"In addition the Great Teacher Miao-lo in the first volume of his Guketsu comments on this situation by saying , 'the people of today look with contempt on the sutra teachings and emphasize only the contemplation of truth, but they are making a great mistake, a great mistake indeed!"
"This passage applies to the people in the world today who put meditation on the mind and the dharmas first and do not delve into or study the teachings of the sutras. On the contrary, they despise the teachings and make light of the sutras...."
"Among the evil monks there will be those who practice meditation and, instead of relying on the sutras and treatises, heed only their own view of things, declaring wrong to be right. Unable to distinguish between what is correct and what is heretical, all they will do is face the clergy and lay believers and declare in this fashion, "I can understand what is right, I can see what is right." You should understand that it is people like this who will destroy my teachings in no time at all."
Good call Mark this. (below) reminds me of...:
ReplyDelete"Unable to distinguish between what is correct and what is heretical, all they will do is face the clergy and lay believers and declare in this fashion, "I can understand what is right, I can see what is right." You should understand that it is people like this who will destroy my teachings in no time at all."
...Hmm...Human Revolution, value creation, Buddha-bodhisattva (what ever that is), mystical transmission through mentor-disciple (very Zen with a twist of Shingon), the heart of the "Mentor", infallibility of the High Priest, life to life transmission of the lineage of the High Priest... very "I can understand what is right, I can see what is right." also very wrong.
Looked at from the adoring masses point of view it becomes:
"Unable to distinguish between what is correct and what is heretical, all the followers will do is listen to the clergy and senior lay "faith" leaders and then declare in this fashion, "they understand what is right, they see what is right." You should understand that it is people following like this who will destroy my teachings in no time at all."
I'm not sure who is mist responsible, the people who push false and erroneous concepts and doctrines or the people who uncritically accept and follow them... its a tricky one...
So, when reading Nichiren's constant reminder to us ,that in the Latter Day, *many* are deluded and *few* can perceive the truth, we can ponder the forethought that created a propagation conglomerate that mass produces erroneous teachings by virtue of its sheer numbers---?
ReplyDelete~Katie
not to mention what the lotus sutra(shakyamuni) forewarns about the latter age. its all there, and no one should be surprised. otherwise, the buddha would be a liar. many years ago i would read the teachings and scratch my head thinking that all(sgi/nst) was doing just fine and kosen rufu??#&*^, was not far off. little by little it dawned on me that what was being propagated was not the lotus sutra. it became so egregious and plain to see, i knew, i could no longer remain/support either. bye, bye.
ReplyDeletetruth: the obstacles one encounters by propagating a perversion of the lotus sutra are minuet(ikeda). the obstacles one will encounter propagating the real teachings are huge(nichiren). however, whats at stake is eternal buddhahood. this is not my personal opinion, it is the real teachings. cheers.
ReplyDeleteNice all!
ReplyDeleteI have never been able to understand value creation.
ReplyDeletethe soka gakkai started out as a school teachers group with the intention of creating the most value for the young students as well as the teachers, revolutionizing education in japan. possibly a good intention. it just so happened that the leader was makuguchi and his teaching disciple josei toda. both members of n.s. the japanese have a culture that insists that one must find a master in life. this notion had been, and is a well accepted and a practiced way of life. especially in the early days. 60's/70's and before. the sgi/nst was one part buddhism, one part other forms of buddhism of the day, and two parts japanese culture. not buddhism at all. for those who still don't know, soka gakkai means value creation. then ikeda got a hold of it. not good. today, it's slander is a million times worse.
ReplyDeleteSpot on Greg. SGI has done some deviously interesting things with this master-disciple dynamic, which it has renamed mentor-disciple to be more pallitable to a non Japanese audience. It has used the term mentor to refer to and thus conflate different things; Law, Buddha, Gohonzon, "three presidents" concept, Daisaku Ikeda (with a big M), SGI members (with a small m). It has then elevated the term to a concept, giving it the appearance of something profound and fundamental.
DeleteThis has several effects; 1) it associates the SGI founders and leadership with the Buddha, Law and object if worship, bringing them together in believers minds and legitimising the former in terms of the latter in the process. 2) it makes the "mentor" easier to defend by making it slippery, one can always claim that when the term or teaching is critiqued in the basis of Daisaku Ikeda that mentor refering to Buddha, Law Gohonzon. 3) it embeds the fallacy as a "facts when debating, thus it's harder for opponents to critique if they too use the term, giving advantage to SGI leadership and enables them to claim one "doesn't understand" (this falsely deep and profound "teaching"/concept)
My way round this, is simply to point out that 1) mentor-disciple or teacher-disciple is one of the 3 virtues. 2)insist on explicit labelling, "if you're referring to the Buddha, say Buddha, if you're referring to the Law say the Law, if you're referring to Daiseku Ikeda, say Daiseku Ikeda", so this stops the debate being had on SGI ground and the terms it has set, nor engaging in an implicit acceptance that the "mentor-disciple" conceptualisation is valid.
It also seems to frustrate the hell out of opponents that use this slippery labeling as cover for their corrupt and sloppy thinking.
I heard an analogy that has stuck with me, it went something like "praising mentor-disciple is like praising the phone system. It's really great calls can connect, communication tech is a wonderful thing but it says nothing about the content or its reliably of those calls nor about the quality or honesty of the person who's calling".
When heard that, I sat back and laughed, SGI makes such a big deal out of mentor-disciple and transmission but it's exactly like praising the plumbing.
No wonder Nichiren decided to make the Sutras his teachers and disparaged reliance on master-disciple lineages. He knew the accuracy and validity of the message was the important thing, not whether it was delivered by a iPhone or Android or by this or that network provider!
I bet we've all had nuisance calls, SGI has made itself into the nuisance caller of the Buddhist world... ;). Shame, it could all have been so different.
Everyone who has been there done that knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that when an SGI leader states "mentor" they mean Ikeda. They can BS non-members or newbies that "mentor" may refer to "Law", "Shakyamuni", "Gohonzon", or "Nichiren" but in 100 out of 100 instances, who they really mean is Daisaku Ikeda.
DeleteTruth for gain in SGI cult speak.
ReplyDelete