New CULT affirmation video, just went up a few days ago. [www.youtube.com] For Cousin Rufus Day & Renewing Your Vow To Your "Master" (Ikeda).

A very interesting view, v-e-r-y i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t-i-n-g indeed.

Notice The Dear Leader mini-placard sitting next to the butsudan behind some of the speakers.

There isn't a single speaker whose "experience" I find compelling.

Of particularly telling importance, is the (mis)fortune-baby's experience that starts at the 2:35 min. mark:

"I grew up with my parents chanting and going to meetings and I had ZERO interest in this organization. I thought it was incredibly CULTISH and overpowering and I wanted NOTHING to do with it.. Anytime my parents ha people over, I would try to avoid, at all costs, to be in my house."

Then, her brother was charged with "double life" in prison. It flipped her family upside down and she went for "guidance" and the rest is history. She is now talking the gakkai cult-speak, verbatim, throughout the remainder of her "experience." This is a very typical trigger that causes people dive in to the cult org. - some tragic life event, beyond their control --> so they turn to imaginary supernatural forces for help.

After that, is the "cookie" experience. You just got to listen to it to believe it. The lady overcomes a sugar addiction to fight for Cousin Rufus.

Again, take notice of the Ikeda prayer card on the butsudan stand behind them.

More confirmation bias "experiences" follow.

Finally, toward the end of the video, The Dear Leader surfaces and is mentioned by name by every single speaker.

One person even mentions "writing that letter to SENSEI", "even if I don't get an answer, I can see it when I read the World Tribune." (The cult org. is always encouraging the members to write letters to the "Master", even if you don't get a response, for the "cause" --> good cause = good effect in the cultie mindset).

It closes with, "Sensei always points me in the right direction. NMRK, NMRK, NMRK ..."

I've watched the entire video. I don't find it "encouraging", uplifting or admirable, in any way whatsoever. Quite the opposite.



- Hitch

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T&P, I wanted to address this before I got caught up in a bunch of stuff, but just how much does a butsudan like that run about? The one you had the photo of quite a while back. Were you fed the line, "it will come back to you" when you got it? It's a very nice one indeed. There were some with those around here and they had gone through that as well. I'm not sure if it's confirmation bias in all their cases or what.

Bigger butsudans were supposed to be a reflection of the "depth of your faith", desire to "repay your debt of gratitude", show your "appreciation" (not to mention having more cult meetings at your house so others could be impressed and appreciate it, too), and were touted to be better antenna tuner receivers for more "Mystic Law" benefits to find their way to you. The bigger ones (used to) cost around 10 grand (plus or minus, depending on the type of wood / coating / decoration details), probably more now.

I remember poring over the Nakayama Butsudans (don't ask me how I still remember the name) catalogue: [www.nakayamabutsudans.com]

^ That's one I would have lusted over, but its list price of $18K was a game-ender. On sale for ONLY $15,000 - can you imagine??? After we moved and were in our own owned home, I started thinking more seriously about a *nice* butsudan. I'd always wanted one - I love nice things and have the stereotypical white American's fascination for all things Japanese... So I started nosing about on eBay. And I found one I really liked! It was, like, $1,800, though, so I was arranging and rearranging our budget to see how I might make it work. Then it disappeared!! So I emailed the seller and asked, "Wha' hoppen??" Someone had contacted him privately about buying it and, as the auction as yet had no bids, he'd gone ahead and sold. But he had THREE others for sale, and he'd make me a deal on all three! Here they are:

The little one was 48" tall:

Closed: [i129.photobucket.com]
Open: [i129.photobucket.com]
REALLY open: [i129.photobucket.com]

In the background is my former butsudan, an older model with rosewood-patterned paper over the particle board (discovered that when removing some masking tape that had been applied to keep it together). It had some gold-colored tin fittings on the inside doors. It's on a separate chest I already had. The butsudan originally sold for $65 - I got it used for $20.

The medium sized one is to the left in those pictures - it's of this zebra-striped wood, very pretty, and fancier inside than the little one. It is 57" tall. I don't seem to have any pictures of it, but it's in my daughter's room so I might take a few pics for show and tell.

