The Art of True Relations: Conversations on the Poetic Heart of Human Possibility
In The Art of True Relations, Sarah Wider and Daisaku Ikeda celebrate the great spiritual and literary figures, East and West, who have inspired their own work as educators, poets, and peace builders, including both the men and the women of the American Renaissance. They reserve their highest praise, though, for the lesser known among us, especially teachers and mothers, whose humble, compassionate actions provide the strongest foundation for the realization of ever-greater peace. Ultimately, The Art of True Relations is a tribute to the bonds that give life meaning.
“The Art of True Relations is a carefully crafted, beautifully organized, and deeply hospitable book. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in living more humanely.”
—Megan Laverty, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University
“Following the gentle flow of Ikeda and Wider’s conversations, we enter a heart-warming intimacy with them and with their mentors, Josei Toda and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The authors’ unabashed expressions of appreciation for mothers everywhere, for circles of support, and for the natural world evoke radical gratitude.”
—Ann Diller, Professor Emerita, Philosophy of Education, University of New Hampshire
“This wonderful book both enacts and recalls dialogue as the most fundamental means of human growth. Sarah Wider and Daisaku Ikeda celebrate the self-reliance of Ralph Waldo Emerson as it flowered among others and urged awareness of their needs, with special attention to the women of transcendentalism who were mentors, friends, and teachers of new spiritual awareness. The Art of True Relations is a delight to read.”
—Phyllis Cole, Professor of English, Women’s Studies, and American Studies, Penn State Brandywine
Sarah Wider is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Colgate University, where she specializes in the American Renaissance, American women writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Native American literature.
Daisaku Ikeda is founder and president of the Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist organization with more than twelve million members worldwide. He has written and lectured widely on Buddhism, humanism, and global ethics.
Preface
Daisaku Ikeda
Preface
Sarah Wider
CONVERSATIONS
1. New Adventures
2. University of All Knowledges
3. The Encouraging Voice
4. All Things Connected
5. Sublime Motivations
6. A Return to Self-Reliance
7. The Rhythms of Nature
8. Sympathy and Likeness
9. The Creative Life
10. Renaissance Women
11. Strength Through Connection
12. To Open All Doors
13. Rooted in Dialogue
14. Learning Journeys
15. The Solidest Thing
16. Infinite Power Inside
Notes
Index
About the Authors
Preface to the Art of True Relations
Daisaku Ikeda
“Poet, speak not with the intellect alone but with the ‘flower of the mind’”—such was the cry of the great nineteenth-century American poet and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson, a flag bearer for the revival of humanity.
There has long been a call for the restoration in our world of the power of language, the power of literature, and the power of poetry. This is, at the same time, a warning of the underlying threat to civilization posed by the degeneration of heart-to-heart ties linking one individual to another. How, then, can we transform language from a meaningless, empty shell to the rich nourishment that sustains life, from being degraded as a dangerous tool for the exploitation of others into a powerful source for advancing into the future, filled with hope?
Sarah Ann Wider, former president of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, has been engaged in an earnest exploration of the essential question, “What enables us to lead fully and truly human lives?” She has been carrying on a dialogue, transcending the ages, with the thinkers who led the American Renaissance, deeply pondering their message.
I first met Dr. Wider in the summer of 2006. Her sincere character and profound integrity as a person shone brightly in each word she exchanged with me. My wife was moved to learn that the blue suit that Dr. Wider wore that day was a memento from her mother, Mary Wider. I was also touched when, later, Dr. Wider presented me with some of her mother’s favorite books.
Dr. Wider told me that her mother read Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” when she was in high school, which helped her decide not to be pressed into the conventional patterns imposed on women by society at that time but to follow her own chosen path through life. Motivated by her wish to be of use to a friend suffering from a serious illness, Mary Wider overcame numerous difficulties to enter one of the best nursing schools in the country. Through her devoted care, she helped her friend to live a longer life and went on to give the spiritual gift of hope and courage to many others who were ill.
In her later years, Dr. Wider also told me, her mother was gratified that her daughter chose Emerson as the focus of her academic career. I cannot help but feel that Dr. Wider and her mother are linked by the noble ideals voiced by Emerson—his unflagging belief in the infinite possibility of the individual and the supreme worth and dignity of our inner beings.
