IN 1946, the year following the world’s first use of nuclear weapons, Albert Einstein declared, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking.” Sadly, nearly seventy years later, this is still the case. The discovery of nuclear energy represented a radical shift in the paradigm that until then had governed scientific theory and practice, but there was no corresponding shift at a social or spiritual level to prepare humanity for the awesome responsibility that came with unprecedented destructive power. A widening chasm opened before us that, then as now, seems almost impossible to bridge.
Fortunately, what seems impossible at the level of society (namely, a global spiritual shift to keep pace with the rapid scientific one) is nevertheless possible at the level of the individual, and so there is reason for hope. As Daisaku Ikeda has written: “A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and further, will enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”
In retrospect, I believe this “human revolution in just a single individual” is precisely what we see happening on September 8, 1957, when Josei Toda gave his famous declaration calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Brief as it is, the text of that declaration sounds as shocking today as it did when it was delivered more than half a century ago. A shift in paradigm is always shocking. At first we can’t be certain we have heard it correctly. Because it transcends old ways of thinking, it is difficult to assimilate. In the beginning, we lack the spiritual and intellectual resources for taking it in. Indeed, we may feel tempted to reject a new paradigm at first because it doesn’t fit our way of thinking.
On that day, before a stadium of fifty thousand youth members of the Soka Gakkai, Toda stated what he hoped his listeners would regard as his “foremost instruction for the future.” Given that he was then already ill—indeed, he would die seven months later—his words must have carried the added power of a last will and testament. In the famous photograph taken of him on that occasion, sporting a giant chrysanthemum on his lapel, it is clear that his physical vitality is on the wane. But he was making a transmission of the teaching he had devoted his life to, and he did so in the strongest and most uncompromising of words:
Although a movement calling for a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons has arisen around the world, it is my wish to go further, to attack the problem at its root. I want to expose and rip out the claws that lie hidden in the very depths of such weapons. I wish to declare that anyone who ventures to use nuclear weapons, irrespective of their nationality or whether their country is victorious or defeated, should be sentenced to death without exception.
Even his successor and closest disciple, Daisaku Ikeda, had to struggle to grasp the meaning of Toda’s words, and so it goes without saying that they were not immediately understandable to everyone assembled for his address. For one thing, Buddhism does not support the idea of a death penalty. For another, Toda himself had often spoken out against it, claiming the idea of capital punishment was “absolutely futile.”
Toda’s declaration was one of those occasions when a spiritual leader seeks to shock us out of our ordinary way of thinking. In Toda’s case, what he wanted to communicate was an entirely new way of living in human society, one that would prove necessary if we were to survive in a global age.
That new way of living was based on an awareness of the fundamental dignity of human life. But to attain that awareness, one first had to identify oneself as fundamentally human rather than being merely a member of a nation, a religion, or a tribe.
At the beginning of his life mission, when Josei Toda stated his value-creating philosophy with the simple words “the Buddha is life itself,” he did not mean that the Buddha’s life was the life of a person living in Japan. Though in the beginning his mission was directed toward the impoverished and downtrodden people of postwar Japan, it was never restricted to purely nationalistic concerns. It was simply the right place to start—with his own devastated country and his own suffering people. But from the beginning, his religious vision broke the tribal mode. Even in his later struggles with various adversaries—with the Nichiren Shoshu hierarchy and with the Japanese government—he was aware that the true nature of his struggle was with “the claws of evil” hidden in the depths of the human heart itself. This was his only adversary in life, and in truth the only real adversary of humanity itself. When he called for the death penalty for anyone who ventured to use weapons of mass destruction, he was calling for all of humanity to unite in resisting the only force that could possibly destroy them—the roots of the three poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance.
These were the hidden claws in the depths of the human heart that needed to be eradicated. They needed to be ripped out. They actually needed to be sentenced to death. Buddhism has sometimes been criticized for its arms-length approach to the problem of evil. In fact, religious scholars sometimes question whether Buddhism, which shows such sober, analytical detachment on the issue, has any doctrine of evil at all. But Toda’s Buddhism had no such problem. He wasn’t afraid to identify evil or to grapple with it. In his cell in Toyotama Prison, he had grasped the fundamental life force of the universe, an energy that existed equally in the life of every individual and therefore affirmed the dignity and value of all. To champion that dignity in the world—not just as a religious theory but actively—meant being willing to engage with its opposite. That opposite was the bomb. For what is a nuclear warhead—even when it is stockpiled—if not the ultimate symbol of a heartless and indifferent attitude toward life? Could you be enlightened without being awake to the presence of such an “enemy”? Could you be a Buddha and sleep soundly while thousands of warheads were poised and waiting, pointed at human beings all across the globe?
In making his declaration calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, Toda called for all humanity to unite, crossing traditional boundaries of tribe and country, victor and vanquished, in opposing a force that was truly the enemy of all. It was the first time in human history that the shape and contour of that enemy had become fully apparent. Until then, human beings had always been content to war among themselves, satisfied with the traditional notion of “enemy as other.” Now, for the first time, they faced an enemy with the power to destroy them all.
At first it must have seemed to Toda’s listeners that he was talking about the scientists who had developed such weapons, or politicians who had authorized their use, or perhaps the soldiers who had deployed them. But they quickly realized that the real enemy, whom Toda referred to as “a devil incarnate, a fiend, a monster,” was much vaster and more powerful than that. Storm the palace or the presidium and you might find its minions, but the demon itself could be found only by searching out the deepest recesses of the human psyche. This enemy was far more dangerous than any single nation, territory, or tribe. That was because it had the power to destroy all nations, all territories, and all tribes—and given the freedom to exercise its influence over humanity, it was almost certain to do exactly that.
In retrospect, the new paradigm bequeathed by Josei Toda to his successor, Daisaku Ikeda, and to the rest of the Soka Gakkai youth was more than an antidote to the single problem of nuclear proliferation. In truth, Toda was offering the solution to all other manner of global problems—from terrorism to economic expansionism to global climate change. For none of these problems can even be addressed unless men and women across the globe become empowered as individuals through a process like Human Revolution. Only a paradigm that expands their vision beyond the traditional boundaries separating human beings and defining their interests apart from one another can possibly address problems that exist on a truly global scale.
The advent of nuclear weapons brought with it the necessity for a new way of thinking. For the first time in history, human beings became capable of destroying all human life. Likewise today, the problem of global climate change cannot be solved by nationalities or special interest groups acting alone. Global problems require global solutions, even though they must be implemented locally. And global solutions require a global consciousness—and the willingness of all humanity to work together as one. But as with all radical shifts in consciousness, it has to begin somewhere. In Buddhism, I believe we can trace that beginning to September 8, 1957.