November 1966—the promise of music and drugs, about the only things that made me feel any good, regularly drew big crowds of youth to the night scene on the Sunset Strip. My friends and I milled about outside a club called Pandora’s Box, clogging street traffic, when we heard shouts of protest and pain. I looked up and saw it: a wave of police spilling fast down the Strip, dispersing the crowd with billy clubs—an event that would become known to history as the Sunset Curfew Riots. The grown-ups—local business owners and residents—had proclaimed us kids a nuisance, and the police were delivering the message.
The ’60s were a time of crises: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and, later, Martin Luther King, Jr. At 18, I was one year out from under my parents’ roof and finding the wider world no sunnier than the place I’d run from. Here, too, it seemed a misfortune to be seen or heard by grown-ups.
Running in the light of Sunset’s flashing neon billboards, in a jostle of flying elbows and hair, I wondered: Why are they hitting us? Where can I run?
It was my drug dealer who introduced me to Buddhism. He showed up to my place in the spring of 1967 at his usual time but, oddly, empty-handed.
“What,” I heard my roommate say at the door, “no drugs?” The door slammed, and she came inside throwing up her hands.
“‘No more drugs,’ he says! ‘I’m a Buddhist,’ he says!”
Bad news, but it stirred something in me. I’d been feeling, with the passing of every high, every party and love-in, a deepening emptiness.
In time, he came around again, extending, instead of drugs, an invitation to a Buddhist meeting. This time I was at the door before my friend could slam it.
“Actually, I’d love to come.”
Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo quietly with the others in a West Hollywood home, I experienced a deep calm, and in that calm, a realization: I was on the brink. This is my last try, my last straw, I thought. If this doesn’t work, I’m through. But I also felt this hope coming alive, this will to live to see where the feeling might lead me.
I remember the smiling green eyes of one tiny woman, the district leader, whose home we were in. Both her and her home I came to know well. I’d come ranting, crying, dejected, etc., listing all my problems in a run-on sentence: My car was broke and me too broke to fix it and too hopeless to keep a job and my family was a mess. … She’d just listen and listen and then say, “Terry, no matter how bad it seems, you can transform anything by chanting.”
Never in my life had I felt so heard and seen by a grown-up. In her, I found the connection I’d secretly yearned for: a parent, an unshakable friend. She was one of many who guided me to the writings of Nichiren Daishonin and the guidance of Ikeda Sensei, which became a compass for my life. In the SGI, I felt I’d encountered, at last, grown-ups I could trust.
Fast forward to 2012, by which time I’d experienced all kinds of joys—marriage and motherhood among them—and sailed through many storms as well. But none prepared me for the loss of my husband, Guy, to cancer in July of that year. Unlike me, Guy had been a natural at sharing Buddhism. It’s something of an irony, then, that his passing shook my faith, opened a chasm in my heart and cast me over the brink. I don’t think I’ll heal from this, I thought. My daughters, Stacey and Kimberly, too, felt their worlds turned upside down.
The night he died, a friend in faith drove three hours to chant with me beside him in repose. It was a reminder to me of what I’d found in that West Hollywood home, years ago as a runaway youth—a family.
As we chanted, his face seemed to me to take on a rosy hue, relaxing into a slight smile.
I’ve fulfilled my mission in this life, his contented look seemed to say. And how could I doubt him? He’d shared Buddhism with thousands of people and raised with me the most beautiful family. What was left to me was to fulfill my mission and become a pillar for my daughters.
Terry with her grandchildren, (l-r) Isabella, Amelia, Tasi and Alexis in Long Beach, August 2021. Photo by Stacey Susuico.
With time and abundant daimoku, life began to move again. I started managing some of the hair salons owned by my youngest and her husband. Though heartbroken, a funny thing happened: I began to see the salons as Guy would have—as treasure troves of young people waiting to hear about the Mystic Law. More than ever, I began to lend an ear to these youth, as someone had once done for me. “Mama Terry” they started calling me, because they knew they could come to me with anything and be encouraged.
In March 2018, I passed the door of one young stylist and recognized immediately a person on the brink.
“Are you OK,” I asked.
“No.”
I went in, and we spoke. Then I gave him a Nam-myoho-renge-kyo card. “Today, I want you to say this in between sessions with each of your clients. I’ll be back at the end of the day.”
When I knocked on his door, the young man who answered was completely changed.
“I feel so much better,” he said and held up the card. “What is this?”
