Vatican City, April 2014 (VIS) –
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Fr. Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot,
M.C.C.J., respectively president and secretary of the Pontifical
Council for Interreligious Dialogue, have signed the message that
this dicastery sends each year to followers of Buddhism on the
festival of Vesakh.
Vesakh is the principal Buddhist holy
day that commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Gautama
Buddha. According to tradition, the historical Buddha was born,
achieved enlightenment and passed away during the full moon of the
month of May; therefore, the date on which Vesakh is celebrated
varies from year to year and from country to country. On those days,
Buddhists visit local temples to offer the monks food and to hear the
teachings of the Buddha, taking special care to meditate and to
observe the eight precepts of Buddhism.
This year's message is entitled:
“Buddhists and Christians: Together Fostering Fraternity”.
Extensive extracts from the text are published below:
“Our cordial greetings this year are
inspired by Pope Francis’ Message for the World Day of Peace 2014,
entitled Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace. There, Pope
Francis observes that 'fraternity is an essential human quality, for
we are relational beings. A lively awareness of our relatedness helps
us to look upon and to treat each person as a true sister or brother;
without fraternity it is impossible to build a just society and a
solid and lasting peace.
Your religious tradition inspires the
conviction that friendly relations, dialogue, the sharing of gifts,
and the respectful and harmonious exchange of views lead to attitudes
of kindness and love which in turn generate authentic and fraternal
relationships. You are also convinced that the root of all evil is
the ignorance and misunderstanding born of greed and hatred, which in
turn destroy the bonds of fraternity. Unfortunately, 'daily acts of
selfishness, which are at the root of so many wars and so much
injustice', prevent us from seeing others 'as beings made for
reciprocity, for communion and self-giving'.
As Buddhists and Christians, we live in
a world all too often torn apart by oppression, selfishness,
tribalism, ethnic rivalry, violence and religious fundamentalism, a
world where the 'other' is treated as an inferior, a non-person, or
someone to be feared and eliminated if possible. Yet, we are called,
in a spirit of cooperation with other pilgrims and with people of
good will, to respect and to defend our shared humanity in a variety
of socio-economic, political and religious contexts. Drawing upon our
different religious convictions, we are called especially to be
outspoken in denouncing all those social ills which damage
fraternity; to be healers who enable others to grow in selfless
generosity, and to be reconcilers who break down the walls of
division and foster genuine brotherhood between individuals and
groups in society.
Our world today is witnessing a growing
sense of our common humanity and a global quest for a more just,
peaceful and fraternal world. But the fulfilment of these hopes
depends on a recognition of universal values. We hope that
interreligious dialogue will contribute, in the recognition of the
fundamental principles of universal ethics, to fostering a renewed
and deepened sense of unity and fraternity among all the members of
the human family. Indeed, 'each one of us is called to be an artisan
of peace, by uniting and not dividing, by extinguishing hatred and
not holding on to it, by opening paths to dialogue and not by
constructing new walls! Let us dialogue and meet each other in order
to establish a culture of dialogue in the world, a culture of
encounter!'.
To build a world of fraternity, it is
vitally important that we join forces to educate people, particularly
the young, to seek fraternity, to live in fraternity and to dare to
build fraternity. We pray that your celebration of Vesakh will be an
occasion to rediscover and promote fraternity anew, especially in our
divided societies”.
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