@tsukimoto You wrote that SGI's, "Chant to become happy and get a new car and hot girlfriend" simply sells better than "Elevate your life condition and achieve enlightenment." It's all about numbers -- getting in more new members. More worker bees, more donations, more admirers of Ikeda." Speaking of which, I just received word that, "Sensei[will be] receiving the academic honors of 'Honorary Dean and Professor' from the College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC)."
My first question is, ok which SGI member started the paper work and how much money was contributed to raise the University's awareness of or interest in Ikeda? Next question is, what does Daisaku Ikeda have to do with anything related to pharmacy? I have this feeling that there are many SGI people deeply involved in getting him recognition so that maybe he will get the Nobel Peace Prize. However, this is just my speculation. My next question is, how do 10 million honorary doctorates bestowed upon Ikeda make the lives or practice of SGI members any better? I fail to see the connection. I also fail to see why the members should get all excited about the ones he has already gotten or why some should be working to get him more. Good for him, a man without a university education, that many have awarded him honorary degrees. So what? Unless a particular member is "getting" or earning one and benefiting or profiting from it, s/he is simply counting his neighbor's riches without a accumulating a penny for himself(that's a paraphrase of a Gosho quote for those of you who might not know). Even if Ikeda were to get the Nobel Peace Prize, although I cannot imagine why, how does this make the lives or practice of the members any better? If someone out there can offer up a good reason, please clue me in.

dear Doubtful;

You write:

Speaking of which, I just received word that, "Sensei[will be] receiving the academic honors of 'Honorary Dean and Professor' from the College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC)."


Probably for the expert sifting and compounding he puts into the koolaid.

mark

Well it was Imelda Marcos who collected shoes ... Mr. Ikeda collects degrees and its obvious that they are bought. In some countries, especially in those were public funding for higher education is on the decline this is common practice. Ikeda or not I find that a bit disturbing in general as it diminishes the work of those who earned regular degrees and those whose work is being regarded equivalent to that of an academic – hence honorary degree. Its not just Ikeda, but also others like CEO's etc. to whom those degrees are being dashed out.

Some messages touched the subject of “benefits”. Well in my books this is humbug anyway. What is not not humbug however is if people say their respective religious beliefs made them stronger in times they felt weak etc. faith can be an enormous power generator in ones life. And Buddhism in general is about seeing ones life clearer. Never did I read in Nichirens work that somebody's problem was how to lets say buy that nice kimono. His circumstances in a material way were actually quite miserable for most of the time He more or less even said that there are problems in life we just can not escape but its the attitude that we face them with that we can influence. In one Gosho he even says that even if we spent our whole life counting the wealth of our neighbour won't make us wealthier. So to, as SGI does, value ones own life and faith on material gains is indeed a very shallow interpretation of Buddhism and Nichiren-Buddhism. I think he was concerned with far more important issues.

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Rothaus
Well it was Imelda Marcos who collected shoes ... Mr. Ikeda collects degrees and its obvious that they are bought. In some countries, especially in those were public funding for higher education is on the decline this is common practice. Ikeda or not I find that a bit disturbing in general as it diminishes the work of those who earned regular degrees and those whose work is being regarded equivalent to that of an academic – hence honorary degree. Its not just Ikeda, but also others like CEO's etc. to whom those degrees are being dashed out.

I wonder how many of those degrees Ikeda can enumerate off the top of his head. Could he come up with more than 5 of them? And most of the places that have given him the honorary sheepskins are very little known. I just don't see how anyone can be impressed with a bunch of honorary degrees from places nobody has ever heard of.

Maybe the University of Phoenix will give him one. There ya go, an honorary doctorate from an online college!

As I once said before he just got a few degrees here in Europe, in some countries none since the standards and regulations are quite tough. Some honorary degrees have been criticised here too though, especially when awarded to certain CEO's (at least they had an academic background), but it was too obvious the true intention was to secure some 'public private partnership'. Its also true though that by doing so, also by giving degrees to people like Ikeda, the significance honorary degrees once had is on the decline anyway. I mean one can even 'buy' a 'regular' degree these days. I worked hard for my degrees and whenever I read the H.C. behind a degree it just raises my eyebrows thinking 'So what?'. The once true intention was to honour somebody's work especially for the common good or scientific contribution. Those days are over and one is more inclined to think that someone is polishing his or her ego.

And even if SGI says a thousand times that the degrees are awarded upon the members most of us here would agree, that the degree issue (along side with the M/D interpretation in SGI) is a sign of a serious ego problem of Mr. Ikeda. It is him and nobody else who says which direction SGI takes, so its also him who is on the degree hunt (or lets his staff buy them) and it is him who made the SGI interpretation of the M/D relationship one of the central pillars of SGI 'philosophy'. I think when he passes away SGI (or what will be left of it) will have a substitute to the Tozans to Taiseki-ji - it will be the pilgrimage to his burial site.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2010 01:58PM by Rothaus.

@Rothaus and Nichijew and everyone else. I still want to know, how do 10 million honorary doctorates bestowed upon Ikeda make the lives or practice of SGI members any better? I fail to see the connection. I also fail to see why the members should get all excited about the ones he has already gotten or why some should be working to get him more. So what? Unless a particular member is "getting" or earning one and benefiting or profiting from it, s/he is simply counting his neighbor's riches without a accumulating a penny for himself. Even if Ikeda were to get the Nobel Peace Prize, although I cannot imagine why, how does this make the lives or practice of the members any better? If this is not an interesting question, I will leave it alone.@Rothaus, I agree that pilgrimages to Ikeda's burial site will be strongly encouraged.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2010 01:51PM by doubtful.

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doubtful
@Rothaus and Nichijew and everyone else. I still want to know, how do 10 million honorary doctorates bestowed upon Ikeda make the lives or practice of SGI members any better?

