The Inner Realm of Life in Ikeda Daisaku’s Philosophy and Practice of Human Education

This article examines Ikeda Daisaku’s perspectives on the inner realm of life in his philosophy and practice of ningen kyōiku, or human education. Also rendered incompletely as “heart” or “spirit” in English translations of Ikeda’s works, the inner realm of life pervades Ikeda’s corpus and is central to his view that external change in the world and society happens only through profound internal change in the individual. Through analyses of the original Japanese and English translations of Ikeda’s works, this article examines how Ikeda articulates the nature and cultivation of the inner realm of life in general and relative to human education, and explicates important denotative aspects of that Japanese that warrant attention as we consider Ikeda’s perspectives (in translation) relative to the meaning and role of spirituality and religiosity in education today, as well as to the constituent elements of human education.