I have fond memories of the great spiritual sustenance and encouragement I received from the writings of Emerson and Walt Whitman in my youth. In those days, having accepted as my personal credo the impassioned wish of my mentor, second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda, to rid the world of misery, I was engaged in an arduous daily struggle for peace based on the Buddhist teachings.
Serendipitously, the date July 3, when I first met Dr. Wider in 2006, is the same date that President Toda was released from prison in 1945, after being incarcerated for two years for his conscientious resistance to the dictates of the militaristic Japanese authorities. It is also the date that, twelve years later, in 1957, I was arrested on false charges in the midst of my efforts to expand our movement for the people’s welfare.
As long as people inherit and carry on noble ideals, these ideals will survive undimmed for eternity, eventually bringing glorious flowers into bloom and bearing fruit that stands as irrefutable proof in each person’s life.
In July 2006, to commemorate Mary Wider, we planted a cherry tree—a favorite of my mentor—in the Makiguchi Memorial Garden adjacent to Soka University of Japan. Over the years, the tree has grown and bloomed beautifully, watching warmly over the university students as they have pursued their path of learning.
The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, considering humanity’s future, called for a new field of learning—a field that would employ the human intellect for good rather than evil, that would promote a way of life recognizing the equal worth and dignity of self and others. Based on his hopes for these “new humanities,” Dr. Toynbee asked, “Are not these ‘new humanities’ likely to minister far more effectively than science and technology ever can to Man’s present need to save himself from himself?” I am convinced that this remains just as urgent an issue today as it was when these words were written more than four decades ago.
In our dialogue, focusing on the central theme of the revival of the poetic spirit and the restoration of the power of language, Dr. Wider and I explored many diverse subjects, including youth, women, friendship, art, literature, and the role of the university, tackling topics that Toynbee identified as the tug of war in education—the struggle between the often conflicting demands of national and economic interests on the one hand and individual and humanitarian interests on the other; between science and technology on the one hand and the humanities and arts on the other.
In our discussions, Dr. Wider noted that it is too easy to forget our responsibility to others when we’re involved in an abstract quest for knowledge… . Then we start to neglect so much else in our lives… . When individualism is put in the service of materialism, we distort the human being into a small-minded thinker who values acquisition over relation and self-selection over integral connection.
These ideas are profoundly consonant with the convictions I have held for many long years. I feel a special empathy with the ethos underlying Dr. Wider’s observations and her profoundly compassionate spirit and deeply held belief as an educator in the need to dispel the dark clouds casting a pall over the lives of youth today. This is an unshakable pillar in Dr. Wider’s view of education—a philosophy that stands as the epitome and culmination of the educational praxis in which she has so passionately engaged.
What can be done to prevent students from being swept away by the tide of the times and losing sight of their true selves? What kind of education can help them believe in their own potential and develop it to the fullest? All her ideas and actions derive from her wish for the happiness of each individual.
This desire is certainly the key to resolving the tug of war in education that Toynbee described. Wishing for the happiness of each individual and acting sincerely on this purpose—these qualities are desirable not only in education but in every area of our lives.
At the time of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami in Japan’s Tohoku region, Dr. Wider was quick to send a message. She asked what connects and strengthens us when we feel completely overwhelmed by the devastation around us, when it seems that everything is broken to pieces and torn apart. Words of encouragement was her answer. From far-away America, Dr. Wider felt the profound sadness of those in the affected areas and, reflecting on the grief she felt at her mother’s death and her experience recovering from it, sent her sincere condolences and encouragement to all concerned.
When she visited Japan in October 2012, she traveled to Sendai, Ishinomaki, and Onagawa, sympathetically listening to the victims’ stories and delivering lectures to ignite the torch of hope and courage in their hearts. She said that to communicate meaningfully with those who have experienced unbearable grief in the depths of their beings, our words must contain a power that transcends mere words. She concluded:
In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, the poetic heart responds again and again, from those who had suffered so much and from those who were suffering in deep sympathy. If we allow that heart its full power, there is no wasteland that cannot be transformed.
