Hi, sunmoonstars. I'm very happy that you're feeling like you're in a good place. One note: Your gohonzon is YOURS. YOU paid for it, didn't you? Why not let the SGI buy it back from you? Until then, it's YOURS do to whatever you like with. You can hang it on your wall. Line your birdcage with it. Give it to Goodwill! Sell it on eBay! Toss it into the trash. It is nothing but a mass-produced xeroxed copy of something, glued onto some pretty paper which was then glued onto some wooden or plastic dowels, with a little bit of yarn thrown in. Probably cost all of $0.23 to make. I'm guessing you paid $20 for it - amirite? Why not turn a page by lifting a garbage can lid? The SGI is just going to throw your gohonzon into the trash once you return it - you know that, right?
If you remain in thrall to their doctrines and rules, I wonder if this is the right place for you. Integrate whatever experience whatever way you like, but this forum is explicitly for people who are recovering from the cult experience. I'm sure anyone can claim it's a half-full/half-empty sort of deal, but the purpose of this board is to discuss freeing ourselves from culty exploitation.
Embrace whatever you like in whatever way works best for you. Just keep in mind that, while you were doing ONE thing, you were not able to do any of these hundreds of other things. That's the cost of being in the cult. So while you may attribute this or that positive outcome to your time in the cult, there is really no way to measure just what you would have been able to accomplish if you hadn't gotten suckered in in the first place. It's like someone who has been systematically starved or poisoned going through a heroic effort to try and whitewash it and spin it into something virtuous. It wasn't. You were exploited - there's no harm in acknowledging that. In fact, it's important to do so in order to break the cult's power to seduce and harm others.
If your purpose is to sugarcoat your cult experience, well, then this isn't really the place for that. For many, if not most of us, our purpose, our meta-message, if you will, is to enable others to find the strength to break away from a cult that, like all others, uses fear and mind-control techniques to keep its sheeple docile, compliant, and paying.
The fact that the Gakkai now is virtually 100% about the brilliance of Toadface Ikeda and the importance of subordinating your own individuality beneath heroic efforts to mimic Daisucky - while giving until it hurts, essentially - shows that, while there might have been something Buddhist in it once upon a time, that time is long since gone. Now, it's just another cult - why don't they name it the Daisuckies, like the Moonies, so it's more honest?
Suffering is not a virtue. If you really think it is, then perhaps Catholicism is the religion for you. The whole point of the Buddha's teachings was to enable people to rid themselves of suffering, you know. So there is no reason to gild something ugly and try to make it into something beautiful - that sow's ear will never a silk purse be.
It is far more palatable to say, "Yes, this was unpleasant, but LOOK HOW MUCH IT ENABLED ME TO GROW!" instead of "Yeah, I was involved with a cult, and it was damaging and it really held me back, and yes, I'm embarrassed that I wasted that much of my life on something so ignoble." But the whole cult mentality is to exhort you to regard EVERYTHING as a positive - just look at that wretched "zange" page from Vice President Tsuji. That's all about being victimized and regarding every victimization as ultimately your own fault. Let's all not only blame the victim, but embrace the concept! It's ugly and there's no two ways about it.
If you must spin something horrid into a plus somehow, you may never be able to come to terms with its truly destructive and poisonous nature. Perhaps you weren't "in" long enough to become the target of abuse or to experience exploitation and the pressure to do things you truly weren't comfortable with. If so, then I applaud you on getting out when you did. But if you got out for any reason other than that you got bored or that you simply realized there were always other things you'd rather do than activities, perhaps a look at the circumstances and personalities under the glaring white light of a bare interrogation-room light bulb would help. Once you're out, there's no reason to try and apologize for it. If you feel there is, perhaps you're not all the way out after all.
BTW, there's nothing Buddhist about the Gakkai. Take a look at these quotes attributed to the Buddha and take note:
"Winning gives birth to hostility. Losing, one lies down in pain. The calmed lie down with ease, having set winning and losing aside."
