soka gakkai international quarterly magazine number 52 · soka gakkai international quarterly...

SGIQuarterlyA Buddhist Forum for Peace, Culture and Education

ISSN 1341-6510

Soka Gakkai International Quarterly Magazine Number 52

IN THIS ISSUE:

New Modes ofCooperation

April 2008

Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels is possible (p. 6)

Soka Gakkai International Quarterly Magazine Number 52

SGIQuarterly

The SGI Quarterly aims to highlight initiatives and perspectives onpeace, education and culture and to provide information about theSGI’s activities around the world. The views expressed are not nec-essarily those of the SGI. The editorial team (see inside back cover)welcomes ideas and comments from readers.

C O N T E N T SFeature: New Modes of Cooperation

Imperatives for Cooperation by Sai Felicia Krishna-Hensel..............................................1The Cooperation Revolution by Howard Rheingold ...........4Between Denial and Despair: Communities Cooperating to Solve Climate Change by Robin Oakley .........................6The Imam and the Pastor: Cooperating for Peace Interview with Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye........................................................8Creating Change in the System: Interview with William Reckmeyer ...................................10It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way: Interview with Betty Reardon ............................................12

A Buddhist Forum for Peace, Culture and Education

April 2008

Cooperating for a system change (p. 10)

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Small Victories by Jan Øberg ............................................14Juggling and the Kashmir-Jammu Conflict by Alyn Ware .....................................................................15The EU, a Model of Cooperation by Etienne Reuter .........16Believing in Change by Robert Muller ..............................18When Discord Becomes Solidarity by Merlys Mosquera Chamat .............................................18

People:Preparing for the Worst by Marc Bergman.........................19

Portraits of Global Citizens: ....................................................20Mottainai—the Spirit of Reverence for Life: Dr. Wangari Maathai

Around the World: ..................................................................22Humanizing Religion, Creating Peace; Cultural ExchangeEfforts Recognized; Reaching Out in Singapore; Flood Reliefin Mexico and Bolivia; Remembering Rumi in Malaysia;Youth Nonviolence Conference; Artists for Peace Concert;Daisaku Ikeda Website Launched

On Vocation: ...........................................................................26Taking Care of the Future

The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra: ..............................................28A Teaching Open to All People

The treasure of Indian traditional arts (p. 29)

G lobal cooperation is a responseto the recognition that manyof the crises of the modern

world have implications for the secu-rity and well-being of all peoples.Added to this is the redefinition of theterm security, to extend beyond mili-tary security of borders and nations toencompass eco-security, human rightsand survival of the species as a whole.

The 21st-century global communityis confronted with unprecedentedchallenges, as well as unique opportu-nities. The degree to which it can estab-lish and institutionalize norms andmechanisms designed to promote andsustain meaningful global cooperationwill, in large measure, determine thefuture course of civilization.

The primary challenge facing thecontemporary international system isthe need to construct an effective pol-icy framework to deal with theincreasingly large number of transna-tional problems. Many issues thatwere historically confined to nations

and regions have progressivelyacquired a global character.

As nations confront the challenge ofdeveloping policies from a global per-spective, there is increasing pressureto engage in multilateral consultation.This is evidenced by the growth in thenumber of international organizationsand institutions engaged in dealingwith transnational issues.

As the process of globalizationcontinues to shrink the planet, thedirection of national policy willincreasingly have to incorporate ashift toward cooperative internation-al strategy. The existing structures ofcooperation are often incapable ofpromptly addressing the new realitiesfacing the global community, andover time it will become progressive-ly more necessary to assemble newinstitutional structures and deviseinnovative solutions. Hence, there is asense of urgency associated with theimperative for global cooperation.

Advances in information technology

and a wider availability of data flowshave enabled us to see the importanceof cooperation, as humankind faceschallenges that pertain to the survivalof the entire planet rather than specificgroups or civilizations as has been thecase in previous centuries. The chal-lenges fall into a couple of categories,those with an immediate impact andthose that pose long-term risks.

The basic problem categories, suchas poverty, education and humanrights, represent challenges to globalprinciples, although they are primari-ly manifest at the national and region-al level. Environmental problems onthe other hand may have local rootsbut expand to the level of a globaltransformational process, such as cli-mate change, atmospheric pollutionor scarcity of water. Finally, warfareand conflict, technological develop-ment, terrorism and disease pan-demics represent the transnationalthreats that require an immediateglobal response.

1SGI Quarterly April 2008

By Sai Felicia Krishna-Hensel

Imperatives for CooperationImperatives for CooperationImperatives for Cooperationnovriwahyuperdana CC BY

The growing interconnectedness of ourworld is a source of both tension and hope.The challenges we face can only be resolvedif we find ways to cooperate based on anawareness of that interconnection. This issue of the SGI Quarterly looks at how we are beginning to do that.

The growing interconnectedness of ourworld is a source of both tension and hope.The challenges we face can only be resolvedif we find ways to cooperate based on anawareness of that interconnection. This issue of the SGI Quarterly looks at how we are beginning to do that.

The difficulties confronting the pol-icymaking community as it seriouslyconsiders the looming specter of sub-stantive inroads into state sovereign-ty form the background of this dis-cussion.

TechnologyThe dramatic changes brought

about by technological advanceshave contributed to many of theproblems confronting humankind inthe 21st century. While promoting avastly more interconnected andinterdependent world, communica-tions technology has also exposedthe absence of an integrated globalculture. Cooperation toward ensur-ing free access to information,whether it is educational, health-related or environmental knowl-edge, can only facilitate the estab-lishment of a truly global society.The challenges of an interconnectedworld encompass security issues,global pandemics and environmen-tal degradation, to name just a fewareas of concern, but the promise ofthe interconnected world is that itmay result in more cooperativeapproaches toward dealing withthese challenges.

TerrorismHistory is replete with examples of

conflicts that have been based on acollective consensus between nationsjoining together to contain a perceivedglobal injustice.

The most prominent conflict area ofthe 21st century is terrorism. Whilethere is reason to explain the challengeof terrorism in religious terms, it isprobably most comprehensible whenwe analyze it against the process ofglobal change and the threat of cul-tural domination and destruction oftraditional power and knowledge per-ceived by peoples that feel over-whelmed by the juggernaut of tech-nological progress.

The most effective way to containand prevent terrorism has beenthrough cooperative sharing of intel-ligence and collaboration between thelaw enforcement agencies of variousnations.

Human RightsThe contemporary focus on protect-

ing the rights of minorities andenslaved peoples came into play dur-ing the 19th and early 20th centuries.Following World War II and the perse-cution of Jews and other minorities bythe Nazi regime, there was a concertedmovement to prevent such occurrencesfrom ever happening again. This led toa global consensus reflected in the UNCharter of 1945 of a “faith in funda-mental human rights, in the dignityand worth of the human person, in theequal rights of men and women and ofnations large and small. . .” While thesentiment was shared by many in ageneral sense, there was disagreementwithin the states who were signatoriesto the Charter on who would beresponsible for ensuring that the prin-ciples would be consistently enforced.The Universal Declaration of HumanRights was adopted in 1948 as a set ofprinciples to be achieved rather thanas a binding legal document.

PopulationMany problems are related to the

growing population of the planet, agrowth that places a burden on naturaland societal resources. Providing food,energy, water, health care, basic humanrights and education has become anincreasingly daunting task for nationsand international organizations.

Conflicts for scarce resources aremuch more likely, including the veryreal prospect of water or energy wars.Finally, populations migrating insearch of better opportunities bringwith them the possibility of diseasesforeign to their new place of settle-ment, ethnic and religious tensionsand friction over available jobs.

Global DiseaseWith greater interaction of peoples

through trade and migration, diseasestraveled far from their place of origin.

The post-World War II period saw theestablishment of international organi-zations dedicated to global healthissues. These bodies of experts set pri-orities designed to eradicate diseasesthat they perceived to be imminentthreats, such as malaria, smallpox,polio and, more recently, AIDS.

Much of the contemporary respon-sibility for disease eradication hasrested in international organizationslike WHO and UNICEF, with fund-ing from the World Bank, USAID andother institutions. These efforts havebeen enhanced through the involve-ment of private foundations. Theresult has been the emergence of atransnational coalition of interestedactors dedicated to the control andalleviation of selected global dis-eases.

By the end of the 20th century,smallpox and polio were mostly erad-icated. Malaria and tuberculosis weresupposedly under control, but allthese diseases appear to havereemerged as a global threat.

The global spread of HIV/AIDS,especially in developing countries, isone of the greatest challenges facingthe health care community. The needfor global cooperation has been iden-tified and acted upon to the extentthat UN-based initiatives have beensupported by international financialinstitutions, government subsidiesand private philanthropy, as well asthe participation of health care per-sonnel. This congruence of interestscan be seen as a model for futurecooperative initiatives.

Successful efforts to combat diseaseand ensure basic health in populationsare dependent in large measure onbuilding a consensus on policies andinstruments. National health careagencies and international organiza-tions such as UNICEF and WHO havecollaborated on identifying andimplementing global strategies forimmunization, family planning, oralrehydration therapy, female literacyand other low-technology solutions toassist the global poor. The measure ofsuccess has been that these strategiesare now widely dispersed throughoutthe world community.

2 SGI Quarterly April 2008

“The promise of theinterconnected world is that it

may result in more cooperativeapproaches toward dealing

with these challenges.”

The EnvironmentIndustrialization, technological

development and demographicgrowth are contributors to the problemof pollution and climate change. Thenumber of environmental treaties hassoared over the last few decades.UNEP estimates that there are nowover 500 international treaties andother agreements related to the envi-ronment, more than 300 of which havebeen agreed to since the first UN con-vention on the environment in 1972. Itis in this area that cooperative solutionsare most likely to occur and whereinnovative cooperative institutions andprotocols are being developed.

Access to freshwater is anotherglobal problem that has the potentialto be a serious challenge in the com-ing decades. The surging global pop-ulation, combined with the reductionof freshwater resources, is creating athreat probability that will be difficultto resolve. The uneven distribution offreshwater supplies is a potentialsource of conflict and is only resolv-able through some cooperative shar-ing and allocation between the areaspossessing abundant supplies andthose with limited or nonexistentsources.

The energy-dependent world of the21st century is faced with some hardchoices on conservation and develop-ment of alternative resources.

The growing demand for energycoupled with the depletion of energyresources has economic and environ-mental implications, further increasingthe gap between rich and poor nations.A global development policy is need-ed to arbitrate these conflicting needs.

The ActorsThe expanding range of actors

involved in global cooperative institu-tions and policymaking has come toinclude individuals, NGOs, govern-ments at a variety of levels and inter-national organizations. The boundarybetween public and private is alsobecoming increasingly less importantas collective initiatives are formulated.

Individuals are the basic buildingblocks of cooperative action and poli-

cy. To achieve a high level of individ-ual involvement, it is necessary toarticulate the problem and the solu-tion in clear and understandableterms and ensure that there is a widedissemination of this information inthe community. Providing knowledgeempowers the individual and givesthe community a stake in the out-come. The next step follows from thisas energized communities engage inself-help, as well as lobbying theirrepresentatives toward adoptinglong-term policy initiatives. Some ofthis process is reflected in the effortsthat preceded the adoption of theLandmine Treaty, a process that wasinitiated outside the framework of tra-ditional governmental institutions,but succeeded in being adopted byconcerned nations. The process suc-ceeded in mobilizing public opinioneffectively so that in a period of lessthan a decade a treaty banning theproduction and use of landmines hadbeen adopted by a majority of nations.

The challenge of global cooperationfor human security raises the questionof the advisability of forming a centralorganization responsible for globalgovernance and dealing with issuesthat may require the restriction ofnational sovereignty in the interests ofimplementing cooperative policy. In

theory, as well as in practice, this is aremote possibility since an organiza-tional structure does not ensure agree-ment or consensus in the absence of acollective perception of danger. Manyof the existing international bodiesencounter this problem repeatedly. Aworld governmental organizationwould be equally susceptible to suchchallenges.

