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January 04, 2009 11:17PMRangdrol
Date Added: 11/25/2008
Posts: 25 Re: Former SGI membersIsabella,

Hi, I think it's important to remember that Buddhist philosophy is very real, and very powerful. In my opinion, there is no philosophy like Buddhism, and all the amazing things the Buddha taught are now being embraced, and proven! by scientists from many fields.

The fact is that NSA and SGI really are not practicing the Buddhism of the Buddha, and so if you want, you can find out about Zen, or Tibetan Buddhism by going to a FREE meditation session, etc., and I assure you, no one there will call you, force you to become a member, etc. In fact, quite the opposite! The Buddha never believed his philosophy should be sold, door to door. I am not a scholar in any way, but I have carefully examined many aspects of Buddhist philosophy and I wish some great Buddhist teacher out there confronted SGI and their ideas of what Buddhism is...Bon Chance! Remember, Buddhism is FREE! FREE! FREE! Even HH Dalai Lama said we should take at least!! 10 years before selecting a teacher! Tell that the the Nichiren Shoshu people! :0

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But what about the experiences?

I "felt" a higher purpose among these people. And, ahh, those feelings of bliss after twenty minutes of decrees. (We chelas were expected to chant specified prayers and commands over two hours a day. CUT provides a thick book of decrees).

The bliss (seemingly-Corboy)proved that the prayer worked.

Some decrees invoked powerful cosmic rays (blue, green, yellow, violet, ruby and white; never red, orange, black, gray).

Some decrees called on the Masters to manifest health, wealth and peace for the devotees. Other decrees called for the judgment of bad peoplepeople like Mikhail "communist" Gorbechev, David "capitalist" Rockefeller, all rock stars and liberal Democrats and not least of all, "disgruntled" former members that dared to speak against Mother or "the Masters" in public. I should mention those big, bad, black Magicians of the nether worlds too. Blaze, Blaze, Blaze them away with Bolts of Blue Lightening. Smash, Blast, Annihilate and Consume them away with Blue Rays of El Morya.

Blue meant power! Blue meant protection too., that is, in the "I AM"/CUT paradigm.

I can recall once decreeing for blue protection rays to surround an airplane that just took off with my then one year old daughter and her mother on it.

I had to. The blue rays might have been the difference between that 727 staying aloft or crashing. How did I know? An inner impulse, no doubt coming from my higher self and my I AM presence above, told me so. It was my experience that it was true. How can anyone argue with that?

Since getting into my career of exit counseling, I have logged over five hundred flights (as of 1997) in an eleven year period. No blue ray decrees. Airplanes seem to fly well without blue rays.

The point is that I believed I could wield divine power, as all good devotees of occult teachings believe. Sorcery or "magick" is the fundamental cult of the neo-pagan, Wiccan and occultist.

I once sat in a movie theater watching The Witches of Eastwick. In one scene we see a modern "witch," unnoticeable in an audience listening to a boring politician, cause a rainstorm to disrupt the speech. It ended the tedious lecture much to the delight of the witch. Back in audience reality two middle aged women seated in front of me laughed derisively when this happened. I heard one say to the other, "Oh, that's an easy one. Ive done that many times." She was serious! You rarely know who sits in front of you in a movie theater.

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Those women, like so many New Age occultists I have met, had a tendency to speak "non-judgmentally." This means sitting there politely while someone goes on and on about her consciousness, gnosis or experience without fear of challenge. After all, their truth is their Truth. You wait your turn and announce your insights while others nod appreciatively. How nice. But how nasty when one leaves. One lady did. "Non-judgmental" insights into why the departed person was not progressing dropped all over the place. From this slice of another New Age soap opera I got the distinct impression of hypocritical monologuing between higher selves. The pretense to wisdom and high self esteem.

My struggle with the Teachings was a common one among seekers interested in fully understanding the esoteric words that attracted them. To fully understand occult realities, one must "experience" them in some inexplicable way. Reading is not enough. For example, if a group suggests that chanting a mantra will bring about the changes you desire, and you do "experience" the change after chanting, then, says the occultist, this is proof of a cause-effect relationship between our mantra and your changes. The occultist will say only you, the experiencer, can really tell. You can talk about chocolate all you want, but you have to eat it [experience it] to KNOW it. If youre not sure, you ask the guru. The occultist asks you, "How do you "feel" about it, what does your "intuition" tell you?" Enough coincidences happen in anyones life to seem to affirm the effect of any occult ritual, like chanting a mantra or lighting candles. The skeptically impaired, the superstitious and the confused easily make the leap past coincidence and misinterpretation into "this stuff really works!" I cannot emphasize enough how powerfully this notion of EXPERIENCE dominates students of the occult and related New Age groups.

