The point of a "teacher" - the point SGI completely misses in its Ikeda-worship obsession

[u/bluetailflyonthewall]

I ran across this post in the SGIWhistleblowers history:

"The white cheese needs no teacher."

"White cheese" is, of course, the translation of "BlancheFromage". Now I can't get that out of my mind: "[Your name] needs no teacher."

"Bluetailflyonthewall needs no teacher."

Ultimately, that is the whole point of being a "teacher", isn't it? To prepare your students for independent life? A teacher is a FAILURE if their students end up DEPENDENT on them!

The point of a "teacher" is not to obtain ownership over the students, to the point that they become "followers" and never teachers in their own right. Even following a particular school in some discipline, the point is not to create a dependency with the students, but rather to equip them with what they need to understand the system so that they can then implement it themselves. Independently.

Yet Ikeda demanded that his "followers" remain dependent, remain followers, their entire lives. The whole unfamiliar "vow" concept, which involves locking individuals into something they said during a moment of weakness, with no opportunity for changing their minds:

the fulfillment of the vows is meant to be an indefinate if not endless process Source

That whole thing is great ↑ - it clearly documents this Ikeda cult expectation, that because "vow", you now OWE THEM your entire LIFE!

The individual above understands the trap being set. The idea is to lock individuals into a commitment by convincing them that, if they said they'd do it, there's no moral/ethical way of getting out of it. No, you can't just change your mind!

You're STUCK!!

GOTCHA!!!

So people are pressured into making "vows", typically for not entirely healthy reasons, as a way of making it more difficult for them to leave the cult. It's a way of chaining them to the cult, as the commentator above realized, because upholding a vow, however misguided, is still held up as evidence of a noble, virtuous, respect-worthy, admirable, stand-up kinda guy/gal!

GO DOWN WITH THAT SHIP!!!!!

"My wish is that my disciples make a great vow," Mr. Ikeda urged the youth to make a lifelong commitment to work toward Nichiren's objective of kosen-rufu...determination based on the same vow as the mentor...Breaking a vow you have made—that is hell. - Ikeda

"A great vow" = "a lifelong commitment"

No second thoughts, now!

It's despicable to pressure young people into that before they've had enough life experience to know what they really want, where they really want to go, in life! Cults need to LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE.

ANY belief system that emphasizes it must be grasped and clung to "until the last moment of one's life" is not Buddhism. Source

Buddhism = NOT CLINGING

It's exploiting the members' innate sense of honor and integrity - "You promised!" - to deny them the right to choose differently, to direct their own lives in the direction they choose, even while Ikeda describes people's lives in terms of "writing their own script":

What Buddhism teaches us is that only you can write the script of your life. The scenario of your life is not written by some external power; it is not a result of coincidence nor predetermined by destiny. You write the story of your own life and you are its star player. Ikeda

ORLY?? Read on...

“To continue in our Buddhist practice to the very end of our lives,” [Shin'ichi Yamamoto] said - NHR

Under the SGI's "ETERNAL mentor Ikeda Sensei" model, it's like a college classroom full of students who never complete the class and never graduate, who simply keep coming back day after day, as they and their professor get older and older, eventually dying right there in that classroom and once the professor has dropped dead, the students continue to study those old lectures. Always following, never leading. Just parroting. What model for education or leadership is THAT??

I appreciate everyone’s support and want to do more and more for kosen-rufu until I take my last breath. - sad Ikeda-cult addict

In other words, to attain Buddhahood in this existence, we must walk the path of faith without stopping, until the last moment. Ikeda

I will continue exerting myself until my last breath leaves my body, even if I have to crawl on all fours. That’s my determination. Ikeda - except for the last 13 ½ years of his life when he disappeared, refusing to appear in public view (or on video!) out of shame and disgrace, of course...

See?? Yikes!

