sgi · from a demand by paying attention to our reaction when we hear “no.” if we hear “no”...

SGIQuarterlyApril 2011

Number 64A Buddhist Forum for Peace, Culture and Education

S o k a G a k k a i I n t e r n a t i o n a l

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Edith Sizoo

SOCIAL MEDIA AND PEACEBUILDING Onnik Krikorian

NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION Myra Walden

On Communication

FEATURE1 On Communication

2 Nonviolent Communication: Mutual Giving from the HeartInterview with Myra Walden

5 How Digital Media Can Help Make PeaceBy Patrick Towell

6 Social Media in Armenia-Azerbaijan PeacebuildingBy Onnik Krikorian

8 Learning to Be DifferentFrom an interview with Natasha Richardson

10 Buddhism and CommunicationFrom the Editor

12 Evolving Consensus Through Dialogue Interview with Virginia Benson

14 The Media in War and Peace: An Agenda for Thought, Reflection and ActionBy Dov Shinar

16 Intercultural Communication: Challenges and PitfallsBy Edith Sizoo

PEOPLE18 Finding My True Voice

By Edoardo Santoni

19 Undaunted by SilenceBy Luo Sheng-tang

PERSPECTIVES 20 The Human Connection

Interview with Sarah Wider

PEACE PROPOSAL 22 Toward a World of Dignity for All:

Daisaku Ikeda’s Peace Proposal for 2011 Published

AROUND THE WORLD23 SGI activity news on PEACE from UK and

Morocco; on SUSTAINABILITY from Brazil;

and on EDUCATION from Japan

Plus news in brief from Cambodia, Mexico,

UK, USA, Germany and Japan

ON VOCATION 26 Life On Air

BUDDHISM IN DAILY LIFE28 Shakubuku: Enabling People to Reveal

Their True Potential

ContentsEditorial Team:

Anthony George Joan Anderson Julie Kazumi KakiuchiKeiko KishinoMarisa StensonMotoki KawamoritaRichard WalkerSatoko SuzukiTomoaki NoyamaYoshinori Miyagawa

Published by Soka Gakkai International

Art Direction & Design by Modis Design Printed by Japan Print Co., Ltd.

© 2011 Soka Gakkai International All rights reserved. Printed in Japan.

Printed on FSC certified paper, supporting responsible forest management.

ISSN 1341-6510

125 19

The SGI Quarterly aims to highlight initiatives and perspectives on peace, education and culture and to provide

information about the Soka Gakkai International’s activities around the world. The views expressed in the SGI Quarterly

are not necessarily those of the SGI. The editorial team (see above) welcomes ideas and comments from readers.

Soka Gakkai International Quarterly Magazine

SGIQuarterly

A Buddhist Forum for Peace, Culture and Education

April 2011

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We live in a “communication age” in which people on opposite sides of the world are able to connect with

one another with unprecedented speed and ease. People are able to reach out, encounter and maintain contact with others within their own communities and around the globe through new media technology, and enormous quantities of knowledge and information are now more widely available than ever before.

But what about the quality of communication as opposed to its speed or quantity? New media can also be manipulated to spread lies, bullying or abuse and to incite hatred or violence. And there are vast inequalities in access; many parts of the planet are beyond the reaches of new media. The UN estimates some 1.5 billion people still do not have access to electricity, let alone up-to-date communications technology. This

inequality renders great numbers of people effectively “voiceless,” unrepresented or ignored in a burgeoning global conversation. As the intensity of communication increases, we need to also ensure that the many voices of our world can be equally heard.

To communicate means to “share” or “impart.” The human capacity to communicate is one of our distinguishing features. On a practical level, it is what has enabled us to survive and become the dominant species on the planet. On a spiritual level, as the related term “to commune” suggests, it also implies opening ourselves to others, allowing the perspectives, values and concerns of others to enter deeply into our consciousness. This aspect of communication cannot be replicated by technology.

Communication is a human, as opposed to a technological affair; it involves an exchange, which requires greater effort than

the one-way broadcasting of information. This kind of human-to-human exchange is what the contemporary philosopher Jürgen Habermas terms “communicative rationality,” seeing it as a key to building and expanding democracy.

We first learn to communicate with the people in our immediate environment. As the philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) pointed out, those who have not had the kinds of experience that deepen understanding of neighborhood and neighbors will be unable to maintain regard for people from distant lands. Engaging with others, addressing them with kindness and concern “through words”— dia-logos—is the opposite of violence and is at the heart of building peace.

This issue of the SGI Quarterly brings together scholars, journalists and innovators in the art of communication to share their ideas and experiences about communicating a better future for all. ❖

On Communication

SGI Quarterly 1April 2011

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MW: I suggest that you learn to pay attention to your speech, especially when you are unhappy with another person. When expressing yourself, refer to what the other person said or did without evaluating their actions. For example, rather than saying, “When you insult me. . .,” say, “When you call me inconsiderate. . .” In the latter expression, you are simply quoting the other person without interpreting the words as “insulting.” Also, practice identifying and expressing your needs and acknowledging other people’s needs. For example, if you are unhappy with how many things you have to do, identify and express your need for help: “I’m overwhelmed. I need help. Would you be willing to come in at 6 pm to help me set up the room?” If your supervisor has a sharp tone of voice during a meeting, try to guess and express her need: “I’m guessing you need more cooperation on this project. Is this true?” I believe that this

SGI Quarterly: What blocks the flow of communication in the normal course of everyday life? Myra Walden: We believe that the way in which we have been accustomed to think blocks the flow of mutual giving from the heart. Most of us have learned patterns of communication that block compassion. Some examples of these might be blaming, “It’s your fault that we’re late”; diagnosing, “She’s just lazy”; denial of responsibility, “I lied to the client because my boss told me to”; words that deny choice and imply wrongness, “You should visit your elderly mother more often”; comparisons, “Your sister always gets better grades than you”; demands, “Go to bed, now”; and the concept of deserving, “Terrorists deserve to die.”

SGIQ: What practical steps can one take to improve communication?

Many of us have been brought up in environments where competition, judgment, demands and criticism are the communicative norm; at best these habitual ways of thinking and speaking hinder communication and create misunderstanding and frustration in others and ourselves. Still worse, they cause anger and pain and may even lead to violence. Even with the best intentions, we can generate needless conflict. The system of Nonviolent Communication or NVC, developed by Marshall Rosenberg and others at the Center for Nonviolent Communication in the US, begins by assuming we are all compassionate by nature and that violent strategies, whether verbal or physical, are learned behaviors, supported by the prevailing culture. NVC helps people learn how to communicate effectively with each other so that their lives and relationships are transformed. Here, psychotherapist and NVC trainer Myra Walden talks about her experience of teaching NVC and how it has transformed her own life and those of the people she works with.

Nonviolent Communication: Mutual Giving from the HeartAn interview with Myra Walden

SGI Quarterly2 April 2011

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with their compassionate self through music, nature or inspirational readings, for example.

SGIQ: What is the difference between making a demand and making a request? MW: When we make a request, we are open to hearing “no.” If the other person does not want to do as we request, we are able to respond with empathy. We may choose to ask another person to help meet our need. But if we want to continue the dialogue with the first person, we will seek to connect with him or her until we can find a strategy that accommodates his or her needs as well as ours. We can differentiate a request from a demand by paying attention to our reaction when we hear “no.” If we hear “no” and still maintain connection with the other, then it was likely a true request.

SGIQ: When is it in fact appropriate to listen to someone, to empathize with their situation, as opposed to attempting to “solve” their problem for them? When we listen, what should we look out for? MW: When someone shares a painful experience, my rule of thumb is to empathize always. I assume that the person is seeking understanding. I stay in empathic presence until the person is visibly relieved. The words come to a halt, and there is relaxation of the facial expression and posture. At this point, if I sense that the person wants something else, I ask. When listening empathically, listen with a silent mind and an open heart. Try to connect with the person’s feelings and needs. For example, if someone says to you, “My boyfriend is being deployed to Afghanistan,” connect with the person’s heart. If you want to make sure you are connecting, you may ask, “Do you fear for his safety?”

SGIQ: The courageous use of empathy can help defuse a potentially violent situation. Do you have any examples of this in your own life? MW: A few months ago, I was in my office at the community mental health center where I work. I heard someone scream at the top of his lungs, “Leave me alone!” He proceeded to swear and curse loudly. I waited for a couple of minutes thinking that this would pass, but it didn’t, so I went to the office where the screaming was coming from and asked the woman watching the door if I could go inside, because I thought I might be able to help in this situation due to my training in NVC. Although she was initially reluctant because a crisis worker, a doctor and the father of the young man were already in the office, she eventually agreed to my request. When inside the room, I sat on the floor and asked, “Are you angry

practice alone can improve communication greatly because it promotes mutual understanding and heart-to-heart connection. We can all relate to the need for understanding, support or cooperation, for instance, because we all have these needs. Needs create the common ground where people in conflict can meet.

SGIQ: How do we stop ourselves, when we receive negative messages, either taking them personally—hearing blame and criticism—or blaming others? MW: Get in the habit of bypassing what people think of you. Go directly to the feelings and needs underlying their criticism or blame. It’s a great way to protect ourselves from messages that can diminish self-respect if taken personally. If you find yourself getting upset, take time out to connect with your own feelings and needs. In addition, cultivate a practice that helps you connect with the compassion within you every day. I need to be connected to compassion in order to meet challenges without violence. My practice is to meditate in the morning and evening. Some connect

Some pointers for Nonviolent Communication• What others do may be the stimulus of our feelings

but not the cause.

• Expressing our vulnerability can help resolve conflicts.

• If we express our needs, we have a better chance of getting them met.

• If we don’t value our needs, others may not either.

• Classifying and judging people promotes violence.

• Judgments of others are alienated expressions of our own unmet needs.

• Behind intimidating messages are simply people appealing to us to meet their needs.

• When we combine observation with evaluation, people are apt to hear criticism.

• The cause of anger lies in our thinking—in thoughts of blame or judgment.

• When the other person hears a demand from us, they see two options: submit or rebel.

• Empathizing with someone’s “no” protects us from taking it personally.

• Empathize with silence by listening for the feelings and needs behind it.

From Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg. See www.cnvc.org


FEATURE

because you want to be treated with respect?” To my surprise, the young man listened to me and was suddenly quiet. At that point, I asked if everyone would leave the room so I could talk with the young man one-on-one. Although the others in the room expressed concern for my safety, they agreed with my request at that point. After ample silent time and continued attempts to connect, he spoke to me. Later on, the doctor and the father came back in, and the session ended peacefully. This is an example of a case where I was able to use NVC to intervene in a potentially violent situation and help resolve it peacefully.

SGIQ: How does empathy help heal? MW: When someone receives our suffering quietly, openheartedly and without judgment, we are able to open ourselves to our pain. We experience it fully, release it, and in so doing, we heal. Clarity emerges, and we gain access to inner wisdom.

