We had a daimoku toso at my house last night. A Daimoku toso is a meeting where you chant Daimoku (Nam Myoho Renge Kyo), usually for an hour or more. They're cool.
We used to have these regularly but no one was showing up.
Back in the 80's of course these were standard practice for every campaign. Once a year, sometimes more, Men's Division would do an all-nighter. There were stories of guys chanting into the wee hours and actually hallucinating.
Gee whiz, isn't that fun...
None the less tozos are great. They remind me of the simple value of being an SGI member - meetings.
Those of us Gakkai members and ex-Gakkai members live and practice in a time where being a Nichiren Buddhist is fraught with peril. There is much controversy, and SGI is clearly losing its place "under the radar".
Nonetheless the SGI has a frame-work that makes it easy to hold and attend meetings where you can chant with other Nichiren Buddhists, and that is a wonderful thing. Other Independent Nichiren groups, break-aways and sanghas which have a presence on the World Wide Web have had difficulty through the last decade trying to recreate this.
Nichiren Shu doesn't really emphasize meetings at member’s homes, which is neither here nor there in my opinion. Of course Nichiren Shu has wicked-cool temples which pretty much makes up for the lack of home meetings. Other Nichiren groups I have read about have attempted in various forms to have meetings or conventions, the success of which I am not aware. I know that it must be hard to coordinate, organize and advertise something which SGI does on a normal regular basis.
The conflict is - I feel - that most of us started practicing this Buddhism in SGI so when we leave we hunger for the aspects of the Gakkai that were really satisfying and helped us all practice this wonderful Buddhism.
I appreciate that I am still able to practice in SGI. I feel bad for those who are not and maybe don’t realize that you don’t have to agree with everything SGI does, say or believes in order to go to a meeting.
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
http://uk.download.yahoo.com/ne/fu/attachments/newsreportfromiraq.wmv
Recently it has been suggested that I do not know anything about cults. There are books out about cults, such as Bounded Choice;
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/8605-.html
I haven’t read them however. My reading list is long and I’m behind.
I know something about one cult however. In the mid-90’s I spent time writing to and reading the usenet group alt.religion.scientology. There I met and exchanged e-mails with the Rev. Dennis Erlich for some time. We talked about cults, his experience in the Church of Scientology (CoS), his broken family and the abuse of his children in the org. It was not pretty. He asked many questions about SGI. I shared my perceptions as clearly and honestly as I was able. He gave me warnings about cultism back then and taught me a lot about what it was to be a cultie. My view on culties and ex-culties largely came from these dialogs with the Rev. Erlich.
I have attempted to reconnect with Dennis but alas, he is gone, completely underground as far as I can tell. Following a settlement with CoS, his family in shambles, and living in fear from further retaliation from the Scienos, Dennis is unlikely to resurface on any public forum.
My friendship with Rev. Erlich, and my education on what a dangerous cult really is, is why I reject my critic’s accusations of my own cultism, and of SGI “being a cult”. Recall that I readily admit that I believe there is a cult in SGI, I simply don’t believe SGI is a cult. Only the future will tell where on that road we all end up.
So Lisa, not to diminish the hurt caused you by SGI, but I suggest you read about what a truly dangerous cult is like, and how a real cultie can be hurt by their cult. These are two of my favorite pages pertaining to Dennis Erlich. However typing in “Dennis Erlich scientology” in google will bring up many pages, all good, and all terribly frightening.
http://www.lisamcpherson.org/basement.htm
http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/cos-conf.htm
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
I read with great interest Charles Atkin's latest blog regarding the Forbes article on the Soka Gakkai. If you haven’t read this yet, please do before continuing on.
I’ll wait….. (hurry though, ok?)
I never know what to make of Charles. I keep a strict policy of never trusting culties, and especially not EX-culties. Lisa Jone's latest incarnation of Buddhajones is ugly in my opinion; the classic work of a true cultie who feels betrayed by her cult. Decades ago many thought there was a conspiracy by the government to hire known psychopaths as black ops assassins. This theory fit the appetite of would-be conspiracy theorists. The reality is that the “powers that be” would never have contact with anyone suspected of being a psychopath for the simple reason that the mentally deranged, while willing to kill, are completely unreliable and unpredictable. There are many honest-to-God patriots that will do that same job just as well.
