@BeingAdagio
You said:
Quote
It's so easy to convince ourselves that we are just innocently passing along something we find valuable in our own lives, and so difficult to look squarely at the "karmic brownie points" we are quietly, almost imperceptibly counting up in the backs of our minds, or confront the fear of "karmic retribution" for criticizing SGI that nips, like a determined little dog, at our hearts and minds from the dark places within ourselves where SGI-think still battles for dominance.
You are making my point for me. Being immersed in the "Cult" we all were willing accomplices to the misleading dogma. Freeing ourselves from it involves challenging the "truths" that our cult-conditioned minds produce in the face of other people's experiences. Just like what would happen at a district meeting, everyone would crowd around the new person hoping to persuade them to make the decision to join. No harm in that, except... when they would start asking questions and talking about their problems, the members would begin giving "learned responses" that would reinforce the validity of the teaching and SGI. Everyone gave "guidance" and the longer you practiced, the more that "guidance" sounded the same. "You can definitely change your karma by chanting", "do activities and you will earn blessings", "your problems are due to the ten worlds and your karma", etc.
I guess you can look at if from a different perspective as well. Each of us at one point or another adopted the SGI dogma as the "actual truth". That is why insane things like likening Ikea to Ghandi could go past without us batting an eyelash. Everything that disagreed with the dogma then became an exception, with the actual truth being the SGI view. That being the case, the Cult perspective inserted itself into our lives and minds as the "real truth about life". Now, when we challenge this mind-set we find ourselves trying to pry those mis-beliefs out of the floorboards of our reality, and it is no accident that the stuff creeps in.
Questioning the SGI point of view should not be a case of contradicting the "essential law of the universe", it should be a case of pointing out that if it is the "essential law of the universe", how come it is inconsistent? And why does the organization want to shut down discussion about those "critical elements" of the teaching?
Who here believes that if a vote were taken today of all SGI members world-wide, Ikea would be acclaimed as Buddha? He might score high because many people have been conditioned by the Cult to regard him as being "the one" but I doubt he'd even get 60%.
Wakatta