Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
leeduffield
()
Date: January 10, 2013 07:02AM
Quote
The AnticultQuote
leeduffield
Had the district leader phoning on Monday promising me a lifetime of poor health and Avici Hell in the hereafter.To be fair,the chapter leaders both wished me well though.
that is a double-bind [en.wikipedia.org] part of their training to try and keep people in the sect.
Curse the unbeliever with hellfire and brimstone and cancer due to their unbelief, and give them some love-bombing at the same time.
It can confuse vulnerable people.
I walked away from Christianity and Islam in the past with the same empty threats in one ear and out the other.Incredible that anyone takes that from anyone never mind delusional paper-worshippers.Enlightenment by repeating a book title over and over.Is this for real?I never would have joined if I'd known how barmy the theology was.So glad to be out and much happier doing Pure Land.
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
Hitch
()
Date: January 10, 2013 08:35AM
As far as I know, gokuyo and kokuyo are used interchangeably in Japanese (at least in the gakkai), with the latter being more archaic (??). I've always understood the former to be commonly used due to modern day semantic grammar purposes. There are numerous kinds of "kuyo", some of which some sects partake in, while others do not. But, I could be wrong. A lot of this kind of stuff is a cornucopia of pick and choose whatever suits a particular sect's or cult's manipulative needs, IMO.
That being said,
The cult org. lies and manipulates about the scripture,
The cult org. lies and manipulates its membership numbers (*see below),
And the cult org. lies to and manipulates its own members.
It's all to be expected.
*I've always thought the official membership numbers came from "Weird Tribune" (Thanks Rattyboy for this name) and other publications (of which families are routinely pressured / forced to take multiple copies of). The membership cards are more of a way to collect information about prospective publication subscribers in order to eventually get more subscriptions from family members, follow up with as kids grow up / move out, or have names if families break apart. They are also used to extract extra potential zaimu ($$$$) during special campaigns or drag out more "members" for special meetings where headcounts are everything.
Williams was obsessed with WT numbers and often made reference to the fact that subscription numbers were way, way down with subsequent "General Directors."
****
Love this post. Quoted for truth. My feelings exactly.
****
Re: Double-bind
Saw it, experienced it (receiving end) many times in the cult org.. I called it the "Good Leader / Bad Leader" shtick. It initially confused me, until I eventually realized that they (the "leaders) were all full of sh**. (Apologies for the bluntness.)
- Hitch
That being said,
The cult org. lies and manipulates about the scripture,
The cult org. lies and manipulates its membership numbers (*see below),
And the cult org. lies to and manipulates its own members.
It's all to be expected.
*I've always thought the official membership numbers came from "Weird Tribune" (Thanks Rattyboy for this name) and other publications (of which families are routinely pressured / forced to take multiple copies of). The membership cards are more of a way to collect information about prospective publication subscribers in order to eventually get more subscriptions from family members, follow up with as kids grow up / move out, or have names if families break apart. They are also used to extract extra potential zaimu ($$$$) during special campaigns or drag out more "members" for special meetings where headcounts are everything.
Williams was obsessed with WT numbers and often made reference to the fact that subscription numbers were way, way down with subsequent "General Directors."
****
Quote
leeduffield
I walked away from Christianity and Islam in the past with the same empty threats in one ear and out the other.Incredible that anyone takes that from anyone never mind delusional paper-worshippers.Enlightenment by repeating a book title over and over.Is this for real?I never would have joined if I'd known how barmy the theology was.So glad to be out and much happier doing Pure Land.
Love this post. Quoted for truth. My feelings exactly.
****
Re: Double-bind
Saw it, experienced it (receiving end) many times in the cult org.. I called it the "Good Leader / Bad Leader" shtick. It initially confused me, until I eventually realized that they (the "leaders) were all full of sh**. (Apologies for the bluntness.)
- Hitch
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
Hitch
()
Date: January 10, 2013 11:47AM
More on the "double-bind" behavior:
There was one particular "leader" who was very rude and manipulative to members, adults included. He would put people down for not wanting to do more, help or participate in certain activities (maybe because they had other obligations or things going on), especially door-to-door / street "shakubuku."
If you weren't quite 100% (in his subjective estimation) "into" an activity (like street shakubuku) or full throttle gung-ho, he would just plainly state that you *should* leave and not waste your or his time, because he only wanted to deal with "sincere" members who could get results. This kind of talk upset some adults, too. Him and I got into it once after he made a member cry and (just like "Taitenandproud" - welcome by the way!) I actually had it out with him and ending up leaving, completely fed up; a little later, a younger up and coming eager beaver "leader" comes frantically running after me for the clean up "guilt-trip" talk and mind game guidance.
Trust me, the cult org. can spin anything, up or down and left or right - especially with young, naive and innocent believers - to manipulate, suit their misdeeds and justify their misbehavior.
It's really disgusting and I, to this day, wonder if any of those "leaders" actually remember what they did and how they treated people. Probably not, which would explain how they can live with themselves.
- Hitch
There was one particular "leader" who was very rude and manipulative to members, adults included. He would put people down for not wanting to do more, help or participate in certain activities (maybe because they had other obligations or things going on), especially door-to-door / street "shakubuku."
