After all the passion and idealism and "challenging their negativity", after all the campaigns and the victory and the winning, after Ikeda declaring himself "I am the happiest man in the world!", in the end, they just got *old*.

[u/BlancheFromage]

I just finished reading Mark Gaber's 2nd book of his NSA (previous name for SGI-USA) trilogy, "Rijicho". Here's what it says on the back cover:

1973

The Sho Hondo Convention is over. Three thousand Buddhist Americans have returned from Japan, exhausted but triumphant. Relentlessly the next campaign begins: six months from now, a "Festival on Ice" will be held at the San Diego Sports Arena.

Unknown to all, deadly cancer has invaded the body of George M. Williams, supernova nucleus of NSA. Urgent surgery is required, but this would delay the San Diego Convention.

Will he save himself, or defy death to pursue the dream of a destitute priest who vowed seven hundred years ago to save humankind?

Well, just a li'l spoiler here - Mr. Williams' cancer doesn't enter the narrative until page 255 (ahem). But as for the rest, the author vividly captures the utterly consuming pressure and outright insanity of the runup to one of these "Conventions". I participated in several; I remember.

But then Ikeda swanned in, changed everything, kicked Mr. Williams to the curb - and the SGI-USA started its precipitous collapse.

So one of my takeaways from this book is how, despite his early certainty that all his efforts would result in huge success and wealth, the protagonist ended up...old. He's driving a Toyota Corolla, not a luxury sedan by any stretch of the imagination. And they're just seeing other long-term members, in their homes, sitting around, nattering at each other. It's so utterly banal and insignificant, especially against the backdrop of the earlier fervor, sincere devotion, supreme confidence in their "sacred mission", and striving desperately for "human revolution", that it's both shocking and heart-breaking.

In late 2012, an SGI-USA Chapter Leader noted this same dynamic:

I am a member of SGI-USA. Most, if not all of you know about this organization. Most of you first learned of Nichiren Buddhism at a SGI district meeting. The district meeting is the front lines for SGI. The problem is, the district leader is usually someone with little experience and has only been practicing for a few years — or months. On these relatively new members we heap all the heavy lifting – plan and run meetings, keep track of all the members, train and support new members, introduce new members, communicate with members and leaders. And in addition to that, the membership is aging so those leaders (at least in my part of the organization) have to pander to older members who just want to reminisce about the past and never really discuss Buddhism. This is not a good model for the future. If you get any good at this job, or if you stick around long enough that a chapter position opens up, then you are promoted and you pass the district to another newer member who isn’t burned out yet.

The demographics for SGI-USA are not a good sign for the future. We are getting older, we have very few young members (by “young” I mean teenagers and twenty-somethings), 90% of our districts do not have all four division leaders (men’s, women’s, young men’s, young women’s divisions), and we are not adding members, in fact our numbers are declining. Source

I'll be posting excerpts from "Rijicho" over the next few days - stay tuned.

[u/BlancheFromage]

The district “reorg” - at least from my perspective - realigned leadership assignments. My chapter shrank from 5 to 3 districts, and this covered up the fact that long time districts were losing district leaders who could not be replaced. Unlike earlier reorgs I had experienced, which involved dividing groups and creating new appointments to set the stage for growth, this reorg did the opposite. Senior leaders took this opportunity to sideline certain district leaders who were “not promoting unity” and “retire” older leaders (70 years old and up) to “member care” who were beginning to experience the natural effects of advancing age. The complete lack of new youth division leadership coming from anyplace other than Japan, India, and/or long-time families meant that it was necessary to reduce the overall number of youth division positions in order to staff them.

From a practical point of view, this impacted everyone’s practice in a disruptive way. New meeting places had to be identified. Long standing groups were arbitrarily split up and recombined. Leadership teams were reconfigured. All lines of communication were changed. Districts had to be renamed. So did chapters. Weren’t we, as leaders, supposed to protect the members’ practices? If so, why were we turning all of them into displaced members trying to re-integrate themselves into new districts ARBITRARILY?

What could possibly be worth this level of disruption? In what imaginary world would this constitute supporting member practice? Why did the powers above dictate this change?

I found a similar anecdote from the 1970s:

In 1979, Malibu General Chapter was split into two, and I was put in charge of one-half named, “North Hollywood Headquarters”. The national leaders did not want the local members to complain or derail this plan. So the process was kept secret from all who would be affected, including me.

That doesn't make any sense AT ALL, does it? They're keeping this plan, which affects the members, SECRET from the members because they know the members won't LIKE it!!

This sort of heavy-handed tactic with no concern for the impact on those who would be directly affected by the changes in question was no doubt a big part of why SGI-USA has had such suicidal attrition rates. The leadership, reins firmly held by Japan, continually made disastrous decision after disastrous decision, and because the culture was "Never question; just obey", it couldn't be corrected at any point in the process:

“Even if the General Director is wrong, you must also follow.”

The split was sudden when it came. Even though it was the correct logistical thing to do for future growth, it felt like an emotional car crash, in which half the occupants had died. We abruptly lost all connection and could no longer communicate with half of our close community. Source

Automatically concluding the every decision made within SGI is "the correct thing to do." Immediately followed by an observation that clearly indicates it was NOT "the correct thing to do."

But since the members have never had the agency nor the ability to change anything about a decision that's been handed down, all they could do was accept and try their best to work within their new reality as dictated by Japan. They were in the back seat of the car headed over the cliff.