Dharma Vlog: Cults and Weird Buddhism

hey folks so today I'm going to do a bit of a Dharma vlog be discussing some sort of weird Buddhism and some experience I've had in direct with cults so coming right up hey folks I'm Doug Smith I'm a study director at the secular Buddhist Association that secular Buddhism org and if you're interested in helping to promote a wiser and kinder and a less stressed out world consider subscribing to the channel we'll have talks like these now roughly once a week on Mondays plus some extras so this is an extra so anyway that interests you consider it so I often try to think about you know so how how did I start meditating how did I get my first understanding of meditation and I think the previous vlog I mentioned in high school I had a course called Zen fitness where I did meditation but but I was just remembering that actually there was an earlier experience I had with meditation that was very weird in grade school I went to a relatively progressive grade school and one of our most interesting and in many ways and brilliant teachers who taught Latin I took Latin I also knew Greek and other languages he was a kind of a lingua file and also a big Monty Python fan we used to listen to records and Monty Python in his classroom sometimes he was a great guy but he was he was also a follower of by Juan Shree Rajneesh he was a Rajneesh II so he wore his robes and he had a necklace with Rajesh's photograph on it he may not know of him he was a cult leader back in the I guess 70s 80s change his name to something else I don't remember now got involved in all kinds of scandals but anyway this guy was a Raja Nishi he was also a follower of l ron Hubbard Dianetics Scientology at the same time I don't know how he managed to keep this stuff anyway we would just keep the stuff in his mind I wanted to say we would discuss this stuff in class sometimes when we were bored I remember one experience I had with him I was reading at the time a book by Carl Sagan I don't remember which one it was but one of the books where Carl Sagan mentioned he'll ron Hubbard and talks about how he started Dianetics as a bar bet because you know l ron Hubbard wasn't science fiction author apparently he made a bet with somebody that he could start a religion and so I remember reading this at the time that I was discussing this stuff with my teacher and so I took the book to him and read in the passage and he took the book and he read the passage and on the back cover was a photograph of Carl Sagan so he looked at the photograph of Carl Sagan and he put it down he said he's a sociopath and that was the end of that so anyway I'm asking what about you know about meditation and asked and I don't remember he brought up the subject I did but I remember him saying well you just sort of sit quietly and you stare at something I said what do you stare at and he said well like a candle like a lit candle so I remember going home at some point of getting a candle out of the closet putting it in my room and lighting it and I couldn't stare at the Campbell for more than five seconds before hurt my eyes so I thought this you know this meditation stuff I don't really understand the point of it you know you're hurting your eyes you're getting this pastored image on your eyes you don't want to burn your eyes so I said well you know I'm missing something here he was but he was an example of somebody who was both clearly involved in various kinds of cults that were not even and I could tell at that young age were not very healthy at the same time was was really really brilliant and interesting his father as I recall worked at Mad Magazine he was somebody he could play stuff on the piano just you know by ear he claimed you writing a musical for for Broadway which as far as I know never got anywhere but knows fascinating guy and all was kept in the back of my mind because the time I was you know sort of more interested in weird stuff although I was something of a skeptic because I you know this stuff with Carl Sagan didn't come from nowhere and I do remember him writing me you know on my quarterly report that might be sent home to my parents that I was being overly arrogant and arrogance is one of the things I have to deal with in my life and it's a problem for me and at a young age it displayed itself by my bringing him Carl Sagan so that was sort of my indirect experience with cults another experience which was related to that has to do with a weird form of Buddhism I'm not going to mention the name many of you will know them they are known for chanting when I was in college doing Zen meditation I heard through a friend a common friend or a friend of theirs had a Buddhist group that was meeting in her dorm room it didn't hurt that she was attractive but any event I thought well I'll go and see what this is like you know somebody doing Buddhist meditation so I showed up and in her dorm room there were probably 15 or 20 people I'd never seen before I think from the town or from surrounding area they weren't they weren't university age they had an altar set up and with a photograph as I recall of the text they were sitting down they told have told us to sit down we were going to start to chant and so we spent I don't know Oh quite a while chanting what scene you know we had to read out of a book cuz I didn't know the chants offhand and they weren't meaningless to me I mean they were syllables I assumed out of Japanese you might say that that was a strange part and it was strange but but in a few minutes I began to like it I mean chanting he is a kind of Samadhi it's a kind of concentration meditation instead of following the breath in and out you're following this kind of sound that you're producing as well as the sound and rhythm I can be pleasant it can be again a route towards calming and it has the added benefit of you not falling asleep because you're really doing something if you're just breathing I think there is the danger and I know I experience this danger all the time if you sort of doze off whereas if you're chanting there's less there's less danger of that I thought it was kind of interesting at the end of it was where the problem started we sat around and the leader of the group began to ask people to come forward and talk about their experiences and a number of people came forward and talked about how chanting it helps them achieve wealth it helped them to achieve jobs had helps them to gain a new car or get a new furniture set and that for me coming from a zen background was a real turnoff because it seemed to me that the point of Buddhism was not to achieve worldly ends like those and then one of the universities people asked you know what are we chanting what's the point of this what is on this text and leader told us in no uncertain terms that that didn't matter and that we should leave that aside and not worry ourselves and that was also a kind of a turn-off because again coming from even though I was steeped in I should say steeped in it but I was interested in some sort of weird stuff at the time I was enough of a skeptic to be interested in those kinds questions and to see that there was a problem with film art being answered and then the last part which is the ones that hold the meeting broke up me and the other people from the university were pressured to go with them as I was to New York City that night to be indoctrinated or inducted into their group they said that their leader was there that night that we had to come with some rights and that we could not miss a single day of chanting that it was important to chant every day starting right now and that we were in real danger if we didn't do that and that this this leader was going to be there he was going to have a scroll he was going to tap us on the head he was going to induct us into this group and that we really had to come right now and that was where I really began to feel this as a cult and I got out of there as quickly as I could really um well being pleasant I got there quickly it may be that I'm remembering this wrong this is many years ago probably dating myself at probably thirty years ago it may be that the leader of a group was not particularly talented or good or maybe he was doing something wrong that is to say something the group wouldn't have agreed with it maybe all kinds of things so I don't necessarily want to want to condemn an entire group based on one night's experience but nevertheless this kind of thing has stuck with me that experience is stuck with me and a feeling that there are kinds of Buddhist practices that are kind of fringe at least that some people seem to indulge in sometimes and I think it's a good I would like to use that as a good kind of lesson for us because I think many of us particularly in contemporary mindfulness movement and so on which I'm not all opposed to but some people do tend to think of Buddhist belief in practice as a route towards worldly gains now it's not quite as crass let's say as saying you know if you do mindfulness meditation today you're going to get a job tomorrow a car or a raise or girlfriend or whatever but you know it's subtly there I think and to an extent that even goes back to the early tradition I mean of course there is the idea that part of Buddhist practice is ethical behavior and ethical practice and the Buddha was very clear that that was helpful for our worldly ends we would do better we would do better in our jobs and our business if we're a fickle so I mean I'm not going to say it's entirely divorced from early Buddhism and other forms of Buddhism but it's something I think we have to be aware of and try to if not mitigate at least not embrace wholly because I think the aim of the path which is one of which is what is it I mean what turned me off about that kind of view at the time was my understanding the aim of the path was really not one of getting up getting more money for yourself it was certainly you know having a pleasant life but which would include having a good job for lay people or so on I'm not going to say it had nothing to do with that but on the other hand it seems me if you're there if you add a meditation session in order to get a raise from your boss that you're really not that you're not there under the right mental state it's sort of like they said I mean I think people say about enlightened businessmen an enlightened businessman or light and businesswoman if somebody who understands that if you do your job well and you can become wealthy but if you go into your job because it will make you wealthy you're not you're not going to achieve the wealth you're going to turn yourself off and people off you're not going to be successful if you're going into a job in order to help people you know make your widget so you can help people that you are on a much surfing and the same thing is true I think with what is practice if you are getting involved with what is practice in order to become wealthy or become successful or so whatever it happens to be to some worldly end you're not really doing the right thing and I imagine I'm proud to probably preaching to the choir here but I mean I would be interested in your own your own views about that so anyway that's a quick view of my own experiences in direct experience with cults and weird forms of Buddhism so I hope that was fun and useful for you guys a little bit of a downer blog here and if you're new to the channel welcome I do want to say that for all you new folks check out some of the other videos if you haven't seen them this is obviously this is a vlog so it's a little bit different from some of my more teaching videos unless you like vlogs I got a couple more of those and made you some more in the future if I can think of something else to talk about and if you're if you've been here before then welcome back so anyway thanks for being here and we'll catch you on the next one thanks bye bye

