Living Buddhism: Thank you for speaking with us, Rod. How did you begin your Buddhist practice?
Rod Burke: In 1967, in my 20s, and in trouble. A friend of mine had asked me to house his brother for a while. A week into his stay, my friend mentioned that this brother of his was a fugitive.
I found myself headed to trial as an accomplice, something I confided to a co-worker over lunch. I half-expected him to distance himself, to wash his hands of me, a likely jailbird. But as I talked, he just listened and, once I’d said it all, fished a piece of paper from his pocket and began to write something down. “If you chant this simple phrase, you can obtain everything you need to become happy.” He showed me what he’d written and we said it together several times: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
On the half-hour drive home, I chanted. All that was on my mind was to somehow not go to jail. But as I chanted, I felt something stir within, and as I kept chanting, that feeling grew. By the time I pulled into the driveway, I felt… well, I don’t know how to describe it other than awesome.
How would you describe that feeling of chanting for the first time?
Rod: I’d never felt anything like it. Never had it occurred to me that my life might be deeply significant. I sat in the driveway with a feeling of profound happiness. Then, after a while, I got out, almost gingerly, from the car. Everything I did that night I seem to have done this way—carefully. Opening the door to my house, taking off my shoes, getting ready for bed, I was attentive the whole time to the new, possibly fragile feeling I carried inside. Could I trust it? Would it vanish? The next day, I woke up with the feeling still within me. I took it to work, to my friend, asking, “What is this?”
“You’ve woken your Buddha nature,” he said. An added benefit was that I avoided incarceration entirely, receiving a very light sentence of 1 year’s probation.
Where did this feeling lead you?
Rod: First off, I wanted to know more. I began to get involved in the Soka community, where many of the members I met, like my co-worker, struck me as kind and sincere. I began to open up to them, to a kind of friendship that was foreign to me—friendship based on a vow to become happy and help others do the same.
I took on leadership, which put me on the fast track of my human revolution. Others depended on me and I on others. This second part, depending on others, proved extremely difficult. As a child I’d been enrolled in private schools—first a military, then a Catholic school—which were intensely regimented. I saw my parents only on weekends. At an age when most children learn to rely on their parents, I learned to rely on myself. I carried around an emptiness in me, a feeling of abandonment and a deep mistrust of others. I carried these feelings into my friendships, jobs, marriages and leadership. It was in leadership that I expiated these negative tendencies from my life. Challenged constantly to support, open up to and trust others, I became able to do so in all areas of my life. But this has been a long, gradual journey for me.
In 1972, I entered my second marriage. It lasted about two years. I’ll never forget the day she left me. I came from a trip and the apartment was empty. She’d taken the furniture along with our eight-month-old son. The room was bare but for the Gohonzon. I curled up on the floor and wept.
I woke up on the floor of my bare apartment in a state that hovered somewhere between a stupor and a rage. Hell was where I was. I sat before the Gohonzon and said, out loud, “If this doesn’t work, I quit.” I began chanting to alleviate what felt like bottomless suffering.
What followed?
Rod: Within the first two weeks of chanting toward this goal, I had a realization. It was obvious, or should have been, but I’d been unable to see it. I’m suffering, not her. This is my problem, not hers.
Over the course of the next two months, my prayer shifted. After almost three months, I experienced something extraordinary. It was again a sense of elation, of complete fulfillment, of total forgiveness. I was enough, just as I was—fulfilled, married or not. As with my first time chanting, I went about the next few weeks somewhat mistrustful of the feeling, wondering if it were real. As I continued chanting, I had yet another realization: I was grateful. I did what would have been unthinkable three months earlier to the person who’d collapsed on the floor of his emptied apartment: expressed to my ex-wife, truthfully, that I appreciated every moment we’d spent together.
What were you thankful for, exactly?
Rod: For the opportunity to grow. The boarding schools where I grew up fostered in me discipline and independence but not forgiveness and connection. Until I began my practice, I had no true friends, only acquaintances—people with whom I partied, drank or played baseball. It never occurred to me to even go so far as invite a friend over for dinner. Without knowing it, however, I craved connection. In relationships—particularly in married life—I found I could open myself more to another person, and they to me, and that while in such a relationship, the emptiness I otherwise carried within me would vanish. As soon as that relationship came to an end, however, that sense of emptiness returned. Her leaving me might have devastated me for years. But because I had my Buddhist practice, because I had a great mentor in life, I transformed that bitter experience into something of great value. I won’t say that this was the end of my tendency to seek happiness in relationships, but it was the beginning.
