Welcome to the Daisaku Ikeda Online Library.
Who is Daisaku Ikeda?
Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023) was a Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, educator, author and poet. He was president of the Soka Gakkai lay Buddhist organization in Japan from 1960–79 and the founding president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), one of the world's largest and most diverse community-based Buddhist associations, promoting a philosophy of empowerment and social engagement for peace. He also founded the Soka schools system and several international institutions promoting peace, culture and education.
Born on January 2, 1928, to a family of seaweed farmers, Ikeda endured firsthand the suffering and devastation of war as a teenager, giving birth to a lifelong passion to work for peace and root out the fundamental causes of human conflict.
In 1947, he encountered Buddhism through a meeting with Josei Toda (1900–58), educator, pacifist and 2nd president of the Soka Gakkai, who was engaged in the process of rebuilding the organization after wartime persecution. Ikeda shared Toda's conviction that the philosophy of Nichiren Buddhism, with its focus on the limitless potential of the individual human being, could help revive Japan's devastated post-war society. Then, in May 1960, Ikeda succeeded him as president of the Soka Gakkai, and in 1975 became the founding president of the SGI, now a global network linking over 12 million members in some 190 countries and territories. Under his leadership the movement began an era of innovation and expansion, becoming actively engaged in initiatives promoting peace, culture, human rights, sustainability, and education worldwide.
A prolific writer, Ikeda also published more than 250 translated works, ranging from commentaries on Buddhism to biographical essays, poetry and children's stories, before his passing on November 15, 2023 at 93.
About the Platform
The Daisaku Ikeda Online Library hosts Daisaku Ikeda's works, including books, speeches, proposals, and more. It features an AI tool that can answer individual questions using quotations from our library. Our goal is to preserve the original meaning of Daisaku Ikeda's life and teachings in an AI-focused age.
How to use the AI tool
You can also replay the tutorial on the homepage.
Library
To see a list of all of Daisaku Ikeda's works that the platform's AI tool can quote from, visit the library page. By entering a word in the search bar, you can see all the times Daisaku Ikeda mentioned that word in his works. Some of Daisaku Ikeda's works are also readable in full on the library page.
History
To view all of the past questions and responses you asked the AI tool in the past, as well as the answers you received, visit the History page in the sidebar. From there, scroll or search for the question(s) that you want to see the answers to. Please keep in mind that only successfully answered questions are stored.
Favorites
Quotes from Daisaku Ikeda that are cited by the AI tool or found in the library can be marked as your Favorites, by interacting with a bookmark symbol near the quote. Favorited quotes can be viewed later on the Favorites page in the sidebar, where you can view them later.
Unlike other areas of the platform, you can interact with favorited quotes by dragging them with your cursor or by touch on mobile devices. To organize your favorites, for instance, first create a group, and then drag the favorited quote on top of it. More information about how to use the Favorites page can be found on the Favorites page.
FAQ
Q: Can I have a conversation with the AI tool?
A: No. The AI tool will only respond to individual questions. It will also not use information from your previous questions or user data to answer you. If you want to dive deeper into the topics that the AI tool answered with, please read the sourced quotations from Daisaku Ikeda's works.
Q: Is the AI tool meant to replicate Daisaku Ikeda's writing style, tone, or voice?
A: No. The AI tool is not meant to "act" like Daisaku Ikeda in any way, or any other person/group of people. It is only a tool for summarizing information that it is given.
Q: Why won't the AI tool answer my questions?
A: There are several reasons why this can happen.
Questions are rejected if:
- The question violates our guidelines for usage.
- The question contains emojis, code, foreign characters, or other non-textual, non-English content.
- The question has nothing to do with Daisaku Ikeda or ideas he talked about.
- The question is not answerable with the information currently in the database.
- The question is a hypothetical question/"what-if" scenario that cannot be proven.
The platform will tell you why it was unable to answer your question.
Q: On average, how long does it take for the AI tool to answer a question?
A: The AI tool will take anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to answer a question.
Q: Is there a limit to how many questions I can ask the AI tool?
A: Currently, there is no limit to how many questions you can ask. However, please be mindful to only ask the AI tool one question at a time.
Q: What happens to the questions I ask the AI tool?
A: All questions you ask the AI tool are stored for auditing and analysis purposes. This is necessary to ensure the platform is used for its intended purpose, and to create a better platform in the future.
Please do not include confidential or personally identifiable information in your questions.
Q: What can I do to play a role in improving the platform?
A: Submit feedback using the "Feedback" menu at the bottom of each response. We are always looking for ways to improve our service.
Q: Will the platform add more of Daisaku Ikeda's works to its database?
A: We are currently in the process of gathering Daisaku Ikeda's writings and uploading them to the library. To see which of Daisaku Ikeda's works are quotable by the AI tool, please visit the Library page. Please check back periodically for updates.
Important Considerations
The platform's AI tool is empirically based. By this, we mean that the tool responds to your questions using only information from our database. We aim for the greatest accuracy possible, but all AI tools have limitations.
- The scope of the AI tool's analyses grows with its database. Because the AI tool can only use information from the library when answering questions, there are some questions it cannot answer.
- There is a limit to how many quotations the AI tool can retrieve at a single time. For some questions, the AI tool will not provide every piece of information that could be relevant.
- AI tools are not perfect. The AI summary the tool provides is only a summary of the information displayed below it. The ground truth is in the quotations from Daisaku Ikeda's works.
- The AI tool is very literal and will not always answer similar questions in the same way. Even slight variations in your wording can alter the kind of information it retrieves and the way it responds.
- The AI tool only quotes information that Daisaku Ikeda specifically wrote or spoke. Among interviews and dialogues where he speaks with other people, only his quotes are usable by the AI tool.
If using the platform's AI tool in an academic, professional, or faith-related context, we encourage you to view and cite the original sources used to answer your question.
Guidelines for Usage
To ensure the delivery of accurate responses, please refrain from asking the AI tool questions that it is unable to answer (see FAQ for more details).
Furthermore, to prevent platform abuse, the following guidelines are put in place, and enforced by our moderation system.
DO NOT attempt to use the platform for any of the following purposes:
- Generating explicit sexual or violent content.
- Generating hateful or discriminatory speech.
- Generating malicious, untruthful, or misleading content.
- Generating content having to do with self-harm or harming others.
- Accessing confidential or personally identifiable information.
- Twisting the words of Daisaku Ikeda into someone else's argument or perspective.
- Monetizing the platform for any purpose.
- Modifying or resetting the underlying LLM to accept other guidelines.
- Spamming questions, or using bots or automated tools to abuse platform resources.
- Including encoded messages in your questions.
Failure to comply with these guidelines will result in your user privileges being revoked.
Your Data and Privacy
For auditing and analysis purposes, all questions you ask the AI tool are stored. However, if you delete your account, your questions will be anonymized and made untraceable to you. All other information, like your favorited quotes, will be fully deleted.
Contact Us
If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions, contact us.