POWER OF MIND FOR WORLD PEACE

Inter-Faith Dialogue: The Religious Roots of Social Harmony
POWER OF MIND FOR WORLD PEACE

Venerable Dr.Ashin Ñyāņissara (D.Litt., Ph.D.)

Your Venerable,
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
Good morning,

Today, I'm very much pleased and honoured to be invited to this multilateral dialogues seminar between Islam and Buddhism organized by the International Islamic Culture and Relations Organization of Iran. I really appreciate the vision and efforts of the organizers in holding this important seminar with the objective of exchanging views and exploring joint scientific and religious cooperation opportunities between Islam and Buddhism for world peace. I'm very happy, indeed, to meet Muslim and Buddhist brothers from Iran, Thailand and Sri Lanka here who are dedicated to the strong aspiration of promoting world peace and stability. I'm confident that frequent meetings and discussions between the leaders of different religions not only bring about their mutual friendship and understanding but also play an important role in achieving their common goal of world peace and stability.

As you are all aware, the world today is facing with various conflicts and tragedies almost everywhere. At this critical juncture, we need to find out the cause of problem as a matter of priority so that we will reach the right solution to the problem. In other words, it is an urgent need for us to find ways in order that peace and stability prevail in the whole world.

The current situation of the world is a great challenge for political, spiritual and religious leaders. At this stage, it is my firm conviction that we all religious leaders, on our part, are responsible to help mitigate tensions and conflicts by disseminating the noble teachings of our respective religions to the people.

Every religion calls upon their followers to live a moral way of life and to attain mastery over the mind and to cultivate purity of heart. Whether it is the Bible or the Koran, or the Veda, or the Ti-Pitaka, all scriptures call for peace, amity and harmony. From Jina to Jesus, all great founders of all religions have emphasized it with virtues of tolerance and non-violence. But the world we live in is often driven by religious conflicts and sectarian strife, or even the war of brutal fighting. Because we usually attach importance only to the outer shell of religions and we overlook the universal truth or the inner core of religions. The result is a lack of love, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness and self-understanding in the mind.

When there is no peace within individual, then there cannot be peace in the world. Violence and peace never can coexist. The only way to achieve inner peace is insight meditation. This is non-sectarianism but scientific result-oriented technique of self-observation and self-realization of the truth.

Practice of Insight Meditation brings some unprecedented result -- that is -- experiential understanding of how mind and body are interacting.

Whenever negative emotion arises in human mind, such as craving, jealousy, hatred, anger, ignorance and so on, these negative spirits trigger unpleasant sensations within the body. On the other hand, sometimes, positive states arise in the mind such as tolerance, love, compassion, sympathetic joy and wisdom, etc. At that time, mental actions create happiness and pleasant sensations within the body.

Every moment to moment, the mind generates hate or love, compassion or cruelty, sympathy or jealousy, positivity or negativity, pleasantness or unpleasantness and selfishness or selflessness. So the entire mind is flooded with pleasant sensation or unpleasant sensation all the time. Insight meditation reveals that mental action precedes every physical and vocal action, determining whether that action would be wholesome or unwholesome. That is why we must find practical methods to create pure and peaceful mind.

The practice of insight meditation can be used for keeping the mind balanced and the health sound. By exercising insight meditation, everyone can remove mental disease of negativities and can achieve balance of mind. The balanced mind will make unbalanced world balanced, stable mind will make unstable world stable and peaceful mind will make the violent world peaceful.

The people of any faiths can practice such insight meditation without discrimination of caste, colour or creed. At the same time, they may follow their own religions and traditions in peace and harmony. There is no need for conversion of religion. A common source of tension and conflicts create negativity only. Therefore, conversion is only for changing negative mind to positive mind. As an observer, one will find a society to live in peace and harmony in its natural setting.

Today in the world, we see clearly various degrees of spiritual pollution like discontentment, dissatisfaction, disagreement, argument, no forgiveness, demonstration, strikes, violence, invasion, aggression, and tension, etc. These spiritual pollutions are always creating bad consequences to human societies and human environment.

This is the manifestation of unbalanced and untrained mind. They are motivated by negativities latent within human mind. We all understand that we need to protect our environment and society, stop polluting them and remove such mental pollutions.

