World Peace and Unity Temple
Introduction
Artist’s conception of the World Peace
and Unity Temple in Seoul, Korea.
According to many experts, past and present, this is the era of the Pacific civilization, and the Korean peninsula is often called its center. In past centuries, some visionaries, like India’s poet, Tagore, have predicted that Korea would be the light of the world. The name “Pacific Ocean,” discovered by Balboa and later named by Magellan (in Latin meaning “peaceful sea”), implies that the civilization that borders it on both sides will be a civilization of peace.
Civilizations have their roots in faith traditions and religious beliefs. The highest schools of learning also spring out of religious roots, so therefore, the Pacific civilization should be rooted in spirituality, faith, tradition, and universally shared values. The Temple is that core of the Pacific civilization.
This temple of reconciliation and peace is one beyond sectarianism and exclusion, based on shared universal values – values held in common by all religions and faiths, and values which are validated by the teachings and philosophy of True Love and True Family. These are essential teachings of the Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon and of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, which they founded. Worldwide goodwill for peace needs one global focus, a tangible goal, which is to build a temple for reconciliation and peace — a place where people can come and lay down their language and practice of war, and create the structures for world peace.
Korea should be the home country of that root, the temple. Reverend Moon’s teachings are centered on the principle that Korea has a very special role to play, that it is the new Jerusalem for the world. He had the strong inspiration in late 2007 that now is the time for the temple to be built, for Korea to claim its position as the new Jerusalem. Already a very spiritual society, when the first Christian missionaries came to Korea in the late 19th century, they were particularly successful in northern Korea, so much so that Pyongyang was called the “Jerusalem of the East” or the “New Jerusalem.” The idea of Korea as home to the new Jerusalem has been part of Korea’s culture.
Those spearheading this project will go to Jerusalem and bring soil and rocks to the site in Korea to inherit the spirit of Jerusalem. The same will be done at the birth sites of all the world’s major religions, including Buddhism in India, Confucianism in China, and Islam in Mecca.
The temple should also be the common home of universal shared values such as faith, benevolence, charity, generosity, fidelity, compassion, magnanimity, kindness, devotion, loyalty, sacrifice, altruism, etc. These are all faces of true love in practice. They are the common language of religions. These virtues had been originally defined by religion, the language of the heart and spirit. This temple is the place where all universal values and aspirations can be fulfilled.
International institutions and organizations such as the United Nations are invited to endorse and support the building of the World Peace and Unity Temple. The same holds true for heads of state and government who are responsible for bringing peace to their nations – they are urged to assist in its building, both while in office and afterward.
The temple will represent the internal aspirations of all humanity, of all civil society. As governments endorsed the creation of the United Nations in 1945, so should they endorse the building of the temple, where all society can focus on the work for peace.
World markets and the world economy will benefit from the reduction of tensions and elimination of barriers to good relations among countries and peoples. As the world’s regions become more peaceful, so will the environment for secure markets and movement of goods and services worldwide. Therefore the global business community has sound reasons to contribute toward the building of the temple.
The temple will not be a megachurch; it will be a temple for people of all nations, a temple for the world. People of all faiths and religions will be invited there. It will be a venue for international and interfaith networking, with facilities for education, spiritual training and even physical health.
The World Peace and Unity Temple, to be completed by 2013, would accommodate approximately 210,000 people through multiple services throughout the week. Services would be conducted in all the major faith traditions. World leaders in politics and religion would come to these services; visiting heads of state or government to Korea would naturally want to visit this temple.
A preliminary ad hoc committee for the building of this temple has been formed, led by two of Reverend and Mrs. Moon’s sons: Rev. Hyung Jin Moon, Chairman of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification International, and Dr. Kook Jin Moon, Chairman of the Tongil Foundation. Potential sites are being studied and efforts to obtain global contributions for its construction have begun.
There has never been a place like this before, where all religions may come together, be represented and connected to a common purpose. We believe that God’s message is true love through universal shared values, and that the World Peace and Unity Temple will be an ideal stage to bring this message to the world.
The Value of Sacred Space
By Dr. Frank Kaufmann
Presented January 27, 2009
at a conference hosted by the Summit Council for World Peace,
University Club, Washington, D.C., January 27, 2009
It is a profound honor for me to be here in the University Club, and to be on a panel with men of great distinction. I have been moved to hear the presentations thus far. I am humbled. I hope I can offer thoughts now that are worthy of your time.
