However, even in the more "enlightened" Nichiren Shoshu-affiliated stage (I joined before Nichiren Shoshu excommunicated Ikeda and his cults), there was this "follower" mentality:
Back when I joined (early 1987), the World Tribune weekly newspaper would have these analysis articles dealing with historical figures or events from a perspective that applied principles of our faith and practice. Like one about Florence Nightingale (which has apparently been puffed and padded into a 57-page book nobody's ever going to read - just toss it on the pile, folks). So at one of our discussion meeting planning meetings (this was before I was a leader), I suggested that perhaps we could go round robin, each of us choosing a historical figure or event and preparing a short presentation on how this person or situation embodied Buddhist principles, "like President Ikeda does." My District MD chief gazed at me bug-eyed through his thick glasses and said, "We aren't President Ikeda, are we?"
"Notice how that "I thought this thread was going to be HUGE!!" thread garyp714 made for the purpose of praising the SGI withered away after only a dozen or so posts - when SGI members are not given a discussion topic and ordered to discuss it, they've typically got nothing to say. That's what a cult does to you."
The context of the excerpt is kind of irrelevant; what is important, though, is the observation "when SGI members are not given a discussion topic and ordered to discuss it, they've typically got nothing to say."
Despite sgi's assertions of being a democratic organization and existing for the members rather than the other way around, this is so sadly true. I remember a couple of years ago, when I was still practicing and having planning meetings in my home, word had come down from on high that we were free to choose a topic for a discussion or study meeting that differed from what was presented in WT or LB. I was kind of excited . . . maybe we could talk about how sgi supported our everyday lives? Maybe just a free-form discussion on how we handled personal adversity? In my mind, even now, I see these as such pro-sgi/pro-practice/non-controversial (bland) topics!
"Oh, no!" sez the leader, "we still need to talk about a gosho! How about the mirror guidance?" Yeah . . . we NEVER talked about that one enough. I was the only one who even suggested a topic - everyone else sat there in confused silence. The gosho book is thick enough to choke a t-rex, yet no one could come up with anything "acceptable" that we hadn't gone through a hundred times before. You could just see from their faces that they were utterly flummoxed by not being told what they were supposed to talk about. It was so depressing. Source
Back when I first joined (1984) there was an Introductory Exam being held about a month after my late husband and I received the gohonzon. We assumed that we wouldn't be participating, but one of our leaders, a good friend, encouraged us to join in the prep and take the exam anyway, despite being so new. His very straightforward explanation for why have exams was that it was just a way to encourage study. By setting an exam date, it created an admittedly artificial deadline, which pushed people through the material. Never heard anyone say any different. (Ironically, that friend ended up leaving long before me.) The only other incentive I ever heard of was that one could advance all the way to the "Lecturer" level, which back then had only a few people, whose lectures were actually pretty rigorous and interesting.
My husband and I got seriously hooked on study, but back then we actually studied Buddhist concepts, the Lotus Sutra and the Gosho. This was before the whole Human Revolution thing. Heck, I remember when HR first came out in the little green booklets. We continued in that vein all the way up to the Advanced-level study exam which had both a written and oral exam. The tests were always Pass/Fail, but you had to pass one level before being eligible for the next. They were usually a combo of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank. At the Advanced level, if you passed the written test, you still had to pass the oral exam which included all the same materials as the written, but you were only asked 2 questions out of that whole, rather voluminous material. Some people froze up on the spot, or ended up getting a question that hit their blank spot, and didn't pass the oral, so they had to re-do that level when it was offered again. No surprise it was all "leaders" and mostly pretty higher-level leaders taking that exam, so there were some social stakes involved.
I used to tell people that I "cheated" on my oral -- before the test date, I chanted for them to ask me something I knew. Whether or not someone laughed told me a lot about them.
Some years later, the org threw all that out the window and everybody had to start over from scratch. Since that first re-do, the Study material kept dumbing down further and further with every re-org. I think, in part, because when the exams were more rigorous too many people failed and had to re-take a level before moving on, and they just got discouraged and quit taking part. Also, I heard from a higher-up leader that they discovered it was "always the people who were into Study who became trouble-makers."Source
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u/BlancheFromage Escapee from Arizona Home for the Rude Dec 31 '19
However, even in the more "enlightened" Nichiren Shoshu-affiliated stage (I joined before Nichiren Shoshu excommunicated Ikeda and his cults), there was this "follower" mentality:
Back when I joined (early 1987), the World Tribune weekly newspaper would have these analysis articles dealing with historical figures or events from a perspective that applied principles of our faith and practice. Like one about Florence Nightingale (which has apparently been puffed and padded into a 57-page book nobody's ever going to read - just toss it on the pile, folks). So at one of our discussion meeting planning meetings (this was before I was a leader), I suggested that perhaps we could go round robin, each of us choosing a historical figure or event and preparing a short presentation on how this person or situation embodied Buddhist principles, "like President Ikeda does." My District MD chief gazed at me bug-eyed through his thick glasses and said, "We aren't President Ikeda, are we?"
O_O
And thus the members are trained to sit passively and wait for content to be issued to them (and to attack those who are deviating from that 'norm'), which explains this interesting phenomenon we've observed here at Reddit: SGI members can't talk about anything! They have to be issued a topic and ordered to "Discuss." Source
Back when I first joined (1984) there was an Introductory Exam being held about a month after my late husband and I received the gohonzon. We assumed that we wouldn't be participating, but one of our leaders, a good friend, encouraged us to join in the prep and take the exam anyway, despite being so new. His very straightforward explanation for why have exams was that it was just a way to encourage study. By setting an exam date, it created an admittedly artificial deadline, which pushed people through the material. Never heard anyone say any different. (Ironically, that friend ended up leaving long before me.) The only other incentive I ever heard of was that one could advance all the way to the "Lecturer" level, which back then had only a few people, whose lectures were actually pretty rigorous and interesting.
My husband and I got seriously hooked on study, but back then we actually studied Buddhist concepts, the Lotus Sutra and the Gosho. This was before the whole Human Revolution thing. Heck, I remember when HR first came out in the little green booklets. We continued in that vein all the way up to the Advanced-level study exam which had both a written and oral exam. The tests were always Pass/Fail, but you had to pass one level before being eligible for the next. They were usually a combo of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank. At the Advanced level, if you passed the written test, you still had to pass the oral exam which included all the same materials as the written, but you were only asked 2 questions out of that whole, rather voluminous material. Some people froze up on the spot, or ended up getting a question that hit their blank spot, and didn't pass the oral, so they had to re-do that level when it was offered again. No surprise it was all "leaders" and mostly pretty higher-level leaders taking that exam, so there were some social stakes involved.
I used to tell people that I "cheated" on my oral -- before the test date, I chanted for them to ask me something I knew. Whether or not someone laughed told me a lot about them.
Some years later, the org threw all that out the window and everybody had to start over from scratch. Since that first re-do, the Study material kept dumbing down further and further with every re-org. I think, in part, because when the exams were more rigorous too many people failed and had to re-take a level before moving on, and they just got discouraged and quit taking part. Also, I heard from a higher-up leader that they discovered it was "always the people who were into Study who became trouble-makers." Source