Hello, friends in the SGI-USA

I am hopeful that everyone reading this letter has been doing well since you last
heard from me: experiencing increase in each of the values of Goodness, Beauty
and Gain.

Life contains the capacity, like flames that reach toward heaven, to
transform suffering and pain into the energy needed for value-creation,
into light that illuminates darkness. Like the wind traversing vast spaces
unhindered, life has the power to uproot and overturn all obstacles and
difficulties. Like clear flowing water, it can wash away all stains and
impurities. And finally life, like the great earth that sustains plants and
vegetation, impartially protects all people with its compassionate,
nurturing force.

Daily Encouragement by Daisaku Ikeda

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
As I write this, it is July 3, the SGI's Day of Mentor and Disciple.
Ai-yai-yai. There's those grating, annoying words — Mentor and Disciple …no, I am
not going to inflict upon you a comprehensive and exhausting explanation of
Mentor and Disciple. I'm going to tell you, instead, some of my grouchier and
more peculiar thoughts about this theme.

Inside My Head, Voices

The way I experience Buddhism in my life includes an odd phenomenon where I
sometimes hear an inner voice saying a phrase that I have read or heard in the
past. One such recent phrase that came over and over to me in May this year was
“You have your mission, I have mine” from Daisaku Ikeda's poem To My
Young American Friends. Another that sometimes comes into my thoughts is
mai ji sa ze nen (“This is my constant thought”). When these phrases appear
in my thoughts, the feelings that accompany them are enjoyable, uplifted,
humbling, invigorating.
But the words mentor and disciple have, in the past, seldom come into mind on
their own, and often enough when I have read or heard them, I've felt suddenly
distinctly tired and uninspired and …bored. “Oh please. Not this again. Could the
deejay not find another record to play?” And the urge to tune out whatever is
about to be said (if I am listening in a meeting) then arises and needs to be
struggled with.
If you're pretty sure that I am alone in this, or in a small minority, then you
probably feel like you don't need to read anything more. Otherwise, here we go,
on another descriptive journey through My Process.
“We're Not Worthy”1
In the past 24 years of Buddhist practice I've lived times of great struggle with
myself. Some of that struggle — a lot of it — arose from feelings of unworthiness
and inadequacy. Deeper than most conscious thoughts, these attitudes would
create a barrier to understanding what I really ought to think of SGI President
Daisaku Ikeda. I would alternately feel like there was a component of manipulative
propaganda or dogma being broadcast through the SGI organ publications or
senior leaders; or I would feel like it was clear that Daisaku Ikeda is a great human
being, and well worth praising and honoring — a great thinker, humanitarian,
peace advocate and diplomat, as well as Supreme Leader of a fairly benign
Buddhist organization called the SGI.

Something Missing
But in these alternating thoughts there is something missing: me. In both cases I
am being a passive observer; either an optimistic, positive, “I'm-ok, Daisaku's-ok”
kind of passive observer, or a pessimistic, negative, doom-and-gloom kind of
observer (“I have been chanting and associating myself with the SGI for 24 years;
I think I know that some of what we say is just overblown idealism and
cheerleading and SGI-speak, and I wish that this guy Ikeda would tell it straight
…”. Whichever point of view I took, I was on the outside of any process by
which I am becoming the same as Daisaku Ikeda.
Reading the Lotus Sutra and the Gosho and talking with those who truly study
with a thirst to understand, have helped me through the worst times over the
years. Reading the World Tribune this last 3 or 4 months has been a revelation.
But then, the last 3 or 4 months have been in the context of some of the greatest
confrontation of my comfort-zone I've ever experienced, followed by, by far, the
greatest benefits I have ever experienced.

Where the rubber meets the road

Excuse the flowery and perhaps fakey-sounding prose now, but it's recently
become clear to me that I am utterly convinced that I have to be a successor to
Daisaku Ikeda. I cannot practice this Buddhism and yet not have this identity and
this relatedness at the core of my life. Daisaku Ikeda is my best friend, the one
who “gets” all the internal stuff I go through in trying to practice correctly; he's
the one who has an unfaltering perception regarding my potential stature as a
Greater Self manifested in this Saha world. He is the one being that I can count on
to never settle for a less than rigorously correct interpretation of Nichiren's
intent, and to never settle for less than complete fidelity in his actions, to that
intent.
Somehow, Mentor and Disciple is about the place where the rubber of Buddhist
Philosophy meets the road of Reality in this life. What that means to me is: I've
found that it is incredibly easy for one to become a person who simply praises the
exertions and merits of others and extols the wonder and beauty of the Lotus

1 Reference to the movie “Wayne's World”

Sutra but stops trying to engage the drive shaft in one's own life. Initially it feels
wonderful to slide into the non-engaged state but the long-range results are not
so pretty: I'll find myself forgetting my aspirations and dreams, losing hold of
clarity of memories about when I have felt most deeply encouraged, find it harder
and harder to recognize and respect the Buddha in others … .

Too much praise?

