While in the SGI-USA I became very good at ignoring my life. Sound familiar anyone? Get to the meeting, chant for the members, visit the members, chant for everyone and everything besides yourself. Chant while your so sleep deprived that the quality of daimoku is totally lost.

Since stepping back and opening my eyes to this personality cult called SGI, my chanting is so much more sincere - for myself and those that I love and care about.

My life is now taking a whole new direction and growing in ways I had stopped hoping for long ago. I was too busy living the way SGI wanted me to. Now I'm living true to me. I feel sad for those that threw away their personal practice once they needed to step away from SGI. The basics of chanting, gongyo and study are very worthwhile I feel.

Change can be hard, growth can include some pain, but life is great when you feel you are being true to yourself!!!!!

Quote
Sparky
I agree..."Fat Jap" is very offensive and uncalled for. It doesn't help with the conversation going forward.

I think "Lying Body and Mind Rapist" is a better term.

LMAO....

Quote
backnforth
While in the SGI-USA I became very good at ignoring my life. Sound familiar anyone? Get to the meeting, chant for the members, visit the members, chant for everyone and everything besides yourself. Chant while your so sleep deprived that the quality of daimoku is totally lost.

Since stepping back and opening my eyes to this personality cult called SGI, my chanting is so much more sincere - for myself and those that I love and care about.

My life is now taking a whole new direction and growing in ways I had stopped hoping for long ago. I was too busy living the way SGI wanted me to. Now I'm living true to me. I feel sad for those that threw away their personal practice once they needed to step away from SGI. The basics of chanting, gongyo and study are very worthwhile I feel.

Change can be hard, growth can include some pain, but life is great when you feel you are being true to yourself!!!!!

Amen, backnforth.....Amen!

When people are coming out of a cult, sometimes they need to blow off steam, or they type something while they are emotionally upset.

At the same time, there are massive facts in this forum, like the one's exposing the billion dollar investment funds of Soka U.

SGI, The richest cult in the world? over $1 BILLION in the USA
[forum.culteducation.com]


Often when people are in a cult, especially a type of New Age or so-called "buddhist" cult, they are in fact afraid of normal human emotions, like sometimes losing your cool a bit. Nothing wrong with it.
And sometimes people for their own reasons have to express deep emotion.

As well, usually people have been too passive/submissive when in a cult, and have suppressed their natural assertiveness. That can then come out in anger when they are getting out of the cult.

Almost every cult tries to demonize any type of normal human anger, usually as the guy running the cult wants to control people.

The short point is, anyone who was reading this thread, could see that a person was angry at being used, duped, deceived, manipulated, betrayed...by SGI for years.
People have a right to be angry at SGI.

Not condoning any words, but healthy anger towards the exploitative SGI-USA seems to be a healthy thing. Its the start of having some boundaries.

And the dirty and ugly trash that Ikeda has written and dictated about his 'enemies' is grotesque.
SGI has attacked websites, and gone after critics of SGI.

When people are coming out of SGI, sometimes they don't see SGI like they will later. At first, they might think SGI just made mistakes, and are bumbling fools. Only after much research do they see in fact SGI is run according to very careful planning, including how they use and then discard members.

So people should write what they really think, and not worry if its a bit much. These threads are not just a fact machine, its also self-deprogramming, and sometimes that can get emotionally heated.
People should feel free to express themselves honestly.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2011 12:27PM by The Anticult.

Quote
The Anticult
When people are coming out of a cult, sometimes they need to blow off steam, or they type something while they are emotionally upset.

At the same time, there are massive facts in this forum, like the one's exposing the billion dollar investment funds of Soka U.

SGI, The richest cult in the world? over $1 BILLION in the USA
[forum.culteducation.com]


Often when people are in a cult, especially a type of New Age or so-called "buddhist" cult, they are in fact afraid of normal human emotions, like sometimes losing your cool a bit. Nothing wrong with it.
And sometimes people for their own reasons have to express deep emotion.

As well, usually people have been too passive/submissive when in a cult, and have suppressed their natural assertiveness. That can then come out in anger when they are getting out of the cult.

