Event Recaps: Dialogue Nights

The concept of the greater self, which is central to the philosophy of Daisaku Ikeda and his 1993 lecture at Harvard University, provided the focus for the first Dialogue Nights of our 30th anniversary year.

Participants discussed why listening is so hard and what they do to overcome the many obstacles to the kind of deep and compassionate listening that dialogue requires

On July 29, and after two years and six virtual events, nearly 30 Boston-area university students and young professionals returned to the Ikeda Center for an evening of joyful, rejuvenating dialogue.

On May 27, the Ikeda Center hosted its sixth and final “virtual” Dialogue Nights, with the plan being to return to in-person events this summer, more than two years after they were suspended in 2020 because of the pandemic.

The first Dialogue Nights of 2022 was held on March 4th, nearly two years to the day after businesses, restaurants, and institutions of all sorts started shutting down because of the rapidly-spreading COVID virus.

During times of crisis, personal or social, we often feel an obligation to be strong, for ourselves and others. But what are the costs of always being strong? And what are benefits of being, not weak, but at least vulnerable at such times?

Responding to a surge in interest among young people over the last year relating to the need for self-love and self-care, this Dialogue Nights—embraced the topic as one worthy of investigation.

The Ikeda Center’s second virtual Dialogue Nights, held on May 14, 2021, took place just as life in the United States was starting its long-anticipated transition toward “a new normal."

As 2021 commenced, and with the prospects for in-person events still many months away, it only seemed right to re-launch Dialogue Nights in virtual form. The March 5 gathering, called “Author a New Chapter – You are the Playwright,” proved the wisdom of that decision.