Thank you everyone for comments. You have all been very helpful.

I'm a little confused though. What is the difference between Nichiren Shu and Nichiren Shoshu? Also when the split happened with SGI, why were all the members of SGI excommunicated and not just Ikeda since it seems he was the problem?

To Gingermarie: I sounds like you were a good leader because you knew exactly when you were qualified to give guidance and when you were not. Also I think it is common sense that if someone comes to you who is an abusive situation to tell them or even assist them in any way you can to get it. It is irresponsible to advice someone to just chant. Tell them chant once they are in a safe situation.

Again thanks for the wisdom folks.

@ Songshand

The Nichiren Shu is the oldest Nichiren School. One of the biggest differences is that they do not refer to Nichiren as a Buddha. They also practice silent forms of meditation and are in general not so aggressive in their mission work.
You can easily find out more about them in wikipedia or google.

About the excommunication: As far as I know it was first SGI that was excommunicated along with some of its leaders, the individual SGI members were not excommunicated until 1997.

I have to agree with Tsukimoto even though I do not agree with Nichiren Sohshu (I am in the process of joining Nichiren Shu) I can understand why they got rid of SGI. Ikeda wanted more power and influence than the priest could allow without giving up their own doctrine.

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tsukimoto
Songshand, I don't know that it's so much that any behavior can be excused as long as the person chants -- it's that many of the leaders and long-time members believe that any behavior can be changed as long as the person chants. Maybe, maybe not. I've chanted for many years, and in some ways I've changed, in others I haven't. I've seen fellow members say that they have changed, and yet to me, they still seem to have the same anxiety, depression, temper or pattern of getting into bad relationships that they had ten or fifteen years ago.

You've seen at Soka Gakkai meetings, that people give experiences: "I had this problem, I chanted about it, I overcame it." What that teaches you to do is "reframe" your experiences. Anything good that happens in your life, you start thinking that your chanting and your work for SGI caused it. Anything bad? You didn't do enough for SGI. You didn't chant enough. Well, both good things and bad things happen to nonSGI members too! EVERYONE has ups and downs in their lives. Everything that happens to you is not always about SGI and how much you chanted. This, to me, is a very dangerous thing about SGI...the way members learn to reframe and reinterpret their experiences. Once you get into this mindset it can be difficult to get out of it. I've been out for three years, and I still find myself falling into this kind of superstitious thinking.

This mindset can lead people to make choices that are not always sensible.

I agree entirely with the reframing of experiences and that kind of mindset leading to very insensible choices.

Songshand, I posted way back about how my b/f of 3.5 years joined SGI earlier this year. He tried to recruit me as well, but after hearing about what he was doing and going to a few meetings myself, I knew the organization was trouble, so I refused to join. My b/f's district leader started telling him that I wasn't right for him and that I would never become a Buddhist, so he should leave me. She told him I had bad family karma that would affect him negatively, if he chose to remain with me. Needless to say we broke up, because I couldn't take him being part of SGI anymore and he wanted to break up with me, because he believed his leaders.

After we had broken up, I found out he had written a 7-minute "experience" presentation about how SGI saved his life and made it better by showing him that him and I were not meant to be. Our personalities were too different (i.e. I wouldn't join SGI) and I would interfere with his practice. Everyone I showed it to saw immediately that he was delusional and was not thinking straight. It wasn't even logical.

Long before we broke up, I had already seen the reframing of experiences at work. My b/f was unemployed at the time he joined SGI. Part of it was due to the economy, part of it was because he was picky. He only wanted a 50K+ job. I told him that was ridiculous and he should just apply for ANY job. I even sent him dozens of job ads a day, but he still refused to apply for any of them. He said he would not accept a job under 50K. After joining SGI, he was even more adamant about only getting a 50K job. He said he would chant for it and the chanting will give him this job he wanted so badly. Obviously, he never got a 50K job. When he asked his leader why this didn't happen. His leader told him that he wasn't chanting hard enough, or his karma was too bad, so keep chanting. Eventually, he was starting to see that chanting wasn't helping, so he talked to his leader again. This time his leader told him to apply for ANY job and not to be too specific. He decided to apply for ALL jobs and finally got an interview for a bilingual customer service job. The night before he went to the job interview, I read over the company's website for him and summarized the key information. As well, I looked up common interview questions in French and sent all of this to him, unprompted. He aced the interview and got the job.

