Interview with Professor Jim Garrison
[The following is taken from an interview with Dr. Jim Garrison, professor of Philosophy of Education at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, USA, conducted by Masao Yokota, advisor to the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue.]
Masao Yokota: This year marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Soka Gakkai. The founding date--November 18, 1930--was adopted by Makiguchi and Toda because it marked the day Makiguchi's Soka kyoikugaku taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy), was published. What do you see as the significance of this, in specific terms and from a broader perspective?
Jim Garrison: What immediately occurs to me is that the foundation of a religious movement is found in the publication of an educational text. If we understand philosophy, as John Dewey does, which is that education involves the developmental formation of individuals and community, this then makes perfectly good sense while to most people it may make no sense at all.
In a sense, to properly educate a child, you have to begin no later than educating the grandparents; indeed, the whole society. But our society has the tendency to think of education as merely institutionalized schooling. Nevertheless, education is the essential cultural activity.
Society reproduces itself in two ways--biologically and culturally. If we ever fail to reproduce ourselves biologically, in a generation we would disappear. If we fail to reproduce ourselves culturally in a generation we would be without technologies--we would be without clothes, or knowledge of how to make fire, etc. All knowledge is passed on culturally. The biological reproduction is first nature and culture is second nature. Culture has you before you can ever have it.
Therefore, education is more primordial than religion as we usually think of it, because religion is only one social practice that moves from generation to generation, whereas education is about all cultural activities and practices. It is important to remember there is education and there is also miseducation. The mentor and disciple relationship, the parent-child relationship are very often how culture moves from one generation to the next. There is an incredible power of culture to give us this so-called second nature. That is what makes mentor and disciple important.
Ikeda, in his 1993 Harvard lecture, asks the question, "Does religion make people stronger, or weaker? Does it encourage what is good or what is evil in them? Are they made better or wiser by religion?" He points out that Marx can be perfectly right, religion can be the "opiate of the masses" and particularly religion that merely supervenes. What could an oppressor want more than for you to sacrifice your life now for heaven or nirvana later. In contrast, Ikeda and the SGI are working to bring prosperity to the world here and now. For a Deweyan, this is the right answer. When else is it possibly going to happen?
What I also think is important about the Soka Gakkai's founding publication is the text that was chosen. If one really understands true education as the developmental formation of an individual, you are not merely reproducing society, you are creating it. So it's right there with the value-creating pedagogy. Makiguchi may be physically dead, but he is alive in his text. You realize your individual potential. I realize mine when we create value together. Therefore, reading Makiguchi can itself be a value-creating transaction.
Reading the text is a dialogue with a personality. As Ikeda has said in one of his dialogues, the author, as a personality is gone, however, the personality in the text is alive. This is why I think youth is so important to the Soka Gakkai. It is not my task to decode the author's intent of the text; it is to engage the text in a value-creating activity. Value creation can be seen as co-creation between you and the text. Just as I might engage you in a dialogue face to face right here and now. The magic is in value that we create between us across generations.
Dewey says that a work of art lies in its ability to renew itself for every generation. It is not just that something is timeless so much as it has something that can renew itself repeatedly in every generation. The mentor doesn't have to be there in the living years if the text can be read as a karmic seed. I struggle very much to appreciate an author, to understand the author's time, and what the author was concerned about and the issues of the day but the fact is my times may be different.
Yokota: Makiguchi sowed deep karmic seeds for the future through his ideas and through his behavior, and Toda nurtured those seeds, which blossomed in many ways. One seed that bloomed was the organization's global outlook. As Toda's disciple, Ikeda in turn nurtured the seeds that Toda sowed and concretized this globalism through numerous dialogues, beginning with his dialogue with Toynbee. How do you view this progression of ideas and developments that is being succeeded generation after generation?
Garrison: Obviously if seeds successfully germinate, they blossom. The richer way to see it would be through the three meanings of myo--each time it is opening up, it is becoming fully endowed, it is leading to renewal. Then it does this again and again. So at this point, we don't know what the future will hold but the seeds have been sown in 192 countries and territories.
Ikeda understands and therefore has deep gratitude about the unnamed people that weave the fabric of cause and effect so to speak. Each person is equally necessary. This is actually what moral equality is about. This is where your value-creating pedagogy again meets Dewey. It's very clear we are supposed to educate unique potential so that it can make its unique contribution to society to execute functions we might not even know we need yet, because the person that can perform them hasn't arrived.
Yokota: Ikeda in a sense sowed seeds in "desecrated" soil. In 1975, he formed the SGI in Guam. He began writing The Human Revolution in Okinawa. Then in Hiroshima, he began writing The New Human Revolution--all three of these sites were ravaged by war and bore witness to horrific suffering . . .
