Daisaku Ikeda and John Dewey: A Religious Dialogue

This article is a revision of a lecture
held at this Institute on 17 March 2009.

Jim Garrison

B

OTH Daisaku Ikeda and John Dewey are religious humanists dedicated to dialogue as the supreme means for creating understanding
and securing peace and happiness across all kinds of differences including those of culture, politics, race, ethnicity, gender, and religion. They
preserve a role for the religious in daily life while seeking a “third way”
between the dogmas of secular humanism on the one side and dogmatic
religion on the other. Both believe novel meaning and value may emerge
in discourse to transform our thoughts, feelings, and actions. In this the150th anniversary of Dewey’s birth, let us begin a dialogue between him
and Ikeda as well as Soka Gakkai and American pragmatism.
In his most metaphysical book, Dewey insists that “the philosophy
here presented may be termed . . . naturalistic humanism” (LW 1: 10).
Ikeda too has a deep commitment to humanism. He states, “The SGI is ahumanistic organization” (I, 135). He is serious about this. “Perhaps,”
Ikeda proclaims, “we could call this teaching of the Lotus Sutra a ‘cosmic humanism’”(I, 15). Furthermore, Ikeda does not appeal to a supernatural realm beyond everyday life. Instead, he asserts: “The attainmentof Buddhahood in this lifetime means to achieve enlightenment within
this actual world and this life” (WLS I, 180).1 Ikeda also advocates “naturalistic humanism.” It seeks to intervene in this world to secure compassionate amelioration rather than supervene from outside this world tooffer a reward in heaven for suffering on earth. Ikeda believes that the“true essence of humanism lies in our compassion” (I, 135). The goal is
to transform reality here and now to assuage present distress. Ikeda
states:
The truth (true entity) of things is not found in some far distant realm
removed from reality. In this unwavering focus on the true form (trueentity) of everyday reality, never moving away from real things and

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events (all phenomena) we can discern the true brilliance of the Buddha’s wisdom (WLS I, 170).2

The Mystic Law of cause and effect governs both spiritual and material
existence, which we must comprehend nondualistically. Both Ikeda andDewey are religious not secular humanists and, of course, Dewey isfamous for his nondualism.3
Ikeda and Dewey agree humanity participates in the doings of a
dynamic, continuously creative, endlessly evolving, and pluralistic universe. In his essay, “Creative Life,” Ikeda asserts:
The Lotus Sutra, the core of Mahayana teaching, describes the
dynamism of creative life . . . . In one respect, creative life is free of thebounds of time and space, free to expand and grow . . . . [A]ll phenomena are condensed within our life, and at the same time our life pervades
the universe . . . . On the level of our everyday activities, creative life
propels us to the uninhibited realization of self-perfection . . . . [I]tplaces the quest to realize the Way of the Bodhisattva right here, in the
midst of the troubled mundane world. It leads us to elevate ourselves,transcend our “lesser self,” and affirm the universal self here, now, inthe middle of ordinary reality. (NH 8–9)

We are created creators who, in our creative acts, continue the creationof cosmos out of chaos. “Art,” according to Ikeda, “is the irrepressible
expression of human spirituality” (5). He further proclaims:
Art is to the spirit what bread is to the body . . . . What is this quality ofart that has ordained it to play such an elemental and enduring role inhuman life? I believe it is the power to integrate, to reveal the wholeness of things . . . . [A]rt becomes the elemental modality through whichhumans discover their bonds with humans, humanity with nature, andhumanity with the universe. (4–5)

In artistic creation, the lesser self participates in the dynamic, creative
life of the universe thereby opening up to the larger self, the basic principle of the universe, “the [Mystic] Law that generates the many manifestations of and activities in human life” (NH, 123).
Dewey connects the embodied struggle for life with the unique artistic expressions of the spirit that he calls “ethereal things,” a term borrowed from the poet John Keats to designate things that have neverbefore existed. Examples include the currently heaviest element in the

