"Mystical Insight" or hypnotic language patterns, loaded language, and private language?

Frankly, all the Japanese [religion] imports leave me cold. When I first started practicing, I lived in Los Angeles, which has a large Japanese population. The Japaneseness of Nichiren Buddhism seemed supercool to me then; it was exotic yet accessible. My favorite teachers were ethnically Japanese. I believed that Japanese people automatically understood things about Nichiren Buddhism that gaijin like me would take lifetimes to learn.

I realize now that much of what I assumed to be mystical insight was really the hypnotic language patterns and "loaded language" typical of a cult.

That said, the best teacher I've ever met in Nichiren Buddhism is ethnically Japanese. He talks in a unique way, with simplicity, humor, and strictness. I'm still working with guidance he gave me 15 years ago. It cut straight to all my issues. Amazing. Profound. Really simple and gentle. In my experience, this particular teacher is the exception to all rules, nationalities, and religious organizations.

So I'm not dissing Japanese people and the entire nation of Japan, I hope, when I say I have no interest in joining a Japanese organization. I have serious doubts whether any Japanese religious organization can become mainstream in the U.S. All major Nichiren sects still cling to Japanese terminology and mannerisms and miniscule differences among sects, and they pride themselves on foundational grudges dating back to the death of Nichiren. Why can't we leave that behind?

And let's face it. Nichiren Buddhists are terrible company. We're all the same -- we're still healing from our time in the cults, or we're proselytizing about the great new Nichiren group we've joined or started (or about the UU church we want to join), or we've dismissed groups entirely, saying things like, "We are all Buddhas; there is nothing to practice, nothing to attain." We're a bunch of bullshit artists, wounded bodhisattvas, self-referential narcissists, codependent suckers for charisma, and fierce rationalists who insist that daimoku is somehow very scientific.

We can be loads of fun, too, yeah, but the Nichiren community is like a closed loop that goes around and around getting smaller and smaller. From early 2012