Cosmopolitanism, Buddhism, and Human Education: Daisaku Ikeda and the Soka Tradition of Becoming

• In Event: 52.073 - Expanding the Idea of Equal Educational Opportunity Through a Cosmopolitan Prism

Abstract

This paper examines cosmopolitan education in the tradition of Japanese Soka educators Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871-1944), Toda Josei (1900-1958), and Ikeda Daisaku (b. 1928), as well as relative to the Nichiren Buddhist perspective that undergirds this tradition. Cultural-political critic Sato Masaru asserted that Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism is the first global religion to originate in Japan and, together with Christianity and Islam, will become one of the world’s three major religions (Sato & Matsuoka, 2015). This global spread of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism is due to Ikeda’s (1991–2015; 1995) philosophy and practice of Buddhism rooted in peace, culture, and education, and to the principle of zuiho bini, or “adaptation to local culture.” This same principle is at work in the Soka tradition of cosmopolitan education; but it is perhaps most present in Ikeda’s multiple treatments of “education for world citizenship,” in his actualization of grounded cosmopolitanism in the 15 secular Soka schools across seven countries in Asia and the Americas that he founded, and in the millions of individuals worldwide who are inspired by Ikeda to enact world citizenship in their own way, as they are, in their own locales. It is in these ways that cosmopolitanism as equal opportunity manifests in and by the Soka tradition.
This paper begins with a bilingual (Japanese-English) and bicultural (Japan and the West) analysis of terminology for cosmopolitanism present in the Soka tradition and locates the origins of Ikeda’s thoughts on “world citizenship education” from both historical and linguistic perspectives. Specifically, the author traces the concept of cosmopolitanism from Makiguchi’s ([1903] 1981-1988) notion of sekaimin (world citizen) to Toda’s ([1952] 1965) concept of chikyu minzokushugi (global people-ism) to and through Ikeda’s movement from using chikyu minzokushugi [1960] to chikyu shimin (global citizenship; [1996] 2010) to sekaishimin (world citizenship; 2014, 2016), and why.
Second, this paper locates Ikeda’s understanding of cosmopolitanism as “wisdom, courage, and compassion” in his larger educational philosophy of ningen kyoiku (human education) and in his philosophy and practice of Nichiren Buddhism. For Ikeda, being human is an action, a continual process of becoming; and both Buddhism and human education for Ikeda are about becoming “fully human.” Buddhism and human education are, in Ikeda’s words, “two aspects of the same reality” (Ikeda, Saitō, Endo, & Suda, 1996 p. 168). That is, they are both processes of continually striving to awaken, actualize, and develop the wisdom, courage, and compassion of the Buddha, characteristics that, according to Ikeda’s Buddhist framework, already exist within us and which are the fullest expression of our own humanity, in this life, as we are; this is none other than the inner transformation from the lesser self to the greater self that Ikeda calls “human revolution.” And this is why in 2000 Ikeda (2010) proposed “a paradigm shift from looking at education for society’s sake to building a society that serves the essential needs of education” (p. 83).
The paper concludes with examples of Ikeda’s approach in local realities such as ameliorating the crisis facing Black America.

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University