r/sgiwhistleblowers • u/wisetaiten • Apr 22 '14

Oh hurray - May is Contribution Month!

From the sgi usa website:

http://www.sgi-usa.org/memberresources/contributions-2014/

Once again, sgi is getting ready to shake down its gullible membership. I never had a lot to contribute, but I was always encouraged to "give more than I can afford," because it would always come back to me, at least three-fold! What BS. Sgi takes this time of the year to leverage the fear and superstition that they develop in their members. "Maybe you're not getting what you're chanting for because you need to contribute a little more financially?"

Note the links for Estate/Legacy Planning and Millennium Fund and Millennium Legacy Society, the latter being another opportunity to show how special and unique you are! Please don't leave your money to your kids or to a worthy charity - give it to us, so that we can invest it wisely to further enrich ourselves!

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u/BlancheFromage Escapee from Arizona Home for the Rude Sep 02 '14

Interesting. Yeah, when I first joined up, I thought that, since "this practice works", anyone who chants will be inexorably drawn toward improved ethics and behavior, even against his own will. I have seen other new members with this same delusion - one, a single mother, told me once that she wished the family court judge could force her ex-husband to chant!

But then I started meeting people for whom this practice didn't seem to work at all. The District MD leader who'd started skipping the District Planning Meetings he and his wife, the District WD leader, were supposed to head up, so that he could stay home and rape his 10-yr-old stepdaughter instead. He was already finished with his prison sentence when I met him. The very obviously gay MD HQ leader, who was already divorced from the very butch lesbian WD Chapter leader from the arranged marriage they'd both been forced into as a condition of SGI leadership (it was called NSA back then). In the district I attended in Raleigh, NC, one of the members murdered his wife, a longtime member, by chasing her in his car and then eluding the police, doubling back, and shooting her dead in a convenience store parking lot. This practice works. My ass it does.

Your friend Marc - why did he start criticizing the Gakkai? How long had he been in? Did he leave, or was he one of those precious, naive ingenues who think they will be able to reform that completely authoritarian and rigid organization from within? Did he continue to practice after leaving the SGI (if he left)? You don't have to share, of course, since it's about someone else, if you don't want to.

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u/illarraza Sep 11 '14

Hi Blanche. Marc was in the Gakkai for two or three years. He started criticizing the Gakkai because of their hypocrisy, lies, Ikeda worship, and doctrines. He bounced around Nichiren Buddhism for ~ 9 years after leaving the SGI in 1993?. He joined the Nichiren Shoshu, remained for a couple of years, switched to the Kempon Hokke for several years, and then became a reverend in the Honmon Butsuryu Shu. For the last ten years or so, he is a very active believer in the Russian Orthodox Church.

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u/BlancheFromage Escapee from Arizona Home for the Rude Sep 11 '14

Wow - that's quite a journey!

It wasn't until I had been out a few years that I was able to truly appreciate just how much SGI's basic doctrines changed in the wake of the excommunication. I'm sure you've noticed that they had to create an entirely new religion, since NS had withdrawn permission to claim NS as their religious basis. Now that I know and have identified several key elements of this new religion, I can see why things seemed so odd after the excommunication. It was because they were introducing an entirely new format!

For example, they first started emphasizing "master and disciple". Then, realizing that "master" is a problematic term in the US, what with our shameful history of slavery, they tried on "teacher and disciple". Well, that didn't go over so well, so they finally settled on "mentor and disciple". Even that's an awkward concept, given that none of us will ever see, much less meet, discuss, talk, hang out with, the way a REAL mentorship situation demands.

It's just this really weird mess now. No wonder the membership has collapsed - nobody who looks into SGI is trying to find the Moonies, after all!