Sōka Gakkai
The Sōka Gakkai (創価学会), literally “Company for the Creation of Value”, is a laic Buddhist organization which bases its religious practices and its doctrinal base on the lesson of Nichiren, Japanese buddhist monk of the 13th century, founder in particular of the Nichiren Shoshu, on which Sōka Gakkai was dependant until 1990.
Created in 1930 with the Japan like teaching movement, Sōka Gakkai largely changed with leaving the 2nd World war to become a laic religious movement with whole share. The organization developed with international and has today a wide area network to 190 countries which asserts nearly 12 million faithful.
Sōka Gakkai Internationale federates the whole of the local organizations within a ONG having an advisory statute near the Economic and Social Council and of the Department of the public information of the the United Nations. Through several religious and teaching organizations (Schools and Sōka Universities, Min Concerts one, Fuji Museums, Institute of Eastern Philosophy, etc), it multiplies the cultural exchanges with many university institutions. It takes an active part in the international humanitarian actions carried out by the institutions of UNO.
With the Japan, Sōka Gakkai has of a considerable financial weight, an press group and edition, and especially it is at the origin of a political training present in the two rooms of the Japanese legislative apparatus. This party, made up as well of members of Sōka Gakkai as of external personalities, the New Kômeitô (公明党), is the third political clout of the country.
In France, Sōka Gakkai is considered by several parliamentary reports, part of the media and civil associations of defense of the family and the individual like a Secte. Its activities are limited to masterly conferences, conferences inter-monk and cultural activities of low intensity. Its principal religious activity remains recruitment in the form of actions of Prosélytisme, commonly called campaigns of Shakubuku which integrate the newcomers in a national device of groups of practice and discussions (zadankai).
Presentation of the organization
Short history
The movement was founded in 1930 under the name of Sôka Kyôiku Gakkai (創価教育学会) by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (牧口常三郎), teacher and director of elementary school. Literally this denomination means " company for a creative education of valeurs". It thus brings together teachers and wants to be an academic company. Inspired several Western authors, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi seeks to develop an original teaching method based on the individual and his report/ratio with the environment. Converted with the Nichiren Shoshu, it brings closer its teaching theories to the lesson of Nichiren.
Persecuted during the second world war by the Japanese government, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda (戸田城聖, disciple of Makiguchi) are stopped in 1943 for crime of lese-majesty (refusing to yield with the Shintoïsme become obligatory religion of state). Sôka Kyôiku Gakkai is declared out the law and dissolved. Its principal persons in charge are also imprisoned. The principal temple of the Nichiren Shoshu is requisitioned and transformed into garrison. In 1944, at age the 74 years, Makiguchi dies during its imprisonment.
After the capitulation, the political prisoners are released and Josei Toda is the last member still imprisoned (always refusing to yield with the Shintoïsme). In spite of a deplorable health condition, it takes intense action of Prosélytisme in favor teaching of Nichiren and the Nichiren Shoshu. In a country devastated by the war and a very great poverty, Josei Toda gives on foot a new organization, Sōka Gakkai, literally company for the creation of the values. Between 1946 and 1958, Sōka Gakkai converted 700.000 hearths and gained influences some within the Japanese company. Toda dies on April 2nd, 1958, at the 58 years age. The Nichiren Shoshu became one of the first Buddhist confessions of the Japan.
As from 1960, it is Daisaku Ikeda (池田大作), close disciple of Josei Toda, which assumes the chairmanship of Sōka Gakkai and starts an international campaign to make known the movement and its ideals out of the borders of the Japan. In 1975, it founds Sōka Gakkai Internationale which has the role of supervising the activities of all the local organizations which have flowers in many Western countries. It also founds several institutions with artistic and cultural calling, and especially the universities and Sōka schools. In 1983, UNO decrees the medal of peace to him.
