Quotequiet one 15) Been nicer to people I meet without always thinking about shakabuku or whether or not they might like to chant. Being a member of SGI affects all your relationships with people you see everyday, both members and non-members, as well as with strangers that you meet. That's a very good point. I knew a lady who had taken classes at a local college solely for the purpo
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Quotetsukimoto What I object to is how SGI is constantly glorifying this workaholic, go-go-go overscheduled lifestyle. I would like to have a personal life, time for hobbies and friends, time to stop and smell the roses! When I tried to explain this to my leaders, their attitude was that I was being selfish and lazy, content with a narrow little life. Quote I feel the same way. My former
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Quotedragon14 Are they still bragging about Tina Turner and Patrick Duffy? And maybe John Astin? They wouldn't shut up about them back in the 80's! I know that Patrick Duffy still does a bunch of stuff for the SGI, as does Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. 80's musician Howard Jones also. I think Tina Turner mixes some other things in with her Buddhist practice so I'm
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Ithomas, most people don't know about the Orlando Bloom meeting I attended because it was never reported about in the World Tribune. Actually, the general meeting was reported about, but there was no mention that Bloom was there. I was really surprised by that, knowing how the SGI loves to brag about their celebrity members. My guess is that they were probably parading Bloom around to oth
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Ithomas & evergreen, my memory isn't so hot, but I could've sworn that Orlando Bloom meeting happened just last year, in 2009. In fact, I'm almost positive of it. And, no, it wasn't in NYC. This was one of those "General Meetings" that the SGI loves to have where regular members could all attend. Ithomas, your experience also sounds very familiar to me. I
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One of more interesting experiences I had in the SGI towards the end was attending the "Orlando Bloom Meeting." A big meeting was held at a local convention center with Danny Nagashima, with performances, etc. At the end, Orlando Bloom came out onstage to everyone's surprise (including the behind-the-scenes people). Well, the whole room freaked out, and a swarm of young ladies r
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In the area where I used to practice, they would have the Ikeda video meetings twice a month at the kaikan. When the attendance level at both meetings started running low, they began showing the videos at kofu gongyo. I hated that because I would avoid the Ikeda videos on purpose, and it felt like they were luring us into kofu gongyo only to turn around and shove the Ikeda videos right down you
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QuoteevergreenJust got a "hitory with our mentor" pamphlet fro 2010. It got mailed out to anyone who has gotten SGI USA publications for the last year. I ended my publications this summer but the SGI still hasn't let up. The pamphlet's almost pocket sized. It folds out to four parts. It has Ikeda's "27 visits to America" on it. I looked for it online so t
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QuoteDavidM I had a very cathartic experience last night of going through the piles of SGI magazines and 'study' materials I've accumulated over the years. The person I had been trying to shakabuku was with me too. We wound up on the floor laughing at how often the phrase 'Oneness of mentor and disciple' comes up. If you want to have a few more laughs, try counting
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To add to my post above, let me just say that there are, of course, many differences between Chinmoy's and Ikeda's cults. While Chinmoy restricted his disciples from marrying, watching TV, dancing, etc., Ikeda has never done such things. Also, the SGI is much more organized. SGI meetings are usually restricted to last no more than 90 minutes, while Chinmoy's meditation meetings
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I just finished reading "Cartwheels in a Sari" by Jayanti Tamm that evergreen mentioned in an earlier post. Being a "fortune baby" of SGI, I found it to be a fascinating read. I had been completely ignorant of Sri Chinmoy until now, but there was a lot about his cult that sounded awfully familiar. So much so that I wrote down all the similarites his cult has to the SGI. Th
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If you plan to give your Gohonzon back to the SGI, you can plan on your leaders staging an SGI "intervention." I've seen it numerous times. wayfarerfree is correct: SGI-ers do value the Gohonzon more than the member. They absolutely go into panic mode when someone says they want to give their Gohonzon back. It isn't good for their precious, precious numbers. By the way
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Here's an excerpt from Ikeda's New Year's Message in the 1/1/10 issue of the World Tribune. It may be one of his kookiest quotes yet regarding the mentor-disciple relationship: "The Brazilian astronomer Dr. Ronaldo Mourao, with whom I have published a dialogue, remarked that an individual's innate potential can blossom in a much more vigorous form through the mento
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See if you can spot the common denominator from a few sentences I've extracted from the latest World Tribune (1/1/10). And keep in mind that this is all from one single issue that's only 12 pages long (actually, only 10 because the front and back pages have no articles)! "With the same heart as our mentor, let's unite with our youth..." "Together with our men
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wayfarerfree, Unfortunately, your situation is very common in the SGI world. I have a friend who's also being harrassed ever since she stopped going to meetings. As unappealing as it sounds, you may have to contact some upper SGI leader in your area to get it to stop. Not all SGI people are kooks - find someone who thinks rationally. But if they come on to your property uninvited and
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No matter how corny and silly the lyrics to "Have a Gohonzon" are, the underlying message is very clear: the Gohonzon is something that will make "your benefits grow in a pile," and doing shakabuku will erase your karma and you'll live happily ever after.
