Humanity, Earth and the Universe: A Viewpoint of Mahayana Buddhism

THIS past March, we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Tu Weimingin an academic seminar held at our institute. The theme of his lec-ture was creating a dialogical civilization, in which he mentioned the Axial Age as proposed by Karl Jaspers (1883–1969). He suggested that we are now in the Second Axial Age with globalization progressing rapidly. Jaspers himself refers to the coming of the Second Axial Age, as a time when “Mankind as a whole breathes together as one.”1 Professor Tu calls this new era “A Dialogical Civilization.” Those of us here today from Japan are representatives from that semi-nar in March, and are overjoyed to have this chance for further exchange with Dr. Tu. During the professor’s recent visit to Japan, he was interviewed by Chugai Nippoh newspaper, and in that article, he speaks on the topics of “Confucian humanism ” and “the unity of man and heaven. ” He states, “Confucian humanism’s most lofty goal is the unification of man and nature.”2 This includes the integration of the four components of “self, community, nature, and heaven. ” He refers to this traditional Chinese concept as an anthropocosmic worldview. The Chinese concept of “heaven and humankind as one (tennin gōitsu), ” the Indian concept of “Brahma and the self are one (bonga ichinyo) ” and the Buddhist concept of “the oneness of life and its envi-ronment (eshō-funi) ” are highlighted as the representative philosophies that make up the foundation for the Eastern worldview in a recently published book entitled, Dialogues on Eastern Wisdom.3 The partici-pants in the dialogue include Dr. Ji Xianlin of Peking University, the lat