Their are very few honest seekers of the way among the top SGI senior leaders and many don’t really believe in the Daimoku and all the President Ikeda stuff anyway. They will never admit to it but there is a group of leaders who I will term “wink, wink” who, when they believe you are in on the joke [of the mentor-disciple thingie and the Gohonzon], wink, wink. What they believe in are the social causes propounded by the Soka Gakkai. Jeff Corwin is one example.
Most top non-salaried senior leaders get a rise out of their positions of power and influence among the members. It fills a need. There are a few true believers like Monte Joffee who, in the end, on their deathbeds will be crushed by the weight of their slander and the realization of the emptiness of their beliefs.
The high salaried senior leaders are another thing entirely. They are just con men, hucksters, and sycophants who ride the coattails of their boss to a big fat paycheck. Many probably started out as true believers: The nonsense about the mentor and the “great mission” of the Soka Gakkai [despite the stark reality of Ikeda’s foibles]; the link to their livelihoods of the Soka Gakkai PR and marketing strategy for their products [prosperity, world peace, Enlightenment, Buddhahood]; and the corrupting power of power itself, destroyed any pure faith they might have had. Now they are just hypocrites and slanderers while before they were only slanderers out of ignorance. Theirs is a willful corruption of the Dharma.
The very worst of them all are the high paid study department chiefs who know the truth of the Daishonin’s teachings yet alter the Gosho and teach contrary to Nichiren. They do so, even though they know better, in order to support the wicked Soka Gakkai and its real agenda of multinational religious corporatism and, of course, for the sake of material treasure and their inflated paychecks. I can not criticize them more.
Question: Why not teach in accordance with Nichiren Daishonin, the end results would be similar?
Answer: Nichiren Daishonin’s teachings are absolutely incompatible with profiting for teaching the Dharma. They can only alter the teachings in order to profit for teaching the Dharma. They can only alter the teachings to promote contributions so vigorously. They can only alter the Dharma to teach such non-Nichiren Buddhist concepts as the Oneness of Mentor and Disciple rather than the Oneness of Law and Disciple.
"They can only alter the Dharma to teach such non-Nichiren Buddhist concepts as the Oneness of Mentor and Disciple rather than the Oneness of Law and Disciple." Since Shakyamuni and Nichiren are our teachers that are one with the Law giving us the opportunity to attain the state of the 3 bodied Tathagata we should be exceedingly grateful for them
ReplyDeleteSoku joju busshin. “At all times I think to myself: How can I cause living beings to gain entry into the unsurpassed way and quickly acquire the body of a Buddha?