Living Beyond Belief, Beyond Faith

Dr. Ikeda did not want to be worshipped. He wanted to be believed. He wanted to be emulated. And he wanted his teachings to be practiced. People are great joiners but not revolutionary disciples. 

When people worship you, they basically ignore what you’ve said. They expect you, as the teacher, to be all that you’ve taught, and that justifies their worshipping you. But it also then justifies the disciple’s lack of responsibility.

To move from teacher to the taught, there has to be some transformation, some inner revolution. Nobody is going to know that that has taken place until it becomes public. Real internal revolution is not just private.

The Soka Gakkai has a serious opportunity, and that is to be real spiritual revolutionaries, not just archivists.

Can you say more about that?

Rev. Dean Carter:It is the process that must be employed. You have to, at some point, realize that education is not something you get. Education is something that you manifest. Education is not just knowledge, not just information. A real education is an inside job with very public manifestations. For example, when I think of Dr. Ikeda and what I learned from him, there are some ethical norms, some moral values that are very strong. And I associate these same norms with Martin Luther King Jr. These norms are the highest beauties we create in our lives. 

I’m attracted to these norms, and they inspire me to live them, to become them, to make them my life’s message. Dr. Ikeda demonstrated what being the thing itself looks like. He didn’t just give us a roadmap; he used the map. He traveled a lot to meet people practicing these norms. Norms of nonviolence, peace, value creation, making a career of studying humanity, an adventure in traveling to different nations, different cultures, with different economies, different scientific beliefs, different scholars. Dr. Ikeda’s main ethical concern was support for the creation of beauty in experience and for making good judgments about the richness and intensity of diverse life.

He built dialogical friendships. He constantly emphasized dialogue, getting to know people, learning to listen and to listen deeply, turn-taking and turn-yielding, demonstrating respect for others and creating trust. And by doing all of that, he didn’t just teach by lecturing or preaching, he taught by example, modeling embodied goodness, manifest morality.

I practice Nichiren Buddhism as a Baptist Christian. I didn’t have to give up being Christian or Baptist to borrow from the wisdom and the tradition of Nichiren Buddhism. So that’s why the subtitle of my book is: How My Interfaith Journey With Daisaku Ikeda Made Me a Better Christian. The subtitle of my book is a cosmopolitan head turner. It gets the attention of the Christian world. It opens mental doors to more value creation.

Practically speaking, what did this process of “embodying the teachings” look like for you in your relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. after he was no longer here?

Rev. Dean Carter: Well, I took him seriously, and I chose him to be my mentor for life, which meant I tried to love everybody. Everything I did in my interpersonal and social relations, my environmental, local and global encounters, I tried to come from a place of unconditional love—all conditional love. And I tried to practice nonviolence, not just toward my friends and family but toward people with whom I disagreed. I had to be open to a common denominator in all people, and that is that everyone, regardless of the mistakes they’ve made, everybody has some measure of humanity and should be respected. This is where I am coming from even with people whom I strongly disagree. I do not let their conduct make me abandon my moral values.

How profound. Is there an example that you can tell us about? 

Rev. Dean Carter:Dr. Ikeda provides a wonderful spiritual photo album of how you deal with actualized human behavior. I was most impressed with how Dr. Ikeda responded to the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood after they tore down the magnificent temple near Mount Fuji that the Soka Gakkai International built.^[2]

Dr. Ikeda did not go off on a tantrum. He didn’t behave in a violent or profane way. He recognized what had happened, announced it and said, so be it. It is done. We go on to kosen-rufu. He did not spend any time demonizing the priests. He didn’t come down off the mountaintop. He didn’t wallow in the valley of despair. We have a saying in Christianity: “When you walk through the valley and the shadow of death, don’t stop and build a condominium there! Keep moving.” You do not know how people use their religion until you see how they behave in a crisis. What good is religion in the first place if it doesn’t work for you, if it doesn’t put you on higher ground.

Can you tell us about your most prominent memories of engaging with Daisaku Ikeda?

