Is the Soka Gakkai a cult?

Opening Statement

I think everybody should join a cult at one time or another in their twenties. It doesn't matter if you really "believe," since the experience itself will be an eyeopener for the rest of your life.


Sample Anecdote

I'm going to end this essay with a series of anecdotes concerning my religious cult experience, but I can't resist offering a sample now.

In the mid-70's, I attended a chapter meeting which was held in a member's apartment. After the meeting, the group leader made an announcement. He said the leader directly over him was getting married and he thought we should all chip in to buy him a wedding gift - a $2,000 stereo system. That was a lot of money at the time, and when he sensed a bit of hesitancy from the members, he sternly declared, "I'll pay for it myself if I have to."

Everybody loved this particular groom-to-be, but I thought it was a violation of our principles for this guy to be soliciting money like this. Yes, money was periodically solicited for the organization, but never for the benefit of leaders. I wish I wasn't so shy back then, or I would have spoken up and said, "This is wrong." For the record, I didn't donate a dime.

Later, this groom-to-be was heard to declare, "So-and-so should get a job and not have to crash on other people's couches. This is why we're practicing Buddhists - to prove that we can get whatever we want by chanting for it." Yeah, right.


Statement of Purpose

In my early twenties (back in the mid-1970's), I was a member of a religious cult which is still around today and is currently known as the Soka Gakkai International. I was a member of this pseudo-Buddhist laymen's group for about two years, though I don't know if it's as cultish now as it was then. My purpose today is not to determine its current status, for these simple reasons: it failed in its mission to bring about world peace (as it promised it would) when twenty-years passed (it's been almost 40 years now), and its current membership is about the same now as it was in the 1970's - having become irrelevant.

In the USA, that translates to about one in every 1,000 being SGI members. That's a pretty miserable showing for over 40 years of trying to grow this organization in an environment that has such a vast Buddhist-friendly potential.

My purpose today is to relate some anecdotes stemming from my direct experience, not only during those initial two years but also during a period when I rejoined - from 1993 until I was barred from meetings in January of 2009.


SGI-USA background

SGI-USA = Soka Gakkai Interntional - USA region.

When I joined the SGI-USA in 1974, I was 23 years old and living with 3 roommates in a 4-bedroom flat near Chicago's hillbilly heaven neighborhood - near Wilson Ave and Clark. My share of the rent was $40 per month out of my $5,200 per year US Dept of Labor salary. That's right - I worked downtown across the street from the just about completed Sears Tower, making the lordly sum of $100 per week. Don't laugh - I was actually able to save money back then.

A lot of young people hung out in this flat, since they were friends of my roommates. One day, I walked in on a group of 4 of them in the living room chanting to a scroll in a box. They were recent converts in an SGI-USA street recruitment campaign. I decided to give it a shot, so I joined too, though not immediatelys. Once a week I would go to District meetings - the District being the basic building block of the SGI organization. These meeting took place in a members' homes and typically included between a dozen and 20 members.

These members were divided into Men's, Women's, Young Men's, and Young Women's groups, each having their own leaders and assistant leaders. Two or more Districts made up a Chapter. I know there was at least one level higher than Chapter, but all together these groups made up the Chicago region which had exactly one Community Center. We didn't call it a temple or church, but in all of Chicago, there was only one such Center. I liked the idea that most of the meetings took place in people's homes, but we were encouraged to go to the Center once per week in order to connect with our larger community.


The Promises

There were several promises made to SGI members. The first one: You can chant for anything you want. That is, you could chant for a new car, a job, a girl friend...anything. And you were encouraged to be specific instead of just chanting for happiness (or even enlightenment!) in general.

