Dear Representatives of the SGI Corporate Entity
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A letter from Lisa Jones |
Dear Representatives of the SGI Corporate Entity:
There will never be a really free and enlightened SGI organization until the organization comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him (or her) accordingly.
I paraphrased that line from Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, the treatise that inspired Gandhi and countless others. Thoreau's allegiance was to his conscience: "The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right."
I have read the recent SGI memo
regarding the Gohonzon and the IRG. I note that it was not signed by an individual or individuals, but is the expression of a religious corporation. I am writing to inform you that I respectfully decline to be bound by any authority that the SGI corporation wishes to exert over me. I have taken refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha -- the community of individuals who seek kosen-rufu -- and this is where I remain with or without corporate blessing or censure.
Any religious organization that asks its members to follow its dictates instead of the dictates of individual conscience, is, in my view, arrogating to itself an authority which it cannot rightly possess.
To borrow again from Thoreau: I imagine an organization that can afford to be just to all people, and to discuss all topics openly -- an organization that does not feel threatened if a few members live aloof from it, or wish to reform it, or disagree with some points of organizational policy, who otherwise fulfill all the duties of Nichiren Buddhist practitioners and fellow human beings. An organization which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious organization, which I have also imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
Wishing you a pleasant May 3,
Lisa Jones
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Thursday, June 18, 2015
Dear Representatives of the SGI Corporate Entity A letter from Lisa Jones
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For those who don't know, IRG is the now excommunicated SGI Independent Reassessment Group.
ReplyDeleteA minor note, Mark (but important to us, at the time): we were the SGI-USA IRG. We purposely targeted our American organization with our reform proposals, realizing that there was no way we would, or should, change the master organization in Japan.. In the event, it was a futile cause, obviously, but we did give it some thought.
Deleteand yet some of them , even though deeply betrayed still support the sgi. ???
ReplyDeleteLisa is great for what she says. Lisa says it for how it is
ReplyDeleteLook at the latest result of the Soka Gakkai Corporation Entity's Authoritarian behaviour
ReplyDeletehttp://japanfocus.org/-Brian-Victoria/4181/article.html
"Sōka Gakkai’s words, e.g., “maintain the pacifism of Article Nine,” “strictly defensive policy,” “peace-loving nation,” etc. all sound so reassuring as if nothing had changed.
Yet it is clear that Sōka Gakkai made a major policy change between May and July of this year, for it had initially demanded any change to the Constitution go through the formal process for constitutional revision.
This process would have included an opportunity for the Japanese people to vote on the question of whether they wished to allow their nation to engage in war overseas, i.e., participate in “collective self-defense.”
Sōka Gakkai’s policy change clearly contributed to denying them this opportunity and could well lead to an untold number of deaths."