If you weren't quite 100% (in his subjective estimation) "into" an activity (like street shakubuku) or full throttle gung-ho, he would just plainly state that you *should* leave and not waste your or his time, because he only wanted to deal with "sincere" members who could get results. This kind of talk upset some adults, too. Him and I got into it once after he made a member cry and (just like "Taitenandproud" - welcome by the way!) I actually had it out with him and ending up leaving, completely fed up; a little later, a younger up and coming eager beaver "leader" comes frantically running after me for the clean up "guilt-trip" talk and mind game guidance.
Trust me, the cult org. can spin anything, up or down and left or right - especially with young, naive and innocent believers - to manipulate, suit their misdeeds and justify their misbehavior.
It's really disgusting and I, to this day, wonder if any of those "leaders" actually remember what they did and how they treated people. Probably not, which would explain how they can live with themselves.
- Hitch
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
TaitenAndProud
()
Date: January 11, 2013 05:14AM
I practiced with the SGI-USA for over 20 years - I got my gohonzon in August, 1987. You can do the math ;) If I hadn't been moving around so much, I probably wouldn't have lasted so long - most of the time, I was practicing on my own.
I have a personal experience of the fascistic and authoritarian atmosphere of the SGI-USA organization. Being a white American, I naturally want to be Japanese (it's a joke - that's a white person stereotype). I was enthralled when I read James Clavill's Shogun back in the early 1980s. Well, we bought a house (and I held SGI meetings here) and it has a vaulted ceiling. There is a tall wall over the landing to the stairs, and I found these beautiful gohonzons to put there. For a while, there was a Japanese seller feeding old Nichiren Shu gohonzons onto the market. These are enormous - 5' to 6' tall. As you can see, they are a simplified gohonzon form - no one would mistake these for one of the little, busy SGI-USA gohonzons. I'm going to try to paste pictures here, but I'm not sure if this medium allows it:
Gohonzon 1 - over 100 years old
Gohonzon 2 - over 130 years old
They now hang side by side, and they look beautiful! Well, when I was considering purchasing one (before I decided to purchase TWO!), I asked a Japanese leader to "read" the inscription for me, since I don't read Japanese. That really started the drama. I was told not to buy it. I got a home visit from a leader who said, "Your home has such a lovely, warm feel to it. I would hate to see that change to something dark and sinister." She was, of course, implying that, if I bought "heretical objects", they would magically cause a dark miasma to descend over my home. For all her "wisdom", she couldn't tell that I'd already bought both of them, and they were sitting right upstairs, waiting to be hung!
The local big-cheese women's division Joint-Territory leader, a Japanese war-bride, came by. She inspected these two gohonzons, which were now hanging on my wall, and told me she thought the members might get confused. I, and another (American) leader, disagreed, saying that we didn't think that any of the American members would see them as anything other than beautiful original calligraphy. Besides, where they were hanging, they weren't visible from the room where I held meetings. When the American leader stepped out, the Japanese leader told me I should chant until I agreed with her. That was her "guidance" to me.
It was interesting when, two weeks later, she dropped dead. She was only in her 50s! This was, of course, a sad thing, and that should be the end of it. But I know for a fact, having spent much time in the higher echelons of SGI-USA leadership, that if it had been ME who dropped dead, the leaders would have wasted no time in wagging their heads and tongues about how this was my "karmic retribution" for disobeying my leaders' orders! It is commonplace in the SGI-USA leadership to exploit members' misfortunes this way, as a cautionary tale to inspire more submission and obedience from the membership. But to suggest that SHE was struck dead for presenting her own opinion as official Buddhist doctrine - that would be in terribly poor taste, wouldn't it? So why are the members not accorded the same respect the leaders are?
I heard that, at one meeting, one member had said, "Well, what if she had a museum of Japanese art and artefacts, and wanted to display these examples of original calligraphy as works of art? That would be okay, wouldn't it?" The leader replied archly, "She doesn't HAVE a museum, does she?"
I have always read a lot, and when I started reading about Buddhism outside the SGI-USA's approved publications, I discovered some rather alarming things. Remember how we always hear that "Buddhism is win or lose"? Look what I found from the Buddha in the Dhammapada:
Winning gives birth to hostility. Losing, one lies down in pain. The calmed lie down with ease, having set winning and losing aside.
Now THAT ^ is consistent with the Buddhist principle that attachment causes suffering! "Chant for whatever you want" and "Chant to win" serve only to strengthen attachments! Finally, from the Kalama Sutra:
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Here's another version:
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
Why should we accept that we have to "discard, close, ignore, and abandon" such wisdom? Perhaps because Nichiren and Daisaku Ikeda both saw their opportunity to be worshiped as gods! The way the SGI-USA pays to have Daisaku Ikeda's name put on public monuments is deeply disturbing. The Gandhi-King-Ikeda Exhibit is a joke - more like "One of these things is not like the others!" And the way Daisaku Ikeda's effectively anonymous son Hiromasa is being shoved into the spotlight leads me to suspect that this nobody, who hasn't actually accomplished *anything* on his own, whose only claim to fame is that his daddy is famous, is being positioned to take over the International Presidentship once Daisaku kicks the bucket. To take over what will become a hereditary dynasty rather than a leadership position earned by merit. It's just gross. All hail the Dear Leader!
