Could easily be SGI too, they have some very culty elements to their practices. And they are all over with many convenient locations, like all the best cults.
Comment on The first cult is the deepest
disgrunty@lemmy.world 3 days agoNKT? I rented a room from them once. Photos of the leader everywhere in the public areas.
meyotch@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 3 days ago
You all might enjoy this book on SGI written by a prof I know:
McLaughlin, Levi. Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan. Germany, University of Hawaii Press, 2018.
www.google.ca/books/edition/…/AVgEEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&…
It’s an unbiased view on SGI. McLaughlin’s position as the religion as a mimetic nation is quite interesting too.
disgrunty@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Thank you for giving me a new rabbit hole to explore! I hadn’t heard of SGI.
meyotch@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
No problem! Say hi to the rabbits!
I was born into North America’s Own Original Real Estate Sex Cult. I coped by learning about all the other cool cults out there. Turns out they are all really about getting locals to pay for real estate owned by the inner circle.
lugal@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
That’s the second one, the one I’m in now.
Just kidding. Yes, the photo was a big red flag. Also their dharma just didn’t make sense and they were like “it may take a lifetime to understand this one thing”. Later I realized that most Buddhists teach kind of the opposite of that.
Now I’m in a direct democratic zen group that explicitly has no master. The founder has some natural authority because he learned it in Japan but no one cares about his strict rules. Which is the best of both worlds: you have rules for those who seek guidance but you can just ignore them with no consequences.
LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Nice. I always found it easiest to follow the authority of people who don’t care about their authority, if that makes sense
ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 3 days ago
That’s interesting! Never heard of this sort of group