I’ve begun planting seeds wherever I go—Trader Joe’s, the hardware store, my favorite coffee shop. I focus on the connection, not any strategy. So many tell me that Nam-myoho-renge-kyo was exactly what they needed to hear.
The times are different, but the sense of being lost, of the world being turned upside down, is, for many young people, the same as I experienced at that age. It’s clear that young people need as much as ever a compass—a great philosophy and mentor. They need true friends. Having encountered such a mentor and such friends, I can say with confidence that they will find none greater or truer than in the SGI.
Q: What advice would you give the youth?
Terry Mitchell: To me, coming of age in the ’60s and ’70s, it was clear: Many of society’s leaders make promises without intending to fulfill them. What stood out to me about Ikeda Sensei was that everything he said he’d do, he did it, no matter what. He is someone you can trust.
Throughout the month of December, some 20 countries across Africa held the Fifth All-Africa Buddhist Exam in English and French. President Daisaku Ikeda sent a message to the participants.
byRebecca Butler Pennsauken, N.J.
We were in a huddle, warming up for field hockey, when my friend asked, startled, “What is that?” My shorts had ridden up above the knee and she was looking there, at the scars. I tugged them down and forced a laugh.
“That’s nothing.”
She held my eyes a long moment, and I knew which scar she’d seen, the one that spelled HELP.
“Really, I’m stressed is all.”
By age 17, I’d learned to keep my pain to myself. Telling my loving parents about just some of the abuse I’d experienced growing up in our neighborhood, one of the rougher parts of Pennsauken, had resulted early on in the understandable but isolating policy of keeping me home when not in school. Telling a therapist, too, had been a disaster—she’d all but insisted I’d dreamed the abuse. Though nobody’s intention, I came to expect pleas for help to be punished or ignored, an expectation that seemed to bear itself out my junior year, in 2005, when I opened up to a guidance counselor, was put on suicide watch and tagged with a mental health record that ended my dreams of a military career. I watched my friends leave, one after the other, to college, trade school or the military, while I was left behind, wondering, Why in the world did I open my big mouth?
I might have carried this question to the grave had it not been for the development, in July 2013, six months after the birth of my first child, Victoria, of bizarre spasms—fits of involuntary muscle contractions that contorted my body in harmful positions. The slightest wrong motion could trigger a fit, and I was suddenly in need of help for everything—be it taking stairs, a bath or a drive. Everywhere I went, I went with a cane and otherwise lay stock still on my side. As for the doctors, they couldn’t diagnose it, not with MRIs, bloodwork or spinal taps. It wasn’t until over a year later, just after the birth of my second daughter, Adriana, that a neurologist pinpointed the cause. Dystonia, she said, was a rare neurological disorder without a cure. What I was already doing—taking strong muscle relaxants three times a day—was all there was to be done. In all likelihood, this was my permanent reality.
One thing was clear—some internal limit had been crossed; bottling up my pain was no longer an option. I might as well have nailed a sign to my cane that read, “Help.”
In 2017, someone noticed—the crossing guard at Adriana’s school. We got to talking, and he asked if I’d ever heard of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, a Buddhist mantra he chanted to become absolutely happy. Was I interested in joining a meeting?
By this time, my jean size was a double zero; the stress of tending to my own needs on top of Adriana’s (she was born with special needs), had led to dangerous weight loss. I’d been taking strong antidepressants just to curb the worst of the stress—becoming absolutely happy sounded both wonderful and impossible. Still, I was no longer one to turn away help.
All the pills I was on made a blur of my days, but I remember my first Buddhist meeting, in February 2018, for the warmth of the people there, a warmth I’d never known. Day-to-day, my life was hard—had been hard for years—and here I felt this plain fact fully acknowledged for the first time. I remember the firm assurance of a voice by my elbow: “You deserve to be happy!” and me, just howling through tears: “I knoooww!”
I wouldn’t forget the feeling of that room, of the resonant chanting and what it stirred inside me. I began looking forward to every Buddhist meeting and soon received the Gohonzon.
It was strange, but chanting, I found I could sit, at first for short periods of time, but then gradually longer. People would stack their coats on my chair to support my back and, if a spasm started, would shift the coats around to adjust the support. Soon I was sitting for long periods, chanting to my heart’s content, and I began to wonder what else might be possible. My women’s leader, right from the jump, had wondered the same.
Triumph—Rebecca Butler and her daughters (l-r), Adriana and Victoria, and partner, Scott. Photo by Dave Goodman.
She sat me down and asked me what were my hopes and dreams.
