Hello Everybody, I just want to express my thanks to this forum and the brave and compassionate people here. My story is that I joined back in 1985 and received my Nikken Gohonzon in 1987. I left NSUK and SGI in 1991 I think because of the Priesthood dispute but returned to SGI two years later, because I genuinely wanted to be able to chant with others and had found it hard to maintain my practice on my own. I made the wrong choice and I have left again in August of this year.

Everyone has their own journey and we all make different choices, as I can tell from the varied comments on the forum. My own choice is to return to Nichiren Shoshu. What a relief to know I never have to have 'Mentor and Disciple' shoved down my throat again!

I will tell you more later, I have been following this forum since August and am currently up to page 180. Thank you for letting me know that I am neither crazy or alone in rejecting President Ikea.


lostmyway

Rothaus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wow must say very good responses to
> SoniqueSc. If I seem to forget certain
> issues its because they were already mentioned by
> you guys,
> The mentor/disciple principle, beside being a
> personal one, is not a concept that can be ordered
> to follow. Anyone who denies that there is no
> pressure in SGI to regard Mr. Ikeda as his/her
> mentor is a liar. The concept started to be pushed
> down peoples throats more intensively form the mid
> 90's onward. The more the concept was mentioned
> the more the quality and quantity of Buddhist
> study deteriorated.
> Regarding the priesthood:
> I joined a few years before the split. In
> retrospect I can not recall that any of us were
> given a chance to hear the other side – the
> priests version. After having done a lot of
> reading and research from all kinds of sources I
> can not say that I am particularly fond of the
> Taiseki-ji school hence Nichiren Shoshu. I do
> however feel that Nichiren Shoshu had no other
> choice than to exclude SGI. It was a power
> struggle between two ageing men. Sad enough that
> their respective pack followed them blindly,
> Nichiren Shoshu was always clear, even in Todas
> days, who the 'boss' is . So if one chooses to
> join a certain Buddhist school one should be aware
> of its basic nature and 'rules'. Its almost
> inevitable that one might find certain aspects
> challenging but one would just try to go along
> with a compromise as long one can agree to the
> overall ideas. SGI and Mr. Ikeda however
> challenged the basic idea and concept behind
> Nichiren Shoshu, which as should be mentioned was
> constructed by Nichikan. It was Nichikan who
> cemented the position of the high priest.
> So in the end Nichiren Shoshu, even though I do
> not agree with them on a doctrinal level, had no
> other choice than to excommunicate SGI. SGI also
> was quite good in not telling people that they
> were still members of Nichiren Shoshu, as in the
> beginning it was just Mr. Ikeda, some high ranking
> leaders and the organisation that were excluded
> form Taiseki-ji. It wasn't until 1997 that all in
> SGI were banned form Nichiren Shoshu,
> Also it most be noted that I was shocked which
> foul methods and language SGI used against the
> temple members. A high leader here compared them
> to a cancer. Now to strip someone of what makes
> him human by comparing him to disease is
> distasteful and lacks the very basic Buddhist
> attitude.
> And now, when its clear that the two groups will
> never ever rejoin, now all of a sudden there are
> rumours in SGI that the Dai Gohonzon might be a
> fake. Surprise, surprise this has always been
> challenged by other Nichiren schools ever since
> Nichiren Shoshu claimed to posses such an object.
> If one would have said that a couple of years back
> (and so have I) one was shunned.
>
> One further piece of advice to SoniqueSc
> and GwT ... start reading on page one of
> this forum and you will become aware of the issues
> alerady having been raised.

See my post above, quote from Rothaus. I wanted to add to this, but it all went wrong! Basically, I want to add to what Rothaus has to say about SGI conveniently forgetting to tell us that we were not all excommunicated. My experience was of being asked to attend a meeting in my area (South West of England) and we were told that we had all been excommunicated. Not a surprise to me, I had been canvassed to sign a petition calling for High Priest Nikken's resignation. I refused to sign it - I may have been naïve but I thought the issues could still be resolved through dialogue (!) and this petition would force Nikken into a position of having no choice to excommunicate SGI. This meeting was I believe, very late 1990 or early 1991 - way before 1997 and Rothaus was also correct in saying that it was difficult to get the Priesthood side of the story. Also, we heard nothing from SGI other than the 'evil priesthood' for years. I think they only stopped banging on about it because they sensed our boredom and wanted to get the Mentor and Disciple with Pres. Ikeda out there instead. Why did I waste my time so long with them?

lostmyway

Hi, lostmyway! I started practicing in 1987, and got my Nikken gohonzon later that year - back then, if you didn't live in a city where there was a Nichiren Shoshu temple, you had to wait for the priests to schedule a visit to your outlying area, and they typically waited until a certain number of recipients were scheduled, to make the visit more cost-effective. So that August, I had my gojukai - it was a "historic" gojukai where a HUNDRED PEOPLE got their gohonzons!! But don't expect to see that commemorated anywhere - nothing is worthy of acknowledgment that a) didn't happen in Japan and b) didn't feature Ikeda at the center.

