So, I stopped chanting and going to meetings around four years ago, finally mailing in my resignation letter today, got rid of the butsudan, gohonzon, SGI-printed books using various methods. My story will make it up here at some point, it's just very different than a lot of other people's stories so I'm still kind of working on that.

But I'm curious about the other books we were encouraged to buy as SGI members, specifically the WND and the Lotus Sutra. Ever aince I left I've worked more on studying and understanding more of the world's faiths and have taken more of a Universalist/Unitarian approach to my own beliefs (though neither of those terms really fully describes my ways of practice, I don't know if there's any term that does).

I've always sort of viewed the WND and Lotus Sutra as I do the Bible, the Qu'ran, and the Torah: religious texts that form the foundation for a world faith. At this point, they have a place in my bookshelf along with other religion-based books and texts that use more as reference than anything.

What are your thoughts on these books? I know leaving the SGI was a religious turning point for many people and that our reactions to religions now are as varied as we are, so I would really like to hear from anyone regardless of your point of view or your new life path.

For comparison, I have the typical religious texts in my library, as I mentioned, but I also have several "For Dummies" books on faiths and comparative religion, as well as a favorite of mine called "Blue-Jean Buddha" (which barely even mentions Ikeda or the SGI, unsurprisingly).