By experience occultists tend to mean magical awareness more than empirical participation.

An aphorism for occult seekers might be: It is true for me because I experienced it (I am magically aware of this).

A narcissistic tone is at the core of the "Path" of the occultist because all reality stems from the world "Within," the true inner "Self" that is different from the everyday consciousness available to human beings. Through the Teachings I wanted to tap and use this world "within" not only for my self betterment (to "transmute" my old lower self into a godlike awareness and power), but also for the good of the world. And that is what the Teachings promised I could accomplish.

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That was precisely the bind I found myself in with the Teachings, the bind of distinguishing my "lower self" will from that of my "higher self." A double bind occurred simultaneously whenever I entertained the "authority" of a guru or the teachings of a guru as spelled out in books, tapes, or in the lectures. Whose will was I following anyway? The conundrum of experience, I discovered then, was that all experience is conditioned by an interactive environmenteven the gurus! I had no unconditioned will. Neither did any spokesperson for the teachings be they servant or spook. There was (is) no unconditional will in the human realm. Our will will change if we are freezing or starving. Once I realized that, I could let go of my fear to question and reject the gurus altogether. They were in the same soup I was. My job became one of sorting out the more elegant ways to know my "self" and my socio-spiritual environment. I ceased becoming a lower self and a higher self, a head and a heart (and a hand in CUT), or an untransmuted self and a "perfect" monad. I became what I always was and will be, Joe Szimhart, a person with body parts like a heart, a head, hands, feet, navel, etc. After I forgot about them, all my chakras must have spun so fast that they interacted as one force no longer separate. My chi found one location and disappeared. I am being facetious, of course, but I was a person again and not a collection of symbolic parts with psychosomatic references.

I saw that once the wedge of "awareness," of hip-Gnosis, is set into the psyche from the Teachings, the road to manipulation by gurus opens wide. And how they savor it, to be able to drive into your psyche and perfect your soul, to fine tune every nuance and micro manage your flow of being The tolls had been paid by "experiences" that are often hypnotic: a successful vision quest, an ecstasy, a satori or samadhi, a hint of enlightenment to the impossible fact that you are not you, but much more, oh, so much more. You are, your heightened awareness tells you, a "perfect" being, but you do not know-tice it so well. You, oh unenlightened one, are living an illusion of the mundane self, suggests the enlightened guru. An example was G . I. Gurdjieff (died in 1949) who would have wanted me to remember my essence by practicing "Self Remembering." I met many persons devoted to Gurdjieff (Fourth Wayers), for example, walking about in simulated depersonalized states, watching themselves go through life or at least trying to--living like that can be tiresome even for the most devoted. The "higher Self" watching the "machine." Remote control anyone? Who's pushing the buttons anyway? Mr. G loved programming his VCRs (very conscious recruits). Many who submitted to G's will were once succesful in the arts and financially secure--but many did not end up that way. The quest for enlightenment can take a real toll. [read The Harmonious Circle by James Webb, 1987]

Happily, few people in self-serving cults achieve complete roboticism (those that do might already have a mental illness). Some exhibit stilted behaviors temporarily during meetings as they try to be perfect or enlightened. I have noticed that newer persons who "succeed" in such "schools" or "trainings" or "intensives" tend to become hyper vigilant and hypersensitive to their environment for some time thereafter. Seasoned seekers who attend many "consciousness raising" sessions tend to get jaded. They usually find something good to say about their "experience" anyway, that is, until they find another experience to talk about. Most seekers of higher consciousness accomplish only a pretense of being depersonalized and get tired of it, of pretending to be aware or "awakened."

They stop going to workshops and "mystery schools" of enlightenment and begin raising their kids again.

My CUT experience was my main entry into what happens in guruland when thousands show up for a "mystery school" weekend workshop or conference.

I have since (usually vicariously) experienced variations on that theme by studying what happens in other cults of guru devotion. Different groups with similar social interactions and effects. Much the same theme, but always a different kind of drag. I mean they dress differently, chant differently, gather money differently. They, the messengers of "dont you wish you could be as much of a Higher Self as I am," might do things differently too.

I wanted to believe that my experience in CUT was different, but it only looked different.

Aesthetics vs Empiricism in Spiritual Pursuits
Every new spiritual group offers a different aesthetic. Nothing basically wrong with that. It is what makes them unique. If you wish to attract a separate following, it helps to be unique. Uniqueness seems to flow from the charismatic people who found the new religions, therapies, and cultic movements. The groups take on the character of the leader in many ways through language, dress, diet, information, relationship, ritual and goals. There are a host of psychological themes that shift inside of a person when they convert to the teachings of a charismatic leader. This is natural though it may upset outsiders who were once closer to the new recruit. Natural because many studies show that human beings generally adapt to the environmentssocial, psychological, or geographicalin which they find themselves (e.g., prison, foreign culture, new government), or to which they convert (religion, political party, therapeutic cult).

