Well I must agree. It may be that some individual member once pulled the sex/relationship trick, but it was not common practice to do something like that. And surely not a sanctioned method in SGI.

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tsukimoto

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The Anticult
SGI New Zealand [forum.culteducation.com]

What happened to that guy, does not sound in the least amusing, as its obviously more about emotional manipulation around "true love", not simply sex. His comment that she bolted right after he "joined SGI" is believable. She got her new member number.
But obviously that guy felt a lot of pain over that, as he went to the trouble of searching the internet for a cult website, registering, and making a post. He could see something was up.
.

I'm not convinced. People will pretend friendship to get new converts. They might go so far as to arrange a date...but to carry on a love affair, over time? Pretending to be in love with a guy, just to get them to join SGI? A person would have to be a hell of an actress to pull that off. It would be time consuming, emotionally draining -- and all you're going to get, is maybe one convert? In the time it would take to have that relationship, she could have shakabuku'ed a dozen people!

As for the relationship, we only have his side of the story, and we don't even know him. He's an anonymous poster on a message board. The woman might have left for reasons that had nothing to do with "getting a new member number." Maybe she wanted the relationship to work out, and she hoped that if he joined SGI, then the relationship magically would work out. When SGI didn't do this magic, maybe she just didn't know what else to do. Maybe he was angry from his divorce, and not over his ex wife. Even if you personally know both the man and the woman, you don't necessarily know what they did or said when they were alone together -- or what their motives were.

And yes, Morgaine, I'm in a skeptical mood these days, and maybe it is because I was too trusting when I was in SGI. At this point, I think that chanting seems to work because we expect it to, and because chanting anything causes neurological changes in the brain. You believe otherwise. As with my Christian friends, I just accept that people believe different things.

My experience in Japan in the late sixties was that there were a very large number of Japanese ladies who had recruited their GI acquaintances to join. Some of them even came over to the US based on such relationships and I know of many of the WD who continued to practice thereafter. While in Japan I knew of several of those relationships that broke up, the GI going his way and the Japanes lady reappearing with a new GI "friend". I assume they were closer than MahJong partners then.

I had also heard rumors that the WD in Japan had green-lighted this behavior as a way for the WD member to "change her karma" by leading others to the Gohonzon.

I'm just sayin...

Wakatta

Just to clarify, as its hard to communicate through plain-text.

As stated, I am not saying that SGI in the west, has instructed people to use sex to recruit, in a direct way, like many other sects do like the Raelians.
But, virtually every sect does it indirectly, even just by picking "good looking" people to recruit, and meet and greet.

As far as this example, of course its more complicated, and its absurd to think someone would be involved for months with someone in a romantic relationship, ONLY to get them to join SGI.
But perhaps this person knew there was no relationship for her, and just kept in it, until the person officially joined SGI, so they would get their Karma-point, in their own mind.
Who knows.
But that part of it is totally believable, as echos of that have been seen.

Its not fiction that there are some SGI members, who will repeatedly and constantly try to get people to join SGI, for months and even years. They never quit. That is not speculation, its reality.
And its also not speculation that some members will use flirting/sex to attract attention, or REPEATEDLY give invites to "meet someone" in the dating sense at their home, when in fact that is a SGI meeting.
(Amway does a similar tactic, in they don't tell you the meeting is about Amway, just a business meeting).

Again, that is not theory.
That is basically the first comment I made about SGI, because I saw that with my own eyes a number of times, in rather blatant ways. That is the first thing I noticed, and it happened repeatedly. That is the very thing that raised a red flag for me about SGI.

Of course others may not have experienced that, but its out there. Its not that SGI is ordering people to do this, but there is something in the SGI structure that facilitates it happening.
It must be the pressure to bring in new people, plus the idea of each new person they bring in they get Karma-points in their own mind. Then of course certain people naturally gravitate to what works best, even unconsciously.

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The Anticult
Its not fiction that there are some SGI members, who will repeatedly and constantly try to get people to join SGI, for months and even years. They never quit.

