Buddhists, students, educators and activists rally to end nuclear weapons.

An estimated 140,000 people were killed – about 85,000 of them instantly – by the “Little Boy” bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Its capacity was 15 kilotons of TNT.

The U.S. detonated the “Castle Bravo” thermonuclear bomb in an atmospheric test just nine years later. Its TNT capacity was 15,000 kilotons. That’s 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.

There are more numbers that hint at the capacity for destruction by modern nuclear weapons – mushroom clouds 10, 20, 30 miles high; 280 nuclear weapons tested in the South Pacific between 1946 and 1996 – but the “Everything You Treasure: For a World Free From Nuclear Weapons” symposium at Middlebury Institute of International Studies focuses elsewhere. On the heart.

Akemi Bailey-Haynie is one of the panelists. She’s the women’s leader of sponsor SGI-USA (Soka Gakkai International), an organization of adherents to 13th-century Japanese Buddhist priest Nichiren. Her mother, 84-year-old Sachiko Takata-Bailey, is a survivor of Hiroshima, though she lost several family members. This year marks its 70th anniversary.

“Our own propensity to use violence; emotional, verbal, physical abuse; at work, dismissive or disrespectful attitudes; self-destructive behavior."

“The potential evil in nuclear weapons exists in our hearts,” Bailey-Haynie says. “Our own propensity to use violence; emotional, verbal, physical abuse; at work, dismissive or disrespectful attitudes; self-destructive behavior. Those same tendencies [are] the same source as the justification of nuclear weapons. It comes from the heart.”

She’s going to ask the audience to focus, almost meditatively, on the people and things they most treasure, and to imagine losing all of them. The symposium is a collaboration between SGI-USA, which has long opposed nuclear weapons, and ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), packaged with a traveling exhibit of info wall panels, and elucidated with discussions.

Except for a few alarms, attention to nuclear armageddon has receded.

“We walk around not having a clue,” Bailey-Haynie says. “There are other issues, poverty and global warming, creating strife. None of that would matter if you had a nuclear attack.”

She wrote a biography on her mother’s experience, Winter Always Turns to Spring. One insight mother shared with daughter, according to Bailey-Haynie: “Like when 9/11 happened. She saw the two buildings go down. She said, ‘Now visualize two cities going down.’”

EVERYTHING YOU TREASURE Noon doors open for the exhibit Sun-Tue; 2pm Sun opening ceremony and panel discussion. Middlebury Institute of International Studies, McCone Buildling and Irvine Auditorium, 499 Pierce St., Monterey. Free. 241-1359, david.burnett454@sbcglobal.net.