I have a personal experience of the fascistic and authoritarian atmosphere of the SGI-USA organization. Being a white American, I naturally want to be Japanese (it's a joke - that's a white person stereotype). I was enthralled when I read James Clavill's Shogun back in the early 1980s. Well, we bought a house (and I held SGI meetings here) and it has a vaulted ceiling. There is a tall wall over the landing to the stairs, and I found these beautiful gohonzons to put there. For a while, there was a Japanese seller feeding old Nichiren Shu gohonzons onto the market. These are enormous - 5' to 6' tall. As you can see, they are a simplified gohonzon form - no one would mistake these for one of the little, busy SGI-USA gohonzons. I'm going to try to paste pictures here, but I'm not sure if this medium allows it:
Gohonzon 1 - over 100 years old
Gohonzon 2 - over 130 years old
They now hang side by side, and they look beautiful! Well, when I was considering purchasing one (before I decided to purchase TWO!), I asked a Japanese leader to "read" the inscription for me, since I don't read Japanese. That really started the drama. I was told not to buy it. I got a home visit from a leader who said, "Your home has such a lovely, warm feel to it. I would hate to see that change to something dark and sinister." She was, of course, implying that, if I bought "heretical objects", they would magically cause a dark miasma to descend over my home. For all her "wisdom", she couldn't tell that I'd already bought both of them, and they were sitting right upstairs, waiting to be hung!
The local big-cheese women's division Joint-Territory leader, a Japanese war-bride, came by. She inspected these two gohonzons, which were now hanging on my wall, and told me she thought the members might get confused. I, and another (American) leader, disagreed, saying that we didn't think that any of the American members would see them as anything other than beautiful original calligraphy. Besides, where they were hanging, they weren't visible from the room where I held meetings. When the American leader stepped out, the Japanese leader told me I should chant until I agreed with her. That was her "guidance" to me.
It was interesting when, two weeks later, she dropped dead. She was only in her 50s! This was, of course, a sad thing, and that should be the end of it. But I know for a fact, having spent much time in the higher echelons of SGI-USA leadership, that if it had been ME who dropped dead, the leaders would have wasted no time in wagging their heads and tongues about how this was my "karmic retribution" for disobeying my leaders' orders! It is commonplace in the SGI-USA leadership to exploit members' misfortunes this way, as a cautionary tale to inspire more submission and obedience from the membership. But to suggest that SHE was struck dead for presenting her own opinion as official Buddhist doctrine - that would be in terribly poor taste, wouldn't it? So why are the members not accorded the same respect the leaders are?
I heard that, at one meeting, one member had said, "Well, what if she had a museum of Japanese art and artefacts, and wanted to display these examples of original calligraphy as works of art? That would be okay, wouldn't it?" The leader replied archly, "She doesn't HAVE a museum, does she?"
I have always read a lot, and when I started reading about Buddhism outside the SGI-USA's approved publications, I discovered some rather alarming things. Remember how we always hear that "Buddhism is win or lose"? Look what I found from the Buddha in the Dhammapada:
Winning gives birth to hostility. Losing, one lies down in pain. The calmed lie down with ease, having set winning and losing aside.
Now THAT ^ is consistent with the Buddhist principle that attachment causes suffering! "Chant for whatever you want" and "Chant to win" serve only to strengthen attachments! Finally, from the Kalama Sutra:
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Here's another version:
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
Why should we accept that we have to "discard, close, ignore, and abandon" such wisdom? Perhaps because Nichiren and Daisaku Ikeda both saw their opportunity to be worshiped as gods! The way the SGI-USA pays to have Daisaku Ikeda's name put on public monuments is deeply disturbing. The Gandhi-King-Ikeda Exhibit is a joke - more like "One of these things is not like the others!" And the way Daisaku Ikeda's effectively anonymous son Hiromasa is being shoved into the spotlight leads me to suspect that this nobody, who hasn't actually accomplished *anything* on his own, whose only claim to fame is that his daddy is famous, is being positioned to take over the International Presidentship once Daisaku kicks the bucket. To take over what will become a hereditary dynasty rather than a leadership position earned by merit. It's just gross. All hail the Dear Leader!
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
TaitenAndProud
()
Date: January 11, 2013 05:30AM
RE: Hitch *I've always thought the official membership numbers came from "Weird Tribune" (Thanks Rattyboy for this name) and other publications (of which families are routinely pressured / forced to take multiple copies of). The membership cards are more of a way to collect information about prospective publication subscribers in order to eventually get more subscriptions from family members, follow up with as kids grow up / move out, or have names if families break apart. They are also used to extract extra potential zaimu ($$$$) during special campaigns or drag out more "members" for special meetings where headcounts are everything.
Williams was obsessed with WT numbers and often made reference to the fact that subscription numbers were way, way down with subsequent "General Directors."
I remember one of my first leaders meetings, which must have been back around 1988, and this one young woman, who I think was either a group chief or a chapter chief, was saying something that's always stuck with me. She said that, when a new person joined, their initial fee got them a gohonzon and a month or three subscription to the World Tribune weekly newspaper. She went on to say that, when these new people did not choose to continue their subscriptions, the person who had shakubukued them was *REQUIRED* to pick up the subscription and pay for it out of their own pocket, so that the subscription numbers would never go down! She was saying that this was proving to be a severe obstacle for shakubuku, because she was already paying for, like, 10 subscriptions, and she wasn't willing to get stuck paying for more.