MINE: [i129.photobucket.com]

As you can tell, I was busy turning Japanese at this point! That's me on the couch (SUCH a flattering photo >.< ) and my daughter practicing hip-hop dance moves in front of MY butsuday - fully 7 feet tall!! It's *AMAZING* inside - I'll take some pics and post them tomorrow!!

I had thought I could sell them within the Buddhist community, right? So I put up flyers on the bulletin boards at the community centers both locally and down in San Diego, and I was very upset to find that SOMEBODY was taking them down almost as fast as I could put them up! >:( I only got ONE call - this couple came out to look at the little one and didn't buy it. I ended up giving it to my (one) friend from the organization. I bought all three for $3000 and the guy delivered them himself in his truck for free so I didn't have to pay shipping. I was counting on being able to sell them and recoup at least *some* of my investment, but it didn't happen. I was quite disillusioned, and I felt that the organization was both cheap (for not being interested in buying at less than 25% of the Nakayama Butsudan price - these butsudans were in beautiful condition) AND unhelpful/unsupportive/obstructive (leaders taking down my ads so quickly). So, yeah, that was stupid of me, counting on the organization to help me (ha ha ha), but it was a real quick eye-opener about, well, whether the organization was going to meet any of *MY* needs. I couldn't see doing *everything* for the organization and getting *no* social payoff for myself. Sorry, but I'm practical that way. Why would I want to hang out with a bunch of cheap-ass turds who didn't even *like* me????

Funny - once I got a REALLY fancy shmancy butsudan for myself, my need to belong to the organization rather dissipated. I'm not sure the actual mechanics of it, but once I'd satisfied my own need, I didn't need them any more... I had always envied other members' fancy butsudans and had long vowed to get a really nice one for myself. Mine, in fact, looks very much like the Nakayama ad one, above, but you'll see (tomorrow) that mine's nicer :P

Ooh! Almost forgot about Morning Sun Butsudans!! [butsudan.com] I never went for those *mod* ones - I always gravitated toward the ornate and classic look. Some really nice wood grain, though - I appreciate a nice wood grain as much as anyone. Our local pioneer in MN had this one she'd brought from Japan - I swear the bottom part was carved jade! They said that, in Japan, the value of the butsudan is proportional to its weight.

Say, at the bottom right of that last link, the "Millenia" - for "only" $17,500. Looks just like one of the less-popular droids from Star Wars: [www.gadgetmadness.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2013 09:26AM by TaitenAndProud.

We've spoken a lot about the FNCC (US) $oka Gakkai Cult Org. retreat and have shared many clips, thus far.

Trets, France -

The European Gakkai Cult Org. retreat equivalent, seems to be a rarer bird to spot on YouTube. However, here are two very short clips that demonstrate that the modus operandi is the same no matter where the cult retreat is located in the world:

1. Forever Dear Leader "Sensei" Ikeda song [www.youtube.com] (30 seconds).

2. The absurd, mind and behavior regressing manipulation [www.youtube.com] (40 seconds). Don't know what this one is. Possibly Super-Gakkai Heroes for Cousin Rufus. Got to admit, this one probably takes the cake as far as the kinds of bizarre cult rituals that I've ever seen done.

The $oka Gakkai International = Ridiculous pseudo-buddhist CULT.


- Hitch

This discussion of butsudans is fascinating. And especially Taiten discovering that once he or she got the butsudan, the craving dissipated.

Guys, I made a bunch of Ebay purchases last year and noticed that unwrapping them upon delivery was a let-down, compared with that feeling of being "on the hunt". Getting wasnt as pleasurable as yearning.

In reading your descriptions of SG, I wondered if through social engineering they are creating mental cravings little different from addiction. Then I found a book just recently that made me wonder yet more.

You all might be interested in a book by Marc Lewis entitled Memoirs of an Addicted Brain. Lewis is now a neuroscientist. His career nearly ended just as it began, because when he was young, he was a poly-drug addict.

