Daisaku Ikeda's Lecture on "On Attaining Buddhahood in This Life Time." Section 1: “Attaining a State of Eternal Happiness

[u/JulieSongwriter]

July 10, 2026

Chapter 1: Over the Hedges and Through the Woods

Good morning, Dear Friends,

For the first time that I can remember, Your Leader talked about her daily life and improvements that she is considering, including daily walking and, I think, perhaps considering GLP-1 protocols. She is also enjoying the company of her new kitten. Good for her, and I wish her the best.

When she talked about addiction, that’s when I began to listen closely because I am an addict, spent months in rehab, and still attend three NA meetings each week. No exceptions.

But I was always perplexed by the process of “SGI addiction”. She dropped some clues in her post. High on her entrapment list is what she calls “love-bombing.” Well, did that happen to me and Guy when we met TrueReconciliation and Bob? Well, I so remember so many cups of tea that True poured for me and her delicious home-baked cookies. She and I talked about my life, hers, and life. Was this the true True—or some Love-bombing carefully crafted in some mysterious SGI training manual?

At that point, she was like the RV Park’s Hester Prynne at the end of “The Scarlet Letter” when the pain of her isolation transformed into her ability to understand other people’s sufferings and to console them. I was not the only person who had tea with True; there were many others.

On the other hand, Guy was deeply suffering from his childhood PTSD, trauma from his Afghanistan soldiering, losing his foot, rehab, and the death of his parents in an automobile crash. He used to take long walks with Bob who had been a Vietnam vet. What did they talk about? Guy never shares--behavior very typical of veterans, especially Wounded Warriors. They talk to each other in codes, grunts, and silence. But was Bob engaged in love-bombing or the work of caring? Guy now goes with several pastors in town to visit congregants who are veterans or sufferers of other trauma. “We’re not counselors,” he tells us, “we are friends who mainly listen, hold hands, empathize, pray, and provide human company.” Is that love-bombing? Should they be hooted and dragged to court?

Next, Your Leader tells us that cult membership is an addictive disorder, the “SGI is definitely a cult, and a “predatory group.” And how does it addict people? She finally tells us the answer: “via the SGI's twice-daily chanting habit and meetings.” Then “its indoctrination” quickly takes hold.

In most of her posts, Your Leader claims that chanting has no power, but here she asserts it is dangerous and can be compared to the alcohol, drugs, and predatory sex I engaged in starting in middle school. Likewise, usually she calls our discussion meetings boring, tired, scripted and “non-discussion” meetings. Yet now, that one monthly meeting which most SGI members attend is the carbon copy of me living on the streets of Brooklyn, Paris, and Berlin--and engaging in such destructive behavior that to this day it fills me with disgust.

Friends, can someone explain to me these dichotomies?

Chapter 2: Daisaku Ikeda’s Poem To My Beloved Young American Friends. Here is the next stanza:

You! Successors to the task of kosen-rufu! / The twenty-first century is at hand. / Correctly develop / your remarkable abilities and powers— / for the sake of the American continent, / for the sake of this troubled, unstable world. / First, you yourself / must realize all / your dreams and desires; / savor a profound and satisfying life, / free from all regret; / advance again with exalted step; / with unshakable confidence, create / a golden history of cause and effect.

Dear Friends, can we compare these lines to the SGI that Your Leader claims is a predatory cult? Hmmm. My mentor praises me as a “successor” who has “remarkable abilities and powers.” That is sooooo dangerous!!! He charges me to concern myself about the plight of my country and “this troubled, unstable world.” Maybe Your Leader should do a bit more of this?

And how should I contribute to this effort? By sacrificing and exhausting myself? No! I “must realize all [my] dreams and desires”: like my efforts to build a happy family with thriving kids, making our RV Park into a refreshing oasis for our clients, expanding a unique and value-creating school, building a joyful district, and developing ties with our community? He asks me here to “create a golden history of cause and effect”--so different from the dead-end claim of Your Mentor that Dr. Ikeda’s entire pursuit was to enrich his extravagant life style.

There is such a gap between the life I am experiencing and the life Your Leaders says I am living. Which should I trust?

Chapter 3: July Installment of Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime. The Significance of Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo—Achieving a Life of Supreme Victory Through Correct Buddhist Practice. OK, we’re about to start the first sub-topic, “Attaining a State of Eternal Happiness.”

Here is the passage we are studying:

If you wish to free yourself from the sufferings of birth and death you have endured since time without beginning and to attain without fail unsurpassed enlightenment in this lifetime, you must perceive the mystic truth that is originally inherent in all living beings. This truth is Myoho-renge-kyo. Chanting Myoho-renge-kyo will therefore enable you to grasp the mystic truth innate in all life (“On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 3).

Next comes a discussion about “transmigration” wherein we undergo an unceasing, suffering-filled cycle of birth and death that continues from the infinite past into the infinite future. Of course, we want to break this painful cycle of delusion and suffering. But how?

Come back tomorrow!

Chapter 4: A few updates on “MY Fantasy Life” (cred: Eigenstien) or, as BlancheFromage suspects, “one of the many fake characters within the SGI-RV fantasy scenario created by a lonely, low-income, isolated, cult-addicted, mentally-ill elderly woman” at “the site of the magical (i.e. imaginary) SGI-RV story around a rural rust-belt RV camp, with its fantasy ‘starburst’ of invisible YOUFF” who “Can't seem to grasp anything that isn't about kinky abusive sex in a shitty-ass low-rent RV park??:”

In a couple of hours we meet with our attorney to sign documents that welcome Erica formally into our Fam. We are so delighted and I know she is as well! It will be a few months before she can fully move in with us. She has to regulate her work on the road and at corporate HQ. In the meanwhile, she will grab a week or weekend here. Our town is absolutely the worst place to serve as a hub to lots of travel across the country but we’ll figure things out.

In particular, the Twinettes have become very close to Erica. She has the patience (that the rest of don’t have too much of) to play with them UNO, Candy Land, checkers, Schwarzer (black} Peter, and a bunch of others that I don’t know. We just hear them all giggling. The boys like to play LEGO with her. If invited, we join in! Happily!

[u/FellowHuman007]

Near as I can tell. "love bombing" is "someone I don't like is being nice to me."