Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Date: March 23, 2011 08:53AM
Hello all!
I'm really glad I've found this on the internet. Too bad I didn't have time to read all the posts, but I had a good reading up until page 6 or 7, I really wish I could've read everything, but... ;/
My story seems a bit a different from the ones I've read, but my thought is precisely what most of you had while in contact with SGI.
I live in Brazil and SGI is really big here (I think it's possibly because in my city - Sao Paulo - we have the biggest Japanese colony outside Japan), my father converted to SGI in the year that I was born, 1989. I grew up in meetings and festivals, as a child I didn't mind much, I made tons of friends and learned tons of different things. My father never forced me to do anything, he simply asked if I wanted to attend, sometimes I wasn't in the mood and he was ok with it.
He was the Students/Youth Leader in part of my city (SP is HUGE), he wasn't just a neighborhood leader though, he was very well known inside the organization. Note that we're not of a Japanese family at all (I've read that in the USA only Japanese people are leaders). Anyway, as I grew up I started questioning the whole thing... for some reason I just didn't buy it.
I always liked the whole philosophy of cause and effect and how you must treat other people well and be a good person. And I actually believe that te daimoku can help people to end their suffering and transform themselves, of course it's not magic, but I think that when done sincerely it might help people in need to find their balance and fight for what they have to. The only thing is that I always believed that I could achieve what I wanted if I didn't chant, too. It's a question of determination. When I heard stories of success I didn't question that the daimoku helped them, I just thought that it helped them to concentrate (kind of a meditation) rather than actually transforming their karma and blablabla.
My dad was a bit sad because of that because at least here they tell you that your human revolution must begin at home and in my house nobody wanted to be part of it. My mother always had some problems with the amount of time my dad dedicated to the organization and she never agreed with the whole donating money thing (another note: my mother is an atheist).
Around the same time that I stopped going to the meetings, my father got seriously ill. He has kidney cancer, and some SGI member was the one to helped him to get a check up and everything. My dad was told by doctors that he had to take one of his kidneys off and that he had little chances to survive the surgery, but good chances anyway.
Needless to say my whole family freaked the hell out, but my father remained the calmest of all people, his faith helped him throughout the whole thing. It was really something how he managed to remain calm, he chanted everyday for about seven hours and he was certain that everything would be alright.
And it was, his surgery was a success, he's alive and kicking today and of course, more dedicated than EVER to SGI. He truly believes his faith saved him, and maybe it did, but I always tell him that he could've done alone if he wanted to either. But that's just my opinion.
Anyway, a few years later I moved with my brother and mother to Canada and lived there for about four years, while there I contacted the SGI Canada out of curiosity, just to see if it was different from Brazil. And it was: a lot less meetings, a lot less information and studies. In Brazil they really study the Lotus Sutra and Daishonin's scriptures, but also President Ikeda's; another thing that never went down my throat, why in hell should I have a master-disciple relationship with him? Never got that one answered in any of the meetings I've attended.
They called me every single day to make me go to meetings and help them with crops in some far away place and I always said I didn't want to. They insisted until I moved to another neighborhood and changed my cell number. Seriously, it was crazy.
When I returned to Brazil I still wasn't interested in being a SGI member and my dad was still big in the organization here, ever since I came back I've been receiving phone calls from girls from the Young Women's Division and it's been driving me crazy, I've told them I'm not interested and I've told me father too, but he still tries to make me go. Not force exactly, but he tries really hard.
So last night I was looking for information on SGI, out of boredness and curiosity, and I found this thread, I could relate to a lot of things people said here, but some I couldn't. Still, I was glad I found it and I gathered some of the questions you guys put here (what happens to the money? why follow Ikeda? why the chakubukus? why they try to get so much of your time? why not everyone has access and discuss the sutra? why is Ikeda and SGI affiliated with a political party? and so on), question I always had, but never knew how to ask and I asked them to my father.
He LITERALLY freaked when I started questioning Ikeda. Like I was calling my grandmother a bitch! He said I was misinformed and played by information people post to deceive others, I simply told him I always thought all that, but never really bothered to expose it. And that I don't believe in everything I read, but I did like the way things were exposed in a way to make me think more about it. But he really freaked, he didn't treat me bad or anything, but he took it all very personally.
Anyway, I was thinking about going to one of the big meetings in the next few weeks and question the other ones in one of the dialogues and I was hoping you guys could help me to make up those questions based on facts and other people's experiences. I will surely post whatever they tell me here, too. :]