This sincere, heartfelt encouragement brought tears of deep feeling and empathy, and bright smiles of hope to the faces of many people. In order for Tohoku to shine even more brightly as a symbol of revival in the new century, I hope, along with Dr. Wider, that it will powerfully radiate this beautiful poetic heart.
It is also my sincere wish that this book will contribute to the rising tide of humanistic education, encouraging the “young Emersons” of our time to polish their minds and character for the sake of others, society, and the world.
With undying friendship on this seventh anniversary of the July 3 on which I first met Dr. Wider,
Daisaku Ikeda
***
Preface to the Art of True Relations
Sarah Wider
Every dialogue is a journey. Conversing, we begin, a few words at a time. Where will this thought lead? How will that observation deepen? In thought, we do not—we cannot—stand still. When we are thinking freely and frankly, we move. Especially when we are thinking together. Then that miracle of miracles occurs. We change our minds. We learn to see differently. Actively sharing thought with another person, we reach a place we could not reach alone.
That the focus of these dialogues with Daisaku Ikeda would turn to education is no surprise. I like to say I have been in school all my life, always a student, although for the last half of my life, I count teaching as part of my student’s journey.
For President Ikeda, education is everything. Enabling education for others has been his lifework. As president of the Soka Gakkai International, the world’s largest Buddhist organization, he realized the longtime dreams of its earlier leaders, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda. Both wanted to create educational opportunities for people of all ages—not only opportunities but environments for learning that affirm and develop every student’s creative potential.
At the core of realizing these dreams was not a “me-centered” individual but a long-visioned person building a peace-centered world of truly large understanding. The Soka schools around the world attest to President Ikeda’s determination to see Makiguchi’s and Toda’s dreams become a lived reality for many students.
I had the great good fortune to meet President Ikeda and his wife, Kaneko, on a steamy July day in 2006 in Hachioji, Tokyo, at Soka University of Japan. We spoke briefly about our shared commitment to building cultures of peace in every moment. For me, this most often means in the classroom with my students. For the Ikedas, it includes their almost daily interactions—now, often through poems—with the students attending the Soka schools around the world.
Part of my trip in 2006 took me to those schools, meeting with their students, an opportunity I have been fortunate to repeat many times. I have heard junior high and high school students at the Tokyo Soka schools talk about the importance of cultivating imagination as a path to empathy; I have discussed Emersonian “conversations with nature” with students at both Soka University of America and Soka University of Japan. I have listened and learned from Soka Women’s College students as they studied the poetry of Daisaku Ikeda, and I have parsed the difficult, circuitous language of Emerson’s Nature with graduate students at SUJ.
Conversations with students at these Soka schools have been some of the most thought provoking of my life. This sounds like an exaggeration. It is not. These students have embarked on the mind-expanding life journey of dialogue.
When I was asked to join in a formal dialogue with President Ikeda, it was clear that we both felt the immediacy of our initial audience. Published first in Pumpkin, a Japanese magazine designed for women readers and the eclectic demands of women’s daily lives, our words quickly opened into the larger educative demands that face us on a daily basis. How do we attend to, learn from, and in turn create something humane amid the multiple demands that fragment our days and may leave us feeling displaced and depleted?
Pursuing questions that address the human capacity for wonder, we let our minds wander among all places and times, inviting our readers to undertake their own journeys as well. What might the women of the American Transcendentalist movement teach us about how we attend to the mind’s workings? How do Georgia O’Keeffe’s life and work continue to challenge our ways of seeing? What are our responsibilities to where we are? What are the powers of poetry, and why have we neglected them?
Thought opens to thought. Every observation is just waiting to be shared and explored. Throughout the process, what grew in clarity was the collaborative nature of thought.
The dialogue process itself exemplified collaboration. First, the many occasions for dialogue at the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue or with the students at the Soka schools or with members of the women’s and young women’s divisions of the SGI created a rhythm of dialogue that opened happily and readily into this dialogue in particular. From the beginning, our thoughts were already used to traveling, to being in motion, given the freedom to ride on any train of thought that stopped at our dialogic station. In an interconnected world, there are no tangents.
