More Gakkai ranting.... You will be assimilated, resistance is futile...

Just returned from a "leaders training meeting" in Monterey...

"I was lucky in the order, but then I've always been lucky when it comes to killing" - Clint Eastwood from Unforgiven

I've been lucky in the Gakkai. I began practicing in San Jose and formed friendships/relationships with intelligent and sincerely seeking leaders. Steve Cervelli with his talent for saying things so well without "gakkai speak" (pop-Buddhism buzz terms and Gakkai-Japanese lingo). Steve for years was the territory leader in San Jose. An intelligent and unassuming man, I never recall Steve not being "on".

Jeff McDaniel, ex-Green Beret and a major leadership player, while sometimes moody, sometimes less accessible than others, none-the-less is never without some profound and imaginative quest while continuing undeterred on his Buddhist path. Jeff has always been my first-line Gakkai role model, my sensei. Jeff always has a hype, and is the closest thing to a true Soka Gakkai Buddhist scholar. I say that only because generally when members learn a little about Nichiren's Buddhism they get an attitude and split the program. Jeff has never failed to answer any question I asked both truthfully and to the best of his ability, including when I questioned the Daigohonzon, the 1979 priesthood conflict and the history of the Shoshinkai (and I asked about those things back in the early 80's).

Maureen Cervelli - Maureen is the Buddha, she just doesn't know it. We heard Matilda Buck speak at the last big meeting in San Francisco a couple of months ago. Matilda started out ok, but quickly gave in to hard-line Gakkai rhetoric leaving us all bored and anxious to leave. The whole time I was thinking, "it should have been Maureen up there". Anyone who knows and loves Maureen Cervelli knows she is a reminder of all that is right in SGI-USA. Warm, sincere, truly uninterested in appreciating her own talent for humor, she is a treasure of the SGI.

Now I'm a leader in Salinas. My district has many Japanese pioneer womens division members, beautiful woman who have been practicing this Buddhism for nearly as long as I've been alive. They're an unending source of inspiration for me and my wife. The rest of my fellow SGI members and leaders in Monterey come from the same intelligent common sense stock that I was used to in San Jose.

Maybe I'm just lucky in SGI. It's not just the great people I've known and chanted with all these years, I stay and practice in the SGI for what I get out of it. I do it for me, and I haven't quit because of me. It's just that simple.

Is SGI a cult? Sure it is. What most of you anti-SGI, or even ex-SGI folks don't understand is that cults don't just form from the top down, they form from the bottom up because some people feel they need cultism in their lives.

Am I a cultie? No. I'm a ninja. While I say this time and time again mostly tongue-in-cheek, there is real meaning to my saying "I'm a ninja". I know real from unreal. I am on the path of learning about myself. I've understood and managed my relationships and when things went bad, whether in SGI, The Bujinkan, or even back in my 20+ years stuck in the corporate world I knew, I KNEW that I had to make it my responsibility, my "fault" if you will, my karma, or I couldn't change it.

Once you give someone else the power over you that comes from thinking it's "their fault" that they've "done something to you" you're toast. It's not about how it really is, it's about how you must make it in order to change it.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't care if you ever come back to SGI. I don't deny some of you have had terrible, horrible evil cultish experiences in SGI.

T h a t ' s y o u r k a r m a . . .

And if you don't like me saying so, I don't care.

I love my relationships, even my difficult ones. I've been used, and I've used back. I know and understand the true nature of MY Soka Gakkai and that's why I still practice in my Soka Gakkai.

If you're reading this and are ex-Gakkai, anti-Gakkai or were stupid enough to go follow Taisekiji's pope just because you were angry at SGI....

I don't care.

I was lucky.

Rev. Greg, Shidoshi