Guess who he gave credit to? He said he got the job, because of his leader and his chanting. He said NOTHING about me. The entire time he was unemployed, I paid for his share, whenever we went out. I was the one who supported him, when he got discouraged. I was the one who sent him dozens of job ads a day after spending hours finding them. I was the one telling him the WHOLE time that he should just apply for ANY job. YET through all of that, when he finally does get a job, he claims it's because of SGI and his chanting. After he got his job, it cemented his belief in SGI. Whenever something went wrong, he blamed it on my karma and how I was negatively affecting him. Whenever something went right, it was because of his chanting and SGI, even though I made it possible.

We got into a lot of fights regarding SGI and that's what led him to believe that I was the one creating negativity in his life. That's why he reframed our entire relationship in his experience to show me as the bad guy and SGI as the thing that made his life better. I haven't talked to him in months, but his friends told me that he had since lost his job (because of SGI, but I doubt he'd admit that) and his relationship with his mother and the rest of his family has turned sour (because they all oppose SGI). So since joining SGI, he has lost his job, his g/f, and isolated himself from his friends and family, but he hasn't left yet, so I'm sure he hasn't realize that it's SGI that is causing all the problems in his life. It's crazy how much a person's thinking can be changed. SGI is so disgusting. They use and abuse their members, until they have nothing left to live for except SGI.

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Songshand
I'm a little confused though. What is the difference between Nichiren Shu and Nichiren Shoshu? Also when the split happened with SGI, why were all the members of SGI excommunicated and not just Ikeda since it seems he was the problem?
.

Songshand, the Japanese priest Nichiren, who lived in the 1200's in Japan, had five or six senior priests who followed him. After Nichiren's death, these priests founded their own temples, but sometimes interpreted the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren's writings slightly differently. I think that Nichiren Shu sees Shakyamuni Buddha, the Indian prince, as the true Buddha and Nichiren as merely a wise teacher, while the Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shoshu see Nichiren as the true Buddha.

The buddhajones website also lists Fuju-fuse, Nipponzan Myohoji, Rissho Kosei Kai, and the Shoshinkai as schools of Nichiren Buddhism. The fraughtwithperil website has a blog by Mark Rogow, who practices Kempon Hokke, also a school of Nichiren Buddhism. (Mark has no love for SGI either and sometimes quotes this thread in his blog -- Hi, Mark!)

As for the SGI/Nichiren Shoshu split, who really knows what happened there? The only source of information I had at that time was the Soka Gakkai, as a lot of this stuff was happening in Japan, and I don't speak or read Japanese. And they're not exactly unbiased.

In the United States there are only a handful of Nichiren Shoshu temples -- Flushing, New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Hawaii, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Most SGI members live in areas where there aren't any. So for most SGI-USA members, the temple's far away, and the priest is some Japanese guy in a long gray robe who handed you the Gohonzon once and you never saw him again. Most SGI-USA members COULDN'T have practiced with the temple even if they wanted to --and I'm sure that the situation was similar in other countries. Ikeda and his buddies knew this -- that a high percentage of the SGI members would believe whatever he told them and side with SGI rather than the Nichiren Shoshu priests. The leaders and other members were our friends, people we saw all the time; the priest is just some stranger.

We were told that Nikken ordered SGI to disband -- and then excommunicated the SGI members along with Ikeda because we wouldn't stop following a heretical leader. We were told that Nikken wanted us to join the temples. Well, if he thought we could do that, he was pretty ignorant of the real situation outside of Japan -- most of us didn't live near a temple. Was he really going to build all these temples overseas and send priests to them? That would involve spending a lot of money, and training a lot more priests -- and training non-Japanese people to be priests. No, for most of us, the Soka Gakkai was the only game in town, if you wanted to practice Nichiren Buddhism.

But who knows what Nikken REALLY said? Ikeda had to be tired of priests telling him what to do. He wasn't going to share the power and the money with anyone -- and he realized that a lot of the overseas SGI members had few ties to the Nichiren Shoshu priests anyway. He KNEW he could get away with making SGI all his own show ---so why not do it? Of course, he couldn't say that; he had to create this whole story that would make the members angry at the priests. Well, why not? He had good PR people at headquarters and devout "True Believer" leaders worldwide who would spread the word and get the members outraged at the high priest. Besides, giving people a common enemy unites them.

It all worked so predictably. We responded by HATING the priests; members were even chanting for Nikken's death! Such nice Buddhists we were. It was that mob mentality -- where people in a riot will do things that they would never do if they were alone. I will confess that, while I think of myself as a critical thinker, I still got caught up in the insanity and hatred. If your friends are acting crazy...it can be hard to behave sanely.

Our leaders told us that we were excommunicated and barred from the temples. Well, I was on vacation in Washington during this time, and went to the temple there one day. Rather defiantly, I told the lay member there that I was a Soka Gakkai member. I was not "barred" from the temple at all; I was invited in. I was antagonistic; he was reasonable and respectful. By the end of our discussion, I still did not agree with him on everything, but I did apologize for my earlier rudeness. If this guy had gone to one of my group's SGI meetings, I doubt that the members would have been as respectful to him as he was to me. Sad to say, we were so brainwashed and full of rage in those days.

