NO ONE KNOWS WHY, but for some reason the founders of religious movements tend to come in threes. Shakyamuni, his disciple Kashyapa, and his cousin Ananda come to mind when we think of ancient Buddhism, while Jesus, Peter, and Paul are representative of Christianity. The three founding presidents of the Soka Gakkai—Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Josei Toda, and Daisaku Ikeda—follow the same pattern. For there seems to be a natural progression in the creation, development, and stabilization of a new religion, and those three phases each require the talents of individuals with very different temperaments, so that the person who begins the movement is very different from the person whose role it is to give it shape and form, while the person whose work is to refine and extend its teaching is different still. Probably that is why there are usually three founders. Even at its beginning, religion is a communal effort. We cannot create something of collective value on our own.
The initial founder of a religious movement usually takes great risks. That is the reason why he or she is often persecuted and sometime martyred. Jesus is one example, and if we include philosophical movements as well, Socrates would be another. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, the first president of the Soka Gakkai, would be yet another.
Making a clay pot is a good metaphor to explain how a successful religious movement is created. In the beginning, the process of creation can be quite violent. The clay is usually cut several times—either with a knife or with a wire. Then it must be slapped down hard upon the wheel to give the pot a solid footing. When we think of what this means for the founder of a religious movement, we can see that it takes a special kind of individual to allow himself to be treated that way for the sake of what, in its early stages at least, is mostly just an ideal (the pot is, after all, at this point only a lump of clay). There may be a loose organization in the beginning, a group of committed followers, a meeting schedule, or even a curriculum of sorts; however, once the trouble begins—as it always does—this nearly always falls apart.
On the night that Jesus was taken into custody, his disciples all deserted him. Likewise, when Nichiren incurred the wrath of powerful forces in the military government of his day, only the bravest of his new converts dared stand at his side. How easy it would have been for either man to recant his teachings at this point, letting his disciples off easy and sparing himself injury or even death. For that very reason, there always comes a moment of truth in the creation of any new religious tradition—a moment when its founder chooses (not for the sake of what already is but for the sake of what might be) to hold firm in the face of persecution, enduring what he might easily avoid were he merely to shut his mouth.
Tsunesaburo Makiguchi was repeatedly offered his freedom when he was imprisoned for “thought crimes” against the Japanese Imperial government during World War II. Each time he said no. Makiguchi had undergone a deep religious conversion, an experience the Lotus Sutra called reaching the “stage of non-regression,” the point in one’s spiritual development where it becomes impossible to turn back and return to the world one knew before. In Buddhism that old world is sometimes defined as the world of “upside-down views.”
According to the logic of that old, deluded world, freedom means being at liberty to come and go as we please. Such a definition of freedom is often very useful to an oppressive regime. That is because freedom, if so defined, becomes something that can then be taken away. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi said no when offered his freedom because the offer itself was deluded. His captors, who thought they were free but in reality were the “thought prisoners” of an oppressive government and the victims of a degraded religious culture that had long since capitulated on the matter of basic human rights, therefore had nothing to offer him. He was free already. Like Nichiren before him, his willingness to die for the sake of the Lotus Sutra offered a freedom that could not be taken away by any worldly power or authority. Like Jesus before him (and Nelson Mandela later), Tsunesaburo Makiguchi found in prison something that, given the state of Japanese society during the war, could not be gained outside its walls—true freedom, and with it the power to change the world.
The first founder of any religious movement must find that freedom and that power, and this means that he must be willing to confront the forces of delusion in society—even those forces supported by religious tradition. That means seeing the world right side up and declaring that truth to anyone who will listen. The second founder receives that right-side-up view from his mentor and builds an organization on its principles, declaring and spreading that same freedom and power to a society that, although it may still resist being told the truth, has already begun to accept it on some level. People who are willing to undergo persecution for their beliefs seem more awake (and therefore more convincing) than their counterparts in whatever complacent religious culture is then in power. The work of the second founder is still arduous and still not without risk. Likewise, it requires great energy.
Josei Toda’s energy in spreading Nichiren Buddhism is almost legendary. When we consider his character—the fierceness of his resolve to transform postwar Japanese society through faith, plus the creativity and daring he brought to the task of modernizing Buddhism—it is easy to see the hand of a master potter at work. Toda gave the Soka Gakkai the basic shape it has today, a shape that has proven so useful to modern people that it has long since transcended the Japanese culture that gave birth to it and spread to countless other countries across the globe.
We see in the Soka Gakkai, as conceived by Toda, a dynamic and practical philosophy of life that, for the first time in human history, privileges life over religion, rather than religion over life. Toda demanded that the Buddha wake up and be answerable to the lives of ordinary people. He advised his fellow Soka Gakkai members to test the truth of the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism for themselves to see if they actually worked. They did; therefore it spread very quickly and continues to do so nearly sixty years after his death.
