Spot on Mark, thanks for sharing Charles' post. It's refreshing to see others have the same understanding and concerns. Regarding Mr Ikeda's performance as the mentor, when someone has to tell you to applaud (or 'encourage' you to), you know it's a second rate show...
I'm surprised nobody has cottoned on to the fact that the mentor-disciple relationship is an SGI invented hybrid pairing.
The more normally accepted pairings are either master-disciple or mentor-mentee.
It's an easy experiment to do, just Google those 3 pairings and see what comes up. The SGI invention predictably returns...Yep you guessed it SGI results (or posts about that SGI invention). The others return a broad range of results, master-disciple mainly spiritual, religious, martial arts or arts. Mentor-mentee mainly educational, business or coaching results.
One can only speculate on the reasons for creating such a Frankenstein hybrid.
It's noteworthy that one of the effects is to remove the relationship from easy comparison with the same relationships in other traditions.
It's also interesting that the replacement of 'master' with 'mentor' has the effect of softening the former term by substituting it with the latter (in some cultures) and very interesting that this approach has not been extended to do likewise with 'disciple', where arguably substitution with 'mentee' would not only be a more normal pairing but have the effect of reinforcing the norms for that particular part of the pairing.
Anyone else got a take on the possible reasons for this oddity? Please share...
No doubt, the decision to choose "mentor-disciple" was decided upon through the cunningly brilliant mind of the president of SGI multi=national religious corporation along with his high paid business consultants.
Spot on Mark, thanks for sharing Charles' post. It's refreshing to see others have the same understanding and concerns. Regarding Mr Ikeda's performance as the mentor, when someone has to tell you to applaud (or 'encourage' you to), you know it's a second rate show...
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised nobody has cottoned on to the fact that the mentor-disciple relationship is an SGI invented hybrid pairing.
ReplyDeleteThe more normally accepted pairings are either master-disciple or mentor-mentee.
It's an easy experiment to do, just Google those 3 pairings and see what comes up. The SGI invention predictably returns...Yep you guessed it SGI results (or posts about that SGI invention). The others return a broad range of results, master-disciple mainly spiritual, religious, martial arts or arts. Mentor-mentee mainly educational, business or coaching results.
One can only speculate on the reasons for creating such a Frankenstein hybrid.
It's noteworthy that one of the effects is to remove the relationship from easy comparison with the same relationships in other traditions.
It's also interesting that the replacement of 'master' with 'mentor' has the effect of softening the former term by substituting it with the latter (in some cultures) and very interesting that this approach has not been extended to do likewise with 'disciple', where arguably substitution with 'mentee' would not only be a more normal pairing but have the effect of reinforcing the norms for that particular part of the pairing.
Anyone else got a take on the possible reasons for this oddity? Please share...
No doubt, the decision to choose "mentor-disciple" was decided upon through the cunningly brilliant mind of the president of SGI multi=national religious corporation along with his high paid business consultants.
ReplyDeletesgi/nst is not buddhism. end of story.
ReplyDelete