What else came of this experience?
Rod: I took on leadership in the SGI early on in my practice, understanding this as an expedient means to do my human revolution. Indeed, in leadership, I found myself confronting my most ingrained tendencies: to open myself to no one, to rely on no one. But this tendency was pointed out to me time and again by my own leaders, who I came to consider good friends in faith. They challenged me to collaborate with others, to be open to them and trust them. As I continued to confront and win over my tendencies, it opened my life.
For instance, in 1981, I landed a job working for a top auto dealership, a job I’d hold for 27 years, until my retirement in 2008. In my sixth year there, however, the company’s owner was made aware that I practiced Buddhism, something I’d shared with a fellow co-worker. One day in 1986, he called me to his office. Knowing only that I was Buddhist, he likely feared I was involved in one of the fanatical religious movements sweeping the nation at that time. A devout Christian, he was almost at a loss for words. “Rod, how could you?” he asked.
In the same conversation, he expressed, for the first time, his dissatisfaction with my work. This began three years in which I no longer received raises or bonuses, as I had every year until then. Also, nearly impossible demands were made of me, and, though I always managed to meet those demands, I received no recognition. I felt very much like Shijo Kingo, a samurai and disciple of Nichiren Daishonin: Kingo’s lord, upon discovering that he was a believer in the Lotus Sutra, confiscated his land and held him in disfavor. At this point, I had married and divorced three times; I had five children, was paying child support for each and was a leader in the SGI. There were days I felt outraged, others I felt like giving up. But at such times I returned to Nichiren’s admonition to be courageous in faith, especially where he writes: “Your faith alone will determine all these things. A sword is useless in the hands of a coward” (“Reply to Kyo’o,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 412).
It was in the midst of this challenge that I pondered deeply the heart of my mentor, Ikeda Sensei.
How did you develop your relationship with Sensei?
Rod: It began in 1968 when I and a group of 13 members went to Japan and, while there, decided to visit the Soka Gakkai Headquarters. “Who knows, maybe we can meet Sensei!” one of us had said. When he heard that we were there, we were guided to a conference room in the headquarters. Sensei was there, and the 13 others in my group rushed in while I held the door. Only problem was, there were one too many of us—when I stepped in, there were no seats left! Noticing right away, Sensei motioned for another chair to be brought in beside him. That’s where I sat for the next three hours as we spoke.
“Please, ask anything on your mind. I’ll do my best to answer everything,” he said. As we sat and spoke, I had a feeling about Sensei that I’ve kept with me ever since: I’m sitting next to the most humanistic person in the world.
Years later, experiencing persecution at work, this strong feeling, this desire to respond to my mentor, returned to me. What I was experiencing was small in comparison to the persecutions my mentor had weathered to bring this Buddhism to the United States. Still, viewing it as a shared struggle between mentor and disciple gave rise to a powerful feeling in me, a strong desire to renew my vow with my mentor. I determined to prove at my place of work the practicality and profundity of this Buddhism. As one impossible task was laid on another, I summoned strength I did not know I had. Sharing in my mentor’s struggle to change my karma and advance kosen-rufu, I put my head down and worked.
What happened?
Rod: In 1990, I was called again into the office of the company’s owner. He told me he was inviting his top salespeople on a trip to Lake Tahoe, California. “You’re doing incredible work,” he said, “and I’d like you to come.” He’d reserved an entire restaurant just for us. I was seated next to his wife, and she turned to me and said, “I hear you’re a Buddhist, Rod. Tell me about that, would you?” I told her I was, indeed, a Buddhist, and for the next 45 minutes, I did my best to convey the life-affirming principles of this teaching. My owner came around and said: “You two are certainly having fun! Tell me what it is.”
“Buddhism” his wife said brightly. “Rod’s telling me about it.”
After that day, my owner’s attitude toward me changed dramatically. Things transformed so much that, by 2000, he recognized me as employee of the month, out of a pool of over 1,000.
What about marriage?
Rod: In 1986, I met my current wife, but we were in no rush to marry. I must say, of all my marriages, I embarked on this one from the greatest state of fulfillment, without really looking for anything at all. I wasn’t seeking happiness outside myself but was happy with myself, just as I was. In 2008, we decided to marry. We support each other through thick and thin.
What would you share with the youth?
