DR. MOTOYAMA’S GRADUATION ADDRESS

 I thank all the attendees of this graduation ceremony and CIHS' tenth anniversary. It is my heartfelt pleasure as CIHS' founder to celebrate CIHS' tenth anniversary together with all of you.

As of today, CIHS has sent 52 graduates into the world: in America, Asia, Europe and India. Some of them are working in position of leadership and/or as faculty members at universities.

CIHS provides a unique education of human being as consisting of body, mind and spirit. CHIS teach students that the origin of human being is found in the religious realm through comparative and integrative studies of Eastern and Western religion. Furthermore, from the scientific standpoints of quantum physics and molecular biology, psychophysiology and subtle energy medicine, we are trying to verify the existence of the human soul objectively through scientific experiments and examination of extrasensory perception or psychokinesis (control of physical phenomena by the soul energy).

Terrorism last year in New York, I suppose, has its deepest reason in religion. This terrorism forces us to think about what religion is. I believe the 21st century is the century in which we have to face religion and struggle to find a universal religion to lead human beings into a harmonious global society. CIHS is trying to clarify the nature of religion through comparative study of Eastern and Western religions.

CIHS doesn't want only to concentrate on academic study, but also to share our academic and experimental results with the people and communities in Encinitas, San Diego county and California. For this purpose, CIHS is planning to open and offer the following activities by specialists one or two times every month.

1)          Health consultation from the perspective of subtle energy medicines; for instance, how to improve constitutional problems and prevent possible future illness.

2)          Clinical psychological consultation; for instance, family and marriage problems.

3)          Open classes or workshops on the nature of religion

4)          Yoga exercise and meditation in order to release stress.

In the near future, we will publicize the above activities.

Finally, again I thank all of you for attending our graduation ceremony and the tenth anniversary.

And I offer congratulations to all graduates, again.

Graduation Keynote Address

By  Stanley  Krippner, P.H.D., Saybrook Institute, Adjunct Faculty CIHS

 The study of the classics can offer us moral lessons as well as grounding in philosophy, art, literature, history, and language. After the crisis of September 11, 2001, the classics are an especially rich source to which we can turn for guidance. Wars in classical antiquity, and for most of the past centuries, were seen as a tragedy innate to the human condition. The Greek historian Heroditus reminded us that wars are times when parents bury children rather than children burying parents. Killing one's fellow humans over political, religious, and ethnic disagreements should not occur among civilized people. But it does happen. And the poet Hesiod concluded that war is "a curse from Zeus." The Greek philosopher Heraclitus lamented that "war is the king of us all." Plato went so far as to call peace, not war, "the parenthesis in human affairs." The poet Pindar added that warfare "is not unnatural" but nevertheless is "a thing of fear." (Hanson, 2002, pp. 1-2). The 20th century is often said to have begun on August 1, 1914, with the opening attacks that started the First World War. In retrospect, that was also the date for what Philip Babbitt (2002) has called "The Long War," a conflict that eventually encompassed the First and Second World Wars, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the Cold War.

The Long War finally ended with the reunification of Germany and the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. Many historians were convinced that the world would finally have peace because it had resolved the question that bound all these wars into one: What form of the nation-state-fascist, communist, or parliamentarian-would succeed the imperial states of the 19th century? When this question was answered by the triumph of parliamentarian democracy, some thought "the end of history" had come, and that the struggle to achieve a final constitutional order had ended (Babbitt, 2002, p. 84).

But what was actually ending was not history itself but the history of the nation-state, a constitutional order characterized by governments that promised to better the material well being of a historically defined people. Churchill, Stalin, and Hitler each promised this, even if they had radically different notions of what constituted a nation and how to achieve the objective. However, within the triumph of the parliamentary nation-state lay the seeds of its eventual demise. A universal system of human rights defied its absolute sovereignty and undermined its ability to control its citizens. An international system of trade and finance removed its control over national currencies. Global communications threatened its national cultures. Transnational threats such as AIDS and the depletion of the ozone layer were beyond the scope of any nation-state to control. And the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction rendered hopelessly inadequate the notion of defending national borders from invading armies or intercontinental ballistic missiles (Babbitt, 2002, p. 86).

From this perspective, we can appreciate the real significance of September 11. For five centuries it had taken a state to destroy another state. Only a state could raise the revenues, muster the armies, and organize the logistics required to threaten the survival of another state. Soon this will no longer be true, owing to advances in computer technology, telecommunications, and weapons of mass destruction. The world is entering a period in which a small number of people, operating without overt state sponsorship, but using the enormous power of modem computers, biological pathogens, air transport, and even portable nuclear weapons, will be able to exploit the tremendous vulnerability of contemporary open societies. Because the origin of these attacks will be effectively disguised, fundamental tenets of the nation-state will change.