In my presentation, I examine the nature of conflict, and recommend ways to overcome that propensity. I examine conflict that tends to take place among religious believers, as well as conflict that takes place between religious believers and secular-leaning people, or people who do not have time for or the appreciation of spiritual and religious matters. These are the two types of conflict I look at briefly, and I recommend a program or agenda to help us transcend this bad habit.
There are three elements to being human, the spiritual, the mental and the physical. All people realize this, even non- and anti-religious people. The fleeting flirtation with spirituality that non- and anti-religious people involve themselves with can be seen in the delight at superficial occasions that are spiritual in nature like, “I can’t believe I was just thinking about you and you called,” or “I can’t believe that just when I was at a deadlock in what I was trying to think through, I couldn’t sleep and I was up at four in the morning and there on the television set was a gentleman speaking about the very thing that got me through my problem.” Even people who are either philosophically materialists, or plain old, coarse, everyday, simple materialists of the self-indulgent consumerist type still have a quest, a taste for, and a delight in those things that suggest that which transcends mere natural law, or that which transcends the mere capacities, either mental or physical.
The difference between religious and spiritual people, and non- or anti-religious people is that materialists, either philosophical or accidental, tend to regard spirit to arise accidentally from the busy clash of phenomena. This random bashing around eventually produces spiritual things. Religious or spiritual people tend to regard the human structure, this tripartite structure I described, as given, and therefore, a) purposeful, and b) magnificent. So we are spiritual, mental and physical, and for those people who are religious or spiritual by nature, we recognize our humanness as built that way toward remarkable, exciting, thrilling, and magnificent ends. We are perfectly designed.
Each of these three aspects has a particular quality or essence. The essence of the spiritual is that it is “one,” non-divided. All religions, even those that mistakenly have been described as polytheist, recognize that the absolute and the highest of the high is one, undivided. Non-division is an insight, an essence, or a characteristic of that which is spiritual. Constancy or unchangingness is an element of the spiritual and eternal – no beginning, no end. For those of us who are vigorous in our interest in spiritual matters, we increasingly come to develop a relationship with these fascinating elements – oneness, unchangingness, and eternity, no beginnings, no ends.
The physical side of the human structure is exactly the opposite. It is comprised of or constituted by multiplicity, infinite variety, the seeming exact opposite of oneness, infinite variety. The physical is characterized by variance or incessant change. It appears one way at dawn, and the very same thing appears a different way at dusk. And the chances of seeing the same thing both at dawn and at dusk are unlikely because you are likely to be somewhere else or facing a different direction. Secondly the physical is temporal. It is constantly and incessantly defined by beginnings and ends. We are born, we live, we die. Our days are born, and live and die. So whereas the spiritual has oneness, constancy and eternity, the physical has multiplicity, variance, and “temporalness.”
The spiritual side of us seeks to have a relationship with, to resonate with, and to manifest oneness, constancy, and no beginnings, no ends. The physical side of us seeks to participate in, have a relationship and resonate with multiplicity, variance, constant change. Do we like constant change? Do we like multiplicity? The physical side of it, if we’re honest, we love change, if you’re a football nut, you want to see game after game. If you like women, pardon my naughtiness here, the physical side of you wants to try every single one. That’s true. That’s the physical side of us. It seeks to engage infinite variety, infinite multiplicity. This is not a bad thing. It simply is the nature of the physical.
The most interesting part of being human however is the mental, the middle part. The role and function of the middle part is to mediate, to reconcile, and to orient us down the path betwixt these seemingly opposite realities that are in fact paradoxically harmonious and mutually supportive. The reason why I use the word “mental” rather than intellectual is because intellectual is only a subset and faculty of what is needed to fulfill and realize this mediating role. The mediating role calls for discernment and knowing, and it is derived from three sources – intellectual, emotional and purposeful. These three aspects of our makeup help provide for us our needed and necessary discernment. It is the job of all three of these to judge. I like this one better than that one. This (this wall) is not the way out of this room, that (the door) is. I need these elements to help me make decisions. This is the job of the mental. Because we are infinite, so is our intellect (and our other discerning faculties). The power of the mental to spot and evaluate difference is unending, infinite.