Almost every cult tries to demonize any type of normal human anger, usually as the guy running the cult wants to control people.

The short point is, anyone who was reading this thread, could see that a person was angry at being used, duped, deceived, manipulated, betrayed...by SGI for years.
People have a right to be angry at SGI.

Not condoning any words, but healthy anger towards the exploitative SGI-USA seems to be a healthy thing. Its the start of having some boundaries.

And the dirty and ugly trash that Ikeda has written and dictated about his 'enemies' is grotesque.
SGI has attacked websites, and gone after critics of SGI.

When people are coming out of SGI, sometimes they don't see SGI like they will later. At first, they might think SGI just made mistakes, and are bumbling fools. Only after much research do they see in fact SGI is run according to very careful planning, including how they use and then discard members.

So people should write what they really think, and not worry if its a bit much. These threads are not just a fact machine, its also self-deprogramming, and sometimes that can get emotionally heated.
People should feel free to express themselves honestly.

I strongly disagree. Racist statements are never defensible, even with the knowledge that people trying to extricate themselves from cults are sometimes emotional or have felt suppressed. I just don't get the sense that anyone here was so broken by SGI that they stopped being able to tell basic right from wrong, or fair from unfair. If that seems a little too politically correct for anyone, so be it.

Labeling someone with an ugly racial slur brands the labeler, and his/her associates as far worse than the target of the slur. Many people instinctively want to defend the specific person being targeted (and rightly so) , even if they might otherwise have agreed with you. It's impossible to confine the hurtful effects of such remarks to one person. Racial epithets are felt, and understood as a personal slap in the face, by anyone who is a member of the race you are talking about -- not just by those who disagree with your position aside from the slur.

Yes, Ikeda has very profitably sold a lot of gullible, needy people on the idea that SGI's dumbed down version of Nichiren's Buddhism is under assault by "enemies." I just don't think his weight or especially his race, have anything to do with it. Cult behavior, and illicit enrichment from it, exist everywhere on the globe.

Quote
BeingAdagio

I strongly disagree. Racist statements are never defensible, even with the knowledge that people trying to extricate themselves from cults are sometimes emotional or have felt suppressed. I just don't get the sense that anyone here was so broken by SGI that they stopped being able to tell basic right from wrong, or fair from unfair. If that seems a little too politically correct for anyone, so be it.

Labeling someone with an ugly racial slur brands the labeler, and his/her associates as far worse than the target of the slur. Many people instinctively want to defend the specific person being targeted (and rightly so) , even if they might otherwise have agreed with you. It's impossible to confine the hurtful effects of such remarks to one person. Racial epithets are felt, and understood as a personal slap in the face, by anyone who is a member of the race you are talking about -- not just by those who disagree with your position aside from the slur.

Yes, Ikeda has very profitably sold a lot of gullible, needy people on the idea that SGI's dumbed down version of Nichiren's Buddhism is under assault by "enemies." I just don't think his weight or especially his race, have anything to do with it. Cult behavior, and illicit enrichment from it, exist everywhere on the globe.

That's exactly what I meant. I agree with a lot of the things being said on this forum, and yes I'm angry with SGI and some of the members, but I would never refer to them as a "Jap" or any other racial slur. The same way you wouldn't call Jospeh Kony the N word despite being a pretty evil man, no one should be referring to PI as "Jap." Simple as that.

I am not talking about any race based slur, obviously.

But the total concept of being emotionally honest, including anger at SGI and Ikeda.
The idea that getting out of a cult can be all politeness and perfect rationality is incorrect. Its messy and can be unpleasant, of course.

Ikeda is a meglomaniac, and a greedy and dishonest person, it has nothing to do with his nationality.
Ikeda biggest critics are people in Japan.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/2011 06:19AM by The Anticult.

From memory, in a 330 page thread, there was only ONE time one person, probably in a moment of being emotionally upset, said something like that, that obviously no one condones!
That goes with saying, to anyone who has read a thread like this.

So why keep going back to one single thing, that one person said?
They said it, so address it to them. One person made that comment, so address them specifically about it.

