Diversity or Disunity

From the Writings of Nichiren Daishonin – The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life:

All disciples and lay supporters of Nichiren should chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with the spirit of many in body but one in mind, transcending all differences among themselves to become as inseparable as fish and the water in which they swim.

In this, and in many other passages, Nichiren encourages us to have unity. President Ikeda often speaks of the need for unity. As do most senior leaders today.

But what is unity?

In the NSA of yesteryear, unity meant striving together toward a common goal. The goal could be participation in a parade, preparing for a convention, pursuing a shakubuku target, etc. We all new what the goal was; we all wanted to achieve it. All the time, of course, we knew that the real goal is kosenrufu.In today’s SGI it’s harder to discern. We’re milling about smartly with nowhere in particular to go. A few years ago the goal was 1 million members by 2000. That later turned into1 million friends of the SGI. Never happened. Then we had the FUN campaign. That didn’t produce much either. We have Soka-Spirit with its multitude of definitions. Last year’s big event was the study program and the October self-test. Learned a lot. All over again. This year there is the Leadership Training series with a promised Leadership review early next year. Who is promoting the program? Email notifications aren’t enough; schedule changes and uncertainty about new or rerun program don’t help. And who’s training the trainers? The youth division is doing their thing; the women’s division is, as always, keeping the movement alive; the men’s division is doing mostly nothin’.

Bring on diversity!

The SGI membership includes people from all walks of life: various ethnic backgrounds, degrees of education, wage earning potential, age, gender preference. There exists a wonderful opportunity to create a truly diverse community of believers. But the SGI does things that might promote social segmentation rather than diversity. Each division conducts their activities more or less independently; Some FNCC activities are programmed for various groups according to ethnic background, social status or sexual persuasion. There are FNCC conferences that appear to be of general interest but details of these conferences are not widely published. The culture department is another entity that does stuff, only occasionally seeking input from other divisions. The proliferation of these special interest activities makes it hard to promote a truly diversified movement.

What does ‘transcending all differences among themselves’ mean? Transcend – go beyond. Ignore? In spite of? Maybe we shouldn’t emphasize our differences but concentrate on…  what?
It certainly doesn’t mean that we should be compartmentalized – distributed according to some defining attribute.

Where are we going?

SGI-USA seems to have three major activities this year: defeat the temple, prepare for the October study review, and prepare for the leadership review early in 2007. But is this a roadmap for the future? What is the CEC doing? What is the leadership really thinking? There should be more thoughtful discussion and less reiteration of the same old themes.

Perhaps we should unify around a strong local leader who can show/teach us how to ‘just get along’.