Special Series:
Message for the Age of Human Rights—What Does the Third Millennium Require? (2)Daisaku Ikeda
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
WOMEN’S RESPONSIBILITIESFrom Individualism to Solidarity
Ikeda: Their traits as compassionate, loving givers and guardians of life
assign to women a very special role in the twenty-first century and thewhole third millennium it ushered in. All organizations will find it hardto grow and evolve unless they respect the wisdom of women and pay
more attention to their opinions than they have in the past. Failure to do
so demonstrates irresponsibility toward future developments and canlead humanity once again into the grievous path of war. There can be no
doubt that women can fulfill the responsibility of altering the course ofhistory from an era of belligerence and violence to one of peace andsymbiosis. Women’s solidarity of goodness is the foundation of humanpeace and happiness.
The SGI Argentina Women’s Peace Committee held its first conference at the SGI Peace Auditorium in Buenos Aires, in April, 2007. Yourwife, Amanda, attended the meeting, to which you sent a splendid message. In addition, you are kind enough to serve as honorary chairman of
the committee. I should like to take this opportunity to offer you mydeepest thanks.
Pérez Esquivel: It is an honor for me. Unfortunately, as I was in theBasque region of Spain supporting interethnic peace and understanding,
I was unable to attend the conference in Buenos Aires. Nonetheless, I
am honored to have been able to play even a small part. In my message,
which my wife Amanda read on my behalf, I had the following to say
about the struggle being waged by you and all SGI members.
“President Ikeda devotes his life to education, training people to beaware of issues concerning all humankind and to understand and act on
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them. Whatever you can do for your local regions will turn out to be
useful to humanity. You are sensitive, wise women concerned about the
future. I know how you struggle day in and day out to create a world of
equality and amity for succeeding generations, including your own children.”
The conference you mention was followed by an environmental exhibition entitled “Seeds of Change: The Earth Charter and Human Potential,” the content of which I understand was very rewarding and fruitful.
In modern society, which grows increasingly individualistic, for thesake of creating a culture of solidarity, everyone, not just women, must
enthusiastically address social diversity and attempt to extract solidarity
from it. In this sense, I expect great things from the wholehearted
actions of SGI members, who transcend divisive differences, build
bridges among diverse cultures, and demonstrate the potential forembracing and including those differences in actual daily affairs.
Gandhi’s Expectations of Women’s Role
Ikeda: Thank you for your warm words of understanding and encouragement. Our great hope is that our movement can provide seeds ofreform necessary to cope with global warming and the other grave
issues confronting humanity.
In April, 2007—the month in which the women’s peace conference
was taking place in Argentina—on the campus of Soka University inTokyo, the Institute of Oriental Philosophy was sponsoring a joint symposium on the occasion of the centennial of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence movement (satyagraha). In an address he delivered at
the time, my great friend Professor N. Radhakrishnan, former director of
the Gandhi Memorial Institute in New Delhi, said that Gandhi can becalled the first person in history to give women major roles to play insociety. Instead of measuring the wealth of a society in terms of splendid architecture or weaponry, he saw women, the compassionate nurturers of life, as great treasures and said that a society that cannot appreciate them has no future. I am in complete sympathy with what he said.
Pérez Esquivel: I agree with him, too. Some years ago, on a visit to
Mumbai, I met men and women who fought beside Mahatma Gandhi inthe struggle for Indian independence. Though already old, in their ideals
and their capacity to resist, they preserved their ideals of the dignity oflife. Gandhi knew that men and women had to share the road to independence under equal conditions. A large number of women were still

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keeping alight the flame of ideals of liberty they and Gandhi had lit
together. About women’s potentialities, he said that, if power is thoughtof in terms of brute force, women are less forceful than men. But, if it isthought of in moral terms, they are immeasurably superior to men. If
non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with woman.1
Ikeda: Those are famous words. One of the courageous women connected with Gandhi’s movement was the late Usha Mehta, former director of the Gandhi Memorial Hall (Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya).
Together with Usha Gokani, Gandhi’s granddaughter, Ms. Mehta welcomed groups from the Soka Gakkai Youth Division to India in 1992
and 1994. She met Gandhi at the age of eight for the first time and has
transmitted his spirit, overcoming her subsequent four years’ imprisonment during the independence struggle. She spoke of how he taught his
followers to fight courageously for justice and to speak the truth. He told
them that establishing peace in women’s hearts would build social peace
and that peace in the minds of women becomes a great explosive force
for social change. In words of encouragement, she told the members of
our visiting groups that, though they entered the Gandhi Memorial Hall
as guests, they departed from it as comrades. She expressed the wish
that, as members of the Mahatma’s (Great Soul’s) expanded family,
hand in hand, they would take part in the struggle as they pursued thepath to world peace.
Throughout history, the masculine viewpoint has dominated while thetrue greatness and courage-giving strength of women has been underestimated. I believe, however, that with their spiritual powers and theirrefusal to countenance political pressure and inconsistency, women have
now achieved a breakthrough into a new kind of history.
Women Who Sacrificed Themselves in the Struggle for Justice
Pérez Esquivel: Yes, women who have sacrificed themselves for lifeand liberty have demonstrated immeasurable courage and dignity. They
have set models that all humanity should recognize and appreciate.
Indubitably, no force can propel history as strongly as the courage of awoman aflame with justice, irrepressibly crying out for liberty. Social,political, and cultural militancy has a long history in Latin America andmany other parts of the world. Women have always played a leading,constructive role in their particular histories. Many of them have left
marks on the lives of their peoples. It is hard to enumerate all of theones who have exerted an influence on the passing times. One notable

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representative, however, was Rosa Parks, mother of the civil rights
movement in the United States.
Ikeda: I had the fondest respect for Rosa Parks, who, sadly, died in
2005. I met her on two occasions: on the Los Angeles campus of Soka
University of America in 1993 and, a year later, at Soka University in
Hachioji, Tokyo. I shall always remember how much she enjoyed meeting young students. She told them of the historical bus-boycott movement, which she herself ignited. As you know, the city of Montgomery
Alabama had a regulation requiring Black people to give up their seats
to White people and to sit in the rear of the vehicle. But Rosa Parks’mother had taught her faith in justice and the need to believe in andcherish her own self-respect in all places and under all circumstances.
So, returning weary from work on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus and sat in front. When a white passenger got on, the driverordered her to move to the rear, but she flatly refused.
In telling Soka University students how she felt at the time, she said
that, after long years of submitting to it in silence she had had enough of
discrimination. She had not foreseen the large number of Black people
who would rise up in protest against her subsequent arrest and imprisonment. She could not know what harassment lay ahead but was ready totake whatever came her way.
Pérez Esquivel: Yes. Rosa Parks felt the need to cry, “Enough!” And in
crying out, without knowing it, she unleashed a wave of resistance anddisobedience against injustice. Her simple act of human dignity initiatedthe bus-boycott movement. Her “No” constituted an act of rebellion, in
which Martin Luther King, Jr. was later to take the lead, and which was
to result in the passing of civil rights legislation in 1964. Today there aremany Rosa Parkses in the world. Indeed, there is one in every woman.
Ikeda: One point she made impressed me deeply. “I have learned that inorder to bring about change, one must not be afraid to take the first step,or else it will not be done. I believe that the only failure is failing totry.”2
I agree with you that many women inherit her spirit and courage.
Among the ones who speak out and struggle for justice all over theworld, in the area of human rights, I might especially cite Nadine
Gordimer for her opposition to apartheid in South Africa, and Rigoberta
Menchú Tum from Guatemala. Such women use no violence but fightwith great spiritual force.

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Pérez Esquivel: Some women do point out the way and bear witness tohumanity. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum is
one of them. I know of the struggle she has been conducting since her
youth. Her own family was massacred, and she was exiled to Mexico.
With great courage she denounced the military dictatorship in
Guatemala. The whole world heeded her voice calling for an end to violence and massacre.
Ikeda: I have great respect for her noble and indomitable struggle forhuman rights. The possibility of transforming personal experience ofsuffering into concern for the happiness of others is part of the greatnessof the human spirit. Coming from poor, indigenous, Guatemalan stock
herself, Rigoberta Menchú Tum has worked hard to elevate the positionand ensure the observation of the fundamental human rights of indigenous peoples. For example, in 1993 she traveled worldwide as a goodwill ambassador in connection with the United Nations InternationalYear for the World’s Indigenous People. She insists that, in the struggle
for human rights, borders do not exist. The important thing is sensitivity
to life and an awareness of shared humanity.
The noble struggle of a single woman for the establishment of humanrights and the protection of life epitomizes the dignity of humanity andlife. In this respect, Nichiren wrote that, “Here a single individual has
been used as an example, but the same thing applies equally to all living
beings.”3
Rigoberta Menchú Tum, you, and I were among the 55 people fromall over the world who signed the Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons
Threat to Humanity printed in the pages of The New York Times in 2000.
Pérez Esquivel: That is true. We should also mention the Burmese
leader Aung San Suu Kyi. When a group of us, including Betty
Williams who organized a nonviolent resistance movement in Northern
Ireland, journeyed to Thailand to offer her support, the Myanmar military dictatorship refused us entry into their country.
Ikeda: On the occasion of her sixtieth birthday, in June, 2005, a groupof Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including you, Betty Williams, and president emeritus of the Pugwash Conferences Joseph Rotblat published an
open letter to her.
In November 2006, Betty Williams, who is founder and president of
the World Centers for Compassion for Children International (WCCI),
and I met in Tokyo to discuss the role of women in achieving peace and8

