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SGIQuarterlyA Buddhist Forum for Peace, Culture and Education

ISSN 1341-6510

Soka Gakkai International Quarterly Magazine Number 51

IN THIS ISSUE:

The Poetic Heart:Connecting Humanity

January 2008

The ocean is an unending source of inspiration (p. 16)

Soka Gakkai International Quarterly Magazine Number 51

SGIQuarterly

The SGI Quarterly aims to highlight initiatives and perspectives onpeace, education and culture and to provide information about theSGI’s activities around the world. The views expressed are not nec-essarily those of the SGI. The editorial team (see inside back cover)welcomes ideas and comments from readers.

C O N T E N T SFeature:

Introduction ..........................................................................1Poetry in the Air: Interview with Sarah Wider .....................2Restoring Our Connections by Daisaku Ikeda .....................5The Rose and the Nightingale: The role of poetry in Persian culture by Dr. Hossein Elahi Ghomshei..............6So Much to Say, So Much to Do by Hector Verdugo..........8The Light of the Poetic Spirit by Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali ...........................................10Poetry, Flame of Hope by Thiago de Mello.......................12When I Walk by Eleanor Margolies...................................13

A Buddhist Forum for Peace, Culture and Education

January 2008

In Chinese culture, painting, poetry and calligraphy are known as the threeperfections (p. 29)

Poetry is not only words on a page (p. 2)

Old English Poetry by Paul Bibire .....................................14Ocean Culture and the Poetry of China by Shu Xiaoyun..................................................................16

People:Heart-to-Heart by Nomsa Mdlalose, South Africa .............18Shout It Out by NYCCA, Japan..........................................19

Special: ...................................................................................20Salute to Poets by Daisaku Ikeda

Around the World: ..................................................................22Poetry Awards; “My Revolution” in South Africa; China-Japan Normalization Commemorated; Betty WilliamsDelivers Culture of Peace Lecture; Caring for Our Elders; Day of Peace in Singapore; Culture of Peace Exhibition inDubai; Youth Take the Lead in Antinuclear Movement; Sonja Davis Peace Award

On Vocation: ...........................................................................26Growing with the Earth

The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra: ..............................................28Making “Life” the Keyword of the Coming Age

1SGI Quarterly January 2008

Justin Jin/Panos Pictures

What is poetry?When we feel thepangs of love or thesweep of inspiration—the soft chafing of ourexposed hearts againstthe textures of theworld—why are wemore apt to expressourselves in a poemthan in a paragraph?The poetic heartreaches out, seekingexpression andconnection. It is a heartthat tries to cast abridge betweenourselves and theworld; and that bridgemay be built by words,movement, color ormusic. Theseexpressions form thecore of all humancultures and help defineour diversity anduniqueness, as well asshowing us ourcommonality.

The poetic heart, orspirit, is synonymouswith the spirit of peace.The loss of this spirit,this sensitivity to life,describes the pathologyof our ailing planet, theapparent withering ofour humanity. Tonurture the poetic spiritin our own lives is tonurture hope for thefuture.

This issue of the SGIQuarterly celebrates thepoetic heart, as itcelebrates the 80thbirthday this month ofSGI President DaisakuIkeda, who hasfrequently called for therestoration of the poeticsensitivity in us all.

SGI Quarterly: What is poetry?Sarah Wider: My definition of poet-ry is broad and lively and open. Ithink of poetry as a wonderfullyactive presence in our lives. Of courseit comes in the form of words, but italso means a way of perceiving theworld around us—our relationships,our role in this world and in thoserelationships. Poetry gives us theopportunity to think about thingstogether.

Of course, poetry means words onthe page, but it also can be the wordsthat we speak or the words that wehave listened to over time. Poemsappear in songs, and they are given inteachings from one generation to thenext. Poetry is that which speaks toour hearts, enabling us to see moreclearly what we each need to do inany given moment and what ourresponsibility is.SGIQ: How would you assess thehealth of poetry in contemporary soci-ety? Is there enough poetry, too littlepoetry, in people’s lives today?SW: For certain sectors ofsociety, I would say thereis definitely not enoughpoetry.

To give one example, Ihad a student in a class Iwas teaching last yearfrom a relatively privi-leged background. Hecame right out and said:“Poetry doesn’t matter, it’sa dead form.” And whilesome of the studentsagreed with him, therewas a great deal of dis-comfort from studentswho come from different

traditions, students for whompoetry matters greatly. Thereare students, for example, forwhom hip-hop music is big,or students who participate ina poetry culture with theirfriends. It’s in spoken word, inthe music they dance to. Forthese young people, poetry is far froma dead form: it’s the air they breathe.

A Communal ArtSGIQ: Can you talk more aboutforms of poetry that isn’t words on apage? SW: So much poetry comes from oraltraditions. Here, poetry has neverbeen envisioned as something thatwould be written down for just oneindividual to read at a time. Poetrywas always understood as vibrant,

immediate, unending,always meant to be sharedcommunally.

I already mentioned youthculture. You have peoplewho are doing spoken word,where people are using theirvoices for social change, call-

ing awareness to real inequities. Thisis where there is a lot of the impetusfor poetry and where poetry alwayshas been the voice of the people.

The folk tradition in poetry goesback—I think you could say “forev-er.” Because the power of the spokenword is the power that has alwaysbeen available to everyone. It wasn’tthe privilege of the few, it has alwaysbeen the words that have been avail-able to all people to create somethingmeaningful to share with everybody.Any time people are protesting andare calling out rhythmic or rhymingchants, there is the impetus of poetrybehind it. SGIQ: How have you encounteredpoetry among the Pueblo people of

the Southwestern UnitedStates, with whom youhave a deep association? SW: Here there are alsosongs that go back “for-ever.” There are songsthat people can’t put anydate on because they areremembered over timeand have been kept with-in the community, passedfrom generation to gener-ation. People will just say,“That is a very old song,”and one of the ways theyknow that is becausethere are words in that

2 SGI Quarterly January 2008

Interview with Sarah WiderSarah Wider is professor of English and Women’s Studies at Colgate University in Madison County, New York, U.S.A. A foundingmember, and current president, of the Emerson Society, she is the author of The Critical Reception of Emerson: Unsettling AllThings and Anna Tilden, Unitarian Culture and the Problem of Self-Representation.

Poetry in the AirPoetry in the AirPoetry in the Air

“Poetry is that which speaks toour hearts, enabling us to see

more clearly what we each needto do in any given moment and

what our responsibility is.”

Very Quiet

Paula V

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song that aren’t in daily use anylonger.

When people are getting ready for aparticular dance, for example, on afeast day—I can only talk about thosethat are appropriate to be talked aboutbeyond the community, where the restof us are welcomed—people will gath-er together for weeks beforehand andcreate the songs together.It’s hard to explain, andmy understanding isindeed small. The songsare always connected tosongs from the past. Thereare always the songs forwhatever is being danced,but the songs are alwayscreated anew each time bythose particular peoplecoming together.

It reminds me of thetransformative power inpoetry—poetry’s ability toplace us within a largerunderstanding. It might

be more accurate to say that theimpulses within poetry aspire tosomething close to what happenswithin the Pueblo song.

SGIQ: Do you think there is a greaterneed today for public poetry? SW: Whether fair to certain 20th-cen-tury poetry or not, there is certainlythe perception that the most “sophis-ticated” poetry of the century turnedinward and adopted a detached voicethat observed, but did not involveitself within, society. In a word, poet-

ry privatized. In the Unit-ed States there has been astrong distrust of poetrythat takes on public con-cerns or speaks in anovertly public voice. Suchworks have been castigat-ed as “propaganda poet-ry” or dismissed as ideo-logical. We don’t seem towant the poet talkingabout public issues.

And there is somethingvery small-minded orshortsighted about theway that the judgmentshave been made. Often-


A literary café in Baghdad, 2003, where poets, writers and journalists have met for overa hundred years for dialogue and debate

Tewa Dancers From the North perform the Eagle Dance at a Pueblo arts and crafts show in New Mexico, U.S.A.

“I also think of poetry as a quality in our lives, perhaps

a quality of relating to other people.”

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times those judgmentshave come from withinan academy that pro-tects certain kinds ofpoetry. It also tends tosuggest that there isonly one audience forpoetry, too, a very edu-cated audience, andthat this is the superioraudience. This has beendeeply troubling for mewherever and whenev-er it occurs, because itcreates an elite audi-ence for poetry. Whichis very bizarre in ademocratic society.

So when I look to thepublic aspect of poetry, the publicvoice within poetry, what becomes soforceful is the role of poetry that [theAmerican philosopher Ralph Waldo]Emerson (1803–82) spoke of andwhich Walt Whitman (1819–92) tookup in his own work as a poet. Here,the poet was the advocate of the peo-ple and the poet was a prophet, theone who would say the hard, unpop-ular things that no one wanted tohear. And certainly in today’s society,and probably any society, that is pre-cisely what a poet can do.

I certainly love prose, but poetry,because of its ability to deliver imagesdifferently from prose, has that capac-ity to speak to us that much moredirectly and in many ways more inti-mately, to make us feel that we arestanding alone and perhaps more vul-nerably. I think that capacity of lan-guage in poetry has the power todeliver us our truths.

When I think about Daisaku Ikeda’spoetry, he has always had that voicethat is very direct and very appealingin two senses. Appealing to the read-er first in the sense of being veryaccessible. A person can just pick itup, they don’t have to have a PhD inEnglish to read it. You can sit and readit and think about it and use your ownmind to understand this poem.

The other sense of the word

“appealing” is that in his poems he isalways asking us to do something, totake his words and understand whatour responsibility is. So in this sense,he is appealing to us to understandthat there is something to be done inthis world right now. And again Ithink that is the public aspect of poet-ry. I think that is very powerful andvery necessary in our world rightnow, or in fact in any time and anyworld that I can imagine into the fur-thest foreseeable future. I do thinkDaisaku Ikeda stands in that traditionof the individual who is willing to saywhat is unpopular and what is therisky thing to say.

The Poet in Us AllSGIQ: Can you describe, from a per-sonal perspective, what you find thedeepest, most satisfying experience ofpoetry? SW: Quite simply, poetry has been theone constant in times of upheaval. Itspeaks solace, comfort, hope in timesof loss. When human communicationin real time fails—and it does all toooften—poetry succeeds.

I turn to poetry whenfriends cannot bereached, when judg-ment is the mode ofoperation where I work,when violence domi-nates. In the words of apoem, the reader findsrevelation, reassurance,insight, companionship.“I have felt this, seenthis, done this.” Itmakes one think “Hereis how I would say thisvery thought, if only Icould speak so clearly.” SGIQ: What does “thepoet” stand for, and isthere a poet in all of us?

SW: I do believe that we can all bepoets. I think that often people thinkthat because they don’t have a particu-lar way with words, that excludes themfrom being poets. Or, because theyaren’t comfortable with written poetry,that puts them at a distance. But I thinkit is good to remember that the originsof the English word “poetry” can betraced back to the Greek poesis, meaningto create or put into action, and we areall capable of creating or putting some-thing into action.

