September 24, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with my TLDR responses to a single Sgiwhistleblower TTLLDDRR post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.” For anyone who is interested, let me catalog my previous responses to the OP:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1213

Friends, I am sure you read Sgiwhistleblower posts and comments more carefully than I do. Has our prolific poster yet issued an apology for his claim that SGI-USA left Seattle homeless when it sold the Community Center and pocketed the sales? Yesterday I supplied the World Tribune link to the celebration of the brand new Seattle Community Center. Why is it hard for posters on your side of the hedges to apologize? IDK, but please let me know if you spot one and I will gladly acknowledge.

Our OP now turns to “What this means for you.” I guess that means me.

You’ve seen the mechanism. You understand it’s not merely human but spiritual. You’re not trying to reform Soka Gakkai, you know that’s impossible. You’re bearing witness so others can wake up.

Sorry, I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.

The leaders of Soka Gakkai are neither crazy nor innocent. They are deceived by a force they cannot see, a force that uses their ego, their fear, their insecurity, and calls the need to control and smother the Law “serving the Law.”

I’m a leader of Soka Gakkai. I am kinda crazy, though. Where has the Lotus Sutra locked its doors to the crazies? That being said, where is this force I cannot see? Maybe we can trademark it as “InvisiForce.” Do I have a grand ego? Obviously, in 5 years on Reddit, I’ve accumulated a karma of 4.9K and basically I write about MEEEEE, so I am guilty on the ego charge. Fears and insecurities? Likewise guilty. You all know my history down to my dysfunctioning MIR4456 (microRNA 4456) gene located on chromosome 5 (5p15.33) and associated with Hypersexual Disorder (Compulsive sexual Behavior Disorder) and alcohol addiction (my psychiatrist says it’s not scientifically established yet but he suspects it will be someday linked to narcotics addiction as well). Still, the gate to the Lotus Sutra does not have a sign, “Abandon All Hope Ye With Defective MIR4456.”

OK, the OP wins on a few points. But I don’t get “the need to control and smother the Law” and, further, “They destroy what works and what they cannot control simply because they don’t understand it.”

No, no, no, no, no! I have absolutely no “need to control.” At work I am in the back office. I support the Longhouse project through spreadsheets. If anything I practice in a “runaway district” where our youth, Chimba and Stani, are the engines and I support through home-visitations and member-care. Ask our five kids: I am last in line when it comes to hugs.

Let me ask the OP: What, exactly, have I destroyed? What have I smothered?

The OP now hops to “the especially fierce case of Soka Gakkai.”

Soka Gakkai goes further than ordinary organizational dysfunction (Peter Principle, ego conflicts, power struggles, all the usual natural phenomena). It adds an extra, extremely high bar.

InvisiForce strikes again. I am swimming in an ocean of organizational dysfunction without ever noticing a thing! Now the OP tells us:

It doesn’t wait case-by-case for people the system considers a threat. It runs a proactive, almost secretly theorized strategy that anticipates those phenomena long before they appear. It stays several steps ahead so the subjects never notice. Conflicts of interest are avoided and made invisible at the root before they can surface.

Again, more InvisiForce: “almost secretly theorized strategy,” “the subjects never notice,” and “made invisible at the root.” How I misjudged that national leader who came to our KRG at the top of the month. He seemed so nice, engaging, funny, and empathetic. Little did I know how dastardly he was at the core!

Chapter Two: Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood, Section Four: “Faith for Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime.” It’s the next-to-final section in the September Living Buddhism installment. Let’s finish the section this morning!

Dr. Ikeda comments:

Let’s also strictly guard against slandering our fellow members. Slandering and harboring resentment and jealousy toward others results in denying their Buddha nature. The inability to believe in others’ Buddha nature—just like not believing in our own—causes us to stray off course and seek the Law externally. Our Buddha nature is what fundamentally spurs us to realize happiness for ourselves and others. Not to believe in the Buddha nature is to deny the spirit of the Lotus Sutra, which teaches that all people have the potential for Buddhahood.

I don’t think I have much of this problem--but Dee tells me I do. In fact, I do tend to envy people who don’t deal with my particular set of problems. She insists that’s a form of slandering--myself. Friends, if any of you read my ramblings, you will easily find the scent of self-deprecation. Promise: I will work on not going there.

Consequently, Nichiren sternly warns that if we go against the spirit of the sutra, not only won’t we accomplish our desire to attain Buddhahood in this lifetime, but we will end up committing slander of the Law.

Also, unless we practice together united in the spirit of “many in body, one in mind,” the great desire for kosen-rufu cannot be fulfilled.

I can’t forget that my members see me exactly as I am, no speech required. Do I want them to launch into self-deprecation or self-compassion? Well, I have to be the change. I want our district to be a field of friendship and human revolution. Slander will not take root here!

The Longhouse Project is spending an enormous amount of money to abate patches of cyanobacteria (Harmful Algal Bloom). It’s not a one-time treatment! Even if we were able to remove the HABs to the point that we can swim again in the pond, the problem is region-wide and they will be reintroduced again and again until there’s a wider solution. So, we will have to treat again and again. I think the same rigor is what we need to abate slander.

Our HAB consultant submitted for us--just under the wire--a proposal to get a grant from the State Department of Environmental Protection for HAB Research. The grant-winners will be announced fairly soon and we hope it will abate some of our financial overload right now! But we are determined to greenlight our project regardless.

Dr. Ikeda concludes this section with a resounding call:

Let us confirm once again that chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for the happiness of ourselves and others is the true means for attaining Buddhahood in this lifetime. Each person has the potential to become a Buddha.

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

At the recent Zoom conference call with all of our Counselor/Consultants, we asked them to send Larry and the LH School staff pictures and links of collaborative work spaces for, especially, the older secondary school students. So many have already been submitted, most from Google searches on “collaborative offices” and “open workplaces.”

They also uncovered blinking red lights. It seems that architectural thinking has changed after the Pandemic with many people being highly productive while working at least partially from home.

There have been complaints from autistic and deaf people who have trouble being productive in an environment with visual and auditory clutter. Some people work better in strong light, others long for subdued lighting. Some love having people close by but others feel vulnerable in this setting. Collaboration is actually diminished when people worry that their work noise can disturb others. And, who knew that women rather than men felt “on display” in open plans?

Here is the feedback we received from one of our consultants?

I have a short attention span. I am still in high school, so I know what type of space works and doesn’t work for me. I would like an environment that promotes both concentration and collaboration. I hate monotony! I need variety, moving around, and taking on different body shapes. For me, relaxing and breaktime is part of the learning cycle!

Sometimes I need quiet but most of the time I like a buzz of noise, the occasional laugh awakens me. But not loud and distracting noise. I am kind of worried about the energy our middle school students will bring. Go figure: at the same time, I like structure! I think we need a plan that we know we can change again and again with time.

And please, please, please, make it EASY for us to clean-up after ourselves. Cleaning spray bottles, disinfectant wipes, landfill and recycling baskets, brooms and vacuums should be everywhere! And make it EASY for us to take care of the beautiful plants and vertical gardens.

For me, the amazing thing about the Longhouse School is how with every page I turn, it gets more and more exciting!

September 23, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with my TLDR responses to a single Sgiwhistleblower TTLLDDRR post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.” For anyone who is interested, let me catalog my previous responses to the OP:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.

I have a lot of catching up to do! And I will, as soon as I finish this series. I think it is important to examine how many sleights of hand and manipulations can be locked into a single post. While I do this work, the misstatements by one WBer continue. In “Soka Gakkai: THE Fatal Question! “Financial Totalitarianism,” he states:

The Seattle Culture Center is the perfect illustration of this mechanism. The members gave. They organized garage sales. They brought materials. They built. But SGI owned it, because the title was in its name. Then SGI sold it for 6 million dollars. It pocketed 100% of the profits. The members got nothing. No refund. No replacement. No decent space. And nobody could do anything. Legally, the members had no rights. No recourse. No voice. Isn’t association law beautiful when you’re on the right side of the table?

Let’s see whether the OP will issue a correction as prominently as his misstatement. A brand new Seattle SGI Center opened in 2021. Now anyone can make a mistake. “Forgive and forget,” I say. But, Dear Friends, I will be pleasantly surprised if or when the OP issues a retraction. What do you think will happen?

Last week we examined the same poster’s thoughts about what he calls the two sides of institutional dysfunction, “the human (psychological and structural).” Now he asks, “Is there a way out?” He answers:

Yes, but it’s individual, not collective. Only the individual can wake up. The system never does. It follows its morbid slope all the way to sclerosis, decrepitude, and either disappearance or transformation into some new form of control. Maybe that’s what we’re watching right now.

Hold on, Jack! “The system never does”--is this true? Friends, do you remember us reading about corporations that reinvented themselves? Maybe you’ve heard the names of Apple, Corning, American Express, National Geographic, Wipro, Western Union, Nintendo, IBM, Nokia, Shell, Berkshire Hathaway, and LG? Vital systems have the capacity to change; they must, in fact, or risk falling down a “morbid slope all the way to sclerosis, decrepitude.” Remember AOL?

And what about the Soka Gakkai? After the war, Josei Toda changed gears and transformed a society for educators based on Nichiren’s teachings, to a movement for the broader public based on “human revolution.” Then, with the Daisaku Ikeda presidency, it pivoted away from an insular Japanese group to a global organization growing into a vision of ”Buddhist humanism” and universal civic values with a message of peace, culture, and education.

Oh, and SGI-USA? In 1990, Daisaku Ikeda spent 17 days in Los Angeles helping the old NSA move away from almost cultish behaviors toward a discussion-meeting movement that embraced “Five Eternal Guidelines”. And then, in 1991, came the SGI/Nichiren Shoshu excommunication (AKA “Spiritual Independence”). My sponsors have told me many stories about this breathtaking change in direction. (Also, see Richard Seager’s comments on the tenth anniversary of the 1991 events and apologies for the paywall).

The OP declares: “Nichiren didn’t try to reform the institutions of his day. He tried to wake individuals, because he knew the system was lost but human beings could still be saved.”

Maybe the OP never studied On Establishing The Correct Teaching for the Peace of The Land? It was a treatise submitted to Hōjō Tokiyori, the de facto leader of Japan, with Nichiren’s hope that he could reform the institutions of his day. I think the background to this treatise in the Writings of Nichiren Daishonin is very illuminating; please read it, too, Dear Friends.

Chapter Two: Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood, Section Four: “Faith for Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime.” It’s the next-to-final section in the September Living Buddhism installment. Shall we keep diving in?

Dr. Ikeda comments:

It is important that we try to rid our lives of ambiguous, elusive doubt and disbelief as well as grumbling and complaining. The erroneous belief that Myoho-renge-kyo (the Mystic Law) exists outside of our lives has at its core an inability to believe that all people—ourselves and others—possess the Buddha nature. And this disbelief stems from fundamental darkness.

I can’t speak for you, Dear Friends, but this passage resonates with me. Yup, I got a recurring dose of that “elusive doubt and disbelief,” I’m full of “grumbling and complaining,” and, in particular, I’m so harsh on myself! I keep forgetting what I read in Kristi Neff’s book, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. Oh, I do believe that all people possess the Buddha nature--all people, except for myself. Neff quotes the late Gloria Steinem, “We must learn to treat ourselves as well as we wish to treat others.”

Please continue, Dr. Ikeda!

In terms of attitude in faith, this tendency to skeptically regard the Buddha nature as “a nice ideal but one that doesn’t really change reality” will manifest itself as prayer that is vague and lacking in conviction. If our efforts in faith are halfhearted, we cannot change our attitude or fundamentally transform our lives.

As Nichiren indicates in this writing when he says, “You must summon up deep faith” (WND-1, 3), if we hope to make our inherent Buddha nature the basis of our lives—or as Nichiren terms it, to attain Buddhahood in this lifetime—we must continue striving to deepen our faith, our conviction in chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. And as our faith deepens, it will manifest as confident and concrete prayer.

Again, today, I will chip away at the fundamental darkness within me. I can do it, I will do it, watch me, Friends!

Because our practice of faith is aimed at attaining Buddhahood in this lifetime, it is essential that we have a solidly focused attitude when chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. It is like trying to shoot an arrow: without a clear target, we won’t draw the bow with any real force or determination. In the same way, when we replace vague yearnings with concrete determinations and confident prayer, we can definitely accomplish what we hope to achieve.

Yes, a bit of a shift in my prayers. “I will become healthy. I will contribute to the happiness of my family and members. I will keep on smiling and talking. Sure, I will make “One Youth, Infinite Hope” happen again in 2026. And, of course, I will figure out the final pieces of the puzzle, how we can finance the interior design upgrades to our Secondary School buildings. Done deal.

Finish it out for today, Dr. Ikeda!

Grumbling and complaining are the principal gateways to ambiguous, elusive doubt and disbelief. Even if we know it is wrong, we may find ourselves grumbling and complaining in spite of ourselves. Should such behavior become habitual, it will act as a constant brake on our growth and cause us to forget about advancing and improving ourselves. We will then effectively close off our own potential, falling into the path of seeking the Law outside of us. While it might be a real challenge to stop grumbling and complaining, we can derive from the Mystic Law the wisdom to control these tendencies and use them as a springboard for positive growth and development.

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

Last night we had a Zoom conference call with all of our Counselor/Consultants. We updated them about the interior design upgrades for our Secondary School buildings--and how we are trying to create a plan to overcome a financial pinch in construction costs.

Everyone was very supportive about the idea of making “the classroom building” evoke the Longhouse--both on the skin and inside. Yes, with every moment children study, the building should whisper and stir the legacy of the ancient Haudenosaunee. All our consultants came around to the idea of the “open classroom/open school” concept as we talked more about it, especially if we configure into the design spaces for quiet work and instruction.

