Ode to the Grand Spirit A Dialogue

by Aitmatov, Chingiz; Ikeda, Daisaku

• ISBN13: 9781845119874
• ISBN10: 1845119878
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-06-15
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

"There is life hidden within stones. Only we human beings can give meaning to all things in the cosmos through thought and words." With these haunting and resonant words did Kyrgyz writer and novelist Chingiz Aitmatov, who died in June 2008, summarize the dialogue that he undertook with leading Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda. Aitmatov is best known for his novellaJamila, on the publication of which he achieved great fame in the Soviet Union in 1958. But after the Soviet Union's collapse, this writer, who is often lauded as one of the great Soviet authors, felt that his work had been passed over.Ode to the Grand Spiritis both an enduring tribute to the thought of a powerful writer and a fascinating individual as well as a profound reflection on such themes of the process of literary creation, spiritual growth and the essence of humanity.

Author Biography

Chingiz Aitmatov (1928-2008) is widely viewed as the greatest literary figure of modern Kyrgyzstan. An author who wrote both in Russian and his native Kyrgyz, Aitmatov became best known for his novel Jamila (1958), though later novels such as The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years  (1980) and The Scaffold  (1988) also garnered wide acclaim. As well as being a significant writer in any language, Aitmatov enjoyed a political career as his country's ambassador to the European Union, NATO and UNESCO. Daisaku Ikeda (1928-) is the President of Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist organization with some eleven million adherents in over 190 countries throughout the world. He is the author of over 80 books on Buddhist themes, and received the United Nations Peace Award in 1983.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Three Days That Shook The World	p. 1
Victory Over the Self: The Supreme Victory	p. 1
Hope and Friendship: The Wise Man's Orders of Merit	p. 11
War, Literature, Youth
First Books	p. 17
Spiritual Support in Troubled Times	p. 23
Expectations of Youth	p. 27
Justice	p. 31
The Cultural Agora	p. 35
Culture in the Country	p. 41
Learning is Light, Ignorance, Darkness	p. 45
The Highest Responsibility	p. 48
Reviving Words	p. 51
Lest They be Forever Forgotten	p. 53
Perspectives on Perestroika
Standing Up for Human Dignity	p. 57
The Role of the People	p. 60
Literature Worthy of its High Destiny	p. 65
Distrust of Words is Distrust of Humanity	p. 69
People Power	p. 74
Global Union Through Dialogue	p. 76
In the Interest of All Humanity	p. 81
Planned History and Sullied Knights	p. 86
A New Way of Thinking
All in the Same Basket	p. 91
Belief in Bellona	p. 97
We Must All Live Together	p. 101
All Children of Humanity	p. 105
From Isolation to Unity	p. 109
Literature In Life
Russian Literature: Tradition and Traits	p. 113
The Mutable and Immutable in Religion	p. 116
Myths and Folk Tales	p. 121
The Bitter Companion of Happiness	p. 128
Two Letters: Transcending 'isms' Non-violently From Chingiz Aitmatov to Daisaku Ikeda	p. 136
Reviving Spirituality From Daisaku Ikeda to Chingiz Aitmatov	p. 139
Observations on Non-violence, Daisaku Ikeda	p. 141
The Summing Up	p. 150
The Truth about Ourselves	p. 153
The People	p. 155
Their Most Brilliant Attribute	p. 165
The Humanity of Children	p. 169
The Long Journey Inward
Dostoyevsky's Religious Views	p. 173
The Divinity Within	p. 179
Restoring Religion to its Rightful Place	p. 182
Alienation and its Causes	p. 187
Verbally Explicit and Implicit	p. 193
Humanity and Non-human Nature	p. 199
The Nine Stages of Consciousness	p. 214
The Lotus Sutra - Drama of Life	p. 224
A Second Axial Period	p. 231
A Parable for Mikhail Gorbachev	p. 241
Epilogue	p. 245
The End of One Age, the Beginning of Another	p. 245
Notes	p. 249
Index	p. 255
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