Oomoto and Esperanto: continued

If you have only just begun to take an interest in Esperanto and wish to know some basic information about this fascinating subject, please start your reading at the first article of this series. Having already completed 60 articles, I am now at the stage of writing articles for those readers who have learned quite a lot about the Esperanto language and movement already, and who are now wanting to find out more than just the basic introductory information. To get to the beginning of this series, please just click here:
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/espe...

________________________________________________________

In the issue of Australia's national newspaper, The Australian, published on Wednesday 17th, there is a long article on Esperanto by Hal Cohen. Although in the main a good and well-informed article, I wasn't pleased to see it illustrated with large photographs of Fidel Castro and Elvis Costello, and I was even less pleased to see this sentence:

"[Zamenhof] concluded - in what became known as the interna ideo of Esperanto that, if everyone shared an easy-to-learn, neutral tongue, political and national strife would disappear."

Well, even if all you have read about Dr Zamenhof is only what I have written in this series of articles, you will know better than that! Possibly Zamenhof the schoolboy once entertained such a notion but Zamenhof the mature ethical thinker, idealist though he was, wasn't so naïve. He did, of course, recognise that the lack of a politically neutral, common second language was a great barrier to overcoming national prejudices. Nevertheless, he was also acutely aware that conflict and hatred existed between people who did share a common language but did not, for example, share a common religion.

For more information about this subject, new readers can refer to the recent topic article dealing with the innate idea of Esperanto - here: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/espe...

Zamenhof, I think, believed that a lack of shared values rather than a lack of a common language was the source of hatred and conflict between and within nations. Others have thought the same and in this article we are going to examine how the teachings of Oomoto, particularly as expressed by Onisaburo Deguchi, reflect the point of view expressed in Zamenhof's "Homarismo" and also some of the teachings of the Bahai faith. We will look first at what "Oomotanoj" (to give them their Esperanto name) call:

The Essential Doctrine

"God is the Spirit which pervades the entire universe, and man is the focus of the workings of heaven and earth. When God and man become one, infinite power will become manifest."

Go To Page: 1 2 3