“To be happy,” I said.
“Wonderful, what else?”
Pondering this, I realized I didn’t have other hopes—I didn’t think I could and said as much.
“But, if you could?”
“Well, it would be nice to find a home in a better part of town for the kids.”
“What else?”
“I’d like to get Adriana into a great, full-day school program.”
“What else?”
“I’d get off of all these pills.”
“What else?”
I thought hard about what had once made me happiest—afterschool programs like soccer, field hockey and dance. “Well, if I could really do anything—anything?
“Anything.”
“I’d dance.”
Day after day, the women’s division members called me up, heard me out and told me their stories of overcoming hardships. They were stories about how they’d drawn on their faith for the strength not only to survive but to emerge from their struggles stronger, wiser and more compassionate. I thought to myself, If such a thing was possible for her, then maybe it’s possible for me. I made a list of goals and, one by one, checked them off. Within the year, I’d found a new home and secured the best schooling for Adriana. With my doctor’s permission, I began to wean myself off the antidepressants, something I completed in 2019. Following this (again under doctor’s supervision), I weaned myself off the muscle relaxants. This I completed in March 2021, spasm-free, to the shock and joy of my neurologist. By this time, I had a strong desire to give to others what I’d found through faith—that same March, I took on leadership. Having accomplished so much, I decided (again, under doctor’s supervision!) to begin coming off all medications—for blood pressure, allergies, migraines and reflux—some of which I’d taken since childhood. A year has passed since I stopped taking all medications, and I’m in great health.
Lastly, I’ve taken up dance once again. Around this time last year, Victoria and I danced in the Merchantville Holiday Parade, while Adriana, who was once unable to handle events of this kind, took in the whole spectacle in awe: the lights, the music, and her sister and mother bringing up the rear in a line of Rockettes, kicking our legs in time, dancing with joy.
On December 31, a groundbreaking ceremony for a new center in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire was held. The ceremony was attended by members from eight neighboring countries, including Togo, Benin and Senegal. President Daisaku Ikeda sent a congratulatory message. The new center will consist of a 1,700-seat auditorium and a two-story building and will be one of the largest Soka Gakkai facilities in Africa. On January 4, a delegation made up of Takemi Sugai, advisor to the Soka Gakkai in Africa, Bi Drigoné Jonas Toboe, vice general director of Soka Gakkai Côte d’Ivoire, Masahiro Hayashi, director of the Africa Division of the SGI Coordination and Liaison Office, and other Soka Gakkai representatives met with Messamba Bamba, director general of the Department of Faith-Based Organizations of the Ministry of Interior and Security of Côte d’Ivoire. On the same day, the delegation also visited Amadou Coulibaly, minister of Communication and Digital Economy.
On December 22, a Central Africa General Meeting was held in Douala, Cameroon. Soka Gakkai members from the Central African Republic, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo attended the meeting. Other meetings were held on December 23 in Cameroon, including in the cities of Edéa and Yaoundé. On January 1, a West Africa General Meeting was held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, with the participation of members from eight neighboring countries.
Living Buddhism: In Ikeda Sensei’s poem “The Sun of Jiyu Over a New Land,” he describes his impressions of the civil unrest that followed the Rodney King verdict in April 1992. As a youth raised in Los Angeles, what were your feelings then?
Lynn Frazier: I was stunned. In my community in south L.A., abuses of police authority were not uncommon, but in this instance, extreme abuse had been caught on camera and televised to the world. There was so much media attention given to this particular case that I began to hope for and even expect justice. When the verdict came, word flew from the breakroom at work, where my co-workers were listening to the news live. I remember feeling such painful frustration. Across the city, anger boiled over and within a few hours, the unrest broke out. As reports of fire starting and looting came in from locations not far from my work, our managers sent us home.
Driving home, I thought of my younger sister, Lucky, nine months pregnant, who would soon be making the drive home through this city that had been turned on its head.
Your thoughts went right away to your sister and unborn nephew.
Lynn: Yes. Our mother raised Lucky and I on her own. As the older sister in a home without a father, I’d always felt protective of Lucky, and only more so as her due date drew near. At 21, however, my concerns revolved around me. I wanted the trendiest clothes, to be at the most happening clubs, with the most popular crowds. I was someone who went wherever the wind blew, easily influenced by my environment. This began to change when our mother started practicing Nichiren Buddhism with the SGI in 1988, and I saw in just a few days how she’d begun to change. In the wake of her divorce with my father, many of her former friends disappeared; it was just the three of us. But once she got involved in the SGI community, there seemed to always be someone calling, visiting, encouraging her. Her life and ours were made so much fuller.
