Reddit reviews Kung Fu: Pilot

> I noticed that group is Buddhist in name only.

After I left, one of the first things I did was revisit that old TV series from the 1970s, "Kung Fu" with David Carradine. It was insanely popular back then and if you didn't catch last night's episode, you were left out of all the discussions at school the next day. I was in Jr. High. In it, the lead character is a Buddhist priest. While I was in SGI, I had wanted to see it again, but I was afraid that I would find their depiction of Buddhism disappointing (wrong). I'd been thinking some rather dangerous thoughts about philosophy and life during my last years in SGI, anyhow, and once I left, quite disappointed by the shallowness, uselessness, and Ikedaness of SGI, I wasn't worried any more.

And they got the Buddhism exactly RIGHT! If you have Amazon Prime, it's on there right now. Otherwise, if you want to watch it, you can see it here (heh heh - the description describes him as a "munk" lol).

That "mentor/disciple" crap never sat well with me. I always felt that each person should be able to "become expert" at Buddhism, excel, and even become a teacher for others, instead of the perpetual servitude and inferiority SGI promoted. And what about Ikeda was "all that", anyhow? Ew! What had he ever done that benefitted anyone other than himself?

Also, the permanent deference to the Japanese struck me as quite distasteful. Note that that was one of the matters the Internal Reassessment Group (IRG) identified as well, in their 3rd Position Paper.

I joined back when SGI was still part of Nichiren Shoshu, and there was a lot more study, a lot more content that appealed to someone with an intellectual mind. Now it's just 100% pap about Ikeda - gross! I'd never liked Ikeda, not since the very beginning. I tried to ignore him, but SGI ended up making it explicitly all about Ikeda. I did not join for the sake of worshiping Ikeda; I did not practice in order to focus on Ikeda. I wanted Ikeda to go away. But SGI is determined to turn Ikeda into Jesus - no thanks!

So after watching (and thoroughly enjoying) Kung Fu - which affirmed a lot of the realizations I had come up with about what Buddhism should be like, I went looking around online - and was quite shocked at the stark difference between what Buddhism is and what SGI is peddling. No similarities at all!

You're right about the meetings being all the same. Every discussion meeting, we'd typically have one or two guests; they'd never join, never even come back. It was always the same old same old. The format was set; the materials were dictated to us. And nobody else seemed to want to change any of that! Add onto that the shallow and superficial relationships, which means no meaningful social community and no accumulation of social capital. What a waste of life it all was.

Have you seen my favorite Buddhist article? It's about emptiness. Nagarjuna is the smex.