His Holiness Departs Tokyo and Arrives at Kanazawa

November 8th 2012

Kanazawa, Japan, 8 November 2012 – After the past two days of dialogue with Japanese scientists held at the landmark Hotel Okura in central Tokyo, His Holiness had a full morning of audiences and interviews, meeting a number of old and new friends, in his hotel room.

In accepting an invitation to visit a University in Japan next year, His Holiness remarked on the joy and satisfaction he experiences when meeting with students from schools and universities. They were the generation that would shape the future of the world. In his advice to them, His Holiness said, “Irrespective of whether we are believers or non-believers, we all want peace of mind which is actually within ourselves to develop. The ultimate source of our peaceful mind comes from our inner strength, not money or power. We need to pay more attention about these inner values.”

In response to a question from Tokyo MX Television about the outcome of the past two days of dialogue with Japanese scientists, His Holiness said he felt it was a good beginning and he looked forward to the next dialogue meeting where he hoped to introduce and involve the Mind & Life Institute.

Japan was traditionally a Buddhist country and he advised the Japanese Buddhists that it was insufficient to only recite the Heart Sutra and participate in rituals. It was more important to study Buddhism, which could be divided into three categories – Buddhist religion, Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist science.

Commenting on one of the essences of Buddhist practice His Holiness said, “We must use human intelligence to its maximum and then transform our negative emotions into positive emotions.”

Answering a question on the message of secular ethics in his most recent book, Beyond Religion, which has just been translated into Japanese, His Holiness said, “There are seven billion human beings in this world. In reality, a major portion do not have much interest in religion. Even people who claimed to be religious sometimes did not care about their wrongdoing – corruption, scandals and so forth. This was due to their lack of conviction or basic human values, which are essentially common to all major religious traditions, whether theistic or non-theistic. Therefore, we have to promote these secular ethics, which are based on our common experience backed by the latest scientific findings.”

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After a rather short flight from sunny Tokyo, the airplane descended through the dark clouds and landed at Komatsu Airport on the east side of Honshu, the main island. His Holiness drove through a light drizzle on his way to Kanazawa. On arrival at Busshokai Center, he was greeted by young and old members of the Center. His Holiness will spend the next two days here in Kanazawa taking a short break.

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