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And hey, if you are still in SGI and reading this, and trying to think of excuses for this behaviour by claiming that it is his over-enthusiastic followers who organise all these bogus honours for Senseless remember that, were Ikeda an honourable Buddhist leader, he would ask his followers to stop doing stuff like this. He would surely be embarrassed at receiving bogus honours? Have no doubt that Daisaku Ikeda is a con-artist who seems to suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This is not a person who should be revered as a buddhist leader or anyone's 'mentor'. Wake up! (I did, thank goodness).

That's what I think as well. If Ikeda understood *anything* about Buddhism, he would be shocked and appalled at all those *things* named after him, and he would have made a policy decades ago that that sort of crap HAD TO STOP! No, he sucks it all up insatiably like a sucking black hole of "LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!" and chases breathlessly after the fading limelight. He's fading fast (if not dead already) and has failed to achieve international stardom. No matter how much money he was able to accumulate, he's still a nobody. No Nobel Peace Prize. Sure, he can make an SGI World Peace Prize (if he hasn't already) and award it to himself, but in the end, the things you buy for yourself aren't really worth diddly squat when what you want is others' admiration, adoration, and acclaim. I'll bet he *hates* the SGI members - those gullible losers.

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Bad poetry aside, the epitome of his self-aggrandizement was putting himself as an equal to King and Gandhi.

That *always* offended me. How could *anyone* think that this self-involved, insulated little toad of a man would, on any measure, be in the same category as those two greats? Quick! Somebody kill him! Then at least he can honorably claim something in common - they were all three assassinated! Hop to it, faithful!

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StillTaitenAndProud


I couldn't even find an image of the "I like to..." set of board books (for youngest readers) - perhaps I was the only one who ever bought it??? They were something like "I like to chant", "I like the altar", "I like my juzus", "I like to go to meetings" Ugh. I was trying SO HARD to be a good little SGI Buddhist!!

The main couple in my area, a Japanese male and his local partner had the 'I like to chant book'. I remember thinking that they shouldn't be pushing 'this Buddhism' on someone so young as they don't have the mental capacity to understand or chose whether they believe or not. Then again the same can be said for the majority of us adults who got suckied into such nonsense.

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I remember thinking that they shouldn't be pushing 'this Buddhism' on someone so young as they don't have the mental capacity to understand or chose whether they believe or not.

That is, unfortunately, the norm in intolerant religions. I was raised Evangelical Christian, heavily and forcefully indoctrinated since birth into that, so it seemed quite normal to me. I never read them to my kids, though - they were really stupid and boring. The books, not my kids :} Adults need to realize that you can't just write any old garbage and market it as a kids' book and that suddenly makes it a GOOD kids' book.

One area where the SGI is a grand failure is in integrating members' children. I don't know your background, TheVoid, or whether you are a parent, but let me tell you, I received so much hostile unpleasantness because I had small children. When we relocated here to So. CA, of course I "connected" with the organization right away, and, noticing that the "Future Group" leadership position was vacant, signed right up. Future Group, in case you aren't aware, is <age 6. At that point, my kids were, like, 2 and 4. So I got the proper approval of the local leadership to reserve the back room with the big glass window into the gohonzon room and the sound piped in for parents with small children. I put up signs, inside and out: "THIS ROOM RESERVED FOR FAMILIES WITH SMALL CHILDREN." All of a sudden, I noticed there was this really old guy with huge ears and a middle aged Japanese woman sitting next to him in the first row of this back room. Okay. Well, during gongyo (it was still all 5 prayers/recitations back then - took about 1/2 hour in the AM, and this was KRG), my son (4) snatched a ball out of my daughter (2)'s hands. She, of course, shrieked in outrage. Now, keep in mind that I had never seen Old Guy before. Still don't know his name. He had never seen ME before. I'd forgotten my juzus and was using the gongyo book (even though I'd long since had it memorized). So for all he knew, I could have been a guest. He turns around to me and snaps, "KEEP THOSE CHILDREN QUIET DURING GONGYO!" I pointed to the signs reserving the room for families, and went and told the byakuren that perhaps he needed to be offered a different seat. She offered him and his lady friend two prime seats up front, but he refused. At least he had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

