Former SGI member comments on Lisa Jone's observation

“For instance, some say, “You can overcome your problems if you do shakubuku, if you promote Seikyo Shimbun you can be happy. You can be happy if you try to do more zaimu.” This is a life condition of hunger. You are always expecting something in return. If you don’t overcome your problem you will resent having made the effort. This is different from the life condition of Bodhisattva. The Daishonin states: “Self and others rejoice together.” — Lisa Jones.

Don’t forget Rapture, the big pay-off for Hunger!! As most of those reading here, the lower six worlds are tightly chained together and those chains are what really enslaves people to a group like the SGI cult. If you score big in one world and you wind up being dragged through the other five. Like winning at the casino, you keep going back for the rush. Successfully shakubuku someone and you go looking for two more. Never time to raise those people who you’ve shakubuku because the “organizational tempo” was just too high.

I also think this makes a negative case for Shomon and Engaku (Learning and absorbtion) since all of the SGI/NSA literature is wrapped around the Shin-gyo-gaku mindset (faith, practice, study) in which you are strongly encouraged to buy study materials, practice excessively and “believe” in the dogma. Kind of seals you into the equation when taken in total.

In my thirty years of practice I looked long and hard for people who lived up to Bodhisattva and found none. I did meet lots of “false buddha’s” (i.e. people who were book smart but were, like myself, trapped in the lower six worlds and totally self absorbed in their SGI persona’s. Boddhisattva is also known as “humanity” and I’m afraid the organizational practices and goals seem to be aligned in the opposite direction.

As an aside, at one leaders meeting after seeing the projections for shakubuku in a campaign one of my fellow leaders observed that if we stayed on that growth rate we would have converted every man, woman and child in the world within 20 years. Nice goal but totally unrealistic, and frankly stupid. No one was encouraged at that meeting, just annoyed. And as a commentary on the leadership, pushing out something like that to the members was unmerciful and unenlightened. Just setting everyone up for disappointment and guilt (i.e. those worlds of jigoku and chikushou) -- Former SGI member