Rod: Many things I couldn’t share here for lack of space. I’ve suffered my share of loss and hardship. Recently, I was diagnosed with a blood disorder for which there’s no known cure. But having overcome cancer in 2011, I’m embracing this diagnosis as a challenge to deepen my faith and once again show actual proof of the power of this practice. I keep in mind four qualities I’ve gleaned from the writings of my mentor that I hold as my personal credo: prayer, patience, perseverance and persistence. If you can do these, you can do anything.
On September 15, the Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan conferred a Gold Award upon Taiwan Soka Association (TSA) in recognition of its contributions to society. TSA received the award for the 23rd consecutive time. The award ceremony, held in Taipei, was attended by Premier of the Executive Yuan Chen Chien-jen and Minister of the Interior Lin Yu-Chang.
by Mariana de Oliveira Moreira
Roosevelt Island, N.Y.
Interview after interview, they turned me down.
“Who have you worked for? How many years in the field? What have you designed?”
In 2016, I was fresh from college, with little architecture experience. What’s more, Brazil was weathering an economic crisis; it seemed that no one was willing to hire me. As a fourth-generation SGI member, I’d been raised with the awareness that my life was precious. Yet, to the people I needed to impress to make a living, it seemed I was not valuable at all.
In tough times, my parents would remind me that if there was something I wanted, I’d need to draw forth strength from within my own life to obtain it. “The Gohonzon is the legacy we have to give you,” they would tell me. “Use this practice to draw forth the strength within your own life to pursue your dreams.”
My parents also never missed their monthly contributions to the SGI, which however humble, were made with gratitude for everything we had overcome. I, too, saved a little money each month to make my own contribution. “This is how we change our financial fortune,” they would tell me.
In difficult times, I would remember the promise I made at age 8 to learn English, a language spoken by people the world over. I had sung for Ikeda Sensei when he came to São Paulo in 1993, his last visit to my country. In his encouragement to us, the members of SGI-Brazil, he asked us to “forge many deep person-to-person ties of friendship and send out the light of hope to the world.” Although we didn’t have the means for me to study English, I grew up pondering these words from Sensei. Each time I made my own modest contribution, I’d think to myself, “This is how I change my financial fortune.” With that fortune, I was determined to see the world.
As one interviewer after another turned me down, an opportunity arose, a job offer from a cousin living in New York. He and his partner needed a babysitter; was I up for it? This, I decided, was my opportunity to learn English.
Upon arrival, I was reminded right away of the ties of friendship connecting the members of the SGI around the world. A former member of Brazil’s Fife and Drum Corps, in which I’d performed throughout my youth, happened to be living in New York. She connected me right away with a Brazilian women’s district leader, who translated for me during discussion meetings.
Evenings, I babysat, and afternoons I spent chanting in one of the open rooms at the New York Culture Center and studying English. Never had I felt so close to Sensei. I remember reading both the Brasil Seikyo in my native tongue and, with difficulty, the World Tribune in English, feeling as though every page were a letter Sensei had written directly to me.
Maybe I looked it up or maybe it was shared with me, but I remember turning again and again to a passage in an essay he wrote in 1999, titled “Morning in New York”:
Giving up is easy. Anyone can quit at any time. But instead, think again and again, suffer and struggle, do what you have to, with everything you’ve got, not sparing an iota of effort. Just do it. No matter how many times you fail, won’t the morning greet you again tomorrow? New York is the “try again” city. (July 2, 2021, World Tribune, p. 3)
As I studied for the notoriously difficult Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), I soaked up every word of encouragement from both the SGI Brazil and U.S. newspapers. At the same time, I began making sustaining contributions in my adopted country. Each university requires a different TOEFL score of its prospective students. Not only did I pass but far surpassed the required score at my school of choice. With this victory under my belt, I decided to continue my education in New York. Continuing to babysit through school, I’d landed cheap housing in New Jersey, just outside the city limits. Aside from my sustaining contributions, I’d pinched every last penny to save up for a master’s program in sustainability.
While in this program, I encountered and became fascinated by the German concept of a “passive house.” This is a house or building that, by its very design, hugely reduces its ecological footprint. In conversations about planet-warming carbon emissions, we often hear cars and agriculture named as the culprits. So I was astonished to learn that, in the United States, it is in fact buildings—their heating, cooling, lighting, etc.—that emit a third of greenhouse gases. On top of my master’s studies, I began studying for a certification in passive-house design. That year, I was one of just 30% of architects worldwide who took that certification exam and passed it. As the cherry on top, I graduated with flying colors.
