Bulletin Spring‧Summer 2001

Daisaku Ikeda Born in Tokyo on 2nd January 1928 into a family whose business was processing edible seaweed, Daisaku Ikeda completed his formal education with graduation from Tokyo's Fuji Junior College. His education continued under the influence of his sensei or mentor, the courageous Josei Toda, second president o f Soka Gakkai, the lay Buddhist organization dedicated to the pursuit of humane values and peace on earth. Since 1960, Dr. Ikeda, as third president of Soka Gakkai, has worked strenuously to spread its message, so that it is now the largest group of Buddhist lay believers in Japan, numbering about eight million Japanese families in its fellowship. In 1975 ， Dr. Ikeda became first president of Soka Gakkai International. He was inaugurated as honorary president of Soka Gakkai in 1979 ， a position he has held ever since. The membership has quickly spread abroad, too, having well over three million members in 163 countries and regions worldwide, including of course, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Some of Dr. Ikeda's many eloquent speeches and addresses on the urgent and crucial need to negotiate peaceful means to resolve international confrontations have been collected in his two- volume A Lasting Peace. In this book, he goes to the heart of differences between the contemporary world o f global interconnections of peoples and nations and the relative isolation and separateness of nations in the past, where travel and communications were much slower than they are now. A t the same time, our technologies of mass destruction keep us forever living at the edge of the abyss of total destruction. He comes to the same insight as the poet W.H. Auden: 'We must love one another or die.' Technology, of course, can also help us along the pathways of peace and improved lifestyles, for war is incubated not outside in the world or universe; it lurks inside us, like a beast about to spring. I f we are to restrain this ferocious hound of war, we must undergo a change deep within our psyches. Huma n beings must embark on a perilous journey of fundamental change, so that we may discover the ways of harmony among ourselves. Dr. Ikeda knows that 'To this end, we must concentrate the best of human knowledge and effort.' Convinced that education is crucial for the secure future of humanity, he founded Soka University, Soka Women's Junior College and a number of kindergartens , elementary and secondary schools. In addition, kindergartens were established in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. In Orange County, California, the Aliso Viejo Campus of Soka University of America (SUA) w i l l be opened officially on 3rd May 2001. Furthermore, Dr. Ikeda has founded the Min- on Concert Association, the Tokyo Fuji A r t Museum, and the Institute of Oriental Philosophy. His travels to more than 50 countries have taken him all over the world to acquire first hand knowledge of many cultures; his talks w i t h influential political leaders, religious leaders, and academics have helped shape his and others' influential views on world problems; and his eloquent writings, translated into the major European languages, as well as Chinese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, and Malay, have spread his words of peace, wisdom, and compassion. His meeting The 56th Congregation for the Conferment of Degrees 43