SGI just had a better public relations department than the priests, in my opinion. At the time, I blindly believed what SGI said about the split, as did almost all of the members that I knew. Who knows what the real truth is? Ikeda, and he certainly isn't telling. Interestingly enough, "Westword" magazine out in Colorado wrote something that the local SGI chapter didn't like, a few years back. One of their PR hacks wrote in indignantly, and said that President Ikeda was not "kicked out" by the priests -- he chose to leave because of the priests' corruption and lack of progressiveness. By this time, SGI had been telling its members for YEARS that the evil priests EXCOMMUNICATED them -- now, they're reversing the story and saying no, Ikeda just CHOSE to leave? Curiouser and curiouser.

And speaking of PR, Lisa Jones, a former SGI employee, began an anti-cult website after she left SGI. Well, she'd apparently forgotten that when she went to work for SGI, she'd signed a paper saying that she would not write about SGI after she left that job. SGI used that paper to threaten her with legal action, and force her to shut her website down. Now, I can see why Microsoft would try to prevent employees from telling company secrets to another technology company. But what does a religious organization have to worry about? What exactly do the SGI Public Relations employees know that SGI doesn't want the world to find out?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2009 11:24PM by tsukimoto.

I used to often wonder if the "temple" even existed. After several years of being told how evil Nicherin Shoshu was and how sad/bad the Nicherin Shoshu members were, I started to question the whole thing. Why, when I had been a member for so long, had the temple not even once contacted me and tried to get me to be a member? If Nichiren Shoshu was trying to destroy SGI and take all of its members, why were they not actively recruiting SGI's members.? It did not seem that it would be difficult to get the names of active and long-time members, and then they could contact us and try to convert us to their side. But this never happened. It made me wonder why SGI was telling us that. Then it occurred to me that I had never even met a temple member. Why on earth was SGI so worried about the temple?? For so many years?? The whole thing did not make sense!

Now I understand, from reading this forum, that they were trying to unite us by getting us to hate Nicherin Shoshu and work against it.

The world tribune used to be full of "soka spirit" articles. Sometimes close to 100% of the newspaper was devoted to soka spirit. Then, the focus of the world tribune changed to "mentor-disciple". I think that SGI heard all the grumbling that was going on among members and realized that it was time to drop the temple issue.

Recently I ran into a member that used to be very opposed to the persistance of SGI in talking about Nichiren Shoshu for so many years. But now she has joined the Soka Spirit movement! SGI is no longer talking about the temple, instead now they are focusing on "enemies" that are within the organization or on former members. So this member is now working very hard for soka spirt!

Hi Tsukimoto,

Just an addition to your post. The Fujufuse is not realy a school but rather a principle that many of the now Nichiren-Shu schools followed.

