Two divergent views of SGI

 Creating Hope Through SGI? Find Another Alternative

SGI is unhealthy

Oh Oscar, I can relate. When I reached out to SGI, before I was pressured into joining, I was a lonely 24-year-old in college. I was struggling with dealing with people after years of being mistreated in high school and exposed to a paternalistic cult called Nation Of Islam. However SGI will not help you really deal with loneliness. Rather, SGI will give you a means to spiritually bypass. In SGI, this spiritual bypassing looks like:

• chanting for indefinite periods, and because you are more than likely under the age of 35, you will be exhorted to chant with more and more vigor. (You know, that rhythm of galloping horses that sounds more like the rhythm of frantic rats).

• Doing more SGI activities like emcee where you will have to exhibit that euphoric effervescence, doing Gajokai and Soka Group, home visitations (or home v)

• shakubuku where you will in essence behave like the Jehovah Witnesses

• reading more and more of a fanfiction novel series that passes for study material (or if you take the initiative, the Gosho or the Burton Watson 2009 translation of the Lotus Sutra)

• Reading Ikeda's daily guidances

And the harm that comes from SGI's spiritual bypassing:

• The feelings of shame are likely to surface as you begin to more and more consider slander and devilish functions

• You either find yourself tolerating inappropriate or unacceptable behavior, or you find yourself acting with no sense of personal responsibility.

• You will become more and more dedicated to leaders as deviation will be treated as not being in rhythm with Ikeda (because in SGI, Ikeda is expected to be the center of your spiritual quest for happiness).

• You might have problems with control, emotional confusion, or even anxiety.

• You will definitely become spiritually narcissistic. How can you not in an organization where the president says over over that you have a noble mission that only you can fulfill, and that you have found the way to absolute happiness.

With side effects like these, you're better off getting either pets, plants or plushies. And leave the hope creation to those with enough money to set up full ride scholarships, to fund healthcare, to fund derelict schools, and to bankroll good lawyers for BLM protestors. They create real hope. Nobody on the outside of SGI ever said, "My life was improved or saved because my neighbor chanted or did SGI activities."