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The Need for Tolerance Today

‘If a person foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my boundless love. The more evil that comes from him the more good will go from me. I will always give off only the fragrance of goodness.’
(Buddha)

PEOPLE today are restless, weary, filled with fear and discontentment. They are intoxicated with the desire to gain fame, wealth and power. They crave for gratification of the senses. People are passing their days in fear, suspicion and insecurity. In this time of turmoil and crisis, it becomes difficult for people to coexist peacefully with their fellow beings. There is therefore, a great need for tolerance and understanding in the world so that peaceful co-existence among the people of the world can be possible.

The world has bled and suffered from the disease of dogmatism and of intolerance. The soil of many countries today is soaked with the blood spilled on the altar of various political struggles, as the skies of earlier millennia were covered with the smoke of burning martyrs of various faiths. Whether in religion or politics people have been conscious of a mission to achieve power and have been aggressive towards other ways of life. Indeed, the intolerance of the crusading spirit has spoiled the records of religions.

Let us look back at the past century of highly publicized ‘Progress’—a century of gadgets and inventions. The array of new scientific and technical inventions is dazzling—telephones, electric motors, aeroplanes, radios, television, computers, space ships, satellites and electronic devices. Yet, in the same century the children of the earth who have developed all these inventions as the ultimate in progress, were the same people who butchered millions of others with bayonets or bullets or bombs. Amidst all the great ‘progress’, where did the spirit of tolerance stand? Where is the love that many religions preach?

Today people are interested in exploring outer space. But they are totally unable to live as neighbours in peace and harmony on the earth. The fear that humans will eventually desecrate the moon and other planets is today very real.

For the sake of material gain, modern people violate nature. Their mental activities are so preoccupied with satisfying their pleasure that they are unable to focus on or even understand the purpose of life. This unnatural behaviour of present human beings is the result of their wrong conception of human life and its ultimate aim. We create more the frustration, fear, insecurity, intolerance and violence.

In fact, today intolerance is still practised in the name of religion. People merely talk of religion and promise to provide short cuts to paradise, they are not interested in practising it. If Christians live by the Sermon on the Mount, if Buddhists follow the Noble Eightfold Path, if Muslims really follow the concept of Brotherhood and if the Hindus shape their life in oneness, definitely there will be peace and harmony in this world. In spite of these invaluable Teachings of the great religious teachers, people have still not realised the value of tolerance. The intolerance that is practised in the name of religion is most disgraceful and deplorable.

The Buddha’s advice is ‘Ah, happily do we live without hate amongst the hateful; amidst hateful men we dwell unhating. Ah, happily do we live in good health amongst the ailing; amidst ailing men we dwell in good health. Ah, happily do we live without yearning (for sensual pleasures) amongst those who yearn (for them); amidst those who yearn (for them) we dwell without yearning.’ (DHAMMAPADA 197, 200)

<<Назад Буддийское отношение к животным

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Редакция перевода от 01.07.2015 19:55