So much more incredible stuff from everyone.....@Hitch...what you said about "slanderous items" reminded me of what The Anticult has stated many times: Human beings can believe just about anything and it becomes reality. Looking back now on the needless fear that was (and still is) created, it is so sad hearing about members who become actually ill on having such items around them. You are also right that members who are dealing with serious psychological issues seem to be especially prone to this. Which is sadder still.

Reading about the paranoia that surrounds the Gakkai HQ gives me the creeps. There was a lot of paranoia around during the "switchover" 1990-mid-nineties, about. When I had to travel to California for medical reasons, I wanted to attend a meeting out there in the LA area. Well, got through to the main HQ and got the number of the person most local to where I was staying. Arranged to be picked up in front of the hotel.....the directions could not have been more clear and this person was very familiar of the area. I waited...and waited...and waited. Noone ever came. I flashed back to the initial conversation I had with main HQ, and there was definitely a perceptable air of suspicion on their end about who I was, etc. I was a little surprised at this at the time. Shouldn't they be happy, a member here from 2,000 miles away, who sincerely wants to attend a meeting?!?

@KR...I see members who feel they are truly happy practicing with the SGI. They are getting benefits which satisfy them and have no reason to doubt P.I. or the leaders. A lot of the leaders profess great conviction in what the SGI has done for them. They appear genuinely happy. For me, the first light bulb was the very apparent ego-ism that is the majority of the New Human Revolution. I was happy, too. But seeing how Shin'ichi Yamamoto portrayed himself in the NHR as all-knowing Saviour (ghost-written or not, P.I. always has the final say) just hit me as the antithesis of humility, not very Buddhist.

I would also add from recent observations with some of the die-hard youth disciples, they don't ever want to disappoint Sensei, or make him worry. He is like Dad. Don't see them questioning anytime soon.

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bobze39
Well, Hitch, all Russians are partly asians, partly because of location (huge part of the country is located in asia), partly because from 1237 till 1480 Russia was occupied by Mongolo-Tatars. That's why all Russians, even though caucasoids/whites, but also have some mongoloid facial features (wider jaws, eyes little narrower and so on).
As for the lady I got mixed up with, she was not a daughter of an asian leader. She is American, and not asian, she is white/caucasian. But she was a very close friend of SGI-USA leader Danny Nagashima, and she personally knew the cult leader Ikeda.

Moral of the story - when you meet someone who claims to be a personal friend of cult leaders (national & international), RUN in the other direction.

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Nichijew
The SGI has an old saying, "AIDS isn't a problem it's an opportunity."

If they really said this, I find it disgusting. It's even sicker to be coming from a so-called "religious" organization.

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rattyboy
"Again, we value the sanctity of life but we are going to protect ourselves first" is what the youth the leader at the Interfaith Conference says at the 2:03 mark of the above posted video link.
The youth gestures to Rabbi Askelrad at the beginning of the statement then points to his own chest at the end. Telling gestures with at least 3 aspects.
Obviously refering to the words and beliefs of the previous speaker but offering something more profound.
The youth also makes the distinction between tolerating those others on the outside and looking out for #1, his SGI.
And of course, refering to the previous moment when he valued the sanctity of the rules and his need to correct the disunity of the non- stander, the youth sheepishly makes his stand.

Outstanding observations rattyboy. I agree on all counts. Another thing that I find most telling is that out of all the panelists, the gakkai youth robot appears to be the most uptight, unrelaxed, anal, rigid, uncreative (no original thought) and most pretentious participant.

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Shavoy
Reading about the paranoia that surrounds the Gakkai HQ gives me the creeps. There was a lot of paranoia around during the "switchover" 1990-mid-nineties, about. When I had to travel to California for medical reasons, I wanted to attend a meeting out there in the LA area. Well, got through to the main HQ and got the number of the person most local to where I was staying. Arranged to be picked up in front of the hotel.....the directions could not have been more clear and this person was very familiar of the area. I waited...and waited...and waited. Noone ever came. I flashed back to the initial conversation I had with main HQ, and there was definitely a perceptable air of suspicion on their end about who I was, etc. I was a little surprised at this at the time. Shouldn't they be happy, a member here from 2,000 miles away, who sincerely wants to attend a meeting?!?

