Passing on the Law. The Growth of Soka Gakkai International in Argentina
Soka Gakkai is a Japanese Nichiren Buddhism lay organization that has greatly grown in the last decades. Through a strong organizational structure and a membership that undertakes the job of spreading the practice and recruiting new members, they became Argentina's biggest Buddhist organization...
| Published in: | International journal of Latin American religions |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer International Publishing
[2018]
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| In: |
International journal of Latin American religions
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Argentina
/ Sōka-Gakkai
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| RelBib Classification: | AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism KBR Latin America |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Soka Gakkai is a Japanese Nichiren Buddhism lay organization that has greatly grown in the last decades. Through a strong organizational structure and a membership that undertakes the job of spreading the practice and recruiting new members, they became Argentina's biggest Buddhist organization with approximately 30,000 members. Through this article, I would like to highlight some factors that I believe contributed to its growth by focusing on two main aspects: Their practiceshown as simple, easy to learn and that will bring concrete benefits in short termand their network organization based on residence groups, which allows them to cover more territory by decentralizing the space in order to make a closer follow-up of the newcomers and to generate lasting relationships among the members. This point also helps to create the image of a horizontal organization (consistent with the idea of equality among all people held by Nichiren Buddhism), where all members are disciples of one mentor: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai's president. This mentor/disciple relationship is the visible face of a rather invisible organizational structure that has proven to be very successful, given the current worldwide scale of Soka Gakkai. |
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| ISSN: | 2509-9965 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: International journal of Latin American religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s41603-018-0046-5 |