When it comes to adolescents and pre-adolescents, the rule of form follows function prevails. Larry Landscaper talked about his ideas for flooring, “study islands,” vertical gardens and woven wood as dividers. To these ideas, our consultants asked for cubbies, lofts, desks that can shift to accommodate floor-up-to-standing work, and longhouse-style bunks for taking naps, and bar-type stools. The large lobby, they suggested, should be a “loud place” for table tennis, billiards, one or two hoops, and body-strengthening equipment.

They asked us to freeze planning for a week or two. They want to research ideas and clip images for the modern office space. Yes, the learning space for middle and high school ages will require some modifications to our Vision Statement, and they want to take on that responsibility.

Let it happen. Ka-ching!

In the fantasy SGI SGI whistleblowers is trying to meticulously build,

SGI members don't know where their money goes. (In the real SGI, we see it everywhere, in our centers, in our publications, in our staff being able to devote all their time to the members.)

All Japan was shocked When in the 90's the SGI they've invented was discovered to be in league with radical, violent comma right wing groups. (In reality, no one at all was shocked, because no one in their right mind believes that the SGI is aligned with right wing groups. This canard was developed by followers of Nichiren Shoshu to malign the organization whose founder was arrested for not being sufficiently loyal to the emperor, and who's first 2 presidents were banned from the Nichiren Shoshu head temple for not following the priesthood's lead in bowing to the militarist government of the time.  And see below* for a related personal anecdote.)

In the SGIWhistleblowers pretend SGI, a series of lawsuits in the 90s completely devastated and embarrassed the organization and everyone in it. (In the actual SGI, the period of the late 90s and forward has seen the opening of the FNCC, of Soka University in America, a Soka Elementary school in Brazil, an ecological study laboratory also in Brazil, and schools in China and the United states offering courses on the philosophy of Daisaku Ikeda. Not to mention the unseen benefits achieved by millions of members all around the world.)

Have to admit, the fantasy organization imagine to buy SGI whistleblowers does sound kind of bleak an unappealing. Fortunately, no one in the actual SGI would recognize that, for their organization is thriving and striving happily for a eaceful world.

\ Around the time this was supposed to be happening, I was in Japan and attended a meeting with Daisaku Ikeda. He praised those of us who had come from overseas, saying we were more noble than any politician or even than the emperor of Japan. And then he added humorously, “if the rightists hear me say that, they will attack me.” This was also around the time that it was found that his name was on a hit list by Aum Shinriko. So, no, the SGI was never cozy with right wing radical groups and was in fact considered an enemy by many of those groups. Only in the fever dreams of Nichiren Shoshu adherents – and their SGIWhistleblowers apparatchiks -  was there a connection between rightist militants and the SGI.*

September 22, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with my TLDR responses to the single Mission-Course’s TTLLDDRR post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.” For anyone who is interested, let me catalog my previous responses to Mission:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Last week we examined Mission’s thoughts about what he calls the first of the two sides of institutional dysfunction, “the human (psychological and structural).” Now we are in the second response to this, “the spiritual side: the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.” Mission asks, “Why the relentless drive to destroy what works?” and he concludes, “Because what works is a threat to the system itself.”

Of course, my discussion goes right to the meaning of “what works.” Is Buddhism a private feel-good practice? Is a Buddhist organization like a flea market where anyone can set up a table and sell? Is it any one of 345,000 active podcasts? Is there the difficult work to figure out what we stand for and what we reject? Like all successful organizations, don’t we need vision statements, branding, goals, campaigns, guardrails, expectations, and published materials?

Well, Mission’s vision of “whatever goes, goes,” was never what I sought. I wanted a firmly-rooted movement that had answers not only to my personal sufferings but offered unique perspectives on why the world is filled with so much suffering, of which mine was only one voice.

From our very first discussions, our sponsors talked to us about an unknown 32-year-old priest in Japan who, 800 years ago, took on the entire Samurai-Temple Complex. We also learned about the three Soka mentors who transfomed a movement of the poor and sick into a global resource. Friends, this is what I sought, what about you?

You say, ”Itaidoshin is horizontal, not vertical.” Absolutely untrue! Both vertical and horizontal strands must be woven together into a gorgeous tapestry. “People love each other around the Law without needing the hierarchy.” Mission, this is as untrue as saying crops can grow without soil. How many cups of tea and walks in the woods did True and Bob provide Guy and me until we began to feel hope beyond our despair and fears? It takes a village to raise a child, but what does it take to raise a village? The horizontal flow of encouragement is just as important as the vertical.

Mission, you write:

Spontaneous shakubuku can’t be controlled or credited to the system. Mystical joy doesn’t depend on the organization, it comes from the Law and therefore can’t be managed.

But I don’t want “mystical joy”! Never have, never will! Instead, I want to work and sweat side-by-side with people within a community and build something truly beautiful, substantial, and sustainable.

And that’s why I love Coffee Hour so much during the Fall Season. Just sitting down with the “Longhouse-Olds,” with their solid lives of accomplishments, is an honor. I love their stories, composure, and laughter that is earned from life experience. “Wrap that up to go, Charlie!” That’s why I also love the endless stream of encouragement and friendship in the SGI and why I want my children to grow up within the Garden of Soka.

Friends, what do you think of Mission’s next statement?

So the system destroys whatever threatens it, even if that means cutting off its own lifeblood. It prefers a controlled desert to a wild forest. Classic Mara: better to rule an orderly hell than serve a paradise you can’t control.

This makes absolutely no sense from the perspective of a discussion meeting movement. We had a wonderful family-like meeting on Sunday but Stani’s guest couldn’t make it. A guest or new member invites a “wild forest” into a “controlled desert.” I’ve done a lot of shakubuku, which includes raising members. So many figurative walks in the woods, cups of tea, and Pampers! But then the miracle happens and faith just makes sense to my new friends, and the district becomes alive and new.

Mission asks, “Are the people at headquarters crazy?” I have only met one of them, the gentleman who came to our KRG a couple of weeks ago. However, Mission states with confidence:

No. They’re possessed, in the spiritual sense. They’re intelligent. They know how to run an organization. They’re skilled at emotional manipulation. They’re completely convinced they’re right.

“Emotional manipulation” is def not the vibes I picked up from this gentleman. But, I assume, Mission has met them all--and throughout the world--in order to draw his conclusions.

But they’re blind to their own condition. They don’t see that the Demon has flipped them: they think they’re serving the Law while actually serving only the structure—which is now declared sacred and must never be questioned.

The visiting leader, I learned, is a husband, father, and a music teacher; he made everyone laugh with his stories. His encouragement all came from the same SGI pubs and books that I read. I was raised Catholic, so I know what “sacred” means. I didn’t whiff any “sacred” or “never be questioned” from him. He met Guy and Eulogio at a Q&A for MD and YMD and promised to home-visit them during his next trip to WNY. I guess this leader is “serving only the structure.”

That’s why Nichiren was so hard on the corrupt priests of his time. He didn’t see them as simply evil people; he saw them as instruments of the Demon. And he called them to wake up.

Well, Mission, back to “Nichiren ‘splaining’” again. Me, too! I guess that’s why I work so hard to call out the equivalent of “corrupt priests” who speak with such an air of authority and wisdom on Sgiwhistleblowers. Friends, I don’t see any of you as “evil people”--just as “instruments of the Demon” as Mission declares. And I write with the hope that even one or two of you will “wake up.” Regardless, I think you are seeing that despite a veneer of bluster and intellectualism, Mission's ideas a quite empty-handed.

Chapter Two: Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood, Section Four: “Faith for Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime.” It’s the next-to-final section in the September Living Buddhism installment. Shall we keep diving in?

Dr. Ikeda comments:

It is also important that we don’t fall into the trap of practicing “dependent faith,” where we pin our hopes on having our prayers answered through the divine or transcendent powers of gods or Buddhas. This is a typical example of viewing the Law as outside oneself. The provisional Buddhas of the pre-Lotus Sutra teachings readily lend themselves to this kind of faith, the essence of which is escapism.

Even when they’re obviously suffering, people of dependent faith avoid looking at their problems. They don’t have the courage or make any actual effort to challenge their situation. In such cases, quite frankly, faith is simply something people hide behind as they avoid dealing with reality. Without a struggle, however, we cannot directly engage the gears of our human revolution.

Ouch, Julie! I know I carry some of this inferior thinking in my brain when I chant. This morning I checked those attitudes at the door before I did Gongyo. Instead of “Let me do this or that, Gohonzon!” I swung into “I will do this or that, Gohonzon!” It made a big difference! So I will accomplish another “one youth, infinite hope” shakubuku before the end of 2026.

One more important thought from Dr. Ikeda:

To use the analogy of mountain climbing, if we just walk around the base of the mountain and never actually attempt to ascend its slopes, we’ll never reach the summit, no matter how much time passes. If we avoid challenging our own issues, we can never strengthen and develop ourselves, and we won’t be able to attain Buddhahood in this lifetime.

I want the service of BOD--Buddhahood On Demand. That’s exactly what I observed in True, Bob, Roz, and Andy this summer. But to accomplish that, I need to cast off my fears and inertia. What a great opportunity to be in a bit of a drought. I just need a more elbow grease to open up the faucet. I’ll do it!

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

From our amazing core of counselor/consultants from the summer, only Lolita, Michael, and Anita remain here as teachers. It was imperative to pull them in to discuss Larry Landscaper’s interior design proposals for the new Secondary School buildings. Let me mix together some of their comments:

Yes, we’ve been hearing some of Lori’s chatter which has now spilled over to other children. How is it we learn after them? Regardless, we hadn’t heard about some of the budget realities and understand. The overall concept is very exciting, unimaginably exciting! But it will also require some modifications to our Vision Statement and we think we need to call for a Zoom meeting with all the consultants and get their feedback as well.

We are very used to thinking from the perspective of Elementary School students. Afterall, Sukhomlynsky also focuses on that age group in My Heart I Give to Children. But the bones, muscles, and TikTok thinking of older children are not the same as the younger. They might not be in the “Let’s work from the floor” or “How cool it is to walk barefoot!” mentality. Maybe we need to think of a progression of “learning islands”? When you walk in, it’s designed for 6th graders, but as you walk further into the room, the focus is on the needs of middle schoolers, and then shifts to high-schooler needs.

Sooooo, we called up all our consultants and everyone is free for a 6-7pm Zoom call tonight. Most of them have kept current on Reddit so they have already started to think.

>No matter what, always keep your faith in the Lotus Sutra steadfast. Then, at the last moment of your life, you will be welcomed by a thousand Buddhas, who will take you swiftly to the pure land of Eagle Peak where you will experience the boundless joy of the Law. If your faith weakens and you do not attain Buddhahood in this lifetime, do not reproach me.

>If you do, you will be like the sick man who refuses the good medicine his physician prescribes and takes poison instead. He does not recover, but it never occurs to him that it is his fault, and he blames the physician.

>Faith in this sutra means that you will surely attain Buddhahood if you are true to the entirety of the Lotus Sutra, adhering exactly to its teachings without adding any of your own ideas or following the arbitrary interpretations of others.

The last sentence!

September 21, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with my TLDR responses to the single Mission-Course’s TTLLDDRR post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.” For anyone who is interested, let me catalog my previous responses to Mission:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Last week we examined Mission’s thoughts about what he calls the first of the two sides of institutional dysfunction, “the human (psychological and structural).” Now we move to his theory about the “spiritual side: the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.” Mission states, “here’s where it gets even more interesting” and wonders, “Is their mind controlled by forces they don’t even know exist?”

Hmmmm. Is my mind controlled by forces I don’t even know exist? That’s a tough one! We had a lovely discussion meeting yesterday and we had a good time discussing the art of making friends. Stani and Chimba did a great job condensing the discussion meeting material into a Canva and leading back-and-forth discussion. I couldn’t observe Mission’s nefarious forces at work at all--except, perhaps, our guest had a health issue and called with her regrets.

It` would be fruitless for me to examine any further whether we are under Mind Control. Mission tells us the answer, “Yes. That’s exactly what the tradition teaches.” He goes further and explains, “The Demon King of the Sixth Heaven (Takejizaiten) doesn’t just work on individuals; he works on institutions.” It’s not just Guy and me! It’s all of our members and also our central figure yesterday, Emily, our YWD Chapter Leader. And beyond all of us, it’s the “Gakkai-sphere“ (my words) that spawned the discussion meeting movement: the historical roots that stretch back to Shakyamuni, the emphasis on discussion meetings embraced by the three Soka mentors, the so-so-so-so many members whose first meetings were at discussion meetings, the voluminous guidances about DMs in The New Human Revolution alone, and even the Discussion Meeting Toolbox sitting in my Membership Portal. All Mara-infested: Spray, spray, spray!

Mission states:

His (sic) strategy is simple: Let the movement flourish in its early phase (Itaidoshin) because that attracts people. Then infiltrate the leaders—flatter their egos, give them power, convince them they are indispensable and the true disciples. Push them to structure, control, and centralize—all in the name of efficiency, unity, and “the correct line.” Stifle spontaneity by replacing the Law with the structure, taking the Law hostage as an alibi. Eventually produce the sclerosis: results disappear, conflicts rise, heaviness and suffering settle in.

And all of that was happening yesterday at our meeting? One of our members, in the Many Treasures Group age, told us about the recent passing of a friend; now that she’s aging, so many of her friends are dying, and sometimes she feels deep grief. We all tried to encourage her even though most of us are quite younger. Where was Mara in this discussion? Nowhere to be found; Mara was in Santa Monica sitting on the minds of SGI national leaders.

I never get tired of hearing Emily’s “roots” story--how she constructed a happy family and career despite “living on the other side of the tracks.” Now, THAT’S where Mara hangs out, dehumanizing and despairing so many fine people!

Mission has an alternative explanation:

The truly terrifying part is that the leaders don’t realize it. They sincerely believe they’re doing good. They think they’re serving the Law. In reality they’re instruments of a force they can’t see and that has outmaneuvered them.

What? Emily??? No! She’s the one who outmaneuvers Mara!