The second promise: You can attain enlightenment in this lifetime in your current form. That was a little tricky, since we weren't told we could actually become fully-enlightened Buddhas equal to Shakyamuni Buddha. In fact, much later I heard this revision: "Buddhahood is not a destination but a journey." When put that way, it sounds like a carrot on a stick being dangled just out of reach but never to be reached. I rejected the SGI's view of Buddhist practice, since I believe the purpose of practice is to become a Buddha. Maybe not in this lifetime, but I certainly believe it is possible. And I came to see why that state could not be reached in one lifetime - at least not for 99.9999% of us. It certainly didn't happen in the case of SGI President Daisaku Ikeda - that should have been enough to warn us away.

The third promise: We will realize world peace in our lifetime. In fact, in the 70's we used to sing a song with the line, "Keep chanting, keep chanting, we've just got 20 years to go." The idea was to convert one-third of the world's population so they would become active chanters. Another third was needed to support the first third, and the last third was expected to not actively oppose the chanters. These are the three promises I heard in the early seventies. Obviously, the SGI failed as far as their 20 years to go promise was concerned.


Give them something to do

One of the basic rules of any organization is to give its members something to do. Just chanting and studying about Buddhism is too passive. So in the 60s and 70s, the SGI had this idea to form marching units to participate in local community events. For the young men, there was the Brass Band; for the Young Women, the Fife and Drum Corp. So I bought a saxophone and joined the Brass Band, with our most ambitious plan aimed at New York City in 1976. At that time, NYC was so broke, the city wasn't even going to stage a bicentennial celebration on the Fourth of July. So the SGI-USA leadership said, "We'll do it!"

And so I, along with members from all across the country, prayed and practiced for a year in advance so we'd be ready to do our part for the Big Show. Of course, each of us paid our own air fare and living expenses for the three days we'd be there. No problem - it was honor to step forward and save the world. We really felt like pioneers in the vanguard of a new social movement. We felt such a movement was necessary after we had lived through the horrors of the unrest caused by the Vietnam War and Civil Rights riots.

But...after we came home from New York, we were exhausted, burned out from our massive, year-long, labor of love. A lot of the members even stopped going to district meetings, since they felt a bit lost at sea with this huge campaign being over with thereby giving us a lot of time on our hands. The leadership then declared Phase Two as the new order of the day. We were no longer expected to sacrifice so much of our time and energy to the organization, but to personal growth instead and to the nurturing of new members.

I didn't hang around long enough to find out exactly what Phase Two was supposed to entail. I quit, and didn't have any contact with SGI members again until 1993. At that time, I met a member who invited me to an SGI meeting. She was a student at the university where I worked, who informed me that the "excesses" (read: cult-like behavior) of the past were growing pains that had been overcome. She told me that President Ikeda cleaned up our act in the USA. I thought, "What? He was part of the problem, since nothing could have happened here without his approval." But I said nothing, merely making a mental note to myself.

In 1993, I rejoined. But I was determined to do it my way. That year, by the way, I bought a copy of the newest English-language translation of a core Buddhist text, the Lotus Sutra. This version, previously unavailable, was sponsored by the SGI itself but was actually written by a non-SGI scholar - an internationally recognized translator from Japanese and Chinese into English. Dr. Burton Watson, an American, who had received his PhD from Columbia University.

Dr. Watson's translation became a great source of joy and personal enrichment for me. It also opened my eyes to how badly the SGI had gone astray. Local SGI members came to know me as someone who asked a lot of questions, which had proved awkward for members and leaders alike. No doubt, this is why I was finally told to leave the SGI in 2013. Leadership decided to circle the wagons and purge undesirables like me - before they started losing members.


Anecdotes

ONE:

Local district meetings gave members a chance to chant together but, more importantly, to introduce guests to our practice. Hence, these were called discussion meetings. After we chanted, if there were any guests, a few of us took turns explaining the history and nature of our particular brand of Buddhism. Then the chant leader, or a visiting higher-up, would offer closing comments followed by a Q&A.

