Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Date: March 22, 2011 12:08PM
Howdy y'all. I don't know if you remember me but I used to hang around here a lot. I have been out of the SGI for so many months now and I am much happier without them.
If anything, I have to credit all of you lovely people in this forum for getting me out. If it hadn't been for your support, there would be no way in hell I would live a happier life or even retain any sense of sanity. So I thought maybe I should come back here more often to help pay it forward, and help others out there who are stuck in the SGI-styled vicious cycle.
To bobze39-- I agree with you about SGI being a hate group, but then again any cult out there needs a scapegoat in order to further legitimize themselves to their own masses. The Hare Krishnas, for example, see mainstream Hindus as their enemy, Scientologists are against psychiatrists and psychologists, and so on. SGI's hatred against NST and every other form of Buddhism is more in line with how any cult operates, unfortunately.
I have been lurking the past couple of pages and would like to give my 2 cents.
They way the SGI works is dependancy, especially on the chanting. If you have a problem and things don't work out for you, best you spend your time. Don't plan, don't take a look at any options in solving your problems, just chant. Many leaders do like to say that one should take the correct action, but that is often an ambigous term. In fact, I have known a few leaders and fortune children who have acted in an inconsiderate manner towards me. When I called them out on it, they usually say, "I'm sorry. I will chant more next time." These people who have been chanting for years somehow find human decency a very esoteric subject and cannot change themselves without chanting first.
Thinking about my time in the SGI and even reading the experiences on the board, it seems that there is systematic abuse. Many of the leaders I have personally met were very verbally abusive. It is their way of keeping the masses in order, just in case you started thinking on your own. Nagashima once called me stupid to my face. Furthermore, and going back to the first point, if you do have a problem with the leaders (and you are a peon), it is because you are not chanting hard enough or you have fundamental or some other reason why you are not good enough. In the end, the peons of SGI are given more responsibility in their actions than the leaders.
Thoughts anyone?