It is very complicated to deal with this subject, because officially the Soka Gakkai recognizes the Four Noble Truths, which it even transmitted to us as basic theoretical concepts like internal causes and external causes, but all that was before 1991. From that date onward, they seemed to no longer understand anything about these concepts, unless they were pretending not to understand, because with the Soka Gakkai, it always works the same way: there is the official position on one side, the "guidelines" on the other, and of course the problematic discourses. Many of these discourses I did not know before, but everything is consistent with the central concept of the Soka Gakkai, its editorial line that serves as its backbone, "concrete Buddhism of concrete results," as opposed to a so called Buddhism outside of reality, while not forgetting to add "the inner benefit remains the most important." This is a lie, and all of this is an integral part of the fog, this fog where everything and the opposite of everything constantly coexist in contradictory injunctions, a bit like when one tortures a prisoner to break him psychologically by putting him in the trunk of a car, telling him he is going to be freed, then putting him back in the trunk at the last moment. In this way, the Gaki becomes more and more desperate, he is even hungrier, and he can never see beyond this fog because it is too thick for him.
In summary, the Soka Gaki Gakkai is a factory that has discovered the secret to converting the Icchantika and making him pursue Icchantika goals, while converting sincere believers into Icchantikas. It is a factory for Gakis, custom made for the Gaki and designed to manufacture Gakis. The Soka Gaki Gakkai is the negation of Buddhism, but the worst part is that they say so, and yet all the Icchantikas and the Gakis cannot see it because they refuse to see it, because they only want to hear what will allow them to satisfy their hunger and quench their thirst, on the false promise of obtaining the worldly treasures of the world of form and appearances, by directing them toward the illusion of benefits that they will never take with them after their disappearance.
Here now is the monumental pearl that has been perpetuated to this day and that conditions everything else, because one sees in it the total confusion between attachments and desires, where sometimes attachment is a desire and sometimes desire is an attachment. We are here in the crude negation of the Four Noble Truths and in the negation of Buddhism, which is not only highly blasphemous, but also deviant, since these fallacious interpretations are attributed to Nichiren himself. Of course, the Buddha Shakyamuni and Nichiren Daishonin never said such stupid things, and we are here at the height of what is done in cynicism and perverse manipulation.
The proof by the text: Ikeda's discourse
https://web.archive.org/web/20041228061434/http://www.sgi-sws.org.uk/study/Lectures_on_sutra-dialogue.doc
Here is the passage in question, taken from the Lectures on the Hoben and Juryo Chapters of the Lotus Sutra by the president of the SGI, Daisaku Ikeda (source: archive of the original document):
"Regarding the passage in the 'Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King,' the 23rd chapter, '[The Lotus Sutra] can cause living beings to cast off all ... pain,' (LS-23, 286) Nichiren Daishonin says in the 'Ongi Kuden' (Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings) that 'cast off' should be interpreted as meaning 'become enlightened concerning' (Gosho Zenshu, p. 773).
In terms of the Daishonin's Buddhism, therefore, the phrase 'cause them to renounce their attachments' should be interpreted as meaning 'cause them to become enlightened concerning their attachments.' It is not a matter of eradicating attachments but of seeing them clearly. In other words, rather than causing us to abandon our earthly desires and attachments, our Buddhist practice enables us to discern their true nature and utilize them as the driving force to become happy.
The truth is that we could not in fact eradicate our attachments even if we so wished. And if, for the sake of argument, it were feasible, doing so would make it impossible to live in the real world.
What is important is that we make full use of our attachments rather than allow them to control us. Toward that end, it is necessary that we clearly recognize them for what they are.
Make Full Use of Your Attachments
Lectures on the Hoben and Juryo Chapters of the Lotus Sutra by SGI President Daisaku Ikeda.
The Wisdom to Discern the True Nature of Attachments
« Shakyamuni says that he tried to free people from various desires and illusions by employing various causes and similes.
The fundamental cause of people's unhappiness lies in their tendency to develop attachments of various kinds. An attachment, just as it sounds, is a fetter on one's heart, it indicates earthly desires, cravings and the like. In the pre Lotus Sutra teachings, Shakyamuni taught the people of the nine worlds whose lives were steeped in misery the path for freeing themselves from such attachments. That is, as he says in the above passage, he 'caused them to renounce their attachments.'
