In our last episode of the year, host Lillian Koizumi welcomes Ikeda Center Executive Director Kevin Maher back to the Dialogue Studio to reflect on 2024 and the Center’s work and mission. In their conversation, Lillian asks Kevin about memorable events from this past year, how he continues to draw inspiration from and apply Mr. Ikeda’s philosophy, what he’s excited about for 2024, and more. 

Quotes referenced in this episode: 

“I firmly believe that the more severe the challenges we face the more crucial it is that we persist in dialogue because dialogue has the power to break down the walls of mistrust, hatred, and division in the hearts of people everywhere.” - From Daisaku Ikeda’s 1995 message to the Ikeda Center

“I likewise believe that the value of dialogue is to be found in its processes, perhaps even more than in its concrete results. For the vibrant and mutually catalytic process of dialogue between individuals and between whole civilizations dynamically illustrates humanitarian competition, the competition in self-mastery….

“My own meetings with leading figures and thinkers from the nations of the world are motivated by the belief that dialogue indeed has the power to unite humankind. At the same time, I am moved by the desire to try to find, through dialogue, solutions to the many problems that loom before us.

“Without dialogue, humans are fated to walk in the darkness of their own dogmatic self-righteousness. Dialogue is the lamp by which we dispel that darkness, lighting and making visible for each other our steps and the path ahead.” - From Daisaku Ikeda’s 2002 Peace Proposal “The Humanism of the Middle Way: Dawn of a Global Civilization”

Music attribution: Podcast Music

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