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periodic table, “Ununoctium,” the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the rock garden of the Ryoanji Temple. These
would not exist without humanity. Human creations are part of the endless unfolding of possibilities within an unfinished, continuously evolving universe dependent characterized by dependent origination. Ikeda
mentions the “strong esthetic dimension in Japanese religiosity” (5).
There is also a strong aesthetic dimension in Dewey’s pragmatic religiosity. In Art as Experience, Dewey writes:
A work of art elicits and accentuates this quality of being a whole andof belonging to the larger, all-inclusive, whole which is the universe inwhich we live. This fact, I think, is the explanation of that feeling of
exquisite intelligibility and clarity we have in the presence of an object
that is experienced with esthetic intensity. It explains also the religious
feeling that accompanies intense esthetic perception. We are, as it were,introduced into a world beyond this world which is nevertheless thedeeper reality of the world in which we live in our ordinary experiences.
We are carried out beyond ourselves to find ourselves. I can see no psychological ground for such properties of an experience save that, somehow, the work of art operates to deepen and to raise to great clarity thatsense of an enveloping undefined whole that accompanies every normal
experience. This whole is then felt as an expansion of ourselves . . . .
Where egotism is not made the measure of reality and value, we are citizens of this vast world beyond ourselves, and any intense realization of
its presence with and in us brings a peculiarly satisfying sense of unity
in itself and with ourselves. (LW 10: 199)

Human creative expression and aesthetic appreciation is part of the creative life of the universe. It is how the lesser self becomes aware of thegreater self and the larger whole of which we belong for Dewey as much
as Ikeda.
Ikeda himself recognizes the important similarities between Soka
Gakkai and Dewey’s pragmatic religious humanism. In Ikeda’s lecture“Mahayana Buddhism and Twenty-first-Century Civilization,” he asks
the troubling question: “Does religion make people stronger, or weaker?” (NH, 157). Ikeda seeks “a third path,” or middle way, between“faith in ourselves and recognition of a power that is greater than weare” (158). It is in this context that Ikeda turns directly to Dewey as an
ally:
Similarly, John Dewey, in A Common Faith, asserts that it is “the150

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religious,” rather than specific religions, that is of vital importance.
While religions all too quickly fall into dogmatism and fanaticism, “thatwhich is religious” has the power to “unify interests and energies” andto “direct action and generate the heat of emotion and the light of intelligence.” Likewise, “the religious” enables the realization of thosebenefits that Dewey identifies as “the values of art in all its forms, ofknowledge, of effort and of rest after striving, of education and fellowship, of friendship and love, of growth in mind and body.”
As Dewey understood, and as the sad outcome of people’s self worship in modern times has demonstrated, without assistance we are incapable of living up to our potential. Only by relying on and merging withthe eternal can we fully activate all our capabilities. Thus, we need help,
but our human potential does not come from outside; it is, and always
has been, of us and within us (158).4

What Ikeda affirms here is a strong statement of Dewey’s religious
humanism. We find many of the common themes shared by Ikeda andDewey either explicitly mentioned or at least hinted at in the foregoingpassage. These include creative life, growth, appreciation for the possibilities of existence, the greater and lesser self, eclipsing while not eradicating the individual ego, unique human potential that is nonethelessdependent on others for actualization, unified artistic expression as theworkings of humanity toward achieving harmonious unity, and more.
What we will explore on this occasion is Dewey’s distinction between“religion” and “the religious” along with the notion of a third path or the
middle way.
Let us begin with the third path. Ikeda seeks something between completely secular over-confidence in human free will, rationality, and“excessive faith in our own powers” on one hand and extreme belief indeterminism, grace or “dependence on some external authority” such asa theistic God on the other (158). Ikeda makes this critical comment:“Perhaps because our Buddhist movement is so human-centered, Harvey
Cox of the Harvard Divinity School has described it as an effort todefine the humanistic direction of religion” (159). He says that “everything, including religion, exists ‘for the human being’” (85). What hemeans here is that religion should help every individual actualize theirunique potential while finding their greater self such that they may
appreciate the possibilities of existence and enter into the creative life of
the universe to relieve suffering and bring about peace and happiness.
Ikeda means that religion should help individuals to achieve their full
Buddha nature. He does not mean the glorification of the egotistic lesser

