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    For Our Wonderful New Members
    For Our Wonderful New Members
    For Our Wonderful New Members
    Ebook93 pages1 hour

    For Our Wonderful New Members

    By Daisaku Ikeda

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    About this ebook

    “I intend to write as if we were seated together in a shady grove cooled by gentle breezes, engaging in a relaxed conversation.” So saying, Daisaku Ikeda invites us to explore with him five core principles of Nichiren Buddhism and the Soka Gakkai movement, so that we may find true happiness ourselves, help others do the same, and bring about a more peaceful world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateJan 1, 2021
    ISBN9781946635273
    For Our Wonderful New Members

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      Book preview

      For Our Wonderful New Members - Daisaku Ikeda

      ONE

      A Teaching of Mentor and Disciple—Let’s Walk the Path to Happiness Together

      NICHIREN BUDDHISM IS THE SUPREME WAY to develop wisdom to achieve happiness and peace. It is a teaching that enriches each person’s life while striving to elevate the life state of humanity and create a society in which people can live in harmony.

      The Soka Gakkai is growing dynamically as a global religious movement of the twenty-first century. All of you, our new members who have joined us at this time have a mission imbued with great good fortune from past existences (LSOC, 356), just as Buddhism teaches.

      Here, together with our treasured new members whom I love and respect, and with friends who have been studying Buddhism up till now, I would like to discuss the core principles and practice of Nichiren Buddhism. I intend to write as if we were seated together in a shady grove cooled by gentle breezes, engaging in a relaxed conversation. First, we will study about mentor and disciple, the core spirit of Buddhism, the most basic principle of a humanistic philosophy.

      Communicating the Spirit and Actions of My Mentor

      My mentor is Josei Toda, the second Soka Gakkai president. I would not be the person I am today were it not for him. My two novels, The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution, which I have spent the better part of my life writing, are nothing other than the fulfillment of a promise I made to him deep in my heart.

      In 1957, I resolved: It is my mission to leave a record of Mr. Toda’s life for the sake of posterity! On August 13 of that year, Mr. Toda called on me to join him in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture. At the time, I was engaged in an ongoing struggle against the devilish nature of authority, as the Soka Gakkai faced persecutions in the form of what’s known as the Yubari Coal Miners Union Incident¹ and the Osaka Incident.²

      In one of my conversations with my mentor in Karuizawa, the subject came up of his newly published novel, Human Revolution. The novel told the story of a man, modeled on Mr. Toda, striving to advance kosen-rufu together with his mentor, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, the first Soka Gakkai president. It chronicled the true nature of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Value-Creating Education Society), the precursor to the Soka Gakkai, and what it stood for.

      kosen-rufu—A term from the Lotus Sutra that literally means to declare and spread widely. It refers to the process of securing lasting peace and happiness for all humankind by establishing the humanistic ideals of Nichiren Buddhism in society.

      Mr. Toda confessed with a smile, however, that while he had no trouble writing about Mr. Makiguchi, he found it too difficult to convey his own story fully. Those words struck me deeply.

      Mr. Toda’s novel concluded after describing his courageous struggle while imprisoned by the Japanese militarist authorities and his awakening to his mission as a Bodhisattva of the Earth [whom in the Lotus Sutra the Buddha entrusts with propagating the Mystic Law, the Lotus Sutra’s essence]. He did not, however, record anything about his tremendous efforts to spread the teachings after his release.

      Enabling a Change in the Destiny of All Humankind

      The following day, August 14—the tenth anniversary of my first meeting with him—I vowed to write a sequel telling the true history of the Soka Gakkai spirit in Mr. Toda’s place.

      Seven years later, in Okinawa on December 2, 1964, I began writing The Human Revolution, the story of Mr. Toda’s life dedicated to kosen-rufu. Its central theme is A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.³ And for the past twenty-five years, I have been writing The New Human Revolution, describing the endeavors of his disciples to make their mentor’s vision a reality. Now, that literary journey of the shared struggle of mentor and disciple has been completed, and I have been able to fulfill my vow to my mentor.⁴

      The Wish to Help All People to Become Buddhas

      It must be ties of karma from the distant past that have destined you to become my disciple at a time like this. Shakyamuni and Many Treasures⁵ certainly realized this truth. The [Lotus Sutra’s] statement, Those persons who had heard the Law dwelled here and there in various Buddha lands, constantly reborn in company with their teachers, cannot be false in any way. (WND-1, 217)

      This passage from Nichiren’s The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life teaches the deep karmic ties that link mentor and disciple as expounded in Buddhism. To receive the heritage of the ultimate Law of life mentioned in the title means, very simply, to inherit the most important teaching for attaining Buddhahood, which is transmitted from the Buddha to ordinary people, from mentor to disciple.

      In the Lotus Sutra’s second chapter, Expedient Means, the Buddha explains that he has aimed from the start to make all persons equal to me, without any distinction between us (LSOC, 70). Shakyamuni’s true wish was to enable all people to attain the same life state of Buddhahood he had achieved.

      Here, I would like to affirm that Buddhism is distinguished by its focus on human beings. A Buddha is an awakened human being—a person, just like the rest of us. The person first to awaken to the Law (the Buddha) teaches that Law, seeking to elevate the lives of all human beings. In that respect, the relationship between the Buddha and ordinary people is not like that between a god and human beings. Rather, it is a relationship between teacher and student, between mentor and disciple.

      People of later ages lost sight of this core message, first by limiting the

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