The future of global cooperation ismost likely to be a multilevel effort,flexible in its responses and capable ofcreating short-term response teams ofmultiple actors, while simultaneouslystriving to define global priorities andpolicies which could be interpreted asappropriate. Global cooperation in thefuture needs to be primarily a riskmanagement enterprise, with a net-work structure replacing the tradi-tional hierarchical decision-makingmodel that has dominated the inter-national environment.�


Aid agencies and military medics in Aceh, Indonesia, coordinate their efforts to dispense health care to survivors in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami

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Prof. Sai Felicia Krishna-Hensel ispresident of the ComparativeInterdisciplinary Studies Section ofthe International Studies Association.This article is excerpted from GlobalCooperation: Challenges AndOpportunities in the Twenty-firstCentury (Ashgate, 2006), of whichshe is the editor.


W hen I started investigatingthe nature of cooperation, Ikept running into a familiar

story about human behavior.Humans are particularly adept attelling themselves what kind of crea-tures they are, and these narrativeshave proved tenacious and potent.When the stories people ferventlybelieve about the nature of humannature change, lives and civilizationschange. When the old tale about theflat Earth was replaced by the story ofa globe you can sail around, peoplediscovered new worlds. When thestory about the Earth being the centerof the universe changed to one aboutthe sun-centered universe, the scien-tific revolution erupted. We’re stillexperiencing the shocks from the newnarratives Darwin and Freud deto-nated in the 19th and 20th centuries. Isee a new transformation afoot, cat-alyzed in part by technology, but dri-ven primarily by social practices: acooperation revolution.

What if the story we tell ourselvesand teach our children today aboutthe way humans get things done hasbeen fundamentally wrong for cen-turies?

You’ll recognize the old story: Biol-ogy is war, in which only the fiercestsurvive. Businesses and nations suc-ceed only by dominating or defeatingothers. Politics is about your side win-ning at all costs.

Recent scientific research and bot-tom-line economic realities both pointto a very different scenario emerging,however. New evidence from thepragmatic world of business fits wellwith new findings in the sciences:from the subcellular level to that ofmarkets and civilizations, humans andother creatures accomplish the tasks oflife far more cooperatively than the“survival of the fittest” myth that pre-vious centuries have tried to portray.

Cells do it. Ecosystems do it. And peo-ple have grown uniquely capable atways of coordinating, cooperating,collaborating for mutual benefit.

Humans have been tapping thepower of cooperation for a long time.Indeed, according to the “socialinstincts” hypothesis, cooperationplayed an important role when our pri-mate ancestors evolved into humans.But we haven’t known much about thispower until recently. It is hardly thefirst case where our ability to do some-thing preceded understanding of howto do it. Humans have thrown rocks formuch longer than we’ve known any-

thing about muscles or ballistics. How-ever, knowing how muscles workwon’t make you stronger—whereaslearning something about howhumans cooperate might make it pos-sible to create culture, build enterpris-es, transact, govern and socialize inways never possible before.

Three StoriesThree friends of mine, Brian Behlen-

dorf, Jimmy Wales and Larry Harvey,could tell you that understandingcooperation has practical conse-quences. When Netscape went publicand the World Wide Web became bigbusiness, Brian rallied a worldwidenetwork of programmers to voluntari-ly create and maintain free software forputting sites on the Web. The Apachewebserver is now 50 percent of themarket, and is the basis for IBM’s web

Howard Rheingold in Tokyo

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The Cooperation RevolutionBy Howard Rheingold

“I see a new transformationafoot, catalyzed in part by

technology, but driven primarilyby social practices:

a cooperation revolution.”

software. He is a real altruist, and Brianknows that in sharing economies,altruism can work in one’s own inter-est—his company, CollabNet, makes ahealthy profit teaching enterprises howto use open source techniques tobecome more productive.

Wales, a former options trader, con-vinced thousands of people aroundthe world to help him createWikipedia, a free, volunteer-createdencyclopedia of nearly 10 million arti-cles in over 250 languages.

Harvey started building a bigwooden man and burning it on abeach with a few friends; today, theBurning Man festival constitutes thefourth largest city in Nevada for aweek every summer, when 40,000people come together on a drylakebed, provide everything a city of40,000 people requires, display (andburn) huge works of art and leave thedesert as clean as they found it.

Who would have thought, a fewyears ago, that a 23-year-old program-mer and his friends, working for noeconomic incentive, could create andgive away an essential building blockfor the World Wide Web? Or that vol-unteers could even dream of achievingWales’s goal of “a free encyclopediafor everyone on Earth, in their nativelanguage”? Or that a city of 40,000people could self-organize itself annu-ally in one of the most physically hos-tile environments on Earth?

New NetworksUnderstanding cooperation can

change your life. I know that my ownlife, career and way of viewing theworld began to change 20 years ago,when I found the power of what Icalled “virtual communities.” Thenight that my wife found a tick on ourdaughter’s head and I got an answerfrom my online friends about how todeal with them before she got a call-back from our pediatrician was amajor illumination for us about thecooperation-amplifying properties ofsocial cyberspace. But in 1986,Netscape, Wikipedia, eBay wereunimaginable. Nowadays, most peo-ple who use the Internet have had theexperience of turning to an online chatroom, e-mail list or discussion boardto find technical, emotional, evenmedical support.

The trail of evidence started in thesciences, but recent powerful develop-

ments in the worlds of politics, busi-ness and civic affairs have convincedme that a new picture of cooperationis coming into view. I see new ways ofdiscovering knowledge, creatingwealth, managing political gover-nance emerging right now, in the eraof the always-on and in your pocketInternet. I can see the outlines of a newway of thinking about our personalstrategies, about our social relation-ships in families and communities, inour civic and political institutions, ourbusinesses, our means of producingwealth and culture.

I first started piecing together newfindings in biology, sociology, eco-nomics and political science six orseven years ago, when I was writingSmart Mobs, about the way peoplewere using mobile telephones andthe Internet to organize collectiveaction. It occurred to me, as I lookedbroadly at such different enterprisesas Napster, eBay, SETI@home andWikipedia, that these technological,

cultural, economic phenomena wereall expressions of new forms of collec-tive action that became possiblethrough the technical infrastructureprovided by PCs and the Internet, butwere driven by new human-inventedsocial contracts.

In the 1990s we began to see changesin our social systems driven by thegrowing use of personal computersand the rise of the Internet. Now thatthe mind-augmenting computers andcommunity-linking networks are inplace around the world, accessiblethrough devices that billions of peoplecarry in their pockets, the effects shiftfrom technology-enabled to human-driven: at this point, the way peopleorganize economic production, createand distribute culture and knowledge,manage global and local businessenterprises and influence politicalprocesses is where the action is, not onthe LCD screens or in the micro-processors, optic cables or wirelesshotspots. The technology, fourdecades in the making, is a platformfor human endeavor. Now, the biolo-gist and sociologist have more to tellus than the electrical engineer abouthow the cyber-amplified, wirelesslylinked populations of the Earth aregoing to build upon this platform.�


One of the many art installations at the 2007Burning Man festival

“A new picture of cooperation iscoming into view . . . new ways

of discovering knowledge,creating wealth, managing

political governance emergingright now, in the era

of the always-on and in your pocket Internet.”

Howard Rheingold is the author of anumber of books exploring the cul-tural, social and political implica-tions of modern communicationsmedia. His Cooperation Commonswebsite (www.cooperationcom-mons.com) is an ongoing interdisci-plinary investigation of cooperationand collective action in collaborationwith the Institute for the Future.

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“There are many people who go fromdenial to despair without pausing on theintermediate step of actually solving theproblem.”—Nobel Prize-winning climatechange campaigner Al Gore

C limate change has been called“the greatest threat humanityhas ever faced” by sober and

conservative global leaders. It forcesus to face some of moral philosophy’sgreatest challenges.

It might be easy to characterize cli-mate change as a crisis beyondhumanity’s ability to solve, or to seethe end of society as we know it: thedawning of a new age of humanstruggle; of extreme weather, disease,hunger and economic collapse. Callsfor international action and globalpolitical leadership have been sound-ed repeatedly, but the collective posi-tion of international climate diploma-cy is “after you.” It’s almost as if therewere some other set of people hiddenaway somewhere and about toemerge to take up office and save us,in a heroic transformation of our gov-ernments and corporations frombeing the cause of the problem tobeing part of the solution. But it isentirely possible that we have beenlooking for them in the wrong places.

In communities, towns and citiesworldwide, a growing number of“ordinary” people have taken athoughtful pause in that space AlGore talks about, between denial anddespair, looking at what they are ableto do, together. Where cooperationbetween nations is proving to be ago-nizing, fragile and slow, cooperationbetween people in local communitiesis by contrast emerging as vibrantlycreative, powerful, determined andeffective, bringing power back to thepeople—quite literally.

Doing It for ThemselvesThe causes of climate change are as

easy to identify and characterize asthe crisis itself. Smokestacks billowingfilth above a dirty coal-fired powerstation illustrate the cover of Gore’sclimate change film An InconvenientTruth. It is the fossil-fueled energy sys-tem we rely on to power our lives,warm our homes and drive our carsand planes that has caused this prob-lem. It is in the transformation of howwe think about these needs—ofwarmth and cooling, of mobility, oflight and electricity—that we can findthe solution.

The small town of Bishop’s Castle inShropshire, U.K., is home to theWasteless Society. Formed in the mid1990s by a group of local folk con-cerned about the issue of waste—inthis case rubbish—and the fact thatthere is too much of it, the societystarted with the obvious: recycling.

Cooperating amongst themselves tomake collection of green waste easierfor everyone in an era when little gov-ernment help was on offer, theylearned that acting together theycould make a positive difference; aneighboring farmer’s anaerobicdigester could be fed with waste andalso produce clean energy. Bishop’sCastle’s local authority is now theU.K. leader in waste managementusing this technique.

It doesn’t stop there—if they couldtackle waste, could they also do some-thing about climate change? A WasteLess Energy project led to a carbonfootprinting exercise. The society nowruns energy advice programs for localpeople and has conducted surveys forover 400 homes, offering plans to cuttheir energy use. A drive to increasethe use of solar power was launchedand an Energy Club was established tohelp residents actually make thechanges to their homes. A fuel pump


Between Denial and Despair: Communities Cooperating to Solve Climate ChangeBy Robin Oakley

Ninety-eight percent of the energy needs of this building and offices in Malmö, Sweden, are provided byrenewable energy

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now operates in Bishop’s Cas-tle supplying 100-percentlocally sourced waste veg-etable oil biodiesel. Four otherlocal towns are now followingthis lead. The realization thatpeople have the power todecide locally to change direc-tion on their energy provisionand can cooperate to cut thecommunity’s climate changepollution, while benefiting thecommunity itself, has emergedall over the U.K.

EcocitiesIn 2005 a permaculture graduate

called Rob Hopkins moved to thetown of Totnes in Devon and sawhow local communities could weanthemselves off fossil fuels andrespond to climate change in a practi-cal and achievable way. His “EnergyDescent Action Plan” looks into thefuture and helps communities see aclear path of how to get where theywant to be. Totnes became the firstU.K. Transition Town. There are now30 English Transition Towns includ-ing Bristol, Bath and even the Isle ofWight. A handful of towns in Scot-land, Ireland, Wales, Australia andNew Zealand have made the ideainternational. Each has defined itstransition away from fossil fuels in itsown way, but underlying it all is thedesire for warmth, power and mobil-ity without waste, pollution and fueldependency. Efficiency programs,ultraefficient local power plants andlocal renewable energy projects aretaking off in spite of, rather thanbecause of, central government andenergy utilities.

To some, though, these apparentlynovel ideas are very familiar. Den-mark generates over half its energythrough ultraefficient power stations.Over four-fifths of Copenhagen isheated through this method. The cityboasts the most efficient power plantin the world, which can use five dif-ferent fuels, including three renew-ables (waste wood, straw bales and

biogas) and delivers energy fromthem with over 90-percent efficiency.Traditional coal-fired power stationsfavored by big power companies gen-erally waste over half of the energythey generate.