People in the SGI who skim-read Daisaku Ikeda's writings, or who filter out the
parts that make them uncomfortable with their performance as Buddhist
practitioners, that make them uncomfortable with their own attitudes and
tendencies: these people will nonetheless sometimes get up in front of members
at a meeting and try to “promote” the concept of Mentor and Disciple out of a
feeling that they are obligated to by the Organizational Program, or because they
think that it's just a “good cause” to say something of the sort — after all, what
can it hurt? It's part of the doctrine of the SGI interpretation of the life-philosophy,
right? …well, these people do harm. It isn't necessary or beneficial to fake
conviction about Mentor and Disciple and work up a public presentation that's
based on pretended emotion, pretended understanding or pretended
commitment. Members can tell. Chanting works. People who chant can and
do experience a doorway to 'direct knowledge' (wisdom) opening within their
minds/hearts. In that wisdom exists the ability to discriminate between people
speaking falsely and those speaking truly.

Big talk — take my word on it?

In the future, when Daisaku Ikeda has passed on, it isn't going to be original,
revolutionary or daring to praise Daisaku Ikeda. It's going to be kind of
commonplace and conventional. This is a human being of genuine greatness who
has won. He's not going to be forgotten or ignored by history. Some people are
great but largely forgotten by history (Nicola Tesla, the inventor of the AC
generator and electrical power transmission system, is just one example).
One does not do a Bodhisattva practice merely by praising others. One kind of
Bodhisattva practice might be defined as “giving others what they truly want.”
Daisaku Ikeda does not want the absurdist spectacle of hundreds of members
bowing and shouting “Sensei!” at him. He's not an idiot rock star or ego-tripping
TV celebrity. Daisaku Ikeda wants successors. He wants this with the purity
indicated by these words: “In the beginning I made a vow to make all persons
equal to me, without any distinctions.” He wants others to share in the exotic,
indescribable joy of attaining a life state that is free from fear and doubt,
boundless in what one can aspire to create, experience and enjoy, and yet
grounded completely in the realities of life in this world. The sometimes gritty,
tough, complicated or contradictory realities of this world.

Ikeda Clones?
I have never read that Daisaku Ikeda has said “the only path for all persons to
attain the fearless state of life is through ascending from leadership position to
higher leadership position in the Soka Gakkai”. I don't think Daisaku Ikeda
believes this and I don't think Daisaku Ikeda says things he doesn't believe. His
path to attain the boundless state of life has been to use the incomprehensibly
daunting task of developing the Soka Gakkai/SGI organization to the worldwide
membership and human diversity that it comprises now. That doesn't mean that
everyone who is a successor, who inherits the achievement of completely victory
from him, has the same path. “You have your mission, and I have mine”.
Daisaku Ikeda says: 'Buddhism teaches that the “mind is like a skilled painter”
(WND 1, p226). Like a great painter, one's mind or heart has the unfettered ability
to create any kind of life imaginable.' [Pres. Ikeda's Essay in June 12 2009 World
Tribune]
There may be some who think that “cloning” or “replicating” the biographical
history of some SGI leader that they admire, is the way to attain happiness. This is
probably an erroneous way of looking at things. All of us have to be ourselves. The
attainment of a certain level of leadership position, or absence of such an
attainment, is not an indicator of one's strength of faith, of one's improved life-
condition, of one's character or strength or stature. Likewise, we sometimes get or
used to get, the feeling that there's a “standardized list of tests” that we are
being evaluated by in the local SGI organization, don't we? It goes like this: “Are
you attending activities at the Community Center regularly, so that “we” (such-
and-such leaders) see you there?” “Are you going to your District meetings every
month?” “Are you subscribed to the SGI-USA publications?” “Are you making
financial contributions (pledged and/or Special May Campaign)?” Well, I have
something to say about this. This is bunk. If there are people who are leaders in
our area who really apply this “system” to evaluating the “faith” of members, they
need to correct themselves. This is a shortcut, it is top-down organizational
thinking, it is not Buddhism but more properly Bureaucratism.
Having people looking out for us and wanting to see us make the most of the
opportunities that the SGI organization can provide for us — opportunities to make
profoundly powerful causes to develop our lives in various aspects — is a
wonderful bit of good fortune. On the other hand, persecuting ourselves in our
own minds over “failing” at “tests” like these — or actually having leaders who
are taking this cheap shortcut instead of really seeing each of us as the valuable,
respectworthy human beings with missions, that we all are — this is misfortune,
and we need to use the practice of Buddhist faith to change that misfortune. If it
is in our own minds, due to some “natural tendency” to believe badly about
ourselves, we can change it. If it is coming from others, in reality, we can change
it. In fact in the either case it is our stern responsibility to change it, if we aspire at
all to be the kind of people Daisaku Ikeda believes we can be: because having
such people taking “faith shortcuts” around us affects not just one of us but many
of us; and having an inability to see the respectworthy reality of own lives is sad
and unnecessary.
I wish you all a happy Independence Day and the most interesting and productive
month of July.
Regards,
Soren Andersen
SGI-USA General Member, Men's Division
Delaware Park District
Buffalo South Chapter
Buffalo-Rochester Area
Upstate New York Region
Northeastern Zone
East Territory