Second, collaboration was built into the very way the dialogue proceeded. Much occurred via email exchange—each of us writing thoughts to which the other would in turn respond. We had time. We could always stop and think.
In addition, much of my thinking occurred in conversation with Masao Yokota, former president of the Ikeda Center. At a time when health concerns limited my writing and computer use, our conversations gave me the opportunity to expand and explore ideas, sharing in the fruitful give and take of thought. Grateful thanks also go to those who patiently transcribed the recorded conversations, especially to Clarissa Douglass, whose insight deepened and enriched the thoughts that would finally be written on the page. Such thought sharing would have been impossible without the translators who rendered English into Japanese, and Japanese into English. The gift of having one’s thought rendered for others is incomparably precious, and in addition to the translators, my deep appreciation rests with everyone at the Ikeda Center. They provide a rare and precious home for dialogue.
Reflecting upon the time during which President Ikeda and I shared this dialogue journey, a landscape emerges. Here is a topography of education in all its multifaceted features. How have the current consumer-based models of education drained the human capacity for curiosity and creativity? How can these capacities be rejuvenated and encouraged? What is the role of compassion in education? And imagination? And empathy? How do thinkers, poets, artists from earlier ages—whether Nichiren, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Rabindranath Tagore—most thought-provokingly enter the work we do in our daily lives? How do we continue to expand our understanding of education so that its dimensions remain inclusive and responsible? In a world of judgment and standards, how do we create and sustain a challenging and mind-expanding method based on respect, encouragement, and appreciation?
As I look out the tall library windows onto the windy summerscape of the college campus where I teach, I could translate these questions into the features I see around me, whether the blue heron just landing on the pond, or the clouds promising rain that would be more fully appreciated elsewhere, or the planted fields on the hillsides struggling for sunshine and warmth to allow the crops a chance to flourish.
Our campus is quiet in summer, and yet the work continues. Education never ends. Nor do the friendships begun and sustained through dialogue. Honoring education that nurtures and friendships that sustain, I celebrate Daisaku Ikeda and his buoyant and joyful commitment to learning, always learning. I invite you to join the journey and share your thoughts.
Dr. Sarah Wider
Description
In The Art of True Relations, Sarah Wider and Daisaku Ikeda celebrate the great spiritual and literary figures, East and West, who have inspired their own work as educators, poets, and peace builders, including both the men and the women of the American Renaissance. They reserve their highest praise, though, for the lesser known among us, especially teachers and mothers, whose humble, compassionate actions provide the strongest foundation for the realization of ever-greater peace. Ultimately, The Art of True Relations is a tribute to the bonds that give life meaning.
Advance Praise
“The Art of True Relations is a carefully crafted, beautifully organized, and deeply hospitable book. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in living more humanely.”
—Megan Laverty, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University
“Following the gentle flow of Ikeda and Wider’s conversations, we enter a heart-warming intimacy with them and with their mentors, Josei Toda and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The authors’ unabashed expressions of appreciation for mothers everywhere, for circles of support, and for the natural world evoke radical gratitude.”
—Ann Diller, Professor Emerita, Philosophy of Education, University of New Hampshire
“This wonderful book both enacts and recalls dialogue as the most fundamental means of human growth. Sarah Wider and Daisaku Ikeda celebrate the self-reliance of Ralph Waldo Emerson as it flowered among others and urged awareness of their needs, with special attention to the women of transcendentalism who were mentors, friends, and teachers of new spiritual awareness. The Art of True Relations is a delight to read.”
—Phyllis Cole, Professor of English, Women’s Studies, and American Studies, Penn State Brandywine
Author(s)
Sarah Wider is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Colgate University, where she specializes in the American Renaissance, American women writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Native American literature.
Daisaku Ikeda is founder and president of the Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist organization with more than twelve million members worldwide. He has written and lectured widely on Buddhism, humanism, and global ethics.
