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Opening of the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Exhibit
Dr. Lawrence Edward Carter, PhD, D.D., D.H.
The Reverend Dean, Professor of Religion, College Archivist and
Curator
Morehouse College
Official Opening of the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Exhibit
Grant MacEwan Community College, Edmonton
October 2, 2003
To the Mistress of Ceremony and the citizens of this great city, to the members of government present, the Academy, the Soka Gakkai International, the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation who made this event possible and to our Honouree.
I am thrilled and excited to be here in Edmonton, Alberta. I left the hustle and bustle of Atlanta and have come to clean, clear and tranquil Edmonton, Alberta, where the living is easy.
I will begin with a brief statement outlining my purpose for being here, and then I will proceed to recognizing one most honorable person among you.
It is my distinct honor to inform you, Lois Elsa Hole, that you have been selected to receive the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award. This award was created by Morehouse College to celebrate the lives and work of three men from three different cultures and countries whose common path of profound dedication to peace has been recognized internationally.
Mohandas Gandhi's civil disobedience and nonviolent demonstrations won greater freedom and ultimately independence for 400 million citizens of India after three centuries of British rule. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's commitment to peace and justice inspired the American movement for civil and human rights, giving voice to the hopes and dreams of the dispossessed throughout the world. Dr. Daisaku Ikeda's work as a leading Buddhist philosopher, author, educator, humanist, founder and social activist has led to the non-violent democratization of Japan's feudalistic social structures and an international grass-roots initiatve of intercultural and interfaith dialogue and cooperation for global peace.
I've come today to speak about the new superpowers, peace and non-violence. We are standing at a crossroads of life on earth. We come from different backgrounds to help initiate a consciousness of active non-violence among youth and adults globally. The choices we make now will create the future with which not only we, but our children, will have to live and die. We intend to give our children a world that is better than the one we have received; a world not of weaponry, but of livingry. A place in which our children may learn compassionate living, compassionate listening, expecting respect, emphathetic communication, unconditional love, non-judgmental justice -- where you don't participate in negativity. If we want to build a nonviolent society, Gandhi tells us we must begin with the children.
But you can't have what you are not willing to be. If you want peace, you have to be peaceful. You can't give away what you don't possess. You must be the ideal itself to transform the national presidencies and political culture. Violence is like a disease, it affects everyone but it has a way of hitting the youngest among us the hardest.
One-hundred-million died in the 20th century in war and violence. At the beginning of the twentieth centuryk the deaths were predominantly among soldiers. By the end of the 20th century, 80% of the deaths were civilians; and tragically, the majority of these were women and children.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams from Northern Ireland spoke at Morehouse College last spring and informed us that half of the population of Iraq is under 15 years of age. Americans must seek to vaccinate ourselves with a non-violent consciousness, less we become known as child haters and youth killers. We must live according to what is possible in the outcome. We need a campaign equal to our capacity to love and to be creative. We must carry the consciousness of peace. Governments cannot give us peace. We must give peace to one another, and we must start with our children by not giving them away.
There is a great shift going on and we are about to move in mass from homo-sapien-sapien which simply means being conscious that you're conscious, to the next stage. It is said by many that over 50 million people in the United States and an even larger number on the planet (and Ithink that includes many in Edmonton, Alberta) have already crossed over from homo-sapien-sapien to homo-universalis, to being universal humans, being able to embrace the world, and not just the parts. That's what these three men -- Gandhi, King and Ikeda -- and many other architects of peace like your Lois Hole are able to do. Can you love the whole planet and not just the regions, or, are you only capable of loving parts of our world?
Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King and Dr. Ikeda believed that violence does matter. Some of you have heard the statement: "You must be the change you wish to see." Be the change, don't just preach it, practice it. Don't just dream it, live it. Be the thing itself. Don't give lip service, give life service. Don't politic over nonviolence; download it into your biodata. This quotation "be the change" gives us some idea of the ground upholding the principles of non-violence. It originated with Mahatma Gandhi in 1906 when the campaign for Indian rights began to take root among people in South Africa. The year was 1906, but are you aware of the date? September 11, 1906 Gandhi conducted his first non-violent campaign. So now you have an alternative to how to view 9-11-01. The occasion when the World Trade Center towers collapsed triggered the opening of the hearts of the people of the world so that for the first time in modern history, the hearts of the largest number of people in the world opened up and could embrace the suffering on the whole planet. The tragedy is that our hearts did not stay open long.
Will it take this kind of trigger always to get us to realize that we are not separate on this planet, and that Martin Luther King Jr.'s words were indeed prophetic, "that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Dr. Daisaku Ikeda has founded two universities built on a pedagogy of peace. The first such university in the United States is in Orange County, California. Dr. Ikeda has institutionalized the philosophies of non-violent communication of Mahatma Gandhi and of Dr. King in the university curriculum.
Gandhi, King, Ikeda: an Indian Hindu, an African-American Christian, and a Japanese Buddhist. Each acknowledged an American white man, Henry David Thoreau, an 1837 graduate of Harvard Uniersity. They all acknowledged him as the one who taught them civil disobedience and non-violence, a method for dealing with unjust governments.
The best solutions and methods to our current planetary crisis have come to us through a cross-fertilization that literally belts the world. But you will never find these solutions and methods if you don't get out of the box: the age box, the race box, the gender box, the faith box, the nation box and the ideology box. There is an African proverb that says: "He who never visits thinks his mother is the best cook." 9-11-01 and 9-11-06 are calls from the universe that we are not separate: in the case of Henry David Thoreau, his inspiration to be a transcendatalist was acquired from a French woman -- Mme. Germaine de Staël. She was influenced by German philosophies.
Likewise, Gandhi was taught non-violence by his wife, Kasturbai. Gandhi began his career with a violent temperment. The fact that his wife was a good unassuming Hindu woman is probably the reason most of you were not aware of her nonviolent effect on the Mahatma. But during the 10 years that he was in jail, his wife made his speeches, ate his diet, and aroused the women of India to get involved. It was the way she responded to his violence that changed the course of history.
Gandhi indicated that women have a natural predisposition for providing non-violent leadership. Men give orders, but women bring order. Gandhi announced to the world in print that in order for him to free India, he had to become a woman. "Personal power results from a balance of masculine and feminine forces. The spiritualization process--in men as well as women -- is a feminization process, a quieting of the mind."
Gandhi, King, Ikeda, and Thoreau defined their faith not by its boundaries, but by its roots. There is not a scientific truth and a spiritual truth. Truth is truth. There is only one truth! This is why we have this exhibit. Our ignorance will become increasingly costly if we don't get out of our boxes. Pluralism requires the encounter of differences and coherent self-criticism.
In Washington, there is a War Room in the White House that tracks clandestine activities, the threat of nationalized evil, and blueprints for war scattered around the world. In the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, which is the world's most prominent religious memorial to Dr. King, there we have a Peace Room, which tracks peace and non-violent successes, heroes and heroines of inclusivity, champions of justice, unconditional love, literacy and sustainability education, environmental education, peace education and human rights education. With your help, we have spotlighted one person in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada who worked, working under the radar in full view, for peace and non-violence.
Here Lois E. Hole was awarded the Morehouse College Gandhi-King-Ikeda Award by Dr. Lawrence E. Carter. You may read Her Honour Lois Hole's acceptance speech as well, if you wish.
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