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dasutari

2. Chanting
In my region we are very discouraged from chanting for material goods or person gain. Chanting to have money to feed your family? ok. Chanting to win the lottery. NO. chanting for fancy things? NOOO. We are encouraged to chant for ourselves, but also more importantly others in suffering. We are told that simply chanting to the Gohonzon will not grant wishes, it is a tool to inspire us to do better. Chanting, I was told, is meaningless and useless without REAL EFFORT.

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3. Lotus Sutra > other sutras.
I was told that the lotus sutra was the most important sutra, the foundation of this Buddhism. When I asked if I should read the other sutras, they said by all means noting is lost in searching for more wisdom, just pay special attention to the lotus sutra.

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These passages mean that only this [Lotus] sutra represents the truth.

Again, in the second volume it says, “I am the only person who can rescue and protect others.”1 And it speaks of “desiring only to accept and embrace the sutra of the great vehicle and not accepting a single verse of the other sutras.” These passages mean that only Shakyamuni Buddha can save and protect all living beings, and that one should wish to accept and uphold only the Lotus Sutra, and never even a verse from any other sutra.

Although these earlier sutras may include such statements as “this is the foremost sutra” or “this is the king of sutras,” they are all nevertheless provisional teachings. One should not rely on such pronouncements. The Buddha himself commented on this point when he said, “Rely on sutras that are complete and final and not on those that are not complete and final.” And the Great Teacher Miao-lo stated: “Though other sutras may call themselves the king among sutras, there is none that announces itself as foremost among all the sutras preached in the past, now being preached, or to be preached in the future. Thus one should understand them according to the principle of ‘combining, excluding, corresponding, and including.’” This passage of commentary is saying in essence that even if there should be a sutra that calls itself the king of sutras, if it does not also declare itself superior to those preached before it and those to be preached after, then one should know that it is a sutra belonging to the expedient teachings.

It is the way of the sutras preached before the Lotus Sutra to say nothing concerning the sutras that would be preached in the future. Only in the case of the Lotus Sutra, because it is the final and ultimate statement of the Buddha’s teachings, do we find a clear pronouncement that this sutra alone holds the place of absolute superiority “among the sutras I have preached, now preach, and will preach.”

Now, if you wish to attain Buddhahood, you have only to lower the banner of your arrogance, cast aside the staff of your anger, and devote yourself exclusively to the one vehicle of the Lotus Sutra.

If the sutra that one embraces is superior to all other sutras, then the person who can uphold its teachings must likewise surpass other people. That is why the Lotus Sutra states, “A person who can accept and uphold this sutra is likewise foremost among all living beings.”

To ignore the supremacy of the Lotus Sutra and assert that other sutras stand on a par with it is to commit the worst possible slander of the Law, a major offense of the utmost gravity. No analogy could suffice to illustrate it. The Buddhas, for all their powers of magical transformation, could never finish describing its consequences, and the bodhisattvas, with all the wisdom at their command, could not fathom its immensity. Thus, the “Simile and Parable” chapter of the Lotus Sutra says, “If I were to describe the punishments [that fall on persons who slander this sutra], I could exhaust a kalpa and never come to the end.” This passage means that not even a whole kalpa would be time enough to explain the full gravity of the offense of a person who acts even once against the Lotus Sutra.

"In the second section, the questioner objects to such exclusive emphasis on the Lotus Sutra as narrow-minded. The Daishonin replies that his assertion of the sutra’s supremacy among all the Buddhist teachings is based on the Buddha’s own words as they appear in the sutras themselves, and not on the arbitrary theories or commentaries of later scholars and teachers. When the questioner points out that other sutras also identify themselves as “the foremost sutra” or “the king of sutras,” the Daishonin explains that such statements are relative. Only the Lotus declares itself to be supreme among all the sutras preached in the past, now being preached, or to be preached in the future. Next, the Daishonin says that Shakyamuni Buddha did not reveal the truth during the first forty years and more of his preaching, and that only the Lotus Sutra is the true way that leads to Buddhahood." - [www.sgilibrary.org]

"Nichiren used the four-word phrase "discard, close, ignore, and abandon" to summarize Honen's assertions about all Buddhist teachings other than those of Pure Land."

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There is no such belief in Buddhism that the Lotus Sutra is THE only one, the BEST sutra.

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Only Nichiren believed this because he believed in an end-time apocalyptic era. He saw the earthquakes, other natural disasters, wars, as "evidence" that the Japanese were being punished. This is why he went about trashing all other forms of Buddhism, and that was why he was banished to Sado Island.