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breaking the chain of violence. Thirty years ago, in 1976, during thestorm of violence that swept Northern Ireland, she experienced the horror of seeing three innocent children killed. This tragedy inspired her torise up in anger. She says she can never forget the wrath that rose up
from the depths of her heart and feels that, though it can be destructive,
anger turned toward positive purposes can also be highly productive.
Rage at witnessing the cruel violence that took the lives of the children
transformed her into a warrior for peace.
As Nichiren wrote: “From this you should understand that anger canbe either a good or a bad thing.”4 Anger consumed by selfish greed isevil; anger aflame against evil and for justice is good.
Pérez Esquivel: I agree with you. Nothing is as powerful as the anger
and indignation women feel in the face of injustice. When forced toexperience the loss of sons and daughters, many women awaken to a life
marked with tragedy. Then a great cry rises up from the depths of theirconsciousness and their hearts. They rebel and experience inside themthe seed of resistance in the struggle for life and the personal dignity ofthe people. The social demonstrations of mothers, grandmothers, andfamilies occurring in the Plaza de Mayo, in Argentina, were born of justsuch a cry.
Similarly, women demonstrated great courage in the civil war in El
Salvador as well as during the oppressive military dictatorship in
Guatemala. Their persistence earned them the alliance of many other
women in Europe, the United States, Canada, and many parts of Latin
America, who were willing to risk their own lives to save the lives ofothers.
Ikeda: As we discussed briefly in the first installment of this dialogue,during the military dictatorship of the 1970s, many people were suddenly carried off—“disappeared”—by armed military personnel. Beloved
children and spouses suddenly went missing, never to return. With yourleadership and support, thirty years ago, surviving mothers, grandmothers, and other family members formed the movement called the Mothersof Plaza de Mayo.
Pérez Esquivel: Yes. Beginning in 1977, every Thursday, mothers, theirheads covered in white scarves, assembled in the plaza. The names ofdisappeared family members were embroidered in blue on headscarves;
their photographs hung from the women’s necks. Gradually the numbersof demonstrators increased from around ten at the beginning to several

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9

hundreds or sometimes several thousands eventually. But their loved
ones were tortured and killed in detention centers, never to return totheir homes even after the governmental shift from military dictatorshipto democracy. I supported them from the beginning and recall them andtheir cry “Our children gave birth to us” in justification of both theirstruggle and their hope.
Ikeda: A deeply moving story. In February, 1993, I was invited to pay
my respects at the congress building in Buenos Aires. I vividly remember feeling intense sorrow for those mothers as I gazed out at the Plazade Mayo from our passing car.
Pérez Esquivel: Is that so? Like the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,
today women all over the world are working vigorously for the protection of human rights. In 2000, after the Gulf War, I visited Iraq in thecompany of Mairead Corrigan Maguire (1976 Nobel Peace laureate) andrepresentatives of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, which
is headquartered in the Netherlands, and American peace groups. We
arrived in Baghdad after a thousand-mile desert crossing from Amman
in Jordan. Awaiting us was a woman covered head to foot in a blackburqua. Her name was Ayamira, and she lived in a wagon parked in
front of a children’s refuge that had been bombed by American andBritish forces, taking the lives of six hundred children and their mothers.
Ayamira escaped because she had been washing her children’s clothingsome distance from the shelter. When she returned, she found her wholefamily dead. This quiet woman in black was a testimony to both the horror and the remembered resistance of a people struggling to recover its
values and identity.
A Mother’s Prayer Engenders Pacifist Action
Ikeda: Ninety percent of the victims of armed conflict are innocent
civilians; most of them are women and children. Throughout humanity’slong history, a staggering number of mothers and their beloved children
have lost their lives because of conflict and war. My own older brotherdied in battle during World War II, and we lost our homes in bombing
raids. Like many other families of the time, we were evacuated from ouroriginal house. First we had a house built next to the home of some relatives. Then, when this too was bombed out, we erected and lived in akind of hovel on the ruins. At the time, my father was suffering fromrheumatism. I had pulmonary tuberculosis. Four of my brothers were10

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drafted into the military. Three came home in a couple of years after thewar. Still later, we finally received word that the oldest had died in
Myanmar, or Burma as it was known then. His loss was the most painful
thing in the life of my mother, who was usually optimistic and a devoted
housekeeper. I shall always remember how stricken she was by the newsof my brother’s death.
Once we spent a whole night in an air raid shelter during a B-29
attack. At dawn, after the bombers had gone, one American parachutist
lay on the ground nearby. I saw him close-up. He was a boyish blondprobably around twenty years of age. Taught to think all American soldiers were devils, local citizens surrounded him and beat him severelywith poles until finally the Japanese military police took him away. At
home, when she heard of the event, my mother said, “Poor boy! His
mother must be worried to death about him.”
I realized then that mothers all over the world suffered and sorrowed
from war just as my own did. These experiences deeply engraved in myinnermost being the cruelty and folly of war. There can be no barriers ofrace or nationality dividing the hearts of mothers, whose role is to havecompassion for life. I derived these convictions from observing my own
mother’s grief. They have been one of the main sources of all my subsequent pacifist activity.
Pérez Esquivel: In other words, you feel the same sympathy for mothers everywhere that you felt for your own mother. And this sympathy
has been the source of your devoted labor in the name of peace.
Women Who Illuminate Society with the Light of Humanity
Pérez Esquivel: The millennium opened with great violence and armed
conflicts in such parts of the world as Afghanistan and Iraq. As you have
said, war claims more victims among women and children than amongsoldiers. For instance, the peoples of the Great Lakes region of Africa
suffered a genocide of more than three million people, which was
ignored by the mass media. In addition, Colombia and various parts of
Latin America have been submitted to similar violence. In all thesebloody events, women have both been victimized and have distinguished themselves as participants in the resistance movements dedicated to the construction of a more just and humane society. Their mere
presence and witness to life gave faces, voices, and personalities to thestatistics. They illuminate our marches along new roads.

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Ikeda: I find this ability to transform hardship into a life mission both
noble and profoundly moving. Buddhism expounds that some bodhisattvas dare to draw evil karma to themselves by their own compassionate vow. In other words, the bodhisattva who wishes to save sentient
beings will be born into the world polluted with evil and, accepting
hardship, struggle to bring about sentient beings’ salvation.
Everyone has a home environment. People who give themselves tothe solemn struggle to make that environment better and consistently
and courageously perform the good inherent in their personalities convert fate into a mission, thus embodying human nature at its mostbrilliant level. Women are conspicuously better than men at rooting
themselves in and making great contributions to their neighborhoods
and communities.
In connection with your comment that the disaster of armed conflicttakes its heaviest toll on women and children, I might cite somethingthat Richard von Weizsäcker, philosopher and first president of the unified postwar Germany, said on the subject: “Perhaps the greatest burden
was borne by the women of all nations. Their suffering, renunciationand silent strength are all too easily forgotten by history. Filled withfear, they worked, bore human life and protected it. They mourned theirfallen fathers and sons, husbands, brothers and friends. In the years ofdarkness, they ensured that the light of humanity was not extinguished.
After the war, with no prospect of a secure future, the so-called ‘rubble
women’ of Berlin and elsewhere were the first to set about building
homes again.”5
In the darkest times, women have infinite power of life that enables
them to keep alive the light representing the best of human nature.
Pérez Esquivel: In redirecting themselves toward peace, all men must
recognize the path women have trodden in the history of humanity. In
addition to giving it, women innately enrich life and provide hope.
Always courageous and resolute, they set models of resistance andmaturity in dealing with the actual struggles of daily life. In All Men Are
Brothers, Gandhi put it this way:
“If only women will forget that they belong to the weaker sex, I haveno doubt that they can do infinitely more than men against war. Answer
for yourselves what your great soldiers and generals would do, if theirwives and daughters and mothers refused to countenance their participation in militarism in any shape or form.”6
In Latin America, many women rely on solidarity with other womenas they rear and educate their children in difficult situations. Often they

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are forced to face life alone. Their resistance movement has grown andconsolidated with the passing of time. They have testified to the worthof life and set examples that have conquered emotions and inspired solidarity in broad sectors of society.
Ikeda: I agree. Without doubt, expanding the solidarity of women isabsolutely essential to lasting peace. The father of European unity, thelate Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who engaged in a dialogue
with me, said that, whereas the will to fight and kill is an inherent
instinct in males, women inherently want to be considerate and caring
toward others. We have, on the one hand, male warriors who deprive
people of life and, on the other, women who give life. Characteristic values associated with women are symbiosis, union, harmony, and peace.
None of these values can be realized without the internally generated
operations of life itself. By contrast, associations more closely associated with the masculine sex are opposition, exclusivism, and war; that is,external oppressiveness and restraints applied to the lives of others.
Rousseau and Jean Paul, both of whom applied educational theories totheir examinations of human attributes, stressed the importance of thefemale element and, in a thought-provoking manner, characterized as
depraved societies that fail to respect women or heed their voices.
Women suffered horribly during the war and violence of the twentiethcentury. Nor has the negative heritage resulting from the domination of
the masculine principle yet been swept away. In the twenty-first century,
however, such fundamental values as life, heart, soul, and family are
beginning to be examined close-up. The effort to do so approaches thebasic feminine principle. Surely a revival of such feminine elements as
symbiosis instead of competition and self motivation instead of externalpressure will determine whether this century is characterized by respect
for peace and life. A society where women can smile radiantly and act
vigorously is blessed with harmony and promises a future illuminedwith hope. The twenty-first century is increasingly in need of the spirit
of women who are compassionate toward life and stubbornly refuse tocountenance violence.
Women As the Great Builders of Peace
Pérez Esquivel: I am in complete accord with what you say. In
Uruguay, Paraguay, and Costa Rica, women who are our comrades forthe protection of human rights carry out diverse educational programs inwhich they demonstrate their great capacity. In all the offices of their

