little voice

An Intro


This is the all new Jason's blog; new changes for a new year.

small words



You Raise Me Up (Radio Edit) - Josh Groban

history


  • December 2008

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    • goodbye


    designer: eminence.
    image: Sara Bareilles' Site

    Monday, October 4, 2010


    Title: -___-

    I'm not very happy with the way some SSA members do things.. which is why
    I am not rushing into more SSA committments. I went to a chanting session at a senior leader's home from 10+ to 11+. Well, one guy shared that he had successfully got a member to join, which was totally not planned.

    To cut a long story short, basically in my view what happened was this. The member found a chance to share, and bombasted the friend with a lot of stuff. He used his own life as an example to tell the friend that the friend's life was not the way it should be, because he was not in the faith. He told the friend that he was stupid. He implied that he was better than his friend. He proceeded to drag the friend over to the HQ, stuffed an application form in front of him, dragged him to prayer, and got that senior leader over and stuff. In the end, the friend was "convinced".

    If my story is not clear, u can ask me in detail cos writing about this hurts and its not productive anyway. My point is that :

    1) I do not believe anyone has the right to judge another as inferior to him, especially because of differences in faith, and differences in lifestyle choices. For example, someone is on drugs. Does that means I am better than him? No, because I have my vices too, and he definitely should have areas in his life that makes him a better person. SSA believes that life must be lived only in the Soka way, and although its not officially said, the belief is that u need to be saved. That is something I cannot accept. If this is the case, what is the difference between us and Christian fanatics who say that if we don't believe in God, our sins will never be gone and we will go to hell? Who are we to tell someone that we are their savior? Who gives us the right to judge others?

    2) Soka people are very passionate people. I get that. I know that they really believe in what they believe and they really want to help people. However, how people should be helped, is not up to us, it is up to them. I do not believe in 1 size fits all; everybody can be helped but in different ways. Just bcos I am in SSA doesn't means that SSA is the best religious group in the world. It is good, FOR ME, that is all I can say. But if someone else decides that Christianity is the one for them, who am I to say that "No, Soka is the only thing that will help u"?? If we really want to help people, then we should respect that they may not need our help. But in the end, if they are still helped, isn't it good?

    3) Of cos I am not saying we can't spread Soka Buddhism. We can try, but that is where it ends. Spreading the teachings. We can say all we want to others, but if we really want to help them, then we should make sure they fully understand about it. We should make sure they know what they are doing if they sign up. And for that to happen, it could take days, weeks, months and yes, YEARS. But we want to help them right? So we should respect that everyone has different levels of acceptance and needs different periods of time to accept a faith, even if they do accept it. There is really no point in taking the easy way and just getting someone’s name in your member list, just to increase your organisation head count. If the person goes into something they don’t fully understand, not only is it NOT HELPFUL, it may also cause the person harm, as they will not learn the faith the correct way. Do you want someone who doesn’t understand the faith to go around spreading it?

    4) And, getting someone into something in the form of cheating (yes, to me it is cheating) may seem alright at that time. But its like being taken to bed drunk. It is also ok at that time, but when you wake up, then you realize you are in deep shit. When someone learns that they have been tricked, do you think they will still view the organisation favourably? By not being honest with people, and getting them into something like this, you will only create hate and resentment in the end when they realize that they can’t back out.

    5) And lastly, hard selling, insurance agent tactics and MLM strategies are disgusting. It is already disgusting when used in the financial fields that they are invented for, but in faith? Come on! Bombarding people with info, dragging them to your HQ, getting your senior to come, sticking an application form to people, withholding info from them, that is just classic MLM man. Do you really think that in a faith organisation, you really need to do this? Do I need to say more?

    To me, the organisation exists for good reasons, and the faith has indeed helped me. However, being overly enthusiatic about it , i.e thinking that we must help everyone, to me, ironically, can make matters worst.

    Faith is a very sensitive thing, and as members of a faith, we should exercise more thought before we try to do such things, and not just do it for the sake of it.

    End.