Channel: Doug's Dharma

Views: 25,344

Rating: 4.6571426 out of 5

Keywords: buddhism, secularism, buddhist, buddha, secular buddhism, secularbuddhism, secularbuddhism.org, secular buddhist association, doug's secular dharma, cults, weird Buddhism, Buddhist cult, Carl Sagan, dharma vlog, buddhism vlog

Id: vpeF669f-i8

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 10 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/FaithlessnessMajor13]

Nothing has changed about SGI in the thirty years that this man went to his first meeting 30 years ago except possibly they hide it more.However I think that in some ways the idol worship of Ikeda has gotten worse.I was introduced in a similar way.A fellow college student asked me to come to meeting with her and that weekend she said a priest was coming and he was giving out scrolls and I had to get one.After I got it she helped me put it on the wall in a filenes basement shirt box and told me I could chant to it for whatever I wanted.Unbelievable but true.I never really talked to this woman much after this.She was much older than me.She was about 60 and moved down to Cape Cod.I remember her as always complaining about her husband who had paid for her to go back to art school and she said she wanted to divorce him.She was a very bitter woman.I don't think that piece of paper could give her anything to make her happy.I love to tell people my stories on this Reddit because not only are they really funny but they are true and I hope they will stop anyone in their tacks of falling down the rabbit hole of SGI because the damage to ones life it can cause is not funny.The SGI has destroyed many lives.

[u/OCBuddhist]

I always enjoy listening to Doug Smith, but I hadn't run across this particular video before - so thank you for posting it here. Doug's expression "a weird form of Buddhism" says it all.

[u/BlancheFromage]

Yeah, I watched that before - my comments are here :D

What did YOU think about what he had to say?

[u/-23sss]

I came across this video by searching SGI cult in utube ! His experience was really extreme, proper cult behaviour. Making you decide very quickly, implying it's now or never ,you are going to miss the opportunity. If only my first brush with them had been that extreme it would of scared me off too. They have toned it down considerably. As I have said before flying under the radar .

[u/PantoJack]

Haha SGI's so bad in his eyes that he doesn't even want to say their name.

[u/-23sss]

Yeah I was willing him to say it, it's funny that not many people have gone really public about the SGI and there conduct, are they scared or just can't be bothered with the hassle and the drama