On May 4th, the Ikeda Center hosted its latest seminar bringing university students into dialogue with senior scholars working in peace- and education-related fields. The fourteen Boston-area students in attendance, who ranged from undergraduates to doctoral students, represented a rich range of interests and academic disciplines, including medicine, comparative religion, international affairs, international development, theological studies, and conflict mediation and resolution. They engaged in a 90-minute dialogue on the complexities of conflict resolution with Meenakshi Chhabra,...
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On Monday, May 4, fourteen Boston-area university students gathered at the Ikeda Center to engage in dialogue with professors Meenakshi Chhabra of Lesley University and Darren Kew of University of Massachusetts Boston. Chhabra's remarks centered on her experience fostering Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and Kew's centered on his work facilitating Muslim-Christian dialogue and mediation in Nigeria. Finding common ground means being willing to cross borders of many kinds, Chhabra and Kew said. We will post an essay on the event during the week of May 11.
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Students at the University of South China lit candles in honor of those affected by the Nepal earthquake. The NYT has published a good first-person account of the earthquake and its aftermath. It's called "Perseverance and Grace as...
In Encountering the Poems of Daisaku Ikeda, literature scholars Ronald A. Bosco, Kenneth Price, and Sarah Ann Wider consider various dimensions of the poetic oeuvre of Buddhist thinker and leader Daisaku Ikeda. Dr. Bosco looks at lyricism in Mr. Ikeda’s work, Dr. Price traces the poetry’s connection with Walt Whitman, and Dr. Wider elucidates how the poems function as encouragement for their many readers worldwide.
In the latest SGI Quarterly, the London-born, Los Angeles-based actor Sabra Williams (right) describes her experience as director of the Actors' Gang Prison Project. Launched in 2006, the project employs theater — specifically the techniques of the 16th-century Italian "people's theater" known as commedia dell'arte — to help prisoners in the California system positively cope with their incarceration...
Over the last few months our work has focused specifically on human dignity. But dignity is always near the heart of our work, no matter the time or topic. Philosophically speaking, dignity is a core aspect of the Buddhist humanism that undergirds all our endeavors and inquiries. In his opening lecture at the 2009 Ikeda Forum, Dr. Steven Rockefeller identified dignity as one of the values that unites the humanistic philosophies of Center founder Daisaku Ikeda and American philosopher John Dewey:
"There is agreement between Dewey and Ikeda on the general...
A new piece at the Southern Illinois University website profiles Center friend Larry Hickman and his work promoting cross-cultural understanding. The story devotes considerable attention to our newest Dialogue Path Press title, Living As Learning: John Dewey in the 21st Century, which Dr. Hickman recently co-authored with Jim Garrison and Daisaku Ikeda. In particular, the piece looks at ways that Dewey's philosophy connects with that of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, whose Buddhist, value-creating philosophy (formed in the early decades of the 20th century), provides a foundation for Mr....
Center founder Daisaku Ikeda's 2015 Peace Proposal to the United Nations is called "A Shared Pledge for a More Humane Future: To Eliminate Misery from the Earth." The excerpt below is from the synopsis of the full version, which can be accessed and read here.
"On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), I would like to offer some thoughts on ways to generate greater solidarity among the people of the world for peace and humane values...
When Donna Hicks first hit on the concept of dignity as a way to understand conflict, she learned two things fast. One was that people were very receptive to the concept and eager to use the lens of dignity to understand the conflicts they were in and the pain they were feeling. The other was that, despite the near universality of agreement that dignity is crucial, most of us share a pretty shallow understanding of what it is and how it impacts us. With this awareness, Hicks set out to research, understand, and apply dignity in the context of her work as a conflict resolution specialist to...
View our new photo gallery for the January 31, 2015, event with Harvard's Donna Hicks celebrating and exploring the power of dignity to transform conflict. A capacity crowd attended on a day that was cold and clear but positioned cleanly within two major snowstorms. She is the author of Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict. She employs the lens of dignity to help resolve conflicts large and small, here and abroad.
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Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue
396 Harvard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: (617) 491.1090 Fax: (617) 491.1169