Table of Contents
Preface
Daisaku Ikeda
Preface
Sarah Wider
CONVERSATIONS
1. New Adventures
2. University of All Knowledges
3. The Encouraging Voice
4. All Things Connected
5. Sublime Motivations
6. A Return to Self-Reliance
7. The Rhythms of Nature
8. Sympathy and Likeness
9. The Creative Life
10. Renaissance Women
11. Strength Through Connection
12. To Open All Doors
13. Rooted in Dialogue
14. Learning Journeys
15. The Solidest Thing
16. Infinite Power Inside
Notes
Index
About the Authors
Excerpts
Preface to the Art of True Relations
Daisaku Ikeda
“Poet, speak not with the intellect alone but with the ‘flower of the mind’”—such was the cry of the great nineteenth-century American poet and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson, a flag bearer for the revival of humanity.
There has long been a call for the restoration in our world of the power of language, the power of literature, and the power of poetry. This is, at the same time, a warning of the underlying threat to civilization posed by the degeneration of heart-to-heart ties linking one individual to another. How, then, can we transform language from a meaningless, empty shell to the rich nourishment that sustains life, from being degraded as a dangerous tool for the exploitation of others into a powerful source for advancing into the future, filled with hope?
Sarah Ann Wider, former president of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, has been engaged in an earnest exploration of the essential question, “What enables us to lead fully and truly human lives?” She has been carrying on a dialogue, transcending the ages, with the thinkers who led the American Renaissance, deeply pondering their message.
I first met Dr. Wider in the summer of 2006. Her sincere character and profound integrity as a person shone brightly in each word she exchanged with me. My wife was moved to learn that the blue suit that Dr. Wider wore that day was a memento from her mother, Mary Wider. I was also touched when, later, Dr. Wider presented me with some of her mother’s favorite books.
Dr. Wider told me that her mother read Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” when she was in high school, which helped her decide not to be pressed into the conventional patterns imposed on women by society at that time but to follow her own chosen path through life. Motivated by her wish to be of use to a friend suffering from a serious illness, Mary Wider overcame numerous difficulties to enter one of the best nursing schools in the country. Through her devoted care, she helped her friend to live a longer life and went on to give the spiritual gift of hope and courage to many others who were ill.
In her later years, Dr. Wider also told me, her mother was gratified that her daughter chose Emerson as the focus of her academic career. I cannot help but feel that Dr. Wider and her mother are linked by the noble ideals voiced by Emerson—his unflagging belief in the infinite possibility of the individual and the supreme worth and dignity of our inner beings.
I have fond memories of the great spiritual sustenance and encouragement I received from the writings of Emerson and Walt Whitman in my youth. In those days, having accepted as my personal credo the impassioned wish of my mentor, second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda, to rid the world of misery, I was engaged in an arduous daily struggle for peace based on the Buddhist teachings.
Serendipitously, the date July 3, when I first met Dr. Wider in 2006, is the same date that President Toda was released from prison in 1945, after being incarcerated for two years for his conscientious resistance to the dictates of the militaristic Japanese authorities. It is also the date that, twelve years later, in 1957, I was arrested on false charges in the midst of my efforts to expand our movement for the people’s welfare.
As long as people inherit and carry on noble ideals, these ideals will survive undimmed for eternity, eventually bringing glorious flowers into bloom and bearing fruit that stands as irrefutable proof in each person’s life.
In July 2006, to commemorate Mary Wider, we planted a cherry tree—a favorite of my mentor—in the Makiguchi Memorial Garden adjacent to Soka University of Japan. Over the years, the tree has grown and bloomed beautifully, watching warmly over the university students as they have pursued their path of learning.
The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, considering humanity’s future, called for a new field of learning—a field that would employ the human intellect for good rather than evil, that would promote a way of life recognizing the equal worth and dignity of self and others. Based on his hopes for these “new humanities,” Dr. Toynbee asked, “Are not these ‘new humanities’ likely to minister far more effectively than science and technology ever can to Man’s present need to save himself from himself?” I am convinced that this remains just as urgent an issue today as it was when these words were written more than four decades ago.
In our dialogue, focusing on the central theme of the revival of the poetic spirit and the restoration of the power of language, Dr. Wider and I explored many diverse subjects, including youth, women, friendship, art, literature, and the role of the university, tackling topics that Toynbee identified as the tug of war in education—the struggle between the often conflicting demands of national and economic interests on the one hand and individual and humanitarian interests on the other; between science and technology on the one hand and the humanities and arts on the other.