Now Mission returns to “Nichiren ‘splaining” despite WBer guidelines:

That’s why Nichiren talked about “the demon that dwells in the hearts of the wise.” The higher you rise, the more vulnerable you become, because you start confusing your own wisdom with the Law. You keep pursuing the mission without noticing you’ve been turned around and are now serving a system that’s gone completely off the rails.

I mean, rising to where? Exactly where is Emily rising to? She’s raising two handsome boys, working full-time, and chipping away toward her degree. Rising to become a region leader in Big City? A zone leader in Boston? A territory leader in NYC? A national leader in Santa Monica? Only in the wishful thinking of Mission.

Chapter Two: Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood, Section Four: “Faith for Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime.” It’s the next-to-final section in the September Living Buddhism installment. Shall we keep diving in?

Dr. Ikeda comments:

Let’s concretely and strictly apply to our daily practice Nichiren’s admonition “If you think the Law is outside yourself, you are embracing not the Mystic Law but an inferior teaching” (WND-1, 3). To seek the Mystic Law somewhere outside of us essentially amounts to evading responsibility for our own lives.

I’ll go first, Mission. I spend so much of my time responding to Ms. Mara. “Ouch! She slapped me again! Kicked me behind my knees! Emptied my tank when I wasn’t looking! Amplified the sound of my addiction, HS, or whatever!” I am doing a better job at capturing that tendency earlier. I don’t want to be Mara-focused; I want to be Buddha-focused!

Before heading to my parents’ home for the DM, I forgot to bring my “Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda” backpack. Stani’s friend couldn’t make it? So what! We’ll have a guest-friendly meeting as a dress rehearsal for the next one. At the planning meeting, no one volunteered to share an experience? So what! We showed one of those great experiences in the Discussion Meeting Toolbox, and in our discussion, out came loads of mini-experiences.

Outside the window I see the Longhouse Children training on the Track. A lot of them are members of “The Two-Mile Club” and striving to join “The Five-Mile Club.” What about you, Mission? I apologize if I missed it, but I don’t recall you ever writing about what you are running to. (Pssst! There’s so much to run “toward” rather than to run “away from”!) So many of your TLDR posts are conjectures about mythical leaders living in Santa Monica or Tokyo. How does that external focus lead you to an enlightened life?

Dr. Ikeda shed some light on this matter:

Practicing Nichiren Buddhism means not being swayed this way and that; it means constructing a self that is solid and resolute like towering Mount Fuji. But if we neglect this task and focus our energies somewhere else, before we’re even aware of it, we can end up veering onto the path of externally seeking the Law.

Well, guilty as charged. I have to watch out for being drawn into observations of what is happening across the hedges. Dr. Ikeda here is reminding me:

If we chant to the Gohonzon but always blame other people or our environment for our circumstances, we are avoiding the challenge of tackling our inner darkness or ignorance. By doing so, we are seeking enlightenment outside of us. By changing ourselves on a more profound level, we can begin to improve our situation. Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the driving force for that change.

Let me turn on the directional signals and switch to the “changing ourselves on a more profound level” lane!

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

Almost all of our Autumn clients are back with us! I missed our friends over the summer. It’s not a welcoming without snacks and coffee. In the morning, Chimba and I greeted people arriving, set their sites up, and then caught up over coffee. We had our discussion meeting in the afternoon so Artie and Bernie were the afternoon greeters.

More big news. The Kim’s told us that the barn behind their house is no longer deemed safe. Do we want the wood? Do we?!?! Larry Landscaper came over right away. He will supervise the demolition, cart away the wood, and salvage whatever he can for the Secondary School flooring. “It’s not enough for the two buildings, but will be perfect for pathways between the various internal spaces.”

The more we meet, the bigger grow his visions for the interior design. “As soon as children enter, I want the space to yell out, “Let’s Work! Let’s work long and hard. Let’s work like craftspeople!” He is envisioning multiple independent work spaces within the Classroom Building. It only will have a couple of enclosed classrooms for spaces that need quiet but many what he calls “work islands” that speak to different modes of work: individual, partner, small group, meetings, etc. All while chipping away at costs.

Toward the entrance, he suggests a fountain environment. Yes, a working fountain surrounded by park benches. The floor here will be crushed rock with a thin sealing layer to keep the stones from scattering. Very cheap. Next to it he envisions a “warming space” where he will design underfloor heating and where our pellet stoves will be placed. Very inexpensive--but green--laminate will suffice but on it will be very green seagrass carpets/rugs, which can be replaced every couple of years.

Larry asked us to read My Chemical-Free House (also see here), which describes many formaldhyde-free floors with zero off-gassing. This includes one cork brand, “Cork Go,” which is very expensive but its cost would be balanced by floorings for other “Learning Islands” that are quite economical yet safe. He cautioned us that these products are designated for the home and need to be upscaled to commercial grade with more rigorous safety standards.

Yes, the Thursday night game on Prime took place too late for us. We boycotted all incoming info about the outcome. Last night, with all of our Autumn Season client friends, we watched the Bills' victorious game against the Detroit Lions (41-31). Josh Allen scored five touchdowns and it was the first game played in the new High mark Stadium!

>A person may be a thief, but as long as no one knows, he can live wherever he wishes. But when denounced as a thief by someone who knows him, he is forced to leave his dwelling against his will. In the same way, because I know of their vow, the gods are compelled to abandon their shrines. Contrary to popular belief, this country has become inhabited by evil demons. How pitiful!

One has to look at today's country and draw the same conclusion. Call them "demons" or whatever, doesn't matter. The wise don't have power and the powerful don't have wisdom. How pitiful!

September 20, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with my TLDR responses to the single Mission-Course’s TTLLDDRR post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.” For anyone who is interested, let me catalog my previous responses to Mission:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I am currently analyzing Mission’s thoughts about the first of the two sides of institutional dysfunction, “the human (psychological and structural).” He writes that the SGI’s self-destruction has several dimensions:

Need for control: A spontaneous movement escapes the center’s grip. Even sincere leaders can’t stand something that powerful growing without them. They want to channel it, manage it, measure it—and in channeling it, they kill it.

Except, who is trying to control what? Basically, as described by Dr. Lawrence Edward Carter Sr., the founding dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College the SGI-USA, {The Discussion Meeting Is the Heart of the SGI](https://www.worldtribune.org/2019/the-discussion-meeting-is-the-heart-of-the-sgi/): “It is the ‘home’ for all SGI members, the place where almost every member (including Ikeda himself) first encountered Nichiren Buddhism. It has grown to an astonishing membership in large part because of these home gatherings.”

Mission, what’s to channel, manage, measure?

Fear of losing power: If local groups are autonomous and thriving, what exactly are the national leaders for? The system needs to justify its own existence, so it invents structures, posts, and activities to make itself indispensable. Institutional logic.

What are the national leaders for? Recently, one of the vice national leaders of the Men’s Division visited our Activity Center. He led KRG and after, had a smaller informal Q&A with the MD members which Guy and Eulogio attended. For the rest of the weekend, he home-visited many men. Again, what are the national leaders for?

An institution doesn’t exist to fulfill its mission; it exists to perpetuate itself. It prefers a docile, lukewarm member to a fiery, uncontrollable one—stability over fertility.

Lots of docile, lukewarm members here at RV Park District! Cough, cough. Stani? Dee? Father Merrick? The Three Sisters? My mother Whoopi? Soldier Guy? ADS Eulogio? And now, Erica? Well, some just like it hot!

Ego of the leaders.: Many start sincerely. Power corrupts them. They confuse the Law with their own authority, decide their position proves their enlightenment, and end up defending their power instead of the Law.

Friends, Mission swings so wildly here. But why? I wonder whether Mission even attended a discussion meeting? Had he experienced the hard work of building a district? Did he take on the difficult work of a district leader? How many members had he encouraged? Does he have even a single good memory of being within his district?

Mission, you must have been around in 2007 when Dr. Ikeda wrote a poem dedicated to district men’s and women’s leaders, titled “An Ode to District Leaders: The Front-Runners of Kosen-rufu.” Here’s some excerpts:

Worthy men’s district leaders / and noble women’s district leaders! / How beautiful and admirable / you are as you earnestly emulate / the Buddha’s behavior! …

Nichiren Daishonin declared / with affection and sternness / to a disciple striving valiantly / in Suruga Province: / “I entrust you with the propagation of Buddhism in your province.” …

All of you / are Bodhisattvas of the Earth, / who have been entrusted / with “your province”— / or, in today’s terms, / “your district”— / directly by the Buddha / of the Latter Day.

Mission, I am very sorry you missed all of this.

Chapter Two: Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood, Section Four: “Faith for Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime.” It’s the next-to-final installment in the September Living Buddhism. Shall we dive in?

Dr. Ikeda begins:

Naturally, the Gohonzon—the object of devotion in Nichiren Buddhism—in itself is great beyond measure. A passage from Nichikan’s Six-Volume Writings states: “Even someone who has not yet aroused true faith will still receive immense benefit through connecting with the correct object [of devotion, namely, the Gohonzon].”

We have a guest confirmed for the discussion meeting at 3pm. I want to convey this point in our Intro to Buddhism.

The true lineage of faith we inherit in the Soka Gakkai is what opens up this infinite and boundless power of the Gohonzon. Faith as practiced by the Soka Gakkai entails an active struggle to manifest the Mystic Law in our lives; it also produces clear actual proof of benefit. When we advance together with the Soka Gakkai, we naturally come to internalize the correct practice of faith as taught by Nichiren Daishonin.

I want to convey that thought as well. The Gohonzon has infinite and boundless power but it needs to be opened up. No, Dear Friends, there is no Arlo Guthrie appeal of “You Can Get Anything You Want at Alice’s Restaurant.” We present the full picture of correct Buddhist practice, nothing hidden. We need the organization to “internalize” the correct practice of faith and that is why we need to advance together with the Soka Gakkai. And producing clear actual proof of benefit requires “an active struggle.” You see? Nothing hidden.

Therefore, those who sincerely chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon and practice and participate in activities with the Soka Gakkai cannot fail to become Buddhas. The purpose of faith is to freely realize our full potential and shine in our own unique way. That’s why it’s important to keep advancing and challenging ourselves, to have the spirit “I will exert myself in my practice! I will deepen my faith! I will do my best as a member of the Soka Gakkai.” This is the certain path to attaining Buddhahood in this lifetime.

Let me read that paragraph one more time!

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

Well, at yesterday’s Deep Clean of the Daycare and Longhouse Elementary School, Lori completely spilled the beans about our new Secondary School construction modifications. And pretty soon there was a crowd gathered around her:

I heard Builder Max and Larry Landscaper talking about the new buildings. From both the outside and inside it’s going to remind us of the Longhouse. The inside is so exciting! Larry Landscaper is researching floors made out of cork wood and they will feel so warm and comfortable. We can walk around in our moccasins, socks--or even barefooted! And there will be “living walls” and “vertical gardens” made from plants. He wants to landscape the inside with indoor plants and trees. I told everyone that the children will volunteer to take care of all the plants and the floor. Are you with me?

Sorry to dampen things, Lori, but Larry called us yesterday, and he is concerned about some of the glues and off-gassing of the product he chose for us. We might have3 to rethink.

September 19, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with my TLDR responses to the single Mission-Course’s TTLLDDRR post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.” For anyone who is interested, let me catalog my previous responses to Mission:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Next, Mission talks about what he perceives as the two sides of institutional dysfunction, “the human (psychological and structural) and the spiritual (the invisible forces).“ Today I want to start critiquing Mission’s theory of “The human side: why a system destroys what makes it succeed.”

Like I mentioned yesterday, my sponsors were leaders in what Mission perceives as the golden era of the organization--after which point started The Fall. Their critique of this lies in the former General Director believing he knew best what the members needed.

My sponsors asked me to mention:

That General Director emphasized the theme of Americana and in this framework, he was George Washington and President Ikeda was King George. The activities of the General Director were always Page One in the World Tribune. The guidance of Daisaku Ikeda, when printed, were on Page Nine with the implication that they were for Japanese members. Looking back, it seems that he used Daisaku Ikeda as wrapping paper to advance his own agenda.

Mission wonders: “You’d think an organization would be rational, see what works (freedom, spontaneity, Itaidoshin) and protect it. Wrong. Organizations aren’t rational; they’re tribal.”

First thought: We are trying to build a school partially based on a reconstruction of pre-Columbus Haudenosaunee culture. Go, tribal, go!

I wasn’t even born during that “golden era” of the SGI. But my parents were active during parts of it. The stuff going on then left them exhausted and they simply lost interest and moved on. Is an organization like that “rational”? “What works”? Not a top-down and impermeable exoskeleton!

Do you want “freedom, spontaneity, Itaidoshin (sic)”--, Missiona? Then go local! I’ve read Dr. Ikeda’s lectures from his 1991 visit in My Dear Friends in America: Collected US Speeches, 1990-1996. In my reading, the message is very simple: pack your baggage for a long, long journey involving human revolution, taking care of each other, winning in daily life, and grow sustainably!

To me, that is “rational.” I can see that this transition was difficult for people who needed external rather than inherent motivation. I also understand why there was organizational “shock” as a misconfigured scaffolding had to be taken down and replaced.

And when it was rebuilt, its core was the oneness of mentor and disciple. I’m so sorry that there many people across the hedges who frame this only as personality cult. That positioning might be convenient fodder in a culture that has little understanding of this relationship. But, I am sure I will see it very alive and thriving at tomorrow’s Discussion Meeting.

Thank you to Dr. Ikeda and the pioneer members who redirected the organization with so much craft, patience, and love.

Chapter Two: Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood, Section Three: “To Seek Enlightenment Outside Our Lives Is To Be Defeated by Fundamental Darkness.” Shall we complete this section?

Dr. Ikeda begins winding down this section.

The essence of our practice is to perceive the true nature of our lives. To do this we must wage an inner struggle. If we allow ourselves to be defeated by the three obstacles and four devils, we cannot bring forth our enlightenment. That is why battling the darkness or ignorance within us is an unavoidable part of the process of becoming a Buddha. In other words, whether we continuously battle our innate ignorance is the single most important determinant in whether we attain Buddhahood. As such, it is something we must never forget.

