Part 2
Over a period of just under four years, not only did I have both my hips and both my knees replaced but I also had my left shoulder replaced and an operation called a radial head excision done on my right elbow. I underwent physiotherapy and hydrotherapy at the hospital and did exercises at home, including what I called ‘circuit training’ which involved walking round my apartment on crutches a certain number of footsteps per day. Unfortunately, the operations were not uniformly successful. Whilst I experience very little pain in my hips, my knees are sometimes very painful indeed, and inflexible. As for the operation on the left shoulder, it brought about only a small reduction in pain and almost no change at all in my ability to move my left arm. To this day I can lift my left arm only a few inches away from my body and the left shoulder is painful all the time, whether I am using my arm or not. This affects my sleep a great deal as it is difficult to find a comfortable position in which to lie.
Throughout the time when the illness was in its acute phase and when I had my six operations, the spectre of the SGI hovered ominously over me. At the beginning, when it was difficult to deal with the depth of despair that I quite naturally felt, I was often treated in a cold, cavalier manner by SGI members. The women’s district leader I mentioned earlier once said, with regard to my having become so ill: ‘I don’t know what you did but you must have done something…’ I was so stunned that I could not take in the rest of the sentence. But the message was very clear: I had ‘created negative karma’ and this devastating illness was its inevitable – and presumably deserved – consequence. On another occasion, when I was feeling down and in a great deal of pain, I was chastised by another die-hard member and told that I ‘should be grateful’.
It would be both untrue and unfair of me to say that all the ‘kindness’ shown me by SGI members during this period was false, but I am certain that much of it was. My view is that longstanding SGI members tend to develop what I call a ‘cosmic accounting’ mentality, firmly believing that they will accumulate ‘good fortune’ if they manage to log a lot of entries in the plus column of an invisible universal ledger. The notion that ‘everything is answerable to the law of cause and effect’ lies at the very heart of SGI’s pseudo-philosophy, and this encourages a mercenary approach to life by which members become relentlessly determined to make as many positive ‘causes’ as they possibly can, for their own benefit, whether or not their heart is engaged in these actions. On a couple of occasions when I thanked people for having given me a lift to medical appointments I got the response (accompanied by a rather embarrassed grin): ‘That’s OK. I get the benefit.’
When I first became very ill, I experienced profound doubts about the Gohonzon. By this time I had been a very active member of the SGI for about 20 years, and suddenly suspecting that both the organization and the practice were somehow fallible and fallacious was deeply unsettling. Throughout my life, I had never really enjoyed robust health – something that was sometimes attributed to the fact that I nearly died at birth due to one of my lungs not opening – and, when I started chanting, one of my main goals was an improvement in my general physical well being and levels of stamina. I was a keen swimmer, walked a lot and had even been on a beginner’s course in rock-climbing just months before my health started to collapse. How could it be that I was suddenly so ill? Of course, the SGI ‘teachings’ conveniently came up with a pre-packaged explanation: I was apparently expiating karma by undergoing intense hardship – an explanation that gave me no solace whatsoever.
Over the years, with some of my symptoms being suppressed by drugs and some of the pain reduced through surgery, I was able to reestablish a certain degree of equilibrium in my life. All of a sudden I found myself once again hosting SGI meetings (even though I did not have an official responsibility) and also helping members prepare for the SGI-UK study exams. By this time I had been chanting for almost 30 years, two of which I had spent as a district leader and 11 as a chapter leader. I had also worked extensively on a couple of the SGI-UK publications over a period of many years as a writer and sub-editor, and gave Gosho lectures at chapter level. As my condition stabilized, I noticed a change in the attitude of certain SGI members towards me: I was no longer ‘persona non grata’ in discussion meetings – someone who might bring shame on the organization by crying – but, rather, a ‘result’ of dedication to the Gohonzon and therefore to be championed.
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