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Ultimately, all experiences are empty. There is no "greater purpose" - that's an expression of attachment and delusion. The concepts of "deserve" and "embrace" and "cherish" are all expressions of *attachment*, just as "Buddhism is win or lose" is. The purpose of Buddhism is to enable us to disengage from our small, immature, grasping egotism, to the point that we won't seek after "deserve" and "embrace" and "cherish" etc. The concept of "emptiness" is crucially important within Buddhism; what it means is that the only value is in whether something enables us to become less clinging, less attached. The whole goal is to rid ourselves of delusions and attachments, after all - that's what Buddhism is all about. If you're interested, here is a great article that explains emptiness: [
www.thezensite.com]
Don't let the name put you off. Sure, Nichiren said that "Zen is the work of devils," but there's no such thing as "devils" and Nichiren was an intolerant bigot who wanted the government to make him a superstar. So I think we can take his opinions with a grain of salt, so to speak. From the site above, here is an important passage:
Quote
This dialectical process is often called the Middle Way of the Twofold Truth (erh ti chung tao). Like the Middle Way, the Twofold Truth is essentially a way of emptiness as it is a path of eliminating extreme views so that one may be "empty" of attachments. Different levels here represent the degree of one's spiritual maturity and accomplishment. The advance from one level to another is the process of salvation or transcending the world. The doctrines of "the Middle Way of Eightfold Negation," "a distinction between the conventional truth and the ultimate truth," and "Emptiness" should be examined and comprehended from different levels. The Middle Way is not just a refutation of a pair of extreme views, but a negation of all extreme views wherever they occur. The conventional truth and the ultimate truth do not stand for two definite truths or realities. They have different connotations and implications on each level. The dialectical process is not limited to three levels. It is a means of purifying the mind, which can be employed progressively to infinite levels until one is free from all conceptual attachments. When all attached things and views are completely eliminated, "Emptiness" means "absolutely non-abiding."
It should be noted that to obtain the ultimate liberation from ignorance and delusions one does not have to go through three levels or the infinite stages of the gradual progression; for one can achieve enlightenment instantly. Emptiness is like a medicine: some people may have to take the medicine many times before their diseases are cured, but others may take it just once and be instantly healed. Also no matter how one obtains salvation, he should know that, as with medicine, emptiness is of use to him only so long as he is ill, but not when he is well again. Once one gets enlightenment, emptiness should be discarded.
However, ultimately no truth for the Maadhyamika is "absolutely true." All truths are essentially pragmatic in character and eventually have to be abandoned. Whether they are true is based on whether they can make one clinging or non-clinging. Their truth-values are their effectiveness as a means (upaaya) to salvation. The Twofold Truth is like a medicine;it is used to eliminate all extreme views and metaphysical speculations. In order to refute the annihilationist, the Buddha may say that existence is real. And for the sake of rejecting the eternalist, he may claim that existence is unreal. As long as the Buddha's teachings are able to help people to remove attachments, they can be accepted as "truths." After all extremes and attachments are banished from the mind, the so-called truths are no longer needed and hence are not "truths" any more. One should be "empty" of all truths and lean on nothing.
To understand the "empty" nature of all truths one should realize, according to Chi-tsang, that "the refutation of erroneous views is the illumination of right view." The so-called refutation of erroneous views, in a philosophical context, is a declaration that all metaphysical views are erroneous and ought to be rejected. To assert that all theories are erroneous views neither entails nor implies that one has to have any "view". For the Maadhyamikas the refutation of erroneous views and the illumination of right views are not two separate things or acts but the same. A right view is not a view in itself; rather, it is the absence of views. If a right view is held in place of an erroneous one, the right view itself would become one-sided and would require refutation. The point the Maadhyamikas want to accentuate, expressed in contemporary terms, is that one should refute all metaphysical views, and to do so does not require the presentation of another metaphysical view, but simply forgetting or ignoring all metaphysics.
Like "emptiness," the words such as "right" and "wrong" or "erroneous" are really empty terms without reference to any definite entities or things. The so-called right view is actually as empty as the wrong view. It is cited as right "only when there is neither affirmation nor negation." If possible, one should not use the term. But
We are forced to use the word 'right' (chiang ming cheng) in order to put an end to wrong. Once wrong has been ended, then neither does right remain. Therefore the mind is attached to nothing.
To obtain ultimate enlightenment, one has to go beyond "right" and "wrong," or "true" and "false," and see the empty nature of all things. To realize this is praj~naa (true wisdom).
As you can see, the goal of ending clinging (attachment) means that nothing can be regarded as an "ultimate truth." That, in itself, is clinging and attachment. The Buddha's aim was to equip people to step out into reality unencumbered by any of the typical crutches. To cling to Buddhism - or anything else - is attachment, which, by definition, means you cannot attain enlightenment. The Buddhist doctrines point to an inescapable conclusion - even Buddhism must be cast aside if one is to attain enlightenment (which is defined as the cessation of clinging, craving, delusion, and attachment). So chanting until the last moment of your life is, actually, a statement reflecting attachment, the antithesis of enlightenment.
I'm sure it's fair to say that being determined to "embrace my time with the Gakkai" is an expression of attachment...of course, I wish you all the best. Namaste.