Back a few years ago, when this site (formerly "rickross.com") was purchased and undergoing the transition to culteducation.com, the boards went off-line and came back all jumbled up - it was a mess for several months. Everybody jumped ship; I and a couple others ran into each other over on reddit, where the SGI member-regulars there harassed and banned us, to the point that we felt we had no choice but to open up our own site: SGIWhistleblowers.com. Please come on over and play if you want - just type in "reddit sgiwhistleblowers" and your search engine should bring you right to us. We've got a lot of UK articles and some UK regulars, so it might be fun!

Hi, corboy - across the years! meh and I were just talking about you earlier today - we hope you are well! If you'd like to come visit where we hang out now, just put "reddit sgiwhistleblowers" into your search engine and it will bring you right to us.

Yo, glad you're well!

Am busy these days, but maybe will pop over.

Lots of fascinating discussions take place on reddit these days.

When I am curious about a particular news story and cannot find enough
citations for news coverage, I check and see if anyone is talking
about it on reddit.

Glad to hear from you! I'll be checking back here now that a few people have trickled back.

Thanks for that, StillTaitenAndProud. I will look at that website as well. I am still working my way through here, up to page 199 in my reading and some of it is just hilarious. I will post my experience of SGI in detail at some point.

I am in process of re-joining Nichiren Shoshu and feel really happy about it, but don't wish to elaborate any further at the moment. I think it is a great shame that the travesty of Buddhism SGI inflict on mrmbers causes them not only to ultimately reject SGI but also the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin. Only my view of course. It is also disturbing how SGI seem to have terrorised people. Maybe the americans have had a different experience. It was ridiculously easy for me to leave. I have lost every so called friend in SGI except for 2 people, who I am in touch with occasionally.

Keep well everybody.

Dear lostmyway:

Welcome both to CEI and to the new discussion of SGI on Reddit.

The SGI discussion on this message board is many years old.

This message board is searchable. For your searches to cover the entire
discussion select the "all dates" search option.

If you like a particular member's articles, you can click on the person's name, get their profile, then in the lower right corner of the profile window, you can
see "all posts" Select that and you get everything that person has written.

Finding a fellowship of people who have been in the same situation is
incredibly healing.

During the discussions of SGI on this message board, a very savvy person named
The Anticult posted some information.

It can be read here

[forum.culteducation.com]

Hey folks, here is an example of SGI recruitment.

I know it is SGI recruitment because I participate in CEI discussions like
this one.

If I had not been well informed about SGI, I might well have fallen for this
recruitment.

Here is how the person did it.

1) The SGI recruiter and I attended a 12 Step meeting together.

2) We talked afterwards and the person persuaded me to accept a lift home -
and was very persuasive.

3) The conversation began with the person saying how troubled they felt that
their own spirituality ran counter to the 12 Step norm, which is something
plenty of us are aware of --- but Corboy emphasis -- this should not
be clung to as a personal grievance or massaged as a divisive issue. Many, many 12 Step members identify as
secular humanists, even atheists.

Everyone has gripes and discontents with even families, work places or groups
that they love.

Trust bandits seek to disrupt your ongoing nurturing relationships by targeting and massaging these gripes and discontents.

4) After more of a chat, X revealed they benefitted from chanting, used it to work with internal energy. Had Corboy not been wary of this sort of thing, Corboy might have grown curious.

5) X said this was "A form of Mahayana Buddhism" and then watching me
intently, said what they chanted was Nam Yo Rhenge Kyo.

Ah, hah. Sokka Gakkai, I thought. Yucko. No wonder the person was so weirdly
intense and made it seem a big deal that 12 Step spirituality was different
from that persons spiritual practice.

People who enjoy their hobbies do not display this kind of intensity.

I got a sense that this person was clinging to the mood they get from SGI
and its practices.

Because this mood is fragile and high maintenance it
needs protection from skepticism, doubt and requires constant refuelling.

Will say that the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions **are** different from SGI.