To miss the keynote address of Prof Swaminathan is like missing out on a visit to the nine wonders of the world, but in the line of duty one has to suffer a great deficiency in life. Therefore, I will take it with fortitude, and a sense of some solace that at least I had the good fortune of meeting you people briefly. Really, the evening belongs to the keynote speaker, but three of us have been asked to add a modest little bit of thought to what will, most certainly, be a flavour of thoughtfulness. I was frankly wondering if it would do if I just shared with you what Mulana Subir was forced to say to a gathering such as this. Not being prepared to speak on the occasion, he looked soulfully at the audience and asked, “Do you know what I am going to say?” And, of course, most people don’t know what a speaker is going to say before the speaker actually says it. So, very honestly, they said, “No, we really don’t know what you are going to say.” He then said, “I am most offended. I will not speak to an audience that doesn’t know what I am going to say,” and walked away. So Mulana Subir was ushered in again the following week because the organisers didn’t want him to get away with it so easily, and this time of course he was a little more confident. He looked at the audience and asked, “So you know what I am going to say?” and everybody said, “Oh yes, indeed we do’” and he said, “Well, then, why should we waste my time?” So he was called back the third time, and this time the audience decided, “Let us just prepare for this man, he is very slippery. Half of us will say we don’t know and the other half will say we know, and we will finally get him to say something.” When Mulana Subir looked at the audience and said, “So, ladies and gentlemen, do you know what I am going to say?” half of them very cheerfully said, “Of course, we do” and the other half looked pained and said, “No, we don’t.” So he thought for a moment and said, “Right. I think, in that case, those who know will please tell those who don’t. My job is done.” The idea of inner transformation is, I think, something that all of us instinctively cherish. When someone puts the idea across to us in such a profound manner, with such devotion and dedication as Dr Ikeda has done, all I can do is to flag it. We all seem to know that there is some such thing as inner transformation that concerns us all — in some form or other, in some intensity and in some extent in everyday life. Particular events and situations — a birth, a death, some moment of great joy, a moment of great pain or great distress, when the pain is your neighbour’s and you think that it could have been yours, or when the pain is your own and you wonder why it has come to you – make us focus on ourselves. We reflect, momentarily at least, that this is the moment we must begin to search for an inner transformation. We readily list the things we have done wrong, the things for which we think we are being punished, the things that we should not do, and, finally, the things we should be doing and which seem so difficult for us to do. If you are a Muslim, you tell yourself, “I have been missing my Friday prayers, I will not miss them again.” If you are a Buddhist or a Hindu, you say, “I have taken life, I will be a vegetarian and I should be a vegetarian. [I am only saying that because for a Muslim to be a vegetarian is a contradiction in terms.]” Thus, we all come up with what is essentially our personal way of saying, “I will change. I will change myself.”
If you look at any religion, every religion has a very extensive methodology for transforming yourself. You set out to transform the world much later; the first thing you do is transform your inner self — you first look within. As a Buddhist you do this, as a Shaivite you do this, as a Vaishnav you do this. You do this as a follower of Jesus Christ, you do this as a Jew, as a follower of Islam, as a Jaini. You do this as part of any religion known to the world. “Jihad” an oft-used word. In fact, in this wonderful film [Another Way of Seeing Things ] on the dialogue between the West and the East, between Islam and Christianity, the crucial word is “Jihad”, and anyone who knows Islam knows that Jihad is all about transformation within. Jihad is not about destroying other people’s lives and attacking other people, indulging in violent acts of the most perverse kind. Jihad is about yourself. Yes, of course, Jihad is also about war, but it is about the war fought after you have won the war within your own mind, in your own soul, not the kind of “Jihad” that you and I have become familiar with. When Jesus says, I will take upon myself the pain of all humanity and I will suffer for you so that you will have joy, it is the same message. It is for us to think of what we can do, of the immense potential of a human being, an ordinary human person, to be able to overcome what is evil, what is wrong, what is perverse. And yet, we often feel it is evil that prevails, that the bad comes easy and the good is very difficult to come by. Every time somebody lights a little lamp of goodness, there is darkness all around it that wants to destroy that light. I want to recite a little couplet that a former Prime Minister of India once recited for a former President of India. I think there have seldom been better words to describe really what we are all here to do today. Dr Swaminathan, that couplet is:
Koi bazam ho, koi anjuman ho
Koi bazam ho, koi anjuman ho
Irshad mera kadeem hai
Jahan roshini ki kamee dikhi
Wahin chirag jala diya
[Wherever it may be
Whatever be the gathering and
Whatever the place that we meet
Wherever I see darkness
It is my habit to light a little lamp.]
But, of course, the most perilous darkness is within the soul, within our own selves, and that’s where the lamp has to be lit, that’s where the great winds blow, that’s where the storms come, that’s where the turbulence takes place.
It’s such a wonderful thing that unites us all. We have just seen a film on going beyond boundaries — boundaries that history has caused and created, boundaries that our minds have caused and created. Going beyond these boundaries for a single world in peace is only the larger picture, the macro picture. The micro picture is in the world that we all live in ourselves, the world within us, the world within our bodies, within minds that think we will be here perennially, for all time. And yet, we do know that these are things that come and go: they disappear very quickly and easily. What survives is something that some of us never recognise in our full lifetime — and that is the soul and inner transformation, the idea that joins together all religions, all people and all cultures. The idea of inner transformation is something wonderful that we are here to pay tribute to, and to the Bharat Soka Gakkai. This is my first experience of being with such wonderful people. Just being here and getting a sense of such wonderful people in one place makes us feel optimistic. It gives us strength and makes us feel that peace has a chance in our lifetime, in our world, in our environment — that peace must come. Peace must endure and peace must prevail because, really, there is no alternative. We can disturb the peace, we can cause distress, but ultimately it must be peace that will succeed. If you just look at the end of our lives and what happens to all of us, we become dust, a handful of dust; we become wind, we become water, and we go back to what we belong. But when it is all over, when the trauma of war and violence, of hate, of disease and hunger, and pain — perhaps even the trauma of separation, separation from our loved ones, from our dear ones, from our young ones — is over, there is peace. We all say in the end, whatever may have happened, he or she now is at peace. So peace does prevail. It’s just that it prevails when we have lost this wonderful opportunity of celebrating it in our lifetimes. So I think, ladies and gentlemen, together here we can resolve, and must resolve, that peace come in our lifetime. Peace, before our Maker gives us peace. |