This analogy fits how I feel about culties. Like drug addicts they can and will turn on you on a moment’s notice. Lisa Jones, from her latest work, seems now – to me – to be one of those kinds of culties. But I digress…
Charles latest work hits right to the core of the future that lies ahead of the SGI. You can only spin so far before you spin out of control. While Charles, in my opinion, will always be considered an “ex-cultie in recovery” he hit the nail on the head with this latest writing.
Two paragraphs leave me very curious however;
“I doubt that there will be wide spread panic in the ranks of the SGI over more bad press. How many SGI-USA members are actually reading Forbes.com? Don’t they have a backlog of several thousand PI speeches to catch up on? SGI members have always been conditioned to regard any criticism of their leader or the organization as an assault of tenji-ma, the most powerful sansho-shima in Buddhism. All negative accusations are regarded as slander, falsehoods, and inevitable persecution from spreading the correct Law. To weather such assaults is considered the mark of a wise person with strong and correct faith. After all, didn’t Nichiren endure and overcome countless persecutions in the name of the Lotus Sutra?”
“’This obstruction (tenji-ma) is usually said to take the form of oppression by men of power.’ (A Dictionary of Buddhist Terms and Concepts, pg. 461-462, NSIC, 1983). SGI logic is to take the position that because president Ikeda is the master, his actions and direction are at one with the will of Nichiren and the earliest realization of kosen-rufu. Questioning the motives, core doctrines, or finances of the SGI is viewed as breaking the harmonious unity of the believers according to SGI interpretation of Nichiren Buddhism. Persist in your query and you will be isolated from the group. “
I must admit that I have never heard this level of cult-speak in all my years of NSA/SGI. I think this is perhaps due to the fact that Charles practiced long before I did, and also reached a level in upper leadership I have never been privy to. It scares me frankly because it sounds so much like Scientology, which is a well-known dangerous cult. Reading Charles will always leave me wondering what function it is inside human life that leads people to become culties, and turn organizations into cults. No one in my SGI world would dare talk cult to me, at least not to date.
As far as the Forbes article goes, I agree it’s a terrible work of tabloid journalism. I also believe that hard-core Gakkai culties better start revving up their spin engines or at least start growing accustom to being criticized and questioned. Our leader is a very very rich man and as I’ve said before, RICH doesn’t make for a respectable religious leader, prophet or even a good Bodhisattva. Not that rich anyway.
Truth be told, I don’t know who Daisaku Ikeda is. Many of my members in Salinas have met him in person – long ago – but I have not. I am fortunate however. I have met Masaaki Hatsumi, the last true Ninja on Earth. I get to train with him every year in Japan. No bodyguards, no entourage of suited leaders, no large auditoriums, just him and several hundred other Ninjas-in-training. I have exchanged breif greetings with him and observed him closely.
One way to keep from becoming a cultie is to know what you know, and be honest about what you don’t know, honest at least with yourself. Once you’ve done this you can travel down the road to becoming spiritually bullet-proof.
Thanks Charles, good work.
Rev. Greg, Shidoshi
Well, if you haven’t heard, SGI is embarking upon a new statistics campaign. I attended the very first meeting in our area a couple of months ago with Richard Yoshimachi. They asked for volunteers to enter the attendance numbers onto a webpage.
I remember back in the early 90’s when leaders were saying that e-mail was a bad thing; that too many members would get left out. I could never figure out why SGI members were so slow to get technology.
Anyway, I didn’t volunteer because I knew I’d be asked. I know that’s obnoxious, but I’m a ninja and I enjoy my reality. Know what I mean? So I waited. My vice area-chief called me to ask me to work on filling out the new member cards and to tell me the name of the woman’s division member who was in charge of entering attendance on the new website. A couple of days later he called back to tell me that there had been a mistake – I was listed as the contact for the website work.
Imagine
I have begun to work on the cards. I completed the cards for my family, and then worked on the cards for the family of the chapter chief. I called and spoke with his wife who – it turns out – was in charge of statistics way back when.
She had stacks of cards from our NSA days lovingly stored and cared for, and she handed them all over to me. One large stack of cards for inactive members (read – members long since forgotten) and another for active members, active – well – 10 years ago. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but with a solid sense of purpose with which to do it.
Well it seems NO ONE gets left behind in Salinas.
Soka Gakkai International is for real – in Salinas.
Rev. Greg, Gakkai Ninja