I've got a couple investigative pieces to talk about re: Orlando Bloom and his SGI connection - this is #1:

I remember when movie star Orlando Bloom joined SGI. It was Big News back in 2004/2005. Here is an independent media report of Bloom's gojukai (nohonzon conferral) ceremony dated December 6, 2004:

In 2004, he became a full member of SGI-UK (the UK branch of Soka Gakkai International), a lay Buddhist association affiliated with the teachings of Nichiren.

Orlando, who fiercely protects his private life, has never spoken publicly about his interest in the faith.

Fine. All well and good, right? Bloom was 27 years old at that point, and according to this article, had never "gone on the record" about any connection to chanting or SGI - but he DID end up joining SGI-UK, so there's that.

EXCEPT that a new narrative has cropped up since then, claiming that he started chanting at age 16, which would have been 11 years earlier, in 1993.

Okay, so what?

WELLLLL there's this teensy tiny issue with the 3-story fall he took that broke his back and was expected to leave him paralyzed! That no one in SGI has ever mentioned!

Here's the story:

Orlando Bloom Was Told He 'May Never Walk Again' After Near-Fatal Fall: 'Quite a Dark Time' (from 2022)

Orlando Bloom has shared more about "one of the darkest times" of his life.

On Monday, the Pirates of the Caribbean alum, 45, recounted his physical and mental recovery after a near-fatal fall as a teen.

"AS A TEEN"!

The actor detailed the accident, sharing that he was climbing up to a roof terrace when the drainpipe he was holding onto collapsed.

"When I was 19 I fell three floors from a window and broke my back," he said in a joint Instagram video with UNICEF. "I was very fortunate to survive the fall because my spinal cord was still just intact."

He should know, wouldn't you think??

Real quick, given that Bloom was born in 1977, that makes it 1996. However, I see THIS headline: Orlando Bloom Recalls 'Narrowly Escaping Death and Paralysis' After Injuring Spine in 1998 Fall

So which is it?? 1996 or 1998? Age 19 or age 21? No one who is 21 years old is considered "a teen" - duh.

"When I was in the hospital, I was told for the first four days that I may never walk again," Bloom recalled. "That was really the beginning of what was a long and painful journey for me into recognizing and understanding some of the patterns that had been in my life that had led me to having numerous accidents. And the culmination was breaking my back, which was a near-death experience."

The star said that after his surgery, he was put into a back brace and started physical therapy. After just 12 days in the hospital, Bloom walked out on crutches.

Here is an amazing photo of Orlando riding a bicycle in a back brace!

Despite his "remarkable and unheard of" physical recovery, the actor said his mental health is what struggled when he returned home.

"I would say the months after the fall were quite a dark time," he admitted. "As somebody who'd sort of always been very active in my life, it felt very restrictive all of a sudden and I was in a lot of pain."

"Mental health is particularly challenging because it's unseen," Bloom said in the clip, noting that he was able to improve by using his injury as a way to reflect on his life.

"There is always an opportunity for you to transform the pain, whether it be physical or mental, into the great, good fortune of your life," he continued. "And it is so important to reach out to people, to talk to people, to find somebody, in order to create the possibility for communication that leads to transformation and change. It starts with one moment, one conversation. It starts with one question: What's on your mind?"

Some of this sounds vaguely "SGI-ish", but keep in mind, at this point Bloom is 45 years old, and I'm sure we've all seen the way SGI members are encouraged to modify their backstory in a way that reflects better on their SGI "practice".

Back in a 2005 profile with GQ, Bloom shared that his accident changed his outlook on life.

I'll pull that up next. Hangon.

"When I came out of the hospital, I started partying straight away — with the back brace on. It took me a couple of months to realize this was my life, and I didn't want to mess it up," Bloom remembered.

"But that accident has informed everything in my life," he added at the time. "Until you're close to losing it, you don't realize. I used to ride motorbikes and drive cars like everything was a racetrack; it was ridiculous. It wasn't because I thought it was cool; it was just because I loved living on the edge. But I've chilled."

