Chanting for Benefits Soka Gakkai and prosperity in Brazil*

Abstract

Soka Gakkai International (“International Value-Creation Society”; also, SGI) is a lay Buddhist movement that was founded in 1930 by a Japanese educator, Tsuneaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944) and has now over 12 million members in 190 countries. The International Association Brazil Soka Gakkai (port. Associação Brasil Soka Gakkai Internacional-BSGI), the Brazilian umbrella organization of SGI, was founded in 1960 by its president Daisaku Ikeda and since then has been expanding in the whole country. In this article I discuss some key Soka Gakkai doctrinal elements -such as “benefit” (benefício), for instance- and how they resonate with doctrinal elements found in Pentecostal/neo-Pentecostal churches in Brazil. I am not suggesting, nevertheless, an immediate and obvious relation of cause and effect such as: Soka Gakkai wants to become more attractive to non-members, therefore it borrows elements from other Brazilian religious groups. This is not a matter of effect following cause, and this affirmation is far from being correct, as the ethnographic analyses will show. My approach to the question is that Soka Gakkai indeed has in its scope a central element related to prosperity -individual and collective- that is "translated” by the members into a doctrinal message that is very similar to the message spread by the neo-Pentecostal churches in the country. Despite the similarities, I suggest that Soka Gakkai does not follow the exact style of neo-Pentecostal churches in Brazil. The role the Organization plays in this scenario is to reinforce the responsibility of the members to carry out the mission of the Kosen-rufu (peace through individual happiness), focusing on the importance of prosperity: individual and global.