And its also not speculation that some members will use flirting/sex to attract attention, or REPEATEDLY give invites to "meet someone" in the dating sense at their home, when in fact that is a SGI meeting.

Of course others may not have experienced that, but its out there. Its not that SGI is ordering people to do this, but there is something in the SGI structure that facilitates it happening.

It must be the pressure to bring in new people, plus the idea of each new person they bring in they get Karma-points in their own mind. Then of course certain people naturally gravitate to what works best, even unconsciously.

I agree with this post, especially these quotes. SGI's pressing members to recruit -- and telling members that they'll improve their karma by doing so -- encourages members to behave in a phony and manipulative way toward potential converts. It's also a good point that people will gravitate, even unconsciously, toward behaviors that have worked for them in the past. Whatever helped them get their own way from family and friends -- whether that's flattery, pestering people without let-up, or flirtatiousness.

Overall though I believe its a fair statement to make that any kind of sexual manipulation in recruiting newbies was/is quite an exception. I say this in order to keep the thread believable, as it sounds a bit sensationalist to me. I have been a member more than 20 years and it never came across such conduct that I am aware off – which does not mean that it did not happen.

What I did notice though, was especially Japanese YWD being on the “husband-hunt”, amongst Caucasian members especially, in quite a desperate manner – maybe for immigration purposes? The marriages broke up quite easily though. I also noticed double standards amongst Japanese women who had been divorced by their husbands – they always put on a big drama and the guys were always the “bad” ones. In two cases I know the women had an affair for years and certainly they put on “the poor left behind and maltreated wife”-face, while the guy never ever came out with that his wife had an affair. Heard of that years and years later and this happened more then once.
Certainly one, at the time, would have never doubted the respective woman's story as Japanese women were some what regarded as “holy” never ever doing anything wrong. I do not want to bash Japanese women here though just the double standards and hypocritical behaviour of some of the Japanese members I became aware of. In “western” marriages the respective sides would have just said that it just did not work any more – the normal thing when partners became strangers – the Japanese would however make such a big drama out of the whole thing.

Since we are talking about the craziness of recruitment i.e. shakabuku campaigns, I'll share an experience I had in the 1980's. It was street shakubuku time one evening at the kaikon and I was fairly new and not really on-board with the whole shakubuku thing, afterall I was brought up to 'not talk to strangers'. The Japanese woman in charge was the Chapter or Headquarters leader and had the tough pioneer spirit. She was giving out orders and fully expecting everyone to only say "Hai!". I was in the back of the room and the leader was pairing up people to go out to find strangers to introduce to buddhism. My thoughts were that I might go if I was with my sponsor, let's call her Amanda. But when the leader told me I would be paired up with someone else, I said No, but I would go with Amanda. We began going back and forth which led to a full blown argument where she accused me of causing disunity and she literally pushed me out of the room, telling me to "Leave!"

I was devastated and shocked. A few people came to my aid and we went into the Gohonzon room to chant. I was quite upset and crying and they were compassionate. Looking back on that incident I realize that they never said they thought the leader was wrong in her actions, but they DID point out the Oneness of Life and Environment concept and that I needed to raise my life condition to get rid of the negative experiences. I can't say I disagree with that, but there is always the external reality of the situation to consider and she WAS wrong.

My fellow-members chanted for me for several days, worried I would quit. I can't explain why I didn't. Eventually I ran into the leader at the Kaikon and she came over to me, looked into my eyes in a concerned way and said "Are you okay?" That was the closest thing I got to an apology.

Somehow I used the experience to be stronger, and maybe a little more diplomatic with my objections. All in the name of skakubuku. Eventually we went door to door and tried to introduce people by interrupting their home-life. Once, we put some people in the car and took them straight to the temple and they received Gohonzon. Once my sponsor and a youth leader were together doing street shakubuku and a man pulled knife on them. It was devastating to them. The youth leader no longer would go out and do street shakubuku and my sponsor eventually quit her practice. Something like that will bring you to your senses.

I don't know what all the current methods are to do shakubuku but it seems like the desperation of NSA days are back!

