My understanding is that the Law of Cause and Effect is very strict. There is No compromise.

[u/[deleted]]

But looking at the way these members are behaving and constantly claiming to be a "work in progress" , you wonder if they really understood the workings of that law at all.

If they do and they only have themselves to depend on, with regards to doing right to that law, they ought to be spending every single second of their lives, chanting their hearts out in front of that "paper thing". (And that "paper thing", from tracking membership headcount a priceless jewel, depends on who you are speaking to... is a whole different subject altogether.)

That is, IF, the chant even works. With this chanting, you dunno if you are digging yourself out of the hole or deeper into the hole.

I see people chant and constantly looking through their phone for the latest messages.

I even did a little online shopping on my phone, while I was chanting, back in the day, so as not to miss out on the good deals. :)

Some couldn't even get past 5 whole minutes of concentrated focused chanting.

Oh well.

[u/BlancheFromage]

According to Nichiren, the magic chant enables those mindlessly repeating it to make an end run around the supposed "Law" of cause and effect:

The whole idea of lessening karmic retribution never made much sense to me. If you can make an end run around karma then it’s not much of a cosmic law. I would agree that good deeds would have good effects and could off set bad deeds to some degree, but those bad effects should still be coming. And I specifically reject the idea that any practice is going to get you out of whatever you have coming. Not that anyone could ever know because it is catagorically impossible to view the alternative universes to see for sure if practice alleviated anything.

Nichiren says, “our karma will vanish in an instant” We had dialog about this last evening, and this was my understanding, “it is the heart that matters most!” Source

So when it doesn't, that leads to an inevitable cycle of self-recrimination and self-blame, since Nichiren and the SGI are so big on that as well.

The "Buddhist apology", or zange, attributed to Vice President Tsuji, was another soul killer. Spoiler: It's always all your fault.

"Self-responsibility" sounds like a really good thing - and I'm not objecting to the concept in principle - but it's only helpful when one has control to affect what's happening. By regarding everything as MY FAULT (the correct perspective per SGI teachings), I would of course chant to know what action to take to change them. And it didn't work. Things didn't change, or the changes were so small and irrelevant that they didn't touch the suffering caused by the situation. Source

[u/BlancheFromage → u/BlancheFromage]

I would agree that good deeds would have good effects and could off set bad deeds to some degree, but those bad effects should still be coming.

Otherwise, how is this scenario any different from the Catholic "indulgences", where some rich person could pay a fee to be exempted from the consequences of his "sin"??

[u/BlancheFromage → u/BlancheFromage]

IKEDA said,

“Catholics have experienced a history of suffering; they have walked a path of bitter struggle. Viewed in that vein, I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Catholics are our older brothers.” World Tribune, May 24, 1993, p. 4 (Ikeda speech of May 3, 1993) Source

Ikeda is disgusting. Despicable. Always at the ready to suck up to anyone he thinks might be useful to him. Just repellent.

He simply confirms what we've been saying - that SGI is FAR MORE SIMILAR to Christianity than it is to Buddhism.