SGIQ: In nonviolent philosophy, anger is not an emotion to be suppressed; it is in fact to be acknowledged but expressed in a responsible way. How can we use our anger constructively for dialogue? MW: We use anger constructively when we take time to release the thoughts that are causing our anger and to identify the needs that are not met in a given situation—rather than reacting out of anger.

Underlying anger, there is always judging and blaming. In the privacy of our minds, we give airtime to judging and blaming, such as, “I can’t stand this idiot! How dare he talk to me like that! Ah, the arrogance. . .,” or, “It’s her fault that we are in this predicament. When will she learn?!” When we become aware that this is how we are thinking, then we can endeavor to identify and connect with unmet needs in the situation. Perhaps we need more respect, consideration and trust

from the other person. From a place of connection with our needs, we

can begin the dance of Nonviolent Communication, expressing ourselves vulnerably and receiving the other person empathically. We trust that this dance leads to heart connection, where solutions can arise that meet everyone’s needs.

SGIQ: How has this work on nonviolence enriched your own life? MW: NVC has enriched my life in important ways. Employing NVC processes to address life’s challenges increases my sense of peace and freedom. Identifying and connecting with the needs underlying the actions of others has brought greater harmony to my personal and professional relationships. For these reasons, sharing Nonviolent Communication fills my life with passion and meaning.

SGIQ: Marshall Rosenberg writes, “The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego, your need to possess and control, and transform you into a generous being. . .” Why is gratitude so important? MW: Gratitude helps us become more aware and enjoy the wonderful things in our lives—being alive, having fresh water to drink and friends who support us, the beauty of nature, to name a few. With a grateful heart, we naturally want to contribute to the well-being of others and of the planet. Gratitude is powerful fuel that can promote effective social change. ❖

• First stage: We see ourselves as responsible for others’ feelings.

• Second stage: We feel angry; we no longer want to be responsible for others’ feelings.

• Third stage: Emotional liberation—we take responsibility for our intentions and actions.

“Most of us have learned patterns of communication that block compassion.”

From emotional slavery to emotional liberation

Myra Walden is cofounder of

the Institute for Empowering

Communication: www.empoweringcommunicationinc.net For more information on Nonviolent

Communication, see www.cnvc.org

Nonviolent communication workshop


FEATURE

both the creation of self-identity and regard for others. In this way, communications media advance mutual knowledge and understanding.

Digital MediaWhilst digital media replicate many of the cultural

and educational experiences of other media, their interactivity and personalization shift users from being passive watchers to active participants and producers.

Some of the key attributes of digital media—and how they differ from traditional media—are that they are collaborative and coproduced, local and global, changeable and persistent, searchable and personalized.

Digital media—through social media, blogs, etc.—encourage and enable interactions between people to talk, discuss and debate, and collaborate creatively. At the same time they can foster a sense of locality through location-based services such as FourSquare ( foursquare.com), and form the communications backbone of in-country campaigns for democracy, such as in Iran’s Green Revolution and more recently in Tunisia and the Arab world. Another aspect of their power is their ability to connect people at a distance. This can not only increase intercultural dialogue but also create a

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded in November 1945, in the wake of the world’s most violent conflict, with

the purpose of contributing to peace and security by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science and culture. Its constitution recognizes that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed,” and that “ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause . . . of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war.”

Peace, in other words, needs to be actively created. One fundamental way that this can be done is through building awareness, knowledge and understanding of others and their ways of life—removing ignorance about those who are different from us.

Trust develops from feelings of empathy with others, the ability to stand in their shoes and see the world from their perspective. Cultural expressions are perhaps the most natural and effective means by which we are able to develop empathy, to engage our emotions in the understanding of others.

Cultural expressions always communicate aspects of who the performer, author or characters within a narrative are and project a sense of identity or voice. Dance, song, poetry, painting, sculpture, sonic art or games—all of these express and engage the emotions, communicating to us beyond the analytical mind. The arts and culture have the potential to shift attitudes and behaviors rapidly and fundamentally.

Culture, in the sense of values, vision, beliefs and habits, is embedded in all communications, whether we are aware of it or not. Put another way, no communications are “value-free” or “culturally neutral.” We all learn from and are influenced by the information that communications convey and the behaviors they portray. So the media are a major source of education—beyond the realm of formal study, whether we like it or not.

The media also shape and influence our sense of self. We create our sense of self—positioning ourselves within the cultures in our environment—through a process of bricolage, collecting like magpies the bits of the world with which we want to associate ourselves.

Communications media therefore contribute to

How Digital Media Can Help Make PeaceBy Patrick Towell

Patrick Towell is the chair of the

Information Society Working Group

for the UK National Commission for

UNESCO (www.unesco.org.uk). He is

also chief executive of Golant Media

Ventures (www.golantmediaventures.com), which has as one of its core

purposes to “help people understand

more about themselves, other people

and the world.”


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When Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, two youth activists in Azerbaijan, were detained on politically

motivated charges in July 2009, supporters naturally used social networking sites such as Facebook to campaign for their release. Spreading networks wide in order to disseminate information and updates, there were obviously risks involved, especially as activists could be monitored if privacy was compromised.

For them, however, that didn’t matter. The important thing was that Facebook was crucial in the campaign to release the two men. And, as international awareness of their plight increased before their unexpected conditional release in November last year, they were probably right. Despite the inherent risks, there is no doubt that connecting people is something that Facebook excels at.

Indeed, significant progress had already been registered in another area, that of online communication and dialogue between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, months before the activists’ arrest. Moreover, it was again Facebook, rather than blogs or other traditional means, which was pivotal in this respect. As a result, the online environment which exists today was unimaginable two and a half years ago.

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s. Over 25,000 were killed and a million forced to flee their homes until a 1994 cease-fire agreement put the conflict on hold. Even so, frontline skirmishes claim the lives of dozens of conscripts each year. Traditional forms of contact have also been cut off, and it is impossible for citizens from either country to visit the other.

True, meetings between civil society

“multiplier effect” to gather the moral force of like-minded people behind a particular issue, as has been so effectively demonstrated by the online petitions organized by AVAAZ.

Digital content and services are plastic—they are endlessly editable and evolvable. This pliability allows them to respond to circumstances, be adapted for particular communities, and, in the case of digital learning, entertainment and artistic content, they can be adapted to suit different cultural and linguistic contexts. It is also possible to store vast quantities of content and to maintain persistent references to them.

With mobile phones, the Internet and social media embedded in the lives of so many, the information and experiences that digital media deliver are having an ever more significant influence.

It is a common mistake of those who were not raised on digital media to see digital cultural expressions as lower than traditional or “higher” culture. But young people—and increasingly silver surfers—don’t have a hierarchy of high and low culture, and are comfortable expressing themselves and taking in information about others across a range of media.

This expanding interaction among young people has the potential to deeply shape the values, visions, beliefs and habits of the next generation. Digital culture is laying the foundation of a new kind of society, one marked by increased openness, communication and participation. These qualities, together with the mutual understanding fostered through cross-cultural exposure, are the basis of a culture of peace. And for those who feel passionate about contributing to peace, the expanding possibilities of our digital connectedness offer an endless field of potential, limited only by our imaginations. ❖

Social Media in Armenia-Azerbaijan PeacebuildingBy Onnik Krikorian

What you can do: • Make something creative through

your work or personally; a peace-related “take out” supported by digital media

• Sign up to a peace-themed group on Facebook or LinkedIn

• Join a cross-cultural “buddy” program through Facebook or another platform

An ethnic Azeri girl in a mosque


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activists take place in third countries, but both societies generally frown upon such events, and potential participants are sometimes reluctant to take part. A recent survey by the Caucasus Resource Research Centers (CRRC), for example, found that 70 percent of Armenians opposed friendship with Azerbaijanis, while 97 percent of Azerbaijanis felt the same way about Armenians.

Therefore, such meetings are often shrouded in secrecy, even if this limits their effectiveness in wider society. Meanwhile, even when contacts are made outside of the conflict zone, people lose touch when they return home. But, in a brave new world of Facebook and Twitter, such a situation can now be addressed, or at least to a certain extent.

However, even if civil society organizations should have been the first to introduce the use of such tools into their own peacebuilding activities, it was instead left up to individuals. Through my own personal project and work as Caucasus regional editor for Global Voices, a citizen media site established at

the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, adding contacts in Azerbaijan allowed them to look into the lives of some Armenians and vice versa.

And while propaganda on both sides sought to convince respective populations that the other thinks only of revenge, the reality was quite different. For example, it probably comes as no surprise that many Armenians found online are not too dissimilar from their counterparts in Azerbaijan, with most rarely posting about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, preferring to instead share links and commentary about music and films.

True, this isn’t always the case, with nationalists from both sides also online. However, as Facebook is primarily “social,” spreading hateful propaganda can result in users having their accounts suspended. Nevertheless, if one of the key attributes of Facebook is that it is a social networking site, some critics argue that rather than extend connections, it simply replicates those to be found in the real world.

Such concerns are valid, of course, but they overlook the fact that Facebook is a tool with strengths and weaknesses determined by how it is used. It should also be evaluated in the context of fairly ethnically homogenous countries such as Armenia and Azerbaijan with no other means to communicate. Even “liking” a personal photograph or openly wishing someone a happy birthday can be revolutionary in this context.

Simply put, after a period of virtual trust building and overcoming stereotypes, a space for dialogue can finally be created. Even on a small scale, such

interactions directly challenge the very basis on which isolation from each other is justified. Skype can also be considered invaluable here too, and sooner or later, networking not only spreads, but also becomes “acceptable.”

Even so, such connections can eventually begin to taper off, and herein lies the problem. Although Facebook has broken down barriers between some Armenians and Azerbaijanis, those involved tend to be incredibly similar. They are perhaps already libertarian and cosmopolitan, and simply needed the tools to circumvent restrictions in place. Of course, this is still a huge success, but such people remain a minority.

So, while some users on both sides now have access to information and opinions they never had before, we need to constantly monitor, assess and evolve the use of new tools in order to spread the net wider. At the time of writing, for example, there are 111,480 Facebook users in Armenia and 304,380 in Azerbaijan, while mutual connections number only a few hundred at best.

This isn’t to negate the importance of Facebook, of course, as it has proven itself an indispensable tool which has achieved more open communication between Armenians and Azerbaijanis than any other medium to date. However, there is also the need to strategize its use, especially as others will eventually attempt to obstruct progress in this area. Privacy issues will therefore become key. ❖

“Even ‘liking’ a personal photograph or openly wishing someone a happy birthday can be revolutionary in this context.”

Below: Away from the propaganda, ethnic Armenians and Azeris such as these in Tsopi, Georgia, can coexist. In Armenia and Azerbaijan, however, neither side has the opportunity to meet face-to-face. Could social media therefore provide a solution?

