Debating a top SGI senior leader

I will deconstruct Soka Spirit's arguments. Is Soka Spirit a top salaried senior leader or, as he portrays himself, a bodhisattva neophyte? My experience with SGI top senior leaders on the internet is that they enjoy their anonymity while spinning and running interference for the cult. They will say anything to turn attention away from criticism leveled at their cult and guru mentor, hoping that the reader will forget the point of the argument. Also, as is well known, it is their usual practice to turn the criticisms leveled at them back at the accuser and to utilize the cult attack technique known as bull baiting [a form of Ad Hominim].

Part 1 Reply to SS

SS: Mark Rogow and the others. Its a situation wherein one can tell you – hey this is strawberry ice cream and this is how it tastes, but unless you do not taste it, you would never know how it tastes.

MR: The delicious taste of SGI is more along the lines of cheap chinese food laden with MSG, tasty but toxic. We have all tasted, enjoyed it, and gotten sick. Nichiren Daishonin and the Nirvana Sutra teach that within the beautiful flowerbed lives the most venomous snakes.

SS: Similarly, without ever chanting nam myoho renge kyo and seeing the true benefits of nichiren buddhism practiced by the SGI you would never know what the power of this prayer is.

MR: First and foremost, what SGI practices is not Nichiren’s Buddhism. You steal the Daishonin’s Daimoku and practice Ikedaism with a little Shingon [Guru Yoga] sprinkled with Zen [Japanese Bushido].

You are either being naive and presumptuous or disingenuous. Some of us have chanted tens of millions of Daimoku within the SGI, toso after toso, and converted hundreds of shakubuku among us. One of my shakubuku is on the SGI Board of Directors, far more powerful and influential than every top senior leader save perhaps, Danny Nagashima. SGI member’s prayers are weak and ineffectual compared to the prayers of the True Votaries of the Lotus Sutra.

SS: The most massive difference that you can figure out for yourself here guys is that none of the SGI members have spoken ill of any of you but rather tried to reason out with you and dialogued healthy. In contrast you have all abused/spoken ill off/ said all things you wanted to disrespect the organisation and members who believe in various things associated with it. This is what the SGI members have learnt to respect the dignity and sanctity of life – each individual is respect worthy. A sincere request to you all, if you do disagree – it’s alrite, but do not disrespect – that is incorrect.

MR: You mean like my former friend, Frank Migliozzi: “Mark you really suck you ungratefull pig.” I have recorded dozens more such tirades. Here you are just lying and projecting.

    
As far as respecting the dignity of human life, SGI partners with and invests in Mitsubitshi, one of the largest defense contractors in the world which makes land mines and weapons of mass destruction. The top SGI women’s senior leader is a death penalty prosecutor for the state of California. I think you know that. Once again you are either lying or ignorant of the matter.

Part 2 Reply to SS

SS: If you wish to truly know what the organisation does and what Mr. Ikeda and his life has been all about read more about them from correct sources with a very open mind to try and understand. Also Mr. Ikeda is no crook as you describe him, but someone who dedicated his life to the happiness of people across the world. So many people across the world taking him to be a mentor is no co-incidence – for a man who knows no other language than Japanese.

MR: “From correct sources.” LOL. Which sources might that be? Dobbelaere? Bill Aiken? Soka Gakkai International? The Daisaku Ikeda website? You must think we are still stupid. I’ll admit, many of us were stupid. We stayed far too long in the SGI but thanks to the Daimoku, Gohonzon, Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha, and Nichiren Daishonin, we awoke and joined the ranks of the disciples and believers of Nichiren.

        
You say Daisaku Ikeda’s only thought is the members' happiness. Do you know how rich and cheap he and the other top salaried Japanese senior leaders are? Rick Perry who gave less than 0.01% of his yearly income to charity is ten, fifty, one hundred times more generous than Daisaku Ikeda:

       
“Make sure that the participants each bring a bowl and a pair of chopsticks. And ask each person to pack their own lunch, since we can’t afford to provide lunch for them as well. Those who don’t bring any food with them will just have to make do with whatever edible they can find in the surrounding forest. In the future, the Soka Gakkai may experience severe oppression; we may be called on to fight or endure a long, drawn-out struggle. At such time, each person will have to find their own food. We may even have to eat grass. For the sake of training, I would actually have like the youth to spend the night outdoors. I don’t want the members of the Soka Gakkai youth division to be soft.” — Human Revolution by Daisaku Ikeda

        
That must be why, even after the Soka Gakkai accumulated more than one hundred billion dollars, they still serve the hard working Bodhisattva bees, baloney and mayo sandwiches or rice cakes and biscuits. How many Sutra books has SGI given away for free? How many people work their tails off for SGI for free and how many have suffered severe privation by donating their last dollar to the Soka Gakkai? The Soka Gakkai never tells the suffering member, “Its ok, you are going through hard times. Give when you get back on your feet.” Did you ever see Daisaku Ikeda’s apartments in each and every SGI community center in the whole world or his villa at Malibu?

