A Liberating Education

If you present education as religion it is not good. But the essential character of the teachings is very logical, very scientific and psychologically feasible in the modern world, which is hungry for good education. Why don’t we call our name for this Universal Education? What do you think? The subjects are mental factors, Prajnaparamita, Abhidharma and Madhyamaka, also life, death, bardo and rebirth.

Children need both discipline and letting go. Creativity does not mean no discipline. World education now is terrible. I think if we make some good education people will appreciate that. I think they are ready. Especially America is ready. For something natural to arise you have to provide logically under standable guidelines and some psychological and philosophical framework as well. In this way the totality becomes profound. These three aspects have to exist simultaneously so that the person becomes integrated.

Nowadays in the world, the religious person and the unreligious person have become separated, but in actuality you cannot separate them. The totality of existence containing all reality is everybody—you, me, all human beings. Education should be about everything coming together, not partial, not separating. In my opinion, the bad in the world comes from religion separated from life, from science. These two should go together.

To completely understand one’s own physics and psychology, I call this Universal Education. I have always thought about this. In Buddhism we have an incredible education structure from birth to death. I feel these things can be put into universal language. My aim is we give up religion, give up Buddhism, go beyond Buddhism. Universal Education should be universal people without culture games. Every country, every culture, religion and philosophy already has wisdom and we should bring that wisdom into Universal Education. Without dogma we can have common understanding.

We need new education for the world because the present education is no longer suited to the intelligence of contemporary society. It produces conflict and dissatisfaction for younger generations. Many people in the world today do not accept their own reality and the totality of human nature, the spiritual aspect of themselves. When they do accept that, then they cannot accept scientific reality. These conflicts are very common in the West. I am determined there must be a middle way. If we educate people toward understanding both the spiritual and scientific aspects of reality, then human beings become capable of complete physical and mental liberation. Western education needs transcendental transformation.

When I talk about new education, I do not mean that we should do away with education as it exists now. We can use this old education but we can take out the words that make us dumb. We can change the old clothes, put it into new shape, add more flavor and a deeper understanding of human nature. Universal Education does not mean we should give up mathematics, history, language and so forth. It makes no sense to give these up because they have some meaning. Western education does have its advantages. Every subject has its own totality, wisdom and skill. In the same way we humans are interfused and interdependent. These must all be seen without fragmentation, as they exist simultaneously as a whole. 

Thinking “This is a spiritual person and that is a non-spiritual person” is fragmented because in actuality, these things cannot be separated. There is spiritual and nonspiritual in each person. You are spiritual, you are the philosopher, the psychologist, the scientist, all of these—not merely potentially, but now. Rather than being partial and fragmented, education should bring all of these together. Thus we become integrated. 

It is important that spiritual and scientific understanding become unified by avoiding the fixed ideas of each system. These manifest in their terminology. Generally speaking, science has the concept that religion and our spiritual side are superstitious and that the terminology of religious people is not related to science. These should meet, producing a new human being who from the time of birth is educated in Universal Education. They will then have complete scientific understanding and complete spiritual understanding.

We can produce better human beings. Bad education is like a prison. We must learn to open the prison and psychologically liberate human beings.