Posted 2/6/2012 12:06 am
They are cheezeballs, cultists. Not quite as bad as Scientology but still a big, cheezy waste of money.
If you interested in Buddhism join a traditional group. Even if you are specifically bent on Nichiren Buddhism, join a legitimate sect like Nichiren-shu that has been around for centuries rather than this tacky shit.
Fair enough. My point was more that philosophically speaking Soka is to traditional Buddhism as Mormonism is to Christianity. It has its roots there, but its something different entirely.
I dunno how it works overseas, but SGI in Japan has a MAJOR network, they reckon its like 10% of the population or something. And the connections translate into something tangible...a vastly disproportionate number of people in careers where connections are important like politicians and people in entertainment are SGI but dont advertise it publicly.
I don't care about Buddhism. I just want to know if it's safe or if I'll get brainwashed. This chick is way out of my league, so unless I'm going to get ritually sacrificed I'll probably put up with whatever stupid shit she wants me to do as long as I can keep fucking her.
Buddha's words and teachings have been preserved in a number of texts called "Sutras." After his death, many Sutras proposing "new teachings" were introduced over the next millenium that claimed to be directly from Buddha but were obviously not. Sets of these more recent "sutras" became the basis for Mahayana and Vajarajyana branches of Buddhism in East Asia. Most of these represent a departure from the original core teachings of Buddhism.
One of the most popular "new sutras" of the Mahayana strain was the Lotus Sutra. It has long been revered all over East Asia. The Sutra teaches, among othter things, that all men have the capacity to become Buddhas, and that the lifespan of the Buddha is infinite. Buddha-nature is conceived of as a kind of supra-essential ultimate reality, beyond the personal being of the historical Buddha. This text formed the basis for the influential Tien-tai (or Tendai in Japan) school.
Nichiren was a medieval Tendai monk in Japan who taught that the current era was corrupt and tradtional Buddhist practices no longer worked. Even reading the Lotus Sutra itself was too far above people of this degenerate age. The only path forward would be to chant the TITLE of the book (not even any of the content). Because of a Mahayana belief that the part contains the whole and the whole contains the part, simply chanting the title (part) was seen as equivalent to actually reading the text (whole). He presented this as the only acceptable Buddhist belief (a radical departure from the general tolerant pluralism that usually characterized Buddhism).
Many different schools blossomed from Nichiren, the two biggest being Nichiren-shu and Nichren-shoshu. The latter was the more radical, claiming that Nichiren himself, rather than the historical Buddha, was the true "Buddha of our era" and the focus of devotion turned more and more to Nichiren over the historical Buddha.
The Sokka Gakkai was orignally a layman's group of Nichiren-shoshu followers that rebelled from the priesthood. By using 20th century media-savvy skills, this group became quite large and wealthy in Japan and around the world. Recently the doctrinal basis has drifted eveb from devotion to Nichiren towards devotion to Ikeda, Sokka's founder.
There is more nutty stuff, like their belief in the supernatual power of a plank of wood they have...but generally from this thumbnail sketch you can see how derivative and improbable their theology is.
Btw "Shakubuku" is translated as "breaking in" and also as "removing resistance".
Note for the op: once they "Shakubuku" you, you'1ll never see her pussy again. She'll be busy recruiting other morons to the cult. But then you would have become yet another chanting drone.
You could say that nailing SGI chicks is sort of a specialty of mine, because for the most part they mean well even if their beliefs are a bit nutty. One thing I will say in their favor is that the level of TFB you can expect is a lot lower than your average woman.
Just smile and nod, there isnt much they can do to turn you after that. Sure getting dragged to gongyo for an hour or so once a month is lame but you could do a lot worse.
Posted 2/6/2012 12:35 am
Knew a couple of folks from SGI and they're very nice people, but wouldn't consider joining up outside on continuing contact with that chick.
Apparently so. Although getting people to swallow that all our pain is the fault of a rib-woman's temptation by a talking snake doesn't seem all that much more bizzare if you really think about it...
No need to kick a dead dog, as far as I am concerned.
But still, it is just moronic to repeat a fucking TITLE of some ancient forgery and think that does any good.