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Tsukimoto, thanks for that link to the Gakkai songs. They bring back a lot of memories (not great ones, though). A song that's particularly ridiculous, yet amusing, is "Have a Gohonzon," which is sung to the tune of "Hava Nagila." I have to admit to being somewhat uneducated to the Jewish religion, but I remember thinking back then, "Isn't this a little offen
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Just another piece to add to the mentor & disciple propaganda: The 11/27/09 issue of the World Tribune has an experience by a member in California entitled "Always a Victor" where she reminisces about a series of meetings Ikeda held during a 1981 U.S. visit. It reads: "When SGI President Ikeda came to Malibu, Calif., in February 1981, I was working behind the scenes as a
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

Even if this stuff is beaten into your head from childhood, there's still hope of getting away relatively unscathed. I officially joined the SGI around 6 months old, learned gongyo (prayers) at 7, and can remember having a photo of Ikeda in my room around that same age. In fact, my first name was actually given to me by Ikeda. I believe it's a fairly common thing in Japan to request
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These experiences that I'm quoting are from actual SGI members. I know they aren't made up because I have known many people whose experiences have appeared in the pages of the World Tribune. The experiences are almost always printed with the member's photo as well. However, the latest experiences that I have seen just go over the top with the Ikeda worship. The common pattern u
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I just came across an experience in the 10/23/09 issue of the World Tribune that is so ridiculous that I have to post about it. It's by a woman in California talking about how she and her daughter, named Destiny, overcame their problems through chanting and reading Ikeda's guidance. Towards the end of the article it reads: "I wish that I could hug President Ikeda and thank
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The issue of getting "Sensei" to come back to visit America is brought up every single year at SGI meetings. It truly is like a carrot that they dangle in front of the members. Around November or December you always hear "Let's welcome Sensei back to America in (insert year here)!" And it never happens. In a World Tribune (11/6/09) article entitled "2010: The Yea
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I've always wanted to be a fly on the wall when Danny Nagashima has to call Ikeda with less-than-stellar numbers. I'm sure Ikeda's true Buddha nature is revealed during those conversations! Did any of you ever attend those monthly Ikeda video meetings that started a few years ago? The way Danny Nagashima and that vice president guy (Wada?) would kow-tow in Ikeda's presenc
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Interesting views on the membership situation. I just simply don't like being one of the numbers that they trumpet on their website, in their pamphlets, or boast about at their meetings. The SGI is pretty obsessed with taking tabs on how many people attend each meeting. Whenever there's a big meeting there's always a sign-up sheet where you have to put down your name, the spe
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Does anyone know if you are able to officially disjoin the SGI? Anyone successful in doing that? I know that you can return your gohonzon (if you can ward off all the members that will talk you out of it), but what about just your actual membership? Although I'm not being counted anymore in the SGI's meticulous meeting attendance reports, it still bothers me that I'm counted as
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Hello evergreen, your situation is almost an exact carbon copy of mine. Since I'm a fortune baby (are we called that because we'll bring great monetary fortune to Ikeda?), my family is also heavily into the SGI. I, too, have not told them that I have left the organization yet. It's guaranteed that they will try to talk me out of it, but knowing what I know now, I could never eve
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tsukimoto, in the credits for The World Tribune no one is listed as an editor. The first name on the list is General Director Danny Nagashima so maybe it's him. There is a Managing Editor (Monica Soto Ouchi) and Editorial Advisor (Jeff Kriger). Guy McCloskey is still the current publisher. Others listed are Senior Advisor Fred M. Zaitsu and Assistant Publisher Margie Hall. On the i
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Quote] But who's name is listed in the article as writing that text below about oneness? Its time to get the name of the SGI-USA expert in group persuasion. It could just be one person. Anticult, I took that quote directly from a front page article of The World Tribune (11/6/09 issue) entitled "Message - America: Let's Win Together!," and it is only credited to Ikeda (of
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One thing (out of many) that drove me crazy about the SGI was the "SGI-speak" that all the members do. For anyone who's been in the SGI for any length of time will recognize what I mean. Variations of the word "victory" is used rampantly: "The year of victory!," "We must be victorious!," "Let's be victors!." And there's an obses
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Rothaus, one of the more significant changes I noticed recently is that in the past SGI members would have monthly study meetings based on a certain Gosho (Nichiren Daishonin's teachings) or Gosho passage. There are still monthly study meetings, but now members study lectures on the Gosho given by Ikeda. If I recall correctly, I think they refer to it as something like "President Iked
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