With international expansion, then its admission within the United Nations like ONG, Sōka Gakkai placed the Nichiren Shoshu among the Buddhist main movements of the world. In 1990, after several notable disagreements in the fifteen previous years, the Nichiren Shoshu seeking to recover the million members of Soka Gakkaï while attacking its chief, under the impulse of its large patriarch, Nikken Abe, decides to expel the whole of the members and the believers of Sōka Gakkai in the whole world. The latter is found consequently independent of any monastic organization. And it is Nichiren Shoshu which is found thus insulated on the international plan and even national, since the majority of the believers followed the laic movement.
Today, Sōka Gakkai international asserts 12 million faithful on more than 190 countries. In number of them, she is recognized like religious movement and implies herself in many cultural, artistic and patrimonial initiatives. She multiplies the humanitarian actions and the exchanges with a number of academic, university and governmental institutions all over the world.
Beliefs and practices
Sōka Gakkai (and its associates) base their action and their religious practice on the lesson of the monk Nichiren (1222-1282). Buddhist monk of the school Tendai, Nichiren proposed, in the feudal context of the Japan of XIIIe century, a practice centered on the exclusive recitation of the title of the Sutra of the Lotus supplied with a whole of comments and interpretations (the gosho) which form the doctrinal corpus of this teaching.
Leaving the traditional executives of Buddhism Tendai, Nichiren diffused a more prosaic approach and nearer to the layman. Its central article of faith is that each individual has the capacity to express the awakening of the Buddha during his life, sokushin jobutsu. Each one can thus obtain the benefit and the attributes of the Buddha without having to pass by the various monastic schools of historical Buddhism.
Nichiren thus proposed a simplified approach of the Buddhist practice. It is based on a liturgy including/understanding a daily ritual practice, the recitation of one will mantra drawn from the Japanese title of the Sutra of the Lotus (nam-myoho-rengué-kyo, or Daimoku), the study of the Buddhist lesson (Sutras and comments) according to the Chinese classification of Tendai, and the profession of faith by the principle of antagonistic conversion (Jap. Shakubuku).
Its antagonism with respect to the political authorities and its intolerance of the parallel currents of its time are worth in Nichiren to be the privileged target of its religious detractors and to be regarded as a seditious fanatic by the leading class of Shogunat de Kamakura. It is exiled twice and misses being carried out summarily at the time of its second exile. Persuaded of its Messianic mission, Nichiren does not have of cease to show the superiority of its doctrines on the whole of the Buddhist sects Japanese women. This character trait remains in the schools which are claimed of its teaching with more or less of intensity.
Today, the religious practice within Sōka Gakkai is, on the bottom, the same one as that instituted by the school Fuji (also called Nichiren Shoshu). As regards the formalities, she wants to be adapted to the daily life of the laymen, in particular with regard to the place of worship, the order of recitation of the liturgy and the type of Mandala conferred to the believers. Since 1990, the schism between Sōka Gakkai and its Buddhist school of reference, the Nichiren Shoshu, removed the role of the monastic order in practice and the religious formalities. The belief however remained the same one while being articulated on the Gohonzon, the Daimoku (Title-mantra of the Sutra of the Lotus) and Gosho (collection of the lesson of Nichiren).
The contribution of Sōka Gakkai in practice and the belief in the lesson of Nichiren relate primarily to the laic of the principles of Buddhism of Nichiren near all the layers of Japanese population, and foreign diffusion in one second stage. Inheriting the teaching vocation of its founders, Sōka Gakkai proposes a reading contemporary and brought up to date of popular Buddhism but very impresses traditional Japanese values. This reading introduces concepts such as the human revolution, the Sōka values (beauty, kindness, benefit) or a religious practice which are based on the daily life. Lastly, Sōka Gakkai widened the fields of its action to humane and associative activities in the civil society following the example large related laic organizations with the principal confessions of the contemporary world.
Structures and operations
In France, Sōka Gakkai is made up according to the associative model into force for the religious associations or of public utility. Segmented on three distinct associations (ACSBN, ACSF and ACEP), it separates its action according to pertaining to worship activities and of cultural activities. This distinction whose border is untraceable rests primarily on the need for being recognized like religious organization with whole share and thus for seeing the gifts of faithful raising of the taxation of the churches and not of that of associations of public utility.
