Niwano Peace Prize
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Posted by Lao Xu Jin in Culture section |
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The ?Niwano Peace Foundation (Nichiko Niwano, president; Motoyuki Naganuma, chairman) established the ?Niwano Peace Prize to honor and encourage individuals and organizations that have contributed significantly to interreligious cooperation, thereby furthering the cause of world peace, and to make their achievements known as widely as possible.
The Foundation hopes in this way both to enha nce interreligious understanding and cooperation and to encourage the emergence of still more people devoted to working for world peace.
The ?Niwano Peace Foundation was chartered in 1978 to contribute to the realization of world peace and the enhancement of culture by promoting research and other activities, based on religious spirit and serving the cause of peace, in such fields as thought, culture, science, and education. Nikkyo Niwano, founder of ?Rissho Kosei-kai, during his many years of guiding the organization and disseminating its teachings has consistently urged the necessity of peace activities based on a religious spirit but transcending denominational bounds.
The world today is threatened by many difficult problems-nuclear war, hunger,environmental pollution. At such a time the mission of people of religion is more important than ever. It is vital that they cooperate on the basis of mutual understanding in working for the common goals of human happiness and the realization of world peace.
On the basis of these principles, Founder Niwano has promoted interreligious cooperation both on the international level, as one of the leaders of the ?World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP) and the ?International Association For Religious Freedom(IARF), and on the domestic level, as the force behind the Movement for a Brighter World Community.
It is his firm belief that people of religion the world over, as well as others whose activities are rooted in the spirit of religion, should cooperate in a way transcending sectarian differences to pro mote such activities from the broad-based viewpoint of social and public well-being. It was with these goals in mind that Rissho Kosei-kai established the ?Niwano Peace Foundation.
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