May 12, 2017
Hope is a Decision Released Worldwide
LOS ANGELES, USA: Middleway Press, in association with Dialogue Path Press, has recently published Hope is a Decision—Selected Essays of Daisaku Ikeda, a collection of autobiographical essays written and published over the past 50 years.
In these timely writings, Daisaku Ikeda takes the reader on a journey to discover the answers to life’s probing questions such as: Can one person really make a difference? How do we remain optimistic when the world seems to be falling apart around us?
As the epitome of the incurable optimist, Ikeda has boundless faith in humanity. In each essay, he suggests ways in which anyone can connect their personal search for strength, wisdom, and hope to the collective desire to bring about a just, humane, and caring society.
In “The Most Important Decision,” he writes:
Each individual has immense potential, and a great change in the inner dimension of one individual’s life has the power to touch others’ lives and transform society. Everything begins with us. . . .
When we change our inner determination, everything begins to move in a new direction. The moment we make a powerful resolve, every nerve and fiber in our being will immediately orient itself toward the fulfillment of this goal or desire. On the other hand, if we think, “This is never going to work out,” then every cell in our body will be deflated and give up the fight.
Hope, in this sense, is a decision.
In a foreword, Sarah Wider, professor of English and Women’s Studies at Colgate University, writes:
Ikeda calls us to understand hope in a way we may have forgotten or perhaps never known. He asks his reader to learn its range, to listen to its heart, to study its many and varied manifestations. Hope may be as familiar as a friend’s encouragement, as near as the tree that grows in an unlikely place, as immediate as the harmonies that come into our thoughts. At the same time, Ikeda reminds us that hope is neither easy nor does it mean acquiescence to injustice. These essays open our eyes to the profound and courageous determination required of those who decide for hope.
In a concluding essay, Mr. Ikeda, responding to the Doomsday Clock that stood at 11:55 p.m. in 2007, just five minutes away from the “midnight” of human annihilation, writes:
Even in the face of the severe crises confronting humanity today, I cannot side with the advocates of apocalypse. We can best negotiate the challenges we face when guided by hope, not when motivated by fear.
The inner transformation resulting from even a single person’s human revolution holds such hope. This is a revolution open to all, one that does not demand the sacrifice of a single life. When this process achieves a critical momentum—with waves of positive change spreading from one person to another—global society will be dramatically transformed.
This is a revolution that starts here, now, in the heart of every one of us.
Hope is a Decision is available at neighborhood bookstores in the USA, as well as through online bookstores worldwide.
[Adapted from articles appearing in the May 12, 2017, issue of the World Tribune, SGI-USA, and on the Books & Publications section of the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue website: http://www.ikedacenter.org/books-publications/book-list/]
