World Religions Conference November 1957

Author(s): Sushil Muni
Publisher: Achal Singh Seth

Page 69

I Mie San delegate from Japan
worth in your own life and conduct, they are not worth the name. Whatever may be our religion and whatever our social order, we must bid adieu to the use or rather misuse of the brute force and wrong use of knowledge for without this we cannot do anything real.
The trouble with all of us is that we cannot but see and detect the mole in others but cannot see the beam in our own eyes. We must come to know our own faults and weaknesses and try to weed them out one by one. Without self-reformation we cannot reform others. The past had had its errors and paid for the same and we must forgive and forget that. The present lies with us and we ought not to taint it by the bygone sins of others, but try to keep it virgin chaste for chastity is life and the source of peace.
"Life" lies in the protection of the living and its efflorescence is Love-Love that knows no want and is ever ready to relinquish what it has. Thus 'Life' depends on 'Love'-not on self-love but on love that is selfless and ever willing to sacrifice its own self for the preservation of others. We today need both in polity and religion, persons who give precedence to "Service" before "Self", --self sacrifice for the rights of others. This gives insight into the oneness of being and helps to secure everlasting peace. But this comes only by practice and not by loud talks alone. Religion lives by life and life by religion and the two cannot be seperated from each other, for religion translated into action is life.
Mr. I Mie San, Representative from Japan
I thank you with all my heart for the kind opportunity afforded to me to address this august assembly. Everywhere in the world today, we hear and talk of peace, but at the same time we find tremendous efforts being made in the reverse direction. On the one hand, we find Mankind scaling new heights of civilisation, and on the other, we find it slipping back into the law of the jungle. We all claims to be civilized beings, conforming to the code of civilised behaviour, and yet we are suspicious of each other. We do not and cannot trust our next door neighbour. Our homes, our villages, our cities are strife-torn; between the administrator and the administrated, employer and employee, the entire atmosphere was clouded by hatred and violence. Only religion can save humanity from the slough of despond into which it has fallen.
The invention of weapons of death and destruction is nothing new, there have been arms of various description from the very beginning. Atom Bomb seemed to be a miracle to us a few years ago. Today it is a terrible reality. We Japanese saw this dread weapon
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