November
22, 2004 | Daisaku Ikeda, The Japan Times, Japan
GN3
Editorial Comment:
Sustainable development as a comprehensive
concept necessitates a thinking that can analyze,
integrate, synthesize, imagine and create with both
moral imagination and technique. This has tremendous
implications for the kind of education that society
makes available to children--not the conventional
kind of education that regimentally looks at today's
economic needs rather than the unforeseen needs of
the future. As discussed in the article below,
education must be reconceptualized, so that human
potentials are allowed to flower and individuals can
be empowered out of wisdom, courage and compassion
to change the world that confronts them and achieve
true sustainability.
2005 will
mark the start of the United Nations Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development. The Decade
offers a vital opportunity to make real progress
toward putting human society on the path to
sustainability. More than one-fourth of humankind
lives in conditions of chronic poverty. Famine,
military conflict, human-rights abuses, environmental
degradation and climate change all threaten human
dignity -- indeed, survival. The challenges facing us
are clear and inescapable.
Sustainable
development has been defined as development that meets
the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
It includes such diverse aspects as peace, ecological
integrity and human rights, and requires us to
reassess our concept of "progress." Education for
sustainable development must find a central place
across the full spectrum of educational endeavors if
it is to provide the opportunity for all people to
learn the values, behavior and lifestyles required for
positive societal transformation.
Because
sustainable development is such a comprehensive
concept, it can provide the links across otherwise
nonconversant bodies of knowledge, opening up exciting
new possibilities for multidisciplinary collaboration
and cross-fertilization. But it is especially vital
that we focus on children and young people. At the
same time, education for sustainable development must
actively engage traditional bodies of knowledge and
informal sites of learning -- in the family, the
factory and the local community.
To achieve
sustainability, we will have to draw from the richest
veins of wisdom from humanity's diverse past and
present, enlisting these for the sake of the future we
all must share. The Earth Charter, a statement of
shared values and principles refined and formulated
through a process of sustained dialogue involving
representatives of the world's cultural and spiritual
traditions, gives succinct expression to the
challenge: "We must join together to bring forth a
sustainable global society founded on respect for
nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and
a culture of peace. Toward this end, it is imperative
that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our
responsibility to one another, to the greater
community of life, and to future generations."
Most
fundamentally, our survival hinges on realizing a
profound change within human beings themselves; only a
reorientation in the inner life of humanity will
enable us to meet the daunting challenges that face
us. On a previous occasion I proposed the following
three attributes for global citizenship:
-
The
wisdom to perceive the inter-connectedness of all
life and living.
-
The
courage not to fear or deny difference; but to
respect and strive to understand people of different
cultures, and to grow from encounters with them.
-
The
compassion to maintain an imaginative empathy that
reaches beyond one's immediate surroundings and
extends to those suffering in distant places.
I believe
that the process of developing and strengthening these
qualities is at the heart of education for sustainable
development.
From the
Buddhist perspective, our most pressing task is to
understand the inner forces within the human heart
that drive people to engage in the ultimately
self-destructive act of disrupting and undermining
harmony with the natural environment and other people.
Buddhism regards the inability to recognize the
reality of interconnection as "fundamental darkness"
or ignorance. This means ignorance of the web of
interdependence that supports our existence in the
world. It is the inability or refusal to perceive the
chains of cause and effect by which our actions
influence our surroundings -- in ways that ultimately
impact our own lives. It is the cold brutality and
folly that imagines that the misery of others can be
the basis for our own happiness. This attitude is
sadly reflected in patterns of resource consumption
that are undermining the very life-systems of the
planet on which we live.
A
reawakening to the reality of our interconnection and
interdependence must take concrete form in efforts to
extend solidarity and concern toward all those with
whom we share this brief moment in the history of our
planet. We must learn to act today with responsibility
toward the generations who will follow us. And we must
never surrender to the forces of hatred and division
raging in the world -- and the poisoned sense of
futility and powerlessness they implant.
Within the
great, interconnected web of being, each person has a
unique purpose to fulfill, a contribution only he or
she can make. Even if people are engaged in
problematic behavior, we should not give in to the
temptation to regard people as a problem. We should
instead learn to regard each individual as a resource
of truly limitless potential, remembering that the
wisdom and insight to resolve humanity's most pressing
challenges already exists as a hidden, untapped
possibility in the hearts of people alive today -- and
most especially in the hearts and minds of the young.
To be effective, education for sustainability must be
rooted in a deep faith in humanity -- the
determination to awaken human agency through the
interlocking processes of learning, reflection and
empowerment.
The founder
of the Soka Gakkai, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, was an
educator whose first work, "The Geography of Human
Life," written in 1903, offers a detailed exploration
of the interrelationship between humanity and our
natural environment. At the start of this book,
Makiguchi describes the objects in his study, the
various accouterments of daily life, noting that these
are in fact results of the labors of people in other
lands. In his work, we can feel the common pulse and
hear the shared breathing of self and other, of the
unseen people near and far whose lives are linked to
ours in relationships of mutual support. His efforts
as an educator were focused on enabling children to
develop a concrete appreciation for the relationships
that connect us to each other, to the natural
environment and to the world.
Makiguchi
noted the fact that while humans cannot create matter,
they can create value. He saw the development of
wisdom as the key to enhancing children's ability to
make the world a healthier, more beautiful, better
place. I think this insight -- that our capacity to
create value is not intrinsically constrained by the
physical resources we have available to us -- points
to a core aspect of sustainability: Where do we find
the wisdom to do more with less? How do we create
limitless value from a finite natural resource base so
that all people -- now and in the future -- may enjoy
lives of dignity, comfort and fulfillment?
Key to this
challenge is confronting the nature of human desire:
whether we control our desires or are controlled by
them, whether, in the words of one Sutra, we are the
masters of our minds or our minds are our masters.
Buddhism
teaches that desires can be transformed. The thirst
for justice is a desire. So is the desire to free the
world from needless suffering. The qualities of
courage, wisdom and compassion I mentioned earlier can
act to unleash these most elevated forms of desire,
encouraging reflection, action and transformation. The
success of the Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development will depend on whether it can touch
people's lives at this deepest level. Efforts for the
future that come straight from the heart have the
power to change the world.
Internet Source:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20041122a2.htm |