Get ready to have your creep-meter ratcheted up a bit more . . . . [www.youtube.com]. A protest group at the same said HQ (if you follow some of the additional youtube links, you can get a general flavor of some more, too). Notice the "official" soka police (undercover and in uniform), the secret-service-esque earpieces and the suited gakkai (elderly) leader in command in the center of the gate. Very slick, efficient and professional security operation they got going. It makes the sgi-usa/sgi-x look like amateurs in comparison (and they are). At the ~ 5:10 & 5:30 min. marks, they are getting filmed and photographed back for "documentation" purposes by the soka gestapo.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2012 06:21AM by Hitch.

PS, I forgot to add that at the end of that HQ protest clip ( ~ 9:10 - 9:15), the REAL police show up, the gakkai elderly leader tells the police officer that it's too dangerous for the protesters to be standing in the road near the gate and wants them moved down the street away from the immediate area. The police officer (very eager to cooperate) then gestures to stop the filming and the clip ends. Watch it for yourselves and ask yourself, just WHO has the real "authority" here (the police officer or the gakkai official)? It speaks volumes. Remember, this is supposedly a "world peace", humanistic, religious organization.

Once I was outside the NYC community center, set up a table with anti-SGI literature and demanded a meeting with David Kasahara. Many members were interested in what I had to say but 3 YMD's came out and told me to move away from the center or they would call the police. I got into my car [I had a space right in front of the center...hehe only SGI members find parking spaces in New York] and told them that they were cowards and poor disciples of the Buddha of the Modern Age.

Nichijew

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rattyboy
Picturing these moments of probing by members reminds me of a confrontation years ago that I had with some sort of christian group that was using cult-like tactics in our brief sidewalk encounter. At the time I'm sure I had been mulling over my involvement with SGI and had already been doing cult research. It seems like I had been for years. I was in an unfamiliar part of a city I rarely visit when a group of about 8 people approached me, one person in front of me telling me something about their group and a person on my right handing me some pamphlet. I noticed they had formed a circle around me, 1 or 2 of them off the sidewalk in the street in order to do so. "I know what you're doing!" I said. Looking at a woman who was the best dressed of the lot I said " You're the leader. Make them stop!" She waved at them to open the circle. As I walked away I turned back and said to them: "You might want to rethink what you are doing and why you are with this group". I don't think I had ever been so direct and assertive about anything without expressing anger. Very matter of fact about my opinion and personal needs and what I perceived. All that pent up non-action toward extricating myself from SGI and Ick-eda's mandate for better living came into play before this new mind virus could even get into my airspace. I remember my words because it felt like a strong moment. And then I was on my way. But. I spent way too much time with SGI letting doubts wash over me. In the SGI group circle in which the leader mentioned leaders needing money ("believe me!" he said) as I posted earlier in this forum, it wasn't going to be easy to question him in front of so many of my peers. So I didn't. - Many of them having given experiences, perhaps with tears attached. But still I gasped silently to myself like a few other times at that gathering and others.
I haven't encountered an SGI member in quite a while. I think the directness could be there, but the less involvement the better. "Do not engage in any discussion" I had to tell myself after a while. That worked.

I find this to be a fascinating post and one that I can relate to. I'll admit, I've become more intolerant with religious fanatics and am no longer willing to observe the normal social boundaries of civility when encountering aggressive proselytizing. Just engaging in sincere conversation sets off bells with many of these people and gets you placed onto some kind of prospective fresh meat list. In which case, they will also return. You have to be clear, direct and strong. Being brutally honest about what you think of them will also send a clear and quick message that invariably causes them to even take a step back. I encountered some mormons and one "elder" was so brainwashed that he had tears in his eyes and his voiced quivered as he spoke. I remember immediately recognizing the religious psychosis for what it was. It was like flipping a switch with me. Up until that point I had been respectful, even despite them getting pushier and pushier. Mormonism is a transparent crackpot con-job "religion." I told the quivering individual that he's also mentally unstable and that he needed help (not the kind of help that the magic book that he was literally holding to his chest was giving him either).