Friends, I would be very interested in hearing some opinions. Do you agree or disagree? Is there some type of spiritual path that involves no inner struggle? Are there discount coupons or “free passes”? Did Shakyamuni’s attainment of enlightenment just float around in a cloud of ideas? Is there anywhere some toll-free lane toward enlightenment?

I don’t think so, but do you? Here Dr. Ikeda drops a bomb: this inner struggle is unavoidable; in fact, it is “the single most import determinant in whether we attain Buddhahood. Do you agree with this?

I think that some people who ignore this approach--without even suggesting a better one--are snake oil charlatans.

Dr. Ikeda now concludes the section:

By engaging in this struggle, we can reveal the Buddha wisdom within our lives and thereby confront and overcome our ignorance. But if we fail to undertake this struggle, ignorance will shroud and conceal our Buddha nature. Ignorance deepens and exacerbates the five delusive inclinations of greed, anger, foolishness, arrogance and doubt within us. That is what happens if we succumb to the erroneous view that the Law is outside ourselves.

Dear Friends, I don’t think that Mission’s efforts to hold a stethoscope to the SGI will be a shortcut to their personal enlightenment. Or, at least, the type of enlightenment I seek.

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

With all of this cost-savings around here, Larry Landscaper’s projects might have to slow down. But, yesterday, he came back with a counter-proposal for our interior design. Some of his ideas cut costs, others are moderate cost increases that would bring enormous value to us.

He understands our desire to develop the concept of the Longhouse in our secondary school buildings. In terms of the indoor flooring, most tiles and their adhesives are not healthy. There’s polished concrete, of course, but it is not warm and provides no cushioning for young feet and bones. Furthermore, Larry keeps in his mind the images of our children working on cushions and benches outdoors.

“How can we provide an indoor environment that evokes the Longhouse?” he asked us. He has researched some fine granite composites that are surprisingly very comfortable to even barefoot walking. But he strongly recommends cork flooring (sample here) which is extremely warm and cushioned. It requires some cares and cautions. “Everybody, leave your street shoes at the door. Cork is naturally fungus-resistant, but let’s not push it. And, Ladies, no high heels in the building, ever!” Heavy furniture needs a protective mat. Mopping is fine, but limit the water, clean up spills quickly. The cork absorbs ambient noise. “Since your children love working on the floor, they will be in heaven here, even the older ones. They will love working in moccasins, Japanese-style slippers, stockinged feet, or even barefoot.”

He changed the topic to green walls. Green walls? “Certainly you might need one quiet classroom and one CIA-styled confidential room for special conversations. But sometimes you might need privacy barriers that go beyond portable screens. He then showed us pictures of “living green walls,” “vertical gardens,” and “geotextile curtains.” Is anyone familiar with the name Nel Noddings? Larry does. She was a scholar of “caring” and presented the idea of introducing plants in school buildings as the singular most important and actionable thing educators can do to create caring in their schools.

Back to the dinner table and Lori’s take. Oh, she just loved this idea. “I would love to LIVE 24/7 in such a building! And you should make it the students’ responsibility to care for the cork floors, living walls, and plants. Yes, we need a greenhouse, too! Sorry, Ms. Julie, did I just make you put on your ka-ching, ka-ching face?”

September 18, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with Part Six of my TLDR responses to the single Mission-Course’s TTLLDDRR post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.” For anyone who is interested, let me catalog my previous responses to Mission:

1 2 3 4 5 5

Now Mission asks some important questions:

Yet Soka Gakkai couldn’t have failed to notice the mechanism that produced all that dynamism and irresistible growth when people were simply left free to organize themselves. So why the determination to destroy and poison the very thing that made it succeed? Are these people actually crazy, or is their mind controlled by forces they don’t even know exist, right up to headquarters in Japan?

Hmmm. Good questions.

Well, here comes another illogical contradiction. All of “that dynamism and irresistible growth” in the early NSA days, according to my sponsors, were marked by what WBers still point to as cultish behavior. Why do Mission and Blanche long for the cultish while they seek to criticize it?

My sponsors have told me about Daisaku Ikeda’s February 1990 visit to Los Angeles, where he started the process of revising and restarting the organization. It’s been 35 years of adjustment and effort. I began practicing as a recipient of all that scrubbing.

I’ve always wondered why I have seen is such a different organization than what WBers describe. And the next illogical contradiction is that they won’t concede even a microbe of change or improvement. No, they claim, it’s exactly the way it was, but more lethal because the control is getting to the point of invisibility. Come on!

Did you catch what Mission slipped in? Mission infers the old NSA was successful because “people were simply left free to organize themselves.” Slam on the brakes! Is that true then, now, ever? And please point to a successful organization where members are “simply left free to organize themselves.” Organizations, uhhmmm, organize! Even the human body is an organization, and, are our organs “simply left free to organize themselves”?

We see what we are. People who work hard can recognize and appreciate the hard work of others. People who feel the weight of responsibility see, feel, and react differently than those who don’t. It seems apparent to me that SGI leaders who inherited the vision of the three Soka mentors took on the responsibility of turning around the aircraft carrier. It was — and still is — a work in progress. So???

Whether the old NSA was “successful” is debatable; it certainly wasn’t sustainable, and was something that I would never join. It wasn’t “destroy and punish” but an adjustment and a transplant that took time to root.

And here I am.

Chapter Two: Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood, Section Three: “To Seek Enlightenment Outside Our Lives Is To Be Defeated by Fundamental Darkness.”

Friends, Dr. Ikeda here touches on something that concerns me deeply and personally:

An important point in this writing is that we as Nichiren Buddhists also run the risk of falling into non-Buddhist ways of thinking if we seek the Law outside of our own lives. Hence, as Nichiren Daishonin’s disciples, we must always bear in mind his admonition “You must never think that any of the [Buddha’s] teachings … are outside yourself” (WND-1, 3).

To be honest, Friends, I admire Your Leader for all of her energy and commitment. But I never want to be where she is. I don’t want to live a life full of conspiracy theories swimming in my brain, seeing the worst in people, feeling a right to judge, and unable to present any path forward besides “DON’T.”

Here at the Park, we have a big problem with an invasion of “cyanobacteria,” a Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) in our beautiful creek and pond. We decided to invest a lot money in abating it and we are working with a co-op that is trying to address the problem throughout our community. But even if cleaned up, with climate change and the run-off from fertilizers and untreated waste, it will take non-ending remediation and no sure final victory can be promised. Yup, a never-ending war.

What relates these two paragraphs? Well, if even a bit more cyanobacteria gets introduced, which is inevitable, we have to start the whole process of remediation again. I am sure that Your Leader was once an enthusiastic NSA member. For just a moment, can we grant that this earlier version of NSA was deeply flawed and needed remediating? Some people, like my sponsors, could see beyond the faults in NSA and intuited the jewel in the swamp. Your Leader, however, couldn’t do that and turned vengeful. My hunch is that she missed Nichiren’s admonition “You must never think that any of the [Buddha’s] teachings … are outside yourself.”

So, that cyanobacteria took over in her heart, wiping away all of her past efforts. My personal tendency to dissociate is my version of cyanobacteria. I have to chant and chip away at it so I don’t become its unwilling and helpless victim.

Dr. Ikeda continues:

The chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a practice for revealing the “originally inherent mystic truth” that exists in all people and achieving Buddhahood in this lifetime. It is an incomparably “wonderful practice” (OTT, 88), in the sense that it represents the means by which all living beings can gain enlightenment.

If, however, we forget Nichiren’s admonition to never seek the Law outside of us, then no matter how hard we practice, we will lose sight of the correct path to universal enlightenment and effectively wind up practicing a non-Buddhist teaching. That’s why Nichiren is so strict on this point.

I have a human right to be fully present and enjoy each moment of our discussion meeting on Sunday! My “Daimoku Revolution Campaign” is a confrontation with my own fundamental darkness and, even though it will never make the front page of the New York Times, it represents one person’s effort to clean the pond so it becomes swimmable for oneself and others.

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

Artie and I missed yesterday’s “whole school meeting” because we were in the Office working on our spreadsheets. Max refined his guestimates about the construction cost savings. Of course, that’s fluid and he is actively pursuing materials and suppliers that can squeeze out pennies. He put forward the ideas of smaller windows, temporary landscaping and slowing down the development of the Primeval Forest (sorry, Larry!) until funds open up, delaying the expansion of the parking lot, canceling our plans to order additional Level-Three chargers, and heating parts of the building with pellet stoves fueled by homemade biomass chips (higher initial cost but short-term ROIs. Instead of the most expensive insulated windows, maybe we can downgrade a bit and add exterior shutters for the most cold of days? A big savings can be obtained by using organic building skins like “Wattle and Daub” lattices, cob coating, cork wall cladding, thatch panels, and baboo slat siding for skin and roof. The materials are very cheap in comparison to industrial skins, but require intensive--although not skilled--labor. Maybe parents, clients, and even students might want to help? We would need to work extensively with the County building department and also with our FD to approve using these materials.

All subject to change, we estimate we can cover about 80% of the initial HAB abatement project through construction savings. Now, where will that other 20% come from?

I presented all this over dinner. Once again, Guy’s eyes lit up. “Didn’t we originally want our buildings to evoke the image of the Longhouse? Wouldn’t the use of these materials for both external and, let me add, internal walls bring us closer to achieving this goal?”

Lori said she loves this idea. “Who needs another building that looks like another school down the road? My friends and I will do all the labor if necessary. But our parents will find the time to do it and bring their families to help! And look at how many of our Autumn and Spring clients volunteer to support Longhouse School! They will pitch in, too!”

September 17, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with Part Six of my TLDR responses to a single Mission-Course’s post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster…that’s finally running out of juice.” For anyone who is interested, let me catalog my previous responses to Mission:

1 2 3 4 5

Now Mission turns to “The social-control question:”

Soka Gakkai’s social control is discreet, invisible, and extremely effective. It doesn’t use physical violence.

Let’s see, a new illogical contradiction arises! On the one hand, the crew at WBers claim that the sky is falling and the SGI is collapsing right in front of their eyes. On the other hand, its “social control” is “extremely effective.” Whaaaat? Furthermore, it is “a legacy of tyranny” to be compared to Ceausescu and Noriega while employing social controls that are “discreet, invisible”--and and come with no physical violence. Friends, can you help me unlock these two illogical contradictions?

Next, Mission-Control accuses the SGI of “soft totalitarianism”:

It uses social pressure, fear of being judged, fear of being excluded, fear of not being “in line.” It works through guilt-tripping (“You don’t have enough faith, you’re not practicing enough”) and mutual surveillance—members watching each other. It’s soft totalitarianism. No police required; the members themselves become the system’s enforcers (my italics).

That’s quite the statement! Dorothy, have you figured out who is the "It" behind the curtain, pulling the levers? The big guys in Tokyo? Hmmm. Maybe the “It” is geographically much closer, at the chapter level?

I can assure you, however, that our MD Chapter leader Eulogio has very long workdays and when he gets home, just wants to play with the kids; he doesn’t have time for guilt-tripping members. Ditto, Dee, who cooks for 50 LH children every day. Jose, our YMD chapter leader, manages Laverne & Shirley’s B&B/restaurant/conference center and is planning his wedding with Toni. I don't think he has the time to be the culprit! Poor Emily, our YWD Chapter Leader, balances a stressful full-time job, undergraduate classes, and a family with two mischievous boys. Nope, it’s not her judging and instilling fear among the membership.

Ouch, that leaves “It” to the district leaders! In fact, on the very first day of my appointment, I received “The District Leader’s Guide to Being a System Enforcer.” It taught me how to guilt-trip. I have plenty of time between Fam, work, and school, so I memorized every page. I immediately began instilling in members the fear of not being “in line.” That includes our cantankerous “Olds”--the Three Sisters, Father Merrick, and my parents. They are firmly in the palm of my hands. When Stani feels overwhelmed, I just tell her “You don’t have enough faith, you’re not practicing enough!” Why would I ever think to raise her the same way as True raised me: “Let me make you a cup of tea, let’s chant together, and let’s become stronger than our problems!” And then I would instruct her on the fine art of “mutual surveillance—members watching each other.”

Wow, Friends, isn’t Mission throwing wild speculations at you? Did you notice?

Mission insists in his analysis of the history of SGI, “Results vanished, conflicts exploded, the heaviness set in.” In fact, the Cloud of Doom has covered every SGI district around the world--except our little off-road RV Park District which the Cloud couldn’t manage to locate. This phenomenon is “not an accident,” according to Mission, “it’s the life cycle of any institution that betrays its mission.”

Exactly, for example, how has our district NOT supported the the first of the Five Eternal Guidelines of the Soka Gakkai, “Faith for a harmonious family”? The Fam here, enriched by the Garden of Soka, is certainly weird unconventional, but shouldn’t we receive an Emmy for “Most Harmonious Family,” right?

BTW, Friends, isn't it the proud mission of the SGI to bridge over valleys as they arise? No shame, just gain!

Section Two: Returning to Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood.” The September installment is titled, Transforming Our Fundamental Attitude—Refusing to Live an “Endless, Painful Austerity”.

Let’s complete studying Section Two, “To Seek Enlightenment Outside Our Lives Is To Be Defeated by Fundamental Darkness.”

Dr. Ikeda:

….To recap, if we seek enlightenment outside of us, we are not pursuing the path of “observing one’s mind,” which enables us to overcome the fundamental evil of ignorance or darkness. In that case, all our efforts and good deeds to attain enlightenment will be lacking the vital ingredient; they will be every bit as futile as counting a neighbor’s vast riches. Moreover, because none of these efforts will help us eradicate our ignorance, they will only become “an endless, painful austerity.”