Onnik Krikorian is a freelance

journalist and photographer of

Armenian and English descent now

based in Yerevan, Armenia. He has

covered the conflict between Armenia

and Azerbaijan over the disputed

territory of Nagorno-Karabakh

since 1994 and is also the Caucasus

regional editor for Global Voices

(globalvoicesonline.org), a major

international site that monitors,

amplifies and curates citizen media.


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My daughter, Amanda, was born a normal healthy girl, only she started babbling in her first hour—something

that babies usually do at a later stage. Her first word was “mama,” her second was “awa” (water), then she skipped “papa” and went to “tortuga,” meaning “turtle.” By the time she was a year old, she already had four languages—the four basic languages we speak on the island of Aruba: Papiamento, English, Spanish and Dutch. She could by then say “papa” and “mama,” but scarcely called us to ask us for anything and wasn’t interested in communicating with us what she needed or felt. But she was the perfect child, she didn’t bother us, and she liked living on a strict schedule.

By the time Amanda was two, we realized there was something missing. She had started talking to us more, but never about things like “What did you do today?” No day-to-day communication, and very little hugging or touching. She would pull away from us. She had a lot of memories but could not place them in time. She had memories of when she was one year old that she would speak about

when she was three. We had to teach her what time is, what sadness is—the abstract things you usually do not need to explain.

When Amanda was three, she would search YouTube for Chinese instruction videos, Portuguese songs. She went all-out on the languages. She went on to read, but we didn’t know she could read, we just saw that sometimes she would say things like “I love you” if she saw it written somewhere. We thought, “That’s not possible, we haven’t taught her to read.” Now she reads a lot, especially encyclopedias, and can talk about anything and everything.

Our cat Chelsea became very important to her, because Chelsea was the one who had feelings. Chelsea was angry, Chelsea was sad. She tried to communicate with us through the cat. We realized we needed to deviate from normal one-on-one communication with her, and we started using puppets to get her to speak about her day, about her feelings, what she wanted. She would interact with the puppets instead of us. Then I used mirrors to let her see my facial expressions, because she

didn’t want to look directly into my face. We’d stand behind her and teach her what my facial expressions meant when I was angry, when I was sad, happy, scared.

We saw also that she had issues with the imagination. She would scream if she saw

somebody dressed as Elmo or some other TV character, and she would say, “On TV they’re much smaller.” We saw many things that related to the autism spectrum.

Amanda was officially diagnosed when she was four because she started kindergarten, and that’s where the difference between her and the other kids became more visible. She still had the behavioral issues of a two-year-old. She would put everything in her mouth, she couldn’t dress herself. She was diagnosed as an autistic savant with multiple language skills.

At kindergarten, because Amanda could read, the teachers would get her to read to the

Learning to Be DifferentFrom an interview with Natasha Richardson

“Everybody is born with a purpose. . . We don’t just want her to mimic other ‘normal’ children.”

When Natasha Richardson from Aruba in the

Caribbean detected the first signs of autism in

her daughter, Amanda, now aged six, she wanted

to lend a hand in the development of quality

service for all families dealing with autism in the

island. She now works as coordinator of the Aruba

Autism Foundation (see www.autismaruba.org),

and Amanda attends normal school and appears

on local television programs as an advocate for

autism, which is estimated to affect 1 in every 110

globally.


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class in the different languages and present her interests in music and foreign countries. That was also to avoid bullying, because she would be bullied. She was usually called a baby, because she would spin around or jump up and down. Other kids would say, “You’re like a baby because you still pee in your pants and you talk funny.” We used her talents to show them, “Yes, I might have some baby stuff, but I also have stuff you don’t have, and you can use that to your advantage if you are my friend.”

Amanda is now six, and we are focusing on helping her develop her social and communication skills. We have to explain to her what is going on in different social situations, how you are supposed to react. She’s at a level now where she can evaluate her day, what she did, what she felt in the situations she was in.

She knows she has autism, she speaks about it. When we go out with her, and if, for example, the waiter turns on the music too loud, she goes to them and says, “Hi, my name is Amanda. I have autism. My ears hurt if you turn up the music. So could you please keep it softer?” Or if they don’t give her the menu,

she says, “Hi, my name’s Amanda, I have autism and I can read, so can I please have a menu?” But also she can say things like “I get hyper,” or shows behaviors that she has less control over. She says things like “I got like this” (hand flapping). She has a book now she

can use in class and tell the kids that she has autism. As soon as she gives us the green light, we will support her in this all the way! Mostly she thinks it’s a normal thing. Amanda knows her strengths and weaknesses.

The struggle with all this is, “Is she really happy connecting to people?” I really have to work with her on that. It is important, because one day I won’t be here anymore and she will have to communicate well with people. And that is my main question as a parent: when do I put my foot down and say really you have to meet more people, really you have to play with other kids, when she is not happy with

that? Where do we draw the line? Because we want her to be happy, that’s the main thing. And if she’s happy learning information all the time, that’s good for her, but we want her to still be social. But is it really what she wants; is it really what she needs? It’s a fine line we balance upon as her parents.

You have to have a lot of patience. I learn that anew every single day. For me, it’s very important not to view her as having a defect. Everybody is born with a purpose, and we have to respect that purpose and help special children develop that purpose. We don’t just want her to mimic other “normal” children.

My father used to be the director of a school for mentally challenged children. They have issues but they could really brighten up your day. That’s a purpose, to show us not to take things for granted.

People look for big things in life, the thing that is going to make them famous or whatever. But no, it’s very simple—you have to be happy. You don’t have to do much, just be and be accepted the way you are, and accept who you are. You were made with a purpose, and once you find that purpose, know that purpose, you will have peace in your life. ❖

According to the American Society of Autism, autism is “a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and is the result of a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain, impacting development in areas of social interaction and communication skills.”

Because autistic behavior is not always apparent to those unfamiliar with autism, parents should be aware of what are possible early signs of autism, such as different behavior.

For more information see:

www.autism.com www.autism-society.org www.autism.org.uk www.autismspeaks.org

“By the time she was a year old, she already had four languages.”

Amanda and Natasha in the Netherlands, where Amanda experienced snow for the first time


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Buddhism is perhaps unique in the central role it accords human-to-human communication. The sutras, which record the teachings

of Shakyamuni, are almost all in the form of questions and answers, the living dialogue through which the man who became known as the Buddha sought to bring hope, comfort and a renewed will to live to the people he encountered. Because he interacted with people from throughout the Indian society of his time, he responded to the full spectrum of human sufferings, anxieties and questions: What does it mean to live? To die? Why are we here in this life? How can we make our time here meaningful and joyous? The fact that his teachings were memorized, recited and later recorded is testament to the deep empathetic connection he formed with those with whom he interacted, and the transformative impact he had on their lives.

Likewise, when Nichiren, the 13th-century founder of the Buddhism practiced by SGI members, writes, “The voice does the Buddha’s work,” he is referring to our ability, through words and language, to touch and awaken the deepest potential for good in other people. His teachings come to us in the form of treatises—many of them written as dialogues that capture the back and forth of debate, doubt and understanding—as well as numerous letters of encouragement and guidance written to his followers. Like Shakyamuni, Nichiren confronted the full range of experience, and his responses, while undergirded by his unshakable confidence in the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, are anything but dogmatic. In a letter to a mother who has just lost her son, for example, Nichiren simply expresses astonishment at her ability to endure, while also sharing his own shock and grief at this loss.

Within the Soka Gakkai, dialogue—interaction with others—has been the basis of the organization since its inception. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944), first president, founded the Soka Gakkai’s grassroots movement for peace on the basis of the small-group discussion meeting. In the face of increasing hostility from the militarist-dominated power structures of 1930s Japan, Makiguchi was tireless in his efforts to speak to individuals and promote discussion. He sometimes traveled to remote corners of Japan to meet and discuss his ideas with just one person.

Similarly, second president Josei Toda (1900–58), had an uncanny ability to take complex Buddhist concepts and make these accessible to ordinary people enmeshed in the realities of everyday life. He compared the process of human interaction and communication, including the inevitable

Buddhism and CommunicationFrom the Editor


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frictions, to the way in which the rough and dirty skins of Japanese mountain potatoes are naturally peeled away when the potatoes are placed in water together and rolled against each other.

A Common HumanityAs heir to this legacy, SGI President

Daisaku Ikeda has carried out a wide-ranging program of dialogues, meeting with thousands of leading figures from all different walks of life, religious, intellectual, cultural and political backgrounds. These efforts have been based on faith in the shared bedrock of humanity. When asked, for example, why he was traveling to the Soviet Union in the early 1970s—a time of heightened Cold War tensions—he responded simply: because there are people there. In the Soviet Union, as in China and the United States, he met with political leaders including Aleksei Kosygin, Zhou Enlai and Henry Kissinger, but he did so in a private capacity, as a fellow human being.

Together with members of the SGI, he has used dialogue to draw on people’s energy and creativity, to forge an effective grassroots movement for peace. As Ikeda wrote in 2009, “Our efforts are based on the belief that it is

dialogue, first and foremost, that opens one heart to another. However slow this process may appear, we are convinced that it is the certain path to world peace.”

Genuine dialogue requires deep mutual respect that does not fear difference but seeks to clarify it and helps participants find common ground at a new and deeper level. Plain-spoken words that issue from a true concern for the happiness of another can open new avenues of understanding. To quote Ikeda again: “Dialogue 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.” Or, in the words of the German philosopher and educator Otto F. Bollnow (1903–91): “Truth born from dialogue is not a cruel, frightening, forceful truth, but is a truth which gives comfort and supports life.”

As Ikeda says, through dialogue, we can arrive at a deeper mutual understanding: “Dialogue starts by clearly recognizing the positions and interests of the respective parties and then clearly identifying the obstacles to progress, patiently working to

remove and resolve each of these.”Ikeda frequently cites the examples

and words of the religious thinkers and philosophers who, through history, have placed an emphasis on dialogue as a means of awakening self-awareness and deepening understanding. The dialogues of Socrates as recorded by his disciple Plato are for Ikeda an enduring source of inspiration, a model of rigorous examination of ideas and their underlying assumptions, a path for exorcising intellectual or spiritual laziness.

He has also cited the transformative effects of dialogue highlighted by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965), who, in his book I and Thou, described the risks and possibilities that open up to us when we fully acknowledge the existence of others: “I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter.” Buber described such genuine encounters as taking

place “on the narrow ridge” of earnestness and honesty.

Ikeda recently engaged in a dialogue with Elise Boulding (1920–2010), the Quaker sociologist and professor of peace studies. When asked about how to rid the world of

violence and terrorism, she said that ultimately it comes down to “Listening and bringing people together in dialogue and getting to know what kind of world they live in.” Through dialogue, or communicative action, we

are able to build peace. Such dialogues are often difficult to begin and even harder to sustain. It takes time to establish trust, a rapport, points of mutual agreement, with some or a few others, and it is even more difficult to continue to open up new common ground with them. But it is by commitment to dialogue on all levels that we can begin to build a new civilization.