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movement, they share responsibilities with men on a footing of equality
and with the same rights. Their input in the programs for the nonviolent
resolution of conflicts is essential, because fundamentally women are
the builders of peace and understanding among individuals and peoples.
Ikeda: Wonderful! In connection with a theory of civilization, the great
Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore expected much from the activities ofwomen. He believed that today civilization is still basically masculine.
In such a civilization of power, humanity had lost freedom and humanity
in the attempt to conform to a vast mechanistic organization. Tagore
expressed the hope that, in the civilization of the coming age, the wholeworld will be founded, not on profit and politico-economic competition,but on social cooperation and the ideal spirit of mutual respect instead ofon the economic ideal of efficiency. Tagore was sure that women wouldfind their true position in relation to the achievement of this goal. He
further believed that, when they awaken to their own responsibilities,
women will be able to address the new task of building a spiritual civilization with fresh heart and care.7
In other words, in the past civilization of power, human beings havebeen treated as mere means and have lost their humanity. In the task ofbuilding a new civilization of the soul, women will play the leading role.
We must therefore hope that they will be given a broader stage for actual
activities in all countries and all fields of endeavor.
Pérez Esquivel: I agree. Unfortunately, because of religious intolerance,
in some nations, women are forced to live in restricted exclusion as if
they were inferior beings. Nonetheless, in many nations, the presence of
women is becoming increasingly important in cultural, scientific, andtechnical circles. The female population has managed to free itself fromof the marginality to which it has been confined in some nations andbreak out of the rigorous mold of being considered only means of reproduction or pleasure.
Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, defiant, feminist movements became militant and rebellious enough to create newspaces for their participation and to reclaim the right to total equality
and, refuting rigid systems and male monopolies, to fight for the right toexercise their freedom.
Ikeda: Very true. Throughout history, women have been oppressed andexploited. Even now in the twenty-first century, behind the long stridesof economic development in some nations, many women are forced into

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extreme poverty. At the same time, as their participation in politics
becomes widely accepted, women’s rights are becoming a focal point ona global scale. The birth of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women in the last quarter of the twentieth century is symbolic of an irreversible current.
Pérez Esquivel: Yes, it is. Women have made important conquests; but
progress has been slow, laborious, and in many instances painful. Men
have remained unwilling to give women space outside the family ambit.
The struggle has been unequal because power has remained in the handsof the patriarchy.
Women’s victories have depended on social battles and enormous
individual and collective intellectual capacity. Female intervention insociety, politics, science, and culture followed a long period of male triumphs. In this connection, I should like to mention the great researchscientist Marie Curie, who broke the shackles of her epoch and opened
new possibilities for female interventions in formerly exclusively masculine fields. In doing this, she made a fundamental contribution tohumanity.
Ikeda: There is a statue of Marie Curie at Soka Women’s College,
which I founded. Her granddaughter, Hélène Langevin-Joliot, a French
nuclear physicist, visited there and engaged in heartwarming exchanges
with students. As is represented by her two Nobel Prizes—in physics
and chemistry—Marie Curie and her achievements symbolize a newstage in the history of women’s wisdom. Shining with special nobility
among those achievements is the self-sacrificing way in which, during
World War I, ignoring personal danger, she and her daughter nursed thewounded on the front lines and treated some of them with high level Xray medical technology. After the war, she actively promoted peace inthe League of Nations. She wanted to be able to say she had done everything possible to ensure that her life had not been lived in vain and that,instead of thinking about what she had accomplished, she always asked
herself what she had yet to accomplish.
Historically, many other women have perseveringly striven to turn thepath of humanity in the direction of good, hope, and peace. In an age
plunged in confusion and anxiety by war, violence, human-rights violations, plague, and hunger, surely it is women who, going beyond care ofchildren and family, can rise up to shed the light of expanding compassion and hope on society at large.

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The Lady Shrimala and Mother Theresa
Ikeda: In cooperation with UN organizations like the United Nations
High Commission for Refugees, SGI actively participates in the organizing of exhibitions related to human rights and the collection of funds
for refugee assistance. In these efforts we are impelled by the Buddhist
wish to practice the philosophy of respect for the dignity of life.
Buddhist history and scriptures provide many examples of highly
active women. One of them is the Lady Shrimala, who vowed to
Shakyamuni to work persistently for the sake of suffering people. She
promised never to abandon the lonely, unjustly imprisoned, ill, disasterafflicted, or impoverished she encountered but to bring them tranquility
and abundance. Without equivocation, laxness, or retreat she vowed to
enfold and encourage them all warmly.
Pérez Esquivel: I remember your telling us of the Lady Shrimala as awoman who pledged herself to protecting human rights when my wifeand I met you in Tokyo in 1995. Her story reminds me of Mother Theresa, whom I met on several occasions. As a Catholic nun, she devoted
herself to the impoverished, marginalized people on the verge of adespairing, lonely death, like the so-called untouchables (harijan in
Gandhi’s term) of Kolkata (Calcutta). When asked about the world situation, the functioning of the financial world, and the problems preoccupying governments, she said she had no understanding of such things.
She was afflicted by the sufferings of others and considered putting love
into action supremely important.
Ikeda: Philosophically very profound. Because their ultimate goal is thehappiness of humanity, politics and economics must be founded on thereligious spirit of love and compassion. The spirit of compassion symbolized by the image of the Lady Shrimala courses through Nichiren
Buddhism. Nichiren, who lived during the thirteenth century, a time
when the ordinary people suffered bitterly in a series of wars and disasters, wrote his “On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of
the Land” as an admonition to the authorities of the ruling Kamakura
shogunate. In it he uses a variation of the written symbol (kanji) for theword nation, which ordinarily consists of the character for monarch
enclosed in a boxlike form (kunigamae) indicating something that surrounds. Nichiren replaced the monarch element with the character forthe people (min). In other words, he thought of a nation, not as a territory controlled by authorities, but as mainly something centered on the

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ordinary people and stressing their happiness and tranquility. His attitude is related to what in modern terms is called human security.
In “On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land,”
Nichiren formulated the idea of the ordinary people as the reformers of
their epoch, while evoking all their own potentialities on the basis of thephilosophy of respect for the dignity of life.
In this way, he encourages us to live creatively for the sake of the happiness of all humanity: “If you care anything about your personal security, you should first of all pray for order and tranquillity throughout thefour quarters of the land, should you not?”8Making Nichiren’s philosophy of peace and popular welfare the basisof all action inevitably is conducive both to the realization of world
peace and universal happiness and to opposition to all modern authoritarianism and evils that threaten human dignity.
The Buddhist View of Women
Pérez Esquivel: I know that, since its foundation as a great lay organization based on the teachings of Nichiren, Soka Gakkai has consistently
worked for the peace and happiness of humanity. But I should like toknow what view Shakyamuni had of women.
Ikeda: Extreme discrimination against women prevailed in the India of
Shakyamuni’s time. Numerous passages in the Brahmanic scriptures
speak contemptuously and insultingly of women. But, adopting an historically epoch-making stance, Shakyamuni instructed both men andwomen, permitted women to be members of the Order, and regarded thesexes as equal in terms of religious qualifications. After his death, however, male-centric views came to dominate. This change in attitude
resulted in the doctrine of the Five Female Hindrances, according towhich women are innately incapable of becoming celestial beings like
Brahma, Shakra, Devil king, Wheel-turning king, or Buddha. Calledemissaries from hell, they were said to lack the seed of Buddhahood. In
other words, they could never become Buddhas.
In its philosophy of the Buddhahood of women, however, the Lotus
Sutra is heir to Shakyamuni’s own spirit of the equality of the sexes.
This approach is illustrated by the story of the Buddhahood of the eightyear-old Dragon King’s daughter in Chapter Twelve, “Devadatta.” Whenthe disciple Shariputra comments on the Five Hindrances preventing
women from attaining Buddhahood, this little girl tells him, “Use yourown supernatural powers to behold me becoming Buddha.” In effect, by

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saying this, she takes the epochal step of destroying contemporary discrimination against women and makes a great human rights declaration.
Pérez Esquivel: Shakyamuni’s attitude toward women must have beenhighly revolutionary for the India of his time. What attitudes toward
women characterized the Japan of Nichiren’s day?
Ikeda: The supremacy of the male sex dominating the patriarchic
society, the Japanese Middle Ages was strongly colored by attitudes
encouraged by indigenous Shinto and by a discriminatory Buddhism
that had abandoned Shakyamuni’s spirit of sexual equality. Against thisbackground, Nichiren insisted that in terms of religious practice andcapability of enlightenment, men and women are completely equal. The
following pattern gives an idea of his attitude: “There should be no discrimination among those who propagate the five characters of Myohorenge-kyo in the Latter Day of the Law, be they men or women.”9“Only in the Lotus Sutra do we read that a woman who embraces thissutra not only excels all other women, but also surpasses all men.”10“All the practitioners of the Lotus Sutra, men or women, are Worldhonored ones (Buddhas), aren’t they?”
Nichiren wrote many letters of encouragement to women, whom headdressed with the same titles of respect he used when writing to men.
He had supreme respect for women.
Pérez Esquivel: He made no distinction between laity and clergy andnone between men and women but had the highest praise and encouragement for female believers.
Ikeda: Yes. Shakyamuni taught that it is not through birth but throughdeeds that a person becomes noble or base. He and Nichiren, too, neverdiscriminated among people on the basis of sex or class, origin, or membership in the laity or the clergy. For them, nobility or baseness depends
solely on the individual’s deeds and mental attitudes. The important
thing is not gender but whether a person is able to bring his or her limitless possibilities to full flower and find happiness. Shakyamuni and
Nichiren shared this spiritual viewpoint. Instead of being obsessed bygender differences, human beings must strive to perfect their personalities and fulfill themselves.
Pérez Esquivel: Your explanation makes the Buddhist view of womenclear to me. And this in turn explains why Soka Gakkai, the basic cur-

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rent of which is the philosophy of Shakyamuni and Nichiren, respects
and places great significance on women.
President Makiguchi’s Emphasis on Educating Women
Ikeda: It is good of you to say so. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, first president of Soka Gakkai, put the highest expectations in mothers andwomen in general as the builders of the ideal new society of the future.
He referred to the awakening of the “great maternal” and placed maximum emphasis on the education of women.
In 1905, at the height of the Russo-Japanese War, he was a teacher atTōa (East Asia) Women’s School in Tokyo and made efforts with otherpeople to found a correspondence-course organization called the Japanese Association for the Higher Education of Women for primary school
graduates and served as manager of the organization. It charged no
entrance fees, reduced instruction rates for families of soldiers at thefront, and had a system for recognizing model students. Mr. Makiguchiplanned a women’s school of liberal arts, an institute of learning free ofcharge for girls unable to pay school fees. In 1907, while managing theJapanese Girls’ Association, he published a magazine for women called
Nihon no Shojo (The Japanese girl), the second-oldest periodical of its
kind in the country at the time. Indicative of his fervor for female education, all these activities were carried on in the spirit of the desire to provide education for everyone.
Pérez Esquivel: Most impressive. Taking such action in the name of
women’s education at the beginning of the twentieth century was highly
innovative. Education is the basis of all society. It is necessary not only
for imparting knowledge, but also for generating conscience. It gives
women the creative vitality and sentiments to maintain inner and outerequilibrium in the face of conflicting and traumatizing social impacts.
Ikeda: Just as you say. In the magazine Daikatei (The great home),
which was sent monthly to members of the Japanese Association for
Women’s Higher Education, Mr. Makiguchi published a speech including the following passages:“Are there people in the world today who don’t feel the need to educate women? The era in which it was possible to suppress the love oflearning and claim that women’s learning is useless and dangerous has
passed.”“I want to use education to keep women from falling into poverty.”