Just what you'd expect from an "ideal family-like organization" that stresses good common sense above all, right? *wink*
Is there any place to get REAL membership numbers?
One more thing - when I was still a member, I was involved in Soka Spirit and went to this meeting up in LA. A big cheese YWD leader opened her remarks by saying, "Since I've been practicing, I have helped more than four hundred people get gohonzon!" Much clapping. "Do you know how many of them are still practicing today? Two." No clapping. But this is the reality.
Thanks for the welcome, BTW! Nice to be here! Say, since I keep an eye open to religious goings-on in general, I've noticed that one of the fastest growing sects of Christianity is Pentecostalism. The Pentecostals are known for "Prosperity Theology", which basically says that, if you just give more and more to the church, that will "make room" in your life for God to shower financial blessings into! That the only reason you're poor etc. is because you aren't giving enough to the church. This struck a chord with me - I remember hearing something quite similar from the SGI about how you'd always get back several times more than what you donated, and that every penny you spent on the SGI organization would come back to you many times over. The whole magical-thinking "get something for nothing" is the common thread that links the two, and it seems Americans are particularly susceptible to the idea that there is a magical way for you to get wealth without actually having to *earn* it. I remember one young woman, a single mom, who was chanting 4 hours a day to "change her financial fortune". She had somehow arrived in her mid-30s with no significant job skills, no college degree or special training, and no relevant work experience that could serve to get her into anything other than an entry-level job which, being quite intelligent, she didn't want. So there she sat, chanting for money to fall out of the sky. She and I were friends, I thought, so I explained to her as gently as I could what some Japanese leaders had explained to me, that financial karma can take about 10 years to change, you know, long enough to earn that college degree or accumulate the relevant work experience to enable you to get into a higher-paying job. She screamed at me, "I don't HAVE 10 years! I need my financial karma to change RIGHT NOW!" She then told me I was a horrible person and a terrible mom (I also have 2 children) :)
I never blamed her for her outburst - she was in incredible pain, and had latched onto chanting as the magic charm that would magically change her life. I don't know what became of her, but I've felt bad about her for quite some time, as I'm one of the people who originally encouraged her in believing she could create something from nothing just by sitting on her ass and repeating magic words :/
Williams was obsessed with WT numbers and often made reference to the fact that subscription numbers were way, way down with subsequent "General Directors."
I remember one of my first leaders meetings, which must have been back around 1988, and this one young woman, who I think was either a group chief or a chapter chief, was saying something that's always stuck with me. She said that, when a new person joined, their initial fee got them a gohonzon and a month or three subscription to the World Tribune weekly newspaper. She went on to say that, when these new people did not choose to continue their subscriptions, the person who had shakubukued them was *REQUIRED* to pick up the subscription and pay for it out of their own pocket, so that the subscription numbers would never go down! She was saying that this was proving to be a severe obstacle for shakubuku, because she was already paying for, like, 10 subscriptions, and she wasn't willing to get stuck paying for more.
Just what you'd expect from an "ideal family-like organization" that stresses good common sense above all, right? *wink*
Is there any place to get REAL membership numbers?
One more thing - when I was still a member, I was involved in Soka Spirit and went to this meeting up in LA. A big cheese YWD leader opened her remarks by saying, "Since I've been practicing, I have helped more than four hundred people get gohonzon!" Much clapping. "Do you know how many of them are still practicing today? Two." No clapping. But this is the reality.
Thanks for the welcome, BTW! Nice to be here! Say, since I keep an eye open to religious goings-on in general, I've noticed that one of the fastest growing sects of Christianity is Pentecostalism. The Pentecostals are known for "Prosperity Theology", which basically says that, if you just give more and more to the church, that will "make room" in your life for God to shower financial blessings into! That the only reason you're poor etc. is because you aren't giving enough to the church. This struck a chord with me - I remember hearing something quite similar from the SGI about how you'd always get back several times more than what you donated, and that every penny you spent on the SGI organization would come back to you many times over. The whole magical-thinking "get something for nothing" is the common thread that links the two, and it seems Americans are particularly susceptible to the idea that there is a magical way for you to get wealth without actually having to *earn* it. I remember one young woman, a single mom, who was chanting 4 hours a day to "change her financial fortune". She had somehow arrived in her mid-30s with no significant job skills, no college degree or special training, and no relevant work experience that could serve to get her into anything other than an entry-level job which, being quite intelligent, she didn't want. So there she sat, chanting for money to fall out of the sky. She and I were friends, I thought, so I explained to her as gently as I could what some Japanese leaders had explained to me, that financial karma can take about 10 years to change, you know, long enough to earn that college degree or accumulate the relevant work experience to enable you to get into a higher-paying job. She screamed at me, "I don't HAVE 10 years! I need my financial karma to change RIGHT NOW!" She then told me I was a horrible person and a terrible mom (I also have 2 children) :)
I never blamed her for her outburst - she was in incredible pain, and had latched onto chanting as the magic charm that would magically change her life. I don't know what became of her, but I've felt bad about her for quite some time, as I'm one of the people who originally encouraged her in believing she could create something from nothing just by sitting on her ass and repeating magic words :/
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
TaitenAndProud
()
Date: January 11, 2013 05:42AM
It is amazing the level of delusion-all those special kosen-rufu gongyos and tozos for peace,youth etc. As if a few people chanting to a piece of paper is going to change the world. The excessive materialism attracts a fair few who would not go near Buddhism normally. Members put in so much, its a shame their efforts are in vain." How to completely fail to achieve enlightenment but maybe get a little wealthier in the attempt." Had the district leader phoning on Monday promising me a lifetime of poor health and Avici Hell in the hereafter.To be fair,the chapter leaders both wished me well though.Its sad really.
