World Meditation Day
World Meditation Day (6th August 2022)
A unified world begins with a unified mind. Since our establishment 52 years ago, the Dhammakaya Temple has been promoting the practice of “world peace through inner peace”. This year, we celebrate the World Meditation Day of August 6th by inviting people from around the world to meditate more and to send in a picture of themselves in meditation posture.
We started the invitation in May this year. So far, we have received over one million photos of people of all ages in a sitting meditation posture. We want to convey a message that anyone can meditate, and everyone should meditate because we all want peace and happiness.
The World Meditation Day was constituted 34 years ago in 1988 by the World Fellowship of Buddhist Youth, of which the Dhammakaya Temple is a member. This Buddhist network organization chose August 6th because it was the same date in which an atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima during World War II, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
We want to highlight the fact that all wars are created twice: first in the human mind and subsequently in the battlefield. Therefore, it follows that if we want to stop any external war, we need to first stop an inner war.
The fastest and most effective way to stop an inner war is through meditation. Wars are costly and painful whereas peace that arises from meditation is free. It has no geographical, political or economic boundaries. Everyone can meditate if they so choose. This means everyone can contribute to world peace by simply generating peace within themselves through the daily practice of meditation.
You might have heard the saying: “hurt people hurt people.” The opposite is true: when you are at peace with yourself, you just don’t feel like hurting or harming anyone. When you feel peaceful, you send out a peaceful vibration to the people and the world around you. That’s how each of us can contribute to world peace…...one meditation session at a time.
Since July 2021, the Dhammakaya Temple has been conducting an online program in which our monks take turns teaching a live meditation class 3 – 7 times a week via Zoom. The program has received a very warm welcome. This program still continues, and so far our participants have meditated a combined 1.4 million hours.
Tonight will be another night in which our Buddhist friends and peace lovers from around the world will meditate together. Besides the mass meditation, more than 300,000 lights will be lit to mark the World Meditation Day. As a Buddhist organization and as a world citizen, we will continue to promote meditation as a means to achieving world peace through inner peace because we all need it.
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