How the Education of Love Fosters Everlasting Peace

Honorable Ambassadors, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: My warmest greetings to you all! It gives me great pleasure to have an opportunity to speak about how education in morality, ethics, causality and sacred wisdom can contribute to humankind at UNESCO headquarters. Today is indeed an extraordinary occasion.

I remember Msgr. Francesco Follo (Holy See Observer) and other UNESCO ambassadors have attributed the root cause of turmoil and conflict facing the world today to one factor – ignorance. Due to ignorance, people do not understand the true meaning of God’s universal love for all people, and do not understand that everything in the universe is originally one living entity. Such ignorance has given rise to confrontation and conflict among people. The escalation of confrontation and conflict has led to belligerence and war. Thus, all sages in the East and West had devoted their entire lives to social education, in order to guide people to attain true wisdom. If we study their teachings closely, we will discover that, without exception, all sages extend their innate divine love to all people, and teach everyone to love others as oneself.

Many people have asked me: What is religion? My answer is simply one word – “Love”. God loves all beings. At the core of all religious education is love. This divine love is innate in everyone. This is God’s will. If everyone loves one another, they will not harm others. Consequently, society will gradually become better. If everyone can learn to love all people like God does, then, all turmoil and conflict will be resolved. The world will become peaceful. Therefore, it is evident that the world is in urgent need of religious education.

Religious education consists of teachings in morality, ethics, causality and sacred wisdom. These four types of universal education are common to all religions. There are four stages in implementing religious education, namely, Faith, Understanding, Practice and Attainment. We must first have faith in religious education as a foundation for further studies and deeper understanding of the sacred teachings. Then, we must put what we learn into practice in our daily lives. Only by conscientiously following what we are taught, will we be able to correct ourselves and act as a role model to transform others. The realisation of a healthy body, peaceful mind, family happiness, career success, society stability will serve as proof that religious education can indeed bring about peace.

Only those who wholeheartedly express their love to all can educate others about love. How do we become a truly loving person? It must be through education. A person with a genuine loving heart that is pure and virtuous, will treat oneself and others as one. This universal love is unconditional, and is similar to the Buddhist saying “Unconditional love and compassion for all; Empathy for other people’s sufferings as one living entity.” This “oneness in love” is innate to all beings but people fail to express it as they are misguided. Only by learning sacred scriptures will we be able to understand the greatness of this divine love. And we also hope it will serve as guidance for our cultivation. Truly enlightened sages will not only have their love pervading the whole universe and kindness filling the whole world but they will also inspire others to break away from delusion and attain awakening. This is the education of sacred wisdom.

To understand “loving all as one”, one needs to begin with the first of the Five Moralities: “There is love between parents and child”. Then, this concept is further developed and reinforced through education in ethics and causality. The love between parents and children is not something invented by people. It is innate to our self-nature. To extend the love between parent-and-child to love others is to manifest “benevolence”. If we consider what we wish for ourselves, and extending from oneself to other people, we would understand what others wish for too. Take this understanding further, naturally, you will love all people indiscriminately. This love flows from our true heart. It is referred to as “filial piety” in Confucianism; as “great compassion” in Buddhism; and as “God’s love” in the Bible (Romans 5:5). Furthermore, the Bible says clearly, “God is love.” (John 4:8). The Buddhist sutras also state unequivocally, “Every being was originally a Buddha.”

Those who love others will know how to love themselves and vice versa. In Confucianism, such state of attainment is described as “Heaven and humans are unified as one.” In Buddhism, it is referred to as “Every existence and phenomenon (all Dharma) does not depart from self-nature.” The Bible teaches us: “Bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” (Ephesians 1:10). Hence, a truly awakened person knows how to love oneself as well as others. Benefitting oneself and others to utter perfection is the utter perfection of religious education.

Chinese ancients have said, “When the self is cultivated, then the family can be properly managed. When all families are properly managed, the country is then well governed. When all countries are well governed, then peace will be enjoyed throughout the world.” This is a progressive process starting from loving oneself to extending universal love to all. Hence, everything begins with self-cultivation. We need to follow the four stages of Faith, Understanding, Practice and Attainment to gradually implement the education in morality, ethics, and causality and sacred wisdom.

Hence, the first step is to instil confidence in people. How do we do that? We need to create a role model for everyone to see and believe. For this purpose, we conducted a three-year pilot program in my hometown (Tangchi) of 48,000 people in 2005. We built an education center there to promote education in morality, ethics, causality and sacred wisdom. First, we needed to train teachers. Out of over three hundred applicants, we selected thirty-seven qualified teachers who shared the same values as us. We requested the teachers to act as role models to practice the teachings of the four types of universal education before they taught others, as we believe leading by example is more important than teaching by words. After two months of learning, these teachers were able to truly practice the sages’ teachings in daily lives. Then, we let them pay home visits to the town residents to demonstrate the positive impact of such education and encourage them to attend classes at the education center. After several months of educating the residents, it brought about significant changes in the social ethos of this small town. People’s innate love was awakened: crime rates and divorce rates decreased sharply; the town went from being messy to become clean and tidy; the relationships of families and neighbors changed from being tense to harmonious; people became more honest with much less occurrence of theft in shops and taxi drivers would return valuables left behind by passengers. We witnessed that “a harmonious and courteous society” was in the making as if goodness and simplicity of an ancient Chinese society had been restored. In 2006, an eight-hour presentation and a three-day exhibition were presented at the main hall of UNESCO headquarters in Paris to illustrate the success of the pilot program in Tangchi, which had earned wide support and endorsement from the participants.

In the abovementioned experiment, the teachers and residents had to first develop their confidence in universal education. The next step was to study and understand the underlying teachings. Then, they put what they had learnt into practice. Lastly, the change in the town’s social ethos served as testament that such education could indeed bring about stability to society. Based on the success of the experiment in Tangchi, I would urge every religion to establish “a model city of faith” in which to demonstrate their teaching, studying and practicing of their faith as part of daily life, and provide evidence to people across the globe to see the positive effects of education of love for themselves. This will be a great contribution to social harmony. With more models in place, more and more people will become awakened. Only by restoring religion as an education, can world peace and stability be restored. The ideal of everlasting world peace would then be realizable in the not-too-distant future. We hope we all can do our part and work closely together to create a bright future for humankind.

Finally, I wish everyone happiness and auspiciousness! May the world be blessed with sustaining peace, stability, and universal harmony! Thank you.