သီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ ေဂ်႐ုစလင္ မိန္႔ခြန္း ***********
Your Venerable
Your Excellency Mr. President / Prime Minister of Israel
Excellencies
Dhamma Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good morning,
It gives me great pleasure to be invited to this Summit Meeting of
Israel-Asia Faith Leadership organized by Israel's Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and the American Jewish Committee in collaboration with World
Council of Religious Leaders with the noble theme to create better
understanding and relationship between religious, intellectual and
political leaders of Israel and Asia. I sincerely believe that frequent
meetings of this kind would be highly conducive to the strengthening of
world peace and stability.
The world today is full of chaos,
full of crimes, full of miseries, full of evils, and full of violence.
The nations are arming themselves to their teeth. Arm races among great
countries are most frightening and the weapons they are using are
highly destructive that people are living insecure lives.
The
historic pages of world history have been marred by many atrocities and
cruel wars, the root cause of which is evil mind that generates
unpleasant situations and miserable events. The starting point of
miserable events is selfish thought of egocentric human beings. The
source of competition and conflict is the thought of jealousy or
unhappiness over other's progress and success.
Today, I'm very much
pleased to share one of the salient teachings of the Buddha over the
power of mind, which is largely instrumental in establishing individual
peace. This plays a very powerful stepping stone to to the promotion of
world peace and stability.
We, human beings, are mysterious beings
with inconceivable potentialities. Noble characteristics and criminal
tendencies are latent within us. These may rise up to the surface of our
lives at any time unexpectedly without using strength and power. These
potentialities or tendencies are dormant within us in various degrees.
Within the powerful complex human's mind, we find a treasure vault of
virtues and wisdom, then we find a rubbish heap of wickedness and
corruption. By developing these respective characteristics, we may
become either a blessing or a curse to humanity. We human beings, are
consisted of both mind and matter. One of the Buddha's messages in
(Manopubbangama Dhamma)- mind is forerunner, mind is chief in life, mind
is the master of man, mind moulds the human life, mind makes happiness
and suffering, mind creates beauty and ugliness. Therefore, human beings
are architects of their own lives. Thus, in order to create our
beautiful life or beautiful world or peaceful world, we must mould our
mind to be beautiful and peaceful first.
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
could not 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,
positive states sometimes arise in the mind such as tolerance, love,
compassion, sympathetic joy and wisdom. 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 balanced mind and sound health. 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.
People of any faiths can
practice such insight meditation without discrimination of caste, colour
and 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 conflict 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, 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, removing such mental pollutions.
People are searching for a
place of peace and tranquility. However, it can not be found in this
materialistic world. So, let us change our mind from negativity to
positivity. Removing such pollutants of negativities while seeking
forbearance and selflessness promotes peace and harmony among human
society as well as balanced mind and healthy relationship between human
society and its natural environment. This is what all human beings have
to practice for individual and world peace.
May all beings be free from aversion. May all beings be happy.
May Peace and Harmony prevail in every corner of the world.
Venerable Dr. Ashin Nyanissara (D.Litt., Ph.D.)
Chancellor of Sitagu International Buddhist Academy
Honorary Professor of International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University
Chairman of International Association of Theravada Buddhist Universities
Chairman of the board of director of Theravada Dhamma Society of America
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