I also think of poetry as a quality inour lives, perhaps a quality of relatingto other people. A kind of attentive-ness that we are willing to pay toanother person. A willingness to payattention to what is going on aroundus, to bring a certain clarity, to trulylisten to what a person is saying to usbeneath the language that they aregiving us: What is really troublingthem? What do they really want to bedoing with their lives?

So I think poetry is about the quali-ty of attention as much as anythingelse. Perhaps the quality of intentionas well. So in that sense I think we canall aspire to be poets, because each ofus can bring that act of listening toeach other. And also be looking forthat quality of attention and intentionin our own lives and help others dis-cern that in themselves.�

Poetry at Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York

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“The poet was the advocate ofthe people and the poet was a

prophet, the one who would saythe hard, unpopular things that

no one wanted to hear.”

H uman beings are each amicrocosm. Living hereon Earth, we breathe the

rhythms of a universe that extendsinfinitely above us. When reso-nant harmonies arise between thisvast outer cosmos and the innerhuman cosmos, poetry is born.

At one time, perhaps, all peoplewere poets, in intimate dialoguewith nature. In Japan, the Man’yo-shu collection comprised poemswritten by people of all classes.And almost half of the poems aremarked “poet unknown.”

These poems were not writtento leave behind a name. Poemsand songs penned as an unstop-pable outpouring of the hearttake on a life of their own. Theytranscend the limits of nationali-ty and time as they pass from per-son to person, from one heart toanother.

The poetic spirit can be foundin any human endeavor. It maybe vibrantly active in the heart ofa scientist engaged in research inthe awed pursuit of truth. When thespirit of poetry lives within us, evenobjects do not appear as mere things;our eyes are trained on an inner spir-itual reality. A flower is not just aflower. The moon is no mere clump ofmatter floating in the skies. Our gazefixed on a flower or the moon, weintuitively perceive the unfathomablebonds that link us to the world.

In this sense, children are poets bynature, by birth. Treasuring and nur-turing their poetic hearts, enablingthem to grow, will also lead adultsinto realms of fresh discovery. We donot, after all, exist simply to fulfilldesires. Real happiness is not found inmore possessions, but through a deep-ening harmony with the world.

The poetic spirit has the power to“retune” and reconnect a discordant,divided world. True poets stand firm,confronting life’s conflicts and com-plexities. Harm done to anyone, any-where, causes agony in the poet’s heart.

A poet is one who offers people

words of courage and hope, seekingthe perspective—one step deeper, onestep higher—that makes tangible theenduring spiritual realities of our lives.

The apartheid system of racial seg-regation was a grave crime againsthumanity. In resisting and combatingthis evil, the keen sword of wordsplayed an important role.

Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali is aSouth African poet who foughtagainst the iniquities of apartheidwith poetry as his weapon. He writes:“Poetry reawakens and reinforces ourreal, innermost strength; our spiritu-ality. It is the force that makes usdecent people, people who are filledwith empathy for those in need or

pain, those suffering from injus-tice and other wrongs or societalills.” Nelson Mandela readMtshali’s poems in prison, draw-ing from them energy to continuehis struggles.

The Brazilian poet Thiago deMello, lauded as the protector ofthe Amazon, also endured oppres-sion at the hands of the militarygovernment. On the wall of thecell in which he was imprisoned,he found a poem inscribed by aprevious inmate: “It is dark, but Ising because the dawn will come.”They were words from one of hisown poems.

Amid the chaos and spiritualvoid that followed Japan’s defeatin World War II, like many youngpeople of my generation, I gaineduntold encouragement from read-ing Walt Whitman’s Leaves ofGrass. The overflowing freedom ofhis soul struck me like a bolt ofempathetic lightning.

Now more than ever, we needthe thunderous, rousing voice of

poetry. We need the poet’s impas-sioned songs of peace, of the sharedand mutually supportive existence ofall things. We need to reawaken thepoetic spirit within us, the youthful,vital energy and wisdom that enableus to live to the fullest. We must all bepoets.

An ancient Japanese poet wrote,“Poems arise as ten thousand leavesof language from the seeds of people’shearts.”

Our planet is scarred and damaged,its life systems threatened with col-lapse. We must shade and protectEarth with “leaves of language” arisingfrom the depths of life. Modern civi-lization will be healthy only when thepoetic spirit regains its rightful place.�


Restoring Our ConnectionsBy Daisaku Ikeda

“The cloud-seas of the heavensare riled by waves.

The moon a ship rowed intohiding behind a forest of stars.”—A Japanese waka-style poem

written some 1,300 years ago,in the Man’yo-shu

Daisaku Iked

a

Daisaku Ikeda is the president of theSoka Gakkai International. He is aprolific and widely published poet.This is a shortened version of an essaypublished in The Japan Times onOctober 12, 2006.

P ersia has been admired as aland where people walk onsilk carpets and talk the lan-

guage of poetry.Poetry in Persian culture is not

simply an art: rather it’s the veryimage of life, terrestrial and celes-tial; the perennial philosophy, theholy scripture, the minstrel, themusic and the song, the feast andrevelry, the garden, the Rose andthe Nightingale, and a detailedagenda for daily life.

In the lyric poetry of Rumi, Sadiand Hafiz you can hardly find asonnet that does not contain thewine, the bard and the beloved. Indidactic and mystical poetry, com-monly in rhyming couplets, thesame theme of Love runs throughoutlike running brooks of milk and wineand honey of Paradise as described inthe Koran.

The word saqi in Persian literature isthe counterpart of the muse in West-ern culture and fulfills exactly thesame service as the muse to inspire thepoet, to illuminate what is dark, toraise what is low, that the poet mayassert the eternal providence and jus-tify the ways of God to man.

In Persian poetry, as in all goodpoetry of the world, Love is the great-est circle of attraction and affection,with no one left out of the circle. Thestory of David, the prophet of Love,who had 99 wives and still yearnedafter another one, according to reli-gious traditions, is interpreted byRumi as a reference to the 100-percentnature of Love: If there is a single per-son in the whole world whom youhate, you are not a lover.

Sadi, in one of his famous sonnets(ghazal), says:

I’m in Love with the whole world,for the whole world belongs to mybeloved.

Love is at peace with all religions,all ethnic groups, and all colors, lan-guages, races and tribes, as expressedin hundreds of sublime poems in Per-sian poetry:

O my Christian beloved,O my Armenian friend,Either you come and be a MuslimOr I will take the girdle and become

a Christian.

In the realm of Love, there is no dif-ference between a mosque and amonastery.

You can behold the light of theeternal beloved wherever you turnyour face.

—Hafiz

Love celebrates the meaning ratherthan the form and modes. The mean-

ing in the words of Rumi is finallyreturned to God, the substance; theforms are but shadows. Let zealotsfight over shadows and names, butthe lover is after truth, which is thereality, the named. Rumi recom-mends:

Seek the names no moreBut be in pursuit of the namedFind the moon in the skyRather than in the ponds and

brooks.

Love is the common religion inPersian poetry:

Religion and creed for us,As all the wise do know,Is an ardent Love for theVision of our beloved.

—Rumi

I cannot step out of the sanctuary ofmy beloved

O my friends, excuse me,This is my religion.

—Hafiz

The Essence of LoveThe religion of Love, according to

Persian poets, is not a faith to acquire:we are all born with it. It’s our divinenature. We all are born in Love withbeauty, truth and the good; this is ouruniversal heritage.

The word nafs, which means souland self at the same time, has beendefined as a substance that loves, thatdesires, that wishes.

If you are asked who you are, youcan reply: I am Love; I love, thereforeI am. Amo, ergo sum.

If we are born with such a good reli-gion as Love with one commandment


The Rose and the Nightingale:The role of poetry in Persian cultureBy Dr. Hossein Elahi Ghomshei


that comprehends all the good andbeauty and truth, what are those otherreligions each with a different scrip-ture and commandment?

The answer in Persian poetry is thatall the messengers and apostles ofGod have come to reconfirm what wealready knew in our nature.

The prophets are but reminders ofthe eternal truth written in the book ofour heart.

The essence of Love is selflessness,which can be achieved by the spiritu-al wine of unity.

Love is when thou and I would bemerged into one. This unity thatcomes from Love is the sure sign ofdivine manifestation in us. Wherethere is Love, there is God.

Rumi, in one of his most lovinginvocations addressing God, says:

O my lordThou art the essence of the spirit in

us.Thou art the essence of affection Between man and woman.When man and woman become oneIn love making, that one is thou.

The differentiation between divineLove and human love does not existin Persian poetry. Love, when refinedand purged of self, is holy and divinewherever it appears.

Other such superficial differentia-tions between secular and celestial,worldly and heavenly, earthly and

Godly, have no place among Persianpoets.

When a person is in Love, whateverhe does is a service to God. His heresyis better than the faith of non lovers;his doubt smells of certainty, his bitterwords are sweeter than honeybecause his incentive in all is Love andaffection.

Rumi says, “Enter the circle oflovers and find yourself in the midstof paradise. Do not wait until the dayof judgment; sit happily in front ofeach other now, look with Love andaffection at each other and say peacebe with you. This is paradise.”

The Bosom of ExistenceSuch is the religion of love that, like

a celestial alchemy, it can transmutewar into peace, credit into cash andsin into salvation; and like the leg-endry panacea, it can cure all fatal dis-eases like avarice, hatred, hypocrisyand envy; and like the long-sought-after elixir of life, it can give eternallife; and like the most desired lovepotion, it can make a person belovedby all.

Rumi, after thousands of poems inpraise and description of Love, says:

If I speak of love constantly untilresurrection, the blissful

Qualities of love shall not come toan end;

And no matter how eloquently Iexpress the virtues of love,

When I gaze at the fair face of love, Iam ashamed of whatever I have said.

So I confine myself here only to avery brief account of the seven valleysor cities or stations of love, as narrat-ed in detail in 5,000 couplets by Attar,a forerunner of Rumi and of Shehrzadin the tales of Persian Nights:1. The Valley of Quest: The first valley

of love is called quest or seeking.Quest is the first flame of love kin-dled in the heart of the pilgrim. It isa vague remembrance of the realmof union when we were united withour beloved.

2. The Valley of Love: When the flameof quest gradually consumes thepilgrim’s thorns of selfish attach-ments and base secular relations, heis set all aflame and enters the val-ley of love enveloped in fire. This isthe fire that devours hell.

3. The Valley of Gnosis: Gnosis is anintuitive knowledge that is the illu-mination and enlightenment of thedurable fire of the previous valley.In this divine light, the pilgrimachieves the ability to know peo-ple, to hug them and to pardonthem. “The earth is crammed withheaven, and every common bush isafire with God.” Here all theopposing elements kiss each other;the day thanks the night for herdarkness, and the night pays hertribute to day for his brightness.

4. The Valley of Independence and

sunriseOd

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Hector Verdugo is a peer navigator forHomeboy Industries, an organization insouthern California which helps rebuild thelives of former gang members after prison.He himself joined a gang when he was 14.At the age of 24, he gave up his criminallife. Hector started to write poetry as aresult of taking part in the Homeboy Indus-tries writing class. He is also an outreachspeaker for Homeboy Industries and is cur-rently raising money to launch a poetrymagazine Homeboy Press next year.

What is your experience of writing apoem?

