Choose Life: A Dialogue

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For Time magazine Toynbee was 'an international sage' and certainly in the same bracket as 'Einstein, Schweitzer or Bertrand Russell'. Daisaku Ikeda is a figure of global stature, the spiritual leader of a worldwide lay Buddhist organization devoted to the promotion of education, culture and peace. Between 1972 and 1974 Toynbee and Ikeda discussed many of the vital issues which confronted their societies in the early 1970s, all of which remain current and significant. Indeed, topics such as the problems of pollution, dwindling natural resources, conflict and war, the role of religion, and population growth, are even more pressing than they were thirty years ago. In this influential and inspiring volume, which records their wide-ranging conversations, the challenge issued by both men is framed as follows: will humankind choose to salvage its destiny by a revolution in thinking and morals? Or will disaster ensue if it pursues its present course towards self-destruction and the despoliation of the environment? While recognizing that our survival is threatened by the imbalance between human immaturity and technological achievement, the optimistic message of this classic dialogue is that man-made evils have a man-made cure.

ARNOLD TOYNBEE (1889-1975), CH, was Professor of International History at the University of London until his retirement in 1955. His major published work was A Study of History, which appeared in successive volumes from 1934 to 1961.

DAISAKU IKEDA (1928-) is President of Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist organization with more than twelve million adherents in over 190 countries throughout the world. He is the author of more than 80 books on Buddhist themes. Although he has described himself as being merely 'a traveller along the Silk Road of the spirit', his dialogues have nevertheless earned him over 200 academic awards from universities and institutes around the world, in addition to the United Nations Peace Award in 1983.

The table of contents of this book will tell the reader, at a glance, that the book covers a wide range of topics. These topics have entered into the dialogue be- cause they are matters of personal concern to the two participants. The dialogue is now being published as a book in the hope that the same topics will prove to be matters of general concern for the authors' contemporaries in the English-speak ing world, in Japan, and elsewhere.

The dialogue was originally an oral one. The two participants met in London and their conversation lasted for several days. The record of what they said has been rearranged by Mr. Richard L. Gage. His editorial work has been both skilful and arduous. A reader's eye needs a different presentation from the kind that suits a listener's ear, and the two authors of this book are very grateful to Mr. Gage for the service that he has done them. They believe that their gratitude will be shared by the reader.

The topics discussed in this book are of very diverse kinds. Some of them are of urgent concern at the present time, but some of them are issues of pe- rennial importance that have been pondered and discussed by human beings ever since the unknown date at which our ancestors first awoke to conscious- ness. It seems probable that these perennial questions will continue to be debated so long as mankind survives in the psychosomatic form in which we exist in our material environment, that is to say, in the biosphere that covers the planet earth.

Daisaku Ikeda is an East Asian; Arnold Toynbee is a Westerner. In the most recent chapter of mankind's history, the West has been taking the lead and has been playing a dominant role. In the present book, Toynbee suggests reasons for expecting that, in the future, the leadership is going to be taken over from the West by Eastern Asia. Mankind has already been united on the technological plane by the worldwide expansion of the West European peo- ples' activities within the last five hundred years.