Theme Speech at the Dharma Meeting celebrating
Chinese Lunar New Year and Birthday of Maitreya Buddha
5th February, 2000 -
Chinese New Year Day of the Year of Dragon
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In the twentieth century, human culture achieved unprecedented accomplishments in scientific technologies and in material advancements. Yet, at the same time, humanity also started to face numerous concerns, such as environmental contamination, ecological imbalance, moral deterioration, and nuclear threat etc. These illustrate mankind's needs for perfecting the thinking consciousness. Humanity needs to elevate the quality of the mind and the quality of life. A highly advanced technological civilization requires mankind to possess highly perfected spiritual qualities. Only then can scientific skills proliferate in better benefiting mankind. Only then can technology benefit humanity. Otherwise, high technologies are likely to be "misused" by mankind, or transformed into "fearsome" form of "power" entities. In the new century, the fortune of all mankind and the advancement of civilization require a peaceful world. In addition to the continued development of high technologies, it also requires mankind to elevate the quality of their lives, and improve and perfect humanity's spirits. Therefore, like all other religions in the world, Buddhism is duty-bound in shouldering the historical heavy responsibilities. |
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