My take on it all now is that these people are more than welcome to their fairy tales, but I don't want to play with them and I don't want them sharing them with my children either. I'm very firm and tell them all that they are not welcome, I am not interested, go away and don't return. Btw, take a look at how they react when the shoe is on the other foot [www.youtube.com] (I'm still much more polite than that, in comparison).

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bobze39

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Shavoy
@bobze39, your experience is triumphant, indeed! So did the defamation hinge on the fact that your advisor was gay solely, were there other things they tried to dig up in vain to get to you? All those emails alone--yikes. So ridiculous.

Shavoy, I'd like to share with you a bit what I learned from Defamation 101 class, which I took in USC and later in life (figuratively speaking).
It doesn't really matter what you say about the person. The point is to keep attention of people on the person. So when you send blanket e-mails to the person's coworkers, it really doesn't matter what you say as soon as email contains the person's name and photo. There is only one message "WATCH OUT FOR THIS PERSON". It's really enough. Read the excerpt from Tsukimoto's post on page 308:

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tsukimoto
Yes, this is quite different than the memo sent out to the public, that Simplify posted. The language of the whole Kitano memo is very militaristic. The SGI leadership regarded the SGI/Nichiren Shoshu split as a war, and they consider it justifiable, even good, to do the following:

1. Perform surveillance on people who have joined, or who have expressed interest in, Nichiren Shoshu.
2. Phone people's homes, and listen for background noise.
3. Keep written lists of SGI members/former members who have joined, or expressed interest in Nichiren Shoshu.
4. Monitor priests' activities; confront and harass priests.
5. Members are to seek out information on Nichiren Shoshu priests and lay members, and report this information to their leaders.
6. Members are to pretend an interest in, and friendship for, Nichiren Shoshu members, with the goal of persuading these members to return to SGI.
7. Distribute priests' pictures and information about their whereabouts as if the priests are suspected criminals.

Look at the instruction No.7. Did you notice that the instruction doesn't specify what to say about priests? Because it's enough to attract people's attention to them, to ask people to "watch out" for them. That's the real art of defamation! When people watch out for someone, they already look at this person with prejudice. They start misinterpreting his words, and they are afraid of him, so they start distancing themselves from this person. That's it! The goal is achieved. Because the real goal of defamation is to isolate someone socially. Then it will be difficult for this person to get a job, to maintain income, to survive.

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Shavoy
bobze39, thanks for bringing out how defamation works, how it's more subtle than banging someone over the head outright. That SGI did/does that, gives the creeps. So much for respecting the dignity of every human being.

You're welcome, Shavoy, here is little bit more from Defamation 101 class.
The goal is to isolate the person from people that surround him: his coworkers, his neighbours, his friends, even his family. To achieve this delicate task, you have to approach each of his coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives individually. You have to work with them. It's a long process. You have to do it in a subtle way.
1. Establishing a network of snitches.
Coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives of the person are approached with the idea of playing an innocent game, like Intervention (cable TV show, where relatives and friends try to intervene in the person's life to stop his/her life of drug and alcohol abuse and return his/her life to normal). Coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives are told that they are being given a unique chance to collectively influence him for the better, to help him, to save him, to improve his life for the better by playing some innocent game and collectively influencing him for his own good. Would you pass on a chance to participate in collective effort to help your coworker/neighbour/friend/relative? Friends and family members are being approached through their friends or relatives, and others are approached directly. They are told that in order to make this help more effective, they will have to watch him closely and report infromation to the "handler". So, a network of snitches is being established to spy on the person, but people don't see it this way, they see it as more efficient way to collect infromation about the person in order to help him more efficiently.
2. Pitting the person and his coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives against each other.
a) You let the person know that he is being spied on by his coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives. It can be done in several ways: the person starts hearing from strangers on the street or from some other people personal infromation or some particular words/expressions, that he said in a conversation with his coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives. He doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's going on. Or you just sent him an anonymous e-mail, that just says "your coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives are spying on you, buddy, and reporting the infromation, be careful". Bottomline, you let him know on purpose that he is being spied on.
b) You tell the person's coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives that "HE FIGURED IT OUT, he knows that you've been spying on him". You tell them that the person had a nervous breakdown over it (even if the truth is that the person couldn't care less). Coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives of the person start feeling shame. Then you tell them that the person is very angry and will try to get back at them. (Once again, the case is THE PERSON COULDN'T CARE LESS). Bingo! Coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives are afraid of him!
3. The person and his coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives start avoiding each other. The person avoids them, because he knows that "everything he says can be and will be used against him", bottomline, in every conversation with them he has to be very careful not to reveal personal infromation, that can be later used agaist him, and that's very tiring. The coworkers/neighbours/friends/relatives avoid him, because they know, that after the conversation with him, they will have to report it to the handler (and they would be afraid not to report - in this case they might be blacklisted themselves), and that's also very tiring.
The goal of isolation is achieved.
The method of punishing someone by isolating him from the rest of the tribe is nothing new. People are social animals and can survive only in tribes. In prehistoric times in primitive society people were punished by being banished from the tribe. They couldn't survive by themselves in the wild.

