Newly appointed SGI-USA Women’s Leader Monica Soto Ouchi gave the following determination at meetings in Los Angeles and Oakland, California, commemorating the 65th anniversary of Ikeda Sensei’s first steps in the U.S. to spread Buddhism around the world.
by Monica Soto Ouchi
SGI-USA Women’s Leader
I want to first and foremost express my boundless gratitude to Ikeda Sensei, to whom I owe everything, and to Mrs. Ikeda, who is watching over worldwide kosen-rufu.
I also want to acknowledge the women and men in this room who have laid the foundations for kosen-rufu in America in a painstaking process that Sensei once likened to “relentlessly carving out steel beams with their fingernails.”[1]
I also want to express my deepest gratitude to Naoko Leslie, who ably navigated the women’s division, especially during the tumultuous years of the pandemic and all that followed. She changed so many lives in the process, including mine.
I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My mother, Ruriko, was born in Hiroshima two years after the bombing. She met and married my father, Al, while he was stationed as a naval officer in Atsugi, Japan. They returned to the U.S. in 1969, where she introduced him to the practice, they bought a home and knocked down the walls in the dining room so they could host SGI discussion meetings.
My two sisters and I were raised in a warm and loving district and were active in the Fife and Drum Corps. But growing up, my life seemed like a duality. On the one hand, I was told at SGI activities that I could do and become anything. On the other, I attended school in a disenfranchised neighborhood, where people lacked access to basic public amenities. By the time I graduated, I had lost more than a dozen classmates to violence, illness, suicide and more.
In June 1996, I was a profoundly cynical 23-year-old when Sensei came to Denver to receive an honorary doctorate. As a budding journalist, I was asked to support the World Tribune. And it was through coming into contact with the life of my great mentor that I felt for the first time the sensation of being a human being.
Of all the things that Sensei has done for humanity, he is unrivaled in his love of and belief in youth. I believe that everyone here is a product of his radical and relentless care.
Now, we stand at a juncture in American society where youth, more than ever, are rootless and lost.
As we celebrate the 65th anniversary of global kosen-rufu, I would like, with all of you, to build a Soka family in America, where youth are drawn by our genuine bonds of camaraderie to their neighborhood discussion meetings, which represent the heart and soul of our movement.
At a youth training session in Los Angeles in February 1990, Sensei said:
In a family, there is no particular need for a hero. What is needed is a strong father who can protect everyone and a mother who is impartial, fair and kind.
In a family, if one person is unhappy, then so is the entire family. Therefore, in the SGI-USA, I would like you to sincerely pray for and protect one another so that … every person will become happy. These are the kinds of humanistic bonds that give birth to true unity.[2]
Recently, I read a story about the former Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz and his meeting with a prominent rabbi. He had asked Schultz what he thought was the main lesson of the Holocaust. After getting an unsatisfactory answer, this rabbi said that when people were taken in droves to the concentration camps, only 1 in 6 people was given a blanket. That person had to decide whether they would extend their blanket to the five people sleeping next to them.
The youth are so valiantly leading the way as the mentors of propagation in our country. Speaking to the women of my generation, in particular—who grew up with creature comforts such as Buddhist centers and English-language publications and the Florida Nature and Culture Center, and who have gained so much benefit from their practice—the times require that we decide whether we will extend our blanket to others in the form of shakubuku.
Recently, I came across a photo from Sensei’s visit to Denver that I had never seen before. It was at a dinner encouragement meeting, which I was asked to attend—not because of anything I had done but because the rest of my family had been invited.
It was a photo of a member giving Sensei an American flag as I looked on. This image contains all my dreams and determinations for the future; it is seared into my heart.
I love my country. I love the youth. And, most importantly, I believe in 2030.
And, with all of you, I’m prepared to fight for all three. Thank you for this unsurpassed opportunity to serve the members. Thank you, Sensei! I will do my best.
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