MESSAGE FOR THE AGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

19“Instead of giving them money, material goods, or jobs, it is far more
important to give them the ability to discover their own ways of living
and to overcome difficulties.”
An educator himself, the second president of Soka Gakkai, Josei Toda
emulated Mr. Makiguchi’s efforts in correspondence-course education.
As their spiritual heir, to realize their ideals, as third president of Soka
Gakkai, I founded the Soka Women’s College and have established correspondence educational courses in Soka University.
In addition, at the time of its inauguration, I suggested that the Kansai
Soka schools, initially started as girls’ schools, adopt as school bywords
Conscience, Good Health, and Hope and, at the first entrance ceremonies, I urged students to never to try to build their own happiness on
the unhappiness of others.
Pérez Esquivel: Three generations of Soka Gakkai presidents haveundertaken women’s education. The great expectations Mr. Makiguchi
had for women and his exhortation to them to awake to their potentials
indicate and illuminate the course we who live in the twenty-first century ought to follow.
Soka Gakkai has pursued a path leading to liberty and the creation ofpeace. The founders and precursors have followed the path of peace andsolidarity with the intention of radically transforming spiritual values indiverse aspects of life and human action.
Walls Dividing Humanity
Pérez Esquivel: Many of us thought that, with the fall of the Berlin
Wall, the world entered a new stage of international cooperation and solidarity and that liberty would be won for everybody. We thought thathumanity would direct its efforts toward the elimination of hunger andpoverty and concentrate on protecting the global environment. But circumstances turned out much more complicated, and our hopes for the
cessation of ethnic conflicts and acts of terrorism were frustrated. Even
worse, the global problems confronting humanity, like war, famine, indigence, and the destruction of the environment, assumed still morealarming forms. The balance between humankind and nature has beenlost. The world has become engulfed in clouds of violence and uncertainty. At the same time, high illiteracy rates and insufficient resources
to ensure human health and development have become a constant threat.
Ikeda: True. In the hope of focusing on such problems and discovering

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hints for resolving them even slightly, for some years, I have been issuing yearly peace proposals. In addition to the peace proposal, I published a proposal entitled “Fulfilling the Mission: Empowering the UN
to Live up to the World’s Expectations” for the United Nations General
Assembly, which was held in September 2006. In it, I wrote that, as longas there are people in the world threatened by famine, poverty, and environmental pollution, though it may entail problems and invite criticism,
the only way to discover solutions is to empower and vitalize the United
Nations, to which many nations belong and which is morally supported
in all regions.
In spite of recently increasing numbers of children completing primary school all over the world, according to UNESCO estimates, there arestill 785 million illiterate persons worldwide. Of this number, two-thirds
are women. More than a hundred million children are said to be
deprived of the chance to attend school. UNESCO plays a central part in
conducting the campaign Education for All, the goal of which is the creation of an environment where basic education is provided and where
educational opportunities are equal for both sexes. In connection withthis goal, in 2003, the United Nations started its UN Literacy Decade.
Pérez Esquivel: Certainly the work of international organizations likethe UN has born fruit. Nonetheless, the facts reveal the persistence ofmany different kinds of walls dividing humanity; for example, the wall
between the rich and the poor, the wall between Israel and Palestine, thewall dividing North and South Korea, and the wall between the UnitedStates and Mexico. These walls deepen rifts among peoples by intensifying hatred, resentment, and vengeance.
Without doubt, however, the most difficult walls to raze are thoseerected within our hearts by intolerance, absence of dialogue, and thelust for power and conquest. Such walls can be torn down only bymeans of a daily, individual process of personal dialogue and social andcultural interactions.
Ikeda: I agree. As a mother, woman, and human being, Betty Williams
courageously both spoke out and took action to bring such walls down.
In my talks with her, we discussed ways humanity can break the vicious
circle of hatred and vengeance. She said, “For me, and the only way I
can work, is to remain true to one’s beliefs and love one’s opponents
into submission…. This is by no means an easy thing to do.”11
Candid, open interpersonal dialogue is the only way to eliminate thewalls of intolerance and discrimination poisoning human life. Develop-

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21

ing inherent good human traits of courage and compassion throughsteady, persistent dialogue builds a solidarity of goodness among ordinary people. And this is the way to lasting peace. The power of dialogue
is the true weapon of peace. Furthermore, dialogue is more a female
than a male specialty. Wise men of the past who have stressed its importance have called attention to women’s power of dialogue.
As you yourself point out, Ralph Waldo Emerson insisted that, tomake its content truly profound and noble and to extract its greatest
profit, we must aim for person-to-person dialogue. He said, “Womenare, by this and their social influence, the civilizers of mankind. What iscivilization? I answer the power of good women.”12 Surely the power ofwomen will initiate and guide the age of dialogue.
Pérez Esquivel: I agree. History presents a rich trove of women’s experiences and contributions to plotting the path to freedom. The constantly
evolving, living examples they set enrich all humanity. This was especially true in the twentieth century, which was characterized by violence, wars, and armed conflicts that profoundly wounded human lifeand conscience.
Ikeda: SGI women members have ceaselessly struggled to build peacewith a tough spirit undaunted by violence and terrorism. The journalist
Mariane Pearl is one of them. In January, 2002, while on assignment inPakistan, her husband Daniel Pearl, a correspondent for the Wall Street
Journal, was abducted and killed by an armed group. The terrorists
behind the killing shocked people all over the world by posting the murder on the Internet. It is hard even to imagine the depth and scope of his
wife’s sorrow. She was pregnant with their son at the time. But, refusing
to give in, she said that letting her suffering get the best of her would
cost her soul. “Hating the criminals would only satisfy their wish toplunge my husband and me into fear and submission and make us powerless. I intend to win this battle for the sake of the happiness of my son,
who has never seen his father’s face.”13
Her memoir, which aroused great public response, received theFrench Truth Award for outstanding factual reporting. In the message ofcondolences I sent to ceremonies marking the first anniversary of thetragedy, I said, “The global sorrow caused by Daniel Pearl’s death has
created a vast network of human solidarity. Not even the most hate-filled
can destroy this force for good.”
Pérez Esquivel: I agree with your way of thinking. Women are becom-

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ing protagonists of social change and are forging a new conscience forhumanity. Recently I have been having encounters and interchanges ofideas with teachers and other professionals in the fields of education,
psychology, and the law as well as with social workers, instructors at
various levels, and students. Most of these people are women of extraordinary dynamic powers striving to create interdisciplinary networks invarious fields. I feel that their silent revolution of the conscience will
generate new social paradigms.
Women are assuming new roles and places in societies. Throughout
the Latin American Continent, including Argentina, mighty women’s
movements have arisen in defense of human rights, like the ones I havealready mentioned: The Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza deMayo; the families of the imprisoned and disappeared; and similar
expressions of solidarity among actresses, singers, writers, musicians,
and many other female intellectuals.
The SGI Women’s Movement
Ikeda: The people you mention are leading precursors in the creation of
A Century of Women. In our SGI movement for peace, culture, and education too, women display wonderful strengths and play various leadingroles. For example, the Soka Gakkai Women’s Peace Committee isactive in such publishing projects as the twenty-volume series entitledWith Hopes for Peace. In addition, its members help cultivate informed
public opinion by producing a variety of exhibitions, including the“Women and the Pacific War,” “Our Global Family,” “Women and the
Culture of Peace,” and “Children and the Peace Culture.” To take thepeace message to all parts of the world, they conduct lectures, hold mass
meetings on important topics, and collect petition signatures.
Pérez Esquivel: I am immensely happy to know that Soka Gakkai International is boosting its work in the name of peace and that its womenare dedicated protagonists of value creation in expanding the importanceof understanding the problems confronting humanity. Without doubt,
they give us a sign of hope for the times.
We are moving from individualism toward a network of solidarity andshared struggle and hope for the people. We must strive for freedom, notsingly, but all together. Women play a major part in the development of
a new human conscience. When they break their silence and rise up conscientiously, it will mean that something in the world is changing. That
will be a salutary symbol. In this connection, I am reminded of some-

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23

thing Don Quixote says to his faithful squire: “Sancho, the dogs arebarking. That means we are riding forth.”
The eruption of women into the life of the twenty-first century
promises to bring many surprises signifying hope for the arrival of a
new dawn.
Ikeda: You quoted the same passage from Don Quixote before leaving
Japan at the time of our first meeting in 1995. On that occasion, yousaid, “When someone I trust is being criticized or maligned, I will say
nothing to that person. But I express dissatisfaction when that person
goes uncriticized by everybody.” This is the kind of sentiment we can
expect to hear from a person like you who has overcome hardship time
and time again.
The waves a ship in full sail arouses are proof of forward motion.
Those of us who have struggled against groundless, jealous criticism
and painful condemnation find your message immensely encouraging.
Pérez Esquivel: I am very happy that you still remember my words. I
can understand the calumny and baseless lies the three successive presidents of Soka Gakkai—Makiguchi, Toda, and yourself—have endured.
Ikeda: I am grateful for your understanding. I once expressed myemotions concerning women as leaders in the Century of Life in thefollowing verses.
Like a new sun
the new century of women is imminent.
In that century,
women will win
happiness and peace.
Life will triumph.
The movement,
activity, and progress
will live to triumph:
The triumph of the family….
To mighty women of the new century
who stride forward limitlessly,
banzai!
Peace begins near at hand. The women of our SGI peace movement