They don't plain and simple. And in your message you summed it up quite nicely I think. You gave yourself the answer. :-)

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doubtful
@Rothaus and Nichijew and everyone else. I still want to know, how do 10 million honorary doctorates bestowed upon Ikeda make the lives or practice of SGI members any better? I fail to see the connection. I also fail to see why the members should get all excited about the ones he has already gotten or why some should be working to get him more. So what? Unless a particular member is "getting" or earning one and benefiting or profiting from it, s/he is simply counting his neighbor's riches without a accumulating a penny for himself. Even if Ikeda were to get the Nobel Peace Prize, although I cannot imagine why, how does this make the lives or practice of the members any better? If this is not an interesting question, I will leave it alone.@Rothaus, I agree that pilgrimages to Ikeda's burial site will be strongly encouraged.

Perhaps yours is a rhetorical question, because I'm sure most people on this board agree that these honorary degrees don't make the lives of SGI members better and some current members might agree and/ or stare back in silence.
I'm going to write this again. NSA members discouraged me from pursuing Graduate school education because it would get in the way of activities. I thought that was a ridiculous idea at the time. Why not seek that as a great benefit? Ultimately, I stuck with the activities. I stepped down from the educational direction I was pursuing.
What is so great about a city official proclaiming a particular date 'SGI day' or what have you? Is that actually going to be acknowledged by anyone the next year? Are members supposed to clap when they read that, 'Hip hip hooray! I'm a part of this group that the city sees as being important! Yay!' How do those events happen?
Do 'cities' and 'society' really care about these activities? A curious friend of mine contacted a religion news reporter in one of the cities where 'Rock the Era' was taking place to ask if they covered the event in the newspaper. The reporter didn't know of Soka Gakkai but then found a press release that had been sent that they did not print. His final statement was something to the effect: Just because some group like Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, have a huge gathering at some rented space in the city, it isn't necessarily newsworthy. (Yeah but...what about the creation of world peace?)... (just kidding)

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rattyboy

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doubtful
@Rothaus and Nichijew and everyone else. I still want to know, how do 10 million honorary doctorates bestowed upon Ikeda make the lives or practice of SGI members any better? I fail to see the connection. I also fail to see why the members should get all excited about the ones he has already gotten or why some should be working to get him more. So what? Unless a particular member is "getting" or earning one and benefiting or profiting from it, s/he is simply counting his neighbor's riches without a accumulating a penny for himself. Even if Ikeda were to get the Nobel Peace Prize, although I cannot imagine why, how does this make the lives or practice of the members any better? If this is not an interesting question, I will leave it alone.@Rothaus, I agree that pilgrimages to Ikeda's burial site will be strongly encouraged.

I'm going to write this again. NSA members discouraged me from pursuing Graduate school education because it would get in the way of activities. I thought that was a ridiculous idea at the time. Why not seek that as a great benefit? Ultimately, I stuck with the activities. I stepped down from the educational direction I was pursuing.

All those honorary degrees are like all those photo-ops with famous people. They're like Ikeda's having a meeting or two with someone like scholar Arnold Toynbee, and then claiming that Toynbee is a close personal friend and colleague. They're like the ghostwritten books. It's all about feeding Ikeda's bloated, oversized ego -- a desperate attempt to make him look like a great world leader and intellectual.

From the Rick Ross archives -- the article "Sensei's World," by Benjamin Fulford and David Whelan, for Forbes International:

[www.culteducation.com]

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What are Ikeda's aims? Five years after gaining command of Soka Gakkai, he told a Japanese writer: "I am the king of Japan; I am its president; I am the master of its spiritual life; I am the supreme power who entirely directs its intellectual culture."
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To me, this quote says it all. "I am the king of Japan." "I am the master of its spiritual life."? "I am the supreme power who entirely directs its intellectual culture."? Who would even think things like that? Only a person suffering from extreme narcissism and delusion. Outside of the Soka Gakkai, who is he really? Non-SGI Japanese mostly see Ikeda as a corrupt power-monger. Outside of Japan, who has even heard of him, unless they were in SGI?

I think we all agree -- Ikeda's degrees do nothing for the members; they're just food for Ikeda's huge ego. I'm sure he has some rationalization as to how this benefits SGI, world peace and the individual members, but I couldn't even begin to imagine what that rationalization would sound like. Is anyone here crazy enough to even go there? I don't think so.

What I was told about Mentor/Disciple is this: the disciple learns from the mentor so that he can one day surpass the mentor. If that's true, then SGI has completely botched Mentor/Disciple. In SGI, nobody surpasses the mentor. In a narcissist's world (ie SGI) there is only room for one star, one leader, one set of goals.

It's awful to think of all the SGI members who have been encouraged to neglect their educations, jobs, families, social lives, romantic relationships, health, and personal interests -- to do SGI activities. To feed the beast, Ikeda's ego.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2010 10:08PM by tsukimoto.

For sure – this is the fallacy of this Mentor and Disciple concept – the premise that the disciple will in time become the Master – this the SGI will never accept – for them the one and only Master is Ikeda - so their foundation is so distorted it makes any analytical person to just get up and walk out on this junket that SGI is pulling. SO many members that I know are voting with their feet on this one! Before this Ikeda Master was pushed down our collective throats we had about 30 to 40 members @ the district meeting – the last one that I went to had about 10 and 3 were the district leader’s family members – so sad to see some of the YD being called out to confess their devotion to this Master Ikeda - because the ones that don’t buy into this are looking down and are just mouthing the words “Ikeda is my Mentor” SO group think and peer pressure are the tools of the trade! How many more honorary degrees will it take to satisfy Master Ikeda’s EGO…………. Or is he after much more valuable prize – can anyone here say “NOBLE”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!