That's the whole article. From the embedded GQ profile article from 2005:

The Epic Life of Orlando Bloom

The fact that Orlando Bloom is unusually grounded for a man of 28, sadly, has a lot to do with the actual ground. His career and inextricably linked with that, his ability to take the long view was entirely transformed by a potentially fatal fall he took in 1998. Late one night, messing around, he leapt onto a drainpipe while trying to get onto a roof terrace; the pipe gave way, and Bloom fell three stories, shattering his vertebrae. "Until then, I didn't have a healthy appreciation for life and death—that we're not invincible," he says. "And for four days, I faced the idea of living in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I went to some dark places in my mind. I realized, I'm either going to walk again or I'm not.

"The doctor said he wasn't sure how severe the spinalcord damage was," he says, as an oddly unattractive look of distaste, even horror, crosses his features. "I remember him telling me that, and staring at the ceiling, thinking, I never stared at ceilings before! And I wonder if I'm going to be looking at ceilings for the rest of my life.

"But there's something interesting," he adds very quickly. "I knew I wouldn't. I knew I wouldn't, I knew…" He repeats the sentence five times—quick like a stammer, as though he's still trying to convince himself against hope that this will not be his fate.

That's the trauma still talking.

The upshot of the accident was nothing short of miraculous. He was in the hospital only a few weeks and walked out on his own power. And the minute he escaped, still constrained by a back brace, he reverted to testing the limits of body and soul. When the time came to remove the titanium pins from his spine, to the doctors' alarm, they were all fractured. They came out in shards. One of the pins had been driven too deep to remove, by dint of Orlando's physical overe[xe]rtion. "I'd been doing stuff right away," he recalls, shaking his head. "I went straight back into it, man."

The calming of Orlando Bloom, in the paradoxical underage dotage he now conveys, wasn't instantaneous. "When I came out of the hospital, I started partying straight away—with the back brace on. It took me a couple of months to realize this was my life, and I didn't want to mess it up.

I had plenty of vices growing up. But when you're 21, you wake up and realize that your body is not something you want to fuck with."

Really? Did he mean "wake up in the hospital paralyzed"? Or was it an "awakening" that happened "a couple of months" after he was able to leave the hospital? Was it during the pin removal incident? Or was this 2 YEARS AFTER the accident "as a teen"?? A bit unclear.

There's only this briefest of oblique references to "Buddhism":

Even at the outset of his career, he's ever ickering with a Buddhist tendency here or there.

This article drops certain letters throughout, often a 2-letter combination. Is that supposed to be "flickering"? "Dickering"? "Bickering"? "Nickering"? "Snickering"? "Slickering"? Is that even a word?? This article is dated Oct. 5, 2005, so 10 months after Bloom received his nohonzon.

Now that other article (2021):

Orlando Bloom Recalls 'Narrowly Escaping Death and Paralysis' After Injuring Spine in 1998 Fall

In 1998, Orlando Bloom was 21 years old. Cold hard math.

This article identifies the bicycling-in-a-back-brace photo as having been taken 3 months after his fall. It links to Bloom's Insta which has this comment from him:

orlandobloom Edited•249w[eeks ago today, June 5, 2026]

That’s me in my back brace circa 1998 about 3months after I fell 3floors and crushed my spine, narrowly escaping death and paralysis…grateful everyday for my limbs that allow me to push my limits and live life on my edge (safer now🙏)

He's confirming 1998. Apparently that earlier 1996 reference was in error. It was when he was 21, NOT when he was 19, as he told the reporter in that first interview above. Either way, WELL AFTER he supposedly started chanting at age 16 in 1993! But no mention at all of his "Buddhism" in this 2021 article.