We have a healing circle right hereat Homeboy Industries. We start offwith prayer and poetry. We go into asubject and talk about it, about howthe subject is related to your life. Iremember [the poet] reading some-thing about “from grapes to wine,”and I zoned out when I heard that.Then I wrote something straightaway. It was cool, it was pretty rough.I took it with me somewhere, to aretreat in northern California. Then Ijust made it a little fuller, and I read itat the end of that retreat. I was verysatisfied with the way I wrote it—everyone liked it. How about other people’s reactions?

We are surrounded by people whoare just like us. We come from thesame world, and we say our story incertain ways, and we present our frus-trations and our joys. When you thinkdeep and put it in some kind of poet-ic form, it’s only 200 words long, butin that short time, you make someonefeel what you felt, whether it be hurt,


Needlessness: In this valley the pil-grim comes to understand (with thegnosis of the previous valley) thatGod is free from all need to his cre-ation; and reclining on the throne ofperfection, seemingly needs noNightingale to praise His Rose, noangel to sing His transcendence.This is of course like the coynessand disdainfulness of a mistressthat enhances the thirst of herlovers; this is the ice that melts notby the fire of love but rather inten-sifies that fire.

Needlessness is the attribute ofGod, but the pilgrim here acquires ashare, however meager, of thatdivine quality, which makes himthe richest king of the world.

5. The Valley of Unity: When in thetempest of needlessness, all creationis gone with the wind, and thereremains no sun, no moon, no being,no entity, the pilgrim has his firstvision with the One. The beings arenot annihilated but rather disap-pear like a shadow in the presenceof that eternal sun.

6. The Valley of Amazement: Behold-ing the One who is all, and all thatis One, is ever followed by deepamazement and perplexity. Thisamazement keeps the pilgrim silentbecause the experience is beyondword and expression. All Persianpoets who have attained this stationshare the same deep silence, and ifthey write poems, it is the expres-sion of their inability to speak:

When the Nightingale sees theRose,

It starts singing his joy;But I am dazed and dumb in thepresence of Thy vision.

—Sadi

7. The Valley of Annihilation: This laststation of the pilgrim is when heloses himself in the intensification ofthat sense-dispelling amazementand alights in the realm of nothing-ness. In this seeming nothingness heregains whatever he has lost in the

absolute existence of God andachieves perfect peace and security.

In the bosom of existence there isno room for death or dearth ordeprivation or limitation of chainsand fetters. Nezami, the creator ofthe best Persian metric romances,describing the night of his unionwith the bride of the world, speaksof a chamber where there is no roomfor nonexistence. It was in this sta-tion that the great martyr of love,Mansoor Hallaj, cried out: I am thetruth and was taken to the gallows.In conclusion, I wish to reiterate that

Persian poetry is the most preciousnational wealth of Persia and the mostintoxicating wine of Shiraz we canoffer mankind around the world.

And may peace be upon thepassionate pilgrims of the world.

November 2007, Tehran, Iran�

So Much to Say,

So Muchto Do

By Hector Verdugo

The Persian Prince Humay meeting the ChinesePrincess Humayun in a garden, c.1450

Professor Hossein Elahi Ghomshei is aspecialist in Persian mystical litera-ture, aesthetics, and English andAmerican literature. His weekly lec-tures on Persian literature on Iraniannational television have made himIran’s favorite television personality,with a more than 86-percent populari-ty rating among viewers of all ages.

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joy, love or hate. When I hear myfriend reciting the poetry of his life, heis giving me a glimpse of his soul. Iwouldn’t have known about that inany other way. Nobody wants to openup and express themselves, especiallynot Chicanos. We are very privatepeople, but when we write poetry, itis like an open book. So does poetry get to the heart?

It is a tribute. There are people fromall over the world who are famouspoets. There are different perspectivesand totally different worlds. There arepeople from Japan, South Americaand Africa; expression is great,whether it be music or poetry or what-ever. I would say that poetry is think-ing and trying to make sense of some-thing. It’s not just off the top of yourhead; it takes energy and deep think-ing. Sometimes you are digging away,writing something, and you feel painand anger. You want to express it, andwords start coming to your mind.Sometimes I get a word and I think, “Idon’t really know that word.” Then Idoubt myself, pick up the dictionaryand say, “That was the word I waslooking for.” Do you find it pushes you?

Not a lot of people want to exposetheir souls. It takes courage to say, “Iam going to write this down, and Imight have to eventually read it tosomebody.” I want to take one wordand have it mean so much, which,

with my limited vocabulary and edu-cation, is frustrating. Then I findmyself getting caught up in otheractivities that don’t require deepthinking. When you first discover you have avoice as a poet, what does that feel like?

It’s cool—there is so much to say. Iwant to be able to scream at the top ofmy lungs and express more thanwords; I want to give more, writesome kind of drama. There’s so muchmore to do.Do you feel that you discovered poetryat the right time in your life?

I’ve prayed to God and asked forunderstanding, and I feel he hasanswered me in so many different

ways. I think about mylife and other peopleand why we act theway we do or perhapsfail and sometimessucceed. A big puzzlehas been put togetherfor me. I don’t know ifthat’s a universalthought; it is just life. Itinspires poetry. All thedifferent walks of life,everyone’s differentexperiences, the waypeople see love andemotions and circum-stances and physical

stuff. Poems will come to you beauti-fully in your mind, but then it’s gone.To get it down on paper is hard work,and it takes discipline. It sounded like you want to changesomething there with your poems.

What we do right here at HomeboyIndustries, we change people’s lives.It’s beautiful to be a part of. If some-one could record this, this is poetry; itfeels like it. What is your plan for the immediatefuture?

Write more, lock myself in a room. . . .�

My Vine

I’m a grape yearning to be wine Squash me See my soul, my flesh spills its juices. Let it stand exposed Rotting for all to see I sit still marinating in ghetto air I fill your glass, sip me. Let me overwhelm your pallet with My exotic flavor, taste my rage, Mixed with honor and passion,

swish me in your mouth And taste the hint of humility, love,

and hate.

Excerpt from “My Vine” by Hector Verdugo

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P oetry is the language of emo-tions and a medium for artic-ulating feelings, opinions,

ideas, thoughts and beliefs. Muchmore than an artistic pastime, it isthe spiritual repository of humandreams which originate from thedepths of the subconscious.

To understand these poetic veri-ties and artistic functions is to mas-ter the whole essence of life. Andthat means true liberation from theshackles of convention which issynonymous with oppression andexploitation.

The poetic spirit enables us to riseabove the level of other livingorganisms to use our mental, phys-ical and spiritual endowments todeal with the complexities of ouruniverse. The poetic spirit canimmure both the practitioner ofpoetics and the acolyte from eventhe most extreme of external pres-sures.

The poetic spirit equips us withvital skills to deal with all types ofconditions of life. A portrayal inwords, sustained by the faculties ofour five senses—as well as the sixthsense of balance and the seventh ofimagination—sets us on an even keel,enabling us to face the demands of lifeand cope with the struggles of exis-tence. Poetry brings us into unisonwith our surroundings, helping createa rhythm with the cosmos, so that wecan live in harmony with other livingbeings in an ideal environment. Weinvoke the help of the sun, the moon,the stars, mountains and rivers.

Since time immemorial we haveburst into song and dance and sungpraises to the beauty of flowers andthe abundance of fruits for our enjoy-ment. All this fecundity is encapsulat-ed in the nutshell of the poetic spiritlike a pearl in the belly of an oyster.How is it possible to capture the nim-

ble-footed movements of the musethat infuses us with poetic spirit?

The Oral TraditionLong before the written word was

created, an oral tradition existedwhich blended with song and danceto convey meaning. This traditionplayed a vital role in the black poetrymovement against apartheid, the sys-tem of brutal racial separation anddiscrimination practiced in SouthAfrica until 1994.

The influence of oral tradition hasbeen supplanted by the vagaries of theprint media. I cannot stand at a streetcorner or subway and recite mypoems. Although the first priority isself-expression, the purpose is com-munication and sharing ideas, opin-ions. In my poem, “Sounds of aCowhide Drum,” which is also the title

of my anthology, the drumbecomes the symbol of the trans-mission of vital information andimportant news, good or bad.The “boom! boom! boom!”sound was a wake-up call to thecomplacent white minority toheed the cries of the oppressedblack majority. The “boom!boom!” sound was also a rally-ing cry for all the oppressed peo-ple to rise up and fight the evilsystem of apartheid.

As in all fields of humanendeavor which involve emo-tive language through the use ofcreative skills that invoke themuse, poetry has a whole rangeof presentation from the mostsublime to the most militant andradical.

Consider this untitled medita-tion on the poet from JamesMatthews, whose collection CryRage stands as a balancing beamof the imaginative mastery ofrealism, presenting poetry as a

potent contrapuntal force—a weaponof righteousness—against evil.

Freedom owns the poet’s soul He shall not be garbed in A cloak of ideology His voice not laced by Legislation

His voice, the voice of Birds: a robin heralding hope A nightingale lyrically lamenting

pain An eagle emoting the people’s Power

On a bird-wing he will streak From freehold to the dungeonHis songs—freedom songs filledWith fire; the words flaring Flames


Dr. Mtshali meeting with SGI President Ikeda in Tokyo, 1991

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The Light of the Poetic SpiritBy Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali


The poet’s fervor fueled with Strength gained from the draughts of Intoxicating water drawn from an Oasis of deep dank poisoned Wells

By contrast, most of my poems aresatirical and humorous. This portraitof “The Poet,” for instance:

Through the night The typewriter sounded Clatter-clatter-clatter Like the sonorous ring of an

auctioneer’s bell

The heedful owl hooted hilariously The birth of a new bard, “Hail! A poet is born.”

The mole stopped To listen under the bedewed soil, But the frumpy frog Full of malice croaked a curse

Through the whispering of dreamers The writer wrote and wrote Deaf to the nocturnal chorus Of pompous praises and raucous

curses

Matthews was born and raised inthe colorful District Six of the city ofCape Town. I come from the tiny ruraltown of Vryheid, from the village ofKwaBhanya, where life was stillsteeped in custom and tradition, untilthe missionaries came to proselytizeto the various indigenous peoples,dividing us into different churchesand denominations.

Apartheid was the epitome of divi-siveness. Its antithesis is the poeticspirit, a spirit that transcends bound-aries and crosses all the borders ofculture, ethnicity, race, color, creed,gender. Even in the dark belly of thesystem, the apartheid jail, I experi-enced how apartheid blurred the linesbetween the jailor and the prisoner.The former was imprisoned by fearand insecurity of his own undoing.The latter, though physically shack-led and thrown in the dungeons ofdespair, was spiritually still free torise above the pain of confinementthat was meant to destroy thestrength to fight for freedom.

As long as the flame kindled by thepoetic spirit remains alive, hope willalways spring eternal, enabling us totriumph over the forces of dark-ness.�

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Dr. Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali’santhology Sounds of a CowhideDrum (1971) was one of the first booksof poems by a black South African poetto gain wide distribution, offering arare view of the experiences of blackSouth Africans in the apartheid era.After living and teaching in New Yorkfor many years, Dr. Mtshali has recent-ly returned to South Africa.