Openhearted communication and dialogue stand in direct opposition to violence and warfare, as well as the impulse to silence others through intimidation or threat. Resort to violence is, in the end, born from the frustration at our own inability to convince others of the importance and validity of our concerns, needs and aspirations.

Communication, woven of words and silence, attentiveness to what is said and left unsaid, is an act of courageous creation. It is the broad and certain path to a better world. ❖

“Genuine dialogue requires deep mutual respect that does not fear difference but seeks to clarify it and helps participants find common ground at a new and deeper level.”

An SGI discussion meeting


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on communication and dialogue, which, in Ikeda’s terms, meant openhearted and open-minded dialogue.

At the same time, I needed to connect the lecture with what was going on with peace movements in the world at the time. The Parliament of the World’s Religions had met in 1993, and there was interest in developing a global ethic. So, our initial focus was on global

ethics across cultures and religions, the need to evolve a consensus through dialogue among cultures and religions.

In the summer of 1993, a Harvard academic, Samuel Huntington, had written an article that he eventually turned into a book, positing a clash of civilizations. I believe that President Ikeda was aware of that theory. His own lifework had been premised on evolving a philosophy of the harmony of civilizations through dialogue, so it seemed very significant that he should come and give a lecture at Harvard about what kind of contribution

SGI Quarterly: What was your experience of setting up the Boston Research Center’s programs? Virginia Benson: The first book I read based on Nichiren Buddhism was Choose Life—SGI President Ikeda’s dialogue with British historian Arnold Toynbee. This was around 1983, and I was working in public policy at the time. But their dialogue went way beyond my experience of public policy issues, expanding from a national to a global view. I began to understand things differently from then on. Years later, when I first met President Ikeda in August 1992, I told him I had been encouraged by his dialogues with scholars and leaders around the world and asked if there was any way I could help. Shockingly, he said he didn’t need my help! He said words to the effect of “Don’t just try to help me. You yourself have a unique mission in the world, and I want you, like all the members of the SGI, to become a brilliant shining sun in your own field.”

I had held a lot of important positions in the fairly male-dominated field of public policy and politics—but there was a certain holding back for me as a woman. So it was very significant for a man whose work I admired to turn around to me and say, “I want you to become a brilliant shining sun in your

own field.” This really took the limits off me, and I was able to realize breakthroughs at the think tank where I was working. When I was invited to join the interview process for the directorship of a new peace institute to be founded by President Ikeda, I was asked to create a vision of what I thought would make a good institute. That was really surprising to me, that I was expected to have a vision.

SGIQ: When did you start working as director? VB: I was hired in September 1993, soon after President Ikeda’s lecture at Harvard University, “Mahayana Buddhism and Twenty-First-Century Civilization,” delivered on September 24, 1993. Looking back, I can see the vision for the center was actually at the heart of the Harvard lecture, which focuses on Shakyamuni Buddha’s trust in language and lifelong commitment to dialogue as a means of bringing about peace. I turned to the lecture as the background for the mission statement for the center

Evolving Consensus Through DialogueAn interview with Virginia Benson

“I realized that what mattered most was heart and resonance, the quality of my interaction with each person.”

In 1993, the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century

was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by SGI

President Daisaku Ikeda, to collaborate with diverse

scholars, activists and social innovators. The center,

which was renamed the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning,

and Dialogue in 2009, now has its own publishing arm,

Dialogue Path Press; books developed by the center have been used in 750

college and university courses to date. Virginia Benson served as executive

director for the center’s first 16 years and is now senior fellow. Here, she

discusses how the center evolved.


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Buddhism can make to a global civilization of peace. He then created the Boston Research Center to continue in that spirit.

SGIQ: How have you developed dialogue at the center?VB: I had previously worked in a think tank, where we always focused on making specific recommendations, so initially I found the broadness of the vision a challenge. I thought, “Let’s work here at the center to bring together people from different fields and disciplines, who are scholar activists, around a set of core values.” We took the values that have been clarified through UN processes—human rights, environment, peace and nonviolence, and economic justice—and spent two years on each. The first eight years gave us a foundation of goodwill and a statement of who we were.

SGIQ: The publications program at the center has been very important. VB: At first, we did a lot of events to bring people in, establish our presence and make friends. We held many dialogues and published the transcripts of these. But then a friend of the center, the sociologist of religion Bryan Wilson, suggested we solicit essays and develop a book that hangs together. These too are a kind of dialogue—between the editor and us, the editor and various scholars. Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions was our first book to be picked up by an outside publisher. Other books started getting used as texts in university courses. In a similar way, the Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue, which started in 2004, came about as the result of advice from a friend, the distinguished literary scholar Ronald A. Bosco, who proposed that we do a forum that would articulate the values of President Ikeda and be more clearly identified with his writings.

SGIQ: How has your own practice of dialogue and communication evolved?VB: I once mentioned to President Ikeda that I sometimes felt intimidated around scholars. He responded by helping me see the enormous value of engaging people of great learning in the cause of peace. Feeling more proud of my mission and less concerned about academic credentials, I realized that what mattered most was heart and resonance, the quality of my interaction with each person.

We take networking at the center very seriously, as an end in itself, and we are working to create a great network of globally minded people who want to be in a mutual learning environment and to evolve a set of more universal, intercultural understandings.

SGIQ: How did you develop your own skills in facilitating dialogue? VB: It’s a habit I got from my mother. She was a scholar herself, a geologist, and at the same time a housewife, and we always had lots of people coming to our family home and sharing the dinner table. Because my father was reserved, my mother became the person who had this desire for everyone to feel included and part of

things and for no one to feel left out. I work from the assumption that people want to be drawn out, and I often have an intuition that a particular person may have something to say about a certain subject. I do a lot of guessing to try to make things as equal as possible, so everyone can feel they have contributed something to the wisdom in the room. I combined my mother’s training with what I learned through SGI discussion meetings. I was very grateful to find a group that had just the same ethic my mother had; that everyone has something to say. I felt that President Ikeda would want the ethic of conversation that exists in the SGI and in his dialogues to be there in the center. ❖

Q & A session, Ikeda Forum 2010

“I was very grateful to find a group that had just the same ethic my mother had; that everyone has something to say.”


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These seven “golden questions” should be asked by any enlightened media consumer about coverage of conflict before they begin to read or watch the news, especially

now, as the media industry is changing rapidly and new considerations are coming to the fore about the way journalists cover war and peace.

The Media Like War“There will be no war, request to be recalled,”

cabled Frederic Remington, the New York Journal envoy to Cuba, to his boss, just before the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898. The boss, press tycoon William Randolph Hearst, replied: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” Regardless of the doubts over its accuracy, this episode illustrates media professionals as war lovers and warmongers. There is a correlation between war coverage and economic, professional and discursive norms of media. Conflict coverage has been highly rated in the media because of its nature as a source of income, professional prestige and discourse patterns that allow journalists to represent realities in vivid colors with clear-cut polarities, primordial sentiments and the “spice” of unexpected developments. Conflict

coverage gives reporters and news editors the opportunity to focus on the emotional rather than the rational, to promote glory and heroism. It can satisfy

classic “news value” requirements, through the immediacy of “live” coverage, the unusual: dramatic action, simplification of events, personal stories and the results of “victory” or “defeat.”

The preference of war coverage can also be explained by new media roles in international relations. Media organizations and journalists have become direct actors in international relations. They exchange information with policymakers and field-actors. They provide channels for international dialogue, such as the shuttle diplomacy used by government officials, and exchanges between belligerent leaders. They can blur the distinction between the role of reporter and diplomat, playing active parts in, for instance, summit meetings, “proximity talks” and the signing of peace agreements. The resulting media culture has been criticized for excessive sensationalism—for instance,

Seven “Golden Questions”1. “Flash” or analysis? What is being reported:

a “flashy” isolated single event, such as a

photo of someone immolating himself in a

street in Tunis, or an informative analysis of

the background and context, of what led to

the immolation, and of what can be expected

to come now?

2. Bias or balance? What story is being told?

The narrative of one side, expressed by official

sources, or a more balanced account of views

by all sides involved? Is there sufficient room

for views that dissent from official narratives?

To what extent can one believe that the

information provided is balanced or biased?

3. Facts or views? Do the media provide

satisfactory evidence to support claims

made by conflicting sides?

4. Victory or “victory”? Is the information

on the dead, the injured and the damage

inflicted on people, infrastructure, property

and services reported clearly and fairly

so as to allow for assessing the human

toll imposed on the “victorious” and the

defeated sides?

5. More information or more of the same? Is

there a satisfactory knowledge enhancement

provided to the enlightened media consumer?

What amount, type and quality of information

previously unknown or unnoticed is provided

by reports on the conflict?

6. Journalist or peace activist? Should

journalists take sides in order to promote

peace? What should the enlightened media

consumer expect journalists to do in order

to help peacemaking and peacekeeping?

Denounce aggression and aggressors?

Emphasize the toll paid by victims of war?

Refrain from reporting topics that may be

damaging peace?

7. Good media or bad media? Are the

available channels of information doing

a good professional job? What should be

demanded from the media and from their

clients in order to improve the coverage of

conflict, war and peace?

The Media in War and Peace:An Agenda for Thought, Reflection and ActionBy Dov Shinar

Dov Shinar is dean of the School

of Communication and head of FAIR

MEDIA: Center for the Study of

Conflict, War and Peace Coverage at

Netanya Academic College, Israel.

“There is a correlation between war coverage and economic, professional and discursive norms of media.”


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covering stories only when violence is about to occur—patriotism and simple descriptions rather than complex analyses of the causes and context of conflict. There is an emphasis on fighting parties, manifest violence and sports-like “us versus them” attitudes; and a preference for visible events and results, winners and losers, rather than the longer and more challenging coverage of post-conflict transformation.

The Peace Journalism Alternative: Promise and Performance

Norwegian scholar and conflict mediator Johan Galtung first presented the idea of peace journalism in the 1970s, with the movement gathering steam in the 1990s. Efforts to conceptualize the idea led to a definition of peace journalism as a code of conduct for the media which frames conflict in fairer and more accurate terms than those imposed by economic and political interests; exploring backgrounds and contexts of conflict formation so as to make them more transparent to the audience—offering creative ideas for conflict resolution and transformation, giving voice to all rival sides; and exposing lies, cover-ups, culprits and excesses committed by all parties. Although not necessarily conceived as an exclusive “good news” provider, peace journalism bore a promise to improve moral, ethical and professional media standards. However, at the moment, peace journalism has not yet been accepted as a significant

professional genre; its humanistic stance has not weakened media adherence to overdosed patriotism or changed the prevailing nature of war coverage. Although peace journalists may accuse the media of “patriotic bias,” the media could, perhaps justifiably, accuse peace journalism of “peace activist” bias. The claims on objectivity from both camps could perhaps be considered untenable.

Does Peace Journalism Stand a Chance?