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self and its powers.
For Dewey, the third path involves the poet William Wordsworth’s
notion of “natural piety” toward the universe that sustains us:
The fact that human destiny is so interwoven with forces beyond humancontrol renders it unnecessary to suppose that dependence and thehumility that accompanies it have to find the particular channel that isprescribed by traditional doctrines. What is especially significant israther the form which the sense of dependence takes . . . . For ourdependence is manifested in those relations to the environment that support our undertakings and aspirations as much as it is in the defeats
inflicted upon us. The essentially unreligious attitude is that which
attributes human achievement and purpose to man in isolation from theworld of physical nature and his fellows. Our successes are dependent
upon the cooperation of nature. The sense of the dignity of humannature is as religious as is the sense of awe and reverence when it rests
upon a sense of human nature as a cooperating part of a larger whole.
Natural piety is not of necessity either a fatalistic acquiescence in natural happenings or a romantic idealization of the world. It may rest upon ajust sense of nature as the whole of which we are parts, while it also recognizes that we are parts that are marked by intelligence and purpose,
having the capacity to strive by their aid to bring conditions into greater
consonance with what is humanly desirable. Such piety is an inherent
constituent of a just perspective in life. (LW 9: 19)

Enlightenment and moral amelioration is achieved neither solely
through one’s own efforts alone, nor solely through the power of Nature,
God, or the Buddha.
The primary difference between “religion” and “the religious” forDewey is that religion confines itself to a special domain of humanexperience usually associated with the supernatural and, therefore, does
not intervene to alter the affairs of daily living. Even at its very best,dogmatic religion only supervenes to provide solace, support, and comfort in times of need, but it never moves forward to restore the wholeness of the self through right relationships of dependent origination
within the world. At worst, it leads to fanatic dogmatism. Meanwhile thereligious may arise in all domains of human experience, is entirely natural although numinous, and most importantly, intervenes in the courseof daily affairs to achieve a “better adjustment in life” (11). It often
begins by providing compassionate support, but it moves on to restore
harmonious relationship.

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The difference between “a religion” and “the religious” is the difference “between anything that may be denoted by a noun substantive andthe quality of experience that is designated by an adjective” (LW 9: 4,
emphasis in original). Adjectives, verbs, and adverbs capture the religious quality of experience. Those that have “the religious” experience
feel the desire to engage the world to transform it and make things better
while experiencing a sense of being sustained by the larger whole thatthey serve. Those devoted to a religion may well resign themselves tothe way things are and hope for a reward in the afterlife while egotistically demanding all others obey their rigid dogma. The genuinely religious seek happiness, peace and justice in the here and now and not insome realm beyond nature. They are value creators. For Ikeda andDewey, “the religious” means religious humanism where human beings
experience an intimate relation with the universe wherein their creative
actions matter because they intervene in the course of events to makethings better.
One way of comprehending the difference between a religion thatmerely supervenes and the religious that intervenes is that the former
presupposes an already fully actualized substantial being, a God, anexternal power that human beings must docilely obey in the hopes of
securing support in life and perhaps a reward in the afterlife. Dewey distinguishes two different meanings of the word “God”:
On one score, the word can mean only a particular Being. On the otherscore, it denotes the unity of all ideal ends arousing us to desire andactions. Does the unification have a claim upon our attitude and conduct
because it is already, apart from us, in realized existence, or because of
its own inherent meaning and value? (29)

The first meaning of the word “God” is that of “a particular Being” thatsupervenes in the world and whom we must petition for support since
we cannot rely on ourselves. The second meaning is simply a synonym
for those ideal values that awaken desire and guide human action thatintervenes in the world. The former leads to dogmatic religion while thelatter leads to religious humanism. The problem with an already complete, fully realized God, especially when assumed to be omniscient andomnipotent, is that it makes it very difficult to account for evil in theworld unless the Being itself is evil (see LW 9: 31). Dewey writes:[W]hat I have been criticizing is the identification of the ideal with aparticular Being, especially when that identification makes necessary

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the conclusion that this Being is outside of nature, and what I have tried
to show is that the ideal itself has its roots in natural conditions; itemerges when the imagination idealizes existence by laying hold of thepossibilities offered to thought and action. There are values, goods,
actually realized upon a natural basis--the goods of human association,of art and knowledge. (33)