In Sweden this philosophy hasreached its apotheosis. The Swedishgovernment has effectively declareditself a transition country by setting atarget to be free from fossil fuels andnuclear power and replacing themwith renewables by 2020. It’s alreadybeing proven at a community level. Inthe city of Malmö, the Western Harbordevelopment (Vaestra Hamnen)already boasts 100-percent renewableheating, cooling and electricity as wellas some of Sweden’s most iconicarchitecture. The redevelopment hasdelivered a new residential shorelinecommunity whose motto is sustain-ability. Futuristic buildings glintingwith solar panels stand alongsidegreen courtyards and traditionalSwedish houses.

The decentralized model has deliv-ered for Malmö. A biomass-fueledcombined heat and power unit warmsall the buildings through a districtheating network with warm waterheated in solar thermal collectors.Wind turbines and solar power cells

add to the power station’selectricity and the ultraeffi-cient design of the buildingsmeans that the development isself-sufficient. It is living,working proof that the zero-carbon communities that mustbe our future, if we are to havea future, can be made realtoday. It is also a model thatcommunities, towns and citiesworldwide can emulate with-out waiting for their nationalgovernments to also emulatethe Swedes.

Awareness of the need to cooperateis growing internationally and whilethe global challenge of climatechange cannot be solved solely bycommunities acting for themselves,these exciting and vibrant develop-ments provide momentous proof thatthese solutions work. This also has thepower to remind our internationalnegotiators that they too must coop-erate. The hypocrisy of developedworld governments who point thefinger at industrializing nations suchas China for their excuses is exposedby the fact that it is cooperating grass-roots organizations, not national gov-ernments, who are often leading inthe developed world. In fact, thebiggest ecocity in the world is nowplanned for China using these veryconcepts. The Dongtan development,sited next to Shanghai, has as itsvision a city on the scale of Manhattanwith zero-waste and zero-carbonemissions. It is hard to imagine wast-ing less than that.

In the words of scientist BuckminsterFuller, “You never change things byfighting the existing reality. To changesomething, build a new model thatmakes the existing model obsolete.”�


Robin Oakley works forGreenpeace in the U.K.and China, now headingthe Greenpeace U.K. cli-

mate and energy team. He has alsoworked for Campaign Against the ArmsTrade and for Index on Censorship.

Children playing adjacent to a combined heat and power station supplying localbusinesses and residential premises in Southampton, U.K.

“Cooperation between people inlocal communities is emerging

as vibrantly creative andeffective, bringing power back

to the people—quite literally.”

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O ver the past twodecades in Nigeria,thousands have been

killed in violent clashes betweenChristians and Muslims. ImamMuhammad Nurayn Ashafa, aMuslim cleric, and PastorJames Movel Wuye, a Christ-ian preacher from KadunaState in northern Nigeria, wereat first sworn enemies. Bothwere members of militias whichfought each other in the townof Zangon-Kataf, which erupt-ed in violence in 1992. They arenow inseparable friends. Theyset up the Muslim-ChristianDialogue Forum in 1995 andalso the Interfaith MediationCentre. In 2002 they signed theKaduna Peace Declaration withmany other religious leaders.They have been awarded theHeroes of Peace Award fromthe New York City-basedTanenbaum Center for Interre-ligious Understanding. They are now seek-ing to replicate their efforts through cen-ters in Jos, Owerri and Lagos in Nigeria,and more recently they have conductedinterfaith work in southern Sudan andKenya. They have published a book, TheImam and the Pastor: Responding toConflict, and a film, The Imam and thePastor was released by FLT films in 2006.SGI Quarterly: How did you movefrom hating each other to workingtogether? Pastor Wuye: I am a primary victim.It took me three years to forgive theMuslims for the hurt done to me. I hadthis ambition to retaliate for the handthat I lost in the conflict. Now, I havefound strength to forgive them,through the inspiration I had from theHoly Bible and the Christian texts. Imam Ashafa: The essence of Islamis faith, tradition, to shift people from

hate to love, from hate to cooperation.It started from Muhammad in Meccawhen he insisted that there are noslaves and no masters, we are all equalbefore God. When he had victory overMecca, instead of transferring hate, hetransferred love to the people ofMecca. Instead of vengeance, he trans-ferred the hand of cooperation. Andthat was the spirit I later discovered inthe close reading of Islam. Sincerelyspeaking when I tried, it was difficult.Pastor James’s groups were the onesthat killed my spiritual teacher, andsome of our brothers. I was very sadabout it.SGIQ: Is achieving peace and recon-ciliation easy or difficult? Imam Ashafa: For me, building aculture of peace is a very difficult chal-lenge. There are many walls that pre-vent this. For me there was the fear of

the unknown and of another culture.But religion has the culture of creatingan alternative to violence. If only oneperson is able to see the light andinfluence one person, then we arealready creating ripples. To gobeyond our fear as Muslims is to gobeyond the law of reciprocity. To dofor others because we are trying to getto the others’ need, across the line,across the border, because we feel it isdivine to do so. Pastor Wuye: The challenge of find-ing peace is when you are hurting andyou need to transfer the aggression orthe anger to someone or something.But when you learn through true for-giveness, then you will not blame peo-ple for what happened. Our work hasimpacted on quite a number of people,and we have set up structures that arenow reducing crises, particularly in


Imam Ashafa (left) and Pastor Wuye

The Imam and the Pastor: Cooperating for Peace

FLT Films-Lond

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Kaduna. We have not stopped inPlateau State, because there are quite afew other places that we need to rec-oncile, for example, between theBerom and Hausa in a communitycalled Dillimi-Kwang in Plateau State,and in Bauchi State.

Some of our colleagues are in Sudanat the invitation of the InterreligiousCouncil. We have to replicate our-selves so another Imam and Pastorcan start. We have discovered that ourmodel also speaks to people who donot profess any faith at all. SGIQ: How important is it for reli-gious leaders to understand oneanother’s faiths in today’s world? Pastor Wuye: I think it is crucial. Weare not preaching compromise, nortolerance. We are preaching that peo-ple should accept that they differ andthey can do nothing about that butaccept the reality. Now, in acceptingthe reality you explore the basic tenetsof each other’s faiths: While that isdone, mutual respect will grow, butalso you begin to love, respect and lis-ten to the other one.

We should be sensitive to what wesay as religious leaders. If we speakagainst or in favor of a particular faith,it can bring controversy and resent-ment. This can lead to violence andeven to a war. Imam Ashafa: Why wouldn’t we beable to learn about others? Well,because of our fear of the unknown.The second barrier to learning aboutothers is incapable scholars withignorant followers. They assumethey know the best of their tradi-tions, but unfortunately they arehalf-baked scholars because theyhave the knowledge of the texts butthey don’t have the knowledge ofthe environment. They cannot con-ceptualize the reality of their tradi-tions in the light of the modern chal-lenges that they find themselves in.They are incapable because they areliving in the past. They need tomove into the future.

We need to move into the futurewith a positive mind. We have to

stop judging others from ourown worldview. Peopleacknowledge different colorsin the sky, the garden and therainbow and they feel happy,but they never acknowledgethe dignity and the strength ofour diversity. SGIQ: Does religion exist to helppeople in their everyday lives? Imam Ashafa: Well, for me religionis a tool, it is like a compass of one’slife. You should take care of God’s cre-ation. When you destroy the animalsor plants, when you pollute the envi-ronment, you do the same level ofharm as you do to fellow humanbeings. My religion is about love forall creation. That is why in IslamMuhammad says the best amongmankind is he who brings benefit toothers. Religion should put a smile,not tears, on the face of others. Pastor Wuye: You do not need to ver-balize to present your faith. Your char-acter is what is in the faith. Religionshould be an instrument of molding

people to accept the divinity, some-thing you experience in your heart, sothat you follow your inner voice thatleads to divinity. You know what issaid in Christianity that Jesus Christ isthe Prince of Peace, and Islam alsomeans Peace. If you look, most of theconflicts around the world are betweenMuslims and Christians. But if Christis the Prince of Peace and Islam isPeace, then we should be experiencingdouble peace in the world. SGIQ: What is the greatest lessonyou feel you have learned personallydoing this work? Pastor Wuye: You should not judgeactions on the surface. You shouldinvestigate every action or inaction.While taking an action, be careful notto hurt someone by your actions, orelse you will be judged by the samejudgment that you give out. I alsolearned to pray for every Muslim. Wedo not talk from our head, we talkfrom our heart. Imam Ashafa: When I started,almost everybody was against me,only my family was behind me. Now,

over 60 percent are behind me. Thegreatest happiness is to be able torealize the truth of your mission,and to be able to appreciate it. Wepromote the concept of debate andthe spirit of dialogue. But as long asyou fear death, you fear the loss ofyour inner world, or if you fearpoverty, you can never make animpact in the world. That is the les-son I have learned.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said,“Injustice anywhere is a threat tojustice everywhere.” For the worldto be safe, we have to change thescale of measure from materialismto the concept of piety and nobility.Religion can still save the worldfrom imminent danger.�

“People acknowledge differentcolors in the sky, the garden andthe rainbow and they feel happy,

but they never acknowledge the dignity and the strength

of our diversity.”

Celebrating a peace accord mediated by Imam Ashafa andPastor Wuye in Yelwa-Shendam, an area of Nigeria that hadseen bitter interreligious conflict

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D r. William Reckmeyer is profes-sor of Leadership and Systemsat San José State University and

faculty chair of the International StudyProgram in Global Citizenship at theSalzburg Global Seminar. He served aschief system scientist (2003–2006) at theSystems of Systems Center of Excellence,which was established to develop moreintegrative approaches to complex issues,and was a visiting scholar with the Cen-ter for International Security and Coop-eration at Stanford University.SGI Quarterly: What does it meanto look at the world from thesystems theory perspective?William Reckmeyer: Systemsscientists see the patterns whichconnect everything rather thanall the differences that separatethem. They see that there arepatterns of organization, howthe parts relate in different waysand interact with the broaderenvironment. Most peoplebecome specialists in some par-ticular subject matter or areused to looking at things from aparticular cultural or nationalperspective—for example, com-puter programmers don’t lookat the world in the same way asmarketing people. So systemspeople are interested in lookingat knowledge that cuts acrosstraditional boundaries to see thecommonalities that we thinkunderlie everything. It’s lookingat everything in the universe interms of patterns of organiza-tion and change. SGIQ: The world and its prob-lems seem to be growing morecomplex; are we getting closerto solutions to the global crisisor more distant from them? WR: The world is growing a lotmore complex in large partbecause we are creating the

complexity. Human beings’ability to manipulate matter,energy and information hasincreased vastly. At the sametime, we are also becomingmore knowledgeable abouthow the world operates andhow it’s interconnected. Ourgrowing interconnection means thatmore of us are able to influence others,and vice versa, in a way that isunprecedented in human history.

The ability to anticipate the future isa unique feature of our species, and

this can make us despair or itcan make us hopeful. Myoptimistic view is that as longas we are breathing andthinking, we can alwaysmake things better. We arenow more knowledgeableabout the potential impact of

major global issues, and we havemore collective capability to addressthem than at any time in history.There is also a greater level of caringand responsibility for others. If peoplearen’t entirely selfish in their

approach to addressing issues,I think we can resolve almostanything that’s facing us.

For a long time there hasbeen a lot of emphasis on thevalue of individual success, butin the globalizing world, at theleading edges, there is far moreinterest in and awareness of theneed for collaboration thanthere used to be. And we arelearning how to do that interms of technologies as well asin terms of attitude. A big chal-lenge to collaboration, though,is the increasing specializationof knowledge. We have peoplewho know more and moreabout less and less, who are“part-smart but whole-stupid.”

Systems science provides arigorous framework that pro-motes communication and col-laboration across different dis-ciplines. Operationally andmetaphorically, it is equivalentto the way English, as a com-mon standard interface,enables people of many differ-ent cultures and languages tointeract in our globalizedworld.

I believe there is a lot morecollaboration happening today,because there is a growing


Creating Change in the SystemInterview with William Reckmeyer

A Bolivian woman, in India as part of the Barefoot College's internationalteaching scheme, learns how to maintain solar panels; international stu-dents take the skills they have learned back to villages in their own coun-tries to set up rural solar energy projects

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awareness that we are in thistogether.