Concretely, three associations are placed under the supervision of an moral authority, the Soka Consistory of Nichiren Buddhism. This entity, without legal authenticity, however ensures the national representation of the interests of the worship of Buddhism of Nichiren. Three associations are directed primarily by French leaders, of French origin for the majority. This innovation aims not to be marked more not to be but one local emanation of a strictly Japanese worship. But in spite of appearances, they are primarily Japanese members who direct the important wheels of the organization. In the political and legal field, the reference is the seat in Japan.
On the ground, the organization is deployed on the whole of France about in the same way since the origins of the movement. It consists of a network of meetings of local discussions (zadankai) held by the faithful ones, which take place at the private individuals. These meetings take place per month twice and join together the faithful ones, of the friends or simple visitors around a set of themes of study or a subject of general order. The participants are invited to report their experiment of the practice to the daily newspaper that it is or not related to the subject
The meetings of discussion are animated by a team of framing which with the load of the organization and maintenance of these meetings. They are then gathered in larger cells from 3 to 5 meetings (districts), themselves gathered in chapters, then in regional centres, then in areas. The whole of the device is centralized in the Paris region. With each level, a new team supervises the lower level. These teams consist of persons in charge, co-opted and named by the teams of the higher levels. The whole of the national device is coordinated by the C.E.P. (Permanent Executive committee).
The faithful ones do not have a legal status. They thus do not take part in the management of the organization in the legal direction of the term. Their bond with the organization remains abstract and rests only on the reception of the object of worship (the Gohonzon) which is granted after a few weeks, even a few months of regular presence to the meetings of discussion. The network holds primarily on personal contacts and meetings of encouragement which come to be added to the monthly meetings during which the local teams meet the faithful ones individually. By definition, he anything is not requested from faithful if not the daily practice. However, they are encouraged according to their seniority, or fills with enthusiasm, to exert the profession of faith, with the manner of many religious movements (evangelists, Mormons, witnesses of Jéhova, Moslems, etc), and to invite newcomers in meeting of discussion.
Not laying out more than one associative structure members, the organization rests on the free gifts to constitute its operational budget. The gifts are encouraged like article of faith, but they can be made constantly year. The ceremonies of handing-over of the Gohonzon (object of worship) are also the occasion to make a manual gift. The organization proposes with the sale religious articles and publications. The budget covers the maintenance of the real inheritance of the organization, the operation costs and a score of wages. It covers also certain annual events such as conferences, meeting, etc the main part of activities (meetings, displacements, festivities, framing, reception, etc) thus is ensured by the voluntary ones not-remunerated.
The absence of participation in the management of the organization and the difficulty of knowing the composition of the leading authorities do not make undoubtedly of Sōka Gakkai a democratic organization. By adding to that a purely pyramidal hierarchy, a principle of co-optation of the responsibilities and selection criteria interns based on the " spiritual quality and the experiment bouddhique" , we have a rather rigid and authoritative image of Sōka Gakkai as well seen of outside as felt interior. This architecture specific to the French organization and nearest to the Japanese structure to the base of all criticisms is wiped since the origins of the movement in France.
Controversies and polemics
In Japan
Although the various currents claiming Nichiren survived until the XXe century, none them knew of real rise before fine the second world war and the development without precedent of laic organizations profiting from the legislative measures installation by the American administration. Sōka Gakkai founded by Josei Toda, like many other laic organizations, knew to benefit from these provisions which put a term at the institutional consubstantiality between the Shintoïste tradition and the imperial authority.
