Incoraggiamento daisaku ikeda biography

Daisaku Ikeda was a Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, educator, author and poet. He was president of the Soka Gakkai lay Buddhist organization in Japan from —79 and the founding president of the Soka Gakkai International SGI , one of the world's largest and most diverse community-based Buddhist associations, promoting a philosophy of empowerment and social engagement for peace.

He also founded the Soka Schools system and several international institutions promoting peace, culture and education. Ikeda was born in Tokyo, Japan, on January 2, , the fifth of eight children, to a family of seaweed farmers. Growing up during World War II, he endured firsthand the suffering and devastation of war, including the death of his eldest brother who was killed in action in Burma present-day Myanmar.

This experience as a teenager gave birth to a lifelong passion to work for peace and root out the fundamental causes of human conflict.

Daisaku ikeda quotes on human revolution

In , at the age of 19, he encountered Buddhism through a meeting with Josei Toda —58 , educator, pacifist and leader of the Soka Gakkai. Toda had been imprisoned during the war together with his mentor Tsunesaburo Makiguchi — Both had held firm to their religious convictions in the face of oppression by the military authorities who imposed State Shinto ideology on the population as a means of sanctifying their war of aggression, and Makiguchi had died in prison.

Toda's resolve to stand up to the militarist regime impressed Ikeda, who would later write, "The words of a person who had suffered imprisonment for his convictions carried a special weight. I felt intuitively that I could trust him. Toda was engaged in the process of rebuilding the Soka Gakkai, which he had founded together with his mentor and fellow educator Makiguchi and which had been all but destroyed as a result of wartime persecution.