Global CitizenshipSGIQ: How can peoplebecome effective agents ofchange? WR: I think the notion of glob-al citizenship is importanthere. People have both theresponsibility and the right tocare about what happens tothe world as a whole—not just tobecome aware and care about it, butto actually do something. One of themost radical ideas in the universe isthe notion of self-authorization, thatyou don’t need somebody’s permis-sion in order to try to do something. Ithink there is more hope for morepeople now than there ever has beenin human history. Because in the pastleadership was primarily exercisedby people who were powerfulenough, rich enough, strong enough,or mean enough to be the boss andtell everyone what to do. For a longtime most people had very little sayin what went on in their life, otherthan trying to eke out an existence.The world has become more andmore free in terms of economic choic-es, personal choices and governmen-tal choices. There is more and moreopportunity for people to get up inthe morning and say, “I am not happywith this and we’ve got to do some-thing about it.”

The scientific term for that is self-organization. Many systems are veryself-organizing; that is, action is pri-marily initiated by the parts, not byexternal factors or subject to externalcontrol. The parts come together andstart organizing in new ways and cancreate their own systems. Now, weknow that as grassroots organizing, forexample. It’s the heart of democracy.

A classic example is Candy Light-ner. In the early 1980s, her daughterwas killed by a drunk driver and shedecided she had to do somethingabout it, that there were too manydrunks killing too many kids. Every-

body told her, “You’re just a house-wife, you can’t do anything about it.”Well, she ended up starting a move-ment in the U.S. that has now pro-foundly changed the laws withrespect to drunk driving. But what’seven more difficult, she’s changed theculture. It is no longer acceptable,especially among young people, todrink and drive.

Empowering PeopleSGIQ: You have particular interest inleadership development. WR: In human society it’s alwaysbeen a relatively small number of peo-ple that shaped what was going on,but now it’s getting to be a bigger andbroader group of people. Fundamen-tally, leadership is best seen as notabout being in charge, but more abouthow you mobilize people to pursueshared goals. Leadership is muchmore about influence, persuasion, col-laboration and facilitating change.That’s especially true in a globalworld, because nobody has sufficientpower or the knowledge or theauthority to tell everybody what to do.

Leadership certainly becomes morecritical the more challenging the situ-ation. The root word of collaborate is“labor,” and that’s the difficulty ofcreating collaboration: it’s hard work.So the heart of leadership is funda-

mentally being able toempower people and to helpthem focus their energy towork for the greater good inways that transcend self-interest.

It is also important toemphasize that there isn’t anysingle common definition orcharacteristic of what makesa good leader. Researchshows that there are univer-

sally acceptable and unacceptablebehaviors and traits. Integrity, forexample, is valued by everybody. Dic-tators and arrogance are valued bynobody. But what we find is that lead-ership is very contextually dependentand what works well in one settingdoesn’t work in others. In some cul-tures it’s appropriate to be very explic-it and forward, for example, in theclassic Western view of leadership assomebody leading a charge up a hill.

In other cultures this kind of behav-ior immediately denotes you as a fooland is not viewed as appropriate.What you have to be careful of in aglobal world is that, while leadershipis absolutely critical, one needs amuch more multidimensional view ofleadership in the global context thanin a particular cultural context ororganization.SGIQ: I understand that from a sys-tems science perspective, it’s impor-tant to understand the goal of a sys-tem. What, in your view, is or shouldbe the goal of our human system?WR: Not all systems have goals, onlythose that are cybernetic or purpose-ful in nature like human beings. Whatshould our goal be? Build a sustain-able world. Which means that it has tobe sustainable ecologically and envi-ronmentally, socially and culturally,and also economically. If everybodylived at the average standard of livingof the U.S. and Japan right now, itwould take somewhere between threeto eight Earths to support the currentnumber of people on the planet. Thatisn’t achievable and it’s certainly notsustainable.�


“Many systems are very self-organizing; the parts come

together and start organizing in new ways and can create theirown systems. Now, we know that

as grassroots organizing.”

Students in the Netherlands demonstrate against world poverty wearing T-shirts with the word “One”

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P rofessor Betty Reardon is widelyacknowledged as a founder of con-temporary peace education and is

the founding director of the Peace Educa-tion Center at Teachers College, ColumbiaUniversity, U.S.A. She has served as aconsultant to several UN agencies andeducation organizations and has publishedwidely in the fields of peace and humanrights education and gender issues.SGI Quarterly: What has been therole of women in helping the emer-gence of a paradigm of cooperation?Betty Reardon: I think that womenhave done a great deal that could be alot more effective if it were done incomplementarity with men. I thinkthat what women have done reflectsthe concerns they embrace as a conse-quence of their gender socialization.This seems to me a very importantdistinction to make: nothinginnate or essentially femalein women causes them totend more toward coopera-tion. It is the learningacquired through their rolesas caregivers and sustainersof life and well-being thatinfluences their cooperativebehavior. Cooperation, com-petition and conflict arelearned behaviors, modes ofachieving human ends.Women’s traditional rolessocialize them toward coop-eration and inclusion to pro-duce more well-being formore people. Men’s tradi-tional roles socialize themtoward competition andexclusion, concerned withthe well-being of their owngroup to the exclusion of oth-ers, behavior that leads toconflict.

When thinking about con-flict, there are two arenas ofaction which are important.

One is education in the senseof systematically cultivatedlearning. And the other ispolitical structures in whichconflicts play out. Thesestructures are set within aparadigm of essentialism—whether it’s gender essential-ism, ethnic essentialism or politicalessentialism—the idea that humanbeings can be summed up in a set ofcharacteristics that are in fundamen-tal opposition to another set of char-acteristics.

This sense of essentialismperpetuates gender inequali-ties. Education can helpunpack that kind of thinking,but education per se cannotdeal with the structures outof which it comes. I believethose structures are multiple

manifestations of patriarchy. Most ofour politics are essentially patriarchal.We are socialized to patriarchal poli-tics, and we are socialized to patriar-chal gender roles.SGIQ: How can women play a role inchanging the overall dynamic of thatmultilayered essentialization?BR: Gender essentialisms are usedboth constructively and destructively.The destructive manifestation iswoman as object, woman as the bodyof the enemy, as victim. As for the

constructive use of suchessentialism, as womenbecome aware of the fact thatwars are basically men’s con-flicts—that is, they are con-flicts in the interest of thepolitically powerful—theycan see that it is no longer inwomen’s interests to go alongwith war. They want theirwork saved—and women’swork is maintaining humanlife and viable societies. Sowhat women are now doingis bringing up an antiwar dis-course, calling upon theirgender roles as caregivers,mothers and teachers to inter-vene in and prevent armedconflict, as some have, evenphysically—putting theirbodies between combatants.

Women can also raise con-sciousness that gender rolesare culturally derived andchangeable. Conflict is a mat-ter of human choice, and thatbrings up my favorite expres-

It Doesn’t Have to Be That WayInterview with Betty Reardon

“Women are now calling upontheir gender roles as caregivers,

mothers and teachers to intervenein and prevent armed conflict,

even physically.”

Women in Somaliland demonstrate for peace

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sion, “It just doesn’t have to be thatway.” We can make a difference. If,for example, you look at the stories ofthe 1,000 women who were jointlynominated for the Nobel Peace Prizein 2005, then you see the multipleways in which women actually makea difference, manifesting the roles ofmother, teacher and courageousintervener. SGIQ: What about the role of womenas teachers in the home—can theychange the way children are social-ized?BR: Those women, indeed all par-ents, who are conscious of gendersocialization and trying to educate fora “culture of peace” can do a greatdeal in communicating to childrensuch values as universal humanworth and human equality. They canprovide a worldview in which young-sters learn that conflict is not neces-sarily inevitable and that there areother ways of achieving one’s goals.

They can teach that women andmen, all individuals, have differentcapacities. The ideal arrangement iswhen those capacities are used for themutual advantage of both in the rela-tionship and for all in the family.Children can see that sometimes themother is better at fixing the plumb-ing than the father, sometimes thefather more nurturing than the moth-er. They can begin to see that we allhave various capacities that can bearranged for collaborative purposesin a complementary and equal genderrelationship.

New LeadershipSGIQ: Is there a critical mass ofwomen’s leadership that is requiredbefore the dynamic begins to change?BR: I’d like to see many more womenin politics and in power, but I hopethey would be women who have aconsciousness of patriarchal struc-tures and an understanding of the sig-nificance of gender socialization, sothat they are able to work togetherwith men in a complementary, collab-orative way for transformation of the

culture of war and violence. Transfor-mation can only occur when there isboth organic and structural change.By organic, I mean the inner con-sciousness that drives behavior. Edu-cation must be such that it can lead tointernalized learning that affectsworldview, behaviors and, ultimate-ly, can produce a politics of significanttransformative structural change. SGIQ: You are speaking to such adeep transformation. Does this meanwe need to be patient? BR: I think we have to be impatient!We need to act now. Transformation isorganic and evolutionary as well asrevolutionary. Politics is a living sys-tem, because it’s made by livingbeings. This means we can make sig-nificant short-term interventionswhich will determine whether thelonger evolutionary process is positiveor negative. We should understandthat we will probably reap someimmediate positive result from ourefforts, but we probably will never seethe larger transformational conse-quences in our lifetime. We have tocome to terms with that. Human soci-ety is very young in terms of the histo-ry of living things on this planet. So we

have to be impatient but aware, organ-ically aware, that we have ethicalresponsibilities to act against war andgender injustice now as steps in an evo-lutionary process to achieve a cultureof peace.

At last we are debating, althoughvery awkwardly, issues of the funda-mental ethics of the public sphere. Wehave had, over and over again,reminders from religious leaders,from philosophers and from variousscientists that we are one species.Now we must understand that we areone, we are slowly evolving, that wemight become really good at makinga society built on constructive, mutu-ally beneficial relationships if we actwithin the time frame and the condi-tions that are open to us.

While we might not get the satisfac-tion of seeing the long-range nature ofthese changes, we can get a lot ofshort-term satisfaction from specificachievements, like SC 1325, the UNSecurity Council resolution onwomen’s participation in peacemak-ing. This is a landmark internationaldevelopment toward gender equalityand political change, the result ofaction by women in NGOs associatedwith the United Nations.

So if that could happen in the shortterm, then I think long-term transfor-mation can happen. And knowingthat should give us the courage to facethe full extent of the transformationalpath.�


“We might become really good at making a society built on

constructive, mutually beneficialrelationships if we act within the

time frame and the conditions that are open to us.”

A traditional door in Iran with two knockers with different sounds, one for women and one for men,announcing the gender of the visitor

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R emember Vukovar, one of thecenters of death and destruc-tion in former Yugoslavia?

We’re in Eastern Slavonia, Croatia, inautumn 1997. TFF, the peace instituteI founded, had been asked by the UNmission there (UNTAES) to providesome consultation, mediation andtraining in reconciliation betweenSerbs and Croats after the terrible warthat had started in spring 1991.

Serb and Croat youth had experi-enced war, fled into camps and notseen those on “the other side” for sixyears. Politicians, media, priests, teach-ers and parents had filled them withnationalism and hatred of each other.

TFF’s reconciliation meetings weretheir first time face-to-face with “theothers.” We had about 15 from eachside, one whole day. Their parentsand teachers gave the green light, andwe had met with them separately toprepare them. They were escorted byUN police.

They sat down in two half circles,facing each other—indefinable hostil-ity. Young, vulnerable kids, somesilent, most playing it cool. We start-ed out saying that, since they were allabout 10–12 years old when the warstarted, none could be personallyresponsible for it. Then we invitedthem to tell their personal story of suf-fering but: one, only what you haveexperienced yourself; two, no mentionof who did what, only what happened;three, no interruptions.

Dead silence! The longest minutesof my life! We, the three facilitators,had to break the silence by telling astory of our own suffering. Eventual-ly, one volunteered, then another. Sto-ries like—“One day I was playing in

our garden when I heard a hugeexplosion behind me; turning around,I saw my little brother lying dead,killed by a hand grenade.” Or “Wewere forced to leave our house in thenight; I did not even have time to takemy teddy bear with me.”