Driving home the day the unrest broke out, my sole thought was for the safety of my sister. When I got home, I sat before the Gohonzon and chanted. As I did, calls came in from close friends around the city.
What were your friends experiencing?
Lynn: Anger and frustration. A few asked me to join them, but frankly, I sensed as soon I picked up the phone that they were acting out of either anger or opportunism, or a mixture of both. “Come on, let’s show them!” one said, while another bubbled, “Let’s go get free stuff!” In my three years of Buddhist practice, I had never felt so appreciative of the Gohonzon, which anchored me in the storm raging through L.A. I chanted single-mindedly that my sister would get home safely and that a deep and lasting peace would be realized in our city. When she did make it home a few hours later, I remember feeling this sense of certainty and wonder: She made it back. She’s OK. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo really works. I felt in that moment, for the first time, deep conviction in the power of daimoku.
Lucky came home safe and your nephew, Chai, was born healthy just a week later. But what about your prayer for meaningful change?
Lynn: There had been all this commotion. Promises were made and some changes were affected, but overall, I did not feel deep change resonating from the political sphere. When things died down, it felt like things returned to the way they were. And yet, leading up to Chai’s birth, I actually felt more hopeful. The reason, I’m sure, is how much I was chanting.
Lucky and I were on our own. After our mother moved out of our childhood home in 1991, my sister and I moved in there together. It would be just the two of us co-parenting my baby nephew. In a world that seemed undecided about whether or not it would respect his life, I decided that his best chance lay in me beginning to respect my own.
What a powerful realization. Sensei arrived in the U.S. in January 1993 and presented “Sun of Jiyu.” Did the poem spark further realizations for you?
Lynn: Yes. Like so many who heard the poem, I was deeply touched. In several stanzas, Sensei describes his visceral response to the images of L.A. broadcast around the world the year prior. The following struck me deeply.
Nor can I ever forget the spring of 1992— even now my heart is rent with pain when I recall how the tragic news of the civil unrest in Los Angeles raced around the world.
Heartrending images of the evening sky shrouded in black smoke, of buildings collapsing in flames, once peaceful streets shattered by riot, the entire city gripped by a battlefield tension. People standing lost in confusion, a woman holding an infant cried out —What has become of the ideals of this country? What are we supposed to teach our children?— Her woe-filled words tore like talons at my heart.
I received continuous reports, extended prompt relief. And, putting everything aside, I sat before the Gohonzon and single-mindedly prayed— for the safety of my treasured friends, for the immediate restoration of order, for a world without violence and discrimination.
Hearing these stanzas for the first time, I remember thinking, How did he know? I’d been alone the afternoon of the unrest, alone chanting to the Gohonzon. But reading Sensei’s words, it was as though he’d been there with me. It was then, on first hearing this poem that I felt deep within my life that Ikeda Sensei was my mentor in life.
Raising Chai with your sister, what did you teach him?
Lynn: I raised my nephew with my sister until he was 7, when Lucky married and moved in with her husband. Until that time and after, Chai was raised in the garden of Soka. We taught him to value his own life and respect the dignity of others. He doesn’t practice Buddhism, but has absolutely benefited from our efforts in faith. Watching him grow into the person he is today—capable, kind, intelligent—has taught me to appreciate the hardship surrounding his birth. There is significance in everything. Looking back, it was my Buddhist practice that allowed me to muster hope for Chai’s life to have value. When obstacles arise, Buddhists rejoice because we can transform suffering into a hopeful future. This is what Chai demonstrated for me.
Has the poem’s significance changed for you over time?
Lynn: Definitely. For me, the initial takeaway from the poem was that Sensei understood my heart; that he was someone I could trust. Over the years, other parts of the poem have resonated more and more deeply. For instance:
People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends, you truly live. …
Now is the time for you to realize that through relations mutually inspiring and harmonious, the greater self is awakened to dynamic action, the bonds of life are restored and healed.
