New, from the Ikeda Center archives: Masao Yokota's 2010 interview with esteemed Harvard theologian Harvey Cox on "the future of faith." During their conversation Cox and Yokota discuss how faith is the opposite of fear, why the "age of spirit" is non-hierarchical, and why transformative creativity thrives at the margins of society. Posted 2-18-16.
News & Blog
Newly posted at the Soka Gakkai International website is an article by the Center's Mitch Bogen called "The Practice of Dignity," which looks at ways the 2015 Ikeda Forum provides a window into the ethos, work, and history of the Ikeda Center. With it's focus on dignity, writes Bogen, the 2015 forum got right to the heart of our work:
"The theme of dignity grounds the Ikeda Center’s vision statement, which was created based on Mr. Ikeda’s written messages to the center commemorating important milestones. The opening of the statement reads, 'The Ikeda...
This news summary is from the Daisaku Ikeda website:
In his annual peace proposal to the United Nations released on January 26, 2016, "Universal Respect for Human Dignity: The Great Path to Peace," Daisaku Ikeda, fouder of the Ikeda Center and president of the Soka Gakkai International, calls for intensified efforts to respond to the needs of humanity's most vulnerable, including those displaced by conflict in Syria and elsewhere or by natural disasters.
Mr. Ikeda welcomes the adoption of the UN's new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their ambitious aim of...
We are pleased to make Parts Two and Three of our podcast with Ceasar McDowell available for listening. In Part Two, he explores the aspirational qualities of what he calls Big Democracy: "At the core of this aspiration," he says, "is the belief that the public is fully capable of working together to create sustainable, just, and equitable communities. But to do so the public must have ongoing, peaceful ways to interact around traditions that bind them, and interests that separate them, so they can realize a future that is an equitable improvement on the past.” In Part Three he discusses...
The late Vincent Harding, historian, activist, author, and mentor to many in the quest to expand freedom and justice, was also a friend and confidant of Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, Dr. Harding drafted King's Riverside Church speech, which famously spoke out against the Viet Nam War. Dr. Harding was also a friend of and inspiration to the Ikeda Center. Here are some quotes from his 1996 interview with the Center that offer acute insight into King's values and motivations, as well as his own. These passages were selected...
Our newest podcast features Ceasar McDowell, President of Interaction Institute for Social Change, and Professor of the Practice of Community Development at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here, he talks about how he helps people on the margins find and develop their "voice."
Our world is tragically divided, and we need dialogue. On these things, we in the peace-oriented community agree. But what kind of dialogue is up to the challenge of bridging the various divisions in our world? That was the question that guided a seminar held at the Ikeda Center in 2009 to honor the publication of social anthropologist Nur Yalman's book-length dialogue with Center founder Daisaku Ikeda, A Passage To Peace. On hand for the discussion were a number of Professor Yalman's friends and colleagues on the Harvard faculty: Islam scholar Shahab Ahmed, Divinity School...
In her new essay, "Taking Dignity Digital," our fall 2015 Northeastern University co-op student Taylor Holland writes: "At the Ikeda Center, one of our core convictions is that respect for human dignity provides a baseline ethical standard for our thoughts and actions. When I consider how to bring an awareness of dignity into my life, there is no doubt that such awareness must also extend to social media. While social media is in some ways different from offline interaction in the ways it affirms and violates dignity, there are dignity-building ideas that scholars and mediators have...
This new feature combines photographic portraits with brief reflections from each portrait subject on themes and ideas relating to our core convictions. These profiles, which feature friends of the Ikeda Center, are posted regularly to our social media sites and are archived here by topic, for cumulative viewing. Our first profile set features reflections on the topic of dignity. These were created following our 2015 Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue, "The Practice of Dignity: What It Looks Like Today." Dignity is at the heart of our fourth core conviction.
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For the first time in its twelve-year history, the Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue revisited a topic from a previous forum. Though the topic in question — dignity — was addressed just last year, it proved so rich and multivalent that there was little sense of repetition. To the extent that there was repetition, it only reinforced the truth that dignity is central to our efforts toward peace and well-being.
Called “The Practice of Dignity: What It Means Today,” the forum featured three speakers: Meenakshi Chhabra, Associate Professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies,...
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