"The authors remind me of modern bodhisattvas: facing humanity's current challenges with hope, deep analyses, research, and dedicated compassionate action."
Hazel Henderson, author,
Mapping the Global Transition to the Solar Age
What is to be done? No challenge summons this question more urgently than the global challenge of transitioning to clean, efficient, and renewable energy sources. This is the question that Center founder Daisaku Ikeda and environmental scientist Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker set out to answer in Knowing Our Worth: Conversations on Energy and Sustainability. Over the course of eight probing conversations, the authors consider the strategies that will point us toward a sustainable future and the changes of heart and mind that will inspire the will and strength to achieve it.
Event at the University of San Francisco looks at peace education around the globe
As much as we want to "increase the peace," sometimes we also want to "increase the confrontation." This comment by educator, author, and activist Matt Meyer captured the tone of the recent panel discussion "Glimmers of Hope: Peace Education Around the Globe," co-sponsored by the Ikeda Center and the University of San Francisco (USF) School of Education. Joining Mr. Meyer on the panel were Monisha Bajaj of USF, Maria Hantzopoulos of Vassar College, and Tetsushi Ogata of the University of California, Berkeley. The event was moderated by USF doctoral student in education Mahi Takazawa.
The presentations were diverse, but all addressed various dimensions of "critical peace education," with its emphasis on helping students to situate themselves within their schools and communities and to develop the awareness, confidence, and ability to alter their personal and social circumstances toward peaceful and creative coexistence, wholeness, and justice.
Daisaku Ikeda issues his 2016 peace proposal to the United Nations
In his 2016 peace proposal, "Universal Respect for Human Dignity: The Great Path to Peace" Mr. Ikeda writes:
"Buddhism views the world as a web of relationality in which nothing can be completely disassociated from anything else. Moment by moment, the world is formed and shaped through this mutual relatedness. When we understand this and can sense in the depths of our being the fact that we live--that our existence is made possible--within this web of relatedness, we see clearly that there is no happiness that only we enjoy, no suffering that afflicts only others."