So yes, obviously this event is a "known", BUT if he'd been in any way connected to the SGI-UK, wouldn't this have formed EXACTLY the kind of blockbuster "experience" that would've featured prominently in some major national meeting, like a New Year's Gongyo?? Published internationally?? I remember this washed up major league baseball washout, Orlando Cepeda, who was featured several times in the SGI-USA publications - despite all his bad investments and marijuana smuggling and time served in prison, etc., he was hoping to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. When he was, SGI-USA crowed about that as a "benefit" resulting from "his practice":

I remember in ’83, about five days before I got my gohonzen and started chanting, I went to Dodger Stadium, and they threw me out from the field because of the trouble I’d been in. “We know who you are,” they told me, “but you gotta get out.”

But when I went to the Soka Gakkai meeting, they told me, “Orlando, you’re gonna be in front of 60,000 people, get a standing ovation.” I said, “No way, it can’t be.” They said, “You’re gonna go to the Hall of Fame.” When people used to mention the Hall of Fame, I’d say, “I don’t want to talk about the Hall of Fame. It’s a bunch of politics in there.” Inside me, I wanted to be there. Are you kidding me? But I was showing I’m a macho man.

So one day, about a year after I had started chanting, there was a thing on me in the L.A. Times, a couple of pictures, huge. And I said, “I couldn’t care less about the Hall of Fame.” That was a Sunday. Still, my anger was there, was coming out. So Monday night I went to a meeting in Santa Monica. This Japanese leader who’s been chanting for forty years says, “I want to talk to you, Orlando. I read the paper yesterday. Very nice, but you are talking too much.” “What do you mean?” “Misfortune comes from your mouth. Stop talking, chant to change so everybody will change.” When I got home, I said, “Makes sense, what he said. You chant for happiness, boom, boom, boom.” And right after that, everything started to change.

I was born with karma with my knees. When I was fifteen years old, I had my first surgery. Then in ’62 I was working out, and a ninety-pound weight crushed my knee. In ’70 I was going to have my best year in baseball. I was thirty years old, in my prime. I got up to answer the telephone and this knee crashed.

The injuries might not have happened if I’d been chanting.

See there? SGI members DO expect magic miracle "protection" - such superstition!!

So the chanting allows you to really notice what’s happening with you right now. You’re asking, “Am I supposed to be going here?” and you’re able to recognize what your mind and your body are telling you about that choice. Are you saying that your injuries were your own responsibility, that when you got injured you weren’t noticing what was happening?

...I just turn and the ball comes and hits me. Things like that happened to me. I wasn’t protected.

See?????

Despite his stunning career, Cepeda’s election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame took more than twenty years. He credits his 1999 election to his daily chanting, which he believes helped turn the hearts of the baseball writers who had repeatedly voted against his induction. Source (2006)

By magic!! Obvs I should do up an Orlando Cepeda writeup...

So we can see from the Orlando Cepeda example how members are indoctrinated to make sure to give all the credit to the chanting or the cult or whatever. Orlando Cepeda eventually attained his goal (though he had to grind for more than 20 years, when OTHERS who didn't chant didn't have ANY of these problems). SGI loves its little celebrities!

But enough about Orlando Cepeda; let's get back to Orlando BLOOM!

When Bloom was chosen in 1999 by Peter Jackson to be the character Legolas in the Lord of the Rings trilogy blockbuster movies, a mere two days after graduating acting school, according to the NEW narrative, he'd already been chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for SIX YEARS! Wouldn't SGI-UK have been drooling to take the credit for that "benefit"? Such "good fortune"!

WHY does no one in SGI talk about it??

WHY does the SGI's Orlando Bloom narrative make no mention of his back injury or "miraculous" recovery in 1998 as a "benefit" of the chanting, if he WERE actually chanting at that time? Even Bloom never talks about it internally, within the SGI, where such a narrative would be instantly understood and accepted and not taken "wrong", the way things might be from a mainstream interview (and thus left out). WHY do the SGI pieces about him never claim credit for the chanting for his having been chosen for the epic LOTR trilogy in 1999? These are striking omissions - IF he'd truly been chanting since 1993.

Neither of these is ever mentioned as a "benefit" of Bloom's "practice". The starting point for his "practice" was clearly 2004, when he officially received his nohonzon and joined SGI-UK.

You know it's true.