For Dewey, an alleviating ideal emerges from the earth (it “has its roots
in nature”) through our imagination that grasps the ideal possibilities ofactual everyday existence. Still, we must strive to secure these ideals byintervening in the course of events. The power of imagination to envision otherwise unseen possibilities is so magnificent, we may understand why some experience it as supernatural.
Ikeda also rejects the identification of our highest ideals with a completed Being, much less an omniscient and omnipotent creator, outside
nature:Neither the state nor ideology is sacred, nor is any superhuman Buddha
or deity. The Bodhisattvas of the Earth are in fact Buddhas. But theterm Buddha is inevitably taken to mean a being somehow transcendental or superior to ordinary human beings. The Bodhisattvas of the Earththoroughly devote themselves to the way of bodhisattvas as people whocarry out Buddhist practice. They thoroughly devote themselves to theway of human beings. This point is tremendously significant. The
restoration of trust and belief in humanity will be the key to religion in
the twenty-first century . . . . (WLS III, 272, emphasis in original)

Dewey would approve this powerful statement of religious humanism.
He complains: “Men have never fully used the powers they possess toadvance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power
external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsiblefor doing” (LW 9: 31). Religious humanism demands that every humanbeing exercise their full powers and take responsibility for securing theideals of peace, righteousness, and compassionate mitigation.
In dogmatic religion, humankind sacrifices itself to an already fully
actualized supernatural Being. This path leads to religious oppression
and warfare. Many people postulate an anthropomorphic God that is justa projection of the lesser self’s egotistic desires. In contrast, “the religious” frees human beings to strive creatively to secure ideal possibilities in cooperation with the larger community of humankind, otherliving creatures, and even physical nature. Here is Dewey’s definition of154

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the religious:
Any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal end against obstacles and in
spite of threats of personal loss because of conviction of its general andenduring value is religious in quality. Many a person, inquirer, artist,
philanthropist, citizen, men and women in the humblest walks of life,
have achieved, without presumption and without display, such unification of themselves and of their relations to the conditions of existence. It
remains to extend their spirit and inspiration to ever wider numbers.
(19)

The forgoing passage echoes Dewey’s notion of the “soul” as activities“organized into unity” (LW 1: 223). Dewey states:
To say emphatically of a particular person that he has soul or a greatsoul is not to utter a platitude, applicable equally to all human beings. It
expresses the conviction that the man or woman in question has inmarked degree qualities of sensitive, rich and coordinated participationin all the situations of life. Thus works of art, music, poetry, painting,architecture, have soul, while others are dead, mechanical. (223)

A soulful person recognizes and responds to every new life situation
creatively, uniquely, harmoniously, richly, and compassionately.
Dewey’s notion of soulful persons resembles Ikeda’s idea that anyone
may awaken to their Buddha nature and undergo human revolution.
Dewey and Ikeda agree on the importance of ideal values that unify aperson’s life as they strive to secure peace and justice in their world.
Ikeda insists:
To escape from reality is not the spirit of the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus
Sutra teaches how to make reality ideal . . . . Some might think it shallow to speak of attaining benefit in the present life, but I believe a religion that does not enable people to transform their lives is powerless . . .
. Creating value in daily life is the heart of the Lotus Sutra. (WLS VII,103)

Like Dewey, Ikeda thinks the religious intervenes in life through free
exercise of the imagination to envision ideal possibilities beyond theactual that it is our responsibility to actualize through our creative
actions. Soka Gakkai means value creating society. The notion of value
creation, the activities of creatively transforming everyday reality into

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an idea value, is critical to both Ikeda and Dewey.
Initially, the power of ideals is merely an imaginative projection ofharmonizing possibilities within the larger whole of the universe. Dewey
proclaims:
The connection between imagination and the harmonizing of the self iscloser than is usually thought. The idea of a whole, whether of thewhole personal being or of the world, is an imaginative, not a literal,
idea . . . . It cannot be apprehended in knowledge nor realized in reflection. Neither observation, thought, nor practical activity can attain thatcomplete unification of the self which is called a whole. The whole self
is an ideal, an imaginative projection. Hence the idea of a thoroughgoing and deep-seated harmonizing of the self with the Universe . . . operates only through imagination . . . . The self is always directed toward
something beyond itself and so its own unification depends upon theidea of the integration of the shifting scenes of the world into that imaginative totality we call the Universe. (LW 9: 14)

