The Pursuit of Peace and Dialogue from the Personal to the Global

The afternoon after Andrea Bartoli delivered the 2024 Indigo Talk (view video here), called “Opening Pathways to Peace: The Role of Dialogue in Times of Conflict,” he engaged in a Zoom-based dialogue with several members of the Ikeda Center’s youth committee. This session provided the opportunity to go deeper into key ideas from the talk and the chance for call participants to talk about some of the challenges they have experienced as they pursue peace and dialogue in their communities. 

The youth committee members in attendance were Anna Lane, a family liaison in the Boston Public Schools; Sasha Ndam, who works in the field of affordable housing and is pursuing a master’s in education; Shoumik Banerjee, a senior at Hult International Business School, studying marketing and economics; Meylin Gonzales, who is from Peru and pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard University; Lanre Adeyanju, a rising senior at Harvard College and the Ikeda Center’s Summer 2024 program intern; Preandra Noel, Program and Office Assistant at the Ikeda Center, also pursuing graduate studies in thanatology; and Cindy Xie, who is a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During the dialogue session, the youth committee members posed several questions to Dr. Bartoli. For the first, Sasha talked about how, during this election season, it becomes “really easy” to fall into us-versus-them dynamics, which often leaves her “drained.” Thus, when politics arose in a recent conversation with a friend, instead of asking who they were voting for, Sasha asked them what their fears were about the election. She was happy with this approach because she never felt like she was “losing herself,” as so often happens when things get political. Dr. Bartoli responded by commenting on a few aspects of the scenario. First he offered congratulations for having the self-awareness to be able to “steer away from something you didn’t want to hurt.” And, more than that, “given the level of animosity, hostility, division, violence in the U. S.,” you definitely made a “contribution” to raising our discourse, he said. But, looking deeper, he offered some thoughts on the question of “external causality.” Would it be possible to engage in a fully-political talk without feeling pushed to react? Ultimately, we know that the meaning of a phenomenon comes from within each of us. Even the sunshine can be seen as a negative if we choose to be annoyed at how it has awakened us. And how often are we also annoyed with the rain, even though “we need the rain”? Then, before concluding, Dr. Bartoli observed that “what we are experiencing now is this beautiful moment of mutual gift” in which Sasha shared her heartfelt story and he gave his honest response.

Continuing with a similar theme, Lanre shared how when she enters into conversation with a certain friend, this friend always seems to steer things from dialogue to debate. “I guess my question,” she said, “is how do you encourage someone who you feel like is closed off to dialogue to first have this honest inner dialogue with themselves?” Again, Dr. Bartoli responded by looking at the various dimensions of the scenario. First, he just wanted to note that it’s often important to distinguish between “the ideal and the practical,” and there will be many situations where “I don’t do what I think would be proper to do.” But beyond that, if we look at the situation from a different angle, we can see that maybe it’s not so bad to be “pushed” into debate. The friend’s behavior could be seen as an invitation or opportunity to “learn how to debate,” even if it’s something you might not feel comfortable with. Nevertheless, Dr. Bartoli said he wanted to share one technique that has proven successful “99 percent” of the time when things take an unwanted turn toward a debate, which is to listen and smile and then say, “Wow, let me think about this.” Now this must be done “honestly” and “genuinely”; we must always be aware of our tone if we really want to communicate well. Finally, Dr. Bartoli remarked on how to consider the person who always tends toward debate. Instead of seeing her as “misleading” you, you could see her as someone you could help see that “there is something else in life than debating all the time.”

Speaking next, Anna said that she really appreciated Dr. Bartoli’s thoughts during last night’s Q & A on the need for us to develop a new understanding of what true power actually is. How do you make room for that “authentic” power in the many places like South Sudan, where “traditional” violent power appears predominant. One way to look at it, said Bartoli, is that there always are moments and instances when authentic power is practiced. One case is Daisaku Ikeda’s meeting with Zhou Enlai to discuss the reconciliation of China and Japan. In Africa, he said his favorite example is that of “Julius Nyerere, the president of Tanzania, [who] was able to build a country that was truly a remarkably stable land” – even with the presence of “hundreds of different ethnic groups” there. That said, “violence is the predominant structure of power” in many states. Even in the United States, he said, “the great majority of people associate power with the capacity to kill.” But if you really think about it, if you set your mind to killing it is rather easy. But doesn’t it make sense to apply ourselves in the cause of making life “better, lighter, more joyful” for someone else? Not only that, but what is left when the perpetrator of violence and the giver of life both are gone? It is the one who has given life whose “power will continue forever in the generations to come.”

For the last topic, Shoumik talked about how difficult conversations around the conflict in Israel-Gaza have been, including when the topic of ceasefire has been raised. This has been especially sensitive among his acquaintances in the Boston area who come from various states in the Middle East. Dr. Bartoli said that as someone who “has the gift of not being from there,” you have more opportunity to create spaces for honest expression. In essence, the conflict and Shoumik’s relationship both with it and those in his life, suggested Dr. Bartoli, could best be understood in these terms: The ceasefire, he said, 

is a very important choice because this ceasefire would guarantee that at least there are no more victims. But this ceasefire is very difficult to be accepted by somebody who wants to win and thinks that victory comes only where the others are annihilated or destroyed, are forced to accept defeat. So I think it’s very important for you not only to be in favor of ceasefire, but to be able to offer to anybody — Israelis, Arabs, Palestinians — the space in which they can tell their story of suffering and pain. Expressing what for them would be a fair solution… . So you can offer yourself as a space with anybody who is concerned with those situations and say, Why are you thinking this? Tell me more about this. What would be a fair solution for you?

Finally, Ikeda Center Senior Program Manager Lillian Koizumi thanked participants “for these really deep and honest questions” and Dr. Bartoli “for giving your whole life to answering each of them.” She then turned the floor over to Center Executive Director Kevin Maher for some concluding thoughts. His big takeaway, he said, pertained to the “individual agency that we all have, whether it be in dialogue with ourselves, dialogue with others, or just the way that we look at our circumstances in the world at large.” Then, to wrap things up he shared a passage from Mr. Ikeda that “captured the essence of … today’s dialogue and the intention behind it”: Dialogue, states Ikeda, “starts from the courageous willingness to know and be known by others. It is the painstaking and persistent effort to remove all obstacles that obscure our common humanity. Genuine dialogue is a ceaseless and profound spiritual exertion that seeks to affect a fundamental human transformation in both ourselves and others.”