So far, so good. But...these were never really discussion meetings. If a guest had some in depth questions and tried to pry more info from the leader, he would always be told (something like), "I could try to describe to you what a chocolate cake tastes like. But until you try it, you'll never know." End of story - end of discussion. I all the years I was with SGI-USA, I never found anyone who would (or could) directly answer my questions. I was usually encouraged to, "Chant on it."

The three local-level leaders I had the most contact with in the 1970's never tried to have a real conversation with me. Such conversations that we had were minimal, to say the least (literally). Ironically, this even extended, years later, when one of our particular yearly campaigns was dubbed "The Year of Friendship and Dialogue." Yeah, right.

TWO:

In the early 70's, I was invited to a district-level Young Men's Division chant session. There were four of us present, including the Chapter chief. He chanted the sutra so fast, I couldn't keep up. Another guy had the same problem. After we finished chanting, there weren't any words of encouragement, no "thank you for giving up part of your Saturday for this activity," and certainly no dialogue. We just got a disapproving look from the leader who said, "At least this guy (the fourth in our party) tried to keep up." And then he left!

Years later, I ran that episode by one member who (I thought) was capable of occasional flashes of honesty concerning the practice - but only if he and I were out of earshot of other members. His comment? "Anyone who's chanting that fast isn't practicing correctly." My take? This was just a cheap attempt by this chapter chief to make us think we weren't trying hard enough, just trying to make us doubt ourselves. As I found out years later, it wasn't ourselves we should have doubted.

THREE:

David's 900-page letter to me. When David passed away (in the 90's), I went to a memorial service held for him at the Chicago Community Center. And I got up to speak, holding up a bundled stack of 900-handprinted pages. David had spent about a year writing this epic response to the many questions I had concerning our mutual faith. I thanked his spirit before the congregation, many of whom had heard of this heroic effort of penmanship. He didn't have to do this, but he did. And it made for interesting reading. But...it didn't really answer my questions.

And there couldn't have been any doubt as to what my questions were, since I had gone to several chanting meetings with handouts I'd prepared. These cited, chapter and verse, what my very specific questions were. My intention was to find answers from the members - from ordinary members or leaders, I didn't care which. I had even put my personal contact info on these handouts if anyone wanted to call me later. Sometimes good answers to questions don't occur immediately, so I wanted to let people know I really wanted their opinions, even if offered on another day. But nobody ever spoke to me about these issues; no one ever contacted me.

When the prayer bell was sounded to close the memorial, the guests stood up and mingled. Dale, a veteran member of 30 years, whom I'd known in the 70's, walked up to me as I was showing my letter to a number of people. He heard me repeat that this was David's response to my questions, to which he offered, "Well, I guess that showed you." His unmistakable meaning was: "Well that ought to shut you up."

Dale and I didn't have much contact in the early years of my practice, but I do know that some of my questions made him bristle. And his blind faith made me bristle, but I tried to be a non-confrontational gentleman about this. After all, he was the leader of the district I was in when I rejoined SGI in 1993. However, it seems he still harbored at least a mild distaste for me personally. In any event, no one there asked if they could borrow this letter to read for themselves. Somehow, I wasn't surprised.

FOUR:

Joe and Phil were two members I'd known in the 70's, both of whom were low level leaders. Joe actually introduced me to this Buddhism and Phil had been one of 3 roommates I lived with during a six-month period in the 70's. I don't know what happened between the two of them. But I remember sitting in a car with Phil, when Joe approached and starting pounding on the window. I could see he really wanted to have words with Phil and looked violently angry. He kept yelling, "Open the door." And Phil kept saying, "Fuck you."

Phil didn't open the door and Joe eventually left, after which we drove away. Neither of them ever spoke of this incident again to me. I can only guess that, perhaps, there were tensions due to their roles in the organization that had caused them to cross swords. Or maybe it was a case of one guy hitting on another guy's girlfriend, or disparaging words having been spoken publicly. I had no idea, but I remember being very upset by this. I am very slow to accept anybody as a role model for anything, since I'd come to know that many gods have feet of clay. But these were people I knew who were putting in an awful lot of time and effort to realize world peace. And yet they weren't being very peaceful toward each other.