Deterrence, for example, which has been the core of American national security policy for decades, depends on the threat of retaliation, which in turn depends on knowing who and where your enemy is. When agents of a shadowy virtual state obtain weapons of mass destruction, we face an adversary not subject to conventional deterrence. In this new century, then, the 20th century threat of deterrence will not work. It is not fear of attack from Iraq that moves the Bush administration, rightly or wrongly, to seek a regime change there and to threaten a first strike. The real fear is that such an enemy may seek to coerce the United States by passing weapons of mass destruction to a virtual state, such as al-Qaeda, that cannot be deterred (Babbitt, 2002, p. 86).

In the 21st century, what might be called "virtual states" and "market states" could replace nation-states. Market states will have the same borders and political systems as nation-states but will shift important responsibilities from government to the private sector. Multinational corporations will become surrogate agents of government, blurring the boundaries between political and corporate leadership. Because the market is international as well as private, these market states will be better able than nation-states to cope with a war that is partly private, partly international, and partly defensive, as future wars will be. Because private companies manage most of the critical infrastructures of the developed world, market states will be forced to integrate the private-sector into strategic planning. They will have to develop international patterns of cooperation-pooling intelligence, for instance-or lose the war against virtual states and terrorism. Markets are not effective at encouraging such positive collective behaviors as loyalty, civility, spirituality, respect for family life, or regard for privacy, the evolution toward market states will require societies to find new ways or new institutions to encourage these public behaviors (Babbitt, 2002, p. 86).

Thus, the 21st century may have begun on September 11, 2001, as did another Long War. The phrase, "the War against Terrorism" is an unfortunate choice of titles for the current conflict because it calls to mind pseudo-wars that will never end, such as the "War on Drugs" or the "War on Crime." Perhaps a better name for it would be the "First Terrorist War." This may be a chronic war of low intensity interventions, such as police actions on humanitarian grounds to undergird states in which law has collapsed, opening the way for terrorist control. It may be a war in which aging nation-states try to fight off rising market states, with a virtual terrorist state entering into an unofficial alliance with one side or another. Or the next Long War could encompass a series of religious cataclysms, perhaps between nuclear powers on the Indian subcontinent or the Middle East (Babbitt, 2002, p. 86).

Much has been written and spoken in regard to September 11. I, personally, found the words of the philosopher Jean Houston (2001) to be very wise and extremely perceptive. Dr. Houston reminded us that "We are all New Yorkers," and how, in the light of the terrorist attacks, we must now speak of the world heart, the world stomach, and the world spirit. The United States can no longer be insulated from the pathos of other nations. The English playwright, Christopher Fry, wrote, "Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us 'till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took." And this is the agenda I would propose for this graduating class.

Fry could be speaking today, when oppression has risen in our time, as well as shadows, terrors, and other factors unique in human history. They arise around us to compound our folly and confuse our desire. We yearn for meaning and deal with trivia. Government has become too big for the small problems of life, and too small in spirit for the large problems. The tyranny that threatens to destroy us is not just terrorism; it is the tyranny of the unjust demands we have made of Nature, and the tyranny of some nations being kept in economic servitude by other nations.

This graduating class shares the most profound task in human history, the task of deciding whether we grow or die. This will involve helping cultures and organizations to move from dominance by the nation-states, market states, and virtual states. It will involve putting economics in its place as a satellite to the soul of culture rather than having the soul of culture serve as a satellite to economics. It will involve a stride of soul that will challenge the very foundations of our human condition. It will require that we become evolutionary partners with each other. As Hiroshi Motoyama (2001, p. 65) observed, the human being "can realize divine providence...while coexisting in great love with nature and the cosmos and by living in harmony and in cooperation with different ethnic groups" (p. 165).

We have finally emerged from a century of not only a Long War but also numerous holocausts. Our hopes for the new century, for the new millennium, were for a new way of being between nations and people, between the Earth and ourselves, between spirit and matter. These hopes still remain, but to attain them will require a deep shift in the attitudes of the rich nations of the world toward the poor nations. The shift will require that they adopt an attitude of service instead of exploitation and dominance. At the same time, poverty and victimization is no excuse for terrorism. Those who re-read the classics will rediscover the origins of their culture, and in so doing will learn the difference between themselves and such groups as the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. These differences are evident in the way that government is crafted, in the way that women are treated, in the way that people earn their living.

I would urge this graduating class to read and re-read classic literature. It can teach us who we once were, and who we are now in the beginning of what may be another Long War. The ancients not only teach us that life is spirited and tragic, but also that what was created from these classics was and still is humanity's last and greatest hope on Earth. 

REFERENCES

Babbitt. P. (2002, September 9). "Get ready for the next long war." Time, pp. 84, 86.    

Hanson, V. D. (2002, February). Imprimus, pp. 1-5.

Houston, J. (2001, September 18). Personal communication.

Motoyama, H. (2001). Religion and Humanity for a Global Society. Tokyo: Human Science Press.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

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