However, the battle was not yet won. To stay in the United States, I needed to land a job in my field. I turned again to the Gohonzon with the lion’s roar of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. When I secured an interview with a company specializing in passive-house design, I poured every iota of my being into a prayer to connect with the interviewers, person to person, life to life.
I was worried, as you can imagine, that they, like every employer in Brazil, would ask me a few questions, find my answers lacking, and dismiss me. I chanted intensely that they see past the surface of my résumé, to who I was as a person.
“You haven’t worked in the field the past five years?” the interviewer asked as he looked over my résumé, arching his brow.
I explained that I’d come to the states to learn English, then pursued my master’s.
“You didn’t speak English when you got here?” he asked.
“No,” I said, and he broke out into a big smile.
“You’re telling me that in five years, you moved to a foreign country, learned English, received your master’s, this additional certificate and went straight into interviews?”
I nodded.
“I don’t need to know anything else,” he said, closing my portfolio. “What I need are capable, proactive people who don’t wait on others to get things done.”
Within the month, I was hired, and benefits came pouring in. Though I was told that my salary would be eligible for an adjustment after three months, they decided to adjust it after just one, saying I was doing what they expected of me after five. They also let me work from home and, just last month, sent me on a training course to Vermont that they usually offer only after a year of employment.
For me, I am living my dream and walking the path of my vow. Working for the health of our planet, the common home of humanity. Together with my SGI family spanning the world, I’m striving alongside my mentor in faith, burning with passion, every iota.
From September 10 to 12, an SGI (Soka Gakkai International) delegation led by SGI Director General for Peace and Global Issues Hirotsugu Terasaki attended the 37th International Meeting of Religions and Cultures in Dialogue, themed “The Audacity of Peace,” in Berlin, Germany. The conference was hosted by the lay Catholic association Community of Sant’Egidio. On September 11, SGI Europe Cochair Robert Harrap spoke at a session titled “A World Free from Nuclear Weapons is Possible.” Mr. Harrap introduced the SGI’s philosophy and its activities for nuclear disarmament, including the exhibition “Everything You Treasure—For a World Free From Nuclear Weapons.” Mr. Terasaki met with various dignitaries including President of the Community of Sant’Egidio Marco Impagliazzo and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi.
On September 9 and 10, SGI-Philippines held study conferences at the Philippine Culture Center in Quezon City and the Manila International Peace Center. These were held both in-person and online. SGI Vice Study Department Leader Koji Ishida gave lectures on “The Buddhism of the People” chapters from the book A Religion of Human Revolution by President Daisaku Ikeda based on the “Buddhism of the Sun” study lecture series. On September 10, some two hundred Soka Gakkai Singapore (SGS) members took an elementary level Buddhist study exam at the SGS Headquarters.
On September 5 and 6, SGI (Soka Gakkai International) representatives attended the CARICOM Conference 2023: The Human Impacts of Autonomous Weapons, held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The event was organized by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Legal Affairs of the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and the SGI. On September 6, Hayley Ramsay-Jones, director of the SGI Office for UN Affairs Geneva Liaison Office, spoke at a session titled “Intersectional perspectives on autonomous weapons systems.” On the same day, Hayato Yamashita, program coordinator for Peace and Global Issues of the SGI, read out a statement on behalf of the SGI, calling for the urgent and timely start of negotiations for an international treaty to prohibit and regulate autonomy in weapons systems.
The World Tribune sat down with Dr. Ira Helfand at the Florida Nature Culture Center in Weston, Florida, where he lectured in late July on nuclear abolition at the SGI-USA Student Division Conference.
Dr. Helfand is a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and is a co-founder and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the U.S. affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
World Tribune: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us about a topic crucial to the future of humanity. What has been your impression of the students you’ve met here at the Florida Nature and Culture Center?
Ira Helfand: I’ve just been super impressed by: 1) how positive they are, 2) how interested they are in this issue and 3) how eager they are to engage in conversation and—I believe—future action toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.
It has been my experience that, in general, young people don’t know a lot about the threat of nuclear weapons, but when they hear about it, they react the same way they do to the climate crisis: This is our planet, this is our future, we need to do something to protect it. I find that response sort of amplified here among this particular group of students who seem really, really keyed in on assuming responsibility for the world.
WT: In speaking with people across the country and the world, what do you feel is missing from the average person’s understanding of nuclear weapons?
