The following message by Soka Gakkai President Minoru Harada was published in the October 2024 issue of the Soka Gakkai’s monthly study journal, Daibyakurenge.
Ikeda Sensei embarked on the first of his overseas travels for kosen-rufu on Oct. 2, 1960. About a month earlier, he had visited the hometown of his mentor, second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda, in Hokkaido, reporting in his heart about the upcoming trip. It was also on Oct. 2, four years later, that he set out on a further journey for peace, taking in 10 countries, and again he went to Hokkaido to offer guidance to the members there immediately before his departure. The second of every month represented a memorial marking the day of his mentor’s death [in April 1958].
Worldwide kosen-rufu was the cherished desire of both mentor and disciple, as well as our mission. In all, Sensei visited 54 countries and territories on this historic undertaking, and he embarked on every one of these journeys with incredible determination. I witnessed this firsthand during the numerous occasions I accompanied him on his travels.
In 1972, he visited the U.K. to meet with Arnold J. Toynbee and participated in an extensive dialogue with the eminent British historian. Without revealing any signs of fatigue, he always showed the greatest concern for the members. He arranged snacks for the translation staff who were working late into the evening and inscribed books with encouraging messages such as “I am praying for your glory and good fortune,” presenting them to members working hard behind the scenes. He also invited youth division members to the hotel where he was staying to sit and talk together.
He never motivated people into action with orders and commands. Instead, he reached out to each individual and communicated with them heart-to-heart. These efforts nurtured many outstanding capable people for kosen-rufu in Europe.
Sensei was always seeking out those individuals who were suffering and in need of encouragement, thinking deeply about what he could do to help others, and that’s why he would go first to the most difficult place or to the person who was suffering the most.
This was true during the Ise Bay typhoon in 1959, 65 years ago. As general administrator of the Soka Gakkai at that time, he visited Aichi and Mie prefectures in the Chubu region and encouraged the members affected by the typhoon with Nichiren Daishonin’s writings, including the hope-filled message that “Winter always turns to spring” (“Winter Always Turns to Spring,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 536). Inspired by his heartfelt words and example, the Chubu region was able to rise again like a phoenix.
Sensei once described the essential practice of encouraging others:
It is speaking with a spirit of genuine care and concern to the person suffering in front of us. … It is listening to their problems and struggles, sharing their pain and sadness, and chanting and rejoicing together. The unconditional, all-embracing nature of such humanistic actions, based on the spirit of treasuring each person, is one of the reasons that the Soka Gakkai has spread around the world.[1]
The Daishonin cites the old proverb: “One is the mother of ten thousand” (“A Sage and an Unenlightened Man,” WND-1, 131). When one person stands up, it can change the entire world. Now is the moment to encourage that one person. Let us continue Sensei’s great efforts by reaching out to others and engaging in dialogue that will bring hope to all those in our lives and our communities.
October 4, 2024, World Tribune, p. 11
References
- Aug. 7, 2015, World Tribune, p. 5. ↩︎
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