The debate between peace journalism supporters and critics indicates a need to adapt the basic concepts of this genre to 21st-century realities. This need can be presented in a set of essential, though not necessarily sufficient, conditions. One condition calls for updating the disciplinary basis of peace journalism. The traditional basis, anchored in the largely ideological peace research discipline, seems to lack the strength to support the working logic and practice in the field. The addition of empirical studies on media practices and constraints, which have entered the peace journalism agenda in more recent years, can help meet this condition.

Another condition calls for dealing effectively with structural factors that affect news production, particularly in war coverage. Media structural pluralism is a condition for the refinement of journalism in general, and peace journalism in particular. Unfortunately, such reform can hardly be expected in the present reality of media ownership concentration and centralization.

However, findings on the proliferation and inventiveness of new digital media suggest that media pluralism might be enhanced by the competition induced by the nonbroadcast media: narrowcasting, community/citizen media and other web-based channels.

A third condition has to do with media ethics. In the existing governmental or commercial media structures, media ethics belong in the domain of individual journalists. But individuals are not entirely sovereign in deciding about what realities should be represented and how. In order to become effective, media ethical standards need institutional frameworks and sanctions, particularly in war and peace coverage, to clarify journalists’ autonomy vis-à-vis owners and interest groups.

A final condition is to clarify the expectations from peace journalists. The newer roles of journalists and media organizations—as active participants, catalysts and mediators in international relations—have never been translated into clear expectations from peace journalism. Thus, although it is probably true that most peace journalism practitioners do not aspire to replace politicians and generals in conducting wars and making peace, it is necessary to secure the autonomy of coverage, and to specify the boundaries of journalists’ involvement in war and peace processes.

These and other conditions can perhaps be met through effective combinations of policymaking efforts with better financial support of journalistic research and publication of findings. We could make a more concerted attempt to create and develop a satisfactory media peace discourse, to promote media autonomy from excessive loyalty to governments and establishments, whilst being wary of one-sided concepts and those who have unrealistic ideas about “objectivity” and “absolute truth” in journalism. We also need to improve the hiring and training procedures of journalists and news editors as well as the news value of peace journalism. We need to work with the media to change war-oriented media structures, rather than lecturing journalists or conducting missionary campaigns. ❖

“We need to work with the media to change war-oriented media structures.”


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Communication between people from different cultural backgrounds is known to be full of pitfalls; it is a challenge to

understand these. For instance: while the British colonizers, having conquered New Zealand, said “the land is ours,” indigenous Maori kept saying “the land is us.” In other words, Western people see the land as something they can “own,” an object to be explored, conquered and exploited. The Maori, on the contrary, see the human species as one element of a larger whole,

connotations and underpinnings of words, which are self-evident to those who belong to a given culture but not to others. Each word, beyond its translatable meaning, is generated by a vision of the human being, of society, of the visible and invisible world. However, it also happens that the words do resonate in other languages, but that the functioning of the concept differs in different cultural contexts. A case in point is the topical use of the notion of “responsibility.”

Why Responsibility?Humankind is confronted with new

challenges in the fields of technology, economy and social relations worldwide, causing equally unprecedented crises. These pose new ethical questions and choices to be made between values. The globalization process causes ever-increasing interdependence internationally. This is making the exercise of responsibility more complex and less easy to control. Politicians fail to come to grips with the idea of co-responsibility at the international level; as a consequence, many responsibilities are left unspecified and are therefore not allocated.

Responsibility: What’s in the Word?

The relational dimension of responsibility is universal. Although there are hardly any symmetrical equivalents to be found in the languages of the world for the English word responsibility, the idea of responsibility in the sense of taking care of what is valued in a broader environment resonates everywhere. The European word, which is derived from the Latin, respondere, shows the inherent relational nature of the notion of being responsive to others. The words used in other languages usually spring from different linguistic roots, but all refer to a relational ethics. For instance, the Hebrew word ahraï contains the word “other” (aher) and the word “brother” (ah). In Hindi, uttardaitva means the response that is due to others, implying a charge. Makarand Paranjape writes, “For most

which consists of all that lives, “the woven universe.” They identify themselves with the land as a gift from Mother Earth passed down by ancestors to hold and take care of for future generations. Translating the Western concept of “ownership” creates misunderstandings, for it relates to individual rights, while in the indigenous view ownership relates to the community and each member’s responsibility to the group as well as to nature.

This is one of a myriad of examples of “what words do not say”: the cultural

Intercultural Communication: Challenges and PitfallsBy Edith Sizoo

HRH King Juan Carlos of Spain (left) shares a traditional Maori greeting of a hongi with Maori elder Gerrard Albert during a visit to New Zealand in 2009

This article is based on two books, What Words Do Not Say and Responsibility and Cultures of the World, the result of intensive intercultural dialogue about the question of to what extent key notions, when translated into various languages, still convey the same meaning. This initiative was inspired by the concern that cultural interpretations of commonly used concepts are steeped in ways of thinking which cannot be taken for granted outside the boundaries of the cultural context concerned and thus create implicit misunderstandings that are mostly ignored.


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Indians, to be responsible simply means to do one’s Dharma, that is, one’s obligations toward oneself, one’s family, friends, profession, the state, ancestors, other forms of life, the gods.”

Responsibility is also seen everywhere in the world as a charge, a burden, that must be assumed in order to create the conditions for living together as a group of human beings. For instance the Lingala word for responsibility, mokumba, is a synonym for “weight” and “pregnancy.”

Assuming ResponsibilitiesWhile rights are claimed, responsibilities are

assumed. But not for the same reasons everywhere, nor for the same things. The distinction between duty and responsibility is less marked in non-Western cultural contexts. In the latter, duty is perceived as a constraint

defined and imposed by others, while responsibility is related to a personal commitment out of free will. The idea that one may assume a responsibility by one’s own choice entails that one can also be held to account for the consequences of one’s acts.

In the African context, this distinction is usually less clear-cut. It is not so much a matter of a human choice; rather, it is the “social order of things”—that is, the social, divine or cosmic order in which everyone must play her or his role and assume the tasks or duties that go with them. Even the ancestors are responsible for the protection of the living members of their extended family.

In the Chinese context, on the contrary, the individual prefers to shy away from personal responsibility unless that would imply losing face. Yu Shuo writes, “The concept of ‘responsibility’ (ze ren) reflects the typically paradoxical nature of Chinese thought. It refers partly to those who wield authority, who are automatically deemed responsible, whereas for other human beings, their only duty is to obey their superior. The refusal to assume individual responsibility can also be seen in people’s refusal to voluntarily sign a contract, a charter. Giving assistance to people trapped in a blazing building does not come from a feeling of moral compulsion but rather as a public demonstration of one’s goodness.”

For indigenous peoples in India, the Philippines and other places, the vision of the individual as an integral part of the cosmic whole means there is not much question of being responsible out of

free choice. One thinks rather in terms of “shared identity”: the self is the other. Sylvia Guerroro writes, “In the Philippines pakikipagkapwa is viewed as the overarching primary value. At the root of the concept of kapwa is the unified single identity of the ‘self,’ an identity shared with other human beings and even with non-human forms of life.” Thus in these contexts, the idea of responsibility would be expressed by terms like “taking care” or “being a guardian.”

Ways in Which Responsibilities Are Exercised

“Accounting for” the exercise of responsibilities seems to be more pronounced in the full European meaning of the word responsibility (originating in Roman law) than in resonating words in non-Western languages. The different cultural views of why and how to assume responsibilities—for whom and for what; whether and to whom to account for the consequences of one’s acts—are often underestimated if not altogether ignored in the global discourse. There is a growing consciousness that “responsibility” is a key notion to face the crises of today. Intercultural dialogue is indispensable for at least two reasons: avoiding intercultural misunderstanding and enriching the meaning of words. These two processes start with listening and observing, immersion in the world of sounds and signs and gestures, with searching for the common and the different, learning before judging, and finding out “what’s in a word.” For words tell different stories to different people. ❖

Edith Sizoo was born in the

Netherlands in 1939 and holds

a master’s degree from the Free

University of Amsterdam. She is

a multilingual sociolinguist and

international coordinator of the

International Charter of Human

Responsibilities initiative. She has

coordinated several intercultural

research projects and edited several

books. For more information about

Responsibility and Cultures of the World: Dialogue around a collective challenge, visit www.peterlang.com.

“Each word, beyond its translatable meaning, is generated by a vision of the human being, of society, of the visible and invisible world.”

Eighty-two-year-old He Zouyi of China, who coproduced a Naxi-English Dictionary with explorer Joseph Rock, translates Naxi pictographs


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My passion and work is performing and teaching music. I record music regularly and perform

across Australia. I also teach at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and run my own vocal workshops.

Though the music industry is very competitive and challenging, I feel grateful for the gift and opportunity to express my art and communicate with audiences and students whenever I can.

Overcoming my ego and insecurities as a performer, though, has been a constant challenge. Since childhood, my value and worth was caught up in my ability and identity as a musician. I often compared myself to others and struggled with feelings of fear. But through my Buddhist practice over the past five years, I am gradually awakening to a sense of self and worth that is based on my infinite and innate value as a human being and an

appreciation for life itself. In 2010, I was invited to take on the

responsibility of being an assistant for the performing arts group and Blue Sky Choir of SGI-Australia. I was grateful for the invitation after seeing how my friends’ lives had blossomed through their involvement in SGI activities. Fulfilling these responsibilities has been a process of transformation and a source of immense growth for me.

As I struggle with severe depression and anxiety and a deep sense of fear and isolation, I quickly realized what a challenge it would be to support others.

Through the effort I made to open up my life, I experienced major breakthroughs in my personal and professional life; at the same

time, my struggle with suicidal and self-harm tendencies intensified, causing me to become hospitalized several times.

It has been the regular support of others and my engagement with the choir that has encouraged me to keep going and not give up on my life and others. I have developed a life condition where I isolate myself less and reach out to others more. My genuine desire to express, connect and communicate is becoming stronger and more sincere.

Nichiren writes, “The voice does the Buddha’s work.” And SGI President Ikeda has written that it is because our voice resonates with life that it can touch the lives of others. I am often deeply touched by the sincerity and humanity of the choir members who are so bravely committing to their lives and developing their voices. My experience with them has deepened my conviction in the value

of a single individual and the power of one voice to communicate to many hearts.

As a professional artist I have had to unlearn a lot of negative habits that have separated my expression from my true self. The choir members have reminded me through their willingness to be vulnerable that the essence of art is to communicate, not demonstrate. By focusing not on craft and perfection but on heart and humanity, I am learning to be more effective in communicating as a person, performer and music coach. I have learned to appreciate and experience these values on stage, in the classroom, but most importantly, in everyday life.

I am returning to that innocence I had as a child and teen of making music to express

my feelings and experience without needing to impress people but with a deeper sense of responsibility and purpose. My hope and intention is to inspire and encourage all I encounter through my music.