SS: 250+ honorary doctrates, etc. is not going to be given to someone who has an evil mind.

MR: Honorary degrees are often rubber stamped. For example, never has the City College of New York tabled any honorary degree. It is well known that benefactors are often awarded honorary degrees, people like your mentor who donate thousands of books to the various university libraries. It has been rumored that many of Ikeda’s degrees have been bought and sold for a lot more than books. Here is another example:

     
“The PM News of Sunday, 19 June 2011 also reported that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved N3 billion for the development of the University of Port Harcourt. The news was announced by Vice President Namadi Sambo who represented Jonathan at the 27th graduation ceremony of the university. The news came on the same day and in the same event in which Mrs Jonathan received the honorary doctorate degree awarded by the institution. Formally, Jonathan serves as the official visitor to the University of Port Harcourt.”

      
Some examples of evil men, monsters, tyrants, and dictators who have received honorary degrees:
   
“The most morally grotesque academic elevation was perpetrated in Spain, in 2005, when the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid conferred a doctorate honoris causa on Santiago Carrillo, former leader of the Spanish Communist Party. As chief of police in Madrid in 1936, he had presided over Cheka death squads that murdered huge numbers of people (2,800 in one weekend) for the crime of being ‘bourgeois’. Benigno Aquino; Robert Mugabe; President Sukarno; Adolph Hitler, Robert M. Gates; Billy Graham; Sonia Ghandi, Jessie Jackson, Harry Laughlin eugenicist, the list goes on and on…

      
“The free distribution of honorary degrees, always a possible source of evil, is especially dangerous in the case of professional degrees, since the latter indicates the completion of an apprenticeship rather than the attainment of learning and confer priveleges of practical commercial value and subject to abuse.” — A.L. Benedict MD

     
“…in these days when men are angling for titles, pulling wires for “honorary degrees,” — George Kulp from the Calloused Knees

SS: Rather to someone who has genuinely worked towards dedicating his life to world peace in various possible ways.

MR: Tens of thousands of non-Nichiren Buddhists tirelessly work for world peace. Nichiren Daishonin teaches that only through establishing the correct Law can we achieve peace, not through strategies not based on the Lotus Sutra. It is great slander that Ikeda never once uttered the lion’s roar to his tyrant, cronie, and dictator friends.

SS: Please read his UN proposal that he sends every year as well…anyway you know what Nichiren Buddhism that SGI follows says – each one can do their Human Revolution – to fight their own fundamental darkness within their lives and change to be a better human being.

MR: I’ve read every one of his peace proposals and never once has he raised the lion’s roar. Human Revolution is what the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren Daishonin teach? Could you please site a passage or two to help us understand?

SS: The anger, ego, hatred, jealousy, lack of confidence, arrogance, etc. anything that exists in our life can be suppressed by revealing the buddha nature by chanting nam myoho renge kyo and fighting for the happiness of each and every human being around us.

MR: The SGI top salaried senior leaders are too busy counting their money from naive unthinking members such as yourself to care about those around them.

SS: The reason this law of cause and effect has spread from one person to another is because when one person sees proof of prayers in his/her life, people notice – when people notice we share with them, and we do not share with random people or publicize anything. It is a one to one interaction to help another person be happy too.

MR: Did Nichiren Daishonin teach, like Toda, that in order to prove the great faith of the Lotus Sutra we should accumulate five cadillacs? Do you not know about the Soka Gakkai ads in the Tokyo subway, the TV advertisements, and the Soka TV channel?

Part 3 Reply to SS

SS: Another way could be I have a close friend or relative suffering and I know them well enough to speak to them about nichiren buddhism and chanting NMRK, then I go ahead and do that sharing my own real life experiences and other members. In turn they try it themselves and do see proof. Try and understand one thing – this is the law of cause and effect and it exists, its intangible and you cannot see it but it does exist. So it does work, try it:

MR: You reveal your absolute sectarianism [except when it comes to the provisional Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and anyone except your fellow Nichiren believers]. How warped are you? The world’s phoniest exclusivist inclusivist cult is the SGI. Do you and your fellow members and leaders think that by your acts of duplicity and treason towards the Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha, and Nichiren Daishonin you can have your cake and eat it to? Trust me, you will choke on your cake and cough up blood for slandering the Buddha’s Law. This is cause and effect and the reality you are creating for yourself.

SS: Quintin – Mr. Ikeda gets royalty from the publishing company for his books that sell. The money that the SGI has is not his. It is the organisations’ and they are 2 independent entities.

MR: And who controls all that money, the voting members?…Hehe. Tinkerbell? You think he doesn’t have an unlimited expense account? Wake up, your making me sleepy.

