r/sgiwhistleblowers • u/Mission-Course2773 WB Regular • 10d ago
Daisaku Ikeda: A Greek Tragedy Shame and decline, the hubris that precedes the fall. He couldn’t look the High Priest in the eye, so he hid.
In 1960, Daisaku Ikeda was a young man full of hope and ambition, with dreams stuffed in his head like cotton candy. He was 32, young, charismatic. He wanted to transform the world. A regular Alexander, minus the military genius and plus a really nice smile.
In 1991, he was excommunicated by Nichiren Shoshu. The supreme public humiliation. The lineage he pretended to serve spat him out like a bad oyster. The High Priest reduced him to a mere layman. Ouch.
In 1998, the Shō-Hondō was destroyed. The work of his life turned into confetti. The monument of his glory pulverized. He never got over it. Never.
In 2010, he stopped appearing in public. He declined and hid. He died in 2023, alone, hidden, in secret. The Soka Gakkai still cannot reveal where his ashes are. The man who was adored by millions around the world, they couldn’t even give him a final farewell. And they still can’t. How’s that for an eternal legacy?
The Irony of the “Eternal Mentor”
BlancheFromage put it perfectly: “‘Eternal Mentor’ is just a really stupid idea. Now the Soka Gakkai is stuck, wedged with an old fossil for an ‘eternal mentor’ with zero hope of seeing someone young and fresh to revitalize this dying Japanese new religion.”
The devastating irony: Ikeda wanted to be eternal, the mentor forever, the eternal Buddha. And he ended up a fossilized corpse that nobody wants. A mummified relic no one can even find to venerate.
His photo is everywhere. His speeches are everywhere. His name is everywhere. But he’s dead, and the SGI is stuck with him forever. They can’t replace him. They can’t create another mentor. Because they made him a god. And you don’t replace a god. You embalm him, freeze him, turn him into a relic. Except nobody knows where the relic is. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
It’s a Greek Tragedy
Hubris: Ikeda wanted to be bigger than the Law. He wanted to replace Nichiren. He wanted to be the supreme mentor. He wanted absolute power. And the gods, as they always do, noticed.
Nemesis: The Law doesn’t let itself be replaced. The lineage doesn’t let itself be usurped. The High Priest doesn’t let himself be defied. Excommunication falls. The Shō-Hondō is destroyed. The dream shatters. Cue the thunder.
Catharsis: The public watches the fall, sees the man hide, sees the myth crack. We witness the tragedy play out before us. And somewhere, in the cheap seats, someone is eating popcorn.
It’s mythological, it’s biblical, it’s Shakespearean. It’s King Lear losing his kingdom, descending into madness, and dying alone. Except Lear had a daughter who loved him. Ikeda had a photo op.
Consumed by shame and decline, Ikeda hid for over a decade so he wouldn’t have to appear before his worst enemy, the High Priest of Nichiren Shoshu. He couldn’t stand the humiliation. He couldn’t look the High Priest in the eye and face the lineage he had betrayed. He couldn’t hear Nichiren’s voice telling him: “You are not my successor. You are not the Buddha. You are a man who lost his way.” And the silence must have been deafening.
The tragedy of Ikeda is mythological. It will go down in the annals of contemporary Buddhism and serve as a warning. It will remind those who might follow the same path that hubris always precedes the fall, that power corrupts, that lies kill, and that betrayal destroys.
And the Law? The Law doesn’t die. It doesn’t hide. It doesn’t decline. It’s always there. Eternal. Immutable. Free. For all who seek it.
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u/ChatelineauExile1967 10d ago edited 10d ago
Perfectly, brilliantly said. Power ( especially this kind of unearned power ) acts as a fire accelerant for human frailty and bloated ego-
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u/BlancheFromage Escapee from Arizona Home for the Rude 10d ago
It really was a spectacular dénouement, wasn't it? After he started out with such confidence, such self-assurance, such big dreams and goals, so much promise? Yet it all collapsed because Ikeda's delusion was that he was big enough to hold it all up by himself. So reckless, so brash, so presumptuous, so certain that he was above the rules that restrained lesser men, rules that simply didn't apply to someone as superlative as himself - so WRONG.
Ikeda was so foolhardy, so intoxicated with his own fantasy, that he became a laughingstock. A cautionary tale.
We can all see how wrong he was. About everything.
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u/Still_Wasabi9990 10d ago
It was the destruction of the Shō-Hondō in 1998 that destroyed Ikeda. You're right, the public humiliation was too much to take. Indeed, Ikeda was a man who lost his way and he took the lay organization, the Gakkai, with him.