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initiate their unpretentious dialogue campaigns in their own homes andlocal communities. All their other activities spring from such dialogues.
I am certain that the struggle waged by these women and mothers will
open the door of the new century and radiate hope in the third millennium.
THE STRENGTH OF YOUTH IN BUILDING A PEACE CULTURE
Nuclear Weapons an Absolute Evil—Thoughts of Hiroshima
Ikeda: Allow me to thank you sincerely for the heartfelt message ofcongratulations you sent on the occasion of my eightieth birthday. The
years have flown by since I first met you and your wife in Tokyo in
1995. Forming a friendship with a great peace and human-rights leader
like you and having it extend from one century into another are some ofthe proudest experiences of my life.
Pérez Esquivel: I take this chance to repeat my brotherly wishes foryour peace and well-being combined with our best felicitations on
attaining the age of eighty in a life dedicated to sharing the struggle andhopes for a more just and fraternal world for all humanity. Please accept
greetings from my wife, Amelia, and my sons, as well as from the entire
Service of Peace and Justice Foundation in Latin America.
Ikeda: Thank you and please extend my best wishes to your wellremembered, intelligent wife, to your whole family, and to the membersof all the branches of your highly respected organization. Though as ayouth I was so unhealthy that doctors predicted I would hardly live
beyond thirty, I have now reached a healthy eighty and am resolved thatmy remaining years shall be devoted to the important task of roundingout my life. I can concisely express my current frame of mind in these
verses:“At eighty, to join with youth to build the future;
At eighty, to join with intelligent people everywhereto build a century of peace.”
This is why I consider it a real honor to conduct a dialogue for apeaceful century with you, who have consistently placed your own lifeon the line to protect the human rights and dignity of the masses.

MESSAGE FOR THE AGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

25

Pérez Esquivel: Thank you very much. In this age of dialogue, the clarity of your thinking, your concern with life and spirituality in our societies and the paths people have chosen to walk on, and especially yourconcern for the future of young people are obvious. With their struggles
and their experience of life, women have their own place on the roadyou have traveled. You have always paid respect to the collective popular memory, identities, and values of peoples. I am sure that you havecontributed to the development of a critical awareness and to plotting
paths of liberty and human dignity. Under your leadership, Soka Gakkai
has contributed to producing that critical awareness by promoting its
educational values of liberty and peace. In your long and productive life,
through your experience and wisdom, you have strengthened those values and convictions.
Ikeda: Once again, you praise me too generously. As you suggest, thecultivation of a critical awareness to discriminate between good and evil
will determine future human happiness and peace. Social settings may
sometimes muddle it, but the clear distinction between good and badmeans that harming, debasing, and taking life are always wrong whereas
protecting and cultivating life are always good. This much is certain.
And this is why nuclear weapons are an absolute evil. Hiroshima andNagasaki, the sites of the first atomic bombings, should be imprinted onhuman history as the start of a movement to renounce war completely.
This is my conviction, to which I work to win as many adherents as possible.
Pérez Esquivel: I agree entirely. Hiroshima is unforgettably burned into
my brain.
Ikeda: An active proponent of nonviolence and human rights, you havecalled Hiroshima a victim to ultimate violence. In the autumn of 1988,
you and your wife visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum andthe Cenotaph for Atomic-bomb Victims and listened to what survivorsof the bombing had to relate. You expressed your reactions to theseexperiences in this way: “I thought I knew about the horrors of theatomic bombings. But having seen them with my own eyes, I began tounderstand that the scale of the tragedy exceeds all imagining. This
experience stimulated me to persevere in my work for peace withgreater earnestness.”
In an act of great good-will, you immediately created a bronze sculpture expressing the destruction of property and human life and presented

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it to the city of Hiroshima the following year when you visited Japan. I
understand that the statue represents the hope that, on the threshold of
the twenty-first century, humanity would be able to recover from thetremendous loss. The citizens of Hiroshima, who have long struggled in
the name of peace, were deeply touched by your gift. What impressions
did your visit to Hiroshima make on you?
Pérez Esquivel: I can still see the looks on the faces of some girls inphotographs in the museum. Many years have passed. The Hiroshima
survivors have grown old. But something has marked them forever,something we cannot forget, something we must not forget. In the girls’
childish glances is quietly engraved forever the moment that is a testimony of the people of Japan and of all humanity. In those seconds, thoseminutes, human lives were deprived of breath; the pulse of the world
stopped. At that instant, the sight of his destructive work made the copilot of the bomber Enola Gay cry out horrified, “My God, what have
we done?”Whenever I see or sense that world leaders or the chiefs of state ofboth great powers and of developing countries try to use nuclear arms as
a way of acquiring power, Hiroshima comes to mind immediately.
Hiroshima has left a mark on humanity. Nuclear armaments reveal what
scientific power can lead to and what the costs of its impact and risks
can be for present and future generations of the world.
Ikeda: Humanity must never repeat that tragedy. Many of my friends
were exposed to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some werein their mother’s wombs at the time. They have courageously told theworld about their experiences. Working mainly with young people fromthose two cities, our organization has conducted an extensive programof interviews and tape recordings of the experiences of victims and has
published them to ensure that each of their stories reaches posterity. In
addition, we have sponsored exhibitions, lectures, and questionnaires on
peace and the dignity of life in various parts of the world.
On your visit to the Hiroshima Museum in 1995, you saw the stone inwhich the outline of a victim of the bombing remains dark against abackground bleached by radiation. You entitled that stone “The Shadow
of Humanity.” On the same occasion, you spoke courageously and justly
for the bombing victims when you called for an immediate cessation of
all nuclear experimentation.
In describing his impressions of his visit to Hiroshima, Richard vonWeizsäcker, president of Germany from 1984 to 1994, said that the mis-

MESSAGE FOR THE AGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

27

ery caused by the inhuman explosion was indescribable and that nothing
he knew of on Earth more clearly revealed the need and the reason foreliminating the weapons that caused it. He said that no city could sostrongly incite the desire for peace as Hiroshima. He also said that thevital power of Hiroshima, its will to live, its cultural strength, and its
natural beauty inspire hope for the future.14 All world leaders, especiallythose of nations possessing nuclear weapons, should go to Hiroshima
and Nagasaki to see for themselves how cruel nuclear weapons are andhow great is the disaster they wreak.
A Revolution in Leadership for the Sake of Peace
Pérez Esquivel: I agree completely. The people in power refuse tounderstand that to concentrate on nuclear armament only creates greater
insecurity and imperils the lives of their own people and of all humanity.
We realize that advances in technical and scientific knowledge areimportant to many countries and that political decisions determine
whether nuclear energy is used for developmental or destructive aims. A
reading of the world situation and the great-power politics shows us thatthose in charge have no desire to register or take into account the vociferous demands of their peoples. Like a madness, feeble memory andambition for economic, political, and military power cause rulers toignore the historical experiences and sufferings of their people byunleashing wars and invasions. Power blinds them and leads the generation of greater destruction and death.
Ikeda: As was true in the militaristic Japan of the past, the evil of
authority causes the ordinary people untold tragic suffering. When thepeople in power become arrogant and disregard the dignity of many
ordinary people’s lives, the greater their authority becomes, the moreimmeasurable the pain and misery they cause. Consequently, in thisnuclear age of horrifyingly murderous weapons, preventing the recurrence of such tragedy absolutely requires a revolution in the nature ofleaders.
What are your thoughts on the condition of the world today in relation to nuclear weapons?
Pérez Esquivel: The five great powers constituting the United Nations
Security Council dominate the world and have at their disposal huge
nuclear arsenals capable of destroying everything living on it. The powers that rule today run breakneck toward armed might and nuclear arma-

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ment. I doubt that the end of the Cold War terminated the competition
between the United States and Russia. Besides, some other nations thathave developed technology and possess atomic weapons also want tobecome members of the nuclear club of death. Israel is one of them but,as an ally of the United States, little is discussed about its nuclear arsenal. From the Israel-Palestine perspective, coupled with the regional
instability in Iran, the situation in the Middle East grows worse.
The great powers have no intention of beginning real disarmament.
They intend to be the sole possessors of the arms of mass destructionthat permit them to control and subjugate the rest of the world. As longas they are unprepared to disarm, the arms race continues to imperil
global peace.
In each country, hate, intolerance, and rivalry stimulate developmentof the destructive power of nuclear arms with the idea that greater military power and the possession of hypocritically named “weapons ofdeterrence” result in greater influence.
Ikeda: The arms race you speak of with such regret represents the cycleof evil that human beings are fated to repeat over and over and that the
Buddhist philosophy of the nature of life describes as the Realm ofAnger (Shura-kai in Japanese). In this state of life, extreme selfishness
compels the individual to be constantly making comparisons with others
and to get the better of them. This evil condition allows no room forrespecting others, who serve only as means to the satisfaction of theselfish person’s aims even to a willingness to cause destruction. The
Realm of Anger is one of the ten Buddhist categories of life: starting at
the lowest and moving upward, they are the realms of Hell, Hunger,
Animality, Anger, Humanity, Rapture, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattva, and Buddha.
Since human life largely consists in a transition of suffering among
the lower six states, the Realm of Anger is comparatively frequently
encountered in individual existence and in collective society as well.
Collisions among individuals experiencing the Realm of Anger generate
limitless conflict and destruction. In the final analysis, the insatiablearms race spells defeat for humanity itself.
Pérez Esquivel: Yes, that is its logical conclusion. But how can we get
the big powers to begin real disarmament? We ask ourselves the following questions. Have they forgotten the suffering of humanity? Have they
forgotten what happened during World War II? Have they become oblivious to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust, the millions of lost

MESSAGE FOR THE AGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

29

lives, the horror, the deaths, and the consequences that persist still today
in the lives and awareness of humanity? In the face of the situation inwhich human beings now live we must ask ourselves what each of us
can do and what our leaders can do.
Expanding the Global Nuclear-free Zone
Ikeda: I sympathize entirely with your passionate statement. I firmly
believe that, no matter how difficult, any situation human beings havecreated human beings can rectify.
One promising noteworthy attempt to deal with the nuclear-arms situation is the expansion of nuclear-free zones. In 1967, Latin America set
the pattern by drawing up the first-ever treaty establishing a non-nuclear
zone where all nuclear experimentation and the use, production, deployment, and acquisition of nuclear weapons are forbidden. As is wellknown, your own homeland, Argentina, also declared its abandonmentof nuclear development plans at an early stage.
Pérez Esquivel: Quite so. As you say, in 1967, the nations of Latin
America concluded the Tlatelalco Treaty of nonproliferation of nuclear
arms. Later, it was amended to include the nations of the Caribbean
region, and its title was altered accordingly to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has
been ratified by the 33 nations making up the region. All in all, thesesteps seem encouraging.
Ikeda: They do indeed. On a global scale, in 1959, with the adoption of
the Antarctic Treaty System, all nuclear explosions and the disposal of
nuclear wastes were forbidden south of 60 degrees south latitude. Since
that time, nuclear-free zones have been established in—as we haveseen—Latin America and the Caribbean region as well as in the South
Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia. At present, the entire
southern hemisphere is non-nuclear; and signatories to the non-nuclearzone treaty number well over 100. As I mention in my Peace Proposal
for 2008, it is now urgently necessary to develop a similar non-nuclear
zone in the Arctic. While the International Court of Justice did issue a
milestone advisory opinion in 1996 that nuclear weapons are illegal, theelimination of nuclear weapons requires a vaster and more vocal popularconsensus on their illegality. We must take the success of the movementin the southern hemisphere and now increasingly in Asia as a basis onwhich to establish this consensus as the norm for all humanity.

