Coming to know one another based on a shared humanity through dialogue is the key to breaking down the walls of isolation and reversing the decline of life-to-life bonds among human beings.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I believe that dialogue is the key to breaking through our tendency to separate and isolate. Dialogue changes isolation and loneliness into connection and interdependence. This, I believe, is the essence of Buddhism.
Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.
It's wonderful to move forward technologically, but we cannot forget that we are human beings who thrive on relationships, who thrive on interconnectivity, who thrive on sharing your feelings and emotions.
In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus. They try to protect themselves from others' attempts to push them away.
The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.
We have to realize only in communication, in real knowledge, in real reaching out, can there be an understanding that there's humanity everywhere, and that's what I'm trying to do.
One of the most destructive things that's happening in modern society is that we are losing our sense of the bonds that bind people together - which can lead to nightmares of social collapse.
It's very important for us all to understand that we are interconnected and we need to hold hands together, especially when the going gets tough.
Humankind is getting more and more connected.
Today the fate of humankind is even more crucially linked than ever before. The boundaries between the problems of 'others' and 'our' problems are being increasingly erased.