Speech at the 8th World Assembly of WCRP by Ven. Xue Cheng（2006）

Share religious wisdom and build peace and security together By Rev.XueCheng

Deputy Secretary-General of CCRP, Vice President and Secretary-General of the China Buddhist Association

Respected Mr. Chairman,
Respected religious leaders,

In the spirit of fraternity, mercy and courage, the great sages of religious circles from all over the world created the World Conference of Religions and Peace (WCRP), lighting up the broad road of human peace with religious wisdom. As I get the honor to discuss this theme, which is of great realistic significance and eternal value to the humankind, with respected religious leaders present today, I would like to extend my heartfelt admiration to those great sages who created the WCRP and my highest esteem to those WCRP members who dedicated themselves into the cause of human peace for the past decades. And, as a member of CCRP, a successor engaging in the cause of human peace, I, as well as everyone of CCRP delegation, feel deeply about our sacred mission and heavy responsibility. Hereon, on behalf of CCRP and China Buddhist Association, I extend my heartfelt thanks to WCRP/Japan who hosts this General Assembly for their elaborate organization and thoughtful arrangement, and wish the assembly a complete success!

The topic of my speech today is Share religious wisdom and builds peace and security together.

As we all know, beyond the main trend of peace and development nowadays, there is still disharmony in the world, conflict in the crowds and unease in the heart. The fundamental reason of that lies in the unjust international political and economic order dominantly established by developed countries after World War II, which makes most developing countries could not safeguard their legitimate interests and reasonable requirements, and relevantly get oppressed and exploited. Meanwhile, the terrorism, separatism and extremism become increasingly intense and are related to religion or under the banner of religion in various degrees.

Peace and security are eternal hopes of the human, and harmony and concord are ideal states that human pursue. All the great religions in the world have the discipline that enlightens people to treat each other in equality and harmony, and to discard violence and show mercy and fraternity. So, all the word and deeds that agitate cultural discrimination and opposition of civilization, use violence, incite racial vendetta and religious conflicts, and lead ethnic strife, split of a nation and confrontation of ideology are betrayal of religious wisdom and challenges to the building of peace.

Nowadays, to our comfort, there are more and more figures from religious circles and with great insights have realized the importance of religious harmony to the harmony of the society and the world. To advocate multi-culture and to develop peace education has been spontaneous action of people.

In 1994, with missions of “friendship, peace, development and cooperation”, representatives from Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholic and the Protestant Churches in China formed the China Committee on Religion and Peace (CCRP). In August 1995, CCRP held a symposium to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the victory of the world anti-fascist war and issued Peace statement of Chinese Religious Circles which called for believers from all religions to work together in preservation of peace and opposition of war, to hold a joint prayer for world peace carried out concurrently by China’s various religions respectively , and to found “the Week of Prayer for World Peace”. After the meeting, the religious organizations of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholic and the Protestant Churches from thirty provinces and the five ethnic autonomous regions in China answered the call of CCRP actively and organized religious rites praying for world peace concurrently with hundreds and thousands of religious believers' participation. There is no doubt that through various news medias in China, these activities made a great and deep effect to peace education. From then on, there have been eleven years for Chinese religious believers persisting the “the Week of Prayer for World Peace” activity. In 2005, hosted by CCRP, China Buddhist Association and China Taoist Association invited religious figures of Buddhism and Taoism circles from HongKong, Macao, and Taiwan region participating the Grand Summons Ceremony praying for world peace, extending the scale and influence of the activity. Those series of activities hosted by CCRP promoted the unity of Chinese religious circle greatly and the pursuit of Chinese believers to civilization, harmony and peace.

The first World Buddhist Forum was successfully convened in China this April. Its theme, "Harmonious World, begins in the Heart", which met with general approval by representatives from various countries, revealed one of the simplest, yet the most profound truth., that is, the inner peace is our start point to reach the goal of building a harmonious world. External peace can not exist without inner peace. In China today, our achievements on promoting social harmony, ethnic unity and religious peaceful co-existence are benefiting from China's various religions' fine relations based on equality, mutual assistance and respect, sharing and carrying forward religious wisdom and making joint efforts to help the society and benefit the people. As far as I know, China's Taoist community is planning to hold the International Forum on the DaoDeJing themed "Constructing a harmonious world through the Dao" in China next year. China's Christian (including Catholic and Protestant Churches) and Islamic communities are also preparing to share with the world an "Oriental Mode" of achieving harmonious co-existence between Christianity and Islam.

Today, WCRP Assembly VIII is convening here focusing on how we should confront violence and share security, which reflects the consensus of various religions on our close attention and clear understanding of the destiny of human beings nowadays and untiring efforts for multi-civilization harmony and world peace. Therefore, this Assembly will be of profound significance and of ever lasting influence in the cause of world peace.

We believe that human beings' mutual affinity and world peace and security will be finally achieved as long as we various religions in world commit ourselves together to sharing religious wisdoms, bearing senses of harmony and goodness in mind always, playing exemplary roles in practicing the teaching of harmony and compassion.

Thank you.