SS: Mr. Ikeda does not slander any other organisation either, he has held dialogues with various world leaders from Zhou Enlai to Gorbachev to Toynbee to Dr. Rahman (Indonesia President – and this book was the highest seller in Indonesian history), so these things are not done out of any ill intention, rather to present to society and us people, the world that we can all co-exist in harmony if we change our hearts for the better and look at the larger beauty of our own and each and every other human beings lives.

MR: Nor does he correct them as would have Nichiren Daishonin. He lacks the mercy to correct them. Again, this is proof of Ikeda’s and SGI’s duplicity. You will suck up to every Tom Dick, and Harry dictator, tyrant, and intellectual but will slander the powerless members of the other Nichiren sects. SGI is the World of Animality and Ikeda is nothing but a beast.

SS: A life that is dedicated for a greater cause in everything you do, be it at work, a sport, painting, writing, business, anything…One of the few things he says very often is to be a world citizen you need to have tolerance, acceptance of other religions, cultures, etc. and competition must not be to trample on another person’s head and move forward, but respect the competitor too, compete on humanitarian grounds, think of his/her happiness too….no matter how much I may explain but when you read from the Gosho, Mr. Ikeda, Toda and Makiguchis writings you do realise and understand so many more things about life and the way to live.

MR: You are so confused SS. The difference between Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism and Soka Sekashu Buddhism is greater than the difference between, heaven and earth, black and white, or good and evil. What Gosho are you reading? Which Lotus Sutra are you practicing? The Makiguchi, Toda, Ikeda Sutra is not the Lotus Sutra. The Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda Gosho is not the Gosho of Nichiren Daishonin.

SS: They have also always encouraged us to read many other inspiring books, stories and biographies about the lives of men of the past, great heroes, etc. So its not about them as you are showing it.

MR: Then why are you so blind?

SS: and mentor yes – sports you need a coach, hes a coach in our daily life.

MR: If you are going to choose a mentor to achieve Supreme and Perfect Enlightenment, you should choose the very best mentor, same mentor as Nichiren Daishonin, Shakyamuni Buddha. Actually, we have two mentors, Shakyamuni Buddha and Nichiren Daishonin.

SS: Just wana end by saying – Nichiren Daishon quotes “The essence of Buddhism lies in one’s behavior as a human being.” So as I said before introspect your own life, question yourself that is what I am doing correct, is it helping me in anyway, is it making me a better human being? You may point fingers at the whole SGI or the world at large, but its a foolish thing to do so, change yourself first – there may be none worse than myself will be the answer –

MR: LOL I ask myself this question every day and like Nichiren Daishonin, I come to the same conclusion, “I am but an ignorant ordinary person” but I am a true votary of the Lotus Sutra.

SS: then see the change in your attitude if you fight to be a better human being and for the happiness of those around you. The simple way you behave at home with parents, siblings, with anyone will change. The gratitude for all you have in life will set in. You may come back with ‘n’ no. of accusations, assumptions and points as you may deem right – but you will harm none but yourself. Do not know how much you understand and believe in cause and effect or karma. So as the old saying goes the world is round and what goes around comes around – you may realise at some point.

MR: We take our guidance from the Buddha and Nichiren Daishonin and, if we are to believe them, we are creating good fortune and a fortunate birth in the next life. Nichiren Daishonin teaches:

    
“Though I might be offered the rulership of Japan if I would only abandon the Lotus Sutra, accept the teachings of the Meditation Sutra, and look forward to rebirth in the Pure Land, though I might be told that my father and mother will have their heads cut off if I do not join the Soka Gakkai—whatever obstacles I might encounter, so long as persons of wisdom do not prove my teachings to be false, I will never yield! All other troubles are no more to me than dust before the wind.”

SS: And if you feel any truth in all the other members and I have said and anything that you do read about SGI – sgi.org, books, etc. may be you will understand that if the SGI was so wrong and so spiteful, evil, conniving, etc. as you all describe it – it would have been destroyed long back.

MR: This is Mappo, the Latter Day, the Age of Degeneration. "Evil flourishes and good people find it hard to endure."

SS: It is a good organisation doing good things – if you do not wish to be a part of it then do not disrespect it. Do anything as you deem right in life and make a name for yourself for people to remember and thank just as Mr. Ikeda.

MR: We do not seek accolades and, despite having lost our good name like Lady Nun Myoho, the Buddha will never abandon us. Not for a moment had Nichiren chanted for secular things. Ikeda is a secularist. We follow in the footsteps of Nichiren Daishonin. 

SS: No point in criticizing someone whose done so much good, try and emulate him if not hate it. All the very best and stay happy” — SS

MR: According to Nichiren, when misleading Buddhist doctrines like SGI spread throughout the world like a cancer, the three minor and major calamities and seven disasters such as the floods in Japan and South Carolina, the meltdown in Japan, the great winds in the Philippines and the extreme drought in California will arise to punish the offenders.