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backnforth
Since we are talking about the craziness of recruitment i.e. shakabuku campaigns, I'll share an experience I had in the 1980's. It was street shakubuku time one evening at the kaikon and I was fairly new and not really on-board with the whole shakubuku thing, afterall I was brought up to 'not talk to strangers'. The Japanese woman in charge was the Chapter or Headquarters leader and had the tough pioneer spirit. She was giving out orders and fully expecting everyone to only say "Hai!". I was in the back of the room and the leader was pairing up people to go out to find strangers to introduce to buddhism. My thoughts were that I might go if I was with my sponsor, let's call her Amanda. But when the leader told me I would be paired up with someone else, I said No, but I would go with Amanda. We began going back and forth which led to a full blown argument where she accused me of causing disunity and she literally pushed me out of the room, telling me to "Leave!"

Once, we put some people in the car and took them straight to the temple and they received Gohonzon.

Once my sponsor and a youth leader were together doing street shakubuku and a man pulled knife on them.

I could never get onboard with street shakabuku either. I always sneaked out when it came time to go out and do it. I agreed to do a lot of ridiculous things for SGI, but somehow, I just couldn't street shakabuku! Leaders lectured me about my "lack of courage," and "lack of compassion for others' lives." I did feel guilty -- but not guilty enough to do street shakabuku.

I've heard about the practice of just taking strangers straight to the temple and giving them a Gohonzon -- when they have no clue what it even is. That happened to a Young Men's Division friend of mine, a student from overseas who was struggling due to his poor English. Some SGI members street shakabuku'ed him, took him to the temple and gave him a Gohonzon. He just said thanks and hung it on his wall as a decoration -- he had NO idea what it was or what to do with it. Nobody explained anything to him. Living in another city, he later met some other SGI members -- street shakabuku again! They were talking about the Gohonzon, and he said, "Is that what I have?" He took them back to his place, showed them his Gohonzon, hanging on the wall. They said, "That's a Gohonzon," and helped him enshrine it. He asked, "I am SGI member?" Poor guy didn't even know he'd joined SGI....he just knew that some people took him to a temple and gave him a scroll.

Some other people have also posted in this thread about abusive leaders. One woman (Sushigrrl?) wrote about her experiences in Young Women's Division, having to do activities in the hot sun, not allowed breaks for water -- and then the leader yelling at her in front of everyone because she fainted.

@tsukimoto and backnforth

Well we often heard of SGI-'leaders' loosing their heads in this forum. One reason might be that they put themselves under pressure to reach certain 'goals' and some of these goals might depend on the co-operation of others. Another reason might be though that some are plain and simple psychos. Sorry to use that word, but now after some time has gone by since my departure and common sense kicking back in - thats what would go through my head today. The 'best' thing is – people like that seem to go undetected in SGI and are even put into a position to give people 'guidance'. Today I find it hard to understand why I accepted some peoples advice in SGI (in all fairness their also have been some extraordinary characters I had meaningful conversations with).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2010 01:25PM by Rothaus.

On the subject of leaders behaving badly -- this is from the "Cults, Sex and New Religious Movements" Board, "Sex/Sexuality Within Cults" thread.

[forum.culteducation.com]

-----------------------------------Beginning of Quote----------------------------------------------------------------

Let us look at Professor Deborah Gruenfeld's experiment--what I term the Stanford Cookie Experiment. I believe that scholars of cults and dysfunctional organizatins need to place this experiment alongside Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiment and Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment.

This experiement demonstrates how a leadership role, randomly assigned, has a tendency to trigger swinish bad manners in otherwise normal persons.

The way the experiment worked (and it was replicated a number of times)
subjects were assembled into a group to do a shared task.

*At random, one subject in each group was assigned the role of overseeing and evaluating the others' work--randomly assigned to a leadership role.

During the experiment, a plate of cookies/biscuits was brought in.

