Toward a New Way of Being

Strengthening Our Connections

April 2006

Banner photo: ©MIMOTITO/Digital Vision/Getty Images

Toward a New Way of Being

By Daisaku Ikeda

[©Seikyo Shimbun]

For most of humankind's estimated existence of 4 million years, we were just another animal species, one more element of the Earth's ecology. Only in the past few millennia have human beings developed the kind of sophisticated knowledge capacities to make significant changes in the natural systems of the planet.

Today, alongside its many positive aspects, the negative impacts of scientific-technological civilization can be seen on a global scale. Humanity now confronts the challenge of developing a new and very different relationship with the natural environment--one of conscious coexistence. Failure to do so could threaten our very survival.

An Ongoing Creation

Buddhism asserts that the inner life of the individual corresponds in its vastness to the "outer cosmos" of the phenomenal world. This inner world pulsates with the limitless energy of compassion, love, wisdom, reason, as well as various emotions, impulses and desires. Each instant, this energy issues forth from within to create, in interaction with the cosmos we inhabit, a new self, a new world. When our inner cosmos is in dynamic harmony, its creative energy is communicated to the world in waves of joy, finding concrete expression in actions marked by reason, wisdom and compassion. In contrast, when the inner cosmos loses its essential rhythm, its energy takes destructive, aggressive, domineering forms like greed and other dark impulses. The inner life at such times is a desolate wasteland. External desertification of the planet corresponds precisely to the spiritual desertification of the inner life.

How we relate to ourselves (our inner life) is intimately linked to how we relate to our fellow humans (our societal life), and this is inextricably linked to how we relate to the natural world. Human beings whose internal environments are despoiled and desolate easily fall prey to the kind of self-centeredness that inevitably manifests in acts of domination, exploitation and destruction in the social and natural realms.

But the inverse is equally true. The intimate, mutually interactive nature of Earth's ecology, human society and the inner life of the individual means that the harmonizing influence of compassion and wisdom issuing from within the individual can have a positive transforming effect even on problems of a planetary scale. The key and pivot for transformation is the conscious will in the depths of the life of the individual.

Life and Its Environment

Focusing first on our inner life--our relationship with ourselves--Buddhism uncovers and illuminates the law of causality that governs the processes by which both positive (creative) and negative (destructive) patterns are engraved and potential energies stored in the deepest realms of our lives. At the same time, Buddhism aims to direct the light of human wisdom outward to reveal and bring forth the original, true nature and most creative possibilities of all phenomena, including human cultures and societies.

A Park in Moscow, 1994 [Daisaku Ikeda]

The phenomenal world constitutes a great web of overlapping and mutually interacting elements, woven through with the threads of causality. This web of mutual relatedness extends outward to encompass the most distant limits of the universe. In this way, Buddhism views all phenomena in the universe--not only that which is explicitly, biologically living--as integrally part of life, as "alive."

Writing in 1903, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944), the founding president of the Soka Gakkai, analyzed the relation between people and the geographies they inhabit. He first noted that humans engage in both physical and spiritual modes of intercourse with their surroundings. He then classified the spiritual interactions into cognitive, analytical and utilitarian modes, as well as the aesthetic, moral, sympathetic, public-spirited and religious ways of interrelating with the natural world. In a passage dealing with our sympathetic relations with nature, he writes: "The mountain that until now has towered as something different and apart is recognized as a part of the world, like the self, with which it exists in mutual relations. The mountain becomes a sentient being, and our relations with it reflect this. The self becomes one with the mountain, sharing its sorrows and joys and experiencing its fate."

For most of our history as a species, humans have regarded nature with intense feelings of awe for its power and gratitude for its boundless blessings. The progress of scientific technology, however, has dulled humanity's sense of such feelings, and we have come to regard nature as an exterior, objectified realm to be dominated and conquered for the sake of our material prosperity. Makiguchi's vision of a human-nature ecology is one of partnership or cooperative coexistence within the great universal force of life.

The Mission of Humanity

Accepting the validity of practical or utilitarian interactions between the partners (our "use" of nature and nature's "use" of us), Makiguchi describes a multilayered web of interactions, affirming the meaning and importance of each of our various ways of interrelating with our surroundings. Among these, religion can act to strengthen the human capacity to encounter nature with profound feelings of awe and joy at the creative workings of the universe.

The state of our surroundings may be understood as the shadow cast by the "body," which is the life entity--our selves. Without the body there is no shadow. A life entity and its environment are inseparable. While recognizing the influence of the environment on our lives, Buddhism is primarily concerned with human beings as the protagonists of positive change. Buddhism encourages us to develop an awareness of the whole planet and inspires a sense of our particular responsibility to protect and work to bring into an overarching harmony all forms of life. Contributing to the creation of value within the Earth's biosphere is our role and mission relative to other living beings.

From an evolutionary perspective it could be said that humanity's self-consciousness affords us a special place in the physical, chemical and biological evolution that has been in motion over the 14 billion years since the Big Bang. Human beings are capable of perceiving the rhythms and laws--specifically the law of cause and effect--that guide the growth and development of natural systems. In this sense, the mission of human beings is to contribute as conscious participants to the creative evolution of the universe.

When a clear sense of this lofty mission informs and directs all our efforts in the fields of science and technology, our social, political and economic systems, we will discover a truly humane--in the best sense of the word--approach to resolving the many problems and challenges that face us.