Helfand: I think two things. First is an appreciation of how dangerous the situation is. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, we all walked around sort of looking over our shoulder all the time, worried that at any moment things could go wrong. The situation today is probably almost as dangerous as it was during the Cuban missile crisis, maybe as dangerous, and there’s certainly not that level of anxiety or even attention to the issue that there was back then. There’s more concern about nuclear war than there was, say, two years ago, but nowhere near the level of concern that the current danger warrants.
Then the other thing is: I don’t think people understand how bad nuclear war would be. It’s been a long time since that conversation has been part of public discourse. And people are always shocked when I explain as I did in the talk this morning what’s actually going to happen if these weapons are used. … And when people learn about this they are often quite shocked and surprised. So those two things: an awareness of how imminent the danger is and an awareness of how catastrophic a nuclear war would be. And then when they do hear about this, the third piece is an understanding that this is not the future that needs to be—that there is something we can do about it, that we can prevent this from happening.
WT: The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that truth always passes through three stages: 1) ridiculed, 2) viciously attacked and 3) accepted. What stage do you think the nuclear abolition movement is in at this moment, and what do you anticipate as this movement gains momentum?
Helfand: Is there an allowable stage before that, of indifference? I think that’s where we are. People are ignoring the situation. I don’t think people are ridiculing it, and I don’ t think they will. I do think we have been and will be attacked by those who want to deny this truth. This is a very inconvenient truth.
When people understand how dangerous nukes are, they want to get rid of them. And the entire security policy of most of the major countries in the world today is based on the continued existence of nukes, which means they need to completely rethink the way they do things, which is a very good thing for them to do, but they don’t see it that way.
WT: In galvanizing people to take action, what is the proper balance to strike between an affirmative vision for the future and the terrible, very possible future of a world engaged in nuclear war?
Helfand: What’s the role of fear, right? Well, I think you need to have both. Given all the problems people face every day, things like climate change, racial injustice, economic problems and problems in their own lives, they’re not going to attend to the nuclear issue unless they understand that they really need to be afraid.
On the other hand, they also need to know there’s something they can do about it. So I think both are absolutely essential. I think the message has to be threefold: 1) nuclear war really is going to happen if we don’t do something different; 2) it’s going to be much worse than you can possibly imagine; and 3) it does not have to happen; we can do something about this.
The more concrete we can be about that, the more we can provide a specific plan of action. The Back from the Brink campaign is so important. It provides a very concrete vehicle that people can use to achieve the elimination of this danger of nuclear war.
WT: Having lived through, as the students at this conference have not, the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis, what are some lessons you think young people can draw from the successes and failures of the movement?
Helfand: I think the main lesson we can draw from that past is that it is possible to be successful in this endeavor. We did not anticipate in the 1980s that we were going to be successful, and we did it anyway because we were desperate. We thought the world was going to end if we didn’t end the Cold War arms race, and I think we were right. It would have. But we were successful beyond our wildest expectations. And when people look at the situation today, they are sometimes despairing of the possibility of changing nuclear policy. I think they need to remember how successful we were back in the 1980s and take great hope from that. We have seen that it’s possible to bring about fundamental change in nuclear policy; we’ve already done it once.
We’re not setting ourselves an impossible task; we’re just challenging ourselves to do what we’ve already done successfully once before. And I think that really is the most important lesson from history.
by James Hilgendorf
El Cerrito, Calif.
Who knows what draws two people together and keeps them that way. We were apples and oranges, Elizabeth and I; polar opposites; almost nothing in common. I worked odd jobs to sustain a cloistered lifestyle, holed up, a writer and his typewriter. Elizabeth was someone who fell asleep as soon as she picked up a book. We were both hippies, though, that’s one thing we shared, love beads and all.
We met in 1971 in a boarding house in Boulder, Colorado, and were drawn to each other. Rolling stones, she and I, that’s for sure, no real direction. But when we met, it set us down a different road somehow, together. Whose idea it was to go to LA, to Santa Monica, I don’t remember, but we decided the year after we met and married that that’s what we would do. Within a week of arriving, I was invited to my first SGI meeting.
What struck me most from that meeting were the experiences and energy of the people there. I still remember the single mother who shared of chanting for a car and getting one. Down to earth and high-energy, these people were using Buddhism to confront real problems for real results.
As mentioned, I was a hippy, but not the sort to pick up a sign in protest of the world’s injustices, though they pained me deeply. No, my tendency—my karma—was to turn inward, withdrawing further and further into myself in search of an inner force of reformation. But that would be challenged as I began practicing with the SGI.