What had been Serb and Croat sto-ries became common stories. Atlunchtime we were all completelyexhausted, many having cried non-stop. Over pizza and cola, some beganto talk over the ethnic divide.

We spent the afternoon encourag-ing each other by brainstorming onhow we would want Eastern Slavoniato be in 20 years. Lots of laughter,dreams—moving from hatred andfear toward positive energy and hope.

Many told us that this had been themost important day in years. For bothsides, we were the first adults who hadlistened to them. They had learned thatsuffering was common, that they hadbeen misled by the lies of politicians,priests, teachers, media and parents.

I’ll never forget the words of onegirl: “Thank you, thank you. But . . .tonight I’ll tell my father everythingand about my new friends among‘them.’ He fought them and is now ina wheelchair because both his legswere shot off. He will never under-stand how I can feel what I feel today,and he will be so angry with me.”

It’s the many smaller “victories”among human beings that keep megoing. I believe that, more than fakegovernment “resolutions” and“peace” agreements, the accumula-tion of such positive stories, and theirproliferation through the media, canultimately put an end to war.�

Small VictoriesBy Jan Øberg

Jan Øberg is cofounder of theTransnational Foundationfor Peace and FutureResearch (TFF), based in

Sweden. See: www.transnational.org

Youth at a children’s home in Serbia

“What had been Serb and Croatstories became common stories.

At lunchtime we were all completely exhausted,

many having cried nonstop.”

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I am visiting a school in rural NewZealand and am with a group of15 students outside on the playing

field. I have a bag of balls at my side.“Who here knows how to juggle a

couple of balls?” I ask, tossing twoballs into the air as I speak. A fewhands go up.

“How about three balls?” I query asI perform a simple three-ball pattern.A couple of hands remain.

“How about eight balls at once?”The hands go down and there is asomewhat disbelieving but expectantlook on their faces.

“Well, today I am going to teachyou how to juggle eight balls at once.”Now they think I am joking. “It’s toodifficult to do alone. I canonly juggle four by myself.But together we can juggleeight! It’s called group jug-gling. Let’s do it.”

So in a circle we begin bythrowing one ball from per-son to person until every-one has received (caught)the ball from one personand thrown it to another.We then throw the ballaround the circle in thesame order. Once we haveestablished the order inwhich the ball travels fromperson to person, we canthen get a second ball goingaround the circle after thefirst—and then a third, afourth, a fifth, etc.

Each person is merely receivingballs thrown to them in succession byone person and then throwing them toanother—but the effect of many ballstraveling through the air at the sametime is amazing. We do indeed man-age to get eight balls in the air. Thefeeling of joint accomplishment iswonderful and there are huge smilesall around.

This is one of the many games weplay as part of peace education inNew Zealand schools to reinforcemessages about working together andto build cooperation skills.

But I have found that the games arenot just suitable for teaching school-children—they can also be useful inbuilding trust, understanding andcooperation at the international level.I work in the field of international dis-armament and am often in workshopswith ambassadors or other officialsfrom opposing sides in conflicts—such as Russians and Americans onthe nuclear weapons issue, or Indiansand Pakistanis over the Kashmir-Jammu conflict.

Being Defense-lessOnce I was in a five-day workshop

with officials from eight nuclearweapon states, and we had intro-duced the idea of a treaty to abolishnuclear weapons. There was a lot ofskepticism from the officials. Theyfeared that some of the other countriesmight not abolish all their nuclearweapons but would hide some of

them. And the officials did not trustthat the others would not attack themif they were “defense-less.”

I thus felt that these officials neededmore experience in being “defense-less” but having to trust the others. Iled them in a game of Circle Fall. Thisis where one person stands straightwith arms at their sides in the middleof a small circle of people. The peoplein the circle have their hands up tojointly take the weight of the person inthe middle as s/he leans over. As theperson in the middle becomes moreconfident that the others won’t dropher/him, s/he can fall further intotheir hands as s/he is passed aroundthe circle.

As these officials playedthe game, their mood defi-nitely lightened up.

In our group we had avery large and very stern-looking Russian generalwho had been silent duringthe discussions. He had nointention of playing thisgame—perhaps he thoughtit was stupid. Perhaps hedid not feel comfortableenough with others in thegroup to play. Perhaps hedid not trust that otherswould catch him. In anycase he just stood back andwatched.

However, as each of theothers had a turn in the

middle of the circle and he saw howwe all worked together to support theweight of the central person as s/hewas passed around the circle, hismood also lightened—enough that atthe end the other officials all turnedto him and invited him into the mid-dle of the circle. And indeed, as he letus bear his weight, a smile creptacross his face for the first time in thefive days.


Juggling and the Kashmir-Jammu ConflictBy Alyn Ware

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Students in New Zealand play a cooperative game

“A day will come when all thenations of this continent,without losing their distinct

qualities or their glorious individual-ity, will fuse together and form theEuropean brotherhood. A day willcome when the only battlefield will bethe marketplace. A day will comewhen bullets and bombs will bereplaced by ballots.” These were theprophetic words of French poet VictorHugo in 1849. It took, however, morethan a century of fratricidal wars andmillions of deaths before a few coura-geous and visionary statesmen fromEurope’s core came together to pro-pose a project for peace through anever-closer union of Europe’s nations.

For hundreds of years the relationsbetween European powers were gov-erned by balancing military might. Inthe 20th century, European rivalriestriggered world wars culminating inmass slaughter of civilian populationsand genocide. In 1945, Europe offereda picture of wrecked economies andmoral bankruptcy. Totalitarian ide-ologies represented a mortal threat toits civilization and values.

Triumph of DiplomacyThe European unification process

represents the triumph of diplomacyand peacemaking over warfare, andan unprecedented model of coopera-tion between nations. The originalidea was to put the essentialresources and raw materials for thewar industry under pooled suprana-tional management. The EuropeanCoal and Steel Community set up in1951 had six member states: Belgium,the Federal Republic of Germany,France, Italy, Luxembourg and the


Following the game, the officialswere much more open to consideringcooperative security arrangements andverification agreements to enable a dis-armament process to occur while build-ing international trust. The Russiangeneral was amongst those whobecame most enthusiastic about pos-sibilities for nuclear abolition.

Starting SmallAnother time I was leading a group

of officials from Asia—including fromIndia and Pakistan—in a workshop onthe Kashmir-Jammu conflict. Therewere about 11 areas of conflictbetween the Pakistanis and the Indi-ans which were raised—some smallissues, such as when cross-border busand trade services could commence,and others much bigger and seeming-ly intractable.

At the beginning of the workshopthe Pakistanis and Indians would notlook at each other. They would eachassert how they were the peaceful sidewith integrity but how the other sidewas for conflict and was alwaysthwarting the possibilities for peace.And they were very emotional aboutthe bigger issues.

I realized that the first step was to getthem looking at each other in a non-confrontational way, and the next stepwould be to get them to put aside thevery tough emotionally charged issuesfor the time being and to build somesuccess in dealing with smaller issues.

So I decided to lead them in group

juggling. In this way the Indi-ans and Pakistanis had to lookat each other in order to receiveand throw the ball—but it waslooking at each other in afriendly way with no issues todeal with apart from whetherthey can throw and catch(something quite easy for twonations that love cricket). I had

11 balls at my side. The group managedto juggle eight of them. We thus built afriendly working relationship betweenthe officials. More than that, we had amodel on how to address the conflict. Inoted that in the juggling we startedwith just one ball—and made it veryeasy. Thus, in the conflict I suggestedwe start with just one of the issues—theeasiest. The Pakistanis and Indiansagreed and managed to find some pos-sibilities for addressing it. This successgave a basis for then addressing someof the other issues.

I also noted that there were 11 ballsand that this time we had managed tojuggle eight—a great achievement—but of course not all of the balls. Sim-ilarly in the conflict, we should notexpect to solve all 11 issues at once.We should expect that some wouldneed to be left until later when wehave had more experience with imple-menting the easier issues to solve.

The workshop finished with a pro-gram of ideas for the issues agreed byall participants and with greater trustbetween the participants and astronger confidence that these ideascould be implemented.�

“As he let us bear hisweight, a smile crept across

his face for the first time in the five days.”

Alyn Ware is consultant atlarge for the Lawyers’Committee on NuclearPolicy, outreach educator

for the Aotearoa-New ZealandFoundation for Peace Studies and glob-al coordinator of the ParliamentaryNetwork for Nuclear Disarmament.

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The EU,a Model of CooperationBy Etienne Reuter

Netherlands. It was an insurance forpeace and a recipe for prosperity. Itbrought together victorious and van-quished nations to cooperate asequals within shared institutions.

The pressure to rebuild and restoreinspired cooperation. At the begin-ning the willing were few. Formidablepsychological obstacles had to beovercome to engineer reconciliationbetween nations that had been taughtto hate each other, had made war andwounded each other deeply.

The economic cooperation betweenthe original member states was animmediate success story, developingfast and leading to a gradual fusing oftheir economies and national marketsinto a single European market with-out any internal hindrances to the freemovement of goods, services, moniesand people. Economic performanceand growth ensued.

One groundbreaking achievementwas the creation of the European Mon-etary Union and the common singlecurrency, the euro, which is now usedby 15 out of 27 member states. It ener-gizes Europe’s economy. It has led tothe creation of an integrated paymentarea and a single communications areawith integrated transport networksand telecommunications.

The single market, with its 500-mil-lion customer base and the size andimportance of its manufacturing andservice industries, its research anddevelopment, plays a major role insetting standards not only for the EUbut worldwide.

A unique formula enables the mem-ber states of the European Union toorganize collective action in the inter-est of common concerns. The memberstates delegate the exercise of part oftheir national sovereignty to the Union.Institutions are all important. Decision-making in the EU is inevitably com-plex, but the system ensures collectiveefficiency while respecting the diversi-ty of its membership.

Common policies for agricultureand fisheries, for energy includingnuclear, for science and technology,

for industrial restructuring, provedsuccessful, and Europe’s wealthincreased. So did its part in trade, andthe EU established itself as the biggestdonor of development assistance andhumanitarian aid in the world. Soli-darity within its society, between theprosperous and less prosperousregions and with the developingworld is a key component of all EUpolicies.

This model soon became a powerfulattraction for the other Europeannations. The six founder states werejoined in 1973 by the United Kingdom,Ireland and Denmark. Greece in 1981,Spain and Portugal in 1986 followed.After the fall of the Berlin Wall and thereunification of Germany, the coun-tries of Eastern Europe sought a futurein the EU, and by January 2007 thenumber of member countries stood at27. Negotiations continue with othercandidate countries, for example Croa-tia and Turkey. Indeed the EU is opento any European country that fulfillsthe democratic, political and econom-ic criteria for membership. Such acountry must have stable institutions,guaranteeing democracy, the rule oflaw, human rights and respect for andprotection of minorities.

The EU is barely 50 years old. It hasgrown to encompass most of the Euro-pean continent. Concerns about eco-nomic growth and jobs, quality of lifeand damage to the environment arenow top of the agenda. The decision-making mechanism of the EU con-

ceived for a community of six coun-tries needs to be adapted to the opera-tional needs of a Union of 27 andmore, and also needs to become moredemocratic and more easily under-standable for its citizens.

Climate ChangeThe single biggest challenge con-

fronting Europe in the 21st century isclimate change. As a group of nations,the EU has the capacity, by actingtogether, to implement long-termpolicies to reduce carbon emissionsand rehabilitate the natural environ-ment. Energy policy is intimatelylinked to these efforts. The EU mustalso use its clout to play its part inshouldering responsibility and con-tribute to international cooperation onclimate change.

Fighting international terrorism,crime and people trafficking, illegalimmigration and money launderingare tasks where collective EU actiongives better results than the sum ofindividual national efforts.

The EU today offers a model ofregional cooperation which chal-lenges other regions to see what theycan do to build their own cooperativemechanisms to ensure peace, devel-opment and stability.�


The signing of the Treaty of Rome by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands andLuxembourg on March 25, 1957, which established the European Economic Community

“The EU offers a model of regionalcooperation which challenges otherregions to see what they can do.”

Etienne Reuter, a lawyerfrom Luxembourg, is asenior official of theEuropean Commission in

Brussels. He has represented theEuropean Union in Hong Kong and inTokyo and was a visiting professor atthe National University of Singaporein 2007.