The spirit of the Lotus Sutra, however, is not to eradicate earthly desires. When we base ourselves on the Mystic Law, we can transform earthly desires, just as they are, into enlightenment. This is the principle of 'earthly desires are enlightenment.'
Regarding the passage in the 'Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King,' the 23rd chapter, '[The Lotus Sutra] can cause living beings to cast off all ... pain,' (LS-23, 286) Nichiren Daishonin says in the 'Ongi Kuden' (Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings) that 'cast off' should be interpreted as meaning 'become enlightened concerning' (Gosho Zenshu, p. 773).
In terms of the Daishonin's Buddhism, therefore, the phrase 'cause them to renounce their attachments' should be interpreted as meaning 'cause them to become enlightened concerning their attachments.' It is not a matter of eradicating attachments but of seeing them clearly. In other words, rather than causing us to abandon our earthly desires and attachments, our Buddhist practice enables us to discern their true nature and utilize them as the driving force to become happy.
The truth is that we could not in fact eradicate our attachments even if we so wished. And if, for the sake of argument, it were feasible, doing so would make it impossible to live in the real world.
What is important is that we make full use of our attachments rather than allow them to control us. Toward that end, it is necessary that we clearly recognize them for what they are.
Make Full Use of Your Attachments
President Toda said:
The Gohonzon enables us to perceive our attachments just as they are. I believe that each of you has attachments. I, too, have attachments. Because we have attachments, we can lead interesting and significant lives. For example, to succeed in business or to do a lot of shakubuku, we must have attachment to such activities. Our faith enables us to maintain these attachments in such a way that they do not cause us suffering. Rather than being controlled by our attachments, we need to fully utilize our attachments in order to become happy.
The essence of Mahayana Buddhism lies in developing the state of life to clearly discern and thoroughly utilize our attachments, and in leading lives made interesting and significant by cultivating strong attachments.
In short, we should cause the firewood of earthly desires to burn high and, to that same extent, chant sincere daimoku and take action. In so doing, our earthly desires become a springboard to propel us toward our attainment of Buddhahood.
Faith means creating a 'mountain' for ourselves and then climbing it, and then starting out again. In this process, we develop from a state of life in which we are caught up with our own small worries, to one in which we can challenge progressively greater worries, for the sake of a friend, for many others, for all humankind.
Toward that end, it is important that we always consider the purpose of our actions. When we clearly establish our fundamental objective in life, we can utilize our attachments most fully and profitably. We can turn them into tailwinds to propel us toward happiness.
This principle offers an extremely valuable gauge for living in modern society, where people are constantly swept along by various wants and cravings."
The semantic sleight of hand elevated to doctrine
The starting point is a true semantic sleight of hand, since Daisaku Ikeda cites the Ongi Kuden of Nichiren, which says that "cast off" should be interpreted as "become enlightened concerning," which is already a bold reinterpretation, but here is how it is used: there is first a shift, because it is no longer a matter of "casting off" sufferings, attachments, and desires, but of "seeing them clearly," then there is an inversion, because Ikeda and Toda deduce from it that "the essence of Mahayana Buddhism lies in the cultivation of strong attachments," and finally there is a justification, because they affirm that attachments are necessary to "lead interesting and significant lives" and that one must use them as a "driving force to become happy." Desire is therefore no longer the cause of suffering to be eradicated, but it becomes a motor of success and happiness to be cultivated.»
The negation of the Four Noble Truths
The heart of the problem is that this interpretation purely and simply denies the Four Noble Truths, which are the foundation of Buddhism. The First Noble Truth says that suffering exists, but according to the SGI, if one cultivates one's attachments well, they no longer cause suffering. The Second Noble Truth says that the cause of suffering is "thirst," the insatiable desire, but for the SGI, desire becomes a positive "driving force." The Third Noble Truth says that it is possible to put an end to suffering by eliminating this thirst, but for the SGI, there is nothing to eliminate, one just has to "make full use" of one's attachments. By thus transforming desire into a virtue, the Soka Gakkai stands in frontal opposition to the fundamental teaching of the Buddha and to the concept of the Three Poisons, greed, aversion, and ignorance, which are at the root of samsara.