Sounds of a Cowhide DrumBoom! Boom! Boom!I am the drum on your

dormant soul, cut from the black hide of a

sacrificial cow.I am the spirit of your

ancestors,habitant in hallowed huts,eager to protect, forever vigilant.Let me tell you of your

precious heritage,of your glorious past trampled

by the conqueror, destroyed by the zeal of a

missionary.I lay bare facts for scrutinyby your searching mind, all

declarations and dogmas. . . .

Boom! Boom! Boom!That is the sound of a cowhide

drum—The Voice of Mother Africa.Excerpt from “Sounds of a CowhideDrum” by Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali


L ike any artform, poetic cre-ation touches the soul throughits beauty. But beyond the aes-

thetic quality itself, poetry must havesome ethical purpose—to serve lifebetter, with the power of the wordthat embraces the heart and the mind.

Poetry lays the truth bare. It plantshope. It lights the way forward in thefight against all that scorns the dig-nity of our human condition. In thesedark days of humankind, we needpoetry by our side.

Poetry helps me to preserve theAmazon forest, to promote culturalexchange in Latin America and todefeat the fierce columns of socialinjustice, causes to which I havedevoted my life for years and years.Poetry and humanity—they can’t beseparated.

I learn. And I learn from the poetsthat walk with me. They don’t allowthe flame to die away. When first I

read Songs from My Heart, by DaisakuIkeda, I learned perseverance. I alsolearn from the life of my people; theyare all the people of the Earth. Peoplewho read me, from all the corners ofthe world, tell me that I am notsinging in vain. I don’t know them.But I know that I share their hope.When I was in prison, I read on thewall of my cell my own lines, writtenby someone who had need for them:“It is dark, but I sing.”

It must be said: the word is not theonly source from which the light of

poetry comes. It comes from music,painting, dance, images, the silenceof sculpture; it is in pop songs, it isborn from the symphonic concertthat engulfs reason to call forthhuman compassion.

Strident voices fall silent. Guns rust.Acts of generous rebellion wither. Butpoetry endures, leaves the paper onwhich it was first written, crossesdarkness, penetrates the tyrant’s wallsand lands, powerfully, in the painfulchest. Tyranny kills poets, burnsbooks. But the power of poetry per-sists in the poet’s song, warning that,in the lines of the song, waiting is notknowing. He who knows, builds his time,doesn’t wait for it to happen.

Without poetry it is impossible toraise a harmonious human society.Poetry lies at the foundation of peace,which humankind deserves.�

—From the Amazon rain forest,November 2007

Poetry, Flame of HopeBy Thiago de Mello

Thiago de Mello’s poetry has been celebrated in his native Braziland around the world since the 1950s. During the years of mili-tary dictatorship he was arrested and imprisoned on more thanone occasion for his resistance, while publication of his workswas banned. Now in his 80s, he remains active in efforts to pre-serve the Amazon rain forest and win social justice for the peopleof Amazonia. This article has been translated from Portuguese.

Excerpt from Thiago de Mello’s “Statutes of Man” (Os Estatutos do Homem), written in 1964 as a reaction to the mili-tary junta which had seized power in Brazil that same year, issuing a series of repressive extra-constitutional decrees.

Article XIIIt is decreed that nothing will be obligatory or banned.Everything will be permitted,even playing with rhinoceroses and walking in the afternoonswith an immense begonia in the lapel.

Only one thing is prohibited:to love without love.

Article XIIIIt is decreed that moneynevermore will be able to buy the sun of future mornings.Expelled from the great coffer of fear,money will be transformed into a fraternal swordin order to defend the right to singand the feast of the day that dawned.

Final ArticleIt is hereby forbiddento use the word Freedom,which will be excised from thedictionariesand the treacherous swamp of mouths.From this moment onfreedom will be something alive andtransparent, like fire or a river,or like a seed of wheatand its dwelling will forever bethe heart of man.

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Thiago de Mello and Daisaku Ikeda, 1997

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Eleanor Margolies lives in Camberwell, London, and is a poet,theater designer and editor. She has published poems in sever-al magazines and won an Eric Gregory Prize from the Societyof Authors for The Foot and Its Covering (unpublished).


When I WalkBy Eleanor Margolies

For hours on end we practiced dying:an imagined blow sinking into the belly, knees softening, the shoulder rolling intothe ground. We exaggerated gravity,persuading muscles to believe our story.

Seven years later, our teacher told Deathhe needed more time for folk tales, mystery plays, shysters and fools. He brought forty years of training—all he knew about the body—to the hospital bed, to village yoga,to a rehabilitation he devised himself,persuading his muscles to remember.

The last he taught called themselves angelsbecause they weren’t like other people. He could watch them all day, moving around him wordlessly, like messages that go directly to the spine.

It is January and muscles are cold.The work is slow. I remember falling, and falling for hours, softly.

Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?

First published in Poetry Folio 61 by the Kent & SussexPoetry Society

I t begins with a feeling of restless-ness: I seem to have becomeobsessed with something seen

out of the corner of the eye, somethingnot quite understood—a turn ofphrase, a gesture, an object on thestreet. The making of a poem is anattempt to see, to gather or to under-stand the meanings that float aroundthese peculiar objects of attention. Itmight mean following a thread of lan-guage—a word, a pun, a mishear-ing—or a memory, a feeling. It meansbeing led somewhere unexpected.

For me, the experiences of poetry—reading, writing, thinking about it—are deeply connected with the city andmoving through it: mulling things overon the bus, reading a few lines andthen looking out of the window. Day-dreaming. The link with travel arisespartly because poetry has its existencein between other parts of my life. Itaccompanies the travel to work, or thelunchtime sandwich, or the journeyhome after meeting friends. It is aseveryday and as necessary. It is a sus-taining secret.

But there is a more funda-mental connection betweenphysical movement and themovement of the poetic line,between walking and writing.“How many shoe soles, howmany oxhide soles, how manysandals did Alighieri wear outduring the course of his poet-ic work, wandering the goatpaths of Italy,” the Russian poet OsipMandelstam wondered. Like Dante,Mandelstam composed on the move.He described the footstep as “linkedwith breathing and saturated withthought.” It is a kind of walking thatsometimes seems hard to rediscover ina city—just automatic enough to let themind wander.

The shape of a familiar journey isremembered by the feet and legs. Youdon’t have to think about where to go.The walk may seem to lack the excite-ment of exploration but there are con-stant small discoveries—a change inthe color of the leaves from one day tothe next, new scaffolding, posters onthe wall, foxes following their own

paths. A softer kind of atten-tion takes over. And, some-times, the wool-gatheringtakes on a rhythm—a rhythmimposed variously by theweather, the kind of shoesyou’re wearing, how tiredyou are—a rhythm that haswords to it.

Once that first walkingphrase is found, the rest might be writ-ten at a desk, at home or in a library,sitting in an armchair or in bed. It’s likethe note from a tuning fork, or thedrummer’s first beats with crosseddrumsticks—it defines the key, or therhythm, of the poem but might itselfdisappear from the final piece.

Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten howto walk. Instead, I carry bags, run forbuses and look out for wildly-drivencars. But perhaps one evening, walkinghome, the streets are still enough thatyou can hear your footsteps ring out onthe paving stones. You long to be homein order to write down the line; youlong for the walk to continue so thatthe next line might come.�

O ld English (Anglo-Saxon) wasthe earliest form of English tobe written, and so the lan-

guage of the oldest surviving Englishtexts. These date from roughlybetween 700 and 1100 CE. Much poet-ry composed in Old English survives,about 30,000 lines in total. It wasmostly collected and preserved infour manuscripts, handwritten books,written just before 1000 CE, thoughsome poems are probably mucholder. So our perceptions of the poet-ry are mostly determined by the(largely unknown) purposes, inter-ests and taste of the compilers of thesemanuscripts.

All this poetry was composed ineffectively the same meter. The metri-cal unit is the rhythmic phrase (half-line), usually of two stresses, linkedinto pairs by alliteration. End-rhyme ishardly ever used, and the meter is notsyllable-counting. Although it is theo-retically very different from most laterpoetry, it feels in most respects natur-al and immediate to a modern earwhen spoken aloud.

Some poems recount or refer toinherited heroic legend. Much else isreligious. Some of this is “public”poetry, fairly obviously intended toedify its audience; other religiouspoems seem rather to be private andpersonal meditations on the humancondition. A few poems deal withevents of recent history, whether aspropaganda or memorial. Some, suchas the Riddles, seem to be primarilyintended for entertainment, althoughthey come from a learned, Latin tradi-tion. Not all surviving Old Englishpoetry is particularly good. Somepoems, versified saints’ lives or versi-fied translations of books of the Bible,have little or no present-day interestother than for specialists. But somepoems still speak very directly tomodern readers, for instance, “The

Wanderer” and “The Seafarer,” oftenpaired and often translated. They givean intense sense of weary longing inthe midst of transience, desolationand darkness, transmuted into a hun-gry quest for enlightenment.

Inherited TraditionOld English poetry certainly grew

out of an inherited tradition: all theancient Germanic languages in which

poetry is recorded (Old English, OldSaxon, Old High German and OldNorse) use more or less the samemeter and the same diction, and insome instances very similar subjectmatter. This poetic tradition musthave been brought by the Englishinvaders in the fifth and sixth cen-turies CE, when they conquered andsettled the former Roman province ofBritannia. Although there certainlywas close later contact between thesecultures, they must have inherited thispoetic tradition from their commonpast. Such traditions, of meter, dictionand content, must go back far beyondthe conversion of the English to Chris-tianity in the seventh century, andlong before they learned to write inthe Roman alphabet.

The poems themselves report oralperformance of oral poetry, recited orimprovised, “sung” to the harp at cel-ebratory feasting and drinking, andnever read aloud from books. How-ever, most or all of the survivingpoems seem to have been composedand transmitted in writing, in someinstances for several centuries. Forinstance, the poems of Cynewulf, whomay have been ninth-century, are“signed” by their poet with runicacrostics. The runes are only visible onthe page; a hearer would merely hearthe rune-names, which make reason-able sense as words within the verse.

Cynewulf is one of only two namedpoets known from the Old Englishperiod. The other is Cædmon, acowherd, a farmworker attached tothe Abbey of Whitby in the mid-sev-enth century. At communal drinkinghe would leave the company as hesaw the harp being passed towardhim, because he could not performpoetry. And one time when this hap-pened, he went to the cowshed tolook after the cows, and fell asleep.And in his sleep, he dreamed, and in


Old English PoetryBy Paul Bibire

“This awareness of transience,the passing of human

achievement and of life itselfconstitutes the most acute

cumulative expression of aphilosophical grief at the passingof things that I have encountered

in any literary work.”

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The only surviving manuscript of “Beowulf”

his dream he saw someone come tohim and say, “Cædmon, sing mesomething!” And he answered, “Idon’t know how to sing, and that iswhy I left the company and camehere.” But the other said, “Yet youhave something to sing to me.” “Whatmust I sing?” said he. “Sing me Cre-ation,” said the other. And with thathe began to sing words that he hadnever heard before. And when hewoke up, he could remember all thathe had sung. The monks took him tothe abbess, and she recognized God’sgift in him, and those that had taughthim now became his pupils, taking

down in writing those sweet wordsfrom his mouth.