Ours was a fast-paced kind of Buddhist practice in the ’70s. I’m talking activities 6 1/2 days a week, hitting the streets to share Buddhism and the World Tribune. It sounds a little crazy now, and it was—all chanting and propagation, very little study—but it was just what I needed at the time, a total 180 from the monastic life I had been drawn to. I got a good, steady job and started making money. I wrote less in those days but exposed myself to life and people as I never had before, and never felt so connected with both.
Love beads aside, another thing Elizabeth and I had in common was that we came from unhappy homes. In mine, my parents’ arguments sometimes came to blows. In Elizabeth’s was an unhappiness of an opposite kind, a marriage cold to the touch. Through daimoku and propagation, Elizabeth and I were challenging our intense karma.
There came a point, in 1987, when I began to feel deeply unhappy. I remember shouting to a senior in faith, “This won’t change; this feeling will never change!” and him calling out, whenever I took a breath, “It will change! Keep chanting! It will!”
I thought my unhappiness stemmed from my marriage. In fact, its roots spanned lifetimes. Sticking close to us over the next six months, this senior in faith helped us maintain a strong daily practice. One step at a time, Elizabeth and I made our way over what had seemed an insurmountable ridge whose summit saw the blossoming of our relationship. Both of us felt we had confronted and overcome not only the marital karma that was ours and ours alone, but also that which we’d inherited from both our parents.
In me, another unlikely feeling was taking shape, a desire to do something my former monkish self would have never considered: filmmaking. Standing beside my brother at the window of our family home in Indiana, the Christmas of 1991, watching the snow falling over the land, I turned to him and said, “Let’s make a film about Indiana.” Over the next several years, he and I produced 12 travel films and one documentary. Beyond our wildest expectations, these came to be viewed by millions of people around the world.
Without a regular Buddhist practice, without engaging so much in propagation, I’d have never developed the filmmaker’s requisite drive to connect with life and people. But as it happens, sharing Buddhism with others has always been our strong suit, Elizabeth’s and mine. Wherever we’ve gone we’ve made it our mission to spice things up a little, shakubuku-wise. Topping the list of married life’s greatest pleasures has been a three-way tie between cooking with Elizabeth, having tea and chocolates with Elizabeth, and doing shakubuku with Elizabeth.
In recent years, our spot of choice was El Cerrito BART train station, where we’d strike up conversations with others on Buddhism. Even when Elizabeth was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2018, even as she began rounds of intensive chemo, we’d go there as often as we could, to share Buddhism with the young people arriving and departing in waves.
I still remember after my father died, my mother telling me, “You’ll never know what it’s like until you go through it yourself.” Her words were with me in the weeks and months after Elizabeth passed away in December 2020.
What got me through her loss were Nichiren Daishonin’s writings and the guidance of Ikeda Sensei. I read from them constantly. This was amid a global pandemic, intense political strife and enormous suffering in America. In the physical isolation of that time, I turned again to writing, wanting to convey my feelings for Elizabeth and a feeling of hope and courage to others across the country. Even in the face of death, I wanted to express my unwavering belief in the yet-unfulfilled dream of America. Based on this desire, I put together a book and began promoting it widely through thousands of individual email exchanges, in which I also briefly discussed the SGI and Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
Recently, I’ve begun conversing with young people on my daily walks, introducing them to this practice and, around their availability, coordinating pop-up intro meetings in my district. Through these efforts, I met a young man who has started chanting and attending meetings and a young woman whom I connected to her district women’s leaders.
With each young person I’ve spoken to about Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, I feel that I am drawing ever closer to Elizabeth, that she and I are still advancing with a shared vow, a shared mission, to spread Buddhism toward the dawn of a new America. Heart to heart, we’re advancing together, forever.
From August 31 to September 4, a total of 106 youth from 44 countries and territories participated in the SGI Youth Training Course in Tokyo, Japan. The event featured a study session, exchange meetings and participation in the Soka Gakkai Headquarters Leaders Meeting on September 2. President Daisaku Ikeda sent a congratulatory message to the opening ceremony. On September 3, the participants attended the World Youth Summit where they discussed ways of contributing to society and tackling global issues. On the same day, they also took part in a World Youth Exchange Meeting together with youth from Japan.
On August 29, the SGI (Soka Gakkai International) co-organized the regional conference “Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia” in Astana, Kazakhstan, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Center for International Security and Policy and ICAN. Participants included delegates from the five member states of the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. SGI Director General for Peace and Global Issues Hirotsugu Terasaki gave a speech expressing his hope for meaningful discussions on the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), in order to move the world in the direction of nuclear disarmament.
