I will leave you with this .. "I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Well I have to let the cat out of the bag. I am feeling guilty. I am not who I say I am (Blue Lady). I know a fellow SGI leader and we talk about what we see going wrong in SGI. If I could tell SGI how I really feel I would have not need to post here. Since she and I talk a lot about my issues I kind of mask who I was and used some of her background in order to post here on this forum. I could
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoterrmoderatorTo whom it may concern: There is no way for anyone to obtain and/or expose the identity of anyone using this message board. Always be careful not to disclose any identifying details about yourself through private messaging. Thanks I used to be Admin on another forum and I forget most people do not have back door access as I did. I had to check emails and IP addresses befor
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

THANKS.. The reason I am suspicous is that yesterday---- I was guestion by one Area Leader asking me how I was doing becuase one of the Zone leaders wanted to know how I was doing? this person has my phone number and could have called me directly. A red Flag went up. BUT WHAT GOT ME a few minuted later... ..I was leaving the center and a Vice General Director pulled me from a conversation
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

someone on here has got your IP addresses and are sharing them with the Leaders of SGI This is illegal to spy on someone.
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Once in a big meeting Mr. McCloskey said he hated Thich Nhat Hanh. Hated was a strong word for me. I am reading his book. Old Path White Clouds suggested to me by my once Senior Leader. He said he wished we had our own SGI scholars. I thought we ran them away. Maybe the truth from said scholars was to revealing. Imagine telling members that some of the Gosho’s were not in Nichiren Holography. The
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteRothaus@ blue lady @ tsukimoto Deep down the emphazis given on eductaion is a farce in SGI. As I said some in SGI even fear education and looking beyond one's own tea cup. Yet again reminds me of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. SGI-guys out there just reading the messages in here I truly feel sorry for you. SGI really is pathetic. I feel sorry for those members who are not AWOK
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Did you ever get the sense that you never measure up? For lack of a better word with the Super –fabulous- excellent- Member. Sounds like a super hero. Able to leap tall obstacles in a single bound and rescue poor unfortunate beings from their sufferings Anyway this Super –fabulous- excellent- Member . The one who defines his/her guest as “My shakubuku”. It’s to let the rest of us who do not
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotetsukimotoAnd to some leaders, the fact that you read at all is a problem. One of my friends was telling our leader that she got up a little earlier in the morning to read, and that she was reading a great book on Arabic culture. The leader scolded my friend, saying, "You should be using that time to do more daimoku!" My friend already did a lot of daimoku, and she argued &qu
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

From: Wake up to you Life by Ken McLeod – This was suggested to me by a member who used to be what you would call a Senior Leader. Do you need a teacher? Page 11 The teacher’s motivation is on e of the essential conditions for a productive relationship. Why is this person teaching – for profit, power, status, recognition , or gratification of personal needs, from an obligation to a teacher
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotequiet one@tsukimoto How true. We were told that we didn't need to read the Lotus Sutra because it was really too difficult to understand, and besides we just needed to chant. SGI says that "faith, practice, and study" are the essentials of practice, but they don't want the members to really study. Just read President Ikeda or SGI's interpretation of everythin
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteDavidMWow, from everything in this 180+ page thread that is actually the most cultish behaviour I've seen. Sitting in a room together calling anyone and everyone, hoping they will come and join. I can't believe SGI has sunk to such depths to hide a nationwide membership drive, aimed squarely at 'the youth', which SGI has been losing rapidly and absolutely needs to survi
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Perhaps at the outset said organization needs to make promises which it cannot possibly deliver. As more layers in my thinking are dissolved, I see more of what in me was attracted to what the organization presented. It took two to perform this dance, even if I was the one wearing Sunday whites like a bride! If anyone else has crazy stories about what you did, especially in your early days of pra
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quoting Tsukimoto " In short, the message is that there is no excuse for not giving your all to SGI -- both your money and time. Give more than you think you can, and it will all be returned to you tenfold or a hundredfold. HERE IS ONE WAY YOU CAN DO IT. This is actual the sequel to something that took place last week in my AREA. . I recieved an email like this last week. at the last m
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

What I wrote came out of Living Buddhism. It was 2 paragraphs long.. so that is how the lectures go. It starts off saying one thing and then moves into something else. Go figure. QuoteRothaus@ Blue Lady Grin :-) have you noticed one thing in your message? You started of giving a gosho quote and ended up citing an Ikeda/Toda incident. Maybe it happend without noticing it, at any rate it s
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