In our discussions, Dr. Wider noted that it is too easy to forget our responsibility to others when we’re involved in an abstract quest for knowledge… . Then we start to neglect so much else in our lives… . When individualism is put in the service of materialism, we distort the human being into a small-minded thinker who values acquisition over relation and self-selection over integral connection.
These ideas are profoundly consonant with the convictions I have held for many long years. I feel a special empathy with the ethos underlying Dr. Wider’s observations and her profoundly compassionate spirit and deeply held belief as an educator in the need to dispel the dark clouds casting a pall over the lives of youth today. This is an unshakable pillar in Dr. Wider’s view of education—a philosophy that stands as the epitome and culmination of the educational praxis in which she has so passionately engaged.
What can be done to prevent students from being swept away by the tide of the times and losing sight of their true selves? What kind of education can help them believe in their own potential and develop it to the fullest? All her ideas and actions derive from her wish for the happiness of each individual.
This desire is certainly the key to resolving the tug of war in education that Toynbee described. Wishing for the happiness of each individual and acting sincerely on this purpose—these qualities are desirable not only in education but in every area of our lives.
At the time of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami in Japan’s Tohoku region, Dr. Wider was quick to send a message. She asked what connects and strengthens us when we feel completely overwhelmed by the devastation around us, when it seems that everything is broken to pieces and torn apart. Words of encouragement was her answer. From far-away America, Dr. Wider felt the profound sadness of those in the affected areas and, reflecting on the grief she felt at her mother’s death and her experience recovering from it, sent her sincere condolences and encouragement to all concerned.
When she visited Japan in October 2012, she traveled to Sendai, Ishinomaki, and Onagawa, sympathetically listening to the victims’ stories and delivering lectures to ignite the torch of hope and courage in their hearts. She said that to communicate meaningfully with those who have experienced unbearable grief in the depths of their beings, our words must contain a power that transcends mere words. She concluded:
In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, the poetic heart responds again and again, from those who had suffered so much and from those who were suffering in deep sympathy. If we allow that heart its full power, there is no wasteland that cannot be transformed.
This sincere, heartfelt encouragement brought tears of deep feeling and empathy, and bright smiles of hope to the faces of many people. In order for Tohoku to shine even more brightly as a symbol of revival in the new century, I hope, along with Dr. Wider, that it will powerfully radiate this beautiful poetic heart.
It is also my sincere wish that this book will contribute to the rising tide of humanistic education, encouraging the “young Emersons” of our time to polish their minds and character for the sake of others, society, and the world.
With undying friendship on this seventh anniversary of the July 3 on which I first met Dr. Wider,
Daisaku Ikeda
***
Preface to the Art of True Relations
Sarah Wider
Every dialogue is a journey. Conversing, we begin, a few words at a time. Where will this thought lead? How will that observation deepen? In thought, we do not—we cannot—stand still. When we are thinking freely and frankly, we move. Especially when we are thinking together. Then that miracle of miracles occurs. We change our minds. We learn to see differently. Actively sharing thought with another person, we reach a place we could not reach alone.
That the focus of these dialogues with Daisaku Ikeda would turn to education is no surprise. I like to say I have been in school all my life, always a student, although for the last half of my life, I count teaching as part of my student’s journey.
For President Ikeda, education is everything. Enabling education for others has been his lifework. As president of the Soka Gakkai International, the world’s largest Buddhist organization, he realized the longtime dreams of its earlier leaders, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda. Both wanted to create educational opportunities for people of all ages—not only opportunities but environments for learning that affirm and develop every student’s creative potential.
At the core of realizing these dreams was not a “me-centered” individual but a long-visioned person building a peace-centered world of truly large understanding. The Soka schools around the world attest to President Ikeda’s determination to see Makiguchi’s and Toda’s dreams become a lived reality for many students.
I had the great good fortune to meet President Ikeda and his wife, Kaneko, on a steamy July day in 2006 in Hachioji, Tokyo, at Soka University of Japan. We spoke briefly about our shared commitment to building cultures of peace in every moment. For me, this most often means in the classroom with my students. For the Ikedas, it includes their almost daily interactions—now, often through poems—with the students attending the Soka schools around the world.