Time and again, those subjects randomly assigned to the leadership role, tended
to do the following:

Took more cookies (greed)
Chewed with mouths open (lapses of ordinary good manners)
Got crumbs on their faces and left crumbs on the table (messes for others to clean up)

Thus, random assignment to a brief, time limited leadership role had a potent effect--increasing the probability that the promoted subject's manners would deteriorate.
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These individuals had just been assigned the leadership position at random -- and were just in it briefly...and yet it still had a strong effect on their behavior. If someone is the kind of person who wants, and seeks power over others, just imagine how much more their behavior will be affected. And if someone is in a leadership position for years -- that'll affect their behavior even more.

Someone posted in this thread about meeting a Japanese Young Women's Division member who had worked in Ikeda's house. The American members were saying, "Oh, that's great, you were so lucky, tell us about him!" The Japanese girl wouldn't talk about it...and seemed very uncomfortable when the subject came up. Given the Stanford Cookie Study, we can imagine how Ikeda's manners might have deteriorated over the years.

There was a video on Youtube of a big SGI meeting years ago, showing Ikeda mocking the then-SGI leader, Fred Zaitsu's speech and pounding on the table. I couldn't believe how rude he was to Zaitsu...but then again, why not? Who was going to stop him?

As with Ikeda, some leaders behave badly simply because they can. There seems to be this culture in SGI that you don't question leaders. They're just flabbergasted if anyone does; they don't know what to do with you. I see this a lot in Japanese leaders, but white, or African-American leaders also develop that mindset.

There is this mystique about leaders -- some senior leader comes into town, and they're treated like a movie star. Everyone is encouraged to get guidance from this person. They're not a doctor, a lawyer, a therapist, a financial advisor, or a career counselor. They may not even have finished high school. They don't know you at all. Their own family, finances, health may be a mess! Yet, somehow, they've got some special wisdom that qualifies them to advise you on any kind of problem -- medical, family, financial, school. The local leaders act as if this is your last chance to ever get any help for your problem, whatever it is. Superleader can help you when doctors, accountants, trained therapists can't....and they can probably leap over the kaikon in a single bound too.

veoh.com has three videos that show footage from Ikeda's visit to the United States in 1993. They show him at a meeting. He's sitting onstage at a table. Fred Zaitsu, the then-director of SGI USA stands at the podium, struggling to read a speech in his halting English -- while Ikeda interrupts him and pounds on the table.

When it's Ikeda's turn to speak, he doesn't seem to make much sense. It could be the translation, it could be the editing of the videos -- it's scenes from several meetings combined on this video. Even so, it just jumps around from President Clinton's inaugural address, a joke about George Williams playing the trumpet onstage, oblivious to everyone's leaving the auditorium, the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo, and the Hawaiian-born sumo wrestler Akebono's success. Nothing makes sense, but the audience, applauding and cheering, doesn't seem to notice or care. Ikeda became fascinated with the English word "great" and the Hawaiian word "mahalo," and he repeats them endlessly, "Gurrrreatooo....greatooo....greaaaaaaato.....maaahaaalooo...maHAAAAloooo," frequently pounding on the table top for emphasis. It reminded me of a toddler...how little kids get when they learn a new word and are just fascinated with it -- and the table pounding added to that impression.

The editor of the video apparently is not a native English speaker, and unintentionally added some hurmor: he or she wrote the subtitle, "Who would believe he is a world reader?" (Well, he or his ghostwriters always are quoting all those books that he supposedly reads, everyone from Tagore to Whitman, so perhaps he is world reader.)

These videos are mostly funny, but also have their scary side...that a man like this has gotten so much power, that so many people take him seriously no matter what he does. He's rude because he can be...and does he do this clownlike behavior as a ploy to disarm people? To make them think that he's this lovable, goofy, warm and fuzzy grandpa figure, rather than a cold, calculating powermonger?

In the third video on the list, the 9:47 minute one, the first scene is Ikeda entering a room and greeting followers. At :44, a woman appears to be on her knees in front of him.

[www.veoh.com]

[www.veoh.com]

[www.veoh.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2010 11:16PM by tsukimoto.