Later, as I came to study Buddhism in greater depth, I learned about the virtue of not giving rise to anger. Perhaps so, but it is hard to be young and dispassionate.

Years later, I heard that Joe had moved back to his ancestral home in the south, becoming a born again Christian. Strange as it might seem, I didn't have a problem with that. I feel that Jesus Christ is a bodhisattva - a stealth Buddhist - who presented Himself to the world in a form that was agreeable to the hungry multitudes of the West. It might appear that Joe had given up on Buddhism, but then I remembered something I read in the Lotus Sutra (a core text of the SGI which, I'm sad to say, too many members only gave lip service to). It said (something like): "It is hard to uphold this sutra, but the buddhas of the universe will be pleased to witness anybody who can uphold it even for a short while."

Translation? You did good, Joe. I hope you'll reconsider Buddhism - this time, not in the SGI context - and find your own meanings from these profound teachings. And when you do, I hope you'll share them with me.

FIVE:

We were getting ready for the New York City bicentennial parade, which meant we did a whole lot of chanting at the Community Center. That's also where we had practice drills for what we'd be showing off to the world as we marched down the Avenue of the Americas. I was chanting with a half-full room of members, when I remembered an announcment made earlier: "Let's chant until 10 o'clock (pm)." That was said hours ago, so as 10:00 approached, I rang the bell to signify that the chant session was officially over. So the room fell silent, but it didn't take long for two firebreathing young men to run up and scold me: "What are you doing? There are people here - leaders - who want to continue chanting."

They were obviously angry at me, but later I thought: "So what's stopping them? We've rung that bell before to officially close a chanting session, only to have those who wanted to continue chanting do so." Then I thought, "What a bunch of Nazis."

SIX:

It was almost time for us to fly to NYC for the Fourth of July, 1976 celebration. Hey, Liz Taylor was going to be our parade's Grand Marshall. Good times, right? We had a few more Brass Band practices at the Chicago Center, one of which featured a leader "encouraging" a member to get a haircut. This member had long hair, but that was the style back then among many countercultural groups. Lo and behold, I saw this same member with a haircut at the next practice. But the result was a bit of a compromise, being longish yet obviously styled by a pro. I could tell this wasn't quite what the leaders had in mind, but they didn't say anything - at least not in front of the rest of us.

When I first joined, I was told I didn't have to give up anything. SGI wasn't like the Hare Krishnas insisting upon a certain style of dress. And we could even continue practicing our lifelong faiths, as long as we included Buddhist chanting among our other practices. I guess, when push comes to shove, members of groups should expect pressure for at least some degree of conformity. But...of course we weren't told that when we first joined.

SEVEN:

In the early 90's, I went to the Center and walked in on a leaders' meeting. In those days, such meetings weren't closed off to non-leaders. I heard one young woman explain the Three S's - in this order: Sensei, Soka Gakkai, Self. We were supposed to support the International leader, Daisaku Ikeda, above all else. Then we were to chant for the mission of the Soka Gakkai, which was the vehicle by which world peace would be realized. Finally, we could chant for our own happiness.

Then I remembered something that Ikeda's predecessor said. Tsunesaboro Makiguchi told his members that his own life was nothing compared to the importance of the Soka Gakkai. Looks like Ikeda reversed the order of the first of the two S's. What happened?

END COMMENT:

If it looks like a cult and acts like a cult, it is a cult. It takes a lot of effort to decultify a movement, but sometimes that's exactly what we have to do in order to protect the core teachings from corruption. As time goes by, I'll be posting more of these revealing anecdotes.

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Steven Searle, Just another member of the Virtual Sangha of the Lotus

Contact me at bpa_cinc@yahoo.com