Oh, boy, that's rich!! But in the end, it's far sadder than I think you realize.
While I was still connected with the organization, a boy my son's age (they were friends) suffered a terrible spinal injury. He's mostly paralyzed from the waist down - he can still hobble around a bit, but the muscles in his legs have all atrophied due to the nerve damage, and they're like toothpicks. Plus he must wear a diaper.
When this happened, the doctors told them that the level of damage and the place damaged indicated that this was going to be a permanent injury. So what did his mom do? Held weekly diamoku tosos at their house on Sunday mornings, with everyone chanting for the boy to be restored to perfect health!
While we all would, of course, like to see every injury heal 100% and the injured person be restored to full original operating condition, this simply isn't realistic. With all those people chanting for him to be "different" from how he was, what sort of message did he receive about whether it's okay to be partially paralyzed? I'm sure he didn't miss that all these people were taking time out of their busy schedules to sit there and chant for him to be changed - something he had absolutely *no control over*. And right there in his own living room. Over the months, the attendance dwindled - I don't know at what point these daimoku tosos were no longer on the schedule.
I found it appalling, as the message that he was not acceptable or okay as he was couldn't be missed. Isn't Buddhism about accepting reality as it is? Apparently, SGI Buddhism is about bending reality to your will! But no one's will was strong enough to overcome that boy's spinal injury. He remains paralyzed and always will. At least his mom got a multi-million dollar settlement from the responsible party.
This was just another nail in the coffin containing my former "faith". No, chanting doesn't work. Sometimes you get what you've been working toward just because you've already done everything possible to get it. Chanting to bring it home (because you don't have confidence in your own abilities being rewarded) doesn't change the fact that you've already done everything you can possibly think of to get that result. That's all prayer is, regardless of what religion it's in - reassuring yourself that *something else*, something *out there*, will help you because you just lack confidence in your own ability to make things happen.
Oh, boy, that's rich!! But in the end, it's far sadder than I think you realize.
While I was still connected with the organization, a boy my son's age (they were friends) suffered a terrible spinal injury. He's mostly paralyzed from the waist down - he can still hobble around a bit, but the muscles in his legs have all atrophied due to the nerve damage, and they're like toothpicks. Plus he must wear a diaper.
When this happened, the doctors told them that the level of damage and the place damaged indicated that this was going to be a permanent injury. So what did his mom do? Held weekly diamoku tosos at their house on Sunday mornings, with everyone chanting for the boy to be restored to perfect health!
While we all would, of course, like to see every injury heal 100% and the injured person be restored to full original operating condition, this simply isn't realistic. With all those people chanting for him to be "different" from how he was, what sort of message did he receive about whether it's okay to be partially paralyzed? I'm sure he didn't miss that all these people were taking time out of their busy schedules to sit there and chant for him to be changed - something he had absolutely *no control over*. And right there in his own living room. Over the months, the attendance dwindled - I don't know at what point these daimoku tosos were no longer on the schedule.
I found it appalling, as the message that he was not acceptable or okay as he was couldn't be missed. Isn't Buddhism about accepting reality as it is? Apparently, SGI Buddhism is about bending reality to your will! But no one's will was strong enough to overcome that boy's spinal injury. He remains paralyzed and always will. At least his mom got a multi-million dollar settlement from the responsible party.
This was just another nail in the coffin containing my former "faith". No, chanting doesn't work. Sometimes you get what you've been working toward just because you've already done everything possible to get it. Chanting to bring it home (because you don't have confidence in your own abilities being rewarded) doesn't change the fact that you've already done everything you can possibly think of to get that result. That's all prayer is, regardless of what religion it's in - reassuring yourself that *something else*, something *out there*, will help you because you just lack confidence in your own ability to make things happen.
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
TaitenAndProud
()
Date: January 11, 2013 05:58AM
Welcome to all board newcomers! Congratulations on opening your eyes and getting out of the cult that is SGI.
Thank you! Never been happier!
Crazy pot smokers, abusive behavior, so-called "fortune babies", I won't restate it all here, but at various points in the thread I have described my experience with all of these things as an unfortunate "Youth!" member of what was in the 1970's, NSA.
When I joined in 1987, it was still "NSA". The other stuff was still going on. The overall feel was very militaristic.