Garrison: There are many conditions that are beyond control of even the wisest and the most able of men. Good fortune must smile on even the best and wisest. Dewey says that is true but fortune has a way of favoring the prepared and turning its back on fools, too. I would also say that Ikeda senses often times where is the most fertile ground. What seems the most unlikely place is also of course the place that it is most needed. You may in fact find fertile ground where you would least expect it, because the soil hasn't been tilled and prepared. Ikeda is a wise and astute man. Wisdom is not theoretical, it is always practical. Often times you don't know that, you intuit the possibility so you go and you try.
Yokota: Ikeda continues to sow karmic seeds for peace and globalism in many different ways. One of the ways is through dialogue. Would you share your thoughts on his dialogue with Toynbee?
Garrison: I realize in some quarters it caused problems and difficulties; but any dialogue across differences involves risk and vulnerability. Part of Ikeda's and the SGI's success as a movement has been to accept that risk and vulnerability.
Many of Ikeda's subsequent dialogues have been East-West dialogues (his dialogues with China were also major achievements and likewise with Russia) but the dialogue with Toynbee also provided Ikeda with a template for what a valuable dialogue would look like. The seed was nourished. My guess is that Toynbee helped Ikeda. A good dialogue is supposed to be reciprocally transformative and creative. That is Soka Education. Dewey would say that we should be prepared to learn from all circumstances of life.
The extraordinary richness of their personal conversations makes you wonder if it helped Ikeda understand his dialogues could be the seeds. But he was also learning from somebody who was deep in the global conversation himself. Toynbee was already there whereas Ikeda wants to begin to take this religion off the island of Japan and spread the seeds beyond the native soil. Then to find out that those seeds would blossom with somebody as far away as London. If value creation is co-creation, it is important that he has had magnificent dialogue partners. In many ways it is about Ikeda as a student and his willingness to be human. Again, it's his youthfulness, regardless of his age in years.
Toynbee really wanted to have this dialogue in the last stage of his life so that he could leave his ideas. He chose a young person, an Asian and someone from a different religion--again differences. Dialogues across differences are the most difficult and the most dangerous but in a value-creating sense, they are obviously also the most rewarding.
"The courage to embrace differences." I don't know if Ikeda uses those words but that is clearly what he means. Just tolerating won't be good enough, you have to embrace them. This takes risk, vulnerability and courage.
Yokota: Do you have any further thoughts on dialogue and the inherent challenges?
Garrison: Listening is the other half of the dialogue. It's the other half of the conversation that we rarely attend to. Nichiren Buddhism accommodates itself with the concept of zuiho-bini [precept of adapting to local customs]. This gives your movement a critical understanding that would provide caution in a dialogue--you accommodate yourself to the circumstances. I love that because it suggests the Buddha is not a fixed thing or person. The Buddha would not enter into a relationship thinking that he is omniscient or omnipotent and had nothing to learn. Until you listen well and hear, you don't know how to be compassionate. Toynbee and Ikeda created a dialogue of genuine beauty that brought things to both cultures and both individuals.
Soka Gakkai is very good at avoiding performative contradiction. That is to say, it performs what it is talking about (the courageous creation of value) very well. Ikeda certainly has Makiguchi and Toda in front of him so he has a tremendous capacity to engage in a value-creating dialogue. By picking Toynbee, he is picking somebody that likewise has a great capacity to engage in value-creating dialogue. There is still an element of good fortune here. It is almost the opening of the flower for both full endowment and renewal. If that one seed can germinate and open and endow and renew then he is prepared to do it again.
I suspect his dialogues become easier over time but it still must be difficult. On the other hand, it is the essence of value creation. You must intelligently accept the risk and vulnerability. You have a good understanding about the nature of good and evil and the way they often times travel together. It is much better to have this glorious dialogue and have of some of it be misunderstood than be paralyzed by your fear and build a mighty fortress that is unassailable. Soka Gakkai has done the opposite. It is willing to risk being misunderstood, even prosecuted. It is a living seed that is willing to grow, change and evolve. It's a religion on the highway and not in the temple.
Jim Garrison is professor of philosophy of education at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA, and former president of the John Dewey Society. His research interests focus on John Dewey and American Pragmatism. A dialogue titled "New Currents in Humane Education: Dewey and Value-creating Pedagogy" (tentative translation) between Prof. Garrison, Daisaku Ikeda and Larry Hickman, Director of the Center for Dewey Studies, was serialized in the Japanese education magazine Todai.