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In the murky conditions that have followed the conclusion of the Cold
War, the danger of proliferation as a result of traffic in nuclear materials
and technologies increases. In these circumstances the wisdom of thedecision by the Latin American nations, including Argentina, to go nonnuclear shines as an historical event.
Pérez Esquivel: The whole world expects Japan, as the victim of
nuclear attacks, to assume a leadership role in the elimination of theseweapons.

The Spirit of the Antinuclear Declaration
Ikeda: For Japan, contributing to peace is a mission, a right, and a duty.
As his primary parting instruction to young people, in September,
1957, the year before his death, Josei Toda delivered his Antinuclear
Declaration, in which he denounced nuclear weapons as an absoluteevil. In it he declared, “… the ordinary citizens of the world have a rightto live. Whoever threatens that right is a devil, a Satan, a monster.” Hewent on to say that the young men and women of Japan have a mission
to convince the whole world that any nation and its people who would
conquer by using nuclear weapons are evil and satanic. He discerned thedevilish desire to intrude on the lives of others that is fundamental to theuse of nuclear weapons.
Without basic changes in humanity itself, far from leading to disarmament, the situation can only worsen and make the creation of lasting
peace impossible. This is why, together with his efforts in the name ofdisarmament, Mr. Toda promoted the human revolution movement as away of triumphing over the evil infesting human life.
The late Joseph Rotblat, who was president of the International Pugwash Conferences on the abolition of nuclear weapons, was intensely
sympathetic with the ideas expressed in Mr. Toda’s declaration. First
held in 1957, the year in which the declaration was made, the Pugwash
Conferences have continued to exert a great influence for a world free ofwar and nuclear weapons. He resonated strongly with our peace movement and with Mr. Toda’s declaration.
Professor Rotblat wrote that evil cannot be conquered with evil andthat the threat of war should not be used as a way to avert war. He also
said that, though it is the norm for nuclear nations, possessing such
arms, even for preemptive purposes, is immoral. I think his meaning is
in line with your own concerns.
In any case, the road to peace must give first preeminence to the gen-

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31

eral tranquility and happiness. The time has come for world leaders tobe deeply aware of this as they pool their wisdom and act.
Pérez Esquivel: I think so, too. The people are the basic element.
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Mohamed ElBaradei makes an important point when he says in effect asfollows: We must create a world that is just, equitable and fair. For thatyou need a system of security that covers everybody, a system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence, a system of security
where every man and woman has a decent standard of life.
Security must be founded on the life and development of peoples, noton their exploitation. I believe that the possibility for averting confrontations among nations in specific regions, like Latin America, is to befound in the unity of people, in achieving consensus, and in encouraging
cooperation and solidarity.
Ikeda: I concur entirely. When I met him in November 2006, in Tokyo,
Director General ElBaradei said “Rights as human beings must takeprecedence over national rights. We can achieve peace if we can go
beyond race, ethnic group, religion, and skin color to understand theoneness of humanity. We can realize peace only when we understandhow much we share as human beings. Comprehension of our shared values will put an end to fighting and war because boundaries, races, ethnic
groups, and skin color have nothing to do with human values but are
only peripheral matters.”
Clearly a peace movement expanding understanding of our sharedhuman values and enlightening the peoples of the world to them is indispensable. Taking Josei Toda’s antinuclear declaration as our starting
point, we of SGI have long promoted peace by the people and for thepeople by undertaking various projects. For instance, in 1974, ourYoung Men’s Division collected ten million names for a petition to ban
the atomic and hydrogen bombs. In recognition of their passion, I went
to New York to present the book containing the signatures personally to
Kurt Waldheim, then secretary general of the United Nations.
Beginning in the 1980s, we have sponsored a series of exhibitions
including “Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World,” sponsored jointly withthe cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the United Nations Department of Public Information, and, in 1996, an updated version of thisexhibition, “Nuclear Arms: Threat to Humanity.” These exhibitions havebeen shown in 39 cities in 24 countries, including the Soviet Union and
China, and have been visited by more than 1.7 million people. In 2007,

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to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Mr. Toda’s antinuclear declaration, we initiated an exhibition called “From a Culture of Violence to a
Culture of Peace: Transforming the Human Spirit.” This exhibition is aconcrete example of what the United Nations means by encouraging thepeople to turn their own hands to spreading the word about disarmamentand nonproliferation. While striving to arouse popular awareness about
the elimination of nuclear arms and disarmament, we hope to also stimulate a rising tide that can change the times by transforming the cultureof war into the culture of peace.
Developing Inherent Human Goodness
Pérez Esquivel: The culture of peace must be a sustained formation
covering all disciplines of knowledge. Thus, when we touch on thetheme of nuclear arms, we cannot overlook such recent events as terrorist attacks and diverse conflicts. Some events are the results of irrationality attempting to establish logical connections between violence andcounter-violence, aggressors and the assaulted, victims and their victimizers. In some cases, reason is lost and unreason takes its place.
The tremendous terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of
September 11, 2001, shook everyone. Violence and self-justification are
two sides of the same coin. Thus walls of intolerance are raised bymeans of ideological, religious, and political conceptions. Disturbed
spirits submerged in hate cannot reach the light. They heed only themselves and bear evidence to a world of contradictions and struggles for
power and dominion. Radicals adopt their own ideologies and consider
themselves proprietors of a truth that they attempt to impose on others.
It makes no difference what means they use to attain their objectives.
They justify the use of violence against each other and the need todestroy the enemy. Their own peoples become an abstraction before
which all of humanity—its nature and existence—is denied.
Ikeda: You describe the fearsome condition in which human beings canno longer perceive each other’s humanity and madly cease being humanthemselves. No matter what the reason for its use, violence is an abandonment of humanity, the demise of humanity.
I joined spiritual leaders from many different fields in contributing an
essay, entitled “The Evil over which We Must Triumph,” to the book
From the Ashes: A Spiritual Response to the Attack on America, published shortly after 9/11. In it I dealt with Buddhism as a philosophy ofrespect for life and the condemnation of terrorism, which tramples on

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33

life, as absolute evil, no matter how virtuous its pretext. To break theseries of evil manifest in the violence and war of the twentieth century,
we must continuously strive to develop the good inherent in human life.
This is true because the foundation of peace is the evolution of the goodelements—nonviolence, compassion, trust, wisdom, courage, andtruth—for the sake of defeating the evil infesting us and ceaselessly
threatening life itself. In this connection, I must recall Linus Pauling, thefather of modern chemistry, with whom you too were on friendly terms.
Already 91 years old, Dr. Pauling was good enough to attend a lecture
entitled “In Search of New Principles of Integration,” which I deliveredat Claremont McKenna College in 1993. In commenting on my speech,
he touched on the Buddhist philosophy of the Ten Realms: “Number
nine, the world of the Bodhisattva—a state of compassion in which one
seeks to save all people from suffering—this is a spirit that people
would do well to accept.” In this way, he expressed his sense of theimportance to humankind of attaining and acting in accordance withwhat Buddhism calls the bodhisattva life-state. Peace can be made manifest in various ways in politics, law, and economy as long as humanbeings are guided by internal motivations to rejoice in the happiness ofothers and never to attempt to build their own good fortune on others’
misfortune.
Pérez Esquivel: I am happy that you mention Doctor Linus Pauling, agreat friend with whom I shared many activities, basically comradeship.
Among the activities we engaged in together was the voyage of thePeace Ship, which, departing Sweden and Norway, took us to Corinto,
in Nicaragua, were we provided support for suffering Nicaraguan victims of war. On board we carried medicines, fertilizers, machinery, andschool materials for the people, but our most basic cargo was solidarityand friendship. Labor unions, the Lutheran Church, and the governmentof Norway collaborated in the mission, as did another close friend ofboth of us, George Wald, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine.
Ikeda: A ship bearing solidarity and friendship is a wonderful page inhistory. A great scientist, Linus Pauling was also a bodhisattva who
devoted his life to peace and the struggle for the good of suffering peoples. His friendship with you is a source of eternal light.
Putting the Security of Humanity First
Pérez Esquivel: On September 11, 2001, the day of the terrorist attacks,

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another piece of shattering information went unnoted by the major
information media. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization announced that on that day, and on every other day of the year,
throughout the world, 35,615 children died of hunger. No television
channel covered this item. The UN, national governments, and many
religious organizations said not a word about this silent genocide by
starvation, this mute bomb more murderous than war.
Ikeda: You point out a very important fact. Extreme poverty and hunger
are the background of modern terrorist attacks, conflict, and war. Structural violence like exploitation, prejudice, discrimination, poverty,
hunger, and disease generate the causes of direct violence. The Bengal
famine of 1943, which claimed three million victims, stimulated myfriend and the former president of the Pugwash Conferences M. S.
Swaminathan to study agriculture and to tackle the problem of food provision. He insists that peace cannot grow when people are too obsessedwith hunger to heed morality and religion and that human beings havethe ecological, economic, physical, and social right to balanced dietsand clean drinking water.
I agree with him. In many dimensions, promoting the security ofhumanity is the issue to which we must afford primary precedence. In
the truest sense, this is the way to defeat war and violence.
Toward an Age of the Global Citizen and a Century of the Spirit
Ikeda: The Russian cosmonaut Alexandr A. Serebrov related to me an
impression that indicates something about the direction of the interesting reformation of human consciousness. He has flown into space fourtimes and has performed ten space walks. He says that each time hereturns from a space journey, as soon as the lock of the craft opens, he ismost strongly impressed with the aroma of the planet, the fresh smell ofEarth. We must pursue educational policies that develop citizens of the
Earth who respect and are willing to care for the planet that is our common home and the mother entity of all life.
Pérez Esquivel: Without doubt. Terrorism, conflicts, and nuclear armaments threaten our common home, this small planet called Earth. We
have no other. We must care for and respect our Mother Earth, its seas,
forests, and plants and the biological diversity of all living beings thatare part of our planetary life.

