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Freeheartandmind
Remember how when somebody went taiten, it was whispered like they had a dread disease or something. Certainly they would be hit by a freight train! Chant for them! What absolute silliness.
They were treated like lepers. That is until they could be cured by the magic chant and welcomed back to the one and only TRUE "special" cult colony.
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Freeheartandmind
Hitch, back in NSA days we were never told what Soka Gaikkai meant, it was rarely talked about. Full disclosure was not (and apparently is not) the norm.
I was one of those "YOUTH!" that pestered certain people for explanations. The explanation that I got from those early days was that "NSA stands for Nichiren Shoshu Soka Gakkai of America." The nichiren shoshu part was pretty self explanatory (orthodox school of nichiren), but the nebulous "soka-cult-gakkai" portion always struck me as deceptive weasel vocabulary.
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Freeheartandmind
In the US there have never been (and will never be) enough ikedabots to impact society at large, so what is she talking about? Grandiose thinking has always been a prime characteristic of the org,that's why the so-called "leaders" are so full or pride and haughtiness. Legends in their own minds.
HAHA!
Exactly! The entire cult org. is a manufactured alternative delusional reality. When all is said and done, there is only one leader who really matters and shall be remembered - The DEAR Leader. Even Williams learned that lesson, the hard way.
A big part of religion, unfortunately, is manipulating and fooling ourselves (and others), precisely because we *are* human. I agree fully with your words "
In the US there have never been (and will never be) enough ikedabots to impact society at large,". I even went so far as to tell a "senior leader" that to their face and ... Oooohhhhhh ... boy, they
did not like that, at all! As an example of the calibre of individuals they have out there, I submit Rep. Hank Johnson [
en.wikipedia.org]. An intellectual tour de force on display [
www.youtube.com] (see 1:20 min. mark). (But, on a serious note, back to the theme of being human, if you read the portion of the wiki article about his personal life, you will find some of the reasons he has clutched to the gakkai cult philosophy. It's a very common trigger - serious health, life, or personal issues that one has no control over - with many hardcore believers/members.) Hank as even gone so far as to travel to Japan and present the dear leader with official congressional certificates/awards (more meaningless epaulettes).
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Freeheartandmind
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56499952/Psychology-and-Buddhism-Kathleen-Docken
"To my husband Richard, my daughter Megan,my parents George, Gertrude, and Ariel,and my Sensei, Daisaku Ikeda, for their support"
BARF!!! How can she pretend to have a valid academic publication when she is an ikedabot? Oh, the blindness of the kool-aid drinkers.
Very hard to take any book or "scholar" seriously that is dedicated at the outset to a cult leader or fails to address the elephant in the room. Something tells me that the authors are missing some key portions to the overall equation. Again, skeptical alarms bells should be sounding off, warning that one should proceed with caution.