The following message by Soka Gakkai President Minoru Harada was translated from the December 2024 issue of the Soka Gakkai’s monthly study journal, Daibyakurenge.
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and respect to all my noble fellow members for your dedicated efforts throughout this year. It has been a year of striving, with our mentor ever close to our hearts.
The path walked by mentor and disciple will carve a glorious, indelible chapter in the annals of Buddhism, for we are making worldwide kosen-rufu—an unprecedented undertaking in the history of humankind—a reality.
Ikeda Sensei recorded the true account of the Soka Gakkai spirit in his novels The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution. This Dec. 2 will mark 60 years since he embarked on this endeavor, and started writing The Human Revolution in Okinawa, Japan [Dec. 2, 1964].
On Dec. 14 that year, I was handed the manuscript for the 13 opening installments of The Human Revolution’s “Dawn” chapter. I had just started working at the Seikyo Shimbun, and I was the first staff member to be assigned to support this project. While I felt the profound weight of the responsibility, at the same time, joy and determination penetrated every fiber of my being.
In those days of letterpress printing and no copy machines, I earnestly transcribed each manuscript. I urged myself on with the thought that I must ensure my mentor’s manuscripts be preserved forever. The copied versions then went to the printer, and I carefully stored the originals.
I would receive one manuscript and set to work, and before I had even finished, the next installment would arrive, and then the next. Sensei was constantly traveling across the country and abroad, encouraging members everywhere he went. He was always on the move. But once he sat down and picked up his pen, he committed his thoughts to paper with incredible concentration. I was constantly in awe of his speed and passion.
One day, I went to the Soka Gakkai Headquarters to hand the proofs to Sensei, received the manuscript for the next installment and then returned to the office. Immediately after, a new pair of socks was delivered to me. Sensei had noticed that my socks had holes in them. I was so moved by our mentor’s care and concern for this small detail in the appearance of a new employee.
The driving force behind Sensei’s writing was his desire to encourage members and to make the greatness of his mentor, Josei Toda, widely known. As a faithful disciple in total unity with his mentor, and as the mentor of our kosen-rufu movement protecting members all over the world, he continued to selflessly devote himself to his writing. His very struggle to continue writing was itself a magnificent human drama.
Our mission as Sensei’s disciples is to engrave in our hearts the spirit of the three generations of mentor and disciple embodied in each sentence he wrote, to put it into practice and to inscribe our own dramas of human revolution in our lives. By doing so, we too can demonstrate the greatness of our mentor, and this will also become a message of hope for future generations.
Taking pride in the fact that our daily kosen-rufu activities are a great historic undertaking, let us joyfully walk the great path of happiness!
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