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Ikeda Sensei

A Path at Windsor

Photo by Daisaku Ikeda.

A single road, stretching limitlessly. If we follow that single road, that single path, it will link us to the land. And beyond the broad expanse of the land, it will link us to the world as well. If we never stop walking ahead step by step along the correct path in life, then the boundless expanse of a world of hope surely will open before us.

There is also the path of fame; the path of power. But continuing along these paths, one’s own destruction awaits in the distance.

We follow an unadorned path. But it is also an unsurpassed path, a path that glows with the light of sublime mission and deep fulfillment. …

There are those who build a path, and those who tear it down. There are those who continue to walk a path, and those who stray from it. I wish to be a person who forges the path; a person who persists in walking the path.

No matter what; until the end, I will keep walking, keep running. Even if I should fall along the way, and return to the dust of the land, because I believe in the youth who will succeed me along this path, I will have not a single regret.

Adapted from an essay in Our Beautiful Earth: Photos and Essays of My Travels, by Daisaku Ikeda, April 2, 2000, Seikyo Press, Tokyo, Japan.

From the January 2025 Living Buddhism

Victory Isles—Volume 28, Chapter 4