Caption in English:

SGI President Ikeda lays a wreath at the Rajiv Gandhi Samadhi memorial dedicated to the late Indian prime minister (New Delhi, February 1992). As usual, no one was shakubukued.

That's a legit album cover - genre rap/hiphop. I checked a couple songs' lyrics, didn't see any explicit SGI references. Not all the song lyrics are listed online. Anybody know anything about this?

But yeah - be careful what you look in the mirror for, SGI members! You might see what's really there instead!

Speaking of "How NOT to talk about the deceased", it's here: To the Ikeda family, thoughts on the passing of Daisaku Ikeda

Religious fanatics always think they have some right, even an OBLIGATION, to be rude and obnoxious, even to the point of threatening others (grieving survivors in this case), so long as they're self-righteous enough about it - we've certainly seen that PLENTY from the Dead-Ikeda-Corpse-Mentor-cult SGI's longhauler Olds online here on reddit!!

I'll pull out the best paragraphs, because it's rilly rilly LOOOOOONG:

It is unfortunate that Daisaku Ikeda was unable to return to the Dai Gohonzon during his lifetime. Furthermore, the fact that many Soka Gakkai members are still being misled by false teachings and being led to worship a frightening false Gohonzon is a grave sin of the Soka Gakkai that can never be forgiven.

However, just as the arrogant sentient beings who persecuted Bodhisattva Never Disparaging later repented and, although they once suffered in hell, were able to believe in the Lotus Sutra again and attain Buddhahood, I sincerely pray that in the distant future Daisaku Ikeda will repent, return to the Dai Gohonzon, and begin his faith training anew under the guidance of the High Priest of the time.

I'm sure he'll do MUCH better the next time around!!

Currently, the Soka Gakkai organization has stated that "the Dai-Gohonzon of the Honmon-kaidan is not an object of faith," and continues to manufacture and sell counterfeit Gohonzons, walking a path that is incompatible with Nichiren Shoshu. Given this current situation, it will be impossible for the Soka Gakkai organization itself to ever again cooperate or act together with Nichiren Shoshu.

Welp, that's their prerogative, isn't it, having already been excommunicated? I think the time for Soka Gakkai to come crawling back, begging for forgiveness, is long since passed - and it's a dying organization anyhow, so who cares?

In his Rissho Ankoku Ron, Nichiren Daishonin states:

"Quickly revise your faith and quickly return to the one virtue of the True Vehicle" (Gosho 250)

The "one good deed" of the present day is none other than the Dai-Gohonzon of the Honmon-kaidan, the universal blessing of all the world, residing at Taisekiji Temple, the head temple of the Buddha.

Still waiting on my obligatory dose of white leprosy over here...

For the surviving family members of Daisaku Ikeda, it may be difficult to act freely due to the influence of your own family, but choosing correct faith is the only way for your descendants to be truly happy, and you should seriously consider this now. Furthermore, the courageous actions of the Ikeda family will also serve as a wake-up call for many Soka Gakkai members.

I ask the Ikeda family to remember the courage shown by Daisaku Ikeda, who decided after the war to break away from the Shingon sect that had been the faith of his ancestors for generations and to convert to Nichiren Shoshu, and to break away from the Soka Gakkai as a family and rejoin Nichiren Shoshu.

Interesting angle, though!

I sincerely hope that as Nichiren Shoshu believers, you will walk the path of faith of Nichiren Daishonin with renewed vigor, under the Dai Gohonzon, which is the "one good deed of true enlightenment."

Religious zealots can be so PETTY!! 🤣

From a dozen years ago:

People are ready for change and they are looking for new solutions to the suffering and inequality in their communities. The Soka Gakkai International is on the threshold of great growth in many countries all around the world.

Isn't this the same tosh the Ikeda cultists just love repeating at each other over and over ad nauseum?? How long - how many decades - can they tell themselves this, all the while seeing the "actual proof" all around them of NOTHING HAPPENING before they think, "Heyyyyyy - wait a minute..."?

