Venerable Master Chin Kung presented a keynote address in Lampeter, UK, 2017
Distinguished guests, dear teachers and students, ladies and gentlemen: Good evening!
This is our very first Friendship Dinner hosted by the Academy of Sinology in Lampeter. We warmly welcome you all here! Lampeter is a place of peace and serenity. Since we arrived, we noticed people here are very friendly and welcoming to all visitors including us. This has brought warmth to us, and made Lampeter feel like our home. We are very grateful for your friendship indeed!
The Academy of Sinology started its first program on the Lampeter campus in March this year. In the past few months, I believe that people must have been very curious about seeing so many new faces around town. Therefore, I would like to talk about why we launched the Academy of Sinology in Lampeter, and why we are here. In simple terms, we have come here for two reasons: first is to revitalize the education of Sinology, and second, is to promote the interfaith harmony initiative with the University.
Before talking about the two reasons, please allow me to share with you a story, which is also the origin of the idea of “Friendship Dinner”. In the late 1990’s, I lived in Singapore for three and a half years. While I was in Singapore, I tried to unite the nine different religions. We often met together, exchanged ideas, and attended important activities of one another. We developed deep mutual respect, care, and cooperation. We became one family that cared for one another. This has played a vital role in promoting social stability in Singapore. The Singaporean government was very pleased with such development and expressed their great appreciation to us.
Mr. Philip Ruddock, the minister of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs of Australia at that point of time, came to know about this initiative. He invited me to Australia to help the government unite different ethnicities and faiths. As a result of this invitation, I set up the Pure Land Learning College in Toowoomba of Australia. When the College was first established in 2002, we organized a dinner party, and invited over 100 of our neighbors living nearby to simply explain why we were there, which was to unite people with different cultures and religions. At that dinner, apart from the free buffet dinner, we also prepared entertainment. We all had a fantastic time together. Our neighbors were so pleased with the event that they asked me, ‘can we hold more events like this in the future?’ This prompted us to hold Friendship Dinner every Saturday in Toowoomba ever since.
We have now been holding Friendship Dinners every Saturday for the past 15 years, and this has become a great opportunity for people to get together, to communicate, to talk, to laugh and to build friendship. With this as a foundation, we have been making efforts to reach out to different groups, and groups of different faiths, in order to achieve mutual understanding and cooperation with one another. Under the leadership of the Mayor of Toowoomba, the city has now become a model city of multi-cultural harmony. In March this year, we invited the UNESCO ambassadors of 9 different countries to visit Toowoomba City. The ambassadors expressed great appreciation and praise for Toowoomba’s achievement. They said: We are very impressed that the communities with a variety of multicultural backgrounds can live so successfully in harmony in Toowoomba. We see everyone always has a smiling face in this city. You have done in a short time what we’ve been talking about for many years. You are the example of what we preached.
In China, our ancient ancestors covering many thousands of years have left us with their collected wisdom, theory, methods, and experiences in the form of great texts to help us cultivate ourselves, regulate the family, govern the state and achieve peace and harmony for the world. Such treasures of wisdom belong to all humanity of the world, and they are perfectly preserved in “the Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literatures of China”. Over time, I purchased 112 sets of the Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literatures of China”, and 330 sets of “the Selections from the Four Branches of Literatures of China”, and donated them to the university libraries and national libraries around the world, with the intention to prevent the potential loss of such cultural treasures due to natural disasters.
However, this “Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literatures of China” is written in classical Chinese, and the majority of Chinese people nowadays cannot read classical Chinese. If no one can read it, even if “the Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literatures of China” is well preserved, it would be nothing more than a pile of useless paper, producing no benefits to society. As such, I am hoping to nurture a group of young teachers, who will be able to comprehend, translate, inform, educate and practice what they learn from the “Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literatures of China”, so that they can pass the wisdom and experiences of ancient sages on to the future generations. However, the opportunity had not presented itself, until last year, I had the opportunity to meet with Professor Hughes, the Vice-Chancellor of UWTSD in London, and expressed my deep concern about the potential extinction of Sinology. Professor Hughes was keen to offer a solution. He said that he was willing to jointly establish the Academy of Sinology with me, to train and cultivate teachers to study, preserve and promote Sinology. We had a wonderful and amiable conversation. After a year of discussion, we signed the agreement last year and the Academy was officially established. The goal of the Academy of Sinology is to pass on this wonderful heritage that we have inherited from our ancestors in order to benefit all the societies, and to bring blessings to our descendants for many years to come. This is the first reason why we are here.
Secondly, it is the state of the world at the moment. Currently, the world is in turmoil. How can we resolve conflicts and promote world peace and harmony? We cannot find a better solution than building interfaith harmony amongst different communities. Over the past two decades, we have achieved unification of different faiths in Singapore and Toowoomba in Australia which hugely benefited the local communities. Meanwhile, we were able to bring religious leaders of the two cities to UNESCO headquarters to report the interfaith harmony that they have achieved, and prayed for world peace together. This has gained the recognition of the UNESCO ambassadors. Here in Lampeter, we would like to champion interfaith harmony as well.
This is very much in line with the original founding principal of Saint David’s College, which was to enhance the education of a broader range and type of clergymen. Indeed, Saint David’s College has trained and cultivated many outstanding missionaries over the past few centuries. The college of Theology on this campus used to enjoy great prosperity and was regarded as one the best Theology colleges in the United Kingdom. They made a tremendous contribution to religious education. We wish to resume such wonderful heritage, and to allow many faiths to revive their religious education on this holy land of Wales. If the circumstances permit, we would like to establish an Academy of Religion to revive the glory that Saint David’s College used to enjoy. This is the second reason why we are here.
These two reasons together explain why we are here. It is out of our good and honest intention to want to do what we can, to help the world bring back peace and harmony. And such intention is induced by your kindness. The Deputy Vice Chancellor of Oxford University once came here to visit me. He asked me why I chose to collaborate with this University in Lampeter. I told him that it is God’s grace. It is indeed the case. I truly believe that our meeting today is also God’s grace. So let’s express our gratitude to God, to ancestors, and to all the people who made our meeting today in Lampeter possible. I wish all of you peace, happiness, great wisdom and longevity! Thank you very much.