His memoir takes the reader through Lewis' life, highlights each incident where he took an addicting drug for the first time and then the reader is given a tour of the brain and how the drug affects its neurotransmitters.

What does this have to do with Sokka Gokkai and desiring a butsudan?

Turns out the neurotransmitter dopamine is most active when we yearn, and especially when the target of our yearning seems almost attainable. When we obtain the desired target--dopamine dissipates and life goes flat.

I am going to quote a lengthy section from Memoirs of an Addicted Brain. I want to make clear that Marc Lewis never at any point addressed issues of social engineering or the chance that some groups might have an effect similar to addiction.

I am not a scientist or medical professional--just a concerned citizen. So I will offer hunches and speculations in brackets.

Those quotes are from pages 157-159 of Memoirs of an Addicted Brain.

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"If emotions join up with learning to modify the brain, then we should not be surprised that a drug of abuse, a drug with enormous power to generate well being and craving when it is absent, changes the brain profoundly.

"As to where these changes take place, the bottom floor of the prefrontal lobe, the orbital frontal cortex (OFC) is a good place to look. The OFC, pumped up with dopamine assigns value to things, things like Lisa, during my dalliance in New York, and things like heroin now.

(Corboy--and it likely assigns perceived value to SG and to a particular style of butsudan--or some other thing on Ebay that caught my own fancy.)

Dr Lewis continues:

"Orbitalfrontal neurons tune themselves to resonate with emotional meaning fertilized by dopamine pumped up from the VTA. And each time they are activated, tthat meaning emerges more vividly, because of the ongoing sculpting of synaptic connections. Learning fuelled by desire.

"With the emergence of addiction (or under the tutelage of a group that does us vs them social engineering?? Corboy) the orbitalfrontal cortext divides the world in half: good and not-so-good.

(Corboy: notice how very often people in high demand groups revert to an us vs them perspective?)

"The anticipation of the drug, the foreshadowing of that special feeling that comes each time, the synaptic imprint by which your brain recognizes that drug, that special feeling, is the purr of your OFC turning on and tuning out. Wow! Good! This will be great ! Those orbital frontal neurons not only feed a message to "you" - the user - they also send excitation in the form of glutamate, down the tubes to many other regions. In fact, those downstream effects are a big part of the feeling, the nuts and bolts of the emotional meaning radiating through brain and body...."

"The ventral striatum finds itself suspended upon two colliding waves" glutamate from the OFC, carrying meaning, and dopamine from the VTA, carrying thrust. Thats how the ventral straitum becomes the henchman of the OFC, ready to do its bidding, whle both members of the little gang keep priming the dopamine pump that keeps them both humming.

(Corboy and could this be the engine that keeps everyone running, running, keeping the wheels of SG spinning?)



"Dopamine creates engagement with life's pleasures, whether natural like cheesecake, an unnatural ones, like the pulvarizing fist of narcotic sedation. (Lewis is describing heroin). But when those pleasures are out of reach, when the goal is beyond your grasp, two things happen. First, if the goal remains attainable (chant harder and I will get it!!--Corboy), anticipated but not yet present, dopamine flow gets stronger, energizing pursuit, tuning orbital striatal connections in the moment, entrenching those same connections over minutes and hours. (Corboy wonder if this same thing happens during SG rally after rally, chant after chant??)

"In this way, orbitalfrontal value is translated into striatal craving, and with repetition, the value- craving amalgam gets consolidated into a lasting union, a dependancy that drives away the competition, perhaps forever.

"When the object is just out of reach, that gush of dopamine feels like raw desire, a deep itch, the contraction of an incomplete soul-- whether the object of that desire is a lover or a drug.

The second stage is when the goal is no longer anticipated, when you've given up. (Corboy--or when the butsudan of your dreams has been purchased, in your possession and unwrapped?)