The one fortune baby I personally knew of (I babysat the poor child) was born to a father that beat the mother so badly she had to leave the state to get away from him. Eventually the man was convicted of attempted murder, I think. Both mother and father were devoted members, and the father had a leadership position. I know that higher level leaders knew about the abuse because the mother told me she went for "guidance" numerous times. Yet, this man was allowed to retain his position. Why would untrained and unqualified people even attempt to give anybody "guidance" about such a serious situation? What's worse than the missing training is the missing compassion. This woman had two children from a prior marriage and I was afraid for all of them.
That's so sad. When I was still practicing where I started, in Minneapolis, there was this young girl, and her mom was a District Leader and her divorced husband was still in the organization as a leader at some level. Then I learned that he'd been convicted and imprisoned for *raping* that young girl, when she was just 11 or 12! The mom said to me that they'd been co-District Leaders at that time, and she'd wondered why he started staying home from District meetings. To rape her daughter, that's why!
When I practiced in North Carolina, this rather scary couple moved into my District, from New York or somewhere. The wife was clearly the dominant personality, abrasive and outspoken. The husband typically just sat there like a doughy mass. I tried to like them, but she scared me. She used to tell us about what "strict guidance" she'd been giving him - all my leadership training had emphasized that wives must *NEVER* give guidance to their husbands, but I said nothing. The only reason I can defend such a policy is that it is wrong to raise one person in the couple above the other. But anyhow, he'd apparently had enough, and he threatened her with a gun. She jumped in her car and took off. He got into his car and took off right behind her - ramming her car with his. They were playing the 911 tape on the news. She was chanting the whole time, in between the screaming. The police joined up; she pulled into the parking lot of a 7-11 and waited while the police took off after her husband. He doubled back to the parking lot and shot her dead.
Those two incidents enabled me to overcome my delusion that Nichiren Buddhism was so "correct" that it would reliably motivate people to become better. I was so deluded! :P
It wasn't until I was out that I learned, from this board, that SGI and Ikea both have billions of dollars in assets. Billions! Yet members are hounded to provide free labor and cash contributions too. This is what makes SGI's blasphemous likening of Ikea to Gandhi and Martin Luther King even more hypocritical and sickening. Gandhi and King never aspired to acquire wealth, and both endured considerable suffering during their respective campaigns for freedom. What has Ikea ever sacrificed? Why SGI members cannot understand this boggles the mind.
Agreed. It's just gross. One interesting detail I learned about the Buddha's teachings, when I started reading outside the SGI's approved reading list, is that there is a sort of "planned obsolescence" incorporated in the Buddha's teachings. Attachment causes suffering - that's one of the 4 Noble Truths. Notice that it's not "BAD attachment" - ALL attachment, whether good or bad, virtuous or evil, causes suffering. It doesn't matter how we categorize it, in other words - our job is to rid ourselves of attachments in order to rid ourselves of suffering.
Clinging to a religion or belief system is just another form of attachment. In the course of ridding ourselves of attachment, we must let go of our religious beliefs at some point and proceed unencumbered. All by ourselves. The point of the Buddha's teachings is to help us learn how to think and how to perceive and understand reality, so that we can then become free to live within it. To say that people must "chant until the last moment of your life" shows a deep misunderstanding of the principle of attachment within Buddhism. In the end, in order to become enlightened, the Buddhist must leave Buddhism behind. It's a revolutionary thought and one completely at odds with all the religions that seek to profit off everybody they can sucker in.
Thank you! Never been happier!
Crazy pot smokers, abusive behavior, so-called "fortune babies", I won't restate it all here, but at various points in the thread I have described my experience with all of these things as an unfortunate "Youth!" member of what was in the 1970's, NSA.
When I joined in 1987, it was still "NSA". The other stuff was still going on. The overall feel was very militaristic.
The one fortune baby I personally knew of (I babysat the poor child) was born to a father that beat the mother so badly she had to leave the state to get away from him. Eventually the man was convicted of attempted murder, I think. Both mother and father were devoted members, and the father had a leadership position. I know that higher level leaders knew about the abuse because the mother told me she went for "guidance" numerous times. Yet, this man was allowed to retain his position. Why would untrained and unqualified people even attempt to give anybody "guidance" about such a serious situation? What's worse than the missing training is the missing compassion. This woman had two children from a prior marriage and I was afraid for all of them.
That's so sad. When I was still practicing where I started, in Minneapolis, there was this young girl, and her mom was a District Leader and her divorced husband was still in the organization as a leader at some level. Then I learned that he'd been convicted and imprisoned for *raping* that young girl, when she was just 11 or 12! The mom said to me that they'd been co-District Leaders at that time, and she'd wondered why he started staying home from District meetings. To rape her daughter, that's why!
When I practiced in North Carolina, this rather scary couple moved into my District, from New York or somewhere. The wife was clearly the dominant personality, abrasive and outspoken. The husband typically just sat there like a doughy mass. I tried to like them, but she scared me. She used to tell us about what "strict guidance" she'd been giving him - all my leadership training had emphasized that wives must *NEVER* give guidance to their husbands, but I said nothing. The only reason I can defend such a policy is that it is wrong to raise one person in the couple above the other. But anyhow, he'd apparently had enough, and he threatened her with a gun. She jumped in her car and took off. He got into his car and took off right behind her - ramming her car with his. They were playing the 911 tape on the news. She was chanting the whole time, in between the screaming. The police joined up; she pulled into the parking lot of a 7-11 and waited while the police took off after her husband. He doubled back to the parking lot and shot her dead.
