From Vietnamese Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh

What follows is part of a Dharma Talk Thay gave on October 12th, 2006, in Plum Village reporting on his presentation to UNESCO:

“This year UNESCO organized a special event for the 2550th Anniversary of the Buddha with the coordination of the Delegation of Thailand to UNESCO; Pure Land Learning College, Australia; World Fellowship of Buddhists; and World Buddhist University. The Vietnamese Ambassador to UNESCO came to Plum Village and invited me to share in this celebration.
So on October 7th, I made three proposals and said I would support UNESCO in accomplishing them. Buddhism is about awakening. We find ourselves in a dangerous situation and we need a collective awakening. UNESCO can help accelerate this. Violence, war and global warming must be dealt with. If we are too busy caring for the small problems of daily life, we don’t have time to sit down together and change the situation. The U.N. has declared the first decade of the new millenium to be an International Decade of Peace and Nonviolence for the children of the World. We are in 2006 and not much has been done. In 1999, UNESCO issued the Manifesto 2000 with six points that are nearly identical to the Five Mindfulness Trainings in Buddhism. Over 75 million people have signed it, but signatures are not important if people do not practice the points in their daily lives.

So the first proposal I offered was that UNESCO set up an institue of Peace and Nonviolence. There are several universities of peace, but they focus more on research rather than practice. We can invite school teachers, parents, community and political leaders, etc. to come and learn tools to practice in a nonviolent way. UNESCO can propose who will participate and our community is happy to provide Dharma Teachers to train them, at no cost. We also have a manual, Creating True Peace, that I was requested to write in preparation for the decade of Peace and Nonviolence, by then Director-General of UNESCO, Frederico Mayor. This could be used in the Institute of Peace and Nonviolence. I suggested that the UNESCO director and permanent delegates and their children also participate in the learning and practice at the institute. In this way, they would not only call for action, but they would be the action themselves. I told the audience that we have offered this kind of training to police officers, prison guards, congress members, so why not to UNESCO ambassadors, too? Peace always begins with yourself. In other words UNESCO must become a Sangha also-- a community that practices peace together-- not just discussing issues and making decisions. Then they can inspire others to do the same.

The second proposal I made was that UNESCO host a summit meeting of Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders to heal the conflict in the Middle East. We are killing in the name of God, democracy, freedom and civilization. If I had to choose between Buddhism and peace, I would choose peace. Because if I were to choose Buddhism and war, this would destroy Buddhism. You can’t kill in the name of Buddha. In the 11th century, Buddhism was persecuted in India. Yet, there was no violent resistance of Buddhists there. We must uproot wrong perceptions in order to end the conflict. Monastic and lay dharma teachers trained in Plum Village can share practices of peace and reconciliation, as we have done many times with groups of Israelis and Palestinians that come to practice with us every year. I suggested that the religious leaders of these three traditions stay together in Paris for twenty-one or fifty days and draft a peace proposal to their political leaders to stop the destruction in the Middle East. UNESCO is an organization developed to promote culture, education, and science. So we need a culture of peace, education about peace, a science of peace.

My third proposal was that UNESCO should sponsor global ‘no car days’ every month. We should also support the annual global no car day, held every September 22nd. I suggested that ‘no car days’ can be a skillful means to accelerate awareness of global warming. I told them that Plum Village and all of its monasteries have established weekly no car days, and that we are in the process of shifting to greener cars, as well as working to reduce our carbon emissions by fifty percent. And I asked all UNESCO delegates to do the same, to drive less, to drive more fuel-efficient cars, to reduce their overall carbon emissions.
Each of us should be an arm of the Buddha to renew the practice, so that living with hope, joy, and compassion becomes possible in our life. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are a kind of global ethic. Each spiritual tradition has them in their own way. Although 75 million people signed the Manifesto 2000, which is based on this global ethic, if we don’t do it, our signatures will not help. So Sangha-building is very important. We already have the path. Don’t’ wait until tomorrow. Whatever you can do, do it today an then old age will be a delicious fruit. The Buddha is always there to support and guide us.”