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Edward Canfor-Dumas was educated at New College, Oxford, where he started writing and directing. He is well known an award-winning TV writer whose work includes Not The Nine O’Clock News, The Bill, Kavanagh QC, Tough Love, Pompeii: The Last Day and Supervolcano. He is, with Richard Causton, the author of The Buddha in Daily Life. He lives with his wife and two teenage children in Hertfordshire. In The Buddha, Geoff and Me he brings all his skills to bear in an absorbing story of everyday city life, where the characters stand out with all their human strengths and weaknesses.
In 1958 he seized the chance of early retirement from the army, where, in his last post in the War Office, he was compelled to face for the first time the use of nuclear weapons and their appalling potential. At thirty-eight he began a fresh career in business. In the 1960s, his business travels took him back to the Far East, where he encountere the Nichiren Buddhism in Japan. He describes it as an electrifying experience. All that he heard and read seemed exactly to match the beliefs and conclusions towards which he had already been moving. He began to practise and in 1971, aged fifty-one, he made his final commitment to the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin. In 1974 he returned to England to join the 200 or so pioneer members practising here at that time. Three years later he gave up business to become the first permanent staff member of what was then called Nichiren Shoshu of the United Kingdom (NSUK) and is now known by the name Soka Gakkai International of the United Kingdom (SGI-UK). He was head of SGI-UK between 1975 ando 1995 and a vice chairman of both the worldwide lay society, Soka Gakkai International, and its European arm, SGI-Europe until his death on 13 January 1995. (The Buddha in Daily Life, 1995)
He is the founder of the International Peace Research Institute and is currently Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of many books including Human Rights in Another Key (1994) and Peace by Peaceful Means (1995) and was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1987 for his work on peace studies. (Choose Peace, 1995)
Sir Hall Caine (18531931) is best known as a novelist and playwright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular and at the peak of his success his novels outsold those of his contemporaries. His novels were primarily romantic in nature, but they did also address some of the more serious political and social issues of the day. Caine acted as secretary to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he travelled widely and used his travels to provide the settings for some of his novels. He came into contact with, and was influenced by, many of the leading personalities of the day, particularly those of a socialist leaning.
His major works: The Shadow of a Crime (1885); A Son of Hagar (1886); The Deemster (1887); The Bondman (1890); The Scapegoat (1890); Cap’n Davey’s Honeymoon (1893); The Manxman (1894); The Christian (1897); The Eternal City (1901).
A formar reporter for The New York Times, has been practicing Nichiren Buddhism for more than 25 years. He has written two books and numerous magazine articles on various topics. He lives in Sharon, Connecticut, with his wife and daughter. (The Buddha in Your Mirror, 2001)
Daisaku Ikeda leads Soka Gakkai and Soka Gakkai International. Soka Gakkai (lit., value creating society) is an organization of Buddhist lay believers dedicated to promoting peace through culture and education. Founded in Japan in 1930, it now embraces well over 8.27 million households in Japan and 1.7 million members in 190 countries and geographic areas (as of January 2007). In 1975, Soka Gakkai International (SGI) was established to coordinate the activities of various national and regional groups.
Daisaku Ikeda was born in Tokyo on January 2, 1928. He graduated from Fuji Junior College in Tokyo. In 1960, he was inaugurated as the third president of Soka Gakkai, which has grown remarkably under his leadership. He has been honorary president since 1979, and is concurrently president of Soka Gakkai International (SGI). He is the founder of Soka University, Soka University of America, Soka Women’s College, several elementary, junior and senior high schools, kindergartens, the Min-on Concert Association, the Fuji Art Museums and the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, Toda Institute for Global Peace & Policy Reseach and the Boston Reseach Center for the 21st Century. He has received the United Nations Peace Award as well as honorary doctorates and professorships from more than 200 of the world’s universities and academic institutions. A number of foreign governments also have acknowledged his work through awards and honorary titles. As he actively pursues his "citizen’s diplomacy", he has met with polotical and intellectual leaders from around the world to discuss the challenges facing humanity.
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He is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and has served as president of the Foundation since 1982. Under his leadership the Foundation has initiated many innovative and important projects for building peace, strengthening international law and abolishing nuclear weapons. He has lectured the world over and is a founder of Abolition 2000, a global network of more than 2,000 organizations and municipalities committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons. He has written and edited numerous studies and books about peace and nuclear weapons, including Nuclear Weapons and the World Court and Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age. (Choose Hope, 2002)
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He is vice general director of the SGI-USA, the lay organization of Nichiren Buddhists in the United States. He has written and lectured on NIchiren Buddhism for much of his 30 years of practice and holds a professorship within the SGI-USA s Study Department. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife. (The Buddha in Your Mirror, 2001)
He is a journalist, teacher, lecturer, pacifist and long-time peace activist. From 1969 to 1997, he wrote columns for The Washington Post. His topics ranged from politics, religion and sports to education, poverty and peacemaking. The Washingtonian magazine called him "the liberal conscience of The Washington Post." The Smithsonian magazine said he is "a man of profound spiritual awareness." He has written for The New Yorker, The Nation, the Progressive, Atlantic Monthly and The Readers Digest. Since 1999, he has written bi-weekly columns for The National Catholic Reporter. Since 1982, he has been teaching courses on nonviolence and the literature of peace. In the Fall semester of 2006, he taught at seven schools: Georgetown University Law Center, American University, the University of Maryland, the Washington Center for Internships, Wilson High School, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and School Without Walls. In 25 years, he has had more than 7,000 students in his classes. In 1985, he founded the Center for Teaching Peace, a nonprofit that helps schools begin or expand academic programs in peace studies. He is a regular speaker at U.S. Colleges, prep schools, high schools, peace conferences and gives an average of 50 lectures a year. The titles of his lectures range from "How To Be a Peacemaker" to "Nonviolence In a Time of War."
He is a vice general director of the SGI-USA and is currently editor-in-chief of the organization s weekly newspaper and monthly magazine. He has led the translation efforts for numerous books and articles on Nichiren Buddhism and has written and lectured extensively on the topic for much of the past 30 years. He is the former head of the SGI-USA s Study Department. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife. (The Buddha in Your Mirror, 2001)
Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is well known as the father of economic ecology and of agricultural modernization in India. As the president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Swaminatnan dedicated himself to eliminate nuclear weapons and to attain global peace. In 1999, the American magazine Time named Swaminathan one of the most influential Asians of the 20th century.
He is a distingished translator from the Chinese and Japanese. He is author or translator of many books published by Columbia University Press, most recently Ryòkan: Zen Monk - Poet of Japan, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, Selected Writings of Nichiren, Stories of Osaka Life, and Saigyò: Poems of a Mountain Home. (The Lotus Sutra, 1993)
Bryan Wilson, who studied for his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics, is Reader in Sociology at the University of Oxford. Since 1963, he has been a Fellow of All Souls. His career has been devoted to research into religion and its role in contemporary society, and he is much in demand as a visiting professor in universities throughout the world. He has written extensively on secularization, and he is an acknowledged authority on sectarian movements, concerning which he has acted as a consultant to government agencies and as an expert witness in courts of law in several countries. He has contributed articles to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, and the forthcoming Encyclopaedia of Religion. His books include Sects and Society; Religion in Secular Society; Religious Sects (which has been translated into five languages, including Japanese); Magic and the Millennium; and Religion in Sociological Perspective. (Human Values in a Changing World, 1984)
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