演讲稿Belief is my top concern

Belief is My Top Concern

Several days ago, while I was reading the book Where is Happiness, written by Bai Yansong, I saw such a sentence “In China, a country with a population of 1.3b, more than 0.1b people choose to believe in religion—Buddhism, Christianity, or Islamism, more than 0.1b claim communism is their belief. That is to say, more than 1b people do not have a firm belief.” Is this something we need to concern? When money and power, closely related to satisfaction of desires, more and more like a belief, on what can we, people in an advancing society, depend to appease our inner heart? How can we address the problems between us and our heart? Where is our spiritual oasis? What is our belief?

In my last summer vocation, I met an 87-year-old man who has been believing in Buddhism since he was 16. I talked with him, listened to him telling his stories and marveled at his experiences. He is just an ordinary villager in the small village. And the Japanese army came to their village in 1942 when he was 18. He was caught by the Japanese and was forced to help them carry the heavy loads. Then he escaped, but was caught again, and he escaped again. Over and over again, he was caught 9 times and he escaped 9 times till the Japanese army retreated from their village. He has endured an extremely dark period of time that most of us cannot even begin to imagine. But while talking to him, some of his words really touched me. He said, „What the Buddhism tells me is just to be a nice person. Sufferings are not uncommon in our daily life. Only if we have experienced miseries can we learn to be strict with ourselves and have sympathy for the people around you. Then you will live your life without shame and have a peaceful mind.‟ He really lives out his life creed.

Now here I want to say that I am not a believer of Buddhism myself and I am not here trying to persuade you into believing a religion. But what I want to say is that a firm belief, not necessarily a religious belief, is a powerful inner strength, with which you will learn to control yourself, not let yourself be drowned out by excessive desires; with which you choose to be a sincere, virtuous and just person; with which you will gradually gain the capacity to put an end to the misery that haunts you, figure out the true meaning of life, and finally enjoy the peace of mind.