This stage brings the addict face to face with the worlds other half, the not so good half. Because when drugs (or booze or gambling, or sex (Corboy or shopping--Ive been on Ebay too) are nowhere to be found, the humming motor of the Orbital Frontal Center sputters to a halt. Orbital frontal cells go dormant and dopamine just stops. Like a religious fundamentalist, the addicts brain has only two stable states, rapture and disinterest. Addictive drugs (and perhaps groups that are adroit at social engineering?-Corboy) convert the brain to recognise only one face of God to thrill to only one suitor. And without that purveyor of goodness, orbital frontal neurons become underactivated, sleepy, deadened. So the glutamate tap gets turned off. And, as a result, dopamine flow goes back, not just to a trickle, but to less than a trickle, because the dopamine factory (as a result of addiction), now relies on its supersized boost of glutmate, brought in fresh daily from the OFC, in order to maintain production.

This is key. This is the result of having an over specialized OFC--one that is either enthralled or asleep--is that the ventral straitum follows suit, becoming underactive itself when the drugs have run out, because there is not enough dopamine to pursue goals, and not enough meaning to care.

(One may become dependant on intensity, after awhile. Ordinary, day to day relationships not orchestrated by social engineers or generated by emergencies, may seem dull by comparison? Soldiers returning from combat may find civilian life unbearably flat. Corboy)

[books.google.com]

corboy, I found the same thing in Dr. Gabor Maté's book, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts". Here is what he had to say about "the hunt" (which he himself feels):

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'Post-industrial' capitalism has destroyed the
conditions for healthy childhood development

The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse. These people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development, they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don’t have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver who wasn’t sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men--or abused, neglected and abandoned serially, over and over again. That’s what sets up the brain biology of addiction. In other words, the addiction is related both psychologically, in terms of emotional pain relief, and neurobiological development to early adversity.

AG: What does the title of your book mean, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts?

GM: In the Buddhists’ psychology, there are a number of realms that human beings cycle through, all of us. One is the human realm, which is our ordinary selves. The hell realm is that of unbearable rage, fear, you know, these emotions that are difficult to handle. The animal realm is our instincts and our id and our passions.

Now, the hungry ghost realm, the creatures in it are depicted as people with large empty bellies, small mouths and scrawny thin necks. They can never get enough satisfaction. They can never fill their bellies. They’re always hungry, always empty, always seeking it from the outside. That speaks to a part of us that I have and everybody in our society has, where we want satisfaction from the outside, where we’re empty, where we want to be soothed by something in the short term, but we can never feel that or fulfill that insatiety from the outside. Addicts are in that realm all the time. Most of us are in that realm some of the time. My point really is, is that there’s no clear distinction between the identified addict and the rest of us. There’s a continuum in which we all may be found. They’re on it, because they’ve suffered a lot more than most of us.

That's from an interview - I thought it apt here because he describes two of the "Ten Worlds" of Buddhism (that we all are probably way too familiar with by now!). Now here's a small section from his book that matches yours:

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It's safe to say that any pursuit, natural or artificial, that induces a feeling of increased motivation and reward - shopping, driving, sex, eating, TV watching, extreme sports, and so on - will activate the same brain systems as drug addictions. In a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study, for example, playing with monetary incentives lit up the brain areas also aroused in the course of drug intake. Positron-emission tomography (PET) scanning revealed that the playing of video games raises dopamine levels in the incentive-motivation circuits. Personal history and temperament will decide which activities produce this effect for any particular individual, but the process is always the same. For someone with a relative shortage of dopamine receptors, it's whichever activity best releases extra quantities of this euphoric and invigorating neurotransmitter that will become the object of addictive pursuit. In effect, people become addicted to their own brain chemicals. When caught in the urgent fever of my compact disc hunt, for instance, it's that hit of dopamine I'm after.

Not only are the identical incentive-motivation and attachment-reward circuits impaired in the brains of overeaters and drug addicts, but so are the impulse-regulating functions of the cortex. "Some evidence suggests a decision-making impairment in obese patients," a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association pointed out. "For example, very obese individuals score worse than substance abusers in the Iowa Gambling Test, a paradigm that also relies on the integrity of the right PFC (prefrontal cortex) for execution." The same authors noted that obese people are more prone to stress, since their hormonal stress-response apparatus is disturbed - another characteristic in common with other addicts.