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35

Ikeda: Tsunesaburo Makiguchi opposed both narrow nationalism andvain, insubstantial cosmopolitanism and insisted that people should startwith close-to-home thinking as the first step in evolving steadily into
global citizens. For instance, children should realize that the cotton garments they wear are made possible by the hard work of cotton-growers
sweating under the hot Indian sun. Such concrete observation helps children understand that their own homes are connected to the whole world.
Mr. Makiguchi wrote, “My life is related to the world; I consider theworld my home. I realize that all countries are my realm of activity.”15
For him, education must make each person aware of belonging to theimmediate home region, the nation, and the world. Awareness of thehome region and the world prevents people from being swept up in
nationalistic evil. Such a view is essential to the creation of a society ofneighbors and global citizens. In addition, from a historical standpoint,
he argued that in the future humanity should advance from military,political, and economic competition to humane competition. The observations of a man like Mr. Makiguchi, who died imprisoned by theJapanese militarists, have much to teach us in the twenty-first century.
Pérez Esquivel: In the course of evolution, the human being has traveled different paths in prayer and meditation. The power of the spirittakes humanity to the right point, where all other paths come together.
The infinite grace of God guides each individual there. It is the ascending and converging power to merge with divinity. In the words of theFrench philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), it is the
Omega point. In addition to seeking universal mysteries and secrets, wemust humbly delve into ourselves to encounter the revelation of life
where life reveals itself to all of us equally like the dropper produces
drops of water. The ability to see life is barred for those whose spirits
are closed to the self and against the world, though it can come to lightthrough meditation and many other ways. This life-bestowing spirit
flows as free as air in our lungs.
Ikeda: I see. What you say reminds me of the idea of Immanuel Kant,
whom Tsunesaburo Makiguchi read fervently until his death in prison.:“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration andawe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”16 As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, towhom you refer, foresaw the arrival of a century of the mind and thespirit, the intellects of the world have pursued the essence of the cosmos
and of humanity in their own ways.

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Shakyamuni Buddha attained insight into his own, vast, internal universe and perceived it to be unified with the great external universe. He
also perceived the cosmic life force that is the source of both inner andouter universes. This was his Enlightenment, which subsequent Buddhists inherited. One of them was Vasubandhu, who lived in India in the
fourth century. Vicariously experiencing Shakyamuni’s discernment, healso systemized the deep layers of the inner cosmos in what is called theteaching of the Eight Consciousnesses(Vijnana). According to thisteaching, the profound levels of the mind are made up of eight kinds ofconsciousness: the five sensually perceptive consciousnesses plus thesixth consciousness, or thought, which integrates the five perceptual
consciousnesses; the seventh or mano consciousness, which corresponds
to the self; and the eighth or alaya consciousness, which is the storehouse of karmic potentialities. The first six constitute ordinary selfawareness. The seventh enters the realm of fundamental self-awareness.
The eighth, or alaya, consciousness is the deepest. It constitutes themost essential current of life which flows in relationships with others. In
the first seven consciousnesses, both bad attitudes like power lust,
hatred, greed, and egoism, and good attitudes like nonviolence, compassion, self-control, and altruism are operative. Buddhism further perceives the good and bad latent energies as good and bad karma in therealm of the alaya consciousness. According to Mahayana teachings,
the altruistic, sympathetic way of the bodhisattva reinforces the goodkarma in the alaya consciousness and makes possible perception of thefundamental cosmic force of life. This approach coincides with what
you call spirituality.
Pérez Esquivel: Yes. Buddhism arrives at truly profound insights into
the inner world.
Ikeda: Further, Buddhism identifies the cosmic force of life with the
Dharma or Buddha nature, the inherence of which gives dignity to all
human life. The Tiantai (Tendai in Japanese) and Nichiren schools ofMahayana Buddhism add a ninth, or amalaya, consciousness which is
totally pure and includes all the other eight constituent consciousness of
the individual life. The Buddha nature resides deep within the human
inner cosmos but is united with the outer cosmos. In its total purity, it isillumined by the light of compassion and wisdom. This fundamental life
beyond the eighth consciousness is expressed as the mantra Namu
Myoho Renge Kyo, the monarch of all nine consciousnesses. Buddhism
teaches us how to live so as to understand the basic power of life and theMESSAGE FOR THE AGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

37

fundamental wisdom of the universe and in this way to make our lives
radiant. In the individual life, this is the philosophy I have called the“Human Revolution”; in society as a whole it shows the way to build
peace.
Pérez Esquivel: I recall an African proverb that goes, “If you don’tknow where you’re going, go back to find out where you started from.”
We lose sight of our destination; returning to our starting point helps us
see where we are going. Perhaps we can tell how we will arrive, how wewill depart, and what we can hope for from a return. Perhaps we cannot.
But if our spirits are open to the four winds of liberty, love, peace, andjustice, we can acknowledge our common spirituality.
Ikeda: No matter what happens, we must keep in mind the starting
point that is our shared human spirituality.
Pérez Esquivel: I agree. We should know how to see what exists but isinvisible to our eyes, to discover the spirit inhabiting each of us. Sometime ago, I told a group of students about something written by a
Nicaraguan woman imprisoned during the dictatorship of General Anastasio Somoza (1925–80). She wrote: “Without permission, a Nicaraguan
prisoner cannot talk, whistle, smile, sing, walk fast, or greet other prisoners. They can neither give nor receive pictures of pregnant women,
couples, butterflies, stars, or birds.
“On Sunday, a school mistress named Didaská Pérez, imprisoned forher ideological ideas, was visited by her five-year-old daughter Milay,
who had brought her mother a picture of birds she had made. At theprison gate, the censor tore the picture up. Birds are forbidden.
“The following Sunday, Milay came again, this time with a picture oftrees. The censor passed it: ‘Trees are permitted.’ Didaská praised thepicture and asked her daughter what were the colored spots she saw
among the branches. ‘Are they oranges? What kind of fruit are they?’‘Shhh,’ whispered Milay. ‘Silly! Don’t you see? They’re eyes. Of thebirds I brought you. But they’ve all hidden themselves in the leaves.’”
Can we see what is hidden in our hearts and minds—to return to theinterior of each person and let the wind and silence in. To allow freeentry and open our hearts so as to return to our common home. We follow different roads toward the “land of no evil,” the promised land
where we can build our common home. Not knowing where that home
is means we are lost.
We must seek a road to the common hearth of the human family, and38

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that road is spirituality and peace. There is no home without spirituality.
Within ourselves, we must awaken the compassion without which we
can never find the road to our common home.
Ikeda: Your story provides much to think about. I believe that we must
fundamentally alter our way of life by transcending ethnic and nationalboundaries and returning to our shared roots; that is, in your words, tothe common home of humanity.
In 1993, the year after the Los Angeles race riots, I visited the UnitedStates, where I dedicated to my friends there a long poem entitled “TheSun of Jiyu over a New Land,” which contains the following passage:“As each group seeks their separate
Roots and origins,
Society fractures along a thousand fissure lines.
When neighbors distance themselves from neighbors, continue yourUncompromising quest
For your truer roots
In the deepest regions of your lives.
Seek out the primordial ‘roots’ of humankind.
Then you will without fail discover the stately expanse of Jiyu
Unfolding in the depths of your life.
Here is the home, the dwelling place
To which humankind traces
Its original existence.
Beyond all borders,Beyond all differences of gender and race.
Here is a world offering true proof
Of our humanity.
If one reaches back to these fundamental roots,
All become friends and comrades
To realize this is to ‘emerge from the earth’.”
The Lotus Sutra, the quintessence of Mahayana Buddhism, teaches
that everyone is the child of the Great Force of Life and is endowed with
dignity. This essential nature is represented in the form of Boddhisattvas
who rise from the Earth on the occasion of the teaching of the Lotus
Sutra to save all sentient beings. In Japanese, called the Jiyu no Bosatsu,
they are empowered by the operations of the four cosmic elements: fire,
wind, water, and earth. First, like fire that rises heavenward, illuminating
everything around, they lead along the right path lighting courage inMESSAGE FOR THE AGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

39

people’s hearts and dispelling darkness with the light of wisdom. Second, like wind, with the might of life itself, they move ceaselessly,
freely, and powerfully, blowing all obstacles from their paths. Third,
undefiled and pure like running water, they cleanse the world of anger
and greed. Fourth, like the sustaining Earth, they compassionately guard
all things with complete impartiality. The ideal goal of our “Human
Revolution” is the evocation and manifestation of this fundamental cosmic force in both the self and others. The four powers of the Bodhisattvas from the Earth are essential in good leaders.
Pérez Esquivel: You know the common home of humanity, thedwelling with many differences that we must value and accept in ourhearts and minds.
You have expressed it in a beautiful poem that guides us toward aknowledge of our primordial identity. Many people ask me whether
peace is possible in a world rocked with war. We ask everyone, including ourselves, this question in the face of the awe and amazement of ourtimes, in which war seems to be the only way closing off all otheroptions. People wonder whether peace is a Utopia, a dream humanity
can never realize.
We must re-create spirit and conscience by freeing ourselves andbuilding a culture of peace while eliminating from our inner beings theviolence that has dominated and enslaved us, that culture of violence bywhich we have been subjugated.
Ikeda: I understand your meaning. The way to convert violence into
peace is to regenerate the spirit in the mind of each individual. Expanding popular pacific solidarity, too, is a way to turn violence into peace.
Such solidarity becomes power for peace and inspires cooperative popular enlightenment oriented toward spiritual reform. Tsunesaburo
Makiguchi urged us to concentrate on humanity, provide hope, andestablish connections with the people.
In a similar vein, in the Epilogue to War and Peace, Tolstoy has Pierretell Natasha, “The whole of my idea is that if vicious people are unitedand constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now that’s
simple enough.”17 I firmly believe that a great popular solidarity to convert evil to good, hate to compassion, and violence to nonviolence canbuild a peace culture that will finally break the fated cycle of bellicosityand force.