But that is not the end of the process, as any potter knows. Even a pot with a very useful shape will not last unless it has been glazed by the potter and then subjected to the prolonged heat of the firing process. Only in this way will the pot become both beautiful and durable enough to survive the constant handling it is likely to encounter in the midst of everyday life.
To the third Soka Gakkai president, Daisaku Ikeda, fell the task of making the Soka Gakkai a thing of lasting beauty. That phase of creation, like those overseen by his predecessors, was not without its challenges. A man of boundless energy and creativity, Ikeda has accomplished many things over the course of his career, but among those accomplishments, two lie at the heart of his mission.
First of all, Ikeda internationalized the teachings of the Soka Gakkai, using them to promote peace, culture, and education in other countries throughout the world. Nichiren Buddhism had always stressed the need to share its teachings widely. In fact, you might say that spreading the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism was the point of Nichiren Buddhism. The Lotus Sutra taught that it was by practicing the teachings of that sutra and sharing those teachings with others that one attained the highest wisdom, forging the indestructible happiness of a Buddha for this lifetime and in all lifetimes to come.
From the beginning, Soka Gakkai members were given the same teaching. The surest way to elevate their life condition was to share the movement’s message with others, offering them the tools, the teachings, and the supportive spiritual community they needed to take charge of their destinies and improve the overall condition of their lives, their communities, and even society itself. This was what Makiguchi himself taught, and it was the teaching that Toda spread to nearly a million Japanese people in the years immediately following World War II. But it was still very much focused on Japan and the struggles of its people. And, after all, it wasn’t that different from what other evangelical religions taught. Ikeda took Nichiren Buddhism one step further, restating the Soka Gakkai’s mission in terms of human values that transcended narrow differences of race, religion, and nationality. By celebrating those values that unite us all, he empowered the Soka Gakkai with a message that was, for the first time, truly global. It was Buddhism on a scale no one had ever seen before. It could go anywhere and help anyone.
It could also address a whole host of emerging global issues—problems like climate change, nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty and hunger, and economic expansionism. These were challenges for which the religious models that had existed up until then did not adequately prepare us. Only through a process of radical self-empowerment—which Ikeda, expanding upon a term used by Toda, called Human Revolution—could human beings address issues that big. They couldn’t be dealt with effectively by any one people, nation, or religion, but only by humanity as a whole. It was Ikeda’s willingness to address such concerns and make them the main focus of his outreach that transformed the Soka Gakkai into what may well be the world’s first true global religion.
Ikeda’s second undertaking was riskier, as the process of firing always is. For it is always possible that, no matter how functionally perfect the form of a pot is, or how beautifully glazed its surface, it will nevertheless crack during the long process of firing. During that process, the heat must be kept at a constant temperature. Likewise, once that process is over, the cooling must occur naturally. Otherwise, the pot will shatter. During this process it is hidden within the depths of the kiln where the potter cannot see it; he can only proceed with faith that his efforts will be a success. More than anything, he has to believe in the whole process. And this is difficult, given the kinds of pressures that the pot is exposed to within the kiln.
Ikeda conducted that “firing” process largely through dialogue—with other Soka Gakkai members, with world leaders and scientists, and with an ever-widening circle of artists, writers, and intellectuals from around the world who shared a common concern with peace. Throughout this process, his aim was to refine the teachings of the Soka Gakkai so that it is clear what they stand for and (the importance of this cannot possibly be overstated) what they actually are. For the danger of any universal spiritual teaching is that its appeal may be so broad that in the end it cannot hold together and simply falls apart.
In this process, Daisaku Ikeda was aided by the history of the Soka Gakkai itself, which emerged phoenix-like from the ashes of World War II, having endured its dehumanizing deprivations and witnessed its horrors— including the atom bomb. From the beginning, the Soka Gakkai’s approach to Buddhism was focused on the fundamental dignity of human life—affirming it, protecting it, and convincing others to do the same. Ikeda’s whole philosophy clusters around the word life—LIFE with capital letters is how I once heard it described. As a unifying idea at the heart of Ikeda’s teachings, it has proved both durable and versatile.
Today, in his eighties, Ikeda continues to extend and develop that idea in dialogue with others, focusing increasingly on the interdependence of life in all of its many aspects, both human and nonhuman species, and the need to protect them all. It’s an approach to Buddhism that is almost, but not quite, bigger than Buddhism. You might say that the Soka Gakkai is Buddhism taken as far as Buddhism—or, for that matter, any religion—can go.