Addictions are often interchangeable - a fact that further buttresses the unitary theory that there's a common addiction process. Although my addictive tendencies are most obvious in my habit of buying compact discs, I can shift seamlessly into other obsessive activities. The week we moved into our present home, 24 years ago, I attended the birthing of six babies, most of them at night. I'd accepted into my practice 15 women whose due dates fell in that month, about 10 too many for a busy family physician. I couldn't say no to being wanted. During the day, when not at the maternity hospital, I was working in my office. You can just imagine how much energy and presence I had left for my family. I have thrown myself equally blindly and avidly into political work and other pursuits. I've even had several of my addictions up and running at the same time. That is, the addiction process was active and looking for more and more external trophies to capture. For all that, the anxiety, ennui, and fear of the void driving the whole operation rarely abated.

The less "respectable" and more harmful behavioral addictions play themselves out in the same way. Dr. Aviel Goodman has drawn this conclusion from research showing a significant overlap between his area of study (sex addiction) and other addictions, such as compulsive shopping, substance dependence, and pathological gambling. In other words, many sex addicts will also have one or more of these superficially different addictions. Pathological gamblers, too, are highly likely to fall under the sway of other destructive habits. About half of them are alcoholics, and the vast majority are addicted to nicotine - and the more severe a person's gambling, the stronger the addiction to alcohol and smoking. [tinyurl.com]

Banquet workers have noted how people in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings typically drink many times more coffee than people in other kinds of meetings. Or how former alcoholics become so obsessed with Jesus. How many former alcoholics are still such heavy smokers. It's just substituting a more socially acceptable addiction for a less socially acceptable addiction.

In the interview linked up top of this post, Dr. Maté notes that:

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The first point to get there is that if people who become severe addicts, as shown by all the studies, were for the most part abused children, then we realize that the war on drugs is actually waged against people that were abused from the moment they were born, or from an early age on. In other words, we’re punishing people for having been abused. The second point is, is that the research clearly shows that the biggest driver of addictive relapse and addictive behavior is actually stress. In North America right now, because of the economic crisis, a lot of people are eating junk food, because junk foods release endorphins and dopamine in the brain. Stress drives addiction.

Now imagine a situation where we’re trying to figure out how to help addicts. Would we come up with a system that stresses them to the max? Who would design a system that ostracizes, marginalizes, impoverishes and ensures the disease of the addict, and hope, through that system, to rehabilitate large numbers? It can’t be done. In other words, the so-called “war on drugs,” which, as the new drug czar points out, is a war on people, actually entrenches addiction deeply. Furthermore, it institutionalizes people in facilities where there’s no care. We call it a “correctional” system, but it doesn’t correct anything. It’s a punitive system. So people suffer more, and come out more entrenched in their addiction than they were when they went in.

"Stress drives addiction." Thus, if you apply more stressors onto a goup, you can reliably expect to see more addictive behavior. Ideally, addiction to the *group*.

His point is that the dynamic of small children being separated all day from their parents, who are exhausted and stressed when they pick them up/when they are picked up, you get a predictably adverse effect on brain development and brain chemistry, one that results in a much greater likelihood of addictive behavior. From "Hungry Ghosts":

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Reinforcement is important in all addictions, drug-related or not. In my own case, it doesn't help that (my place of employment) is located within a few blocks of those unscrupulous compact disc pushers at Sikora's, my favorite music haunt, and that I drive by there most days on my way to or from work. As I described earlier, I can feel excitement rising as I approach the store, even when I have no plan to go there, along with an urge to park the car and walk in. In my NA (nucleus accumbens section of the brain), the dopamine is flowing. The incentive is powerful.

He also quotes drug addicts, how thinking of their next hit and preparing to get it makes them feel good in the same way using the drug does. The ritual of preparing to inject releases dopamine the same way the drug provides it. Finally:

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My workaholism and compact disc shopping have been only the most consistent forms of escape my mind chooses when it's uncomfortable. There have been other behaviors just as compulsive and just as impulsive. I see now that the underlying anxiety and sense of emptiness have been pervasive. Emotionally they take the shape of chronic, low-grade depression and irritability. On the thought level, they manifest as cynicism - the negative side of the healthy skepticism and independent thinking I've always valued. Behaviorally they mask themselves as hypomanic energy or as lethargy, as the constant hankering for activity or for oblivion. When the ordinary, everyday escape mechanisms fail to satisfy, I plunge into my overtly addictive patterns.