President Ikeda writes: “Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The

flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.” My desire to communicate my true self and reach others from my heart is the simple mission I have now learned to appreciate and move forward with. ❖

Finding My True VoiceBy Edoardo Santoni, Australia

“By focusing not on craft and perfection but on heart and humanity, I am learning to be more effective in communicating as a person, performer and music coach.”

“My hope and intention is to inspire and encourage all I encounter through my music.”


PEOPLE SGI members’ experiences in faith

When I was around one year old, I lost my hearing. The doctors were never able to determine why. My parents

were shocked when they first learned about my condition. They were at a loss as to how they were going to raise me and worried about my future. It was because of this that they decided to begin practicing Buddhism, with the wish that I would grow up happily.

When I was younger, I felt very helpless whenever I had to communicate with people who have normal hearing ability. Not able to understand what I was mouthing, they often became upset and impatient as I started to express my thoughts through writing. I was really bothered by this.

I realized, though, that they were not aware of what deaf people have to face in our lives. The best I could do was to be true to myself and strive to convey my thoughts. After all, things are indeed different for us. We cannot hear. We have to spend more time than others learning.

At home, my mother encouraged me to voice my words when I talked to my family, so that I could communicate verbally. After a long period of trying to enunciate every single word, I am now able to let people understand what I am trying to say. If the other person finds it difficult to grasp what I’m trying to communicate, I resort to writing. I have also learned to lip-read so that I can understand what others are trying to tell me.

It is because my parents did not give up on me and taught me to the best of their ability that I am what I am today. It’s largely because of them that I also decided to start practicing Buddhism. Through their faith, they have taught me not to let barriers stand in my way.

Since I was little, I’ve always loved sports and frequently participated in competitions. In 2009, I was selected to participate in the Summer Deaflympics as part of the men’s 400-meter relay team. Training was tough, but these are memories I’ll never forget. By participating in this great sporting event, I made friends with people from all over the

world and met many great athletes. I learned International Sign Language (ISL) and using this, I was able to communicate with athletes from many different countries and forge great bonds.

In the run-up to the event, I injured my thigh muscles. I was worried about being able to participate, but my trainer kept encouraging me, reminding me that I needed to believe in myself. My family also

encouraged me constantly. I kept telling myself I had to get well, that my injury would heal soon and I’d be able to race successfully.

Even as the day of the competition drew near, my leg was still not completely healed. I realized that whatever happened, I simply

had to exert my utmost, together with my teammates. I was overjoyed that we were able to win the bronze medal. This victory was a result of our unity.

Even though a hearing impairment is often a communication barrier, we have to do our best so that people can understand us. Although I may have to face puzzled looks from others, I will remain optimistic and positive. I am very happy that I have people

like my friends and family who care about me. For anyone else struggling with a hearing impairment like me, I’d like to tell them not to be discouraged or disheartened. You have to do what you need to do, and be positive in whatever circumstances you find yourself. ❖

Undaunted by SilenceBy Luo Sheng-tang, Taiwan

Sheng-tang (far left) with his teammates

“It is because my parents did not give up on me and taught me to the best of their ability that I am what I am today.”


PEOPLE

“Soka” means value creation. What is your understanding of this concept?

This is a wonderful, huge topic and a concept vital to the health of our world. Because of the Soka Gakkai, I’ve really been able to think about the term “value creation.” Wherever we are and whatever we do, we have the potential to create value. How do we use that potential? We have to be so aware of why we are doing what we are doing, for whom, and what are the larger implications of our actions, not only for the people around us but for the Earth itself.

Value creation recognizes what is at the heart of being human: the urge to create. Through creating, we connect and build with others. [First Soka Gakkai President Tsunesaburo] Makiguchi articulated the importance of understanding the profound interconnectedness between individual potential and the health of all existence. One neither sacrifices the self nor aggrandizes it in this process but draws upon its creativity in a larger sense. This contrasts with the view commonly held in the United States that creativity requires isolation and is primarily an individualist enterprise.

I also appreciate that value creation is always ongoing. It’s not that values have been created and now we just tend to them. Rather,

we remain active in this process of creating what is meaningful for our own lives and for the good and the health of the world at large. This understands value in such a different context than the prevalent equation of value with commoditization.

Value creation also includes education. It returns education to an elemental place in human life because it attends to what we human beings can in fact do best: create. Although creative powers can sadly be subverted into a destructive force, those abilities, with wise encouragement and nourishment, can also flourish, creating great beauty, great hope and a greater understanding.

When SGI President Ikeda founded Soka University in Japan, one of the mottoes he gave the students was, “For what purpose should one cultivate wisdom? May you always ask yourself this question!” He wants the students to not forget the prime point of their studies.

Yes, I agree. From my many years as a college teacher I see how students can get trapped if they lose that sense of purpose. Or if their sense of purpose gets co-opted into “Well, I just need to get out of here so I can get a job and make money.” Greed is not so

The Human ConnectionAn interview with Sarah Wider

The Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue in Boston, Massachusetts (see page 12),

has conducted a series of interviews with SGI President Daisaku Ikeda’s dialogue partners within the academic community in the US. This is an extract from an interview with Dr. Sarah Wider, professor of English and Women’s Studies at Colgate University in Madison County, New York. Prof. Wider specializes in the American Renaissance, American women writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Native American literature. She is former president of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society. Her ongoing dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda is being serialized in the Japanese women’s magazine Pumpkin.


PERSPECTIVES Dialogue on Values

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much the motivator as fear. It seems the only thing available is a material support structure that supposedly is going to hold them up but invariably empties into despair. We need to make other support readily available so that students and teachers alike can truly see the broader and deeper impact of what we are doing.

Our practice in the SGI is based on the Lotus Sutra, the essence of which is the equality and dignity of all life. One theme of the sutra is the enlightenment of women. In the SGI, great emphasis is placed on respecting women. What have been your observations?

I have had the great privilege and honor of meeting with members of the women’s and young women’s divisions as well as the faculty, students and administrators at Soka Women’s College, Soka University of Japan and Soka

University of America. In each place, I have talked with women who are deeply committed to building cultures of peace. Fierce in mind and heart, their insight leads to long-lasting action. I think in particular of the work done by the women of the Peace and Culture Conference and Committees.

President and Mrs. Ikeda’s ongoing support has been crucial, I know, for the contributions women make in building communities where all may live freely and harmoniously together. I celebrate their support for women of all ages. I think about the correspondence courses at Soka University that provide opportunities for education throughout one’s life, acknowledging the necessity of learning and making that possible regardless of whether or not one can physically be in a classroom. President Ikeda’s support also values knowledge that does not depend on having sat in a classroom or received a diploma. Rather, he values the knowledge that comes from a very deep observation of and experience in dealing with other people, which of course is what many of us as women do. Both President and Mrs. Ikeda have truly emphasized the importance of creating inclusive models of education where women’s “ways of knowing” can thrive.

I think about this in the context of the mentor-disciple relationship as well. Fundamentally a relational way of learning, it understands and values the process of people learning with each other. It’s not a hierarchy but participation and collaboration.

What are your thoughts on Mr. Ikeda’s efforts to carry out dialogues?

President Ikeda understands so deeply that as human beings we are all connected. That human connection is crucial. Also, we all are always connected into the larger world of which humans form such a small part.

Whether through his writings, through our face-to-face conversations or in his ongoing dialogues, I have seen how President Ikeda meets people. He greets the person, not their societal role. He’s not speaking to the title or the perceived place in society that

person holds. He speaks to the person, to the complex human being, and not simplistically to “the doctor,” “the cashier,” “the athlete,” “the professor,” “the janitor.” He values the knowledge we gain from our work, not the status or prestige.

We are each a human being, each with something very particular to contribute to this

shared world of ours. President Ikeda honors that potential. I turn to my own experience with the dialogue he and I shared. There were so many moments when, through that process of dialogue, thoughts broadened, expanded and opened in directions we had not originally seen. Here was the power of potential developed through the practice of dialogue. True dialogue is always larger than any one of the participants. Never just one small limited self alternating its thoughts with another small limited self, it is larger than any two individuals and designed to include all who can imagine and wonder.

Mr. Ikeda recently received his 300th academic honor. What do you see as the value of being honored by a university?

When a university confers an honorary degree, it should take the occasion as an affirmation and as a challenge: affirming the work done by the person honored, and making certain that the university itself lives up to that work in its daily practices. President Ikeda has devoted his life to education that broadens individuals, opening them to others’ thoughts, values, life ways. His large vision of education understands that potential can never be developed at the expense of others and that such potential develops best when difference can speak freely and readily. At its best, a university can be—or can become—such a place. As Emerson called for in “The American Scholar,” we should strive to make our places of learning “universities of all knowledges.” ❖

“True dialogue is always larger than any one of the participants. Never just one small limited self alternating its thoughts with another small limited self, it is larger than any two individuals.”


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In a proposal released on January 26 titled “Toward a World of Dignity for All: The Triumph of the Creative Life,” SGI President Daisaku Ikeda

calls for global civil society to take the lead in resolving two key challenges of our time: abolishing nuclear weapons and building a global culture of human rights.

“Where there is an absence of international political leadership,” he writes, “civil society should step in to fill the gap, providing the energy and vision needed to move the world in a new and better direction. I believe that we need a paradigm shift, a recognition that the essence of leadership is found in ordinary individuals. . . fulfilling the role that is theirs alone to play.”

It is the “multiple overlapping networks of solidarity” created by an engaged citizenry that hold the hope for an era founded on respect for the inherent value and dignity of life.

Regarding nuclear abolition, he explores actions that the world’s people can initiate to: (1) establish the structures within which states possessing nuclear weapons will move rapidly toward disarmament; (2) forestall further nuclear weapons development or

modernization; and (3) comprehensively outlaw these inhumane weapons through a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC).

There is a tendency, he says, to consider the threat of nuclear weapons “as merely a relic of the tragic past. In order to break down the walls of apathy. . . we need to recognize the irrationality and inhumanity of living in a world overshadowed by nuclear weapons, wrenched and distorted by the structural violence they embody.”

Ikeda expresses support for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for the regular holding of UN Security Council summits on nuclear disarmament. He proposes that states that have relinquished nuclear weapons be regular participants, and that specialists and NGO representatives also address the summits. He suggests that Hiroshima and Nagasaki host the 2015 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, and that it should serve as a nuclear abolition summit.

To move the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) toward entry into force, Ikeda calls for a series of bilateral, regional and multilateral initiatives by which groups of states, such as Egypt, Israel and

Iran, would mutually commit to ratify the treaty. A similar arrangement based on the Six-Party Talks could be used to move toward the denuclearization of Northeast Asia.

Ikeda reiterates his strong support for an NWC. He stresses that such a convention could represent a qualitative transformation from traditional international law to a form of law that derives its ultimate authority from the expressed will of the world’s people.

“It is necessary to begin a process that will crystallize the will of the world’s people in a concrete and binding legal form,” he concludes.

