Quotewakatta As long as I'm on a rant, I do have a lot of problems with the encouragement they gave to people to go on tozan or to financially get involved in supporting the organzation. I suppose the belief is that if they "gave until it hurt" they would get benefit from it however many families were in serious financial straits because of the many "money oriented activities
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotegingermarie My husband is a district leader. He is not your "normal" leader. He doesn't buy in to Sensei, doesn't read the publications, rarely does gongyo. Yet, he enjoyes his activities. He asked me if I could "fake it" I don't know what else to tell him. Faking it goes against my grain, however, I do know the whispering, and questioning that will oc
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Wakatta and Dragon, you guys are taking me down Memory Lane. Dragon, were you at that big convention near Boston in the summer of 1988? We were staying in a college dormitory, some college outside of Boston. (Worcester?) I was there. Running around in the heat in white shirt and pants, and wearing white shorts with red and blue sequins when I marched with the YWD marching band. And t
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QuotewakattaTsuki-moto san: I think SGI/NSA prefers things to just be quiet. Do any web search on the gakkai and essentially all there is out there are the official mouthpieces of the organization talking about how wonderful their impending Kosen Rufu will be. Wakatta, I'm sure you've heard the Japanese proverb: "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." I am
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuotebeststarsignHi I am a SGI member Practising In India for the last 10 years. Its strange that some of you who claim to be such great students of buddhism understand so little of it.And then there are others who are ready to believe anything negative that is written about SGI.Our experience in India is totally at variance with what many of you are claiming and when we have similar Experienc
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotedragon14 So many times, Josei Toda was quoted as saying "the Soka Gakkai is more important than my life". And so many people misinterpreted it to mean that they should be doing Gakkai activities six days a week, and telling eveyone they saw about chanting, otherwise they weren't worthy of being Buddhists. I'm reminded of when my women's study group was reading &quo
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QuoteKittyLuvAs far as the Nikken sect goes, it's alive and well on the enemies list. Here's something from a flyer I got at the Queens center last year. This was set for May 18th, 2008 and it's titled: "Declaration: Let's Prove the Justice of the SGI on May 18th On May 18th, the Nikken sect (Nichiren Shoshu Temple) is planning to hold a large gathering of tem
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Quotejojaroyd For those who weren't SGI members or don't know, FNCC is Florida Nature and Culture Center, a place SGI members go for four-day-long meetings. The Student Division is college-aged members. Anyway, we had a HUGE session on Soka Spirit. They played a video from the protest outside the Columbia building that Nichiren Shu was having their meeting at. It was pretty weird. Th
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This bit about the hate-chant principal interested me, so I have been looking up things about the SGI and education on the web. SGI has had the "Soka Schools" in Japan for many years -- and is eager to expand the franchise to the United States. Rick Ross's reference section has an article about the Soka Gakkai's university, Soka University of America, in Alisa Viejo, Cal
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

I remember the "Nikken Out!" days...the irony being that Nikken WAS already out, no thanks to all those daimoku tosos (chanting sessions.) He retired on December 15, 2005, at the age of 83. From the way the Soka Gakkai felt about Nikken, you'd think his retirement would be declared an international holiday or something, but no, not a word! Certainly the senior leadership k
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteThe Anticultalso, if you think about it, its really terrible that SGI is so antagonistic to families. A family member should be able to make up their own mind, and do what they think is right, and not have to worry about losing their family, just by rejecting the SGI process. Why did Ikeda do this? He designed it, as he knows that social family pressure will keep more people in the tribe
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Quoteevergreen I have felt like I was living a lie for many years. Sometimes I would listen to other members complain about the way President Ikeda is the be all and end all. I would stay silent because I didn't want to be responsible for anyone stopping their practice. I don't think I am ready to recruit others to stop - I'm not sure if that is what I really want to do. I DO
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Suenam, in the thread on Ole Nyedahl and Diamond Way Buddhism, wrote something that applies to SGI and President Ikeda too. ..."There is a degree of fanaticism which suggests that Diamond Way members are devotees of Ole Nyedahl rather than practitioners of Buddhism, and this shows in their behavior. It's not so much that there is systemic indoctrination and abuse; however, the resu
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteThe Anticult QUOTE: "The Soka-gakkai follows an intensive policy of conversion (shakubuku; literally, “break and subdue”), which increased its membership within a seven-year period (1951–57) from 3,000 to 765,000 families." Yes, this was under the second Soka Gakkai president, Josei Toda. Toda vowed that he and his followers would convert enough people so that over 750,
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For study, I've got four paperbacks that I keep going back to: 1. Lectures on the Sutra: The Hoben and Juryo Chapters, 1984. This translates the Hoben and Juryo Chapters of the Lotus Sutra into English (Members chant these when they do morning and evening gongyo)-- and gives a little explanation of the passage. 2. The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, by the Gosho Translation Co
