Daisaku Ikeda - The Light of Learning: Selected Writings on Education

Published by Middleway Press

A division of the SGI-USA

606 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90401

2021 Soka Gakkai

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Cover and interior design by Gopa & Ted2, Inc.

25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN : 978-0-9723267-3-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Ikeda, Daisaku, author.

Title: The light of learning : Daisaku Ikeda on education / Daisaku Ikeda.

Description: Santa Monica, CA : Middleway Press, [2021] | Includes index. | Summary: A new selection of writings on education by Buddhist philosopher and founder of Soka University, Daisaku Ikeda. Culled from some five decades of the authors works, this collection presents educational proposals, lectures to university students, and personal essays. The author delves not only into the meaning of soka (value-creating) education but offers a hopeful vision of the power of education to bring happiness to the individual and peace to the world. Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021030159 (print) | LCCN 2021030160 (ebook) | ISBN 9780972326735 | ISBN 9781946635648 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Education--Philosophy. | Ska Gakkai.

Classification: LCC LB880 .I36 2021 (print) | LCC LB880 (ebook) | DDC 370.1--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030159

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030160

T HIS ENDURING VOLUME published here in its third edition with a new title, six new works, and revised translationsintroduces readers to the educational philosophy and practice of Daisaku Ikeda. Known widely as a global peacebuilder and president of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International, Ikeda has also distinguished himself as an important educator on the world stage. From his first publication, written at age twenty-one, to the Soka schools, universities, and womens college that he has founded across Asia and the Americas, Ikeda has for more than seven decades advanced education and lifelong learning as the surest means of truly human becoming, peaceful coexistence, and genuine happiness for oneself and others.

The writings in this edited collection, which constitute only a portion of Ikedas entire corpus on education, span multiple decades and represent many of the diverse voices, modes, and styles characteristic of his oeuvrepoetry, energetic and personal prose, essays, speeches, and detailed proposals. They address two audiences he regularly seeks to encourage and support with his educational approaches, perspectives, and convictions. One of these audiences, as seen in five of the newly included writings, is the students, faculty, and staff at the Soka institutions and organizations he has established, including the many members of the Soka Gakkai Educators Division in Japan. The other is the entire field of education broadly conceivedfrom teacher educators and university scholars across diverse disciplines to teachers, leaders, and counselors in pre-K12 schools around the world; from policymakers and advocates to practitioners of home- and community-based learning in multicultural, multiracial, and multilingual contexts.

A distinguishing feature of this collection is not only that it assembles these works in one volume but that, in doing so, it presents a comprehensive view of Ikeda as both a practitioner and philosopher. That is, while Ikeda is not a classroom teacher or administrator, we see in these writings his characteristic manner of encouraging, appreciating, and directly engaging in life-to-life exchanges with students and those responsible for fostering and teaching them. We also see a careful thinker addressing the most pressing and timeless issues in education: from peace and human rights to the cultivation of our humanity and creativity; from ecological sustainability to the deepening of our appreciation for great works of literature; from the profound significance of dialogue and inner transformation to the removal of education from politicization and the ever-changing whimsy of government authority, among many others. In all, Ikeda advances an approach to education that is clear eyed and aspirational, practical and philosophical, uniquely Eastern and quintessentially universal. It is an approach radiant with the belief that each of us matters and all of us possess the infinite potential to develop in our own humanity and pioneer a better age.

Ikeda calls his approach ningen kyoiku (), or human education. On one hand, this approach is shaped by his faith in the Lotus Sutracentric teachings of the thirteenth-century Buddhist reformer Nichiren (122282) and is a secular manifestation of it. For Ikeda, human education and Buddhism are two aspects of the same reality.

While Ikeda regularly crosses conceptual and semantic boundaries between the religious and the mundane, bringing insights and terminology from Buddhism to secular affairs and identifying examples from the secular world to illuminate Buddhist principles, this does not mean that he advocates for proselytizing or teaching Buddhism in schools. As he states in multiple writings in this volume, he explicitly opposes that, having experienced the consequences of compulsory religious education preceding and during World War II. Rather, he advocates for the need to cultivate a sense of belonging to humanity as a whole

As he states,

The individual growth of a single person will inspire the growth of others and, further, will encourage the growth of ones community and societythis is precisely the principle of a great human revolution. Therefore, if the teacher grows, children will as a matter of course grow. Moreover, for teachers to grow, they must learn from the students growth. Education [kyoiku; ] is mutual growth [kyoiku; ] born from the teacher and student developing together and fostering one another.

Ikedas approach of human education is also informed by his commitment to the thought and convictions of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (18711944) and Josei Toda (190058). Ikeda did not know Makiguchi personally but came to know of him and his work through his close, decade-long tutelage under Toda. Todas influence on Ikeda cannot be overstated and forms the core of his perspective on the deeply transformational effect a heart-to-heart, life-to-life relationship between teacher and taught can have on both. Ninety-eight percent of what Ikeda is, he asserts, he learned from Toda.

Makiguchi was an elementary school teacher and principal whose penetrating scholarship spanned areas such as reading and writing, human geography, communities studies, and perhaps most significant, questions of value. He introduced his theory of value and value-creating pedagogy in the four-volume work Soka kyoikugaku taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy).

Drawing on decades of his own classroom practice, Makiguchi distinguished truth from value, seeking to clarify the often-confused psychological processes of cognition (understanding something as it objectively is) and evaluation (determining its relevance to life). Facticity alone does not make truth meaningful to our lives, he argued. Rather, the significance of truth in our lives comes from the subjective and contingent value or meaning we create from it. Therefore, Makiguchi advocated for a pedagogical practice that helps learners create value in terms of gain, good, and beautythat is, aesthetically pleasing and utilitarian value that serves oneself and others. Moreover, he asserted that such value creation is what demonstrates agency and cultivates genuine, almost existential happiness. Toda was a close colleague of Makiguchi and applied value-creating approaches to great success in his Jishu Gakkan, a tutorial school he founded.