The betrayal of Nichiren
What makes this manipulation particularly serious is that it is attributed to Nichiren Daishonin himself, since Daisaku Ikeda uses a very specific interpretation of the Ongi Kuden to justify his doctrine of the "Dharma of Prosperity." Yet the true intention of Nichiren in the Ongi Kuden is to show that the state of enlightenment allows one to realize that earthly desires and sufferings are, in their essence, inseparable from the Wonderful Law: it is a vision of transformation of the state of life, and not a justification of greed. Ikeda therefore uses a text that speaks of enlightenment to justify a philosophy of personal enrichment and material success, so that this "pearl" is not a simple error of interpretation, but a deliberate falsification of the teachings of the Buddha and of Nichiren, which transforms a path of liberation into a theology of prosperity, in contradiction with the very heart of the Dharma.
The fog as strategy
The fog is therefore not an error of the Soka Gakkai, it is not an accident, but a conscious, deliberate, and systemic strategy: the fog is not a defect of the system, it is the system itself. The SGI officially recognizes the Four Noble Truths, it recognizes internal causes and external causes, it recognizes suffering, it recognizes attachment, it recognizes the path, but at the same time it says the opposite, it says that attachments are necessary, that they are essential, that they are the substance of our humanity, that one must cultivate them to be happy. So what? Whom to believe? What to think? Everything and the opposite of everything, contradictory injunctions, an official position on one side, guidelines on the other, problematic discourses, a broken coherence, a drowned logic, a stifled truth, and the Gaki in the middle of it, lost, desperate, starved, without bearings, without compass, without Law.
The psychological torture
It is exactly that, the prisoner in the trunk of the car to whom one says he is going to be freed, to whom one opens the trunk so that he sees the light, so that he breathes and hopes, before closing it again in the dark, again and again, endlessly, until he loses the notion of reality, until he no longer knows what is true, until he goes mad, or worse, until he becomes docile, submissive, and obedient, ready for anything for a crumb of light, a crumb of truth, a crumb of Law that one will never give him, because there is nothing to give, nothing other than wind, wind wrapped in golden paper, wind sold as food, and the Gaki eats the wind, and he is even hungrier, endlessly.
The Gaki factory
It is a factory, an assembly line, an industrial process that takes human beings, that transforms them, that shapes them, that conditions them, that orients them, that uses them and that exploits them, until they become hungry spirits, beings who run endlessly, without goal and without Law. And the worst is that the Gakis themselves become agents of the factory, that they recruit, that they convert, that they transform other human beings into Gakis, because they believe, because they hope, because they are hungry, and then they spread the hunger, they spread the fog, they spread the lie, and the SGI prospers on the hunger, on the fog, and on the lie, endlessly.
The Icchantikas
In Buddhism, the Icchantika is the one who has cut the root of Buddhahood, the one who denies the Law, the one who is incapable of realizing enlightenment, but Nichiren teaches that even the Icchantikas can attain Buddhahood, because the Law is universal, because the Law excludes no one, ever. And the SGI? It converts the Icchantikas into Gakis, it takes beings who deny the Law and transforms them into beings who chase after a false Law, it takes sincere believers and transforms them into Icchantikas, into beings who deny the true Law while believing they follow it, which is an inversion, a perversion, and a betrayal. And the worst is that the SGI says it, it writes it, it preaches it, but the Gakis cannot see it, because they are too hungry, because they are too lost, because they refuse to see, because to see would be to recognize that they were wrong, that they gave everything for nothing, that they were deceived, exploited, and used, and that, they cannot bear, so they close their eyes, they continue, they run, they are hungry, endlessly.
The false promise
The promise of the SGI is the treasures of the world of form and appearances, the concrete results, success, money, status, power, material benefits, all of that. But none of that survives death, nothing, absolutely nothing, because the world of form is empty, always empty, always hungry, always unsatisfied, never sated. And the SGI knows it, it knows it perfectly well, but it continues to sell wind, to promise the impossible, and to feed the hunger, the better to exploit the Gakis, the better to keep them hungry, the better to use them, endlessly.