Nichiren Buddhism no longer faced persecution, hut instead bad to deal with just the opposite danger: a life of ease and acceptance. This was exactly the offer which bad been made to the founder when he was recalled fromh his exile on Sado, hut now it came from wealthy patrons closely tied to the all-powerful Tokugawa regime. Every Nichiren Buddhist knew how the founder bad responded when tempted with the same SOrt of compromise: he had withdrawn to Mount Minobu, and had neither received support from nor given support to non-believers, no matter how exalted their rank. This came to be called the principle of Fujufuse, 'not-receive-not-give'. What it really involved was freedom from government control. Most Nichiren Buddhists believed in this principle. Troubles came,
however, when the government commanded interdenominational prayer services. Nichiren priests would beg to be excused on the grounds that such services were forbidden by their religion. The relatively weak Ashikaga Shogunate bad always acceeded to the request. The oldest extant document of the government's approving such an appeal is dated 1492, and it mentions that the Nichiren Buddhists were excused 'according to precedents'. In other words, this bad been going on a Ions time by then. The same appeal was granted
in 1571, 1572, 1577, and 1589. In 1595, however, the victorious Hideyoshi made it plain that he would make no exceptions; he expected to bring the great religious orders to heel, and that meant all of them. The Nichiren clergy of Kyoto met to discuss the situation, and decided to obey the government order. Only one chief priest, objected -Kyoei Nichio. On the day of the ceremony he arose before dawn, retired to the country, and went into seclusion.
Hideyoshi died in 1598, and was succeeded by the even morepowerful Tokugawa leyasu. In 1600 he sentenced Kyoei Nichio to exile on Tsushima Island. Nichiren Buddhists, who were well aware of the harsh measures being taken against them everywhere (mutilations and executions were not uncommon), tended to sympathize with Kyoei
Nichio. In 1612, thanks to the influence of important people at the Shogunate, they were able to get him pardoned. Nichio returned to Kyoto and engaged in spirited debates with his brethren who bad given in. He was the man of the hour, and the Fujufuse movement spread rapidly, much to the embarrassment of the accommodating head
temples.
In 1623 the government legalized Fujufuse, and it seemed that the battle bad been won. By the middle of the seventeenth century at least half the Nichiren temples supported the principle. However, by then there were many important personages, such as Lady Oman and her relatives, sponsoring the bigger and wealthier temples. It was people like them, not outsiders, who brought the movement down. In 1665 the government, as part of its plan to controlall religious properties, declared that tempIes which possessed government-granted land must report it to the Shogunate. Accommodating clergy saw this as an opportunity to get rid of the troublesome Fujufuse members. They convinced the government to word the decree so that it specified that the government bad granted these lands 'for worship'. In other words, the Fujufuse priests would have to admit that they bad accepted what they could not accept: government support. Christianity bad been forbidden in 1638, and Buddhism was now the state religion. Every citizen bad to be able to prove that he belonged to some Buddhist temple. The priests, on their part, were authorized to grant certificates of membership, which meant in effect certificates of citizenship. Fujufuse priests were now forbidden to grant certificates. This meant that their parishioners became outlaws; they were beyond the protection of the law and had no rights to either property or life. The Fujufuse believers were treated with the same severity as the Christians bad been a few years earlier: they were hunted down and
wiped out. They survived, however, just as Christians did, by going 'underground'. They would register at a government-approved temple, but secretly maintain their cherished faith from generation to gener-
ation, generally being careful to marry within their own group. The last great hero of the movement was Nichiko, who was hounded from place to place until he was hidden by a sympathetic baron. There he wrote volumes of commentaries on Nichiren and the Sutra. When he bad completed them, he went out into the world again to face his
opponents in open debates. He died in 1698 at the age of 73, and his body was exposed to the elements as if he were a common criminal. Fujufuse seemed to be over. It was not dead, however, and in 1876, nearly two centuries after the death of Nichiko and the fall of theTokugawa Shogunate in 1868, the 'Nichiren Shu: Fujufuse Branch' came
out of hiding and was formally granted the right to exist.
Fire in Lotos, Montgomery pages 164-166

Hi Tsukimoto,

yes at least that is my understanding. Fujufuse was rather an attitude. The way I understand it Nichiren Shoshu did not participate in Fujufuse.
Even as Nichiren Shu is the oldest school, as the text above shows, it was not founded formaly until the late 19th century. Nichiren Shoshu was founded in the beginning of the 20th century. Before one simply had Nichiren temples with slight doctrinal differences. Nichiren Shoshu at the beinning was basicaly just Taiseki-ji with its subtemples. Not all temples that can trace their founding to Nikko became Nichiren Shoshu some are Nichiren Shu - like Honmon-ji.

I can only recommend that book I quoted its one of the few that give an obejctive account of Nichiren Buddhisms history - sadly its out of print now.

Again, that is more specific and direct evidence and hard proof, that SGI is a highly organized sect/group/cult, (whatever you want to call it), which strategizes very carefully about how to "organize" its members, and how to manipulate them.

SGI constantly uses FEAR.

Fear, that if you don't chant enough, then your Karma will go sour, and your life will go down the crapper. (which is FALSE, excessive chanting and Magical Thinking would be the thing that could harm someone's life).

Fear, that if you quit SGI, then your life will go right down the toilet. (also FALSE, as seen by many people's lives have gotten better after leaving SGI).

And the supreme leader of SGI also knows, the best way to unite and motivate people, is to create a crisis, and to create an "enemy". Irrational fear of an enemy, is one of the most classic forms of manipulation. Its been used by politicians for centuries.
So SGI picked the priests, and then demonized them, as that serves many purposes for them.
Most importantly it gave Ikeda supreme power over everything, and at the same time it unites the SGI members in a type of tribalism and fear of the "enemy".

Believe it, Ikeda and his senior soldiers, know EXACTLY what they are doing. Those are deliberate techniques and strategies to manage large groups of people, which they are doing, they are dealing with hundreds of thousands of people.
Every major politican and leader knows the value of FEAR of the enemy, its priceless to them

It does not look like there is scanned PDF copy of that book online.

(reference)
[www.amazon.com]

Fire in the Lotus: The Dynamic Buddhism of Nichiren (Paperback)
by Daniel B. Montgomery (Author)

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Thorsons Pub (August 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1852740914