[Posted 4-10-13] We must embrace the obligation and opportunity of multiple modes of dialogue if we are to achieve fulfilling lives and the peaceful and creative global community that is desired by diverse peoples of good will worldwide. This was the message of a wide-ranging discussion hosted at the Center on Saturday, April 6, as Professors Jim Garrison and Larry Hickman were on hand to engage with a gathering of national and Boston-area university students on themes drawn from the book A New Humanism: The University Lectures of Daisaku Ikeda. We...
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[Posted by M. Bogen, 4-1-13] Valued friend of the Center David T. Hansen of Teachers College, Columbia University, edited our 2007 multi-author book Ethical Visions of Education: Philosophies in Practice. His most recent book is The Teacher and the World: A Study of Cosmopolitanism as Education (Routledge, 2011). I thought I would share some of his vision of cosmopolitanism as a mode of being an active participant in our ever-changing world. A little background: Cosmopolitanism as a...
[Posted 3-22-13] On the evening of Wednesday, March 20, Dr. Lou Marinoff spoke at the Harvard Coop, Harvard University's official bookstore, in support of The Inner Philosopher, the dialogue book he recently co-authored with Daisaku Ikeda. He reprised many of the themes he introduced at the September 21, 2012, book launch event held at the Ikeda Center's Cambridge lecture hall. Topics included: philosophy's twin responsibilities of healing and the cultivation of virtues; the insight of Epictetus that “people are disturbed not by things but by the...
[Posted by M. Bogen, 2-19-13] Black History Month, says NYT columnist Charles Blow, is the perfect time to understand Rosa Parks in all her complexity. Citing a new book by Jeanne Theoharis called The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, he explains in his February 1, 2013, column why Ms. Parks was so much more than the mythologized "meek seamstress with aching feet who just happened into history in a moment of uncalculated resistance." For example, Blow tells us that Parks "spent nearly two decades before the bus incident struggling, organizing and...
[Posted by M. Bogen, 2-12-13] A reader recently contacted me to see if we were familiar with the work of Dr. Jonathan Shay, who lives and works, as we do, in the Boston area. I confessed that I, at least, was not, but soon investigated and found that Dr. Shay is not only an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but is also at the forefront of helping us understand the "moral injury" that afflicts many of those who have experienced war as soldiers. In the introduction to an illuminating...
[Posted 2-8-13] With the launch of our new site we took the opportunity to create a section that celebrates poems that capture and invoke the spirit of peace and harmony. We've started by posting poems that have featured prominently in our public events, including works by Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, and Denise Levertov (shown here). We also feature Daisaku Ikeda's major poem "The Triumph of the Human Spirit," which he wrote in 2006 to celebrate and serve as the Preface for our book Creating Waldens. We will continue to add to this section as we...
[Posted 1-17-13] The site you are looking at is brand new, launched on January 17, 2013! Those of you familiar with our previous site will notice that we have carried over all the content from that site, including all the articles, essays, and interviews that reside in our Thinkers & Themes section. You will also notice an improved photo and video galleries section, this News & Blog section for communicating what's new with the Ikeda Center and the global issues that connect with our work,...
[Posted by M. Bogen, 1-4-13] This opinion piece by author James Carroll, called "A New Year of Pluralism," was published in the January 1, 2013 edition of the Boston Globe. Carroll writes: "During the recent celebrations of Tip O’Neill’s centenary, the late House speaker’s famous maxim was much repeated: All politics is local. In his day, O’Neill had wisely countered the elected big shot’s temptation to replace neighborhood concerns with national issues. But is O’Neill still right? What happens when the affairs even of a...
[Posted 11-10-12] The ninth annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue, held in Cambridge on Saturday, October 13, celebrated and explored the Buddhist concept of interdependence, known more formally as dependent origination. Center founder Daisaku Ikeda’s writings and lectures on Buddhist humanism and global ethics contain many passages on interdependence. Among those that inspired this event, was this from Mr. Ikeda’s 1991 lecture at Harvard University called “The Age of Soft Power”:
"All things are linked in an...
Karma, said Lou Marinoff, is traditionally understood as “the ripening fruits of action.” In Cambridge on September 21 to celebrate the publication of his new dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda, The Inner Philosopher: Conversations on Philosophy’s Transformative Power, Dr. Marinoff observed that “this book is the very ripe fruit of a lot of little actions” that were taken over the last few years. During his presentation, he reflected on the book’s creation and offered a vision of philosophy based on twin commitments to the alleviation of suffering and the practicing of virtues. He also...
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Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue
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