Most Ven. Buddhist leaders and distinguish delegates,Ladies and gentlemen,
First of all I would like to pay my gratitude to the organizing committee for inviting me for the 12 th Anniversary celebration of UN day of Vesak 2015.
We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to government of Thailand and this Royal Highness as well as the most venerable professor Brahma Pundit, the rector of maha Chcelalankoon University for the gracious support may have provided to make this event a success.
Furthemore I wish to convey the greetings and Best Wishes of the president and prime Minister of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Srilanka
As Thailand ,Sri lanka also follows Theravada Buddhism and the Vesak day which celebrating the Birth Enlightment and Passing Away of Lord Buddha is a noble day to our Sri Lankan Buddhists.
As we all know, the day of Vesak has been recognized by the United Nations in adopting a resolution at the General Assembly in 1999 and the first event was celebrated at the United Nations Head quarters in 2001. It is a great achievement for the Buddists. At this point I would like to remember with due respect and great honour , Late MR Lakshman Kadiragamar, Then Foreign Minister of Sri lanka who proposed the noble idea to the UN.
The theme for the 2015 celebration is “Buddhism and World Crisis” which is very timely topic for the world today as we are suffering due to various crisis ,social conflicts, environmental degration, education crisis and economic crisis etc. Such crises created unprecedental decline in all activities of the world. many govts try to respond with various supportive measures and solutions to minimize the problems but the crisis continued to spread .
In this context ,as Buddhist we all can look from the point of view of Buddhist philosophy . Buddhism is suggesting that we should look far more deeply into the nature of our own minds and our own attachments because whenever you get attached to anything, whenever you cling to anything, all of that is within the realm of the conventional. if you are no longer attached to yourself, you can afford to be more interested in other people.
In Buddhism , limited wisdom, merely understanding the self, is not enough. Enlightenment implies the arising of selfless compassion ,such a perspective would drastically reshape our views of others, society and the world.
Therefore ,we Could see Buddha Dhamma as a guide to us for living peaceful as individuals and as societies ‘
So I hope we can find out the better solutions and ways from Buddha Dhamma to be used as guidelines for determining solutions for universal problems ,we faced today.
I would like to thank all presenters who enlightened us with great ideas and views and thank again to the organizing committee for their wonderful arrangements for this workshop.
Thank you.