People are searching for a place of peace and tranquility. However, they cannot find such a place of paradise in this materialistic world. So, let us change our mind from negativity to positivity. Removing such pollutants of negativities will promote peace and harmony among as well as balanced mind and healthy relationship between human societies and its natural environment. This is how Buddhism can foster environmental protection.

Now, we all religious leaders of different faiths from different countries gather here at this Interfaith Dialogue. The International Islamic Culture and Relations Organization of Iran, Buddhist leaders of Thailand and Buddhist leaders of Sri Lankain cooperation with the Sitagu International Buddhist Academy to find out the religious roots of social harmony and also to explore the development of teaching materials highlighting social harmony in Buddhist, Muslim and Christian faiths, as well as a grass-roots education program.

So, I'm confident that we should join hand in hand to abstain from conflicts and violence. We strongly condemn any forms of violence and conflicts. We also urge all political leaders, national leaders and spiritual leaders to join in this declaration. We all leaders must make a vow here and now. We declare that we unconditionally condemn such brutality, cruelty, and any violence. We must try to seek forbearance, forgiveness, selflessness and confession for the establishment of peace, harmony, stability, security and coexistence in the world.

Let us try to formulate a definition of religion. We should try to understand intrinsic meaning of religion. Then, there would be no greater misfortune for humanity than a failure to define religion as synonymous with peace.

Every religion has its own outer shell and inner core. The outer shell consists of rites, rituals, ceremonies, beliefs, myths, and doctrines. These outer shells differentiate one religion from another. However, there is an inner core which is common to all religions. This is the universal teaching of morality, charity, mental discipline, pure mind, pure love, compassion, goodwill, tolerance and insight truth. This is a common denominator that all religious leaders ought to emphatically teach their followers to practice. If proper importance is attached to the essence of all religions, the pure love, tolerance, forgiveness and compassion are shown for their surface level, then conflicts and violence could be minimized.

I would here like to share my understanding that Water has unchangeable characteristics of coolness to all, regardless of race, caste and religion. It helps one who drinks it free from thirst and makes one who touches it clean and fresh. Likewise, fire has a constant nature of producing light and heat. People produce drinking water in different shapes of bottles with different labels and lighters in different brand names. However, their nature is irreversible. My message here is that if we take a superficial look at things, we see them differently. If we use eyes of wisdom, we will see truth and reality.

All human beings should be free to profess and follow their faith. However, they must be careful not to neglect to practise the essence of their own respective religions, not to disturb others by their own religions, and not to condemn other faiths. In this diversity of faiths, when people of different views approached him, the Buddha said, “Let us set aside our differences, let us give attention to what we can agree on and let us put the common core which we agree upon into practice. Why quarrels?” Such wise counsel still retains its value until today.

The Buddha said, “Animosity can be eradicated by its opposite which is pure love, patience, forgiveness and so on. Animosity cannot be eradicated by animosity. Violence is ceased by non-violence. Violence is never ceased by violence. Hatred is never ceased by hatred. Through pure love only, they can be ceased. This is the eternal law.” This is the Dhamma. What is called Dhamma in the world has nothing to do with Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Islamism, or any other “ism”. Dhamma is a simple truth-

1. To understand the Truth is our common core.
2. To understand the Truth is our common goal;
3. To understand the Truth is our common solution to all problems;
4. To avoid extremism and aggressiveness and to follow the Middle Path are our CommonPlatform.

I really appreciate and congratulate the organizers of this event for their vision and efforts. Then, I heartily congratulate in deed all the religious leaders, spiritual leaders, national leaders and scholars who with morality, spirituality and determination work together for wider and deeper understanding of respective religious teachings and to give people the hope that religion will lead to a peaceful future in this world.

May all beings be free from aversion. May all beings be happy.

May Peace and Harmony prevail in every corner of the world.

Thank you.

Venerable Dr.Ashin Ñyāņissara (Ph.D., D.Litt.)
AggamahÈpaÓÉita, MahÈdhammakathika Bahujanahitadhara, AggamahÈ Saddhammajotikadhaja,
SÈsanadhaja-dhammÈcariya Chancellor of Sitag| International Buddhist Academies Principal of Sitag| International Buddhist Missionary Association Founder of the Board of Director of TheravÈda Dhamma Society of America  Honorary Professor of International TheravÈda Buddhist Missionary University Chairman of International Association of Theravada Buddhist Universities