The Oneness of Mentor and Disciple

“A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation, and further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.” With this as his main theme, Daisaku Ikeda wrote his twelve-volume account of Josei Toda’s life and the phenomenal growth of the Soka Gakkai in postwar Japan. This work paints a fascinating and empowering story of the far-reaching effects of one person’s inner determination. Josei Toda’s awakening and transformation, his efforts to teach others the unlimited power of faith, his dedication in leading thousands out of misery and poverty, the efforts of his devoted disciple Shin’ichi Yamamoto—within these stories we find the keys for building lives of genuine happiness. (Please return here each Wednesday for a new passage.)

Excerpts from Volume 10, Determination Chapter, p. 1366

In the 1956 campaign, Josei Toda sent to various parts of the country many of his disciples whom he had personally trained for a long time. For him this was the first opportunity to see whether they took the mentor-disciple relationship merely in the general sense of the word or considered it personally as the oneness of mentor and disciple. Is the mentor's intention being
truly realized or not? This, one can easily judge from the way in which the disciple acts. It is vital that the mentor's intention should pulse in the disciple's life and that he act spontaneously, for only then is the mentor-disciple bond honed to that point where mentor and disciple are truly one. The lifeblood which flows between mentor and disciple-this is the fundamental force which binds the two. In order to attain this state, the disciple must first grasp the source from which the mentor's innermost intention derives, and then make it his own. This is a difficult process which can only be accomplished through strong faith. The source for the power of both mentor and disciple is, needless to say, none other than the Gohonzon.

Shin'ichi Yamamoto, for one, squarely faced the difficult task and accomplished it. For months preceding the Osaka campaign he had continuously taxed his life with incredible effort until he was finally able to manifest the oneness of mentor and disciple in his own actions. Many disciples shy away from such difficulty. They do not in any way intend to go against the mentor's intention, but the fact is that they only have a one-sided understanding of it. For this reason, when confronted with severe realities some of them panic and then content themselves by mechanically forcing their mentor's intention upon other members without first grasping it themselves. Others, although mindful of their mentor's intention, decide that they are faced with a special case, and impatiently try to conform to it by utilizing shallow wisdom which does not derive from faith. All such disciples are totally unaware that they are disrupting the flow of the lifeblood between mentor and disciple by their own actions.' Only when the result of the disciple's serious concern coincides with the mentor's thought does the lifeblood of faith begin to flow in powerful torrents. It is quite easy for a disciple merely to mechanically follow the mentor's intention, but rarely does a disciple attain that state of mind in which he penetrates the source of the mentor's intention and shares that source. However, the oneness of mentor and disciple totally depends on the accomplishment of this difficult process.