In 1994, I accepted young women’s district leadership in the SGI. I didn’t know fully what this would entail, but because I felt a deep sense of responsbility to respond to Sensei, I took it on. In leadership, I was asked to care for many others, to get to know them, to understand what it was they were going through and learn how to encourage them to fight toward their dreams. I struggled many times—it’s not easy to reach out to those who may be suffering. There were times when I’d call a young woman and she wouldn’t answer; other times when she’d tell me flat out that she didn’t want to talk to me. Little by little, though, I developed harmonious relationships with the young women. If someone hung up on me, I was not so quick to dwell on what I may have done wrong. Instead, I was more prone to ponder what the other person might be going through that was causing them to shut down or lash out. I found that the harmonious relationships I built were, indeed, “mutually inspiring.” We inspired each other to grow.
Gradually, I accepted greater leadership responsibility. Lucky tells me that it was the changes that she saw me undergo as I practiced with the SGI that prompted her to sit down beside me one day as I was chanting and say, “OK, I’m ready to learn gongyo.” Eventually, she, too, took on leadership, which was so inspiring! By this time, she had four children, was managing the home with her husband and a full time career!
By practicing together, we deepened our trust in each other and in ourselves. We became resilient people and parents. As Sensei says in the poem, People can only live fully by helping others to live. By building bonds with these young women, restoring them when they were fraught, never giving up on anyone, I began to reflect on the bonds in my own life, in my family, in particular, that needed to heal.
How so?
Lynn: Our father was sporadically in our lives when we were young but then left for good to Thailand, his home country, when I was 7. Since then, I had always felt, Why had he left; how could he? As I began to practice Buddhism, I began to recognize this anger and resentment manifesting in my romantic relationships. It was only through repeatedly opening my life to the young women who I was supporting in SGI leadership that I began to envision opening my life to my father, without the expectation that he would do the same. This was a years’ long process, but eventually I was able to do so. Today, I have a great relationship with my father, my mother, my sister and my husband, K.C. At the heart of all of these is the relationship I have with my mentor.
The realization of true, lasting peace for our immediate community and the world will take time. But I feel deep conviction that its foundation has been laid in the depths of my life, in the life of my harmonious family and SGI community. I feel convinced, as Sensei says, that these mutually inspiring and harmonious relations awaken the greater self. This inner dawning of the greater self, together with my mentor, doubtless heralds a new day, in which the sun of jiyu rises over a new land.
(L-r) Lynn with her husband, K.C., dog, Nanjo and family members in Los Angeles, November 2022. Photo by Yvonne Ng.
―WORDS OF THE WEEK―
Let’s praise one another for our
“unseen virtues” and hold discussion
meetings shining with “visible reward.”
Let’s “be confident that the great
reward . . . is sure to come,”(*)
and advance toward triumphant victory
in harmonious unity, together with
our men’s and women’s district leaders!
(*)“Unseen Virtue and Visible Reward,” WND 1, p.907
Tentative translation of “Words of the Week” published in the Seikyo Shimbun, based on President Ikeda’s recent guidance.
Monday, December 12, 2022 is a press holiday. “To My Friends” will resume Tuesday, December 13, 2022.
byChrista Fontenot Eunice, La.
Through the kitchen window of my mobile home parked in my father’s backyard, I spied my daughter in a blue shirt, her hair cut short and flying in the wind. All grown up, she was even more beautiful than I remembered. She was speaking with my father, her arms flung around his German shepherd panting in a pool of sunshine. One look told me she was happy; one look flooded me with emotion and was all it took for me to forget myself completely. I made for the door, to step outside, call her name and close the distance with a hug. My hand was on the knob when Lucy, my Jack Russell, gave a sharp little bark from the couch, snapping me back to Earth—there was a reason I wasn’t already outside holding my daughter; I’d hurt her too deeply, too often.
Six years had passed since my daughter had cut ties with me in 2013, unable to watch me spiral in and out of destructive addictions to painkillers and alcohol. My heart hammering, I let my hand fall from the knob. I’d been chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for a month, beginning in February 2019, my earliest and most consistent prayer being for my daughter’s happiness. How or when I’d be a part of that happiness, I had no idea, but there it was, proof of my prayer, just outside my window: My daughter looked happy.
By then, I’d been chanting in earnest for a month, since a three-woman troupe had come to my door in February. In the lead was a spritely gray-haired Japanese lady holding two bags, one of books, one of cookies.
“Hello!” she cried. “I love these! These are for you!”
Behind their visit was my friend, DeJohn, whom I’d met in the addiction treatment community and who’d told me about Buddhism. I was four years sober by then but was keenly seeking a spiritual practice that could help me help other women still on the path to recovery. He had asked these women to visit me out here in Eunice. After we chanted, the lady with the cookies got straight to the point.
“So, why Buddhism?”