Regarding human rights education, Ikeda notes that human rights are not brought into existence by treaties or laws, but through the efforts of ordinary people to correct the injustices they experience or see in the world around them. This means making sensitivity to human rights—our own and others’—the foundation of a “culture of human rights.”

He states, “The brilliance of human rights lies in the endless succession of courageous individuals who arise to take up the challenge of extending and expanding them. . . .”

Ikeda expresses his support for efforts to promote human rights education, centered on the UN, and to this end proposes the establishment of new consultative bodies within the UN system. He stresses the importance of the UN declaration on human rights education and training currently being finalized and describes the SGI’s initiatives to support this process, such as the development of DVDs and other tools for human rights education.

He also calls for the world’s religions to engage in interfaith dialogue on promoting human rights education.

“I believe that we must always take pride in the knowledge that the actions we take. . . link directly to the magnificent challenge of transforming human history,” he states. “Each of the world’s seemingly ordinary individuals can be a protagonist in the creation of a new era. No force can match that of a fundamental transformation in the human spirit.”

Visit www.sgi.org to read the full proposal.

Toward a World of Dignity for All: Daisaku Ikeda’s Peace Proposal for 2011 Published


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PEACE PROPOSAL

SGI-Cambodia youth members organized a peace seminar at a high school in the province of Kandal on November 28. Some 200 youth took part in the seminar which addressed topics such as friendship, the purpose of studying and various other themes pertinent to youth. The Khmer version of the SGI’s exhibition “Victory Over Violence” was also shown.

The Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research held an international conference titled “Global Visioning for a Common Future: Hopes, Challenges and Solutions” in Rabat, Morocco, on February 4 and 5. Cosponsored by the Morocco-based Muhammadan League of

Scholars, the conference brought together key experts from diverse backgrounds.

The conference commemorated the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the Toda Institute, and its theme was inspired by the idea of creating an office of global visioning within the UN to project and anticipate future trends, suggested in the 2009 Peace Proposal by Daisaku Ikeda, the Institute’s founder.

Opening addresses were given by Dr. Ahmed Abaddi, secretary-general of the Muhammadan League of Scholars and a key figure in the promotion of human rights, culture and education in Morocco, who stressed that the fundamental purpose of religions is to contribute to people’s happiness, and Dr. Olivier Urbain, director of the Toda Institute,

In Mexico, the SGI exhibition “From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace: Transforming the Human Spirit” was displayed from February 11–17 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of events to commemorate the 44th anniversary of the Treaty of Tlatelolco. It was also shown at the National Polytechnic Institute’s School of Medicine from December 1–15.

SGI’s antinuclear weapons exhibition “From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace: Transforming the Human Spirit” (THS) was shown at Roehampton University in the UK from January 22-24, organized by the university’s Human Rights Society and the newly formed

SGI-UK Youth Peace Committee with the support of local SGI-UK members.

On January 24, a group of 30 postgraduate Erasmus Mundus international human rights students at the university attended the exhibition and joined a youth forum where some 80 youth discussed the issue of nuclear abolition with guest speakers such as Professor Nicholas J. Wheeler, professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University; Dr. Jason Hart, lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath and research associate at Oxford University; Carole Naughton of the Acronym Institute and WMD Awareness Programme; and Tim Street from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

SGI-UK announced the establishment of its Youth Peace Committee (YPC) at a Hiroshima

Peace Day event held at the SGI-UK Grand Culture Centre, Taplow Court, on September 4, 2010. Manny Fernandez, SGI-UK youth leader and chair of the committee, commented that the group was initially formed by the youth to discuss SGI President Daisaku Ikeda’s September 2009 nuclear abolition proposal “Building Global Solidarity Toward Nuclear Abolition” and to think of practical ways to translate his vision into reality.

On October 25, the SGI-UK YPC collaborated with UK Student Pugwash to organize a youth forum to discuss and debate nuclear abolition that was attended by some 150 participants. The forum coincided with the showing of the THS exhibition at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

who focused on the key elements of inner transformation, dialogue and global citizenship. A message from Mr. Ikeda was introduced in which he stated that the current crises facing humanity present us with an opportunity to enact meaningful change and build a global community coexisting in peace and harmony.

On the second day, participants discussed two themes: “Education and Development” and “Civil Society and Nonviolence.” Speakers included Simon Xavier Guerrand-Hermès, president of the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace, Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi and chancellor of Durban University of Technology, and Lawrence Carter, dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College in Atlanta, USA.

Cambodia Youth Take Initiative

Global Visioning Conference Held in Morocco

SGI-UK youth volunteers at the THS showing at SOAS

“Transforming the Human Spirit” in Mexico

SGI-UK Youth Peace Committee Organizes Antinuclear Exhibition


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At the SGI-USA Culture of Peace Resource Center in Santa Monica, California, former army captain Paul Chappell, author of the book Will War Ever End? A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century, spoke as part of the Culture of Peace Distinguished Speakers Series held on January 15. Mr. Chappell is currently the peace leadership director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, California.

An activity pack full of games and exercises has been created to accompany the new SGI exhibition, “Seeds of Hope: Visions of sustainability, steps toward change.”

The pack contains a range of fun activities

for different age groups from kids to adults: a game which encourages “Random Acts of Kindness,” a quiz about endangered animal

species and an animal “safari” featuring the endangered and unusual animals shown on the exhibition panels—from the white peacock to the rosy-lipped batfish.

The activities are designed for use in the classroom or informal groups, and for teachers or people facilitating such games and exercises for the first time. Some activities relate specifically to the exhibition panels, and others to the ideas behind the exhibition, such as developing compassion and respect. Others, such as the “sustainability checklist,” focus on ways of taking action in one’s local community.

SGI-UK organized a showing of the joint SGI and Earth Charter exhibition “Seeds of Change: The Earth Charter and Human Potential” at the University of Brighton, from December 16-18. The exhibition was displayed during an international conference at the university where the results of research into values-based assessment and indicators for Education for Sustainable Development were presented.

On November 27, a ceremony was held at the Amazon Ecological Conservation Center (AECC) in Manaus, Brazil, to commemorate 50 years of SGI-Brazil (BSGI). The event featured seed plantings of Brazil’s national flower, the Ipê-amarelo. Guests included Amedeu Thiago de Mello, renowned poet of the state of Amazonas, who is known for his activism for human rights and for the sake of the Amazon region. On the following day, celebrations continued at the Studio 5 Convention Center in Manaus, showcasing an array of dances and music incorporating elements from local indigenous culture.

The AECC was founded in 1992 to promote environmental sustainability in line with the vision of SGI President Daisaku Ikeda. In 1993, the AECC began a project to restore degraded forests together with the State of Amazonas Secretariat of Environment, Science and Technology (SEMACT), and to date, over 20,000 tropical trees have been planted,

consisting of 60 different species. In addition to reforestation, the AECC

activities include environmental education, contributions to the protection of endangered animal species, and establishing a seed bank to collect and preserve the seeds of Amazonian trees.

In the field of environmental education, the AECC has accommodated open-air learning for students in collaboration with the municipal office of Manaus, since 2001, through which more than 2,000 students visit the center every year. Moreover, in order to promote education for sustainable development, the AECC has engaged in a project entitled “Agenda 21 School Education Plan,” which is conducted in three public schools on the outskirts of Manaus. Participants include parents of students and residents who live close to the schools in addition to students and teachers.

Through these activities, the AECC has been certified by Brazil’s Ministry of Environment

and the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources as a Private Natural Heritage Reserve.

In 2010, the region suffered from the severest drought in some decades, with the water level of the Amazon River dropping to its lowest by several meters. As a result, ancient remains of stone sculptures with carvings of human faces and snakes were revealed near the AECC. This discovery will contribute to promoting research into an as yet unknown era.

The exhibition was created in partnership with the Earth Charter International, and several activities use the Earth Charter as a framework for understanding the different elements of sustainability—respect for life, protecting the environment, social and economic justice, democracy, nonviolence and peace. There are also activities which involve going out to observe nature, such as “Spider Bingo.”

The activity pack can be downloaded from the NGO Resources section of the SGI website at www.sgi.org.

Former Army Captain Promotes Peace

“Seeds of Hope” Activity Pack Available

“Seeds of Change” in Brighton

Amazon Ecological Conservation Center Revisited

Students learning about reforestation at AECC


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Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the publication of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi’s The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy, a TV special titled “Education is for children, the world is for peace” was aired by Hokkaido TV in Japan on November 30. The program highlighted Soka education in practice by featuring students at Sapporo Soka Kindergarten and at Soka Universities in Japan and the US.

SGI-Germany members gathered at the University of Hamburg on November 21 in celebration of the Soka Gakkai’s 80th anniversary. Professor Ulrich Dehn of the university’s Academy of World Religions spoke at the event, as well as Dr. Manfred Osten from the Weimar Goethe Institute. The ceremony ended with performances by SGI-Germany’s Green Hill Orchestra and Lotus Chorus group.

During 2010, more than 7,000 people visited the Soka Gakkai Educational Counseling Centers run by the Soka Gakkai Education Department. Since the establishment of its first center in 1968, more than 360,000 individuals, including students and their parents, have received counseling from trained volunteer counselors.

The centers were started at the suggestion of SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, who encouraged Soka Gakkai members involved in education to

SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, founder of Soka University, was awarded the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Boston at a ceremony in Tokyo on November 21, 2010.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Ikeda stressed the vital role of education in bringing forth human potential and dignity. He paid tribute to UMass

use their knowledge and experience to support their local communities.

The Soka Gakkai Education Department currently runs 34 such centers throughout Japan, staffed by more than 800 volunteer counselors and teachers who have been trained in psychological and educational counseling. The centers offer free services to any students from kindergarten to high school who may be experiencing problems in their studies or educational environment.

Boston’s role in promoting public education with an emphasis on service to humanity and quoted Chancellor Dr. J. Keith Motley’s words “We must hold fast to the larger ends of education which comprise nothing less than the development of human beings; and I repeat, human beings.” He stressed the similarity between the vision of UMass Boston and that of the founding fathers of Soka education, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda, and dedicated the honorary doctorate to them.

Chancellor Motley headed the UMass Boston delegation including Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dr. Winston E. Langley and Associate Provost and Director of International and Transnational Affairs Professor Eunsook Hyun that visited Japan to sign academic and student exchange agreements with Soka University and present the honorary doctorate.

In his citation, Dr. Motley lauded Mr. Ikeda’s advocacy of individual empowerment and social engagement based on compassion for others.

In a discussion following the ceremony, Mr. Ikeda and Dr. Motley agreed that, particularly in times of great turmoil and confusion, the role of education must be to foster people dedicated to the welfare of humankind.

This brings to 300 the total number of honorary doctorates, honorary professorships and equivalent titles conferred upon Mr. Ikeda by institutions of higher education in some 50 countries for his efforts to build peace and promote cultural exchange and humanistic education.