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Youth’s Peace-building Mission
Pérez Esquivel: Tsunesaburo Makiguchi was eager to establish anauthentic humanism in which respect for human dignity was ingrained.
As he indicated with great precision, we must turn our attention tohumanity, provide people with hope, and seek to unite them. How can
we achieve these aims? The challenge is great. But often the solutions
are simple. If we only could practice what Mr. Makiguchi said, values
and attitudes toward life would change radically.
As you know well, in many regions, people live in a uni-polar worldrife with conflicts: wars, hunger, and social, cultural, political, and economic inequalities.
At a recent meeting of the Service of Peace and Justice Foundation
for working on and evaluating priorities and needs, I insisted that weconcentrate on what is urgent and important. There are times when theurgent coincides with what is important and deserving of priority. At
other times, however, we get carried away with the urgent and forget theimportant and the necessary. Immediate conditions absorb us, obscuring
our objectives. This is why we must constantly renew our aims and consider whether we are on the right path. We must be capable of correcting
mistaken directions and re-determine whether our objectives are reallyour priorities.
New generations must understand and must take part in the struggle
to build a different society in which peace is the pillar of social, political, economic, and spiritual life and in which horrors like Hiroshima andNagasaki, concentration camps, wars, and the destruction of life neveroccur again.
The younger generations of today were not alive in that epoch when
the irrationality of power, destruction, and murder was let loose by governments convinced that the world was their own. Young people today
have the mission of creating spaces for harmonious coexistence andmutual respect among individuals and peoples. To enable them to carryout this mission, we must cultivate spiritual fortitude in them. Let us
remember that the past is not gone forever and that some situations,though now submerged and latent, have not disappeared.
Ikeda: Yes. That is why people who knew the evil and violence of thebellicose twentieth century must transmit a spirit of peace and justice tothe youth of the twenty-first. A month after September 11, 2001, Joseph
Rotblat, who was 92 at the time, flew from London to the United States,
eager to address a group of first-year students at Soka University of

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America, the mission of which is cultivating people devoted to the peaceof the world. I remember vividly how, with the courage of a lion, he said
that the terrorist attacks on the United States were part of the twentiethcentury’s negative heritage of despising and ignoring the dignity of life.
This heritage is symbolized by the Holocaust and the nuclear bombingsof Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Dr. Rotblat went on to express his belief inthe goodness of humanity and its capability of civilized evolution and toinsist on giving precedence to the benefit of all humanity over that of
ethnic groups and nations.
A speech you delivered at Soka University, Japan, in 1994 has
become a historical tradition among students, who speak of it still.
Pérez Esquivel: Thank you very much. It was an honor to visit Soka
University, an institution founded by Soka Gakkai, an organization dedicated to value creation. The founding president Tsunesaburo Makiguchi
and his two successors endured attacks and persecutions for the sake ofdefending peace and justice. I consider it important to point out that weshare with you the struggle for those two great causes.
The knowledge of our common humanity underlies human dignity.
Moreover, this knowledge grows when we act on our own initiative forthe sake of others and for the good of society. To say that youth is the
future is only a relative truth. I think that youth is the present, the now,
the today, and that the future will be the direct consequence of the present. We will perceive the fruits tomorrow of the things we have thecourage to sow today. For this reason, young people must learn history
and cultivate a critical awareness. Youth can open the doors of tomorrow. They can do it with weapons in their hands or with arms outstretched in hope and brotherhood. Peace must be built in each young
person and in the comradeship of peoples.
Human rights are nothing special. To the contrary, we must realizethat they proceed from individual behavior. I hope we will be able tocultivate and develop this awareness and the sense of responsibility thatemerges from it.
In Latin America, the Service of Peace and Justice Foundation,
together with certain Swedish organizations, conducts a disarmamentcampaign placing special emphasis on young people. Its efforts are
directed toward schools and the development of awareness of the consequences of arms and the necessity of disarmament.
We aim to teach nonviolence as a way of life. We must resolve ourconflicts through dialogue, not violence. We encourage daily life practices for the individual and in families, communities, countries, and the

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whole world.
Achieving ideals always requires effort and great hope. This is something that Josei Toda indicated very effectively.
Ikeda: Thank you for understanding my mentor. You and all the otherworld intellectuals with whom I have shared dialogues agree that the
future of humanity rests on the shoulders of youth. Josei Toda
bequeathed the creation of the new century to the ardor and energy ofyoung people. Shedding even more light on the world’s troubles, we
intend to build popular solidarity for action in the name of solving global problems.
Pérez Esquivel: Soka Gakkai International contributes to the formationof youth and the building of new paradigms of life and peace. So, its
member organizations and individuals are worthy to enjoy respect. I
should like to say that you are a person of consistent words and deeds.
You put your words into action and impress on them the strength of yourown spirit. I hope that you will continue your work for the good of
humanity for many years to come.
Ikeda: I have learned much from this dialogue with you. The couragethat your wisdom and faith as a man of action have imparted to young
people is beyond measure. Buddhist scriptures teach, “If you want tounderstand the causes that existed in the past, look at the results as they
are manifested in the present. And if you want to understand what
results will be manifested in the future, look at the causes that exist in
the present.”18 As we unflinchingly tread the way of peace and justice,
you and I together are creating causes of future hope and triumph. I
wholeheartedly pray for your long life and increasingly good health forthe sake of humanity.
Notes
Young India (April 10, 1930).
Rosa Parks and Gregory J. Reed. Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today’s Youth(New York: Lee & Low Books, 1996), p. 97.
3
The WND II, p. 844.
4
The WND II, p. 931.
5
Geoffrey Hartman, ed. Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1986).
6
Krishna Kripalani, ed. All Men Are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi As Told in His Own Words (Paris: UNESCO, 1958), p. 163.
7Translated from Japanese. Mitsuo Yamaguchi, Jinkaku ron (Tagoru Chosaku shu
1
2

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vol 9) (Tokyo: Daisanbunmei-sha, 1981).
8
The WND, p. 24.
9
The WND, p. 385.
10
Ibid., p. 464.
11News Letter No. 7035 (November 28, 2006). Translated from the November 8,
2006, issue of the Seikyo Shimbun, the Soka Gakkai daily newspaper.
12
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “WOMAN,” in The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Fireside Edition), vol. 11 (Boston and New York: 1909).
13
Translated from the translator’s postscript for the Japanese edition of A Mighty
Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl by Mariane Pearl, translated into Japaense by Tato Takahama (Tokyo: Ushio Shuppansha, 2005), p. 425.
14Translated from Japanese. Richard von Weizsäcker, Vaitsuzekka Nihon Koen-roku:
Rekishi ni Me o Tozasu na (Richard von Weizsäcker’s Speeches in Japan: Don’t CloseYour Eyes to History), translated by Kiyohiko Nagai (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996).
15Translated from Japanese. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Jinsei Chirigaku (A Geographyof Human Life), in Makiguchi Tsunesaburo Zenshu (Collected Writings of Tsunesaburo
Makiguchi) (Tokyo: Daisanbunmei-sha, 1996), vol. 1.
16
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, translated by T. K. Abbott (NewYork: Prometheus Books, 1996), p. 191.
17
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, translated from the Russian by Louise and Aylmer
Maude (London: David Campbell, 1992), vol. 3, p. 474.
18
The WND, p. 279.

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Daisaku Ikeda
Born in 1928. Honorary President of Soka Gakkai. President ofSoka Gakkai International (SGI). Founder of the Institute ofOriental Philosophy. Established educational institutions suchas Soka University, Soka University of America and Soka
Schools; cultural institutions such as the Min-On Concert Association and the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum; as well as academic
and peace-research institutions such as Toda Institute for Global
Peace and Policy Research and the Boston Research Center forthe 21st Century. Authored numerous literary works such as“The Human Revolution” (12 volumes), “The New Human Revolution” (in progress), and “The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra,”and “Wonderful Encounters: Recollections of Meetings with
Unforgettable People Around the World.” Furthermore, there aremany collections of dialogues with intelligentsia and leadingworld figures, “Choose Life” (A. Toynbee), “Moral Lessons of
the Twentieth Century” (M.S. Gorbachev), “Choose Peace”(Johan Galtung), etc. He has received over 240 honorary doctorates and honorary professorships from universities and institutes
around the world, such as Moscow State University, Universityof Glasgow and Beijing University.
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
Born 1931 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Graduate of the Escuela
Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Universidad de La Plata.
Highly acclaimed as an architect, sculptor and artist he worked
in a number of sculptural medias. In 1974, he founded the El
Servicio de Paz y Justicia (the Service of Peace and JusticeFoundation) for the safeguarding of human rights by promoting
an international campaign to condemn the atrocities committed
by the military regime. He was arrested in 1977 in Buenos Airesby the Policía Federal, tortured and held without trial for 14
months. While incarcerated, he received the Pope John XXIII
Peace Memorial. In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prizefor his efforts in defending human rights. He has received honorary doctorates and honorary professorships from universities
around the world such as the University of Buenos Aires. His
wife, Amanda, is a pianist and musical composer.