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The sad part is that they are not practicing Buddhism.

I want to say that Buddhism is not about peace. There is no where in the teachings of the Buddha that he mentions creating an organization, a church, or anything like that, for peace. That is the most ridiculous thing about the SGI and shows how they have perverted Buddhism so much. Buddhism is about awakening, enlightenment, and that is all!

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To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace. - the Buddha

"Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the hostile. Amidst hostile men we dwell free from hatred. ~ Dhammapada 197"

"Buddhism touches all aspects of human life — the social, economical, ethical, intellectual, spiritual, and mental development leading to enlightenment and nirvana. That is the goal of Buddhism — nirvana, or perfect peace and happiness. ... Suffering ceases when craving is stilled or removed. Then follows perfect peace or happiness — that is, the cessation of all suffering. This is the third Noble Truth. ... And in the fourth stage of sanctity one gets rid of the desire for higher worlds and the desire to be born in higher realms. Pride and conceit are no more. Restlessness is no more. Ignorance, the crowning corruption of all our madness, is also removed. One experiences perfect peace and happiness" - Reverend Mahathera Piyadassi

“Many people think excitement is happiness.... But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

“When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

The Buddha was said to have advised the five mendicants not to live a pessimistic ascetic life nor to live a hedonistic worldly life, but to go above the two extremes; only then they could attain true peace. [www.thezensite.com]

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So, again, if you are happy, that is fine. But you really have to go out into the world and read about Buddhism and ask why is it that we don't meditate? Why is Nichiren Shoshu the ONLY Buddhist sect that doesn't meditate? Because Nichiren was out of touch with reality. He had a martyr complex, and that is why he was kicked out of his village. If he was a monk, at the time, he broke most of his vows simply because of the things he said and how he acted towards others. If he was here today, and we sent him to a psychoanalyst, surely they would have diagnosed him as a borderline personality!

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In my region we are very discouraged from chanting for material goods or person gain. Chanting to have money to feed your family? ok. Chanting to win the lottery. NO. chanting for fancy things? NOOO. We are encouraged to chant for ourselves, but also more importantly others in suffering. We are told that simply chanting to the Gohonzon will not grant wishes, it is a tool to inspire us to do better. Chanting, I was told, is meaningless and useless without REAL EFFORT.

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Spartacus

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ScoobyDooby
It's that time of the year again - when we have to figure out how much of our family's hard earned money goes to the Ikeda relief fund.

Ha, ha! "Ikeda Relief Fund" - that's a good one, Scooby. Ah yes, May - the dreaded month of bleeding for the cult. To anyone out there still being suckered into opening up your pocket books to "donate" money you realistically can't afford to give, be sure to remember - its the "IRF" that purchases all those goodies for cult daddy Ikeda: huge real estate investments, millions in artworks, presidential palaces, limos, jet planes, immense stock and bond portfolios, newspaper & publishing empires, an entire Japanese political party, hundreds of honorary university doctorates, millions of adoring fanantical fans, er, disciples, and a global cult organization cleverly disguised as a ("the only true buddhism") religion - one that has replaced its legit connection to anything remotely resembling Buddhism with a cult of personality that makes Rev. Moon pale by comparison.

<sub>Of course, the two of us are at opposing ends of giving - me, zip zero nada and she as much as she can. The May contributions has always been a source of conflict and disagreement in our household.

In the past, I've conceded to giving reasonable amounts to the organization but it always ended up being much more than we really could afford. My argument that we give so much already in terms of activities supplies and subscriptions monies as well as time and effort to organizing meetings, communications and kosen rufo. This year I hope not to cave in but the pressure is on to give, give, give.</sub>

Please allow me to put my two cents in here, Scooby. If you are going to concede to donating again this year, perhaps you should first get her to agree on spending X percent of the cult donation amount on payment arrangements for you both to go for professional family counciling sessions regarding your disagreements. You may or may not have other issues to tackle as well, but a couple councilor could provide a safe, neutral environment to address problems like coerced family spending on donations to a religious cult that already makes far too many unreasonable demands on your relationship. Perhaps getting yourselves an independent and unbiased sounding board could serve to bring some much needed balance and awareness to reason's rescue, or at least allow you see just how far down the rabbit hole you might be.

Best of Luck, Spartacus

Thanks for the advice Spartacus. We actually tried counseling once, unsuccessfully. The counselor felt I (as a non religious person) was attacking her spirituality. Of course, the counselor's minimal experience with anything Buddhist was Tibetan and she had never heard of the SGI. She wouldn't listen to my cult explanation. Oh well. We may try it again at some point, with someone different of course. This year I will committ to a small amount only, just trying to keep the peace. I will stand my ground.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2013 12:34AM by ScoobyDooby.