Published by Soka Spirit Editor
Posted on September 28, 2011
—SGI President Ikeda (Sept. 28, 2001 World Tribune)
“Justice only shines when we challenge and triumph over evil. I cannot emphasize enough, however, that bloody, hate-filled revenge is utterly foreign to Buddhism. As a famous passage from an early Buddhist text says, ‘Hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by not hating; this is an eternal truth’ (The Dhammapada, p. 8). Nichiren Daishonin, though the target of the harshest persecution, also demonstrated a spirit of tolerance and compassion as vast as the great ocean. He says, ‘I pray that before anything else I can guide and lead the ruler and those others who persecuted me’ (WND-1, 402).
“This does not mean, however, that it is acceptable to blur the distinction between good and evil or to condone evil. As first Soka Gakkai president Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, who stood firm against oppression by the Japanese militarist authorities and died in prison for his beliefs, said, ‘Unless you have the courage to be an enemy of those who are evil, you cannot be a friend to the good.’ Indeed, good cannot be achieved without a struggle against evil. Overlooking and ignoring evil show cowardice and a lack of compassion—in the end, it is the same as doing evil oneself.
“The great struggle to triumph over the pervasive forces of the devil king of the sixth heaven as well as the destructive tendencies within our own lives is what we call kosen-rufu, what we call human revolution.”