Those two incidents enabled me to overcome my delusion that Nichiren Buddhism was so "correct" that it would reliably motivate people to become better. I was so deluded! :P
It wasn't until I was out that I learned, from this board, that SGI and Ikea both have billions of dollars in assets. Billions! Yet members are hounded to provide free labor and cash contributions too. This is what makes SGI's blasphemous likening of Ikea to Gandhi and Martin Luther King even more hypocritical and sickening. Gandhi and King never aspired to acquire wealth, and both endured considerable suffering during their respective campaigns for freedom. What has Ikea ever sacrificed? Why SGI members cannot understand this boggles the mind.
Agreed. It's just gross. One interesting detail I learned about the Buddha's teachings, when I started reading outside the SGI's approved reading list, is that there is a sort of "planned obsolescence" incorporated in the Buddha's teachings. Attachment causes suffering - that's one of the 4 Noble Truths. Notice that it's not "BAD attachment" - ALL attachment, whether good or bad, virtuous or evil, causes suffering. It doesn't matter how we categorize it, in other words - our job is to rid ourselves of attachments in order to rid ourselves of suffering.
Clinging to a religion or belief system is just another form of attachment. In the course of ridding ourselves of attachment, we must let go of our religious beliefs at some point and proceed unencumbered. All by ourselves. The point of the Buddha's teachings is to help us learn how to think and how to perceive and understand reality, so that we can then become free to live within it. To say that people must "chant until the last moment of your life" shows a deep misunderstanding of the principle of attachment within Buddhism. In the end, in order to become enlightened, the Buddhist must leave Buddhism behind. It's a revolutionary thought and one completely at odds with all the religions that seek to profit off everybody they can sucker in.
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
TaitenAndProud
()
Date: January 11, 2013 06:06AM
Still waiting for the chapter leader to call.Ill call him soon to arrange a visit.Cant wait to get rid of the magic scroll.
You do not have to return the magic scroll. Feel free to toss it into the garbage if you like.
It's YOURS. YOU paid for it.
Once you resign from the organization, its rules and regulations no longer apply to you. Please read at this site - it's about Mormons leaving the Mormon Church, but the basic principles work just as well here:
Click here for one of the sites on how to remove your information.
Click here for another site
Click this last link for even more information.
The basic information here applies to the SGI-USA as well. They are not allowed to keep your personal information on file - at all! Anywhere! - once you inform them that you are resigning from the organization. You do not need to explain yourself. You do not need to have any "home visits". You can do whatever you like with YOUR gohonzon. YOU control what happens now. They are not allowed to speak your name any more, and if they try to use you as a cautionary tale or whatever, you can sue them. That's what happened with one person who resigned from a Christian organization (might have been LDS - can't remember) - they went ahead and publicly excommunicated her. She then sued them for several tens of thousands of dollars - and won.
I personally think more people should do the official resignation, but that's just me.
You do not have to return the magic scroll. Feel free to toss it into the garbage if you like.
It's YOURS. YOU paid for it.
Once you resign from the organization, its rules and regulations no longer apply to you. Please read at this site - it's about Mormons leaving the Mormon Church, but the basic principles work just as well here:
Click here for one of the sites on how to remove your information.
Click here for another site
Click this last link for even more information.
The basic information here applies to the SGI-USA as well. They are not allowed to keep your personal information on file - at all! Anywhere! - once you inform them that you are resigning from the organization. You do not need to explain yourself. You do not need to have any "home visits". You can do whatever you like with YOUR gohonzon. YOU control what happens now. They are not allowed to speak your name any more, and if they try to use you as a cautionary tale or whatever, you can sue them. That's what happened with one person who resigned from a Christian organization (might have been LDS - can't remember) - they went ahead and publicly excommunicated her. She then sued them for several tens of thousands of dollars - and won.
I personally think more people should do the official resignation, but that's just me.
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
TaitenAndProud
()
Date: January 11, 2013 06:10AM
There are actually reports of SGI and Mitsubishi misdeeds, as well as reports that SGI's main financing bank is The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. Of course, the problem is SGI keeps all of their finances secret, so only Ikeda and his family know where the money is, and where it went.
As I live in the San Diego area, I'm quite close to the LA HQ. One time, I called them, asking for a copy of the SGI-USA's financial statements. You know, transparency and whatnot. The young man I spoke with said that, if I drove up there, I would be allowed to *look* at them without touching them or making copies. I could go into a room and *look* at them.
Nice, huh??
The whole financial angle smells real bad.
As I live in the San Diego area, I'm quite close to the LA HQ. One time, I called them, asking for a copy of the SGI-USA's financial statements. You know, transparency and whatnot. The young man I spoke with said that, if I drove up there, I would be allowed to *look* at them without touching them or making copies. I could go into a room and *look* at them.
Nice, huh??
The whole financial angle smells real bad.
