LJM holds Global Teleconferencing on 'Awakening Action' in the World Unity Week
2020-06-29
2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, with June 20 to 27 designated as the World Unity Week, and an 8-day global conference online was designed for the duration to help promote positive development worldwide. Ling Jiou Mountain (LJM) adopted ‘Awakening Action’ for its banner theme to cover relevant topics of Chan meditation, the future University for Life & Peace, the Museum of World Religions, and world ecology in the hope of contributing to the world peace, the Earth's sustainability, and a better tomorrow for all.
Ling Jiou Mountain's Founding Abbot, Dharma Master Hsin Tao, has been sparing no efforts in promoting the ‘Loving the Earth, Loving Peace’ ideal, raising funds to create the future University for Life & Peace, as well as in the establishment of the ‘Global Family for Love & Peace’ (GFLP) as a fully registered NGO based in New York. These are examples of Dharma Master Hsin Tao's long-time dedication, and they nicely overlap with what the World Unity Week is all about. The UN's global conference online at a time of the pandemic goes a long way to manifest its significance.
GFLP is a tie-in partner of organizers for the World Unity Week, and LJM hosts the teleconferencing on ‘Awakening Action’ to heighten the visibility of Chan meditation and the future University for Life & Peace as a platform to attract future influencers who in turn will be instrumental in promoting the University for Life & Peace and the Museum of World Religions in the space of Chan meditation for tranquility and interfaith dialogue respectively.
Kicking off the global teleconference, host Arielle Sullivan pointed out that the 70-plus participating world representatives, all full of excitement and anticipation, would join sessions of their respective choice for brain-storming. A total of 25 session leaders were assigned to host 18 panels. The World Unity Week aims at working to make the world better by way of participation, interaction, as well as action in unity. Discussions have been heated across the board at all sessions. Consequently, the organizers have already extended invitations to everyone to join future online extensions of topics that interest them. It is hoped that such a continuation will help substantiate the ‘Loving the Earth, Loving Peace’ initiative on-goingly.
GFLP's Taiwan representative and host of the LJM panel, Tai Lee, welcomed participants from all over by highlighting how planet Earth confronts unprecedented crises of global warming in a battered ecology. In parallel, the future University for Life & Peace has much to offer to help resolve the issue. Lee further said that the LJM panel is organized by GFLP and the LJM Chan Space in New York. Following that, GFLP's New York representative Laurence Singer pointed out that GFLP belongs under the UN's Division of Public Information and plays an advisory role in helping to implement UN's missions in promoting international economic and social co-operation and development under the jurisdiction of the UN's Economic & Social Council.
He then moved on to highlight how Venerable Master Hsin Tao has been achieving goals one after another. Born in Myanmar in 1948 and war-orphaned at the age of 4, the Master became a child gorilla at 9 to survive. He was 15 when learning about stories of compassion of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara for the first time, but already pledging a vow to study Guanyin's Dharma and follow examples of blending religious and social activities by way of peace-centric dialogue, education, and services. After more than a decade of ascetic practice in solitude in run-down cemeteries and a two-year period of strict fasting, Dharma Master Hsin Tao established the LJM Monastery, which is a textbook example of ecological conservation for the original habitat nestled in the mountains overlooking coastal lines. Needless to say that it is ideal for meditation.
Dharma Master Hsin Tao attained the awakening of his inherent spirituality by virtue of Chan meditation and realized that humankind and all sentient beings are interconnected as one and are interdependent in a diversified symbiosis. The Master has committed himself long-term to the promotion of the ‘Loving the Earth, Loving Peace’ ideal. The footage of a video clip on the ‘One-Minute Peace Meditation’ was shared on the occasion to invite all present to join in a meditative practice. A New York-based practitioner Vivian said in her testimonial that meditation helped her pull through COVID-19 and sizeable protesting movements erupting across the US. Vivian said that hers was a chance encounter with meditation, and by getting her 8-year-old son Oliver to practice meditation as well, Vivian literally integrated meditation in her daily life.
The mother-&-son duo practiced the one-minute Peace-Meditation mornings and evenings every-day and they progressed steadily in reaching peace of mind. When riots mushroomed across the US, Vivian became frustrated but Oliver suggested that they go for meditation. The frustration was so overwhelming that meditation almost slid into oblivion for her. But her son's reminder brought them back to meditation and the resulting inner peace. The ending cut of the footage shows how close Vivian and Oliver are, with the boy loudly announcing into the camera that ‘Quiet is the most powerful strength of the universe’, and ‘the world is at peace when the heart is at peace.’
The University for Life & Peace in Yangon, Myanmar is an LJM fulfillment project to give physical embodiment for its long-term initiative of ‘Loving the Earth, Loving Peace’. The film with the title ‘The Power of Awakening’ made reference to how our present lifestyle as dictated by economy and technology has become perfectly capable of destroying the Earth, and the only salvation is through education. The film serves to jolt everyone in the audience to look at the crises in the eye to realize it was high time for action in sync.
The film also shows Professor Michael von Brueck of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), Germany, leader of the planning team of the University for Life & Peace, commenting on the future University's special features in spirituality and ecology with both linking closely to science and technology in such ways that they collectively form the basis of education to fundamentally change the way people think and live towards a lifestyle of reduced materialism with a strong desire for sustainability and spirituality. Professor von Brueck further emphasized that the future University for Life & Peace will stand out in particular for grooming future opinion leaders by offering academic training via progressive meditation in a balanced syllabus to ensure that graduates will return to lead the communities they come from. It is hoped that the future University will thus assume a role of critical magnitude in Myanmar, in Asia, and in the world at international bodies such as the United Nations and its agencies across the board.
As for the decision to have the campus of the future University for Life & Peace in Myanmar, Doreen of the Preparatory Office of the University Project pointed out that Myanmar is the birth country of Dharma Master Hsin Tao and it boasts of diversity in ethnicity and culture, therefore ideal to manifest the LJM vision of a diversified co-existence and an interdependent symbiosis to embody a universal reality. Meanwhile, the country just recently opened up to embrace internationality with an intact ecology, while still a traditionally Buddhist country where nature and frugality still abound. Together, these factors render Myanmar an ideal site selection for the future University to carry out plans and reach goals for the world to model after.
Dharma Master Hsin Tao instructed to offer the ‘Winter School Programs’ for pre-opening warmup pilot projects to gain traction in a systematic approach as the university project progresses. Winter School 2019 ran on the theme of moving ‘Addressing Deep Roots of the Ecological Crises : Towards New Strategies’ aimed at solidifying global consensus for the ‘Loving the Earth, Loving Peace’ ideal. Winter School 2020 focused on programs for ‘Healing the Earth -Transformative Action for Ecology and Technology’, in the hope of turning consensus into action to materialize the goal of loving the Earth by healing it one step at a time.
Dharma Master Hsin Tao, furthermore, launched the Museum of World Religions in 2001 to broadcast the philosophy of ‘Respect All Religions, Tolerate All Communities, and Love All Lives’. The Museum has been organizing sizeable activities for interfaith dialogues and exchanges, thus laying down a solid foundation for the future University for Life & Peace in line with the notion of a diversified symbiosis, racial harmony, and world peace. The decade 2001-2010 alone saw the staging of 16 interfaith dialogues between Muslims and Buddhists in 11 countries. The interfaith dialogue between Christians and Buddhists in 2017 was recognized as a major contribution to a better inter-religious understanding of harmony.