I never got an apology, BTW. I was told that I could submit receipts for all the money I spent for Future Group supplies (like art supplies and whatnot) for reimbursement - I never got a penny back. I quickly realized why that leadership position had been standing vacant, and returned it to that state. But the point is that the SGI seems to believe there can be *no* programs for children and *no* support for families, and the members' children will grow up to be devoted members anyway. Maybe that policy works in Japan, but it doesn't work here. And I'd always been uncomfortable with proselytizing and indoctrination, however much I still regarded it as somewhat a "norm" (given my own dysfunctional upbringing). It wasn't long before I stopped bringing my kids to meetings and I never forced them to chant or any of that crap. Now that they're both in their teens, they know they can choose whatever they like, if they want something, and that it's perfectly fine and normal to have no religion at all.

One topic discussed was how many high ranking SGI officers suffered serious illnesses and other tragedies, despite the alleged benefits of chanting and doing volunteer work.

Ditto for their family members.

That's right. When I was an up-and-coming YWD, it was made very clear to me that the higher your leadership position, the more benefits you would get. So, naturally, I went for as many leadership positions as I could!

Problem is, it doesn't seem to really work that way. Cases in point:

- David Aoyama, killed when one of the hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center, 9/11/2001. He was widely being tapped as a future SGI-USA national leader. So much for Icky-da's statement, with regard to the sinking of the Titanic, that it probably would have turned out WAY different if there had been even ONE person on board who chanted. Yep, he really did say that (in a ghost written article - for all I know, Senseless doesn't even know what the Titanic is/was).

- Shin Yatomi, SGI-USA national study dept. leader and author of "The Untold History of the Fuji School," a Nichiren Shoshu bashing book to support the SGI's claim that it is right and those damn priests are wrong. Of cancer - he was only in his 30s.

- Pascual Olivera, SGI-USA's national Culture Dept. leader. Of cancer - he was under age 50, I think. This after quitting his chemotherapy mid-stream and declaring himself "absolutely cured" and stating that his doctors said "There is not a single cancer cell left in my body" (no REAL doctor would ever say such a thing - cancer comes from *within* your cells, not from outside like a bacterial infection such as strep). He and his wife danced the flamenco for Fat Boy Frogface to celebrate his "victory". 9 months later, he daid.

- Guy McCloskey, SGI-USA national level leader. His ne'er-do-well former drug addict non-racist skinhead son died before age 30 in a motorcycle accident. Seems he was finally getting his life together, perhaps - stupid gohonzon, killing him before he could have enough time to show "actual proof"!

- Daisaku Ikeda's own firsborn son and heir apparent, dead at age 27 or 28 of what is typically an easily curable stomach ailment. So much for all those decades of "most correct practice and study in the world" or whatever the ikedabots like to say about their "modern-day daishonin". So now he's got to shove that pasty do-nothing of a younger son, Hiromasa, into the spotlight so that, when Icky-da kicks the bucket and the nepotism becomes all to clear, the good little gullible ikedabots will be accustomed to seeing ol' Useless and will accept him as the "obvious" next international leader. Doesn't matter what you do, just who your parents are - wasn't that one of the SGI's big criticisms of the priesthood? Have the members forgotten that as well?

That's just a quick sampling. There are no doubt others - I'll add more as I remember them.

I guess I was kind of naïve or altruistic or something - it never occurred to me to do anything in order to increase my own benefits . . . I just did what I thought was right for the other members. Screw the organization; I don't think I ever would've done something for that at the expense of a member's well-being. Years ago, I dated a guy who was a member of NKT (now at least they're pretty open about being a cult of personality), and he once said to me that he wanted to help people so he could become a bodhisattva. That's when I knew that it wouldn't go past that particular date, since I thought it was better to become a bodhisattva so that you could help people. I sort of felt the same way about doing things to gain benefit from them.