Rev. Dean Carter: The first time I met Dr. Ikeda was in 2000 at the Soka Gakkai’s Makiguchi Memorial Hall in Hachioji, Japan. When I arrived, a choir serenaded us with the Morehouse College hymn and “We Shall Overcome.” The entire choir was wearing Morehouse T-shirts. They took me on a tour, and one of the places they took me was to see the exhibit of Dr. Ikeda’s international awards. That was mind-boggling. It reminded me of the Vatican museum in Rome.

Then I was on a very large elevator, and there was a crowd around me. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I would meet Dr. Ikeda eventually. And I thought I would be escorted down a hallway and around a corner and into a lounge and then he’d be summoning me into his office. But it didn’t happen like that.

I was in the middle of this elevator full of people. I was looking down at my notes at what I was going to say. And before I knew it, the doors of the elevator opened, and everybody moved out of the way. I felt these hands on my hands pulling me out of the elevator, and I looked up and it was Dr. Ikeda and Mrs. Ikeda behind him. I was stunned. He didn’t say a word but made a gracious gesture with his hand, saying we’re going this way. And so, I just started walking, and he started out walking next to me, and soon he was in front of me. And that hallway turned into the stage of Makiguchi Memorial Hall Auditorium. Wow!! The whole place was full of joy and music. 

It was full to the rafters, and there was a band playing and we were in front of our seats on a most wonderfully decorated platform, with photographers everywhere, even on ladders in the rear of the stage and throughout the auditorium. Thousands were clapping, smiling and happily laughing so enthusiastically.

When the meeting started, one of the vice presidents of the Soka Gakkai went to the lectern and introduced me. I was next. I got up with great confidence, smiling, and delivered my tribute to Dr. Ikeda. I then called him and Mrs. Ikeda forward. I unveiled a portrait of Dr. Ikeda and Mrs. Ikeda and presented him the citation of induction into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars. I still have three pictures from that experience up in my office. It was the warmest, most magnificent, thundering welcome I have ever received.

The second time I met Dr. Ikeda, we didn’t have on our suit coats, and he had his white shirt sleeves rolled up. He asked me many questions about my biography, and he took notes himself in what seemed like Japanese shorthand. I was amazed at how personable he was, how unpretentious, how humble, and how interested in my background and how I became interested in peace. 

I told him about my father being recruited into the military. I told him about how my father was standing watch with his best friend, at night, outside their tent, and a hand grenade exploded at their feet. When my father opened his eyes, his best friend’s internal organs were all over his body. Dad never got over it and suffered from shell shock and post-traumatic stress disorder. He received an honorable discharge, and he was in and out of the Chillicothe Veterans Hospital all of his life. And that’s how I came to hate war because it robbed me of my father. That was how I decided to commit the rest of my life to peacemaking.

Dr. Ikeda had a similar experience with war—he lost his elder brother and witnessed the terrible effect that it had on his mother. So we had this instant bond. Dr. Ikeda was a very beautiful person. Considering the number of his followers, all the things he founded, he never lost respect for the sacredness of human personality, and it had a powerful effect on me.

I saw in Dr. Ikeda, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gandhi which expanded my vision of what it meant to be a disciple of Dr. King in terms of dialogue, engaging with people who disagree with you, peacemaking and practicing nonviolence. For Dr. Ikeda was doing what I had dreamed of doing and knew that I would never pull off on Dr. Ikeda’s scale. 

And so, I have lived a portion of my life riding the coattails of Dr. Ikeda, as I have done the same in my determination to do something significant for the world to remember Martin Luther King Jr. before I close my eyes. 

Do you have any parting thoughts?

Rev. Dean Carter: Yes. The key to ensuring that Dr. Ikeda is deeply and profoundly appreciated as a teacher and not as a deity to be worshipped and praised will be determined by how seriously his teachings are remembered and believed in. But not just that. How much those teachings are embodied, manifested, powerfully realized and show up in everyday behavior. How those teachings are called upon for use in crises: personal crises, social crises, cosmopolitan crises, international crises and cosmic crises. The key is living beyond belief and beyond faith in Dr. Ikeda—living with his strength and his activism, until we are strong enough to line his belief with our strength and activism.

From the November 2024 Living Buddhism