In the same way, the Nichiren Shoshu and its emanations monastic grew rich considerably while drawing from the financial manna and of notoriety by Sōka Gakkai. That has generated number of fights of influences interior (between factions political and religious) and external (against the rival currents religious and the financial groups which supports them), with the Japan primarily. Sōka Gakkai has a powerful publishing company which enables him to maintain a positive public image and to carry out several media battles within the Japanese public sphere. In 2000, the sociologist Florence Lacroix declared that " Soka Gakkai, it is (...) a fortune estimated between 500 and 700 billion francs, which makes of it the richest sect in the world. " She concluded her maintenance in these terms: " … Soka Gakkai, first sect in the world by his logistics and the degree of sophistication of its strategy, seems to me to be the prototype of the sects to come. "
Sōka Gakkai is, since its creation, in the middle of many political and financial controversies. This publicity is carried by the principal press agencies and of television Japanese. It is reinforced on behalf of Sōka Gakkai by a total lack of transparency and a real disinterest for the wheels of the institutional communication in a country where the collusion between political power, economic capacity and media are regularly quoted like models of the genre (see Sōka Gakkai and the Japanese mediums , Takesato Watanabe, in Citoyens of the world , under the direction of D. Machacek and B. Wilson, 2000, Harmattan).
In France
In France, Sōka Gakkai ran up against the French model of the Laïcité. Many specific character traits of the philosophy of the organization, from the start, rejected the French institutions, then part of the public sphere concerned with spirituality, philosophies Eastern and, in a more general way, the exercise of the worship.
With the social status and room, the profession of faith by antagonistic conversion (Jap. Shakubuku) became the character trait more rejecting. Point-by-point rebuttal and the militant proselytism of the beginnings of the movement in France, then a certain doctrinal exclusiveness, even a certain philosophical arrogance, maintained mistrust and the hostility the public with respect to Sōka Gakkai Frenchwoman and his action.
That contributed to make appear Sōka Gakkai among the sects dangerous of the successive parliamentary reports of the MILLETS in a historical context of institutional standardization of hundreds of associations come from horizons as various as macrobiotics, Eastern medicine, the techniques of massage, certain martial arts, and of course all kinds of philosophical, spiritual and religious movements.
The importance of Komeito in the Japanese political chessboard, the financial power of the organization (estimated at 2 billion dollars) and the development of a network of diplomatic influence through the traditional actions of ONG hoisted Sōka Gakkai with the international level, ensuring a better public image to him. This considerable development worsened, in France like elsewhere, will have it sulfurous of threat and danger which the French press and several defense organizations of the family and the individual lend to him.
The suspicion which surrounds the organization led of associations like the UNADFI to declare: " peace in the world is one of the basic topics of the communication campaign installation by Sōka Gakkai within the framework of its strategy of world expansion. In order to cultivate this image, it is based on UNO of which it is an ONG, like other great sectarian movements, and it finances cultural projects and educational. "
However, in spite of the considerations of the report/ratio of the MILLETS in 1995 which stipulates that: " Sōka Gakkai claims to teach (in spite of the schism of 1990 with Nichiren Shoshu) the doctrines of Nichiren, buddhist monk of XIIIe century which professed a nationalist and intolerant version Buddhism " , force is to note that no legal action saw French court pronouncing punishable judgment against Sōka Gakkai.
In his ratio of 1999, the MILLETS indicated that: " Sōka Gakkai is, by its richness, the third sect established in France: its inheritance, asset partly thanks to the contributions coming from the organization mother, represents 240 franc million 36 million euros, and its annual budget reached, certain exercises, a score of million francs 3 million euros. "
After one period of lull following the dissolution of the MILLETS, Sōka Gakkai is again pinned by the Miviludes in 2005 and disappears from the report/ratio 2006. In same time, the French organization restructures its device and replaces 9 associations which composed it in only three entities having specific and delimited prerogatives. It makes appear a religious constitution, a literature of answer to some mentions made in the report/ratio 2005, and a proclamation of evaluation whose philosophical range and the sociological value remain to be shown.
After thirty years of presence on the French territory, Sōka Gakkai, renamed ACSBN (Religious organization Sōka of Buddhism Nichiren) asserts nearly 16.000 participants in its semi-monthly meetings.
See too
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