In this 2014 video Sarah Wider of Colgate University talks about the unique contributions of women such as Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to the American Renaissance. This is the lead piece in Part 2 of our multi-clip video interview with Dr. Wider (conducted Feb. 2014) on the themes relating to The Art of True Relations, her recently published dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda.
View the full set of videos here
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On September 24, 1993, Daisaku Ikeda lectured at Harvard University on the topic, "Mahayana Buddhism and 21st Century Civilization." Speaking at the invitation of eminent Harvard faculty Harvey Cox, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Nur Yalman, Mr. Ikeda outlined many of the themes that would inspire the founding of the Center later that year.
The lecture begins:
It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who, with his famous panta rhe, declared that all things are in flux and that change is the essential nature of reality. Indeed, everything,...
Humanity has lost a friend of the truest kind. On May 19, 2014, historian Vincent Harding passed away in Philadelphia, where he was being treated for an aneurysm. A friend and advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Harding was a towering, irreplaceable figure in the fields of peace, justice, religious pluralism, and social transformation. Just last year, author and public radio host Krista Tippett described Dr. Harding to us as "a national treasure."
Over the course of nearly two decades, we at the Ikeda Center have benefited beyond measure from Dr. Harding's wisdom...
Creativity and education are unambiguously good, right? Actually, said professors Stephen Gould and Bernice Lerner during their May 2014 dialogue session with local university students, without being careful of how we define these terms and understanding the ways they interact, we run the risk of condoning practices that aren’t necessarily of value for humankind and our world. That said, they argued that creativity and education, informed by wisdom, constitute the foundation for the practices that will lead to peacefully harmonious development in our rapidly globalizing world. Gould and...
In this new video Dr. Sarah Wider discusses "The Path of Motherhood," a way of being centered on resonance with others, and which, in this sense, is open to all human beings. Happy Mother's Day!
We are pleased to present Part One of our new video interview with Dr. Sarah Wider exploring themes from "The Art of True Relations," her new book co-authored with Daisaku Ikeda. The four topics of Part One are: 1) "Dialogue and the Art of True Relations," 2) "The True Meaning of Emerson's Self-Reliance," "Joy Harjo's Metaphor of the Kitchen Table," and 4) "Transcendentalism and Interconnection." Dr. Wider is Professor of English and Women's Studies at Colgate University.
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America Will Be! Conversations on Hope, Freedom, and Democracy, by Vincent Harding and Daisaku Ikeda, has won the Society of Professors of Education (SPE) book award for 2014. Founded in 1902, the Society’s primary goal is to provide a forum for consideration of major issues, tasks, problems and challenges confronting professional educators. SPE is an interdisciplinary organization. Members include both theoreticians and practitioners in education. The second chairman of SPE was John Dewey of the University of Chicago,...
Excerpted here are remarks delivered by Nobel Peace Laureate Oscar Arias at the Soka University of Japan Commencement Ceremony, March 20, 2014.
Esteemed faculty, graduates, and families:
Friendship is one of the most beautiful and mysterious secrets in life. It takes people as different as can be, and ties them together with an unbreakable bond. It can unite us across divisions of age, gender, race, nationality and class...
This piece, posted in March 2014, addresses questions that might occur to thoughtful readers of our core convictions. As in any process of codification, defining our convictions required that we streamline the ideas most important to us. All along, though, our website and other materials have contained many perspectives and complexities, not included in our original formulation, that actually strengthen our convictions as ethical and intellectual tools for global human progress in a world marked by irresolution, imbalances of power, and a bounty of beliefs. The layers and complexities...
This month (March '14) we added several new poems to our Poetry Section, which features works that resonate with multiple dimensions of our work. The new poems are: Joy Harjo's "Perhaps the World Ends Here," Sonia Sanchez's "Morning Song and Evening Walk" (for Martin Luther King, Jr), Mary Oliver's "Sleeping in the Forest" and "Wild Geese," Wendell Berry's "The Peace of Wild Things," William E. Stafford's "At the Un-national Monument," and Rabindranath Tagore's "Where the Mind is Without Fear." (Shown here: Joy Harjo)
Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue
396 Harvard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: (617) 491.1090 Fax: (617) 491.1169