On Friday, Oct. 5, ICNY’s program associate Anushavan Margaryan offered the following remarks at a rally and vigil held in front of the United Nations offering sympathy and support for Buddhists in Bangladesh. The event was organized by BHBCUC (Bangladesh HIndu, Buddhist, Christian Unity Council) USA and the North American Buddhist Community. Mr. Margaryan’s statement:
I am here on behalf of The Interfaith Center of New York.
First, we want to unite with all of you and send our heartfelt prayers to those who got hurt or lost their lives in the midst of violence last Saturday and Sunday.
We as an interfaith organization are here with all of you to say that violence is not the way and it should stop.
We all have the right to cry for justice, as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. did, but that justice should come from the place where there is no violence…but peace and love.
Violence comes from the hate, and hate is always destructive and it never will be solution. It will create more hate and more violence.
So let us remind ourselves one more time that we have so much goodness and love, and beauty in us…and we cannot and should not allow any king of destruction.
I want to leave with you this beautiful thought from Thomas Merton:
“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed… I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”