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W hen I first began working atthe United Nations in 1948, Iwas told that I could not use

the word peace. We could speak aboutthe progress of peacemaking, but therewas no acceptance of the fact that peacecould be the normal situation for all ofhumanity in all countries. After a cou-ple of years, everything changed. Now,peace is a word that is used everywherein the United Nations.

If you are working for a better world,there is one thing which you shouldnot count on, namely, that what youdream will happen during your life.Some things will take longer than that,but that is not a reason for not contin-uing to bring them nearer to reality.

Robert Schuman is remem-bered as the “Father ofEurope.” In Europe there weremany wars between countries.My grandparents livedthrough three wars betweenFrance and Germany. Myfather lived through two wars, and Ilived through one. Schuman was primeminister of France, and later foreignminister in 1950 when he made theSchuman Declaration proposing thatWest Germany and France jointly man-age their coal and steel industries. Thiswas the origin of the European Union.In 1963, I went to Schuman’s tomb totell him that there was now a totalacceptance of the European Union.

There was a border I couldsee as a child from my windowat the edge of town, which Ihated, and I asked, “Why canbirds and animals go therewhile, I, as a human, can’t gothere without having to fill out

a paper?” The border has now disap-peared, and nobody complains aboutits disappearance.�

Believing in ChangeBy Robert Muller

When Discord Becomes SolidarityBy Merlys Mosquera Chamat

Robert Muller is a former assistantsecretary-general of the UN whoserved the organization for 38 yearsuntil 1986. He is chancellor emeri-tus of the UN-established Universityfor Peace in Costa Rica. See:www.paradiseearthnow.com

J uan arrived in Venezuela fromColombia with his mother andfour brothers; his father had been

assassinated during an incursion by anarmed group in which their town hadbeen destroyed.

Juan’s life was turned upside down.At the age of eight he was working inthe street to help his mother supportthe family.

The Jesuit Refugee Service (SJR),which I worked for, was giving thefamily support, and insisted that Juanmust have access to education.

Eventually, Juan began to go toschool. In the mornings he sold pas-tries, and in the afternoons he attend-ed classes. But it was not easy. Hisschoolmates made fun of him, sayingthat he was dirty and a beggar.

The ridicule soon turned into fight-ing and violence. The situationbecame more and more serious, andneither his teacher nor his motherknew what to do.

His mother eventually approachedSJR about her son’s situation, and weapproached the school offering assis-tance.

We worked with the children usingplay activities to capture their atten-tion. One activity consisted of show-ing the children drawings of differentpeople and asking them if they couldidentify which person was a refugee.Of course they chose the worst-dressed people, especially poorwomen, arguing that a refugee is apoor person, as some said, “withoutanything to offer.”

They associated refugees with armedviolence, conflicts and war. Throughdiscussion they came to understandthat a refugee can be any person, withdifferent professions, customs andways of life. Seeing his own life reflect-ed in the content of the activity, Juanopened up and shared his experience.In exchange, his classmates offeredsupport to him in his schoolwork, oth-ers began to share their toys. Now Juanis fully integrated into the class andalso helps his friends, even if he stillsometimes fights! But he is no longerviolent. Thanks to cooperationbetween him, his family, the schooland our NGO, he is accepted, and hisclassmates have learned about theneed to understand and reach out tothose who are “different.”�

Learning about refugees

Merlys Mosquera Chamatwas until recently nationaldirector of the Jesuit RefugeeService in Venezuela.

F our years ago, I made whatsome called a risky decision toleave my job in a business con-

sultancy in Tokyo, and move halfwayaround the world to Washington,D.C., to pursue a second graduatedegree and a completely differentcareer field, that of emergency man-agement and international security.

My interest in this area developedin large part from many years ofexperience in heading up teams ofpeople responsible for the safety andsmooth running of large SGImeetings, while living in theU.K., the U.S. and Japan. Theseactivities always involve culti-vating a spirit of service towardpeople and protecting others. Itook the final decision to takeup a career that expressed thesevalues following the 9/11 ter-rorist attacks on America, andin the midst of a family crisisthat required me to bring fortha lot of courage from my life.

After completing my gradu-ate studies, I began working inthe field of disaster manage-ment and security for the U.S.government. Part of my job here hasbeen to help coordinate my agency’sparticipation in disaster and coun-terterrorism exercises. I also belongto the cadre of people on alert statusto respond to actual disasters.

Creating cooperation and build-ing relationships are critical compo-nents in this field. Without such col-laboration, it becomes almost impos-sible to effectively help people whenresponding to natural disasters orpreventing terrorist attacks.

An important aspect of our workis running large-scale exercises todeal with crises on a national level.A recent exercise dealt with thesimulated response to the setting

off of radiological dispersaldevices, or “dirty bombs,” in sever-al American cities. At other times,the scenario has been a strong hurri-cane pounding the U.S. coastline oran earthquake crippling the nation’sinfrastructure. We have a sayingabout doing these exercises, which isto “play like you fight and fight likeyou play.” The purpose is to “play”the roles as if it was really happen-ing, so that when we do have to“fight” against these natural or man-

made disasters, we are ready torespond in the most optimal way.

Central to this effort is buildingrelationships with the people thatyou’ll be working with and gainingcooperation with numerous otheragencies on a national and local levelso that as little time as possible iswasted and as few as possible obsta-cles exist when we respond to anactual crisis.

Lessons Learned Many look to the response to Hur-

ricane Katrina in New Orleans as anexample of how not to do it. Thetruth is that a lot of people puteverything they had into helping the

victims of this catastrophic disaster,but the “system” on a local, state andnational level broke down due inpart to a lack of cooperation and a“perfect storm” of failures over along period of time.

My Buddhist practice has had abig influence on the way I approachmy work and has been a greatadvantage to me in carrying it outeffectively. The words of Nichiren,the founder of this school of Bud-dhism in 13th-century Japan, to “be

diligent in one’s concern forother people,” are a core inspi-ration, as is SGI PresidentDaisaku Ikeda’s consistentencouragement to pursue dia-logue at all costs and to findcommon ground.

This has helped me in myefforts to develop cooperativeand trustful relations, particu-larly in a recent challengingexperience of liaising withanother federal agency wherepeople in both groups wereexpressing increasingly intran-sigent positions. Now, for thefirst time in years, we have been

able to reach a degree of consensuson how we would work togetherduring a crisis. This may mean thedifference between a confusedresponse and an effective responsein any future disaster situation.

It’s no exaggeration to say thatI’ve had to deal with my own shareof crises during my life, but theexperience of being able to over-come these with my Buddhist prac-tice has given me the courage anddetermination to protect peoplethrough my work. It has alsoequipped me with the strengthrequired to do this and enabled meto face challenges with a feeling ofjoy throughout.�


SGI members experiences in faith

Preparing for the WorstBy Marc Bergman, U.S.A.

D r. Wangari Maathai is travelingaround the world urging theimportance of protecting our

natural environment with the rallying crymottainai. Why has this Japanese word—which means, “What a waste!”—so cap-tured Dr. Maathai’s imagination? Themoment I saw herbeaming, forthrightsmile at our meeting inFebruary 2005, I under-stood immediately:because she is a moth-er—a representative ofall the mothers of Africa.

Dr. Maathai is alsoknown as the mother ofthe Green Belt Move-ment, a grassrootsmovement to planttrees in many Africancountries. In the past 30years, poor ruralwomen have joined Dr.Maathai in plantingmore than 30 milliontrees across Africa. Theyare women who mustrise early in the morn-ing and walk manymiles each day, theirinfant children strappedto their backs, in search of water and fire-wood. This movement to make theirlives easier and at the same time protectthe natural environment is indeed amovement of mothers, for mothers andby mothers.

It’s only to be expected that Dr.Maathai, who has led such a movementfor decades, should be impressed by thewisdom of Japanese mothers as exem-plified by their byword, mottainai.

For people of my generation, wholived through World War II, the wordmottainai reminds us of our mothers.Any scrap of food left over from our din-ner or its preparation was transformedby our mothers’ hardworking hands intoa delicious home-cooked treat to fill the

stomachs of her growing children. Shepickled the leaves cut off the top ofradishes, chopped vegetable peelingsinto a tasty side dish, and served us left-over grilled fish as our afternoon snack.Kids were proud to wear pants withpatches their mothers had sewn on their

knees. Mothers were masters of a sci-ence of nutrition based on love, a homeeconomics based on thrift and ingenuity.

The spirit of loving care that preclud-ed wasting anything was one of Japan’smost admirable virtues in those times,and it was intimately linked to a nur-turing ethos of reverence for life andconsideration for others. I am sure I amnot alone in lamenting the loss of thisspirit as one reason behind the loss of

humanity so painfully evident in ourworld today.

My wife, who also experienced theprivation of the war years, has alwaysstriven to be thrifty and economical inmanaging our household. She neverwastes so much as a grain of rice, and

any leftovers from din-ner are certain to makea second appearance atanother meal. Recy-cling is second natureto her, and she hasalways saved thingslike wrapping paperand ribbon for reuse.

These examples ofeveryday ingenuity andresourcefulness mayseem slight or negligi-ble, but mothers of theworld have used thishomespun wisdomand love as effectivetools for sustainingtheir families andimproving their lives.

My mentor, secondSoka Gakkai presidentJosei Toda, wore andtreasured throughouthis life a thickly padded

jacket his mother had sewn for him.When he left his remote hometown innorthern Japan and went to Tokyo at theage of 19, his mother said to him: “Nomatter how badly things seem to begoing, if you wear this jacket you’ll beable to accomplish anything.” Mr. Todanever forgot his mother’s deep love fora moment. Whenever he found himselffacing daunting adversity, he rallied hisspirits with the determination todemonstrate his gratitude for his moth-er’s love, telling himself, “I’ll be fine aslong as I have this jacket.”

Dr. Maathai also conceived of herGreen Belt Movement out of compas-sion and concern for the future of herchildren and her homeland of Kenya.

SGI Quarterly January 200820

An essay by SGI President Daisaku Ikeda from a series based on his meetings with inspiring individuals from around the world

Mottainai—the Spirit of Reverence for LifeDr. Wangari Maathai, Founder of the Green Belt Movement

Dr. Maathai meeting with SGI President Ikeda in Tokyo, February 2005

“The sorrow of one good-hearted mother is the sorrowof millions of mothers. A trulyhappy society is one in whichsuch suffering of mothers has

been entirely eliminated.”

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She applauds the noble, ordinarywomen who participate in the move-ment as “foresters without diplomas.”Their committed solidarity and steadfastefforts in their communities are not onlypreventing the desertification of Africabut also raising consciousness of envi-ronmental issues in the minds of peoplethe world over. Their service to human-ity and the Earth far exceeds that of anynational leader. Lawmakers should takenote of this fact, recognizing the wis-dom, spirit and actions of the peoplewith the respect they deserve. Unfortu-nately, however, the elites who lead theworld’s nations—the politicians, thebureaucrats, the academics—tend tolook down on such popular movements.

In a speech given in February 2006 atSoka University, Dr. Maathai said thatpoliticians inevitably try to take advan-tage of the people, and so it is vital forthe people to prevent that by involvingthemselves in government. This isindeed true. I believe that democracy inthe 21st century needs to be based uponlearning from the wisdom of mothers,the representatives of the people, andputting the intelligence of women to thefullest possible use.

My mother is also the starting point ofmy activities for peace. She remainedbrave and undaunted though four of hersons were taken away from her, one afteranother, to fight in World War II. But

when, after the war, shereceived the news that hereldest son had been killedin the fighting, she washeartbroken. I will neverforget the sight of her painand sorrow at thatmoment as long as I live.

The sorrow of onegood-hearted mother isthe sorrow of millions ofmothers. War, whichforces the mothers of theworld into submissionand subjects them to star-vation and such bittergrief, must never be permitted, no mat-ter what the circumstances. War is thework of devils. A truly happy society isone in which such suffering of mothershas been entirely eliminated.

