Religion & Ecology
July 2010
Banner photo: Alpine Flowers and Cloud Reflection, Colorado [© Carr Clifton]
Ikeda Center Hosts Book Launch
Mary Lee Morrison (second from left on stage), Boulding's biographer, addressing the book launch [Marilyn Humphries]
The Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hosted a book launch for the newly published dialogue between Elise Boulding and SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, Into Full Flower: Making Peace Cultures Happen, on March 6.
More than 80 people attended the event, which celebrated the long-standing examples set by the lives of the book's coauthors, both of whom have demonstrated that the surest way to create a culture of peace is to create the conditions for such a culture in one's own life.
Considered the "matriarch" of the 20th-century peace research movement, Dr. Boulding has authored seminal books exploring what she has termed "the hidden side of history," chronicling the contributions to peacemaking by women and others who are often ignored in history books.
A friend of the Ikeda Center, Dr. Boulding was awarded its first Global Citizen Award in 1995 and also co-organized the center's "Cultures of Peace" series in 1999. Russell Boulding, attending the launch on his mother's behalf, spoke on the commonalities shared by Dr. Boulding and Mr. Ikeda: "Both are spiritually grounded visionaries and bridge-builders. Both have a commitment to peacemaking at an international level that is grounded in recognition of the importance of education and the empowerment of women and children."
Richard Yoshimachi, Ikeda Center executive director, shared an unpublished poem that Mr. Ikeda dedicated to Dr. Boulding in 1999. The concluding stanza held special resonance for the day:
With a beautiful symphony echoing around us--
the tones of life resounding with life--
let us work together to bring
the human spirit to its fullest bloom.