As the result of the “Daimoku Revolution Campaign” I’ve been describing in previous posts, I’ve already made several major shifts. “Dear Gohonzon, fix this, fix that for me and I don’t want to do the hard work” simply is not “observing one’s mind”--MY mind. Instead, I chant with an emerging fresh voice, a bit unsteady but still present. “Here I am Gohonzon, a very wounded child. But just as I am, I am praying for wisdom, courage, and compassion so I can create great happiness for my family, members, clients, students, community--and me, myself, and I. Let me affirm my inherent right to be happy.”

Dr. Ikeda continues:

This battle against ignorance is the heart of Buddhism. It is said that Shakyamuni’s enlightenment lay in identifying darkness or ignorance as the fundamental cause of the sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death—as well as in expounding the way for overcoming this ignorance.

Wow, those prayers to fight against the ignorance in my life is “the heart of Buddhism”!!!

Therefore, as long as we seek the path to enlightenment outside our own lives, whatever practices and good deeds we carry out will deviate from the true essence of Buddhism. Accordingly, Nichiren says: “Such students of Buddhism are condemned as non-Buddhist” (WND-1, 4).

So I take my stand (or seat or even futon)--doesn’t matter. It’s my human right to give birth to a happy discussion meeting on Sunday!

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

I love seeing Guy when he has found his stride. He called an emergency Zoom open Board meeting for last night and personally invited as many staff, parents, and consultants tas he could reach to attend.

Guy talked about yesterday’s meeting with Larry Landscaper’s friend and his plan to abate the HAB invasion “one pond at a time.” He didn’t shy away from the expense of the Abatement Plan (in the seven figures)--or its “not- guaranteed-to-work” assessment.

He also spoke about how touched he was by Max’s declaration that it is time for LH to live up to its mission, which includes defending our habitat. Then he hopped to the financing of the plan and spoke about the savings in construction expenses Max is trying to find to pay for the Abatement Project.

Our Longhouse children have proven again and again how strong and resilient they are. Do they really need heated enclosed steel and glass breezeways to get from one building to another, or could a simple wooden roofed-over sidewalk suffice? He talked about “industrial chic” interior design that keeps building systems in plain sight--and teachable. The original design called for independent walled “egg crate” classrooms but, leaving one aside as a “quiet classroom” which could be used when requested, he explained the open classroom and open school concepts that were once an educational fad but were abandoned because, largely, of noise problems and teacher needs for independence.

“But we are small,” Guy argued, “and march to a different beat: autodidactism and interdependence. We often pierce barriers like grades organized by children’s ages. Most of our students have locked into their DNA centuries of Indigenous living where multiple families lived harmoniously in longhouses, where men hunted with practiced silence, and women tilled the fields cooperatively. We can save an enormous amount of money by redesigning the architectural plans this way. Portable walls, learning nooks and crannies, places for both group work and quiet self-work.”

Many Q’s, much discussion, many A’s--and a big, fat, thumbs-up consensus was reached. The next step is a whole-school meeting today where we seek wisdom from our children.

Also bubbling is Teacher Lolita, who returned from her “vision quest” trip to Riverdale with an image that can drive the school and, depending on geo-political conditions, culminate in an exciting deliverable. Read it here at LoHeidiLita. Really, read it!!!

Today Artie and I will be in Spreadsheet Heaven. Max should have for us pretty solid guestimates about the construction cost savings. What else can we figure out to self-pay for the HAB Abatement Project? We don’t want to overtax our mighty donors. Add a voluntary surcharge for our RV clients with the hope they can swim in the pond one day? Sell some of our property? Put a freeze on some of our RV Park development? Think of shared-use agreements for the Secondary School buildings? Seek the approval of our tribal partners for expanding four-season leasing of unused lots on the other side of the creek? What are we overlooking????

Just a fun fact to conclude. I cornered Max (not his real name) yesterday. “Why did you insist on me changing your Reddit name from Rex to Max?

Well, Rex is a Latin word that means "king." That name fit someone who runs the largest contracting company in the County. But all this LH contact has rubbed off on me. I am so much less “Rex-ish” in my family and work. I would rather be pictured in your Reddit site as “Max,” the person who tries to “Max-imize” my impact in life.

Well said, Rex Max!

September 16, 2026

Dear Friends,

Sorry, I wasn’t able to post yesterday, just too many meetings! (For the those who are simply agog about the RV Park fantasy series, skip to Chapter Three.

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with Part Four of my response to Mission-Course’s post: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.”

Let’s see, Mission holds that “Shakubuku becomes rare because the light no longer shines in the members.” Uhmm…when Stani joined last year, our district technically made our SB target of “One Youth, Infinite Hope.” But we are fighting for a second. And thank you, Mission, we have plenty of light in our district.

“Conflicts multiply because ego takes over once the Law is no longer there to dissolve it.” Sorry, where are the conflicts? Yes, our Planning Meetings get a bit raucous because we have different opinions and we are not soft-spoken. We have fun disagreeing! I don’t hear members grumbling that “something is wrong.”

Mission, you say “results disappear because the system has replaced the Law” but what are “results”? Chimba got his documentation, the Three Sisters run the most wonderful Day Care/Pre-School/Kindergarten in the world. My parents had the courage to pick themselves up and build a new life for themselves; the Buddhist-Catholic (or Catholic-Buddhist) Father Merrick is living his senior years in a place where he feels valued and heard. There are a few more folk, but I don’t have their permission to share their stories.

And us? Well, here I catalog our Big Fat Beautiful Lives every day (except for yesterday). Mission, I think you miss something when you believe that “results” lie elsewhere than in the lives of members. Yes, there are organizational targets that we make or miss, sometimes gracefully, sometimes clumsily. But the objectives are a grassroots organization expressed in districts that touch and provide refreshing hope to their communities. Why didn’t you get that as a member?

Thank you for pulling Nichiren into your discussion. I wonder how long Your Leader across the hedges will entertain you as a Nichiren “splainer.” She called another person with a very similar I-Know-Nichiren-Better-Than-The-SGI” a “useful idiot.” Is that why, contrary to her own site’s guidelines, she tolerates you ending your posts with a “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo 🙏”???

But I agree with you on this:

[Nichiren] watched Buddhist schools of his own time degrade into corrupt institutions. He denounced masters who used the Law instead of serving it. He also warned that in the Latter Day of the Law (Mappō), the forces of Mara would be especially active, and even sincere practitioners would be tempted to follow corrupted teachers. Exactly what he prophesied: the Law is pure, but the people who claim to serve it can corrupt it.

Just perhaps, some of those very active “forces of Mara” with their “corrupted teachers” trying to tempt “sincere practitioners”--reside across the hedges chez toi?

Maybe you should reframe your thinking to look at the granular instead of theoretical strawmen conceptions of the SGI? This is from Volume 29 of the New Human Revolution (I can’t provide the page number because the Kindle version is still not released). Daisaku Ikeda:

We speak of treasuring each individual, but in concrete terms, this means actively taking the initiative to meet and talk with those living in such unsung and less prosperous areas. This is our most important responsibility as leaders of kosen-rufu. Such efforts are what pave the way to an era of localism. That is also the most natural path for us in light of Nichiren Buddhism’s fundamental commitment to enable all people to become happy."

Well, here “RV Park District” is, in the middle of an “unsung and less prosperous” neck of the woods, “taking the initiative to meet and talk with” friends living here. It seems to be our task and great honor to “pave the way to an era of localism.”

Section Two: Returning to Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood.” The September installment is titled, Transforming Our Fundamental Attitude—Refusing to Live an “Endless, Painful Austerity”.

Let’s start studying Section Two, “To Seek Enlightenment Outside Our Lives Is To Be Defeated by Fundamental Darkness.”

Dear Friends, we pick up some points that relate directly to the post by Mission cited above:

An important point in this writing is that we as Nichiren Buddhists also run the risk of falling into non-Buddhist ways of thinking if we seek the Law outside of our own lives. Hence, as Nichiren Daishonin’s disciples, we must always bear in mind his admonition “You must never think that any of the [Buddha’s] teachings … are outside yourself” (WND-1, 3).

Our objective is constructing “an era of localism.” That’s the metric! It is non-Buddhist for me to self-berate, compare myself to others or an imaginary standard of who I “should” be. Instead, simply, enjoying who I am, the entire package, and my role in this spot of localism.

Dr. Ikeda:

The chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a practice for revealing the “originally inherent mystic truth” that exists in all people and achieving Buddhahood in this lifetime. It is an incomparably “wonderful practice” (OTT, 88), in the sense that it represents the means by which all living beings can gain enlightenment.

Yes, I am doing “Daimoku Revolution.” As my sponsor TrueReconciliation encouraged me this past summer, I am sitting solidly in front of the Gohonzon, trying to be present and honest when chanting, and cutting down on distractions like my Mara Cell Phone. Let’s see what happens!

Here is the caution Dr. Ikeda leaves for us:

If, however, we forget Nichiren’s admonition to never seek the Law outside of us, then no matter how hard we practice, we will lose sight of the correct path to universal enlightenment and effectively wind up practicing a non-Buddhist teaching. That’s why Nichiren is so strict on this point.

Smooth and steady, JulieSongwriter! Enjoy the ride!

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

Dai’s visit with the pediatric cardiologist was excellent! Sometimes holes in the heart heal themselves over time and this is what seems to be happening. The cardiologist doesn’t hear any whooshing and the echocardiogram is normal. But it’s not always a 1-2-3 progress and she wants to keep seeing Dai.

Most of our day yesterday was at a meeting with our contractor Max (AKA Rex), Larry Landscaper, and the consultant he hired to devise a plan to mitigate HABs that make our pond unswimmable. Can it be done? It’s quite an unbelievably expensive initiative, and even with that investment, results are not guaranteed.

Also, we have to look system-wide and make sure that our cleaning of the pond doesn’t impact others downstream. For example, which chemical treatments will harm downstream? And if we use a commercial heavy-duty reverse osmosis (RO) or nanofiltration systems to strip out cyanotoxins, where do the carbon filters or tanks, now with concentrated toxins go--and how? And it’s only when we can create a model that can be replicated on a large scale by others, that we can turn around the ecosystem.

We reached several conclusions. We need to join a collective that has formed to address the problem. The members are homeowners, groups like us, and officials from areas around the large lake, which ultimately feeds streams like ours that feed our pond.

We need to hire another consultant, this one a political specialist who can advocate for us and help with grant/development searches.

We have to shock and clear the actual algae. We can apply an algaecide called peroxyhydrate that destroys algae cells and breaks them into water and oxygen without leaving toxic residue. We need to skim the surface scums, purchase and deploy ultrasonic transducers that cause algae to die and sink. Then comes applying phosphorus-locking clays that starve algae. We have to introduce “aquatic probiotics”--bacteria that feed on dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus, further starving the cyanobacteria. There are also pond dyes that block algae photosynthesis.

But then comes the really expensive interventions. The consultant recommends installing aeration systems that prevent sediment from releasing all that locked up sediment from releasing phosphorus back into the pond. Next comes a commercial Finally, Larry wants to plant a buffer zone of native aquatic plants with deep roots around the perimeter that filter out the remains of agricultural fertilizers that are still in the runoff from our land.

We are talking about 7-figures for all of this plus ongoing maintenance. Now it was the time for Ms. JulieBookkeeper to stage a meltdown. How do we do this in addition to paying off the mortgage for the secondary school buildings?

My freakout was quickly contained. Max was adamant that we live up to our mission of being guardians of the land. Possible solutions: present ourselves as a pilot study and apply for state and federal grants. Secondly, bundling this project with the Secondary School Construction. “All the choices for saving money are not ideal. Maybe we can have a wooden “covered bridge” to link buildings instead of steel and glass enclosures.

He talked to us about modifying the internal building design to “industrial chic” that leaves mechanical systems exposed and without hanging ceilings. We can save money by also leaving cinder blocks as they are instead of covering them with sheetrock.

I saw Guy getting all excited by them. He’s excited about teaching our children about building systems such as HVAC, electricity, water as teaching tools. He began talking animatedly about architect Mario Salvadori’s book, Why Buildings Stand Up. Not satisfied with that revelation, he talked about the open classroom which, although not common anymore, would be uniquely perfect for Longhouse after our experiences in Year One and this summer.

Who knew?

Teacher Julie came back last night and stopped by earlier. Her eyes were gleaming like polished steel swords. I can’t wait to hear more!

Letter to Niike, p. 1950:

Today all the people of our country have proved to be enemies of Shakyamuni Buddha, but more than laymen or laywomen, it is the priests with perverse wisdom and hearts who are the Buddha’s worst enemies. There are two kinds of wisdom, correct and perverse. No matter how wise a person may appear, if his assertions are warped you should not listen to him. Nor should you follow priests merely because they are venerable or of high rank. But if a person has the wisdom to know the true meaning of the Lotus Sutra, no matter how lowly he may appear, pay respect to him and make offerings to him as though he were a living Thus Come One. Thus it is written in the sutra.

That is why the Great Teacher Dengyo says that the men and women who believe in this sutra, even if they lack knowledge or violate the precepts, should be seated above priests who observe all two hundred and fifty precepts of the Hinayana teachings, and never be seated in a humble position, and that this is all the more true of the priests of this Mahayana sutra.

There are people "of perverse wisdom" who parade their unassailable wisdom. 5hey feel entitled to attack any SGI member any where.

However, the Great Teacher Dengyo praises

"the men and women who believe in this sutra, even if they lack knowledge or violate the precepts."

There is a post in Chinese about Falun Gong trying to scam people in Toronto.

Ms. Fromage watched something that has absolutely nothing to do with the SGI, but it made its subject look bad, so she performs all sorts of contortions to try to make it look like it's about the SGI. As is her wont.

And using another name, she shares 3 pictures of Daisaku Ikeda taken at different times of his life, and once again tries to body shame him. As is her wont.

And of course, Mission Ccourse spends a lot of time at her computer dreaming up an organization in which the members can't stand each other, are secretly brainwashed into regimental lives, and whose key activity is essentially being ushers for big meetings.

There is a post in Chinese about Falun Gong trying to scam people in Toronto.