Part of my trip in 2006 took me to those schools, meeting with their students, an opportunity I have been fortunate to repeat many times. I have heard junior high and high school students at the Tokyo Soka schools talk about the importance of cultivating imagination as a path to empathy; I have discussed Emersonian “conversations with nature” with students at both Soka University of America and Soka University of Japan. I have listened and learned from Soka Women’s College students as they studied the poetry of Daisaku Ikeda, and I have parsed the difficult, circuitous language of Emerson’s Nature with graduate students at SUJ.
Conversations with students at these Soka schools have been some of the most thought provoking of my life. This sounds like an exaggeration. It is not. These students have embarked on the mind-expanding life journey of dialogue.
When I was asked to join in a formal dialogue with President Ikeda, it was clear that we both felt the immediacy of our initial audience. Published first in Pumpkin, a Japanese magazine designed for women readers and the eclectic demands of women’s daily lives, our words quickly opened into the larger educative demands that face us on a daily basis. How do we attend to, learn from, and in turn create something humane amid the multiple demands that fragment our days and may leave us feeling displaced and depleted?
Pursuing questions that address the human capacity for wonder, we let our minds wander among all places and times, inviting our readers to undertake their own journeys as well. What might the women of the American Transcendentalist movement teach us about how we attend to the mind’s workings? How do Georgia O’Keeffe’s life and work continue to challenge our ways of seeing? What are our responsibilities to where we are? What are the powers of poetry, and why have we neglected them?
Thought opens to thought. Every observation is just waiting to be shared and explored. Throughout the process, what grew in clarity was the collaborative nature of thought.
The dialogue process itself exemplified collaboration. First, the many occasions for dialogue at the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue or with the students at the Soka schools or with members of the women’s and young women’s divisions of the SGI created a rhythm of dialogue that opened happily and readily into this dialogue in particular. From the beginning, our thoughts were already used to traveling, to being in motion, given the freedom to ride on any train of thought that stopped at our dialogic station. In an interconnected world, there are no tangents.
Second, collaboration was built into the very way the dialogue proceeded. Much occurred via email exchange—each of us writing thoughts to which the other would in turn respond. We had time. We could always stop and think.
In addition, much of my thinking occurred in conversation with Masao Yokota, former president of the Ikeda Center. At a time when health concerns limited my writing and computer use, our conversations gave me the opportunity to expand and explore ideas, sharing in the fruitful give and take of thought. Grateful thanks also go to those who patiently transcribed the recorded conversations, especially to Clarissa Douglass, whose insight deepened and enriched the thoughts that would finally be written on the page. Such thought sharing would have been impossible without the translators who rendered English into Japanese, and Japanese into English. The gift of having one’s thought rendered for others is incomparably precious, and in addition to the translators, my deep appreciation rests with everyone at the Ikeda Center. They provide a rare and precious home for dialogue.
Reflecting upon the time during which President Ikeda and I shared this dialogue journey, a landscape emerges. Here is a topography of education in all its multifaceted features. How have the current consumer-based models of education drained the human capacity for curiosity and creativity? How can these capacities be rejuvenated and encouraged? What is the role of compassion in education? And imagination? And empathy? How do thinkers, poets, artists from earlier ages—whether Nichiren, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Rabindranath Tagore—most thought-provokingly enter the work we do in our daily lives? How do we continue to expand our understanding of education so that its dimensions remain inclusive and responsible? In a world of judgment and standards, how do we create and sustain a challenging and mind-expanding method based on respect, encouragement, and appreciation?
As I look out the tall library windows onto the windy summerscape of the college campus where I teach, I could translate these questions into the features I see around me, whether the blue heron just landing on the pond, or the clouds promising rain that would be more fully appreciated elsewhere, or the planted fields on the hillsides struggling for sunshine and warmth to allow the crops a chance to flourish.
Our campus is quiet in summer, and yet the work continues. Education never ends. Nor do the friendships begun and sustained through dialogue. Honoring education that nurtures and friendships that sustain, I celebrate Daisaku Ikeda and his buoyant and joyful commitment to learning, always learning. I invite you to join the journey and share your thoughts.
Dr. Sarah Wider