This gives a clear statement of therelationship between divinelyinspired, orally performed poetrycomposed by an illiterate poet, andthe written text. The poem that Bedethen quotes, “Cædmon’s Hymn” as itis known, may be the beginning ofEnglish poetry. Cædmon is depictedas coming from the lowest stratum ofsociety, even though the heroic poemsdeal solely with a warrior aristocracyand its own poetic traditions, and theChristian religious poetry otherwisemostly seems to show learned, proba-bly monastic composition.

BeowulfThe two poems that stand out

beyond all others, and that comparewell with anything in European liter-ature of any period, are “The Dreamof the Rood” and “Beowulf.” They are

very different from each other. “TheDream of the Rood” is short, a dream-vision unlike Cædmon’s, for thedream is experienced within thepoem. The vision has an anguished,ecstatic intensity, but is based uponintellectual, even philosophical,understanding of daring originality.It is one of the finest religious poemsin English.

“Beowulf,” in contrast, is an epic. Asepics go it is short (3,182 lines), butthis physical length is misleading: thepoetry mostly moves slowly, mas-sively, and with huge momentum. Itsexperience is that of an entire life-time, from youth to age: it is life-changing. Its content is set against abackground of Scandinavian heroiclegend of the sixth century, but theprimary narratives are far older yet,and go back to myths of immemorialantiquity, functioning as archetypes.

The hero’s fatal dragon-fight is cog-

nate with legends of the Greek divinehero Heracles, and with the Hindumyth of the contest between the godIndra and the demon Vritra. Butalthough the poem seems to showawareness of the mythic antiquity ofits stories, it views them from amelancholy distance of time. Thatwas then, not now; the glory of menwas won, and is lost. This awarenessof transience, the passing of humanachievement and of life itself, is notdespairing—the poem is certainlyChristian, and is aware of hopeunavailable to its characters—but itconstitutes the most acute cumulativeexpression of a philosophical grief atthe passing of things that I haveencountered in any literary work.�


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Not for him is the sound of theharp

nor the giving of ringsnor pleasure in womannor worldly glory—nor anything at allunless the tossing of waves;but he always has a longing,he who strives on the waves.

Groves take on blossoms, the cities grow fair,the fields are comely,the world seems new:all these things urge onthe eager of spirit,the mind to travel, in one who so thinksto travel far

on the paths of the sea. . . .And now my spirit twistsout of my breast,my spiritout in the waterways,over the whale’s pathit soars widelythrough all the corners of the

world—

it comes back to meeager and unsated;the lone-flier screams,urges on the whale-roadthe unresisting heartacross the waves of the sea.

Paul Bibire is a former lecturer at theuniversities of St. Andrews andCambridge, U.K., who has publishedon Old English and Norse.

A carved stone grave marker outside the ruins of Lindisfarne Priory depicts Viking raiders who devastatedthe Anglo-Saxon monastery in 793 CE

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The Seafarer

Excerpt from translation by Sean Miller

P oetry is the bright jewel glitter-ing brilliantly in the tapestry ofChinese literature. Chinese

poetry embodies China’s rich oceanculture. There are poems depicting theocean or using it as the poetic back-drop; other poems portray maritimeactivities and seascapes.

As one saying has it, “Poems shouldbe filled with grandeur, their expres-sions enticing.” The sea is a themeuniquely suited to the expansive andvaliant spirit of poetry. In the wordsof another saying: “The magnanimousocean accepts and encompasses all theworld’s peoples.” China’s oldest geo-graphical account, the Commentary onthe Waterways Classic, describes theenormous virtue of water.

Poets desiring to pay tribute tonature’s beauty and loftiness havefound in the ocean ample subject mat-ter. The boundless vastness of the seadwarfs all other beings.

At times the power of the oceanremains soundless and silent. Withthe touch of the poet’s pen the oceanbecomes a divine spirit; its unfath-omable energies fill people’s heartswith awe.

The ocean arous-es in poets philo-sophical thoughts.The mist-shroudedwaters of the oceansurface surpass allconceptions of timeand space. ZhangZhao’s (1691–1745)poem “Gazing atthe Sea” depicts thesea thus:

A breath of airybeing

Floating in theuniverse, In which, since

ancient times,

The spheres of the sun and moonHave been immersed.

This poem celebrates the sea as amasterpiece existing since the begin-ning of time and holding even the sunand moon in its embrace. What istruly immense is the human spirit.

The ocean brings us the tastes andflavors of life in all its variety. Thefollowing poem by Meng Haoran (c. 689–740), for example, describes atraveler’s swelling excitement:

Raising the sail and gazing Into the obscure distance,The water-route that lies ahead is

long. The traveler eagerly departs On this auspicious day, Catching the wind and Riding the waves.

For the T’ang (618–907) period poetCao Song, the seaside offers sightsthat excite a yearning for home:

The moon rises to meet The pathetic pools left behind By the receding tide.

Zhang Jiuling’s (679–740) “Lookingat the Moon and Thinking of One FarAway” depicts a splendid landscape:

A bright moon rises above the sea. In a distant place, One dear to me Is watching this same sight.

Wang Bo’s (c. 649–c. 676) “Farewellto Vice-Prefect Du Setting Out for HisOfficial Post in Shu” reminds us of theuniversal nature of his sentiments:

While I have friends in places Throughout the world, However vast the distanceThey are as neighbors.

Even those born and raised on dryland find themselves gasping in aweand astonishment at the sight of thesea. Our predecessors created a histo-ry of maritime trade and exchange,raising their sails to the fair wind,their wisdom at the helm, theirunbreakable will their oars; theydrank in the winds and tasted thewaves, plowing and tilling the roilingsurface of the sea.

The desire to sur-mount obstacles in ashared vessel beatenby rains and wind attimes exacted a harshprice. When Li Bai(701–762) heard thathis good friend, ChaoHeng (Abe no Naka-maro) (698–770), hadbeen shipwreckedreturning to Japanafter decades of liv-ing in China, he pre-sumed the worst,voicing his grief in his“Lament for ChaoHeng”:


Ocean Culture and the Poetry of ChinaBy Shu Xiaoyun

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Leaving behind the imperial capitalMy Japanese friend Chao Heng’s Boat receded from view To become a wave-tossed leaf. He passed many islands On his way home. The brilliant moon has sunkInto the deep blue sea,Never to return. The very skies now grieveAt Chao Heng’s tragic fate.

In this sense, the seas may seem tohinder our progress; this was the casefor Si Ma Guang (1019–86) whobemoaned the lack of means to crossthe oceans in pursuit of learning.

The legend of Jing Wei providesinsight into yet another aspect of therelationship between human beingsand the ocean, sparking imaginationin many works of literature. Theyoungest daughter of Emperor Yandrowned in the Eastern Sea andbecame the mythical Jing Wei bird.Her hatred of the ocean was such thatshe decided to fill it up, carrying twigsand pebbles from nearby mountainsand dropping them in the sea. Thus,“Jing Wei trying to fill the ocean” is ametaphor for dogged determination.Han Yu (768–824) was among thosewho used this story in his work.

The state of the ocean is a psycho-logical projection of people’s relation-ship with it. Poets construct, from theperspective of visionary fiction, the

human-ocean relations that constitutean ocean culture.

The ocean is home to the humanspirit. Its waves and winds stir peo-ple’s imagination and fantasy. Li Bai’s“The Difficult Path” offers a glimpseof the poet’s valiant spirit:

I will ride the winds and Surmount endless waves. Setting sail on the vast ocean, I will one day reach The distant shores.

Liang Qichao (1873–1929) is one ofChina’s modern thinkers and politicalactivists; among his important contri-butions was a revolutionizing of thestudy of history. In the depths of thenight on which the 19th centuryturned to the 20th, drinking heavilyaboard a steamer traveling from Japanto the United States, he penned “ThePacific Ocean in the 20th Century.”

In this lengthy poem, he commitshis ideals to the ocean’s depths, allowshis sorrows to drift across its surface.The poem comes to its conclusion onan optimistic note; the poet’s spiritremains unbroken by his years inexile:

I’ve finished drinkingI’m quitting poetry. And yet a bird sings As it flies across The morning sky

Toward a newly rising sun. In 1917, Zhou Enlai (1898–1976)

expressed his determination andresolve to realize his goals for study-ing in Japan, whatever difficultiesmight lie ahead:

Even if his efforts are not rewarded, One who sets out upon the ocean Is still a hero.

Poets are a nation’s representatives,poetry a culture’s laurel crown. Poets’observation and insight into theevents surrounding them reflect aprocess of conscious choice stressingaesthetic sensibility, inner reflectionand spiritual experience. Poetry evok-ing images of the ocean expressespoets’ grasp of human society’s inter-actions with the sea, the psychology ofocean cultures.

The ocean’s capacity to create richlydiverse cultures comes into play onlywith the involvement and participationof different human actors. The poeticsof maritime culture offer us a uniqueperspective, a frame of reference and aspiritual instrument for gauging therelations between people and the sea.�


Shu Xiaoyun is an associate professorof the Faculty of History at NanjingUniversity in China. His specialty ismaritime history. This article wastranslated from Chinese. The transla-tions of the poems are tentative.

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SGI members experiences in faith


I first became interested in story-telling through drama, which Iloved, but it left little time for

me to pursue other activities. Story-telling, as a solitary and occasionalperformance art, allowed for moreflexibility.

There are many storytellers inSouth Africa, but they mostly oper-ate in a traditional context, asopposed to performing profes-sionally. It’s a tradition in Africanculture to pass on culture andinformation through storytelling,educating people about them-selves and the world aroundthem. People think of storytellingas a form of entertainment forchildren, but I think it’s more nec-essary for adults. I see the form asa way of passing on morals andvalues, and it’s my belief thatchildren have more of those thanadults.

In my work, I draw on Africanfolktales and history, and many ofmy stories are about preservingthe environment. I also incorpo-rate traditional songs and chants,as well as some of the body move-ments from the dances I did whenI was growing up. Although Iwouldn’t describe myself as apoet, I incorporate poetry in myperformances. Sometimes I usepraise poems from our family—Southern African families haveizithakazelo, praise poems connectedwith our family names that arepassed on from generation to gener-ation.

An Uncertain PathBeing an artist involves lots of

challenges and sacrifices, and afterembarking on my path as a story-teller, I felt like I was in a constantdilemma, having to decide which

direction to go. By the time a friendtold me about Buddhism, in 2001, Iwas faced with a choice betweenfull-time employment, which meantforgetting all about performance, orcontinuing with storytelling, thelove of my life, and living on anunreliable income.

After starting to practice Bud-dhism, I realized I didn’t have to

accept what was for me an impossi-ble choice. After this change in myattitude, I was able to find a full-timejob that left me enough time to dostorytelling on the side. Then, in2005, I was offered an opportunity tostudy for a master’s degree in story-telling in the U.S.

On my return to South Africa withmy master’s qualification, and nowmarried, I was once again faced with

a seemingly irresolvable choicebetween looking for a stable life inacademia or continuing to pursuemy passion. There were no academ-ic institutions in South Africa thatoffered courses in storytelling,where I could lecture and maybeperform during my spare time. Butonce again, unforeseen opportuni-ties opened up.