There are many things that SGI is duplicitous about .W hen you tote out a picture of the High Priest drinking and having fun as all high priest should --with Geisha gals - send him to Seattle to hang out with prostitutes. How is that in any way different from Mr. Williams and National YWD chief Ms Inowashi having sex in a Chicago hotel? My mother use to comment on that very fact that why did th
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Its seems Presdent Ikeda is just a Buddhist author , not a disciple of Nichiren nor a mentor to millions but just an author. Well the cat is out of the bag. Ya’ll
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Like I told you I am a WD chapter leader and we do the Gosho Study each month. Which at best is becoming more and more problematic it doing it with a straight face? So this month Gosho has some passages that we must discuss and convey to the membership. …… Here is one So on page 65 of Living Buddhism it says. One day, as I waged this solitary struggle, Mr. Today said to me with a bright glin
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

this is the what I rec'd in my email yesterday. The big kahuna is visiting to beat us over our heads The benefit that accrues from making contributions is clearly spelled out in the Gosho. If we were to contribute to kosen-rufu just as the Gosho teaches and then failed to receive actual proof, then Buddhism would be false. The Gohonzon has tremendous power. I'm sure you are all well
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Per this article SGI japan was pulling in 40 million in 1966 just from pubs? Imagine what now. However my Chapter has dropped in pubs. Most members dont read them until District Meetings are not at all
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

ANYBODY READ THIS http://books.google.com/books?id=hklCIp7auUsC&lpg=PA172&dq=NICHIREN%20DAISHONIN%20GOSHO&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=NICHIREN%20DAISHONIN%20GOSHO&f=false <iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border:0px" src="; width=500 height=500></iframe>
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

"try to live your life in a moral way." YOU are so right we dont bother with that its all about the M&D QuotetsukimotoBlue Lady, I felt the same way. It finally hit me a few years in: No matter how much I did for SGI, it would never be enough. Leaders would always expect more. "Good" members went to lots of activities and meetings, called and home-visited peo
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

I shared this with a fellow SGI members. AS she said J. Toda said this is a Business. Only guestion why is Linda seen as a liablity QuoteNichijewHey David... Minutes of the SGI Top Salaried Senior Leader New Year's Board Meeting Board Members, sitting around a large brass table with marble legs: Present: Daisaku Ikeda, Hiromasa Ikeda, Minoru Hirada, Itchy Wada, Nobutaka K
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

One question I keep asking myself is this” If I were a Baptist or Catholic would I feel so bad about my faith?” I would go to church like a good little parishioner. I would give money to the collection box and go home after Sunday services. End of it – no phone calls from the Priest or layity. If I were a Baptist I might get involve in cleaning the church or some other fund raiser. However,
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

TO GWT I would like to respond to the man who posted the long history lesson on the mentor disciple relationship and then chewed us all out. I am not out to destroy SGI neither I am winning about my problems. I prefer to stay in SGI because I want to make a change that it sorely needed. I do it not by confrontation-- or as some of my co-leaders like to do it –when Linda J comes to town. I lea
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

quote: 1) a few posts back I saw something about homosexual members being treated unfairly and even shunned. I haven't seen this where I practice (I have become very close with two leaders who are gay). Has this occurred in many places? Where I am from in the early 70's and late 80's you could not get appointed a District Leader or anything above unless you were not Gay. I
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QUOTE":Please stop saying "master and disciple". That is incorrect. Ikeda is not our "master", he is one of 3 MENTORS. Jebus, get it right people! I do not know when you joined but if you talk to anyone who practice in the last 60's and early 70's President Ikeda was always refer to as Master. Mentor is a realative new term. So I think you need to understand t
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

You know now that you mention it I have been looking for Nichiren gosho not published by SGI but another sect to compare. It is hard to find. QuoteNichijewdear doubtful: Actually, not my last dime. I live in a run down trailer park and subsist on spaghetti and butter and green peas and ketchup with jelly on white for dessert. Botsu for leaving the Gakkai, I guess. For several years,
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

One person in my chapter just put his Gohonzon in a grocery bag and hung it on a door knob of a member who lives in his buidling. Leave at the Center. It is better just to give it back then let anything happen to it. QuoteFindingmywaytodayThe more I read all of your stories, the more I feel I became brainwashed in my four years of SGI. I also feel the harder it will be to pull away fr
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

I was STUNNED when everyone who spoke said that Ikeda is greater than the other two men.------ What I find interesting is that not to many outside of the SGI would even recognize his name. Everyone know Kind and Ghandi. You are right he has done nothing for civil rights, violence, poverty but lets get the whole world to chant. I wonder what would happen the SGI had at least 100 million household
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families