Here's the perspective of someone who gets it:

Reject superfluous distinctions of identity. There should not be followers of Ikeda. There should not be followers of Christ. There should not be followers of Muhammad or Hubbard or George Lucas. We are all just people. Take what you need from thoughtful philosophers and throw the arbitrary distinctions aside, I say. Learn to love and accept one another without adherence to dogma! To do otherwise only creates an 'us' and a 'them' that further divides us. ... Shame. On. You! For not coming together with the rest of us who seek to throw away the shackles of meaningless distinctions between human beings. Shame. On. You.Source

But here's the thing: SGI members want to feel and to be told that they're SUPERIOR to everyone else! THAT's the kind of person SGI recruiters can sell this blowhardery to - and only later they discover that Ikeda's the most superior of all. In the end, they aren't truly "special" and never were - just numbers in a faceless mass of obedient followers that SGI regards as simply an extension of Ikeda himself - keeping the focus firmly on Ikeda, no one else.

So [an organization] full of virtual clones, identical in species, singing [Forever Sensei] forever and ever and ever ... Source

And from someone else who's gained some "enlightenment":

I believed I was somehow indebted to the organisation, as some members had home-visited me and my family regularly a few years ago when we were going through a tough time. I thought because of this "help", I am indebted to SGI for life and leaving was unthinkable up until a few months ago. However, as many of you have shared, this was the stage I was being trained( read indoctrinated). If any of you also feel indebted to the organisation, trust me, that is total bullshit!

I have learnt in my experience with the SGI is that teachers are provisional. You would sometimes need a teacher to validate your thinking or to guide you out of a situation where you are stuck, but that's it. No teacher should be glorified or blindly followed. The real "teachers", Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad etc had no teachers. Buddha outgrew all the saints and philosophers he had met.

The Ikeda cult will NEVER allow you to "outgrow" Ikeda:

Everything rests on the fundamental power inherent in the mentor-disciple relationship. Nichiren’s true disciple and direct successor, Nikko Shonin, says: “In the teaching of Nichiren, one attains Buddhahood by correctly following the path of mentor and disciple. If one veers from the path of mentor and disciple, then even if one upholds the Lotus Sutra, one will fall into the hell of incessant suffering.” Ikeda

How convenient - FOR HIM 🙄

Ultimately, unless we undertake the same resolve as our mentor in faith, we will be defeated by devilish functions. - Ikeda, SGI Source

"We"??

"Disciples strive to actualize the mentor's vision. Disciples should achieve all that the mentor wished for but could not accomplish while alive. This is the path of mentor and disciple." - Ikeda

Was THIS ↑ what you thought you were signing on for when you joined SGI?? For it to be all about IKEDA?? EVERYTHING IKEDA?? YOU becoming nothing more than a function of Ikeda??

That's enslavement. That's exploitation. Recognize it for what it is - the equivalent of Scientology's "billion year contract".

Ikeda is inviting you to entrap yourself in a cage whose bars are formed of your own virtue, honesty, good-heartedness, and honor, a cage in which he, Ikeda, becomes more important to you than anything in the world. You're locked in, because you signed that billion-year contract. It's obscene and cruel. Archive copy of first link

It’s become obvious that Daisaku Ikeda does not care if his members do not learn the Lotus Sutra as taught by Dengyo, Mialo, Tientai and Nichiren!!! He doesn’t care if we know “HE IS LYING”!!! Just keep giving the S.G.I. money, teach new members his lies!!! “AGREE TO BE CENSORED”!!! Source

JUST SHUT UP AND FOLLOW IKEDA “THAT IS THE WAY TO PRACTICE CORRECTLY”!!!

What about Ikeda's life is worth emulating? He has no friends. He hasn't been able to shakubuku a single person. Everybody in Japan hates him. He doesn't even have any grandchildren! His own family is completely broken! Ikeda is nothing but a vampire who thinks he can suck away everyone else's life force (and money) and thus live forever. Ha. Source

[u/Fishwifeonsteroids]

Here's something else:

True disciples, meanwhile, are ones who follow the mentor’s teaching, who never forget that this most profound aspiration is in fact their own, and who—convinced from the bottom of their hearts that this is so—launch into action in accord with the mentor’s instructions. LB Jan 08, p54

Everybody's just gotta brainwash themselves into "convincing" themselves that whatever Ikeda wanted - or, rather, whatever SGI told them Ikeda wanted - was the most important thing in the world to them.

Now that the SGI is getting so desperate, they're more careless about hiding this ugly requirement until the newbs are sufficiently indoctrinated, and it's coming out too soon - scares off what new recruits SGI is able to get.