I was offered a position as ascholar-in-residence at one ofSouth Africa’s most prestigiousuniversities, where my task is tointroduce storytelling as a peda-gogical tool and a means to pro-mote dialogue within the institu-tion. For example, as far as I’mconcerned, medical students needto be taught to connect with peo-ple, as well as to treat disease.Through storytelling they canlearn how to listen to theirpatients, and, for many people,simply being listened to properlyis a major part of their healingprocess.

With the help of my Buddhistpractice, I have been able to com-bine my experience, interests andknowledge together to shape adream career.

I also feel that my Buddhist prac-tice and storytelling connect per-fectly. Buddhism talks about theimportance of creating heart-to-heart connections between people.

I think storytelling is about just that. Stories are spiritual, they deal

with our emotions, and a good storycontains the spirit of what we inSouth Africa call ubuntu, a conceptwhich includes love, generosity,respect, sharing—all the things thatare the values of Buddhism. That’swhy a good ending is important,because it has to touch your soul ina positive way.�

Heart-to-HeartBy Nomsa Mdlalose, South Africa

I was born in Hong Kong in 1980.My father is Chinese and mymother half-Japanese.

We came to live in Japan when Iwas 10 years old. It was my interestin skateboarding that got me intostreet culture, and I started rappingwhile messing about as a dancerand DJ.

At first I didn’t have the slightestinterest in rapping in Japanese,but when I was 15, I met a rappercalled RINO and was inspired totry to express my opinions aboutthe world in Japanese.

I went to Soka High School andthen to New York State Universi-ty in 1999, but I got into drinkingand taking drugs every day to thepoint where I started hallucinat-ing. After three failed suicideattempts I was admitted into apsychiatric hospital.

Suffering from depression anddebilitating apathy, I came back toJapan to rehabilitate. It was at thistime that I started practicing Bud-dhism seriously. When I chanted,I felt an energy welling up frommy inner self; and this energybecame a conviction. The doctorstold me it would be at least threeyears before I was cured and thatI would likely experience serioustrauma in the years ahead. In fact,to everyone’s surprise, I wascured within a half year.

I spent the next year working ina factory, and started to visualizewhat would become the O’LIONZPROJECT (“Only Life In Our Neces-sitieZ”), as well as starting to performagain in small events. I started mix-ing Japanese, Cantonese and English,trying to produce trilingual work.

There are many kinds of rap, butthe way I understand it is that rapbegan as prisoners calling out to

each other, without any musicalinstruments: so rap is a tool to call onpeople to speak the truth. In thatsense, I feel rap is a way of fightingwith words, the most human wayfor people to approach things anddeal with difficult situations withhope. It’s also interesting to me thatrap rhythms and chanting Buddhistsutras sound alike.

In hip-hop, people often say,“Keep it real.” When I create a song,I try to put my experience, truth andBuddhist philosophy into my music.The name, O’LIONZ, is trying toexpress the idea of keeping it real,that the truth inevitably lies withinyour own life. Whatever the topic, itis related to the core and essence oflife and all phenomena. Whatever

we experience leads us to seek outthe truth of life. For me, Buddhismis about reason and the underlyingprinciples of the universe.

In February 2003 I put together agroup called O’LIONZ 11, consist-ing of friends and acquaintances.Our first gig was in front of 1,000people. In March 2005 we releasedan indie CD, and that July we were

the Japanese winners of the urbansection of Diesel-U-Music, a com-petition held across five countries(Belgium, Italy, Japan, the U.K.and the U.S.).

In August 2005, the O’LIONZPROJECT performed at the Hugthe World with Music event inIndonesia, a charity concert rais-ing funds for the victims of theMarch 2005 Sumatra earthquake,which was broadcast throughoutIndonesia. I then was able to quitmy day job and become a full-time artist at the beginning of2006.

In August that year I took partin a 200-member Soka Gakkaiyouth exchange visit to China,and was able to perform duringour exchanges in Shanghai andBeijing.

In 2007, Universal Recordsoffered O’LIONZ PROJECT ourmajor-label debut, then our sin-gle, “Daijobu,” was taken up asthe theme song for a TV show,and in June we released our first

full album. I’m currently trying towrite a song for the 2008 Olympicsin Beijing.

I have found that by putting Bud-dhist philosophy into action, thepositive effects come back to me inmy daily life. I feel now that it’s justimpossible to predict how great thisdriving force in my life will becomein the future.�


Shout It OutBy NYCCA, Japan

There is a power in words,an infinite powerto revive, restoreand make life blaze anew.

There is a life in poetry,a limitless, eternal lifethat can stir and arousea society to new vibrancy.

Poets!Reflected inyour clear eyes—like the still watersof a lake—we can see:Clusters of peoplefleeing in confusionthrough a field of battle. A wailing mothertenderly cradlinga tiny corpse. An infant,starving, emaciated,weakened and awaiting death. The trembling fistof a young boy,who writhes beneaththe crushing weights ofdiscrimination and hate.

Poets!Through your keen earswe can hear, as in an echoing valley: The self-mocking sighsof young peoplefilled with mistrust and isolation,who sense no futureas they wander aimlesslythrough thronging crowds. The painful cry of Earth herself,oceans and atmosphere polluted,stripped and denuded of green,bound by atomic burdens, crying in distressas she continues to revolveon her grinding axis.

Poets!Poets whose fine heartsfeel the full tormentof people’s pain!

War, nuclear weapons,environmental destruction,discrimination,the trampling of people’s rights—all these problemsare caused and createdby human beings.Thus there is no misery or cruelty beyond our power as humansto resolve.

All people, everyone,crave and thirstfor peace,everyone seeks and pursuesthe goal of happiness.

All peoplehold within themselves,in their hearts,a golden sunthat can brightly light their own livesand shed far and widewarm and brilliant beamsof friendship and fraternity.This inner lusterof life itselfis the ultimatefont and sourceof new creation.

Poets!Now is the timeto raise your voices,to call forth and awakenthe sun sleeping in the hearts of peoplethe world over.

Society is awash with false discourse;with propaganda

that incitesxenophobic rejection;with low and ugly rumorwhose sole purpose isto degrade and demean;with shrieked abuse that destroys dignity, tearing into the heartlike a lethal blade.

This floodof deceptive, vacuousand violent languagehas caused peopleto treat all words and languageas suspect.Words arethe human heartand this doubthas driven peopleinto the dark and rampant isolationof cynicism and fear,distrusting everythingincluding societyand humanity itself.

Ah, poets!Now is the timeto use the wordsof compassion and truth,the words of universal justicethat roil and seethe within your heart, to use these words to dispelthe dark and heavy cloudsof language laden withfalse and evil intent,to stir new windsof hope and courage,to bring about anew and golden dawn!

Mahatma Gandhi declared: “A poet is one who can call forth the good latent in the human breast.”

Ah! The innumerablecruel fissures that splitand divide ourblue planet.

SGI Quarterly January 200820

Salute to PoetsBy Daisaku Ikeda

Divisions basedon differencesof ideology,of state,of national and ethnic identity,of religion, of class.

The absurd, horrificand repeated realityof peopleturned against people,viciously discriminating, resenting, wrangling and hating each other.

The deepest evil, the ultimate sourceof all conflict and tragedy,is the dividing heart.Preoccupied with difference, it drives peopleto reject and excludeothers.

But this very Earth,this lovely planet,is a garden richwith the full and gorgeousblossoming of diversity.

It is differenceabove allthat makes each

flowering tree—cherry, plum, peach and damson— uniquely valuable. Difference isthe quality thatenables usto learn from each other,to complement and fulfill each other,to respect and honor each other.

Poets!Let us throw new bridgesacross the gulfs dividingpeople’s hearts!With the cries that issuefrom your soulturn the gears of history:away from suspicion and toward trust,from divisiveness to harmony,from war to peace.

We are all human beings. The poetic spiritbeats and throbsin our veins!

All people are in factsisters and brotherscapable of mutual love,of coming togetherin harmonious unity.

All peoplehave the rightto live out their livesin happiness and dignity.

Poets, arise!Wait for no one, but stand up resolute and alone!

With our wordsand with our actions,let us till and turn the sprawling expanse, the desert aridityof people’s hearts.

The voice of the poetwho has chosen to stand alone calls out to and resounds withthe voice of another self-sufficient poet. A single rippleelicits ten thousand waves.

When our cries of justiceswell to a symphony extolling humanity and life and when its resonant tones reach all corners of the Earth,wrapping and cradling it . . .

Then the deep red glory,the dawning sunof peace for all people everywhere,will rise and liftinto the sky.

Dedicated to the members of the WorldCongress of Poets, September 2007.

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The World Poetry SocietyIntercontinental hasawarded SGI PresidentDaisaku Ikeda the title ofWorld People’s Poet inrecognition of the inspira-tion his poetry has broughtto people all over the world.Society President Dr.Krishna Srinivas and VicePresident A. Padmanabanpresented the accolade atthe Poetry for World Peace,Harmony and HumanismSymposium held on Octo-ber 5 in Chennai, India.This was the first occasionthe award had been made.

The World Poetry SocietyIntercontinental is head-quartered in Chennai andhas members in 50 coun-tries. In 1995, the societyconferred its World PoetLaureate Award upon Mr.Ikeda. The SGI presidentwas also declared a poetlaureate by the WorldAcademy of Arts and Cul-ture in 1981.

In his remarks at thesymposium, Dr. Srinivasquoted Mr. Ikeda’s poetryand recalled their meetingin 1979. He stated he hasnever forgotten Mr. Ikeda’s words onthat occasion: “In a society mired instrife, poetry opens the window of thesoul. Through that window, the refresh-ing breeze of life can blow. Poetry is theproof of society’s humanity, the noblesong of the human spirit.”

On September 1, 820 poets and schol-ars from across the globe had convergedin Chennai for the 27th World Congressof Poets. Former Indian President Dr.A.P.J. Abdul Kalam opened the con-gress, which was sponsored by theWorld Academy of Arts and Culture.

During the congress, Akash Ouchi ofBSG (Bharat Soka Gakkai) presentedthe SGI Peace and Culture Award to Dr.Kalam in recognition of his lifetimeachievements. In his address, Dr. Kalamlauded Dr. Krishna Srinivas, 95, for hisdedicated efforts in publishing themonthly journal Poet for the past 48years. The journal has readers in 50countries.

The first World Congress of Poets wasformed in 1969 by Amado Yuzon, Tin-wen Chung, Krishna Srinivas and LouLuTour with the aim of uniting people

across national borders andachieving world peace andmutual understandingthrough poetry. The officiallanguages of the congressare Arabic, Chinese, English,French, German, Greek,Hebrew and Spanish.

In a message to the 27thCongress, Mr. Ikedareferred to maitri, a Sanskritword expressing compas-sion and friendship, whichhe said is ultimately “the actof rising above attachmentto difference, bringing clear-ly into sight the worth anddignity . . . that exist equallywithin all people.” Heexpressed his belief that thisattitude and insight is inher-ent in the heart of the poet,whose “lofty mission,” heaffirmed, is “exalting thenobility of the human spirit,and rebuking the forces thatwould undermine anddestroy that nobility.”

