Soka Gakkai International : President > Works

SGI President - Daisaku Ikeda

Daisaku Ikeda is the president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a Buddhist association of more than 12 million members in 190 countries and territories, and founder of several educational, cultural and research institutions.

He is a prolific writer, poet and peace activist, recognized as one of the leading interpreters of Buddhism, bringing its timeless wisdom to bear on the many contemporary issues confronting humanity.

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SGI President :: Works

Poetry & Photography

Daisaku Ikeda is an avid and prolific poet. He works in the traditional Japanese poetic forms, which compress feeling and observation into a few brief lines. At the same time, he works in an expansive, free meter form in which a single poem may consist of several hundred lines.

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Exhibition: An on-line gallery of the photographs and poems of Daisaku Ikeda

Ikeda is also active as a photographer. He describes his photographs as a "struggle to capture the truth." Many are taken during the brief interludes of his travels.

Poetry
Ikeda's love of poetry and literature began in childhood. He counts Walt Whitman and Victor Hugo among his most important influences. He likes to celebrate, in oceanic cadences, the dignity of ordinary people's lives. He is committed to reviving poetry and the poetic spirit in public life; he has written poems for such figures as Rajiv Gandhi and Corazon Aquino. In this sense, poetry has been an integral part of his efforts at citizen diplomacy.

Ikeda has received several awards for his poetry. In 1981 he was awarded the title of "Poet Laureate" by the World Academy of Arts and Culture, India. He is also a nonresident member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

Photography
Ikeda is also an amateur photographer, and an exhibition of his photographs entitled "Dialogue with Nature" has toured several countries. Commenting on his photography, Ikeda has written, "I am not and never have been a professional photographer...I would be very happy if I am able to share, to some small extent, my joy at communing with nature, the 'mirror of the heart'."

A single photograph
--portrait of the moment--
is an inexhaustible epic,
a living tale beyond words
superior to a hundred volumes
written and fixed.

A photograph
is consciousness painting,
the instant's art that opens
on the unbounded vistas
of the inner life.

--From "Eternal Voyagers toward the Light of Peace," a poem dedicated to Robert and Cornell Capa.