Its not about the thread in general, or the hundreds of pages of specific example of SGI malfeasance.
Its a mistake to overgeneralize the thread in general, when only the person who said it should be addressed for the comment.
Its a public comment area, not a 'groupthink' situation like a cult, where everyone strives to think in a similar way. Of course, each person is responsible for their own comments and viewpoint.

Or report that comment to the Moderator, and they will most likely delete that comment.
There is a button that says something like 'report this comment to a moderator'.

Why distort an entire thread, from a single comment, from a single person?
Sometimes coming out of cults, some people can get angry. That is just reality.

So report that comment, and one would assume the Moderator will delete that part of it.


Sometimes people make an error of thinking that random people posting on a public forum critical of a sect are a "group", but its not. Each person is responsible for their own individual thinking and comments.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/2011 11:31PM by The Anticult.

Hello everybody,

I'm so glad I found this forum. I read this thread for hours yesterday and it was quite eye opening. I am married to a SGI member who was born in Japan and for the past 15 years or so has lived in the US. We have been married for a little over 2 years and it has been really good for the most part. I knew getting into this relationship that she was a member but honestly I really did not know anything about SGI. As a former member of a cult, the word of faith movement, I would have never knowingly pursued this relationship. Anyway, she really has a wonderful personality and I am finding that just like SGI, the exterior is wonderful, but the interior sparkles a little less.

I have, through the years, asked and confronted her about a few of the cultish things I've seen. The response has always been something like "I've never seen those things" and things like "It works for me and I am happy". It's really hard to argue your points against that sort of stuff, so I just let it go. All was fine until last December when our daughter was born. Wife's mom and sister came from Japan and stayed a while. Long story short, my wife had complications that led to strokes that put her in the hospital 2 days after the birth. Wife's mom got all selfish and got upset that she, wife's mom, wasn't getting enough attention. I told wife's mom to back off and my wife totally does a 180 and turns on me! Big blow up and wife's mom flies back to Japan in a huff. Good riddance. Through it all, there was an uncanny devotion to her mom as the hero and me as the villan.

I said all the above to illustrate a trust issue that suddenly appeared in the marriage. For the first time I saw that my wife was more devoted to her mom/family than me/our marriage. Not cool. So began many heated fights that mostly centered on my fear that if my wife was so devoted to her mom that what would keep my wife from taking our daughter to Japan and not returning? (Japan is a haven for child abductors)....

OK, now the SGI part of all this. The blind devotion to her mom naturally made me wonder about the devotion to the SGI. She has kept most of her SGI stuff away from me because she knows I am not on board with it. What I have learned from reading all about the SGI is that this method of separating the SGI stuff from me was working to my wife's advantage, sort of a quiet agenda operating under the radar. My lack of knowledge of SGI combined with my ignorance of the Japanese language has been used against me all this time and I am only now catching on. The shit hit the fan last night when I made the connection between my daughter's middle name and SGI. I remember my wife insisting that she REALLY wanted the name "Kalen". Sounded good enough to me, whatever. She said it meant "Lotus flower". I was like, cool, that's nice. Then it hit me that that name is essentially in the effing chant that she has been saying her whole life! Great! Now my daughter is forever branded with a cult name that has special meaning to the members. It's perfect, it's a badge to the members and at the same time perfectly innocent to non members. But it is my wife who designed this all along, and I, who unbeknownst to me, approved it. I also found out that she has been giving SGI money without my knowledge.

As today is the first sunday of the month, she was planning to go to a meeting. That's when I let it all out that I knew what it was all about. She seemed shocked that I knew so much. She said today she was to give her "experience". I asked if her story would include all the lying and the discontent at home... I was going to go and see all this craziness for myself but we stayed home and fought.

I would appreciate any guidance from you all that you care to give. I tend to be a firebrand and you all seem to have a clearer head than mine. When I finally saw that I was in a cult years ago and that I waisted so much time, money and energy, I was furious. This crap drives me nuts.

It is said, "you can take the man out of the cult but it is difficult to take the cult out of the man."

Nichijew