Another great and insightful post that I'd like to respond to.

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tsukimoto
So they say....SGI supports the members. My question is, how? What do you feel that you gained from participating in SGI activities? I don't mean from chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, or from the practice of Buddhism -- I'm asking about being in SGI itself. Do you feel that you have gained anything positive from SGI itself -- apart from chanting or learning about Buddhism?

In retrospect, I'd say the only positive thing to come out of it all is my critical thinking mindset. It wasn't all due to "religion", but it started me off down that road. That's the only positive that I can honestly ascribe to my "practice" and time as a member.

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tsukimoto
I enjoyed some of the activities and met some interesting people, but that probably would have been true if I'd taken up folk dancing, joined the Sierra Club, or gone to cooking school.

I'd say that I didn't really enjoy any of the activities. They were an obligation - a burden (more so as I got older). As for meeting some interesting people . . . . . OH YEAH !! DEFINITELY (and not all in a good way, either).

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tsukimoto
When I joined SGI, neither my personal life nor my professional life were going well. Listening to experiences from other members made me feel hopeful that I could change my life. I was able to get my life going in a more positive direction -- and for years, I thought that this was due to SGI and chanting. Now, I suspect that I would have done so whether I ever heard of SGI, or chanting or not. People who have never heard of SGI have problems and manage to solve them. I was able to make positive changes in my life before I joined SGI.

That's one of the chief negative aspects of SGI -- I fell, without realizing it, into the mindset that everything that happened to me, good, or bad, was somehow related to SGI. Other disadvantages are how SGI took huge blocks of time, and the guilt-tripping, the feeling that I could never do enough for SGI.

I never really completely fell for the causal effect nonsense. I started instinctively questioning that mindset fairly early on. But, ditto on the time requirements, mind games and manipulative "leaders." Seeing the way different "leaders" chose to "lead" with their own special brand of psychotic fervor and mistreat sincere "members" in the name of "compassion" also helped to push me away. I agree that no matter how much you did, it was never quite enough and they always wanted that little bit more - endlessly. If you are a polite person, they will literally eventually invade your personal space (home v's), keep coming after you, basically attacking your time and your thoughts, until you either comply or in my case, have the resolve to tell them to take a hike (although I didn't express it in such polite terms).

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tsukimoto
So...has SGI supported you? If so, how? If SGI did/does support you -- is that support worth what you might have lost or given up to be a member?

It didn't support me in any way. Period. It was a one sided relationship in my case. All it did was take my time, my energy (leaving me exhausted at times), temporarily - my mind, my confidence, my freedom, my ability to control my own life, my dignity, my money, my sense of mental well being, my grasp of reality, my ability to think correctly, my right to self determination, and invariably created more and more problems in my life secondary to the manipulation and actions by other psycho members.

They don't truly support you. They are only ultimately interested in getting YOU to support the organization and taking from you. Perhaps some people find the opposite and actually derive something from it, but I wasn't one of them.