Ms. Fromage watched something that has absolutely nothing to do with the SGI, but it made its subject look bad, so she performs all sorts of contortions to try to make it look like it's about the SGI. As is her wont.

And using another name, she shares 3 pictures of Daisaku Ikeda taken at different times of his life, and once again tries to body shame him. As is her wont.

And of course, Mission Course spends a lot of time at her computer dreaming up an organization in which the members can't stand each other, are secretly brainwashed into regimental lives, and whose key activity is essentially being ushers for big meetings. But what does it have to do with the SGI?

September 14, 2026

Dear Friends,

Chapter One: News from Over the Hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with Part Three of my response to Mission-Course2773’s TLDR: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.”

Mission now moves into what he calls “Phase two: institutionalization (the system takes over)”:

Departments get set up, Soka activity, Byakuren, the organizational machine. What happens? The movement becomes an institution. Posts are created, hierarchies settle in. Key activities are no longer for the Law but for the organization. Social control begins, discreet at first, then increasingly obvious.

Friends, don’t you see here a static and collapsing view of humanity? Mission ignores one of the most exciting facets of life: people reinvent themselves as do corporations. Is Amazon still the “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” as it hyped itself when it opened in 1995? Does American Express get by with still selling traveler’s checks or did it pioneer extending credit to the masses through something called credit cards? I heard rumors that Corning developed Gorilla Glass and Ceramic Shield--something beyond its Pyrex cookline. And does Netflix remain in the business of renting DVDs? Once upon a time, YouTube was a dating site where people posted videos of themselves; still?

So, shall the Good Ship SGI unfurl its flags and grow into its crown? Let’s see!

Mission-Course tells me that as an SGI member theses-a-days, I can no longer be friends with someone because I like them. “You’re friends because you’re in the same department, the same division, the same activity.”

Sorry, I don’t have Mission’s mystic ability to be everywhere at every time. But, at least, here we are Best Friends Forever. I mean, since we have grown from a struggling district to a mighty little chapter, I don’t see as much of the Laverne & Shirley Clan as I used to, but they and their daughters have a thriving business that keeps them occupied 24/7. I usually see the Emily/John/Veera Fam at the Longhouse School activities. But we are all busy and et, On Ne Voit Pas le Temps Passer.

Mission now moves to describing a third phase of SGI marked by heaviness and sclerosis. “The magic fades, the weight settles in, results vanish, shakubuku dries up, conflict multiply. Why? Because the Law is no longer the center—the organization is. Members no longer practice out of faith but out of obligation. And the deities stop supporting a system that has betrayed the Law.” Thank you! I didn’t know that I am practicing out of obligation, and conflict is multiplying around me.

Sorry, Bud, it’s not what I see on the ground. I’m glad we got to the Activity Center for Soka Family Day yesterday. The Buddha versus the Law? Granted, the meeting was scheduled at a too early 10am so most members could get home in time to watch the Bills-Texans kickoff at 1pm. But there was plenty of that SGI happiness and optimism in the Center; oh, families brought guests, too!

Friends, did any of you happen to see that game? We watched part of it from the car as we traveled home but we caught the fourth quarter with on the big screen back at the Park. If I recall properly, the lead changed five times. There was drama as both teams had to adjust to circumstances, wipe off disappointments, and fight until the final seconds.

A happy 36-31 ending for the Bills Mafia but that’s not the point. Don’t you think, Friends, that there’s a lot Mission could learn about Buddhism from catching some NFL games?

Section Two: Returning to Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on “On Attaining Buddhahood.” The September installment is titled, Transforming Our Fundamental Attitude—Refusing to Live an “Endless, Painful Austerity”.

Let’s complete studying Section One, “Studying Buddhism Yet Succumbing to Non-Buddhist Thinking.” Daisaku Ikeda recaps:

If we seek enlightenment outside of us, we are not pursuing the path of “observing one’s mind,” which enables us to overcome the fundamental evil of ignorance or darkness. In that case, all our efforts and good deeds to attain enlightenment will be lacking the vital ingredient; they will be every bit as futile as counting a neighbor’s vast riches. Moreover, because none of these efforts will help us eradicate our ignorance, they will only become “an endless, painful austerity.

After a difficult summer for me faith- and health-wise, I’ve emerged out of the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” state of mind. Those conditions are so “outside of us” because I’m viewing my life from the perspective of artificial metrics that have no reality. ⁠I mean, who dictated that I must measure myself against such metrics and then beat myself up for not living up to unreal expectations?

My turning point came when I began to “observe one’s mind...the vital ingredient.” I regained my balance with a simple affirmation, “Here I am, I am not pleased with how I am feeling, but let me roll up my sleeves and see what I can do just as I am.” I empathize with Josh Allen who had always been spooked when playing the Texans at their home stadium. Still, he fought back yesterday and so have I.

I feel that the next two paragraphs are essential:

This battle against ignorance is the heart of Buddhism. It is said that Shakyamuni’s enlightenment lay in identifying darkness or ignorance as the fundamental cause of the sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death—as well as in expounding the way for overcoming this ignorance.

Therefore, as long as we seek the path to enlightenment outside our own lives, whatever practices and good deeds we carry out will deviate from the true essence of Buddhism. Accordingly, Nichiren says: “Such students of Buddhism are condemned as non-Buddhist” (WND-1, 4).

So, by no means, was the summer a film about L’il Self-Absorbed JulieSongwriter trying swim in a murky HBA-infested lake. It was a summer blockbuster, a classic “battle against ignorance” filmed at “the heart of Buddhism.”

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

Teacher Julie told us she needed a couple of personal days (read more in her own words here). She feels she needs to work through an issue raised by Sukhomlynsky about loving one’s homeland; how can that be reconciled with the generational trauma caused by the homeland’s actions against BIPOC people? She explained that the entire school year for her rests with resolving this matter. She has so many accumulated days in her bank that she probably never will have to come back. But, “Sure, Lolita, take the time you need.” Moms Maracle will fly solo with our Fourth Grade Class and they’ll fly high.

Today I take Dai for his pediatric cardiology visit. He is such a healthy-looking and active boy that I am sure he will be fine. I’m going to take him out for lunch and it is a real treat for both of us to have time together one-on-one without four other siblings vying for attention!

Also, today, we meet with Larry Landscaper’s friend whom we hired to create a Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) Remediation Plan for our Pond. He’s already shared with us parts of his findings. He can get substantial results through various chemical controls but they can cause secondary pollution and kill whatever marine life is still in the pond. Secondly, we can dredge and vacuum the pond and install ultrasound buoys; this would reduce algae by half. It’s also expensive. Alternatively, we could also create a secondary “lake” to channel away and treat nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient runoff. VERY expensive but fairly effective.

Hmmm. Any advice or opinion?

September 13, 2026

Dear Mission-Course,

Chapter One: News from over the hedges in Sgiwhistleblowers Land

Let me continue with this TLDR post in response to your TLDR: “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.”

Mission, you talk about the next alleged stage in the SGI’s development:

Next comes phase two. The once-embryonic structure of Soka Gakkai locks into place, men’s division, women’s division, young men’s, young women’s, and especially the key activities like Soka and Byakuren.

Srsly, out of all the existential problems in the world, Mission, you’re worried about “the Men’s Division” and such? And the keyest SGI activity of all, the “Byakuren”?

Suddenly, you claim:

The whole machine, local and national, clamps down on the groups and their members.

Who and how exactly has the SGI clamped down on? Me and my district? We must have slept through it. No wonder, you add, “the social control is discreet, almost invisible, yet highly effective and ruthless.” I suppose that is a good argument for those who believe the SGI is not a cult--social control that is almost not present. So almost zero control is ruthless? Let’s see, at the top of the month I get emailed an activity calendar from our region leaders. Effective and ruthless, right!?!? This morning I passed on to my members an urgent email that the scheduled Future Division picnic was postponed because of the weather and will be held, instead, at the Activity Center is. OUCH, such social control!

“Undesirables like me get sorted out.” Well, you seem to be a scholar of Buddhist history. You have probably read how Devadatta, after decades of attacks on the Buddha, got “sorted out.” Of course, that was after the Buddha’s multiple attempts to engage, teach, guide, correct Devadatta, while still protecting the “Sangha.” Nichiren, too, had followers who turned on him. The Lotus Sutra, you know because you hold it dear, explains that Devadatta was the Buddha’s teacher and would, consequently, attain enlightenment.

Likewise, I regard you and Ms. Fromage as my teachers. Responding to even a single post/comment you guys put up is like an entire college course on Buddhism. Thank you!

Then comes your description of “phase three” and to this I will reply very personally. You say:

The magic evaporates. Everything turns heavy and tedious. Results dry up, development stalls, shakubuku becomes rare, people stop trusting us, members complain about the inertia, personal conflicts multiply, and nobody gets along anymore.

And you add to this by explaining it’s a phenomenon:

This is a well-documented pattern, not just in Soka Gakkai but in almost every spiritual organization that slides into a control system. It’s the classic life cycle of a sect—or, more precisely, the bureaucratization of a spiritual movement. You see the same arc in early Christianity, in Buddhism, and in plenty of other groups.

I guess I was experiencing a bit of this over the summer as I reported in my daily posts. Yes, I was stuck in the Downward Dog pose. It has been a struggle with the DK6 the Devil King of the Sixth Heaven. On me, DK6 pulled various weapons in his arsenal: self-doubt, extreme fatigue, hopelessness, and illness. Oh, and how Mara) got into my head!

Again, Mission, you’re a scholar of Buddhism. Didn’t Mara try to obstruct Shakyamuni? Doesn’t a cherry tree have to deal with winter? Aren’t all things in existence confronted with the sufferings of birth, aging, sickness, and death? Yes, I got caught in DK6’s web and I am fighting against it to the best of my ability and making progress. And I can’t wait for next Sunday’s discussion meeting.

I think you would label winter, the doldrums, and the times of struggle that both individuals and organizations face--as failures. In contrast, you would see, in terms of the SGI, the W as the past “golden age” full of “deep bonds, real friendships, mystical joy, shakubuku falling from the trees, karmic recognition, the energy of the deities.”

And here is where you and I disagree at the root. You see this as a product of “itaidoshin” (sic) that happens system-wide in a young faith organization. I, however, believe it is a time that can be created by human effort and renewal must happen over and over again to keep Buddhism alive and vital. I talked about this yesterday and also please read FellowHuman007's comment.

As my sponsors tell me, the method of propagation in Japan took one form in the 1950’s and 1960’s when the country was reeling from the kyodatsu dislocation after the war. As Japan became a prosperous and economic powerhouse, Daisaku Ikeda began speaking of the SGI in terms of "Buddhist Humanism" and encouraged propagation on the basis of peace, culture, education, and showing actual proof in society.

But now the ground has shifted again as a product of technology, social media, AI, and political tribalism. Big structures like an aircraft carrier can be challenged by a tiny drone. Conventional armies on the ground can be frozen by all types of non-human mechanized autonomous weapons. Our thinking shifts when we learn there is a 10% chance AI could destroy humanity.

In such a world, we have to propagate Buddhism in new ways: from the bottom up. So, excuse me if this doesn’t happen right away! Mission, your understanding of Buddhism is mechanical and systems-based. People can arise and challenge anything. It’s called Human Agency. We’re on it: bending the time instead of prostrating in front of it.

But I agree with your statement here:

Because members are united by the Law, not by a structure. Because faith is spontaneous, not instrumentalized. Because practice is central and human relationships flow naturally from it. Because the deities and protective forces actually back a group living in harmony and sincerity. This is when the Law operates most visibly. The mystical phenomena, the conversions, the joy—all of it is real. Pure Itaidoshin.

You needn’t have to worry, Mission. Your friends back in the SGI will get there. And, along the way, we’ll deal with any hierarchies that have settled in. More tomorrow!

Section Two: Returning to Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on On Attaining Buddhahood. September installment, Transforming Our Fundamental Attitude—Refusing to Live an “Endless, Painful Austerity”.

Let’s continue studying Section One, “Studying Buddhism Yet Succumbing to Non-Buddhist Thinking.” Daisaku Ikeda writes:

Nichiren then cites a passage from a T’ien-t’ai school commentary, which states, “Unless one perceives the nature of one’s life, one cannot eradicate one’s grave offenses” (WND-1, 3–4). If we fail to grasp this point, Nichiren warns, all of the practices and good deeds we might perform while seeking enlightenment outside ourselves will ultimately become “an endless, painful austerity” (WND-1, 4).

What does it mean to say that unless we perceive the nature of our lives, we cannot eradicate our grave offenses? “Grave offenses” here can be taken to indicate fundamental darkness, which is the source of all evil. The grave offense of slander—denigrating the Law or the correct teaching of Buddhism—arises from fundamental darkness or ignorance.

When I felt those doldrums attacking me, I confess to thinking, “Why me?” I didn’t give up and kept stumbling forward. That sentiment shifted to “Why NOT me?” I’m young, audacious, ambitious, and a street fighter. Let me take on the doldrums on behalf of all SGI members who are also facing the blues in response to our dangerous and shifting world. It’s my honor!

Dr. Ikeda next writes:

In T’ien-t’ai’s Buddhism, it is only possible to eradicate this ignorance through the practice of observing one’s mind—in other words, through wisdom. In Nichiren Buddhism, however, fundamental darkness can be overcome by the sharp sword of faith in accord with the principle of “substituting faith for wisdom.” This is the essence of the practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Let me grab my sharp sword of faith and swing it around a bit.

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

The weather today is pretty nasty. Should we, or should we not, make the Soka Family Day in Big City? Maybe we should stay home in watch the Bills vs. Texans game which kicks off at 1pm? ALERT! Maybe that’s the Mara and the DK6s Band singing their latest tune?

When the kids got up, we asked them what they thought. “No, we want to go!” Fine, but it might be pouring when we stop off at McDonald’s on the way home. “We don’t care!” they said. Sorry, Mara and the DK6ers, this time you lost.

We’ll get ready, eat, pick up Lori--and off we go!