How many of us joined NSA/the SGI at a time when we were lonely, bored, sad, or otherwise needy? I'm guessing *ALL*.

@corboy and T&P---Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing these excerpts. Bravo! The insights are explained in a down-to-earth manner and really hit so many nails on the head regarding what humans do to get the reward. And how people who have been treated horribly from the get-go scramble to get and keep the reward. Let's add why Sensei is addicted to his reward, too. It all makes sense.

Once again, thanks.

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corboy
"Dopamine creates engagement with life's pleasures, whether natural like cheesecake, an unnatural ones, like the pulvarizing fist of narcotic sedation. (Lewis is describing heroin). But when those pleasures are out of reach, when the goal is beyond your grasp, two things happen. First, if the goal remains attainable (chant harder and I will get it!!--Corboy), anticipated but not yet present, dopamine flow gets stronger, energizing pursuit, tuning orbital striatal connections in the moment, entrenching those same connections over minutes and hours. (Corboy wonder if this same thing happens during SG rally after rally, chant after chant??)

"In this way, orbitalfrontal value is translated into striatal craving, and with repetition, the value- craving amalgam gets consolidated into a lasting union, a dependancy that drives away the competition, perhaps forever.

"When the object is just out of reach, that gush of dopamine feels like raw desire, a deep itch, the contraction of an incomplete soul-- whether the object of that desire is a lover or a drug.

All of this: or an object of devotion? When you are stressed go to the gohonzon and chant with all your might, they say. No wonder after considering this. I believe you are on to something Corboy.

T&P, you've made me wonder how many addicts are in SGI and how many misfortune babies become addicts later in life. That would be interesting to see the numbers. Of course we won't as usual...

T&P, you've made me wonder how many addicts are in SGI and how many misfortune babies become addicts later in life. That would be interesting to see the numbers. Of course we won't as usual...

I'm looking forward to your next post on butsudans. The last photo if you look at it quick looks like there's a peace sign on the closed doors.

People join cults when their "normal" mode of functioning breaks down or life throws on to them, an overwhelming stressor event that triggers irrational or desperate ways of coping. The cult is one escape option, but really a trap sitting in wait for people. It proffers easy solutions to complex problems.

People who specifically join the gakkai cult org. do so either because a) the "World Peace" or "Buddhism" banners appeal to them (of which the cult org. is not really about ), b) for the sense of "community", social interactions, acceptance into a group (none of which is genuine and only superficial), c) they become dependent on the wishful-magical thinking, illusion/delusion of control, rituals, (they've bought deeply into the thought reform, doctrine, etc.), or a combination of the above.

A fourth category, would be those who were born into it (which includes myself). In this group, I've noticed two additional subcategories: 1) those who accepted it from their early years and practiced because it was their "normal", until they grew old enough to be able to evaluate it critically for themselves (and got out), or 2) those who resisted the practice from their early years, but encountered some significant life event(s) stressor (like we all do inevitably) and turn to the cult org. in desperation and for easy answers. They join up to become hardcore, lifelong devotees. This latter group (2), I've seen a lot of. They've essentially been softened up for years by under the radar cult peer pressure and it is the most logical and obvious direction in the world, for them to turn to when life throws those inevitable curve balls.

I've also seen a fifth category, those who have significant others who practice. They either separate or wind up pulling the brainwashed member out completely (this may be rare?), stay together and resist the kool-aid (a mutual tolerance of sorts), or stay together and eventually succumb to it (like that district leader who couldn't pronounce Ikeda's name I talked about earlier).

I may be missing some categories (I've always noticed a small, but consistent number of Japan or asianophiles that tend to gravitate to the gakkai cult org., too), but those are pretty much the main ones that immediately spring to my mind.


- Hitch