Imagination, however, must not become a means for anthropomorphically constructing escapist fantasies of a hypostatized, already fully
actualized God, or Buddha, that does all the work for us if only we will
believe in them and passively obey. Instead, actualization of the ideal
value requires active human intervention in the affairs of existence.
“Human beings,” Ikeda reminds us, “are wellsprings of creativity”(WLS 1, 202). If we truly understand the nature of dependent origination, emptiness, and nonsubstantiality then we would understand that allphenomena are fleeting and why Ikeda would say that “our destiny is tostay in continuous flight, ever moving forward to the next creation”(NH, 41) It is not what we have done, but what we are yet to do thatdetains us upon this planet. “The essential teaching (second half of the
Lotus sutra),” Ikeda indicates, “is about actualization” (WLS VI, 253).
There are ideal values that we only first perceive in creative imagination.
We must then strive to actualize the ideal that it may intervene in our
everyday life.
For Ikeda, religious humanism demands that we imaginatively perceive ideal possibilities that lie beyond the actual, but then we must act
passionately to secure those ideals through the exercise of intelligent
action. What we want from imagination are real, actualizable possibilities to guide action, and not escapist fantasies that yield a religion thatmerely supervenes upon events from some supernatural realm. Dewey
states: “It is this active relation between ideal and actual to which I156

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would give the name ‘God’ ” (LW 9: 34). I believe Ikeda would agree
that we could almost substitute “the Buddha” for “God” so that this passage reads: It is this active relation between ideal and actual to which I
would give the name the “Buddha.” Dewey affirms:[T]he function of such a working union of the ideal and actual seems to
me to be identical with the force that has in fact been attached to theconception of God in all the religions that have a spiritual content; and aclear idea of that function seems to me urgently needed at the present
time. (35, emphasis in original)

Ikeda and Dewey are both religious humanists that strive to create thevalues that sustain peace and justice while relieving suffering. In
Dewey’s sense of the religious, the word “God” and the word “Buddha”
are surprisingly similar.5
References
Citations of the works of John Dewey are to the critical edition published by Southern
Illinois University Press. Volume and page numbers follows the initials of the series.
Abbreviations for the critical edition are:
EW The Early Works (1882–1898)
MW The Middle Works (1899–1924)
LW The Later Works (1925–1953)
Ikeda, Daisaku (1995). A New Humanism: The University Addresses of Daisaku Ikeda.
New York: Weatherhill. Abbreviated NH.
Ikeda, Daisaku, Saito, Katsuji, Endo, Takanori, and Suda, Haruo (2001). The Wisdom Of
The Lotus Sutra: A Discussion in six volumes. Santa Monica, CA: World Tribune
Press. Abbreviated WLS followed by volume number. I only cite from president
Ikeda’s contributions to the dialogue.
Ikeda, Daisaku (2001). Soka Education: A Buddhist Vision for Teachers, Students andParents. Santa Monica, CA: Middleway Press. Abbreviated SA.
Notes
1
Elsewhere, Ikeda claims: “Buddhism lies close at hand in the here and now. It exists
in daily life, in human existence, in society. To present Buddhism as belonging to somerealm removed from life and reality is a deception” (WLS 1, 3).
2
Ikeda writes:“True aspect” refers to the true reality of life as viewed from the enlightenedstate of the Buddha, who has broken free of all delusion. Here, all things areequal, transcending distinctions and differences between subject and object, self
and others, mind and body, the spiritual and the material. (WLS I, 173)
Dewey would approve of this antidualistic insight.
3
Dewey distinguished his emergent naturalism from reductionist materialism by stating that “there is involved in this view a metaphysical theory of substance which I do

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not accept; and I do not see how any view can be called materialism that does not take‘matter’ to be a substance and to be the only substance—in the traditional metaphysicalsense of substance” (LW 14: 87). He goes on to observe that even terms in physics suchas “mass” merely “name a functional relation rather than a substance” (88). Dewey
replaced the metaphysical notion of substance with a functionalist naturalism.
4
All references to Dewey in this passage are from A Common Faith (LW 9: 34–36).
5
I would like to thank Virginia Benson, Jeff Farr, Kanako Ide, and Angella
Kawashima and for their helpful comments. Errors that remain are entirely my own.