Youth Are HopeDuring the war, many of the trees of

the neighborhood in Tokyo where I wasborn and raised were destroyed in theair raids. The few that were spared werecut down to provide fuel for militarypurposes. The large cherry tree in ouryard also fell cruel victim to the ax, anda weapons factory was built on the sitewhere it formerly stood.

Strangely, in one part of my neigh-borhood several cherry trees remainedstanding, amidst their desolate sur-

roundings. After the war, the trees sentout buds and bloomed profusely again,as if to encourage the people passingunder their branches. I recall my moth-er’s expression of solace when she gazedup at their flowers.

And at that moment, I made a deci-sion: in the future, I would plant cherrytrees all over Japan. I have been true tothis dream of my youth, planting com-memorative trees in the fertile soils ofcountries around the globe, with theprayer for the growth and developmentof each nation and for the good healthof my friends living there.

Planting a tree is planting life; it is fos-tering the future, fostering peace—theseare beliefs that Dr. Maathai and I foundwe shared at the deepest level when wemet and talked.

I asked a group of young people tojoin me in welcoming Dr. Maathai, themother of African environmentalism,just as I had when we welcomed SouthAfrican President Nelson Mandela, thefather of human rights in Africa (inOctober 1990). I did this out of my wishto communicate and pass on thethoughts and actions represented byboth African leaders to future genera-tions. I wished youth to engrave theprayers of those many nameless Africanmothers deep in their hearts.

Dr. Maathai said: “No matter howhopeless the situation seems, the lightof hope can shine.” What strength, whatoptimism! The hope she referred to is,no doubt, the young people of whomshe has such high expectations.�

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SGI Quarterly January 2008

Dr. Maathai meeting with students, Soka University in Tokyo

Women of the Green Belt Movement

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On February 19, SGI PresidentDaisaku Ikeda was awarded the Orderof Friendship of the Russian Federationat the Russian Embassy inTokyo.

Presenting the award inrecognition of Mr. Ikeda’s con-tributions to the development ofRusso-Japanese relations overthe past 30 years, AmbassadorMikhail M. Bely paid tribute tohis efforts to strengthen people-to-people ties through culturalexchange, and his deep under-standing of different philoso-phies and cultures.

Mr. Ikeda has visited the for-mer U.S.S.R. and Russia six timesin order to engage in dialoguewith leaders and cultural figures.He has promoted extensive edu-cational and cultural exchangesand the showing in Russia of

exhibitions devoted to peace such as“Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World,”hosted in Moscow in 1987.

Over 1 million people have beenexposed to Russian culture throughtours by over 40 dance and music

groups invited to Japan by theMin-On Concert Associationfounded by Mr. Ikeda. Andsince Soka University signed anexchange agreement withMoscow State University in1975, over 500 students haveparticipated in the two-wayeducational exchange.

The awarding of the Order ofFriendship was announced in apresidential decree of RussianPresident Vladimir Putin onJanuary 9. Mr. Ikeda was nomi-nated by former presidentMikhail Gorbachev, MoscowState University Rector Dr. Vik-tor Sadovnichy, former cosmo-naut Dr. Aleksander Serebrovand author Chingiz Aitmatov.


In his 2008 peace proposal issued onJanuary 26 to commemorate theanniversary of the SGI’s founding in1975, SGI President Daisaku Ikedacalls for the humanization of religionas one path toward peace.

Commenting that the current trendtoward fundamentalism is found notonly in the religious sphere, but also inexcessive attachment to national orethnic identity and even to marketprinciples, Mr. Ikeda stresses the needto put the human being at the centerof all issues. He identifies dialogue askey in combating fanaticism, mistrustand dogmatism.

“Does religion make people stronger,or does it weaken them? Does itencourage what is good or what is evilin them? Are they made better andmore wise—or less—by religion?”Ikeda writes. “These are the questionswe need to ask of all religions, includ-

ing of course Buddhism, if we are tosucceed in fully ‘humanizing’ them.”

He also makes concrete proposalstoward protecting the planet’s ecology,upholding human dignity and creatingthe infrastructures of peace.

He suggests that the UN Environ-ment Programme be upgraded to thestatus of a specialized agency and callson the Japanese government to sharetechnology with the goal of makingEast Asia a model region for energyconservation and efficiency.

Noting that 2008 marks the 60thanniversary of the Universal Declara-tion of Human Rights, Mr. Ikedastresses the need for a global culture ofhuman rights, urging that an interna-tional conference on human rightseducation centered on civil societygroups be held as soon as possible.

Drawing attention to the potential ofAfrica, he proposes that the fourth Tokyo

International Conference on AfricanDevelopment, to be held in May, focuson the empowerment of youth.

In the area of peace, he supports thecall for an Arctic Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone as an important step towardestablishing the illegality of nuclearweapons.

He suggests ways of strengtheninginfrastructures for peace in East Asiaand welcomes the Japanese govern-ment’s program to invite 6,000 youngpeople from East Asian countries toJapan, concluding that working withyouth is the best way to build grass-roots solidarity for peace.

“Humanizing Religion, CreatingPeace” is the 26th annual peace pro-posal issued by Mr. Ikeda, sharingBuddhist perspectives on currentissues facing humanity and proposingconcrete solutions. See the full pro-posal at: www.daisakuikeda.org

Ambassador Bely presents the Order of Friendship

SGI’s global activities for peace,education and culture

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Cultural Exchange Efforts Recognized

Humanizing Religion, Creating Peace

In October, southeast Mexico experi-enced torrential rain causing the worstfloods in 50 years. SGI-Mexico youthdivision members participated in reliefactivities in Tabasco State, an area which

was severely devastated by thefloods, distributing food,drinks and blankets to 260households. Antonio Monal, arepresentative of the MexicanRed Cross responsible forTabasco State, remarked, “Ireally appreciate the voluntaryactivities of theseyoung people. SGImembers are ourhope.”

In Bolivia, torren-tial rains over severalmonths led to themost devastating

floods to hit the country in 25years, resulting in numerouslandslides, impassable roadsand flooding of vast areas ofagricultural land. Together

with the government, SGI-Bolivia initi-ated relief activities in the hard-hit SantaCruz Province in the eastern part of thecountry. On February 7, SGI-Boliviarepresentatives visited the province’ssocial services department to donatefood, clothes and blankets collected bylocal SGI members.


Singapore Soka Association(SSA) organized and partici-pated in a series of outreachinitiatives in November andDecember including a peacelecture, a campaign opposingviolence against women andan environmental exhibition.

From November 14-28, SSAheld the “Before It’s Too Late”exhibition, an educational andcommunity service projectdeveloped by SSA youth since1997, at the Singapore Repub-lic Polytechnic. On November21, the third SSA StudentPeace Lecture was held at theSingapore Management Uni-versity, with guest speakerMarina Mahathir—a newspa-per columnist and formerpresident of the MalaysianAIDS Council. The lecture,which was attended by some250 people, discussed theimpact of the Internet on peo-ple’s lives. SSA members alsotook part in the White RibbonCampaign, which aims toraise public awareness on violenceagainst women and children andencourage people to speak up againstsuch abuse.

On December 10, 2007, SSA spon-sored its seventh Daisaku Ikeda AnnualLecture at the organization’s headquar-ters. Guest speaker Dr. K. Kesavapany,

director of the Institute ofSoutheast Asian Studies(ISEAS) and Singapore’sambassador to Jordan, spokeon “Buddhism, Singaporeand Interfaith Dialogue” toan audience of 800 peoplerepresenting Singapore’sChinese, Malay and Indiancommunities.

In a message sent for theevent, SGI President DaisakuIkeda characterized dialogueas the fundamental remedyfor the pathology of the mod-ern world.

Ambassador Kesavapanycommended SSA’s many

community-oriented activities and urgedSSA members to continue to take the ini-tiative in promoting interfaith and inter-ethnic dialogue in Singapore.

Reaching Out in Singapore

Flood Relief in Mexico and Bolivia

During a Q & A session at the Student Peace Lecture (top left); the audience enjoys Dr. Kesavapany’s lecture (bottom)

SGI-Bolivia representatives donating relief goods

Distributing supplies to affected families in Mexico

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On November 24,Soka Gakkai Malaysia(SGM) and the Nation-al Archives of Malaysiaorganized a forumwhere guest speakersshared their thoughtsand insights on Rumi,the celebrated 13th-century Sufi poet,humanist and philoso-pher. The guest speak-ers at the forum wereDr. Chandra Muzaffar,President of the Inter-

national Movement fora JUST World, and Dr.John Fozdar from theMalaysia Interfaith Net-work and Bahá’í com-munity. The forumsought to establish alink between patriotismand universal values,and emphasized theneed to bring togetherpeople of diverse ethnicand religious back-grounds on the basis ofshared universal values.

SGI Quarterly April 2008

To commemorate Martin Luther KingJr. Day, the fifth Annual Youth Nonvio-lence Conference was held on January 21at the SGI-USA Culture Center in NewYork, on the theme “Human Security Is(Not) Da Bomb! A New Global Vision.”

The event was co-organized by TheTemple of Understanding, SGI-USAand Groundwork, Inc., and attracted160 participants from allover New York City. Theday consisted of a plenarysession, performancesand workshops.

The plenary sessionfeatured two speakers,Kathleen Sullivan, disar-mament education con-sultant to the UN, andGyude Moore, a formerrefugee from Liberia whois now a graduate studentat Georgetown Universi-ty. Dr. Sullivan spoke ofthe need for a true revo-lution in value, frombeing things-oriented toperson-oriented. She alsostressed the need to redi-rect government spend-ing from the military

budget to education, health, etc. Mr.Moore pointed out that the more isspent on military expenses, the lesssecure the world becomes. He alsoreminded the youth participants thatsometimes it is necessary to be unreal-istic in order to bring about change.Youth should not accept the unjust prin-ciples of society.

A number of group workshops wereheld throughout the day. These includ-ed ones on the nonviolent principles ofMartin Luther King Jr., the SGI-USA“Victory Over Violence” (VOV) programand youth and nuclear disarmament.

The VOV workshop focused on thefact that active violence such as war orviolence starts from individual passive

violence such as hatred andnegative emotion, and that ifwe keep silent and overlookviolence around ourselves,this is also a type of passiveviolence. In the disarma-ment workshop, aimed atenabling participants to takejoy in finding their power toconstructively respond tonuclear proliferation, therewas discussion on theimportant role creativityplays in achieving peace.

Participants commentedthat they were happy toknow that others shared thesame belief in peace and thatMartin Luther King Jr. Dayis not a day-off to take a rest,but a day-on to work forpeace and nonviolence.

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Remembering Rumi in Malaysia

Youth Nonviolence Conference

Making a point in the closing plenary session

TV host Norina Yahya chairs the forum

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A website offering information andresources concerning the life andachievements of Daisaku Ikeda, aswell as a selection of his writings andphotographic works, was launched inJanuary (see: www.daisakuikeda.org).

As well as a detailed biography, thesite offers, for the first time online, com-prehensive writings detailing his think-ing and achievements as a Buddhist

philosopher, peacebuilder and educator.A resource section makes available thelatest news concerning Mr. Ikeda as wellas his writings and interviews andrecords of his activities. The site com-plements the “Words of Wisdom” sitefeaturing quotations from Mr. Ikeda(www.ikedaquotes.org) and the “DaisakuIkeda Library” which introduces hispublished works (www.ikedabooks.org).


Artists for Peace Concert

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Daisaku Ikeda Website Launched

The International Committee ofArtists for Peace (ICAP) presented itsfirst Annual Founder’s Concert onDecember 16, showcasing jazz legendsand multiple Grammy award winnersHerbie Hancock and Wayne Shorterand their friends at Royce Hall, Uni-versity of California, Los Angeles(UCLA) in southern California, U.S.A.Over 1,500 people attended the show,which was dedicated to SGI PresidentDaisaku Ikeda in celebration of his80th birthday on January 2, 2008.

ICAP was initiated by performingartists of SGI-USA and is a coalition insupport of the United Nations Inter-

national Decade for a Culture of Peaceand Non-Violence for the Children ofthe World (2001–10). Based on its mis-sion to provide peace educationthrough the performing arts, ICAPconfers an annual “Humanities in theArts Peace Award,” produces cultur-al exchange concerts and promotespeace education through music.

