Galician and Basque Editions of On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime Published
Galician and Basque editions of On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime
MADRID, Spain: Ediciones Civilización Global, an publishing
project affiliated with SGI-Spain, has released Galician and Basque editions of
On
Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime, a lecture by Daisaku Ikeda on
the writing by Nichiren of the same name.
Galician is a Romance language spoken by approximately 2.5 million
people mainly in Galicia, in the northwest region of Spain. Basque is a
language of the Basque Country in the western Pyrenees, straddling France and
Spain, spoken by about 850 thousand people. The Galician and Basque languages
were banned or discouraged during the Francoist dictatorship (1936–75) but have since been brought back into
the country’s institutions, and the release of these editions is being greeted
favorably as an effort to respect the culture of these regions.
“The Galician edition was introduced in Galicia’s local newspapers
Xornal
Galicia and La Región on May 17 and 18,
respectively.” On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime was also
previously published in Catalan, another official language of Spain, and was
well received as a book providing insight into the life philosophy of Nichiren
Buddhism.
This lecture by Mr. Ikeda is on one of Nichiren’s key writings in
which he teaches that all people have the potential to attain Buddhahood just
as they are, in this lifetime. Mr. Ikeda explains, “Nichiren Buddhism, unlike
the established Buddhist schools of his day, was not dedicated to the worship
of a specific god or Buddha. Nichiren established the means for all people to
achieve enlightenment, the ideal of the Lotus Sutra, by formulating the
practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which enables us to activate our
inherent Buddha nature and manifest it as the life state of Buddhahood.”
With the addition of these two languages, the number of languages
Mr. Ikeda’s various works have been translated into has reached 50, amounting
to more than 2,000 books.
Daisaku Ikeda’s works have been translated into 50 languages
[Adapted from an article in June 1, 2020,
issue of theSeikyo Shimbun, Soka Gakkai,
Japan]