I explained about my history of addiction. Though I’d maintained a strong relationship with my son and my father, I was estranged from both my mother and daughter, and had caused suffering to all of them. She nodded and laid her hand on the knee of the younger woman beside her. “This is my daughter. We weren’t always friends. It took a lot of daimoku! Please chant for anything. No dream is too big.”
After they left, I opened up my little book of goals. I didn’t know where to start, but after a while I picked up my pen and in the upper corner of one page wrote simply: Mom.
As with my daughter, it didn’t seem right for me to expect my mother to open her heart just because I felt ready to open mine. Nonetheless, I put her foremost in my prayers, bearing in mind the words “no dream is too big.”
Two weeks later, my phone rang, and I recognized the number, my mom’s. More calls followed until we were speaking regularly, openly, becoming friends.
What had once seemed impossible had become a reality almost overnight. After that first call, I sat down with my book of goals and wrote what I hadn’t yet dared—my daughter’s name.
In the meantime, chanting and studying Buddhism brought about other changes. For one, I was bringing greater courage and compassion into my work sponsoring women in recovery. One day, one of these women arrived to a workshop high. After, some more- experienced sponsors advised I give up on her. Normally, I would have listened. Instead, I heard myself flatly refuse.
“I’m not giving up on her. I don’t need a person to come to me perfect for me to believe in them.”
Looking back, I see that these words came from the deepened faith in humanity I’d gained through chanting and reading the guidance of Ikeda Sensei.
In January 2022, my mother called with “something to discuss.” Hesitantly, she said, “Your daughter is pregnant.” I shrieked in joy, and then my breath caught.
“Mom, did she give you permission to tell me?”
“She did.”
“And do you think I can reach out?
“I do.”
Hanging up, I broke down, calling out through my tears to my fiancé, DeJohn (yes, the very one who’d introduced me to Buddhism). He, too, cried tears of joy.
“Please chant for anything. No dream is too big.”
Christa with her husband, DeJohn Scott. Photo by Daniel J.
I texted my daughter, congratulating her. She shot a text right back asking if we could meet for coffee. Blue must be her color—I spotted her right away at the café, big with the baby, in a blue dress.
At this sit-down, we laughed and cried. She had some difficult questions, but those were what I’d come to answer.
Then she explained that her husband was hesitant to have me over. Given my past, he had valid concerns. I said right away: “I’m so glad he loves you so much and is such a protective husband and father-to-be. I have no motive except to hopefully get to know you better.”
I continued to chant for her and her baby wholeheartedly each day. But a few weeks later, a realization struck: I had not been chanting for my son-in law! I started right away.
Three days later, my daughter texted that her husband had a change of heart!
We met for dinner and talked late, and I could see the love they shared, the wish for the other’s happiness. I don’t think there’s a word to describe the feeling when they asked me to be part of their life. I was crying; my daughter, too. We all were. The most overjoyed was maybe my son-in-law, glowing with happiness that his wife would have her mother again.
That night, I realized another thing: For the longest time, I’d been chanting for my daughter’s happiness, a happiness that was hers, unshakable and resilient, in spite of all the pain I’d caused. But it had not occurred to me that perhaps my presence, as a strong, positive force within my family, was an essential part of the picture.
“Whatever your circumstances, whatever your past, the forces that determine your future are nowhere but within your own heart and mind. It is here that the star of your destiny shines.”
On December 10, Amnesty International Japan and the Soka Gakkai Peace Committee co-organized the Fifth Annual Youth Forum, titled “Young People and Human Rights Education: Promoting Children’s Rights in Japan” to mark Human Rights Day. Held in Tokyo, the hybrid event featured a keynote speech by Slovenian Ambassador Blanka Jamnišek. She stated that more people learning about human rights at earlier stages of life would contribute to the stability of society and happiness of people. Ambassador Jamnišek also conducted a face-to-face training session for some 30 teachers and 10 Soka Gakkai Women’s Peace Committee members on the use of human rights education tools to teach children about their rights.
On December 9, El Colegio de Michoacán (The College of Michoacán) and the Soka Gakkai of Mexico opened the exhibition “Everything You Treasure—For a World Free From Nuclear Weapons” at the college’s Luis González library. The exhibition, jointly created by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and the SGI (Soka Gakkai International), was held to mark the 40th anniversary of Alfonso García Robles, former Foreign Minister of Mexico, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. Luis Alberto Arrioja Díaz Viruell, president of the college, spoke at the opening ceremony. The exhibition will run until January 31, 2023.
