Home Dharma Dew Buddhism and humanism: A reflection by Professor
Dr. Sukomal Barua, The New Nation, May 19, 2008 Dhakka,
Bangladesh -- Today is the Sacred Buddha Purnima, the full-moon
day of Vesakha blessed by the birth, Enlightenment and Passing
way of the Buddha. The day in very significant and important to
the Buddhist world. It brings peace, integrity brotherhood, non-
hatred, universal love, compassion and full humanism of the
mankind of the world. We know, humanism is a system of thought
or action originating in Western Europe in the 15th century
which gives more importance to the affairs of man or human life
as against medieval traditions of scholastic theology or
philosophy. It was a kind of movement against intellectual or
scholastic authority of the middle ages and gave rise to modern
intellectual, scientific, and social developments. It insists on
the dignity of man and it refuses to find in the divine,
anything external and superior to mankind. It concerns itself
with mankind and the dignity of ma