Creating Waldens: An East-West Conversation on the American Renaissance is a deft and thoughtful dialogue by Daisaku Ikeda, Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson.
This engaging, deeply personal book, illuminating the search for meaning in today’s world, offers a rare insider’s look at Soka Gakkai Buddhism, one of Japan’s most influential and controversial religious movements, and one that is experiencing explosive growth around the world.
In the earlier half of the 20th century, Austrian-born writer Stefan Zweig is said to have urged organising for peace as the most effective measure against the organisations of war. In a parallel vein on a different continent, Daisaku Ikeda culled from the tragedy of war a lifelong commitment to building the resources for peace.
Along the fast-paced course of this dialogue emerges a broad yet sensitive glimpse of two men—one a specialist in chemistry/a scientist, the other a Buddhist—both strongly committed to peace and disarmament as fundamental human rights.
The introduction of Buddhism to China is a fascinating story of the meeting of two great civilisations: India, the land of the Buddha’s birth, and China, where Buddhism was transformed into a world religion and from where the Buddhist scriptures eventually spread to Japan.