Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Date: December 30, 2013 03:43AM
Aw, shucks Spartacus, thanks!
Well, if we didn't learn to stand alone when we were in sgi, we certainly learned to do so after we left - in terms of the friends we thought we'd made in the org. For a group that purports to be one that in inclusive and open-minded, those little brains clam up when it comes to accepting someone who leaves. Of course, that's typical cult behavior that I think stems from the tainted defectors giving members negative ideas about the group.
There was a YWD member (I'll call her J) who left in Feb or March, and I can't say that her leaving the group had no influence my decision to leave a couple of months later. She didn't leave as openly and finally as I did - she just said that she was stepping away for a while to deal with some personal issues (we all knew that J was having some serious and dangerous problems with her ex-husband).One of the factors in my decision to part ways with sgi was the lack of respect some of the leaders had in not acknowledging her request to be left alone. An MD leader, who was made out district leader earlier in the year, kept calling and emailing her - that was out of line, even by sgi standards. He was a toad, anyway, and we went head to head more than once, albeit in a fairly passive way.
Since the postings are gone, I'll briefly re-tell what finally made me leave the group. We had a member, A, who had lost her husband in a tragic car accident; she was in her early 40's and had two kids - a daughter 16 and a son who was 12. To put the sitch into further perspective, this is an Indian family and, of course, the father is the center of family life. He had a very lucrative position with a pharm company - they had a very high-end lifestyle. A, on the other hand, was a stay-at-home mom; she'd been an architect in India, but those qualifications don't stand here. They had a pretty nice life, but when the husband died, everything changed, and their future didn't look too good. A had weekly tosos at her house for several months, but was unable to attend study or discussion meetings; she was struggling to maintain a level of normalcy, particularly for her son . . . she was busy attending activities that he was involved in, as his father had and of course those events were on weekends, which was when all of the district meetings took place. I was in charge of publishing the district schedule to the members, and she contacted me to ask if she could put a toso on the schedule (she hadn't had one for a while). Since there had never been any hesitation on the part of the leaders to support her (or any other member requesting a toso) in the past, I was happy to do so. I received an email from Mr. Toad that evening telling me that it should be a leadership decision whether A could have a toso or not and that I shouldn't have just added it to the schedule. I (fairly politely) emailed him back, told him that he was full of crap, and that it had never been a leadership decision in the past so why was it now? I told him that it was our responsibility to support our members, and I quoted Senseless' admonition that the org existed for the members, not the other way around.
That same evening, I got a call from one of the co-WD members who told me that Mr. Toad had been including J in emails about meetings; this particular WD leader is Japanese . . . her English is a little shaky, and she doesn't communicate well in writing. I asked her if she wanted me to send out an email to the district reminding them not to include J in emails of that sort (we'd sent out an email prior to that, telling them the same thing), and she said that it would be a good idea. I sent out a brief email, not pointing any fingers at any individuals, just saying that J had requested to not be included in district emails, and that we needed to honor that.
The following day, I had a phone call from the Chapter WD (or whatever that hierarchical level is); I wasn't home when she called, but when I called her back, she told me in no uncertain terms that I had no business sending out emails like that, and that A shouldn't be having tosos if she couldn't make it to regular district meetings. I was so stunned that I really was almost speechless. I called my co-WD leader, "K" (not the one who'd called me about the emails); she came over and we talked about the situation. She told me that I had done the right things all the way down the line - in fact, she said that I'd been far too nice and should've told the chapter leader to "go eff herself."
You can imagine how surprised I was to get a call from K four days later telling me that there had been a leaders' that weekend, and it was decided that I wasn't going to be having planning meetings at my place any more and that I no longer needed to do the meeting schedules any more, since someone else (a "good" member who never rocked the boat) had volunteered. It was abundantly clear to me that I was being punished by having opportunities to gain benefits (using their language) taken away from me.
I stewed over this for a few days, thinking about the doubts that I'd had all along (mostly about Nichiren and Ikeda) and how the leaders had treated J and A. Oh, and how they'd treated me when I raised concerns about J and A! None of it gelled with what I knew about Buddhism, and I decided that I could no longer tolerate the bullshit. I thought about how other members I knew suffered in their lives, and how they were told time after time that they needed to chant more, strengthen their faith and practice or connect with Senseless "on a heart-to-heart" level. I thought about the inconsistencies between sgi and what I knew about Buddhism from my reading before I joined. I just couldn't force myself to try and tie it together any more.
I left in a little more dramatic fashion than J did; I sent an email to the district members and leadership as well as the chapter leaders and told them that I was leaving and why. Phone calls and emails from all of them ensued (despite my stipulation that I would welcome continuing communication with them on a friendship level, but absolutely no sgi-stuff); I ignored all of them, and I followed up with a letter to Klubhouse HQ in CA, threatening legal action if they didn't expunge my personal info from their records and cease all contact. I cc'd the local/chapter leadership on that, and other than an occasional phone call or greeting card, they left me alone.
Anyway, that's my story. I haven't heard anything from them for several months, other than from a couple of the ladies that I remain friendly with. The woman who shakubuku'd me (whom I've known for more than 40 years) and I no longer speak; that sometimes makes me sad, but I know what a false friendship that was now.