The International Societyof Greek Writers and Artshas also recognized Mr.Ikeda for his literaryachievements and contri-butions to peace. SocietyPresident Chrissoula

Varveri-Varra announced the Greek-Chinese Culture Award during the FirstQinghai Lake International Poetry Fes-tival held in Qinghai Province, China,from August 7–10, and attended by 160poets and literary figures from 30 coun-tries. The festival was organized by theGreek writers society together with theCultural Agency of Qinghai Provinceand the Poetry Institute of China.


Students perform a song at the award ceremony

SGI’s global activities for peace,education and culture

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Dr. Srinivas and Dr. Padmanaban (holding certificate, center and right) entrust the WorldPeople’s Poet award to Institute of Oriental Philosophy Director Yoichi Kawada (3rd from left)

The SGI Quarterly was sad to hearof the passing of Dr. Krishna Srinivason December 14, 2007.

On September 27, the Chinese Peo-ple’s Association for Friendship withForeign Countries, the China-JapanFriendship Association and the ChinaCouncil for the Promotion of Interna-tional Trade in Beijing cohosted a grand

reception commemorating the35th anniversary of the normal-ization of Sino-Japanese diplo-matic relations at the Great Hallof the People in Beijing.

A Soka Gakkai delegation ledby Toshiyuki Mitsugi, senioradviser, attended the festivities,together with some 600 repre-sentatives from the two coun-tries. Chinese Premier WenJiabao, President of the China-Japan Friendship AssociationSong Jian, and former Japanese

Prime Ministers Yoshiro Mori and Tomi-ichi Murayama were among the atten-dees. Prior to the reception, Mr. Mitsugiconveyed a congratulatory message toPremier Wen Jiabao from SGI PresidentDaisaku Ikeda.

At the reception, various Chinese offi-cials greeted the Soka Gakkai delegatesand expressed their appreciation for Mr.Ikeda’s longstanding contributions tofriendship between the two countries.

To mark the anniversary, the SokaGakkai-affiliated Min-On Concert Asso-ciation sponsored a tour of Japan by 51members of the China National Acro-batic Troupe with 114 performances in61 cities throughout the country fromSeptember to December.

On September 22, one week prior tothe anniversary reception, a publicrecitation of Mr. Ikeda’s poems andwritings was held at Peking UniversityHall as a gesture of bilateral friendship.Students from Peking University andSoka University presented a total of 19poems and essays.


To commemorate the 50th anniver-sary of second Soka Gakkai presidentJosei Toda’s antinuclear declaration,SGI-South Africa hosted “My Revolu-tion—Revealing the Jewel Within,” atribute to Steve Biko in dance, music,song, storytelling and poetry, in Johan-nesburg on September 8. The eventincluded a performance by poet KhosiXaba, and a keynote speech fromMbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali, a poet forhuman rights who shared his perspec-tive of Steve Biko and one of his poems.Some 200 people joined the event.

The year 2007 marked the 30thanniversary of the death of Steve Biko,an iconic figure in South African historywho created a new pride and a new con-

sciousness among the peoples of SouthAfrica in some of its darkest hours. Hedied at age 30 on September 12, 1977,after being beaten and tortured by police.

SGI-South Africa determined to cre-ate a joyous celebration of his life, draw-ing inspiration from the text of a dia-logue between Dr. Mtshali and SGIPresident Daisaku Ikeda in 1991, as wellas a speech by Mr. Ikeda in the same

year in which he described the BlackConsciousness Movement, of whichBiko was a youthful leader, as follows:“The focus of this Black ConsciousnessMovement was a self-revolution, a kindof ‘human revolution’ movement.”Inspired by these words, SGI-SouthAfrica set out to create a commemora-tion of the life of Steve Biko that wouldcelebrate the parallels between the prin-ciples of Buddhism and Biko’s ideals.

Several poets performed original poet-ry, including one talented young poet of15. A director of the Steve Biko Founda-tion spoke, and the chairperson of theSteve Biko Remembrance Group sharedanecdotes of his life. Musical perfor-mances had people dancing in their seats.

China-Japan Normalization Commemorated

The China National Acrobatic Troupe

“My Revolution” in South AfricaP

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“Violence is a choice: Reject it. Non-violence is the weapon of the strong, notthe weak.”

Nobel Peace Prize laureate BettyWilliams stressed these words during alecture at SGI-USA’s World CultureCenter in Santa Monica, California, onSeptember 23. More than 900 peopleattended the lecture, one in the ongoingCulture of Peace Distinguished SpeakerSeries that SGI-USA’s Culture of PeaceResource Center is sponsoring to helpbuild an awareness of and sustain a cul-

ture of peace in families, schools, work-places and local communities.

Ms. Williams spoke frankly about herpast efforts for peace in Northern Ire-land. Over the past 30 years, she hasdevoted her life to fighting againstinjustices perpetrated on childrenthroughout the world. She has traveledextensively, advocating for legislation toprotect children and calling, in particu-lar, for the creation of “Cities of Com-passion” in every country—safety zonesthat would be off-limits to any form ofmilitary attack that could threaten chil-dren’s lives.


Caring for Our Elders

On September 23, SGI-USA membersin San Francisco, California, met for aforum on “Caring for Our Elders” at theSGI-USA San Francisco Culture Center.This was the seventh of a series on elder-ly care that began in January, sponsoredby SGI-USA women in San Francisco.

At the September 23 forum, six pan-elists from a variety of disciplinesinvolved in elder health care professionsprovided insight into the variousresources available to those caring forelders. The panelists spoke about dietand nutrition, hospice care and advancedirectives, communicating with theelderly, communicating with health careprofessionals, health care options andresources for the elderly, and taking careof the caregivers themselves. Followingpresentations, the panelists participatedin small group discussions with theaudience.

Day of Peace in Singapore

On September 21, the Singa-pore Soka Association (SSA)cosponsored an event titled“May Peace Prevail on Earth” tocommemorate the InternationalDay of Peace, together withMercy Relief, Jamiyah Singa-pore, the Young Sikh Associa-tion and the Inter-ReligiousOrganization. The UnitedNations designated September21 as the International Day ofPeace in 2001, with the aim of“strengthening the ideals ofpeace and alleviating tensionsand causes of conflicts.”

Some 200 people from variousreligious and civic organizationsgathered at the SSA FriendshipHall for an interfaith exchange. MercyRelief Chair T. K. Udairam welcomed the

participants, stating they had cometogether from a broad cross section ofcultures, religions and ethnicities “to sayin unison that we have chosen peace.”

Professor Tham Seong Chee, presidentof the United Nations Association of Sin-gapore, reminded the participants that“Ensuring peace and preserving it iseveryone’s concern.”

An eight-minute video, “Peace OneDay,” recounted British filmmaker Jere-my Gilley’s efforts to establish the Inter-national Day of Peace.

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More than 500 youth participated in the SGI-USA WestTerritory Youth Culture Festival, “Unstoppable—A Life ofVictory,” at the Vic Lopez Theater in Whittier, California,on October 14. The festival—an original productionpresented twice before audiences of 4,000—celebratedthe lives of five peace heroes whose efforts haveilluminated the dignity and power of ordinary people:Nelson Mandela, Betty Williams, César Chávez, WangariMaathai and Daisaku Ikeda.

Photos courtesy of E

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Youth Take the Lead inAntinuclear Movement

From September 8–16, SGI-UK host-ed an antinuclear exhibition producedby its youth members at its South Lon-don culture center, which was visited bysome 2,000 people. Dr. Robert Hinde,Chair of the British Pugwash Group andprofessor of zoology at Cambridge Uni-versity, gave a keynote speech. Dr.Hinde spoke about the cruelty of warthrough his own wartime experiences,as well as his feelings on visiting theHiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.“In order to eliminate human suffering,war itself must be eliminated,” hestressed.

The first Pugwash Conference washeld in 1957, the same year second SokaGakkai president Josei Toda made hisantinuclear declaration, entrusting thetask of achieving the abolition of nuclearweapons to young people. The

renowned astronomer, Prof. ChandraWickramasinghe, whose dialogue withSGI President Daisaku Ikeda has beenpublished as Space and Eternal Life, alsovisited the exhibit.

Sonja Davis PeaceAward

The SGI-New Zealand young women’sdivision won the Sonja Davis PeaceAward on September 4 for its members’efforts to spread peace in their localcommunities through the Victory OverViolence initiative. The award com-memorates the life and work of peaceactivist Sonja Davis and is administeredwith the support of the New Horizonsfor Women Trust.


Celebrating the opening of the exhibition

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The SGI exhibition “Building a Cultureof Peace for the Children of the World”was held at the Dubai Knowledge Vil-lage between November 2 and 10. Theexhibition was held under the patronageof Her Royal Highness Princess HayaBint Al Hussein, UN Messenger of Peaceand wife of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed BinRashid Al Maktoum, vice-president andprime minister of United Arab Emiratesand ruler of Dubai. It will subsequentlybe shown in other educational institu-tions in Dubai.

On November 1, over 350 invitedguests attended the opening ceremony

which featured a musical on the themeof a culture of peace performed by 75middle school students from DubaiModern High School, a co-host of theexhibition along with SGI-Gulf, theUNICEF Gulf Office, Dubai KnowledgeVillage, Dubai International AcademicCity and GEMS schools. The musicaltells the story of a troupe of youngclowns who are learning their trade andthe secrets of life itself.

In a message read out at the opening,SGI President Daisaku Ikeda stressedthat education is the necessary founda-tion for building a culture of peace.

Guests of honorincluded Dr. AbdullaAl Karam, chairman ofthe board of directorsand director general ofthe Dubai Knowledgeand Human Develop-ment Authority, andDr. Ayoub Kazim,executive director ofDubai Knowledge Vil-lage and Dubai Inter-national Academy City,who commented in hisspeech, “In line withthe mission of DubaiKnowledge Village toprovide the environ-ment for a variety of

organizations to create and disseminateknowledge, we are happy to associatewith SGI-Gulf, an organization that iscommitted to promoting human valuesthrough education and culture.”

Following the translation of the envi-ronmental education film “A Quiet Rev-olution” into Arabic by SGI-Gulf, a neweight-language DVD version has beenproduced, including Arabic and Germanas well as English, Japanese, Chinese(traditional), Korean, Spanish andFrench. Copies are available for educa-tional purposes at a nominal cost from<[email protected]>.

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Culture of Peace Exhibition in DubaiThe musical show staged by Dubai Modern High School

Dr. Ayoub Kazim (left) and Dr. Abdulla Al Karam (right) viewing the exhibition

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Yasumi Nishi is amandarin farmer inWakayama Prefecture,Japan. After taking over thefamily farm, he spent morethan 10 years in painstakingexperimentation with soilimprovement. This hasenabled him to producemandarins with aconsistently high sugarcontent that are now prizedthroughout Japan.

Mauro Traini has anorganic farm in Tuscany,Italy, where he produceswine, olive oil and grappa.He also cultivates ancient fruits,saffron and legumes. Out ofconcern for the environment, he nolonger transports his produce toother parts of Italy but only sells itlocally.