TV Program Features Soka EducationCelebrating 80 Years of the Soka Gakkai

Soka Gakkai Educational Counseling Centers in Review

At the counseling center in Yamanashi

300th Academic Honor Awarded

Chancellor Motley and Mr. Ikeda at the ceremony


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Please tell us about your radio programs and the kind of content you feature.Shoko: I work for a local radio station in Hiroshima, so we mainly do community-based programs to meet the needs of a variety of listeners. For example, one of our programs features guests from various fields exploring music, sports, comedy, beauty, education, food and so on from a local perspective. Another program is a late night show where local performing artists share their favorite music. We also have a program called “Peace Road,” where hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) describe their experiences and representatives from peace activist groups speak, conveying a message of peace from Hiroshima. André: I host two radio shows. The first is an open discussion about soccer and teams from all over the world. It is an open program where participants can freely express their opinions. It has a huge number of listeners, both soccer lovers and those who want to know more about the sport. The second is an entertainment show in which we do lots of interviews. It’s full of fun, humor and one of the most popular shows on Portuguese radio. It’s a show for everyone, and the goal is to bring joy, happiness and culture to people.

What are the most enjoyable aspects of your work, and what are the most challenging?

Shoko: The programs I start up and plan, especially those that are prerecorded and require editing, as short in length as they may be, are in a sense my “works of art,” and I tend to develop a special fondness for them. So I’m happy when these programs turn out well and are well received. Also, I learn a lot from the guests I have on the show, and it’s great when they enjoy being on the show. But the challenging aspects may be researching and booking the guests themselves! André: One of the most enjoyable aspects is being able to influence people in society positively. It is very rewarding to receive warmth, love and care from the listeners. It’s amazing when I feel that through my voice I can create some positive influence in the listener’s life, and also the sense of being able to create companionship with those who are listening.

How does your Buddhist practice inspire your approach to work?André: Every day, I put into action these words of Nichiren: “The voice does the Buddha’s work.” This phrase to me means that in using our voices to express the state of our inner lives we are able to connect ourselves to our environment. The emotion and influence transmitted through radio makes it a unique communication medium, even in these modern times. That power of communication is amazing. It’s a great

André Dezidério André Dezidério was born in Brazil and has been practicing Buddhism for 19 years. He graduated from the New University of Lisbon in Portugal with a degree in Journalism and Communication Sciences. He currently works as a radio host, producer and DJ in Lisbon.

Shoko Ishida has been practicing Buddhism for 28 years. She spent three years working at a radio station in Tokyo before moving to Hiroshima, where she is currently a director and radio host at the local radio station FM Chupea.

Life On Air


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responsibility to work in this field where you can influence people’s behavior. Every morning during my Buddhist practice I determine not to be defeated in my heart.Shoko: One of the teachings of Nichiren that I keep in mind especially at work is the concept that respecting others constitutes the essence of Buddhist practice and the correct way for human beings to behave. Due to the nature of my work, I meet a lot of people every day, so I feel that applying this concept in my daily life is especially important for me. One of our programs is run by five presenters and three directors, each with strong personalities. There are also more than 15 volunteer staff who support the show. As chief director, I have the responsibility of making sure everyone involved is able to participate and work together comfortably. To achieve this, the Buddhist teaching of treasuring and respecting each person becomes very important.

In addition, through my work with the Soka Gakkai Hiroshima Women’s Peace Committee, I have met numerous hibakusha, some of whom we have invited to speak on the show. My involvement in peace activities has deepened my motivation to convey this message of peace through my work as a radio presenter.

What is the key to communicating with people you have never met?Shoko: Some things I try to keep in mind are: to avoid the hard sell; not to look down on listeners in any way; to convey to listeners the things that move and inspire me as directly as possible; and to make sure we’re enjoying ourselves. Unlike television, radio has no visual element—so the radio waves carry the mood of the studio and the emotions of the presenters directly to the listeners. It’s all the more important, then, for us to put ourselves in the shoes of our listeners.

For live shows, we try our best to read out and respond to e-mails that

come in during the show, but given that there are many more listeners who don’t go as far as e-mailing or faxing us but genuinely enjoy listening to our show, we try our best to think of the silent majority.André: I think we are able to communicate with people we don’t know when we get in sync with their language. The listener likes to identify him- or herself with the radio and the communicator. I love my profession, and the key to good communication is clearly expressing our emotions.

What was the most interesting interaction you’ve had with a listener?André: I remember, during one of my regular shows, someone calling and saying that he was in prison. He said it was a heavy, miserable environment, and he tried whenever he could to listen to the show, to escape from it. The hours he listened to the show were, for him, the only moments of joy he had the entire day.Shoko: Working with the hibakusha who come on our program to speak about their experiences, not only was I affected by the experiences themselves, but I was deeply moved by each person’s profound sense of mission to convey their message of peace.

Through being inspired by their deep resolve and sense of mission, I have come to feel that my mission as a radio presenter and as a Buddhist is to make sure this message remains strong and clear for future generations. I feel that in this way we are able to interact positively with our listeners.

What do you see as the role of radio in building communities?Shoko: In an age where tools such as cellular phones, e-mail, blogs and Twitter enable us to create communities without meeting face-to-face, sending information through the radio may seem rather one-sided. However, because ours is a local radio station, we are very much community-based, and it’s common for us, for example, to be asked to advertise local events taking place.André: Interaction is the key to the show’s success. Communication has been transformed completely with advancements in technology. We strengthen our ideas with the support of the Internet, blogs, social networking sites, chat rooms and so on. People don’t want to be just listeners anymore; they want to participate and influence the decisions about the show’s content. This is the direction we hope to move in. ❖

“The emotion and influence transmitted through radio makes it a unique communication medium, even in these modern times. That power of communication is amazing.”


ON VOCATIONA series in which SGI members discuss their approach to their profession

The purpose and goal of Buddhism is people’s happiness. The inner life of each of us is rich with untapped possibilities, deep

spiritual reserves of wisdom, courage, energy and creativity. The unique beauty and wonder of each human being is that we give form and expression to these potentialities in endlessly varied ways, according to the particularities of our character, culture, personality and passion. The aim of Buddhism is to enable people to become aware of and bring forth the boundless potential of their lives. Buddhism refutes the sense of powerlessness we may feel in the face of suffering and new challenges, enabling us to tap our inner resources to transform any source of suffering and find fulfillment and purpose.

Within the broad tradition of Buddhism, it is the Lotus Sutra that most clearly defines this profound potential and clarifies that it exists equally within the lives of all people. It emphasizes that the purpose of Buddhist teachings is to enable all people to connect with that in the here and now. The Lotus Sutra is also notable for its “one vehicle teaching,” which embraces all and expresses the ultimate truth of Buddhism—that all people can attain

Buddhahood and have the right to be happy. Buddhist texts describe two basic methods

of expounding this truth. The first, termed shoju in Japanese, is to share this view of life without directly challenging the other person’s existing beliefs. The second, shakubuku, is a more assertive expression of the truth and a challenge to views which diminish human life.

Shakubuku is a practice for others, a concrete exercise of compassion and belief in their Buddha nature. It is an act of the highest respect for others and one that requires courage—to speak in-depth about the teachings of Buddhism. Practicing solely for oneself might seem an easier option, but this is not the real road to enlightenment.

By the 13th century, some 1,500 years after the death of Shakyamuni, Buddhism’s founder, Buddhism had become well-established in Japan but had split into numerous contending schools, each claiming to represent the true teaching of Shakyamuni. Some had also become co-opted into the existing oppressive and corrupt power structures.

It was in this context that Nichiren (1222–82), the founder of the Buddhism practiced by members of the SGI, lived. After long study

of the various Buddhist teachings, he began to vigorously refute those doctrines that he saw deviated from the life-affirming teachings of the Lotus Sutra. He continued to do this in the face of severe persecution from the established powers, out of his conviction that misguided philosophies which encouraged passivity and a sense of human powerlessness were the primary cause of suffering and social discord.

The portrayals of Nichiren’s famously impassioned efforts have sometimes obscured the fact that shakubuku is first and foremost about open dialogue. Nichiren always remained committed to dialogue, declaring, “So long as persons of wisdom do not prove my teachings to be false, I will never yield.” His opponents, refusing to risk debate, instead plotted his persecution.

The Lotus Sutra itself provides a model for shakubuku in the person of Bodhisattva Never Disparaging, who would bow deeply before each person he encountered, telling them he deeply revered them because they possessed the Buddha nature. His actions, however, were initially met with ridicule and aggression. Directly addressing the Buddha nature of others, what Bodhisattva Never Disparaging ultimately refuted in the people he encountered was their limited view of themselves.

It is a natural tendency to put limits on what we believe we are capable of and what we can expect out of life. In a sense, these walls are the means by which we define ourselves. We can easily become caged in by narrow views of our self and the world, and it can be uncomfortable and even threatening when this limited sense of our self is challenged. Buddhism continuously challenges our understanding of who we think we are.

The spirit of shakubuku, however, is never the shallow, argumentative concern with proving oneself or one’s views superior to another’s. It is the spirit of sustained compassion to enable another person to believe in the great, unrealized potential of their life. ❖

Shakubuku: Enabling People to Reveal Their True Potential

“The spirit of shakubuku is the spirit of sustained compassion to enable another person to believe in the great, unrealized potential of their life.”


BUDDHISM in DAILY LIFE

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Daisaku Ikedabuddhist philosopher, peacebuilder and educator

This website details SGI President Ikeda’s

accomplishments and contributions as a Buddhist

philosopher and leader, peacebuilder and

educator, as well as presenting a selection of his

own writings relevant to these themes. The site

also includes a biography, a selection of short

autobiographical essays, news, interviews, third

party commentaries and detailed information about

Ikeda’s published works.

Read more about the man, his work and achievements at:

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On CommunicationCover Photo: Lyon, France© Alexis Grattier/Getty Images

SGIQuarterly

A Buddhist Forum for Peace, Culture and Education

The Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a

worldwide association of 90 constituent

organizations with membership in 192

countries and territories. In the service of

its members and of society at large, the

SGI centers its activities on developing

positive human potentialities for hope,

courage and altruistic action.

Rooted in the life-affirming philosophy of

Nichiren Buddhism, members of the SGI

share a commitment to the promotion of

peace, culture and education. The scope

and nature of the activities conducted in

each country vary in accordance with the

culture and characteristics of that society.

They all grow, however, from a shared

understanding of the inseparable linkages

that exist between individual happiness

and the peace and development of

all humanity.

As a nongovernmental organization (NGO)

with formal ties to the United Nations, the

SGI is active in the fields of humanitarian

relief and public education, with a focus

on peace, sustainable development and

human rights.

SOKA GAKKAI INTERNATIONAL15-3 Samoncho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0017, Japan

Telephone: +81-3-5360-9830 Facsimile: +81-3-5360-9885

E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.sgi.orgSGI Quarterly Website: www.sgiquarterly.org

sgi · from a demand by paying attention to our reaction when we hear “no.” if we hear “no”...

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