Actor Ron Glass served as emcee,introducing Shorter and Hancock(since, winner of the 2008 GrammyAward for Album of the Year). Join-ing Hancock and Shorter on stagewere bass-guitarist Nathan East,drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and a 28-

member ensemble of UCLA musicstudents.

The idea of performing togetherwith the students reflected, saidHancock, Mr. Ikeda’s emphasis onthe importance of young people forenabling society to progress.

Hancock introduced a new com-position for piano to celebrate the80th birthday of Mr. Ikeda, whom hesaid he considers his mentor in life.He remarked that, for all Mr. Ikeda’ssignificant achievements, it is “thewarmth and joy of his humanity[that have] created the greatestimpact on my life.”

Lin Yin-Chen has been involved inearly childhood education for over20 years. She is currently thedirector of the Xing Fu (Happiness)Day Care Center in Tainan, Taiwan.

Diya Chopra received Montessoriteacher training and has beenworking at the Delhi Public Schoolnursery in India for the past threeyears.

What attracted you to the idea of beinga teacher for small children? Was thereality of the job what you expected?Yin-Chen: I believe that nothing ismore precious than children’s well-being, and I feel fortunate to bearound children all day long. When Ifirst started, I found things verydifficult, but I was lucky to havewonderful colleagues and, with theirsupport, I’ve been able to rise aboveeach challenge. Now, as anadministrator, each year I set specifictargets, and we’ve always met orsurpassed these.Diya: I am excited by the idea ofhelping the next generation to growinto world citizens who can contributeto society. Ever since I was a child Iwanted to be a teacher, but I neverimagined that children would be somuch fun to be with.

What is the most difficult thing aboutyour job, and how do you cope with it?Diya: For me, being patient was one ofthe most difficult things at first. Now Iself-reflect more. I feel that we, asadults, are role models for the childrenand they will emulate whatever theysee in their environment. Yin-Chen: It has been more than 10years since I made the transition frombeing a kindergarten teacher torunning a kindergarten. Looking back,the most difficult aspect was having toface so many responsibilities eachday—solving human relationship issuesand administrative problems, managingnutrition and sanitation, planning andcoordinating events, ensuring goodcommunication with the parents,safety, etc. As the administrator, yourwisdom is constantly challenged to getthrough the day efficiently and

effectively. You need courage andconviction when you’re in a difficultsituation. Also you have to facesituations head-on with thedetermination not to be defeated, anddo all you can until you succeed. Theseare attitudes that I’ve learned andcultivated through my Buddhistpractice and SGI activities.What do you like most about your job?Yin-Chen: I am really grateful to beable to work with a team of excellentteachers. And the greatest pleasure forme is to be able to watch the childrengrow up safely and happily. Diya: Interacting with children fromdifferent backgrounds really opens mymind and helps me to grow. How do you stop yourself losing yourtemper with difficult children?Yin-Chen: I appreciate more thananything else the fact that I have beenable to get to know and be aroundthese children. I try to always regardeach child as an individual with dignity,and I always pray for their happiness.The fact is that getting mad at themnever solves the problem. Admonition,encouragement and praise bring outfantastic results. Children haveextremely sensitive minds and hearts,so we have to respond to them withhonesty and sincerity, and use


On VocationOn Vocation A series in which SGI members discusstheir approach to their profession

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Taking Care of the Future

Yin-Chen Diya

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difficulties as nourishment for ourdevelopment as educators. That way,both the children and we the teacherscan grow together.Diya: It is quite a challenge. Initially I didlose my temper, but now I handle suchsituations better. My Buddhist practice isvery helpful and enables me to draw outwisdom to deal with different situationsand to base my actions on concern forthe children. For example, I had astudent in my class who would hit theother children and the teachers inanger. I addressed the situation basedon my practice and prayer and broughtit to the notice of the principal andparents, with the intent of finding outthe root of the problem so that the childcould be helped. What’s your basic approach to gettingchildren to cooperate (with you andwith each other)?Yin-Chen: I try to make sure that theteachers and children have a commonawareness by helping themunderstand the meaning and purposeof each activity and making athorough plan in advance. We alwaysput the children first. Diya: My basic approach is to befriends with the children and at thesame time try to make them

understand that they have come toschool to learn and create value, thatwith cooperation and sharing, thingscan be done more easily.What elements of Buddhist philosophyare most useful to you in your day-to-day work?Yin-Chen: I try to greet each day witha sense of appreciation. There is aBuddhist text that says this world is“where living beings enjoy themselvesat ease.” I try to create value each day.Obstacles can spur one’s growth. Ialways pray that I will be able tocherish those around me and enjoyhelping others instead of beingtrapped in my own problems. I also tryto have the attitude to continuallydevelop myself and to use my timemore effectively.Diya: My Buddhist practice has givenme the courage to challenge difficultsituations with the belief that I can bringforth the required abilities to succeed. Istruggled a lot when I was at schoolwith very poor grades and very low self-confidence. My teachers just about gaveup on me. Based on my Buddhistpractice, though, I was able to turn thesituation around completely. So muchso that later, after I graduated andcompleted a teachers training course,

my ex-vice principal, who had beenunwilling to let me sit my exams,recommended me for a job as a nurseryschool teacher at my old school.

Also, SGI President Ikeda’s constantemphasis on dialogue is very inspiringfor me. Through dialogue with theparents I try and help the children inevery way possible. What do you see as the most importantvalues to transmit to young children?Diya: Truth, cooperation, working inunity with one another and mostimportantly solving problems throughdialogue are I think the most importantvalues to transmit to the children.Yin-Chen: To have confidence in theirown unique abilities and bring out theirown potential, and to learn the spirit ofgratitude and sharing. The foundingpresident of the Soka Gakkai,Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, an educator,said that the ultimate purpose ofeducation is children’s happiness. Weneed to help children acquire the basiclife skills so that they can take care ofthemselves and care for others. I deeplybelieve that children have unlimitedpotential, and through working withthem, I have come to believe even moredeeply that we can unlock this throughlove, confidence, understanding anddedication.�

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Some one or two hundred years after the appearanceof Buddhism in India, we are told, a Greek ambas-sador of the king of Syria visited India and was

astonished at what he observed there. “A surprising thingabout India,” he exclaimed, “is that there are womenphilosophers who debate openly with men, propoundingthe most difficult arguments!”

Dr. Hajime Nakamura, the renowned Japanese Bud-dhologist from whose work I cite this episode, goes on tosay, “The appearance of an order of nuns [in Buddhism] wasan astonishing development in world religious history. . .Buddhism was the first religion to produce such an order.”

Shakyamuni’s inclusion of women, whose status inancient India was nearly as low as slaves, in the religiousorder he founded was thus a revolutionary act. The teach-ings of Buddhism were in fact expounded for the happi-ness of all people; there is no discrimination based on sex,priestly or lay status, race,scholastic achievement,social position, power orwealth. Buddhism exists toenable those who are dis-criminated against and oppressed, those who have expe-rienced the bitterest sufferings, to attain supreme happi-ness. This is the true power of Buddhism, and the wisdomof the Lotus Sutra.

The Lotus Sutra itself is a scripture that is open to allpeople. It has remained alive over the centuries preciselybecause those who embraced and propagated it wentamong the people to expound its teachings.

The Lotus Sutra teaches that the “one great reason” whyBuddhas appear in the world is to enable all living beingsto attain Buddhahood. Shakyamuni stated, “At the start Ipledged to make all people perfectly equal to me, withoutany distinction between us.” The Lotus Sutra teaches thatall equally possess the potential to attain Buddhahood, andthat all have the ability to savor the state of absolute hap-piness. It is worth noting that Shakyamuni’s determina-tion to make Buddhahood available to all people isrevealed by the language in which he chose to preach theBuddhist teachings, namely, a Magadha dialect that wasthe everyday language of the common people.

Mahayana Buddhism does not set forth a complicatedlist of rules of behavior or discipline that people are expect-ed to follow. It respects the freedom and autonomy of the

individual. But when we examine the teachings ofMahayana Buddhism, we see that they present anextremely demanding model of leadership.

The Lotus Sutra, the pinnacle of Mahayana Buddhism,harshly criticizes corrupt and degenerate religious leadersand priests. We must realize that religion is always in dan-ger of growing apart from the people when its leaders for-get to reflect carefully on their own behavior and come tolook upon themselves as authorities.

There is a general tendency to accept the premise thatBuddhism distinguishes between priests and lay followers.But this distinction clearly has no substantive basis in theteachings of Buddhism. Thus the Japanese BuddhologistKyosei Hayashima writes: “As far as the formation of thesangha (Buddhist order) is concerned, the division of theBuddha’s followers into priests and laity, both of whichaimed for an identical ultimate goal, was no more than a

reflection of the social struc-ture of the time in which theBuddha lived.”

Today information andeducation are available to all

members of society. Therefore, I think we should consid-er the distinction between professional clerics and lay fol-lowers, not as one of essence but of function; not as oneof rank but of roles.

Only those who struggle daily with the realities of life inthe secular world can understand others who face thosesame struggles. The inevitable tendency, if religion is tomake a serious attempt to open itself to the people, is tomove away from an organization centered around a priv-ileged class to one in which ordinary people are central.

Religion in the 21st century must provide people withthe wisdom to think and decide wisely for themselves howto live their lives.

The wisdom of the Lotus Sutra is a wisdom that improvessociety and brings happiness to the people. Unless it accom-plishes those things, it is not true Buddhist wisdom. On abroader level, I think we can say that all wisdom thatimproves the lot of the people, and that contributes to theirhappiness, is the wisdom of the Lotus Sutra.

What can each of us, as an ordinary human being, dofor others, for society? Religion for the people—religion inthe 21st century—must be an inexhaustible source of suchawareness and the energy to put it into action.�

“Religion in the 21st century must provide peoplewith the wisdom to think and decide wisely for

themselves how to live their lives.”

The Wisdomof the Lotus Sutra

The Lotus Sutra is a Mahayana Buddhist text whose teachings form the foundation ofNichiren Buddhism. The following is excerpted from SGI President Daisaku Ikeda’swork, The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra, which explores the significance of thisancient text to our contemporary lives.

A Teaching Open to All People©

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The Wisdomof the Lotus Sutra

Editorial team:Joan Anderson, Anthony George, Elizabeth Ingrams, Kimiaki Kawai,

Motoki Kawamorita, Yoshinori Miyagawa, Nobue Nakaura, Satoko Suzuki, Richard Walker

Published by Soka Gakkai International©2008 Soka Gakkai International. All rights reserved. Printed in Japan.

Printed on recycled paper.

The Uma Dogra Kathak Dance Ensemble and the percussion ensemble Dhwani toured10 cities in Japan in January and February 2008 under the auspices of the Min-On ConcertAssociation. Kathak, the major classical dance form of northern India, has a history ofsome 2,500 years and originated as a form of religious storytelling. The Min-On ConcertAssociation, founded by SGI President Daisaku Ikeda in 1963, aims to build interculturalunderstanding and peace through the promotion of music and the performing arts.

The Treasure of Traditional Indian ArtsP

hotos by M

in-On

The Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a worldwideassociation of 82 constituent organizations withmembership in 190 countries and territories. In theservice of its members and of society at large, the SGIcenters its activities on developing positive humanpotentialities for hope, courage and altruistic action.

Rooted in the life-affirming philosophy of NichirenBuddhism, members of the SGI share a commitment tothe promotion of peace, culture and education. Thescope and nature of the activities conducted in each

country vary in accordance with the culture andcharacteristics of that society. They all grow, however,from a shared understanding of the inseparable linkagesthat exist between individual happiness and the peaceand development of all humanity.

As a nongovernmental organization (NGO) withformal ties to the United Nations, the SGI is active inthe fields of humanitarian relief and public education,with a focus on peace, sustainable development andhuman rights.

SOKA GAKKAI INTERNATIONAL15-3 Samoncho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0017, Japan

Telephone: +81-3-5360-9830 Facsimile: +81-3-5360-9885

Website: www.sgi.org

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soka gakkai international quarterly magazine number 52 · soka gakkai international quarterly...

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