As I first mentioned above, the only thing it gave it me was the ability to see a critical sign post directing me to the road of skepticism. Looking back, that's probably my greatest post-"benefit." ;-) "AAO!! Thank You, Sensei!" (hehehehe!) (I always try to keep a sense of humor about it all, too.)

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gingermarie
That was another reason why I bailed. I could not see myself giving "guidance" to anyone. I just knew I wasn't qualified. Period. Who is qualified? Those who went to school to be a minister, psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker; are sought after through the proper channels and are compensated accordingly, not an SGI leader. Most
SGI leaders work for free, and as they say, "you get what you pay for." I can give free advise as good as anyone, here it goes; tip of the day, "don't bet on the horses!"

Just as there is a dysfunctional relationship between the "leaders" and the membership, there is a lot of extreme manipulation and insecurity at the "leadership" tier as well. The only requirement to being a good "leader" is to demonstrate your loyalty to the right people and be a good at BS'ing (in both directions, to those above you and those below you). I don't know how some of these people can live with themselves.

Hi Hitch. All those who ascribe to an ends justify the means worldview have no compunction about lying, deceiving, backstabbing, manipulating. It is greed and animality that propels such men [and women]. They don't really believe in the Law of cause and effect that they purport to embrace, they couldn't. Since what goes around does indeed come around, they are in for a very very hard time.

Nichijew

My apologies, unfortunately the language to my question wasn't worded correctly:

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KR
For anyone who reads this: What would be the most effective method to "shakabuku" someone out of SGI or any other cult?

Your thoughts...

I tried to keep it as simple as possible. I was more wondering if from everyone's personal experiences if anyone here had any success with at least convincing (a) SGI member(s) to look at their organization more critically. I concede failure my behalf, once again my apologies, but as always you all have produced some very meaningful responses.

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wakatta1
Well, good luck with that.
Of course it would depend upon the depth of committment or dependency the individual had to SGI. Kind of like convincing someone deep in substance abuse to simply "stop doing that".

The only person who can "Shakubuku" a person out of a cult like SGI would be that individual themselves.

Somehow you'd have to penetrate into the cult mind set and cause them to "doubt" that they have all the answers. Slowly then they will follow the bread crumbs back to reality.

(Yep, speaking from personal experience here...). The more intelligent and committed the person, the tougher it would be to get them to doubt themselves enough to begin reevaluating their beliefs. Many of the people on this board can relate to what I'm saying, it just doesn't happen overnight because the culty "magical thinking" sets up "detour" signs throughout your mind to anything that resembles critical thinking. Usually it takes an external event to get you thinking....

Testify my brotha! You and I have had the same experience. Thank you.

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Hitch
KR - There are no easy answers to your question. It depends on the person. A part of the person has to be receptive and open to the idea of questioning and doubting (i.e., a part of them has to want it for themselves). The trigger that gets them to that point is also different for different people (for some, it is a single event, for others it is an accumulation of events). I'd say the starting point would be to focus on the trigger(s). Then, slow reeducation and critical thinking are the only way out. Even then, some people will have doubts, panic attacks and possibly relapses. Whereupon you will have to start over again. Persistence is also important. People who truly *need* the cult and its support mechanisms, however, are going to be the most difficult to get to, maybe even impossible. For those, the *need* to believe overrides all else and, as mentioned above, their door of doubt is completely shut. Unfortunately, they are probably beyond reach.

Crazy on how the mechanics work here in the USA, given that many SGI members come from other religious backgrounds one could wonder why is it that the same reasoning and doubts for the previous faith can't be applied to the SGI faithful.

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Shavoy
@KR...I see members who feel they are truly happy practicing with the SGI. They are getting benefits which satisfy them and have no reason to doubt P.I. or the leaders. A lot of the leaders profess great conviction in what the SGI has done for them. They appear genuinely happy. For me, the first light bulb was the very apparent ego-ism that is the majority of the New Human Revolution. I was happy, too. But seeing how Shin'ichi Yamamoto portrayed himself in the NHR as all-knowing Saviour (ghost-written or not, P.I. always has the final say) just hit me as the antithesis of humility, not very Buddhist.