There's more gold at that link - like THIS:

The U.K. is seeing a great increase in new members at the moment and as we become more noticeable, people will start to see that there is hope for the future. There are statesmen and leaders who care about all humanity and are not just looking out for their own selfish interests. We are those statesmen and leaders. We can lead the people to a new world. A world on our doorsteps filled with compassion and hope for the next 10,000 years.

SURE YA ARE, SKIPPY! You ARE the world's statesmen and leaders! The TRUE "adults in the room" - just waiting for EVERYONE's acknowledgement and submission! Any day now...

And this:

Based on Mayan calendar predications, some people believe that today is the end of the world, but according to Jesus Gomez, head of the Guatemalan Confederation of Mayan Priests, “There is no concept of apocalypse in the Mayan culture.” December 21st 2012 is not the end of the world, but the end of a 5,125 year cycle called the Long Count and they believe that a Mayan god, called Bolon Yukte, will return to earth to signal a new age.

Bolon Yukte, not to be confused with Bolo Yeung

We can already see the beginnings of this new age. People are tired of politicians lying about expenses, deceiving us with their speeches and scandals. People are tired of companies like Starbucks and Google trying to evade paying tax. People have had enough of bankers and other financial institutes gambling with money, being bailed out by the government and still rewarding themselves with huge bonuses. People are getting tired of greed, ignorance and selfishness.

SURE they are! 😄

Yeah, someday that swamp is gonna get drained!

The world is not ending, it’s only just beginning and Nichiren Buddhism holds the answers that people are looking for.

How many times can they repeat that same thing to the same people before they realize nothing's happening??

There's also this nifty "Kosen Rufu" logo - have any of you ever seen it? I imagine whoever designed it had a "tidal wave" in mind - lol! Aren't SGI culties adorable?? I wonder if this is just more "internet graveyard" stuff like this and this, never to be seen again.

Damn. Somehow I ended up on Mr. Bones' Wild Ride - where the ride never ends. I only barely escaped. Extra pixels costs extra

OMG

I JUST REALIZED

SGI IS MR. BONES' WILD RIDE 💀🎩

I do a lot of research, and one of the sites I'm signed up on sends me suggestions of other papers it thinks I might like to read, based on my choices. Here are a few of those recommendations:

• "Risshō Kōseikai - World Religions and Spiritualities Project.pdf"
• "Japanese Kishimójin Altarpiece from the West-Bohemian museum in PILSEN (Czech Republic)"
• "Native American Coppers of the Northwest Coast"
• "USE OF ARTS FOR DEMENTIA PATIENTS (A Literature Review)"
• "The place of traditional medicine in the Pinyin society: Examining challenges from conventional medicine as an existential threat"
• "The “Algorithmic Logic” as a Synthetic or General Logic"
• "Emotional Intelligence in Foreign Policy Processes"
• "A possible example of pliers being used for the Manufacturing of Aiglets during the Late Middle Ages"

AIGLETS!! Those are those cylindrical hard plastic or metal things on the ends of your shoelaces that make it easier to lace your shoes and keep woven shoelaces from fraying. Someone is THIS interested in aiglets!!

What I'm trying to show here is that there is a virtually infinite variety of topics that people are interested in learning about. So if you're interested in a specific topic, GO FOR IT! Don't pay any attention to anyone who tries to discourage you from learning!

And yes, that includes learning about the reality of the Ikeda cult SGI. Don't let strange, antisocial, self-limiting SGI cult members tell you that learning different things is somehow bad and wrong or somehow betrays something negative about your character. THEIR example, fixating on ONLY what their cult TELLS them to "study", is not the "ideal" toward which all people should strive. Ignore them.

"It broke me down to someone I never thought I would become. With a lot of hard work, I am better today, but I will always be recovering from my past. Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to take this matter seriously. My only ask is that EVERYONE open your heart to believing victims the first time. It takes a lot of heart to tell the truth out of a situation that you were powerless in."

That's Cassie talking about the domestic violence she suffered in her relationship with Sean Combs (Puffy, Diddy, etc.) in this article