From: "Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning & Dialogue" <info@ikedacenter.org>
Date: 29 November, 2011 21:16:37 GMT+08:00
To: changchengliang@gmail.com
Subject: "Cultivating the Greater Self," and other news
Reply-To: info@ikedacenter.org
In This Issue 8th Ikeda Forum Soft Power Seminar Core Convictions
November 2011
E-Newsletter
The Ikeda Center e-newsletter is designed to keep you up to date with our activities in support of peace, learning, and dialogue.
A report from the 8th Annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue
How can we best understand the Buddhist concept of the "greater self" in our culturally-diverse world? How can we encourage its emergence in situations large and small?
On October 22, 2011, four speakers and nearly 100 attendees gathered at the Ikeda Center in Cambridge to discuss these and other questions during the 8th Annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue.
During the morning session, Virginia Benson of the Ikeda Center considered the importance of dialogue with others and Ann Diller of the University of New Hampshire outlined the challenge of dialogue within oneself. In the afternoon, Bernice Lerner of Hebrew College looked at how our attitudes affect the emergence of the greater self and Lou Marinoff of The City College of New York expounded on why an accurate view of life is essential to this emergence.
Soft Power & Globalization
Seminar brings Langley and Yalman into discussion with Boston-area university students
On September 26, 1991, Daisaku Ikeda delivered an address called "The Age of Soft Power" at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Nearly twenty years to the day later (September 29), Nur Yalman (left) of Harvard University and Winston Langley (right) of UMass Boston came to the Center to discuss with fourteen Boston-area university students the relevance of Ikeda's vision in the rapidly globalizing world of 2011.
The professors emphasized that Ikeda's vision of soft power is primarily educational and spiritual in nature, seeking to spark the inner transformation of individuals. In their view, when we activate what Ikeda calls our "inner resources of energy and wisdom" we are better able to steer economic and technological globalization in positive directions.
>> Read about the seminar here!
Our 7 Core Convictions
New feature helps define the Ikeda Center's work
Over the summer Ikeda Center staff engaged in a process of identifying the core convictions that inform our work. In our view, these are the convictions that, if widely accepted and acted on, will lead to a significantly more peaceful, harmonious, and flourishing world in the decades to come.
Seven in all, the convictions cover themes relating to dialogue, humanistic education, human potential, human dignity and the sanctity of life, inner and outer transformation, poetry and imagination, and interdependence. If you go to our website you can read brief essays about each conviction as well as supporting quotes from the writings of Daisaku Ikeda.
>> Learn more about the Ikeda Center's core convictions!
Contact Information
Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue
396 Harvard Street * Cambridge, MA 02138
phone 617-491-1090 * www.ikedacenter.org
Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue | 396 Harvard Street | Cambridge | MA | 02138