What aspect of the farming lifestylegives you the most joy?Mauro: There are so many joys tobeing a farmer. Besides working in theopen air and sharing the rhythms ofnature, the greatest pleasure is beingconscious of doing something thatbenefits both oneself and others—producinghealthy food thatis notcontaminatedwith pesticidesand attemptingto maintain ahealthyenvironment.

Jean-JacquesRousseau called

agriculture the most useful and nobleof all professions. I agree with this, andit has inspired me to continue in thisjob in spite of the many difficulties.Another pleasant aspect of this job isone’s relationships withother farmers, especiallythe older ones, whohave a lot of wisdom,not only aboutagriculture but about lifein general.Yasumi: What gives methe most joy is bringing the fruits that Igrew with such care to the market and

seeing people therereally appreciatingthem. It is also verysatisfying that mylivelihood is sustainedby people who arehappy to buy ourproducts. Over the past20 years, I’ve studiedhow to produce aspecial orange with a

rich, sweet and juicy taste. Ipour my love and affectiononto each tree, each leaf andeach fruit.

Also, to experience thechanges of the four seasonsin my body as I work makesme feel as though my ownlife is growing. It gives me asense of joy and appreciation,a sense of fulfillment.What are the greatestchallenges you face as afarmer?Yasumi: The greatestchallenge is when the crops,which we have poured so

much effort and care into, aredestroyed or damaged by bad weatheror other kinds of incidents. It’s also verychallenging when our products don’tget a fair evaluation at market.

Mauro: There are manydifficulties. The financialrewards do not comparewell with othereconomic sectors. Inrecent years, however,climate change is thegreatest problem

confronting us. I worry about thisbecause, despite all the farmer’s efforts,the risk of crop failure is very high.

Also, we have to fight against thispervasive vision of agriculture being thepreserve of the big multinationalcompanies with their agrochemicalsand genetic modifications.How do you see the mission of farmersin society?Mauro: Agriculture has always beenabout supplying food for humanity.Today it must provide for a remarkable


On VocationOn Vocation A series in which SGI members discusstheir approach to their profession

Yasumi Nishi (right)

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number of people; the difficulty is tofulfill this mission without excessiveexploitation and chemical pollution ofthe land.

We have to produce food that is fullof the vital energy that supports thelives of human beings. More often,modern agricultural produce is full ofresidual chemicals and deprived of thesubtle and more vital nutritionalelements that deeply nourish thehuman body. If human beings arewhat they eat, given humanity’spresent situation, agriculture bears agreat responsibility.Yasumi: SGI President Ikeda hasencouraged farmers to becomebeacons within ourcommunities. Icompletely agreewith him. I believewe have a role toplay in creatingharmony withinsociety, and I havebeen exertingmyself toward thatend.How does yourBuddhist practiceinfluence your approach to your work?Yasumi: I have changed a lot throughmy Buddhist practice and through theinfluence of the writings of PresidentIkeda; I have a deeper appreciation ofthe value of life. I have also been ableto develop a challenging spirit not tobe defeated by difficulties and tosquarely confront each problem I face. Ifeel grateful that I can continue toimprove myself.Mauro: Through the process of myown personal development inspired bymy Buddhist practice, I’ve come tounderstand the necessity of makingimprovements in my work. I’ve stoppedusing chemical products and begun tofarm organically, and I’ve alsodiscovered the importance ofmaintaining and recovering traditional

farming practices.I’ve also begun to conserve and

reproduce endangered varieties ofcereals, legumes, vines and fruits.When I learn about a strain which is indanger of becoming extinct, I feel veryemotional at the thought of being able

to protect it andpass it on to mychildren andfuturegenerations.Many people livein cities and havelittle contact withnature. Does thisconcern you?Yasumi: I thinkthis is the resultof excessive

emphasis placed on the pursuit ofprofit. One thing that concerns me isthat if people lose contact with nature,they are likely to lose their gentleness.Mauro: I always find it is strange thatthere are people who do notproduce at least some ofwhat they consume. Itwould be great if, in thefuture, many buildings incities, instead of havingonly parking lots, wouldalso have vegetable gardens.What do you feel you havelearned about the rhythms and laws ofnature from your work?Mauro: I think farmers develop anatural grasp of the Buddhist outlookon life. You find that the simple

wisdom that farmers possess is thesame as what Buddhism expresses inmore detailed terms—wisdom aboutlife and death, impermanence, theinterdependence of all phenomena,and the inseparability of self and theenvironment.

Farmers know that our lives areclosely linked with plants and the land,and studies are now demonstratingthey can influence each other. This linkbetween plants, the soil and humanbeings can influence the quality of theharvest. I believe in the positive effecton plants of dialogue, and I would liketo experiment with other ideas, such asthe effect of music in cultivation.

From this perspective, I feel hopeful.A positive change in human beings willbe reflected in the environment. Wewill be able to stop our destruction ofthe natural environment.Yasumi: Although the crops we growcannot speak, I think they probably

know their mission. What I mean is, seeds knowwhen to sprout, and they

endure numeroushardships to bloom andbear fruit, progressingwith all their mighttoward the flourishing of

their own progeny. We seehow plants are able to

soothe a person’s heart, bringingenjoyment and courage to othersthrough their own existence. If we givethem our attentive care, they never failto respond. I think this is precisely whatis taught in Buddhism.�

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H ere, SGI President Ikeda discusses the enlighten-ment of second Soka Gakkai president Josei Todaduring his imprisonment by Japan’s militarist gov-

ernment in World War II. In prison, Toda avidly studied theLotus Sutra and its introductory Sutra of ImmeasurableMeanings. While struggling to understand a passage in thelatter sutra describing the “entity of the Buddha,” Toda hada realization that completely transformed his perspective onBuddhism. The passage is a list of 34 negations, beginning“His body neither existing nor not existing, neither causednor conditioned, neither self nor other. . . .”

The Lotus Sutra teaches that all human beings canattain Buddhahood. What, then, is a Buddha? What doesit mean to attain Buddhahood? These are questions vitalto all Buddhist teachings. Tomerely say that the entity ofthe Buddha transcends thepower of language, that it isunfathomable, does not helpour understanding in theleast. Mr. Toda deeply contemplated these questions andsought to resolve them.

It was then that the word life suddenly flashedthrough his mind. He perceived that the Buddha is lifeitself:

Life is neither existing nor not existing, neithercaused nor conditioned, neither self nor other, nei-ther square nor round, neither short nor long, . . .neither crimson nor purple nor any other sort ofcolor.Life is a straightforward, familiar word we use every

day. But at the same time it can express the most pro-found essence of the Buddhist Law, a single word thatexpresses infinite meaning. All human beings areendowed with life, so this word has practical, concretemeaning for everyone. In this way, Mr. Toda’s realiza-tion made Buddhism comprehensible to all.

Life also has enormous diversity. It is rich and full ofenergy. At the same time, it operates according to cer-tain laws and has a defined rhythm. Life is also free andunfettered. It is an open entity in constant communica-tion with the external world, always exchanging matter

and energy and information. Yet while open, it maintainsits autonomy. Life is characterized by this harmoniousfreedom and an openness to the entire universe. The infi-nite and unbounded state of Buddhahood can bedescribed as a state in which the freedom, openness andharmony of life are realized to the maximum extent.

Mr. Toda once described his feelings after havingattained his realization in prison as follows:

It is like lying on your back in a wide open spacelooking up at the sky with arms and legs out-stretched. All that you wish for immediatelyappears. No matter how much you may give away,there is always more. It is never exhausted. Try andsee if you can attain this state of life. With the word Buddha, the image of a supreme being

tends to dominate people’simpression. It evokes a feel-ing of the Buddha beingsomehow distant and sepa-rate from us. The word Law,in the sense that it implies a

rule or phenomenon, suggests the impersonal. Alone, itdoes not convey much warmth. Essentially, the Buddhaand the Law are not two different, separate things—theword life encompasses both.

All people are endowed with life, and life is immea-surably precious. The declaration that “the Buddha is lifeitself” reveals that the very essence of Buddhism—theBuddha and the Law—is in our own life.

Mr. Toda once said:We use the word self [to refer to ourselves], but

this word actually refers to the universe. When weask how the life of the universe is different from thelife of each one of you, the only differences we findare those of your bodies and minds. Your life andthat of the universe are the same. I believe that “life” and “life force” will be the key-

words for the 21st century. Mr. Toda’s enlightenmentthat the Buddha is life itself is a declaration that life isthe absolute and supreme reality. It was an opening vol-ley to all warped and twisted points of view which woulddestroy the dignity of human life. And indeed this isBuddhism’s fundamental challenge.�

“The infinite and unbounded state of Buddhahood can be described as a state

in which the freedom, openness and harmonyof life are realized to the maximum extent.”

The Wisdomof the Lotus Sutra

The Lotus Sutra is a Mahayana Buddhist text whose teachings form the foundation ofNichiren Buddhism. The following is excerpted from SGI President Daisaku Ikeda’ssix-volume work, The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra, which explores the significanceof this ancient text to our contemporary lives.

Making “Life” the Keywordof the Coming Age©

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©Yali Shi/Dreamstime.com

The Wisdomof the Lotus Sutra

Editorial team:Joan Anderson, Anthony George, Kumiko Ichikawa, Elizabeth Ingrams, Kimiaki Kawai,

Motoki Kawamorita, Yoshinori Miyagawa, Nobue Nakaura, Satoko Suzuki, Richard Walker

Published by Soka Gakkai International©2008 Soka Gakkai International. All rights reserved. Printed in Japan.

Printed on recycled paper.

An exhibition of 200 paintings and calligraphy works byChina’s Jao Tsung-I was held at the Soka Gakkai’s KansaiInternational Culture Center in Kobe, Japan, from October2–28, 2007, commemorating the 35th anniversary of thenormalization of Sino-Japanese relations. Jao Tsung-I, whohas won renown as a scholar, a painter and a calligrapher,has been described as the Leonardo da Vinci of the Orient.Some 70,000 people visited the exhibition.

Left to right: Lotus flowers with text from the Lotus Sutra; tree peonies: the text exhorts human beings todisplay the same nobility as these flowers; stylized Chinese characters: mountain, water, sacredness andsound; Chinese characters in ancient oracle bone script.

The Paintings and Calligraphy of Jao Tsung-I

The Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a worldwideassociation of 82 constituent organizations withmembership in 190 countries and territories. In theservice of its members and of society at large, the SGIcenters its activities on developing positive humanpotentialities for hope, courage and altruistic action.

Rooted in the life-affirming philosophy of NichirenBuddhism, members of the SGI share a commitment tothe promotion of peace, culture and education. Thescope and nature of the activities conducted in each

country vary in accordance with the culture andcharacteristics of that society. They all grow, however,from a shared understanding of the inseparable linkagesthat exist between individual happiness and the peaceand development of all humanity.

As a nongovernmental organization (NGO) withformal ties to the United Nations, the SGI is active inthe fields of humanitarian relief and public education,with a focus on peace, sustainable development andhuman rights.

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

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

Website: www.sgi.org

©Natural Selection Craig Tuttle/Design Pics/Corbis

Cape Kiwanda, Oregon, U.S.A.

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