| I was an SGI-USA district leader until today. I told my leader I resigned. But actually I had not really been doing the 1,001 things this position required for a while. I just stopped. It was just too much.
The leader said she understood if I was "too busy." I corrected her. I was not just too busy I was not willing to do all that stuff anymore.
But I can understand her not really getting it, especially since I left out the biggest reason for my disaffection. I can no longer can make excuses for how the SGI-USA is. Even more fundamental, I can't keep ignoring the fact that I don't believe what SGI teaches.
Here's the big thing, and many other Buddhists, former SGI ones too, my feel differently: I absolutely believe that I am the Buddha, the Law, NMHRK, the eternal Shakyamuni, the universe itself. My entire life confirms this for me in countless ways. This is what Nichiren said in the Gosho and Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings.
I know this concept can get confusing because both Shakyamuni (at least as recorded in the sutras I've read) and Nichiren sometimes said things that made it seem as though the Law or Gohonzon was something we pray "to."
But the big truth that Nichiren stated more than once, and that Shakyamuni implied in the Lotus Sutra, is that we (or I) are IT--the whole shebang.
The SGI says this sometimes. But mostly I hear or read about how great the Law, chanting, NMHRK or the Gohonzon are as if these are genies and the actual person who made something move in her or his life was secondary to how much s/he chanted and "worked for kosen rufu."
When I look around me, the world doesn't work that way. There are plenty of people who never chant but are happy and resilient and living well. What is more important than how much somebody does those tasks is the quality of one's life, one's heart or spirit, her attitude, and, I think especially, her self view. From there, everything else springs. SGI rarely conveys this essential message
I also got tired of the fear-mongering. That is, being told of the evil that happens if I don't chant enough or don't fight enough for kosen rufu or don't believe in the SGI enough or read the incredibly long, unedited and self-aggrandizing (New) Human Revolution enough.
I started fighting back in my head. Yes, I can chant just three times today, or just in my mind, or not at all, and all is still well with me. Because I am just as eternal now as I was before and after I learned of Buddhism in this lifetime.
And from my thoughts spring everything. Realizing this frees me. |