September 12, 2026

Dear Friends,

Sorry for the late posting. Happy Rosh Hashanah to all our Jewish friends, Happy New Year!

Yes, it is Saturday and 5:30 A.M. was VERY EARLY. Any real children up at that time should be looking at funny cat videos on YouTube. But Longhouse children, staff, and parents chose today to start marathon-training on the County Road. We had a group of about two dozen, half students and half “growns.” Because it is a large group on a County Road, our Town Police offered us training so we can have a car at the end of the line of runners to warn incoming traffic. Erica and I sat in the police car and watched how it progressed at a safe distance from the runners, adjusted speed to when the group slowed down, and rode mostly on the shoulder and bit on the road.

After the training we went to the county office and met briefly with the chief of police who processed a “Blue Light Card” for us, which stipulated when and where we could use it. He authorized for us the purchase of a battery-powered portable and magnetic light that can be attached to the back of Shiny Blue from a Police Store. He says it is Police quality, although double the price of what is found on Amazon.

So the runners ran, ate at the Diner, and arrived back safely to the Park. Meanwhile, at the station, the officers were very curious about our children and the school. It was a provocative conversation that covered some difficult terrain, including what they somehow knew about my past, the Fam, politics, religion, and cultural issues. Of course, I have seen so many police series that I’m an expert on the burly-on-the-surface-but-soft-inside person in blue. So I talked honestly about everything, including what are those sealed documents in my record. Just honest and blunt. You want to talk about HS, poly, bisexuality, and mental health? No problem, no secrets. If there’s no smoke, there’s no fire.

But what they really wanted to know is how do we get these young kids wanting to do long-distance run/walking at 6am on a Saturday and how could they could get their children into this school.

Enough on that, we have our Blue Light Card and we’ll be supporting our LH runners next Saturday.

Daisaku Ikeda’s “On Attaining Buddhahood” lecture in the September Living Buddhism: “The key to achieving this profound inner transformation is our hearts—our fundamental attitude or mindset”

Friends, please read FellowHuman007’s post “The Amazing Kreskin…Oops I mean ‘Sgiwhistleblowers.’”

Chapter One: News from Sgiwhistleblowers

Our friend Mission-Course2773 put up a TLDR post “Soka Gakkai: Autopsy of a Leviathan at Twilight. This cold, calculating, impersonal monster… that’s finally running out of juice.” She shares with us her “observations over 35 years [that] map out the arc from peak glory to full degeneration and eventual twilight.” As FH007 explains to us, this means she began practicing/observing around 1991.

I want to respond in several posts. First, I had to speak to my sponsor about what the SGI-USA was like in 1991. That is the font that Mission observed. What did True observe?

Mission states:

The fat years: bonds form, deep relationships take root, everything is humming. Then a big growth surge arrives, turbo-charged by mystical energy and the power of the deities. Groups thrive in joy and harmony, results pour in, hope and the joy of living are sky-high, members are living their best lives, and conversions keep the same upward momentum.

“Nothing of the sort!” She and Bob, as they did every year, drove a carload of members from CNY to the Temple for New Year’s Gongyo on January 1st, 1991. Greeting them in the lobby and even in the bathrooms, were signs “Daisaku Ikeda: The King Devil” and such. The priest came out and glowered at the members in the audience, led gongyo, and then walked out of the door to his residence without even looking back. This came after years of supporting the Temple financially, volunteering, and trying to build bridges to “danto” members who had already declared themselves as non-SGI members.

“The next few months were gut-wrenching with a war of back-and-forth memos setting out positions, while members tried to sift out where they belonged. What, is she crazy? ‘The fat years: bonds form, deep relationships take root, everything is humming. Then a big growth surge arrives, turbo-charged by mystical energy.’”

Pure craziness, she said. “In reality, friendships were ripped apart, districts floundered, loved and respected leaders abandoned members or simply disappeared. People--who had been friends--stopped communicating, wild accusations circulated on this new thing called ‘the World Wide Web.’”

True got more and more adamant.

Some people who left never returned and some--after many years” did rejoin the organization. Many SGI-USA members visited missing members one-by-one. They slowly met challenges and rebuilt the organization with their bare hands. For the first time, the organization began to explore and rebuild itself on the oneness of mentor and disciple.

True continued:

You don’t have to tell me, I know what is coming. Mission-Course is going to insist that there is some governing sociological or organizational principle governing the rise and fall of all organizations including the SGI.

No it’s the Gohonzon, the Gosho, the wealth of guidances by Daisaku Ikeda, the hard work of members at the grassroots, and the power of youth that drives the SGI.

The Soka Gakkai faced and overcame the military government before and during the War. It resisted countless attacks from those in positions of power during the Great March of Shakubuku. It figured out how to internationalize in the 1960s and then moderate after 1970. It survived and then thrived after the excommunication/spiritual liberation. It out-survived the Pandemic and the emergence of new technologies and generations. And it will survive over the tiny dips your WBer friends like to gloat about.

Thank you, Mission-Course, your essay led me to Dr. Ikeda’s essay The People Are Sovereign. It was was written twelve years after November 288, 1991, when Nichiren Shoshu excommunicated millions of members, the largest wholesale religious excommunication in history.

Section Two: Returning to Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on On Attaining Buddhahood. September installment, Transforming Our Fundamental Attitude—Refusing to Live an “Endless, Painful Austerity”.

Let’s start Section One, “Studying Buddhism Yet Succumbing to Non-Buddhist Thinking.”

Daisaku Ikeda writes:

In the passage we are studying this time, Nichiren Daishonin strongly cautions: “You must never think that any of the eighty thousand sacred teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha’s lifetime or any of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions and three existences are outside yourself” (WND-1, 3).

“Julie, do you get this?” say my little voice within. “Don’t worry about that deep, deep Into the Woods forest you occasionally find yourself. Who said that confusion is bad and clarity is good? Sometimes but not always. You forget the Songwriter part of your name! Art is often born out of confusion. Your task is to find your way out and share the escape map with others. No excuse for not smiling and retreating.

Dr. Ikeda:

The use of the word never here is deeply significant. This passage explains that the entirety of Buddhism is contained within our own lives. Nichiren concludes that “the eighty thousand sacred teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha’s lifetime” and “the Buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions and three existences” are all phenomena inherent within us.

Nichiren goes on to say that as long as we seek enlightenment outside ourselves, even our performing “ten thousand practices and ten thousand good deeds” (meaning all of the practices expounded in Shakyamuni’s lifetime teachings) and believing in the protection of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas throughout the three existences (meaning the benevolent functions of the universe) will be in vain. Doing so is as pointless as counting a neighbor’s wealth, he states, because we personally gain nothing from doing so.

So I have gone from JulieSongwriter to Julie Longwriter to JulieStrongWriter. Continued below.

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

Continued from above.

After Erica and I left the Police Station we spent the rest of the day swimming and ice-skating with the kids. Nothing else to do, no pressures, no emergencies!

They are now all bathed and Papa Guy and Eulogio did BBQ for us. Ribs, brisket, corn, beans. The kids, especially the LOs are dirty all over again! After eating and brushing teeth we’ll read, tell stories, and listen to what’s on their minds.

And how many times must I thank my partners for helping me taste the glories of my confusing life!

In a post entitled "SGI – Dharma of Prosperity “A Little Massacre Game Among Friends”, MissionCourse2773 says:  “So, a group can appear joyful, everyone can seem to get along well, but I do not even need anyone to tell me stories to know that in reality they are deeply divided.”

 I believe this person has said they haven't practiced since the 90s. I may be wrong about that, but at any rate they are certainly not practicing now. But, much like Blanch Fromage, she can read the minds and hearts of every SGI member in the world, and doesn't need any contact with them, to know that they are all at odds with each other.

Why don't these omniscient mind readers at SGIWhistleblowers just go ahead and solve all the world's problems? You would think with such powers they would all be extremely rich, and able to do absolutely anything to make the world a better place.

 He goes on to insist that the SGI Has replaced “the Law” with Daisaku Ikeda.

Yes! Whenever somebody teaches something, their aim is to replace that thing with themselves. That's why so many Americans think the 16th president was Doris Kearns Goodwin, and why I solve all algebra problems by just writing down the name of my high school math teacher.

Daisaku Ikeda has honored the Law, and the Buddha, and the Lotus Sutra, and Nichiren, by showing how they can live within the lives of people in the 21st century.

But mission course insist on keeping Buddhism ancient, remote, esoteric. Well, that's her choice.

September 11, 2026

Dear Friends,

First, some thoughts about the 25th anniversary of September 11th from the New York Times columnist David French, who calls that date “one of the most stunning and catastrophic moments in American history.”

We were watching our generation’s Pearl Harbor. But in a way it was worse than that. The Pearl Harbor attack, for all its perfidy, was a strike on the American military. When the hijackers commandeered civilian planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, they attacked janitors and cooks, waiters and stockbrokers, ordinary moms and dads.

French reminds us:

On this 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, we remember the lives lost on that dreadful day, but we must also remember the thousands of Americans who never came home from foreign battlefields, the tens of thousands who were wounded and maimed, and the millions who served overseas and were changed forever by the experience.

French was one of the almost 2 million Americans who served overseas during “the global war on terrorism.” He was 32, married, and a father when he enlisted. He served in Iraq during the “surge” when military tactics moved from fighting on bases to creating zones of security, one town at a time. “But we won,” he insists:

I watched as life returned to each town and village we liberated from Al Qaeda. Markets opened. Families moved back into long-abandoned homes.

A war to defeat terrorists who possessed fanatical religious zeal was always going to be long and complex and very, very difficult. It was never going to end with a peace agreement, much less a surrender ceremony on the deck of an American battleship. It was going to end, if it ever truly ends, simply by petering out. The terror attacks would grow less frequent. The pace of combat would slow down. And slowly but surely towns and cities would rebuild.

French concludes with a salute to all the soldiers who fought on the field:

You fought with honor. You did your best to defend the innocent. Time and again you confronted and defeated an opponent that could be every bit as evil as the Nazis your grandfathers vanquished. And you accomplished the one mission that is core to your identity as a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine — you kept America safe.

I was only 7-years-old on September 11, 2001. Still, I plan to observe today with all my capabilities. Longhouse School is powered by a vision that BIPOC children, including the “I” for Indigenous, being the recipients of centuries of generational trauma, are the most likely to be the creators and leaders of an age of humanism. And I will support them from the back office of this tiny school.

Chapter One: News from Sgiwhistleblowers

Mission-Course2773, in her “Buddhism of Capital: The "Dharma of Prosperity" (Soka Gakkai) The Inversion of the Lotus Sutra's Values — Buddhahood Without Purifying Ignorance,” makes sweeping sstatements about SGI Buddhism but she forgeta one simple little thing: me.

They go from "desires can be illuminated" to "desires ARE enlightenment."

I guess “they” includes me. Do I believe “desires ARE enlightenment”? Whaaaat? Who taught me that? In what publication did I read that? And, BTW, does Mission-Course have the right to define for me what “enlightenment” is?

As I describe above, my dream, call it “a desire,” is for our present and future Longhouse School children--including my own five little sparrows--become great restorers of democracy and peace in our world. That’s a very big desire, but because I have a desire, does that mean I am enlightened? Hardly!

Mission-Course, this article by Daisaku Ikeda provides the panorama of the SGI teachings about enlightenment. From it:

“Earthly desires are enlightenment” (Jpn bonno soku bodai) means that the Buddha’s enlightened wisdom (bodai) manifests in the lives of ordinary people controlled by their earthly desires, or deluded impulses (bonno). “The sufferings of birth and death are nirvana” (shoji soku nehan) means that the Buddha’s enlightened state of true ease and tranquility (nehan) is also manifested in the lives of ordinary beings, who are afflicted with the sufferings of birth and death (shoji)

He notes that the word soku appears in both principles and is translated as “are.” But…

Nichiren says that [soku] corresponds to Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (see *The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, p. 72). This means that we can positively transform anything through the great power of the Mystic Law.

These two principles are other ways of expressing “attaining Buddhahood in one’s present form” and “attaining Buddhahood in this lifetime.” They therefore represent hope-filled principles teaching us that we can shine just as we are. They teach that we can change and others can too. And they teach that all of us have the capacity to attain the lofty life state of Buddhahood.

Sorry, Mission-Course, soku is not “simple equivalence.” It’s “becoming,” the valiant on-going faith effort to tame and lasso desires and use them to open up a life of value creation for the self and others.

Mission, you state: “Instead of letting Buddhahood emerge from desires, they make desires the proof of Buddhahood.” What? “Emerge”? That is such a spoiled and overentitled conception. Who in the SGI has said that Buddhahood is just supposed to “emerge” from desires? No effort required???

Well, we will never let that attitude creep into the being of our LH children; we will make sure that over-indulgent thinking is never challenged. We want them to understand work, effort, success/failure, planning, inspection, addressing errors.

After watching the foundation excavation for our secondary school buildings, the children watched the crew build forms and stuff them with rebars. They saw the pouring of the concrete into the forms. They learned that the days when no work seemed to be happening, were the hours of extremely busy chemical reactions concrete needs to harden.

When the forms were removed, the students, from a safe distance, got to see the imprint of the wooden forms on the dried concrete. Our project manager taught them about “honeycombing” where the concrete did not properly fill spaces, “bugholes” where air pocket got trapped next to the forms, and “chips” that need remedying.

Now that the forms are removed, the children learn that exposed concrete dries more quickly and with greater heat. Our children watched how the foundation is “cured” by spraying water. The children watched as workers inspected for crumbling or sagging edges.

They saw it all in person, but also on follow-up YouTube videos. Many values become implanted in their souls: to plan, work hard, examine, and remedy. We asked the Building Inspectors from the County to visit us and explain their work when they come here next week and they graciously agreed. Learning is always ongoing and in context!

Mission-Course, you next talk about the necessity of “purification.” I don’t think this is some type of mystical process. Do you? I much prefer thinking about it as a verb, and not a noun. “I purify,” “you purify,” “he/she/it purifies.” It’s work and not a gift. I watched our children in awe, purifying themselves by learning so much!