The same is true with regard to the capacity of the heart, its emotional grasp, and emotional discernment. And the same is true for the capacity of purposefulness. The reason why purposefulness is a judging thing or a deciding thing is because purposeful actions distinguish and differentiate; this will quench my thirst, this will not. If my purpose is to get rid of my thirst, “purposefulness” helps distinguish between things, and calls one thing better and one thing worse. So knowing, apprehension, discernment, these are what I call mental (not intellectual). These are designed to guide the human being into our capacity to perfectly harmonize our experiences of being at once spiritual and physical.
This tripartite, mental part of being human has by its natural function judgment or assessment. Its job is to navigate and to guide. Its mission and job is to provide for the individual access to the true nature of things. It does so through collection, collaboration, interpretation, and integration of information. That can be straight gut. It can be straight heart. It can be straight emotion, intellectual analysis, or a blend of the three.
I have a friend whom some of you may know. She and I are so extremely unlike one another that almost all my time with her is difficult. She operates entirely from the gut, and I am relatively intellectual. But she gets it completely and accurately. For this reason I must stay with her. I must keep her as a friend because she has good discernment, good judgment, good guidance, good insight. Do you follow what I’m saying? So do not be prejudiced against people who seem like they do not think. They get it. This is an important matter for me. When you walk down the street and you walk by the guy who is cleaning up the subway or something like that; if you think you are smarter than him, pause and correct yourself.
The reason why conflict can arise is when these mental functions – intellect, heart, and purposefulness – have a bias in their nature, when they fail to function as an impartial third party. If the mental is infected with bigotry, if it is bigoted toward one side or the other, it cannot provide the balance and sound guidance for us to chart our lives properly. The mental usually has a bias toward the physical. This is because the physical is most easily recognizable, and the most easily accessible. If the mental tends to side with change, difference, and multiplicity, it fails to provide guidelines that intuit the spiritual, oneness, constancy, and eternity.
When you see religious conflict, it is not because religion by nature tends to be conflictual. It is because the work of the mental side of ourselves is biased toward the differences in religion rather than biased toward the spiritual in religion.
The second thing to note is that religions, (due to religious history) are guaranteed to be radically different from one another even though they derive from the same, one, true origin point. The founding and arising of religions has happened steadily for thousands of years. How different is each age and each epoch? Add to that the extreme geographical and cultural differences in the founding and development of each religion, and you have a recipe for as great a difference as possible. Faithful people often do not like to approach religion historically because they think it might relativize their faith, but most mature believers are able to integrate the contextualization of their faith in history. The person who taught what eventually became Buddhism lived about 2,500 years ago. The person who taught what eventually became Confucianism and what eventually became Taoism also approximately 2,500 years ago. The person who taught what eventually emerged as Judaism taught approximately 4,000 years ago. This was a guy walking around teaching, a fellow like you. Some fellow 4,000 years ago. The person who taught what eventually emerged as Christianity, 2,000 years ago. The person who taught what eventually emerged as Islam, 1,400 years ago.
Plus, all these religious impulses are arising in all different parts of the world – in China, in India, in Israel. These simple facts, plus the extreme differences in geography and culture in these vastly different parts of the world should make it obvious that initiatives, even in touch with identical sets of truths, would surely find expression in wildly different forms and externals. This is common sense.
So here once again there is an urgent need for sound mediation from our mental faculties, these and the social institutions devoted to the training and development of our mental faculties – namely, education. Our approach and grasp of religion both in the oneness of spirit, and in the vast multiplicity of time and space, require balance, and a positive role for judgment and discernment. We must be fixed and oriented toward a peaceful balance between the infinite, the one, the unchanging and eternal, and the infinitely various, infinitely changing, and infinitely arising beginnings and endings of historical religious unfolding.
The ideal enterprise to help us and to train us in forging the balanced and whole persons that we must create of ourselves, by our own decisions and responsible acts, is the conception, construction, and devoted maintenance of sacred space. It is in this permanent self-creating demanded by such a reality that we forge the capacity to harmonize these two seemingly paradoxical dimensions of our experience, the one and the many. There is nothing more perfect for this simple human purpose than beginning with sacred space, the building that sits in the center and from which social unfolding expands. Sacred buildings are not only merely functional as places for people to gather, even as a place for every kind of person to conjoin. Even beyond their functionality as the present call for social harmony, they are more profoundly the present call for our own inner harmony. The mind, the devotion, and the act harmonize all elements of our being human for simultaneously spiritual and physical purposes. These invite us to be human in a balanced way, training our three parts to dance in the original ideal of the divine.
These are the first thoughts that I have put together on these matters for this project. Thank you very much.