I had a couple people move in with me about 3 years ago. I told them beforehand about my daily practice of chanting (at that time). They were cool with it as long as I wasn't doing it loudly so as to bother them, which I never was.

But one day the young woman told me how much the chant actually DISTURBS her. She told me a story of how when she lived in South Korea, she would sometimes visit Buddhist temples. She actually practiced meditation and yoga in depth there for a while.

One day, she went to a temple she had never gone to before up in some mountains. It just so happened that on that particular day, that Temple's guru was coming to visit, which was a BIG DEAL. She said people were constantly chanting (not the NMRK chant, a different one) the whole day she was there. She then was forced to spend the night due to some circumstances, can't remember, but I think transportation was closed early from the mountain. And they chanted ALL NIGHT, much to her dismay.

She was totally stressed and freaked out by this whole experience so apparently whenever she heard me chanting, that memory is what came up for her. I was extremely surprised to hear that someone could be so negatively affected by a religious mantra chanting experience. Nevertheless, I chanted more quietly at home after that.

I've always been a somewhat spiritual person and have found myself wondering about synchronous and "fateful" events. I honestly feel that having a roommate who was bothered by my chanting, which led me to keep it to myself more, and also led to me having LESS meetings and "SGI activities" in our home, was a huge blessing for me. I think it was around that time that I began to have more and more doubts about SGI.

My roommate wanted to feel more comfortable with me having strangers in our home for meetings so one night, me and several of the youth members had a little meeting with her at our house to talk to her about our practice and hopefully alleviate her concerns. We shared our own experiences with her and she shared her experience with meditation with us. It wasn't a very enlightening meeting, but she did seem to feel a little more comfortable with the people I was having over once a month.

Having a roommate who was uncomfortable with SGI helped me to start to step back from the practice more. She and I had to set agreements about how often I was having people come over to chant with me, which was a LOT before she moved in. Probably twice a week. To compromise, I cut that back to I think once a week and only one official big meeting once a month.

As my doubts for SGI grew over the months, it was kind of great to be able to shift blame to my roommate for me not being able to have people over so often. Lol. Thanks old roommate!

I finally left SGI at the end of 2018. When I told my roommates, they were really surprised. The other roommate never had any issues with my chanting, but when I told them, he was like "Congratulations! It's about time!" 😂 He had known all along that SGI is basically a cult. He never said one bad word to me, though.

The end 😋