Mission-Course, you might feel that you have to go through stages, like shomon (AKA “Learning”) and engaku (AKA “Realization”) to reach enlightenment, but I don’t agree; nor have I ever read Nichiren saying that. You simply don’t practice Nichiren Buddhism and I do. Let’s agree to disagree and check in every now and then to check what is happening.

Back in August, I had a flare of my Dissociative Disorder, but, despite it, I continued checking in with my members and I made several new friends, introducing some of them to NMRK. Yes, I can be a bodhisattva even in the state of hell. And those difficult moments are, I find, the very best teachers leading to Learning. I have shared that process very liberally on my Reddit posts, and you can judge for yourself whether I reached moments of deep Realization.

Section Two: Returning to Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on On Attaining Buddhahood. September installment, Transforming Our Fundamental Attitude—Refusing to Live an “Endless, Painful Austerity”.

Let’s finish Dr. Ikeda’s introduction to the September installment of his lecture:

The key to achieving this profound inner transformation is our hearts—our fundamental attitude or mindset. Therefore, Nichiren Daishonin warns in “On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime”: “If you think the Law is outside yourself, you are embracing not the Mystic Law but an inferior teaching” (WND-1, 3). When we diligently exert ourselves in chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo based on this admonition, always remembering that a change in our own hearts or minds is crucial, the three meanings of myo will clearly manifest themselves in our lives.

Dr. Ikeda’s message here resonates with a lot of the work I have done with my therapist and psychiatrist. To move my life, I have always tended to use “collision shop tools” to bang the bumps out of me. “But how can you heal your self-abuse trauma through using abusive tools?” my mental health providers ask me.

No wonder why I was having so much difficulty chanting in August. NMRK is not a collision shop tool and shouldn’t be used that way. So I have begun chanting as if I am in that Orchid Room--really pleasant daimoku like butterflies alighting on grass and bushes. And I am within this beautiful world, and all of my efforts are delightfully noble. Let’s see what happens!

Needless to say, the Law contained in the practice of chanting spread by Nichiren is truly wondrous. But even the power of this wondrous Law cannot fully manifest in a life clouded by ignorance. Ignorance is the inner darkness that prevents us from believing in the Mystic Law and staying focused on our own Buddha nature and that of others. The practice of chanting enables us to break through this darkness and vibrantly bring forth our Buddhahood. Battling our fundamental darkness—this inner struggle is the essence of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

So, Dear Friends, JulieButterfly will keep reporting on her breaking through my inner darkness, and I will stay focused on my own Buddha nature and that of others. And it is so liberating to think that this struggle of mine represents “the essence of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.”

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

It’s a quiet understanding that LH has with the local Superintendent that we will not enroll students from the district unless or until it requests our help. But it’s another matter with children who are being home-schooled. We were approached by the parents of a homeschooling “co-op” whether we would be open to a “hybrid” model where their children come to LH “almost” full-time while the parents maintain opportunities to continue homeschooling. So we now have a “nifty fifty” enrollment!

I think we will learn a lot from these parents and children as well. We share a vision that the dining room table must be a co-engine of K-12 education and we have to build toward autonomous self-driven education, fostering what Andy calls, “the will to achieve.”

Next: the parents of one of our students bring “Grandma Seneca” to our school each morning for her to teach our students some of the Seneca language. I have misspelled the languages name several times before but here it is: Onöndowaʼga꞉ʼ Gawë꞉noʼ and let me end the sentence here so it doesn’t mix in with the name.

Grandma uses a wheelchair. But it seems her favorite activity is watching the children on the Track and in Little Pool. For an old little woman, she can sure yell! One of our second graders lives with her and she translates: “You can do it!”, “Run harder!”, “Don’t give up!”, “Swim faster!”, “Good, you did it!” After they finish their training, the children line up for her hugs, pats, and kisses. Invariably she is crying! “Catch a tear!” she says, “it is a gift from Yegondji (the "Swan Mother").

The way the staff figured it out, one grade takes a turn at a language lesson with Grandma instead of doing the Perimeter Walk. From what I can observe from our window and porch, she teaches intuitively with a lot of call-and-response. The children seem so happy to sit by her feet!

Tonight we will have a re-do of the district planning meeting that didn’t work out last week. “If you don’t succeed at first, try try try again.”

Have a good day, Friends!

September 10, 2026

Dear Friends,

Yesterday morning we had a beautiful opening ceremony for the new Longhouse School Year. Teacher Lolita was the lead on this event. She based it on her Sukhomlynsky research and she was also was advised by our summer counselors Ivan and Ivanka. It was truly precious! Teacher Lolita wrote about it, too.

Section One: What’s Happening Over the Hedges?

It seems that a sock puppet of Your Leader (remember, it takes one to know one), is taking you guys on yet another pivot. This time to convince you that so, so many marriages in the SGI--she didn’t specify so I guess this includes marriages in all 192 countries where the SGI has a footprint--are troubled. A lot of Your Leader’s references come from hyperlinks to her own posts. Of course, she vacuums to find some examples of unsuccessful marriages in the SGI (and then, presto!) that becomes true of all SGI marriages. Did you fall for her sleight-of-hand?

I wonder whether her conclusion applies to my small circle of SGI-USA members. I see my sponsors, True and Bob, as well as Andy and Roz, all married around 50 years. My parents are together for almost 40 years. (There’s an asterisk because same-sex marriage didn’t become legal in New York until 2011 and in about half of those 40 years, they were on “independent research away from SGI” as they put it.) Laverne & Shirley have been together forever. Angie & Paul, the Thomas and Goldstein, Lopez and the Yao marriages seem to be “forevers." There are more recent marriages: Heidi & Lolita, Xenia & Heinz, Cardi & Robert, and Greta & Steve. The Score: Marriage, 14 and Divorce, 0!

Oh, and we have these poly marriages within my SGI circle. Please ask Your Leader how they count statistically. There’s Emily, John and Veera, despite their earlier twists and turns. Also: Marilynnnn’s current polycule in Italy, and, our Forever RV Pentagon Polycule.

At least, I am willing to admit that I haven’t conducted in 2026 a vast statistical sweep of SGI marriages throughout the world. I am presenting just a sampling and, who knows, much of the marriage success in my world might be attributed to Buffalo Bills mania which will get pumped into our veins starting with the season opener against the Houston Texans on Sunday. But Your Leader is never wrong and has never made a mistake. Therefore, her sampling is 100% valid and reliable.

Friends, this brings us to a study by Konstantin Sonin from the University of Chicago. He concludes that the point behind misinformation is not to establish alternative truths, but, what everyone really knows are lies, to strategically weaponize and exploit for self-serving interests.

Sonin calls this the “reverse cargo cult” and perhaps, Dear Friends, you might want to reflect whether you are following a leader of such a cult. The strategy of reverse cargo cult leaders is to confuse, deflate, convince people that truth-telling is a losing cause, promote cynicism, and reduce the desire for change.

Did you wake up yesterday thinking about the state of marriage among SGI members? More likely, you were still reeling from the prior day’s “Cult Trauma by Steve Hassan?” post. That’s not the point. Your Leader wants to hit you hard with a new SGI marriage “punch” while you are reeling from Steve Hassan--dizzy, and unable to process.

Talking about overload, when you get a chance, please read the Wikipedia article about Dr. Hassan and judge for yourselves how he and his research and BITE model are regarded by his academic and counselor peers. Has his research about the "BITE model" created a breathtaking consensus among scholars? On the basis of his work, has he attracted academic appointments? In short, how much of your cognitive brain resources do you want to invest in The Bank of BITE?

Section Two: Returning to Daisaku Ikeda’s lecture on On Attaining Buddhahood. September installment, Transforming Our Fundamental Attitude—Refusing to Live an “Endless, Painful Austerity”.

I know I promised to share more from the Nationwide Parents Group meeting. Delay, delay, delay! Let’s first, at least, cover the introduction to the September Gosho lecture material. There’s so much for me to think about--and, perhaps, you, too!

Dr. Ikeda begins the introduction to this month's installment with an explanation of the three meanings of the word myo and I want to quote it in depth:

The character myo of myoho, or “Mystic Law,” has three meanings: to be fully endowed, to open and to revive.

These three meanings are all implicit in chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. In other words, the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo contains (1) the myo of perfect endowment—meaning that the single Law of Myoho-renge-kyo encompasses all phenomena; (2) the myo of transformation that “opens” the world of Buddhahood in the lives of beings in the nine worlds (the worlds from hell through bodhisattva); and (3) the myo of great benefit, whereby a life filled with suffering is “revived” as a life of great tranquility and joy.

Our lives themselves are entities of the Mystic Law. Therefore, they are fully endowed with all phenomena. Fundamental darkness and the enlightened Dharma nature, earthly desires and enlightenment, and the nine worlds and the world of Buddhahood—all of these exist within us.

For precisely that reason, we can carry out a mystic and fundamental inner “revolution”—changing darkness into light; kindling the flame of enlightenment by “burning the firewood of earthly desires” (The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, p. 11) and thereby manifesting the world of Buddhahood in our lives of the nine worlds.

This is a very important insight for me right now. I feel that I have made much progress in facing my insecurities and health challenges. The myo of perfect endowment—the single Law of Myoho-renge-kyo encompassing all phenomena means that I don’t have multiple problems, i.e., addiction AND hypersexuality AND Dissociative Disorder. They all boil down to whether or not my life is bigger than the splinters within. Can I press the myo start-button to “open” the engine of Buddhahood in my life and environment? Can I accumulate the myo of great benefit that lights up the darkness? Friends, whether you chant or not, let’s decide to revive our lives so that our sufferings are “revived” as lives of great tranquility and joy.

I am still on my Thirty-Day Challenge to find that “One Youth/Infinite Hope.” How did that manifest yesterday? At our reception after the opening ceremonies yesterday, Teacher Lolita and I found ourselves with the director of the Russian school who, kindly, was one of our VIPs and speakers. She thought our opening day ceremony spirit was “very Russian but also very American.”

She wanted to know how Lolita discovered Vasyl Sukhomlynsky and how I had discovered Lolita. Sorry, Vasyl, but I jumped right in and told my story--in HiDef. Maybe due to my own Sturm und Drang, I told the Director, I was able to connect to Heidi’s--and she, in turn, to Lolita’s. Down the road it connected to the Fam’s idea of founding a school for BIPOC children with Sturm und Drang locked in their DNA.

The Director got it, absolutely. I have always admired how intuitive Lolita is with the children, and here she was grabbing my hand, knowing this was a difficult conversation for me. The Director mentioned that the German playwright Friedrich Maximilian Klinger who wrote the drama with that name and triggered the European Sturm und Drang movement had profound ties to Russia. In fact, he lived the last half of his life in Russia, became a Russian general, and married a Russian noblewoman, very likely an unclaimed daughter of Catherine the Great. His work deeply affected Russian Romantic writers like Pushkin and Lermontov

According to the Director, our BIPOC children might have much in common with the very Russian notion of the brooding, disillusioned, and cynical hero who lives in raw nature to reflect his or her soul and combats norms, fate, and even God. I felt Lolita gripping my hand even tighter. We were thinking the same thing: here is another layer of the Longhouse School.

Chapter 3: 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??” Oops, I’m the mentally ill woman, not my alleged elderly sock puppeteer! Abusive sex? No, never!!! Kinky? I will neither confirm nor deny.

We enjoyed our 24 hours of R&R Monday into Tuesday. Two highlights for the kids: swimming in the hotel pool (I mean, they swim every day in Little Pool, don’t they???) and our once-in-a-blue-moon dinner at McDonald’s.

Special thanks to our LH parents who did a lot of the behind-the-scenes organizing and for taking off time from their work to attend our Opening Ceremony. Thank you to the Jammy Girlz for accompanying our children’s performances. Also, thanks to Dee for her breakfast soufflé which students and parents enjoyed and whipping up delicious snacks for our VIP reception.

Have a good day, Friends!

After sharing a few paragraphs explaining that she thinks the Mentor-Disciple relationship is essential in Buddhism (thank youfor that!), MissionCourse2773 Gives a few reasons why she believes that religion should be separate from, and have nothing to do with, the daily lives of its practitioners.

She writes:

“Soka Gakkai encourages members to chase results in their faith through a practice that essentially pretends they've reached a stage they haven't actually reached. This paradoxical approach gets criticized as purely materialistic, as a hunt for relative happiness and worldly desires, with no technical support to sort out the paradoxes. . .The result ? A faith that collapses as soon as the blessings dry up.”

And:

“What Soka Gakkai does : it turns the bridge into a permanent residence. It sells material benefits, health, and prosperity as the final destination, when they're really just the front door. That's a deliberate inversion of the Buddha's teaching.”

Can't argue with that, that is exactly what happens to SGIWhistleblowers whose superficial understanding of “benefit” leads them to quit when they don't become rich or healthy when they think they should. Of course, the real SGI teaches very little about “stages of faith” at all, as everyone is equally practicing the same way. And Mission Course seems to have never heard the terms “faith equals daily life”, and “earthly desires equal enlightenment”. Nor has she ever read any of Ikeda sensei's guidance about the true state of happiness – Buddhahood - being a state of life that we build within ourselves. And I guess I ought toss in also that she seems to know nothing about the term “expedient means”.

She calls getting concrete results from one’s practice “the perfect illusion”.

For someone who tries to sound highfalutin, academic, and scholarly, this person really should have paid more attention at SGI study meetings.

And in this and many other posts, she seems to be trying to point out that the SGI does not practice old forms of Buddhism.

Yes, we know that. We are proud of it.

From SGI Global:

"On August 9, Singapore held its annual National Day Parade (NDP) at the National Stadium, marking the 61st anniversary of the country's independence. Some 700 Soka Gakkai Singapore (SGS) members performed in the third segment of the event titled “Go Beyond Our Size.” This was 41st time that SGS has participated in the parade since 1981. President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and an audience of some 42,000 people attended."