Re: Soka Gakkai International -- SGI
Posted by:
Shavoy
()
Date: January 11, 2013 06:11AM
Quote
TaitenAndProud
I practiced with the SGI-USA for over 20 years - I got my gohonzon in August, 1987. You can do the math ;) If I hadn't been moving around so much, I probably wouldn't have lasted so long - most of the time, I was practicing on my own.
I have a personal experience of the fascistic and authoritarian atmosphere of the SGI-USA organization. Being a white American, I naturally want to be Japanese (it's a joke - that's a white person stereotype). I was enthralled when I read James Clavill's Shogun back in the early 1980s. Well, we bought a house (and I held SGI meetings here) and it has a vaulted ceiling. There is a tall wall over the landing to the stairs, and I found these beautiful gohonzons to put there. For a while, there was a Japanese seller feeding old Nichiren Shu gohonzons onto the market. These are enormous - 5' to 6' tall. As you can see, they are a simplified gohonzon form - no one would mistake these for one of the little, busy SGI-USA gohonzons. I'm going to try to paste pictures here, but I'm not sure if this medium allows it:
Gohonzon 1 - over 100 years old
Gohonzon 2 - over 130 years old
They now hang side by side, and they look beautiful! Well, when I was considering purchasing one (before I decided to purchase TWO!), I asked a Japanese leader to "read" the inscription for me, since I don't read Japanese. That really started the drama. I was told not to buy it. I got a home visit from a leader who said, "Your home has such a lovely, warm feel to it. I would hate to see that change to something dark and sinister." She was, of course, implying that, if I bought "heretical objects", they would magically cause a dark miasma to descend over my home. For all her "wisdom", she couldn't tell that I'd already bought both of them, and they were sitting right upstairs, waiting to be hung!
The local big-cheese women's division Joint-Territory leader, a Japanese war-bride, came by. She inspected these two gohonzons, which were now hanging on my wall, and told me she thought the members might get confused. I, and another (American) leader, disagreed, saying that we didn't think that any of the American members would see them as anything other than beautiful original calligraphy. Besides, where they were hanging, they weren't visible from the room where I held meetings. When the American leader stepped out, the Japanese leader told me I should chant until I agreed with her. That was her "guidance" to me.
It was interesting when, two weeks later, she dropped dead. She was only in her 50s! This was, of course, a sad thing, and that should be the end of it. But I know for a fact, having spent much time in the higher echelons of SGI-USA leadership, that if it had been ME who dropped dead, the leaders would have wasted no time in wagging their heads and tongues about how this was my "karmic retribution" for disobeying my leaders' orders! It is commonplace in the SGI-USA leadership to exploit members' misfortunes this way, as a cautionary tale to inspire more submission and obedience from the membership. But to suggest that SHE was struck dead for presenting her own opinion as official Buddhist doctrine - that would be in terribly poor taste, wouldn't it? So why are the members not accorded the same respect the leaders are?
I heard that, at one meeting, one member had said, "Well, what if she had a museum of Japanese art and artefacts, and wanted to display these examples of original calligraphy as works of art? That would be okay, wouldn't it?" The leader replied archly, "She doesn't HAVE a museum, does she?"
I have always read a lot, and when I started reading about Buddhism outside the SGI-USA's approved publications, I discovered some rather alarming things. Remember how we always hear that "Buddhism is win or lose"? Look what I found from the Buddha in the Dhammapada:
Winning gives birth to hostility. Losing, one lies down in pain. The calmed lie down with ease, having set winning and losing aside.
Now THAT ^ is consistent with the Buddhist principle that attachment causes suffering! "Chant for whatever you want" and "Chant to win" serve only to strengthen attachments! Finally, from the Kalama Sutra:
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Here's another version:
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
Why should we accept that we have to "discard, close, ignore, and abandon" such wisdom? Perhaps because Nichiren and Daisaku Ikeda both saw their opportunity to be worshiped as gods! The way the SGI-USA pays to have Daisaku Ikeda's name put on public monuments is deeply disturbing. The Gandhi-King-Ikeda Exhibit is a joke - more like "One of these things is not like the others!" And the way Daisaku Ikeda's effectively anonymous son Hiromasa is being shoved into the spotlight leads me to suspect that this nobody, who hasn't actually accomplished *anything* on his own, whose only claim to fame is that his daddy is famous, is being positioned to take over the International Presidentship once Daisaku kicks the bucket. To take over what will become a hereditary dynasty rather than a leadership position earned by merit. It's just gross. All hail the Dear Leader!
Fascinating post, TaitenAndProud......it brought back memories again of senior leaders and heretical objects in one's home. I relayed here a while back about how I bought into the Fear and threw away precious items given to me by a dear family member who supported my practice 1,000%. These were hand-carved statues of Chinese fishermen, for God's sake! Chinese fishermen!!!
When she gave me the porcelain statue of an Asian lady goddess (which she had purchased during another Far East trip) a few years later, I said, enough of this, I will NOT throw this one away.
Life rolled along, like it always did---The earth did not open up and swallow our home. The benefits still rolled in.
They try to frame and re-frame and frame again situations that equal Life, as we all experience it.
I was able to view the Gohonzons and they are indeed beautiful works of art!
The whole win-or-lose thing was also a thorn in my side. It basically seems to punish members, making them feel like crud if they "lose" in anything. What needless pressure.
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