2009 FOCUS

Humanizing Our Lives, Humanizing Our World

Go here for essays and articles on our 2009 focus.

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Center founder Daisaku Ikeda calls for the creation of a new humanism to meet the daunting challenges of contemporary society. Responding to this call, during 2009 we will be asking: What are the attitudes we might hold, and what are the actions we can take, that would make our world – and our lives – more human?

Grounding our inquiry – called “Humanizing Our Lives, Humanizing Our World” – is the awareness that the health and humanity of each person is intertwined with the health and happiness of the world as a whole.

Ikeda long has emphasized this connection, insisting on the potential of inner change to radiate out to bring peace to the world. “A great human revolution in just a single individual,” says Ikeda, “will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, will cause a change in the destiny of humankind.”

Building on Ikeda’s Buddhist humanism, we will look as well for inspiration to the humanistic ideas found in two of the Center’s formative influences: the transcendentalism of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, and the philosophical thinking of John Dewey.

Taken together, these three schools of thought have much to tell us about how we might be fully and compassionately alive in the twenty-first century.

Among our activities this year, the Ikeda Center will host two public events:

• A "book talk" event on September 24, featuring Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson discussing the book they co-authored with Daisaku Ikeda, Creating Waldens: An East-West Conversation on the American Renaissance (Dialogue Path Press, forthcoming)
• The 6th Annual Ikeda Forum on November 14, commemorating the 150th anniversary of John Dewey’s birth

In addition to publishing Creating Waldens, we will be producing interviews and articles, gathering essays, and reporting on the Ikeda Forum to help round out a vision for “Humanizing Our Lives, Humanizing Our World.” These will be posted, at left, under Articles and Essays.

To get us started, here is an essay created by the Ikeda Center to introduce the thinking behind our selection of this year's focus.

Read articles and essays from the 2008 focus, "Understanding Death, Appreciating Life."

“Obstacles call out our capacity for creative response that not only transforms the world, but the self in the process."

Jim Garrison, Virginia Tech

Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue
396 Harvard Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Phone: (617) 491.1090 Fax: (617) 491.1169