What do SGI and political parties have in common? The Iron Law of Oligarchy, of course: "First defined by German sociologist Robert Michels (1876-1936), this refers to the inherent tendency of all complex organizations, including radical or socialist political parties and labour unions, to develop a ruling clique of leaders with interests in the organization itself rather than in its official aims."

Tell me about it.

In other news... Did you see the excerpts from "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions" by Francis Wheen in The Guardian? (If not, click here dead link .)

Wheen rightly calls quackery on the carpet -- "spiritual" quackery -- and takes some swipes at homeopathy and Mayan rebirthing rituals. I'm no expert on Deepak Chopra, but I have heard him speak a few times and he didn't strike me as a quack. Anyway, the excerpts are worth reading.

I'm sure that, in the eyes of many, the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo has a high quackery quotient. Yeah, it sounds kind of nutty to say that the invocation of this particular mantra is a sort of medicine of the human heart. Granted. Maybe this is why I worry about SGI-USA's tendency to "market" Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as a self-help program: it seems to me to degrade the credibility of the practice of Nichiren Buddhism.

The Nichiren Shoshu priesthood (corrupt though it has become) used to give the SGI lay organization a kind of credibility that it just doesn't have right now, a patina of age-old religious respectability.

The time I went on tozan (in the spring of 1991) I was brand new to Nichiren Buddhism and had been chanting for only a few months. I was with a group of about 10 other gals from Los Angeles. For the first couple of days, we toured SGI corporate buildings in Tokyo and met with SGI leaders. My first visit to the head temple at Taiseki-ji was for ushitora gongyo presided over by High Priest Nikken. I remember thinking, "Oh, this is a religion." Seriously, that fact hadn't dawned on me during any of my previous interactions with SGI.

Now, some SGIers would accuse me of being impressed by priestly robes and rituals, but I don't think that's what impressed me about the temple. When an institution has been around for a few hundred years, one gets the feeling that it is based on an enduring set of principles rather than on the personality of a leader or group of leaders. Surely there have been good priests and bad priests in the temple's long history, but somehow the institution itself is bigger than any one personality, including Nikken. One may ultimately reject the doctrinal interpretations of Taiseki-ji (as I have) but there's a sense of timeless refuge about the temple.

I don't get that feeling with SGI. Leaders striving to make SGI synonymous with Daisaku Ikeda -- and Ikeda synonymous with Nichiren, and Soka synonymous with Buddhism -- gives the whole enterprise the taint of a short-lived marketing campaign. SGI touts the "timeless principles of Soka," which seem to change with each speech, and which have little effect on organizational practice. It feels fake, false, fabricated.

The institution of a priesthood is not an inherently bad thing. Priesthood and laity could and should ideally work together as complementary -- and sometimes countervailing -- influences. Both Nichiren Shoshu and SGI have failed practitioners of Nichiren Buddhism, I think, in a very fundamental way by rupturing this clergy/laity relationship. And I don't honestly believe that either group is dedicated to the development of Nichiren Buddhism in America. Rather, they are interested in their blood feud and their ultimately Japan-centric aims.

Hmmm. Let me skim what I've written so far. Yeah, it's all heresy and I'm a traitor to the glorious cause of Soka.

I guess that's enough for today.

XX,
Lisa J.