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QuoteThe Anticult But just using one's own common sense, it is accurate to say that suffering is created by desire. That makes sense. You want X, you don't have it, you feel bad. You can't feel bad about not having something you don't want or need! As a matter of fact, SGI doing the opposite, and promoting desire as a virtue, is proven to make people more unhappy!! There
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QuoteHravenkel Not long after (a month or so), I began to notice that the members in my district knew absolutely NOTHING about the actual Buddha or core Buddhists teachings. I can recall one incident when our group was discussing a conversation that a member had recently had with one of his co-workers in which the co-worker mentioned his familiarity with one of the Buddha’s teachings called the
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Quotejojaroyd Otherwise, I was wondering how other members actually went about "quitting"? I guess some people probably just stopped showing up or answering phone calls. Did others actually tell other members or leaders? I feel like I am obligated to inform someone I want to leave because I'm in a leadership position, just so they don't think I disappeared or something and kee
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteKittyLuvYou're right, chanting is not the problem, and chanting with friends sounds wonderful, if you could find true friends in SGI. The members I met at these meetings seemed very fanatical. I didn't feel safe or comfortable and the thought of having any of them coming into my home and chanting with me was downright creepy. They were very false people. I couldn't ima
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QuoteKittyLuv" Toda and Makigushi suffered for what they believed in a terrible time for many. What do think their opinion would be of this organization today? I could be wrong, but it doesn't sound like wealth and power were their ultimate goals. Good question, and I can only guess at the answer. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, the founder of SGI and its first president, seems to h
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QuoteThe AnticultI hope you find this as amusing as I do. Years ago, I too was into "Buddhism" in the sense of chanting, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and the whole nine yards. I don't recall exactly how I was approached, but I do recall her saying that Nichiren Daishonin was the only form of Buddhism not involved in wars, or something like that. So anyway, I tried it for a while, but fr
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QuoteSparky SGI is a "militaristic" org. They DO want to take over power in Japan and Americans are rich useful idiots (like american socialists are to militaristic communism). I have seen first-hand how SGI-USA has tried to "calm down" their crazy devotees. Many people (occidentals) would bow and shout "HAI!" (Nipponese for "YES!") in response to the s
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QuoteKittyLuv In reading your post about SGI having it's good points, tsukimoto, especially if they would drop the Ikeda worship. I don't think that's going to happen. Every meeting I went to Ikeda was center stage. Yes, I thought that the Ikeda worship was a bit much when I joined in the eighties -- but it got much, much worse in the nineties. The SGI members are obs
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Kittyluv,, I have seen Lisa Jones's earlier websites, Sokacult.com and Buddhajones.com. They've been archived or taken off the web. There is a Buddhajones.com that is online now -- that's a different site. If my memory is correct, the SGI sued Jones and forced her to take her sites down. She was a former SGI employee, and apparently, SGI put that in her contract, that she
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteKittyLuv I talked to a lot of people suffering from anxiety in the course of my healing, I noticed that isolation was a common theme, and I was no stranger to that. I can see why chanting would feed into this. I'm very grateful that I had people that were pushing me to get back out into life. There seemed to be a lot of anxious people in SGI and my SGI "mentor" would te
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteThe Anticult But I think people would be shocked to find out how many of those SGI people are telling fibs and lies. They may tell the fib to please their SGI mentor, they may even delude themselves. The problem with the obsessive SGI chanting, is that if a person has a bit of OCD, or an anxiety disorder of some sort, they can get into very very serious trouble. I knew one SGI girl who w
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QuoteKittyLuv Anyway, in the beginning it was benign, no pressure and I felt, wow, I'm among really caring people. It was a film featuring Ikeda that got to me. It seemed incredibly over the top by any standard. -- people getting up on the stage and talking about good fortunes that happened to them as a result of donations to SGI. I still went to homes and chanted, but
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Sparky's slow-gongyo-on-the-mountaintop cabdriver sounded interesting, so I googled "slow gongyo" and "Reverend Kando Tono." Turns out that this Nichiren Shoshu priest, the Reverend Tono, DID have issues with how fast the American Soka Gakkai members did gongyo. He did try to get the New York City members to do slower gongyo. (The twice-daily chanting that many Ni
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteThe Anticultyes, that is just coming from the personal experience of knowing quite a number of SGI people. They weren't bad people, just self-centered people, who seemed to try to cover up their self-centeredness by saying they were Buddhist! Also, those are the folks making the most noise, trying to recruit you, etc. They were doing what they were conditioned to do by the SGI machin
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

QuoteThe Anticult The people I know in SGI are generally totally wrapped up in their own personal practice, feelings and issues, and are not critical thinkers or researchers. So they don't go online and read about the problems in SGI. Basically every person I have ever seen who does SGI, does it in a very self-centered and narcisstic way. To them, its all about me me me, my career, my inc
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families