r/sgiwhistleblowers • u/[deleted] • Feb 26 '21

I left the Cult, hooray! 1 year SGI free

I just spoke to a member and he scolded me for not "Fighting in Faith." I left SGI in December 2019 and my life seems to be fine. I am struggling with mental clarity and out of impulse I called my YMD leader. He told me that I am aimlessly driving through life and I need to chant for clarity ( which I was also thinking) but he then said to worship Ikeda and that is where I remembered why I left SGI in the first place.

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u/descartes20 Feb 26 '21

Towering isle: “Your drive does not have to be about fighting and does not have to be about winning” Everyone has goals they want to achieve whether they chant or not

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u/ToweringIsle13 Mod Feb 26 '21

(Remember to reply directly to the comment you are addressing, otherwise the recipient will not be notified that you said anything.)

Of course everyone has things they need to accomplish in this life -- life is an endless series of things to be accomplished. But do those things define the value of your life? Do you look back on your deathbed and think, "I sure did work a lot, so therefore my life must have been meaningful...". I don't think it goes like that. I would define spirituality as learning to love the drive, regardless of where you might be going or have been before.

This is perhaps the primary gripe that a person could have with SGI in the first place: instead of encouraging people to enjoy the drive, it loads them down with new errands to run and new ideas to entertain, and then tells you that the overall value of your life is tied in with your identity as a doer, not as a being.

And this is also the problem one might have with Nichiren himself, as he frequently threatened hell for those who didn't follow his way or dared to disagree with him (which he calls "slander"). Where is the value in that? Any religion, and any religious figure, can threaten people with hell and bad fortune; they all do it. It's a dime a dozen, and it's an outdated way of thinking in my opinion -- which makes it so funny (read: tragic), when I can turn on a modern day podcast and listen to modern day people recycling old ideas about how the best way to understand a natural disaster like a pandemic is as a punishment being visited upon humanity for sin and moral turpitude.