It's abundantly clear that no matter how hard one practices, it's not going to put you ahead in line for good things to happen. There are so very many examples of that - a woman I practiced with in Las Cruces. She was a lovely woman, enthusiastic and completely devoted to the practice. She'd moved from Chicago to be with a man she'd gotten engaged to, moved in with him and quickly discovered that he was a raging culero. She moved back to Chicago in less than six months (I think she's a WD leader there now), broken-hearted. Let me say that she was one of the kindest, sweetest-natured people I've ever met; she honestly lit up the room when she came in and lightened peoples' hearts . . . she was just that way. She would come over and chant with you at the drop of a hat, or just go out to have coffee and talk - she was there for me whenever I even thought about it. She was one of those people who would make up chant-counting charts and hand them out to everybody, would chant for hours on end, and participated in absolutely every activity. I received an email from her a couple of months ago, in which she said that she had never chanted more than she was at that time, and had never been suffering so deeply. If the practice doesn't work for someone like her, who's every action sprung from such deep sincerity, then it isn't going to work for anyone.

I really think that if members devoted as much time working on their lives than they do chanting and waiting for some benevolent law to bring them what they want or need, they'd have much happier (and healthier) lives. So much time repressing anger and honest feelings eats away at you; in eastern medicine, there's a belief that holding such negative energy in creates real physical problems and disease.

At least Shin didn't spend his last days chronicling the misfortunes of others.

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I guess I was kind of naïve or altruistic or something - it never occurred to me to do anything in order to increase my own benefits

I don't think I was quite clear. The whole goal of more benefits was to have more to use to help others with! That's why I wanted to become HQ YWD leader - I would be in a position to influence and create great opportunities for so many more YWD than as a lower level leader. And I did! I took them camping, roller skating, hiking, out to parks, had sleepovers, all the things that I'd wanted to see offered for the youth but that had never been offered to the youth by any of the previous leaders. I tried to get a homework buddy system in place, but the older YWD weren't really inspired to make that kind of effort. My replacement was more successful in getting that program implemented, but it was still my own idea :}

For example, let's imagine you have a spare $100. You can give $20 to each of 5 homeless people, and they can get a decent meal or whatever. Now imagine if you have $100,000,000! With THAT kind of money, you could build apartment houses for the homeless and staff them with medical and psychiatric doctors and aid workers to provide the kind of assisted living those people need to be safe and taken care of.

A pioneer leader told me that, if I wanted to help others become happy, I had to first become happy myself. You can only give what you already have. That was my guiding principle, and I still don't regard it as selfish.

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I really think that if members devoted as much time working on their lives than they do chanting and waiting for some benevolent law to bring them what they want or need, they'd have much happier (and healthier) lives. So much time repressing anger and honest feelings eats away at you; in eastern medicine, there's a belief that holding such negative energy in creates real physical problems and disease.

Agreed. If people had been encouraged to develop their lives instead of just sitting on their fat asses mumbling nonsense, imagine how much they could have accomplished! How many members chanted hours upon hours instead of signing up for a class at the local community college, believing that the chanting would get them ahead in their careers faster?? How many members pooh-poohed and turned down unglamourous, entry-level jobs, instead chanting for something more flattering, that paid more, even though they weren't really qualified? If they'd put as many hours into getting training and work experience and training as they did chanting, they would end up far ahead of where they are.

I just ran across an article about bad bosses, and item #2 or #3 was the "anonymous complaints" one. You know, "There have been anonymous complaints about your work." Well, me being in the SGI really caused me to stab myself in the back here. All that rubbish about self responsibility and "it's MY karma" and whatnot led me to address the charge confidently - "Perhaps it was ______; we had some issues with the _____ project" and suchlike. You know, me taking full responsibility like a good little bot. What I SHOULD have said was, "I don't play these silly games. Either tell me who's complaining so that we can address any issues together, or let's go have a little chat with your boss."

The reality, which I didn't figure out until later, was that SHE felt threatened by me. SHE wanted to cut me down but was too much of a weasel to take responsibility for it, so she blamed her own complaints on "anonymous" others, to give her own criticisms a sheen of authority. I didn't realize it until she jumped ship and got a different job.

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a guy who was a member of NKT (now at least they're pretty open about being a cult of personality)

quickly discovered that he was a raging culero.

What's "NKT"??

What's a "culero"??