Schicksals-Sinfonie (symphony of destiny)
Daisaku Ikeda is a Buddhist philosopher, educator, author, nuclear disarmament advocate and the founding president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the world’s largest Buddhist lay organization with approximately 12 million practitioners in 192 countries and territories.
Ikeda’s sense of the great power of culture and the arts to uplift and assuage people would later become an underlying current in his philosophy of and activism for peace. It was during the turbulent period of his youth that this sensibility was forged.
Ikeda suffered throughout his youth from tuberculosis, a deadly disease at the time. He writes fondly of his memories of listening, exhausted from work and illness, to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, known as the “Destiny” or “Fate” symphony. “As I sat in the middle of my tiny apartment, with the stirring resonance of that great work filling the room, I felt my blood race and dance with joy . . . a powerful courage resurged in my heart.”
This Symphony is another Beethoven’s favorite of mine after “Ode to Joy”.