１９９１年私たちは，全世界の宗教学者40数人を集め、「世界経典」を編纂しました。
「世界経典」は、キリスト教とイスラーム、仏教をはじめとする世界の主要な宗教の経典に登場する言葉を，テーマごとに比較、研究し、まとめたものです。
ところで、作業をおえてみると、そのたくさんの宗教の教えの中で，約七割は同じ事を言っていました。残りの三割だけが、各宗教の特徴を表す言葉でした。
これは、全世界の宗教の七割は同一の教えを伝えていることを意味します。ターバンを巻く，念珠を首にかける，十字架を前に掲げる、などその外見は違いますが，宇宙の根源を求め、創造主の御旨を推し量ろうとする点では，全て同じです。
人は趣味が同じだけでも良い友人になります。生まれた故郷が同じというだけでも、数十年をともに過ごした間柄のように話が通じます。ところが、実に教えの七割も同じ宗教どうしが、互いに話が通じないというのは本当に残念なことです。
互いに通じることを話、手を結べば平和と愛をかたります。ところが、まさにその平和と愛をめぐって争いをおこしているのです。
「世界経典」を編纂しながら得た私たちの結論は，世界の宗教が間違っているのではなく，信仰の教えかたが間違っていたという事実でした。
間違った信仰は偏見を呼び、偏見は争いを呼びます。
ー平和を愛する世界人としてー
In 1991, I brought together forty religious scholars, instructing them to compare the teachings that appear in the sacred texts of Christianity, Islam Buddhism, and other major world religions. The book that resulted from their efforts was World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts, published in 1991. What they found was that the sacred texts of religions convey the same or similar teachings more than seventy percent of the time. The remaining thirty percent are teachings that represent unique points of each religion. This means that most of the teachings of the major world religions are same at their core.The same is true of religious practice. On the surface, some believers wear turbans, some wear prayer beads around their necks, others wear a cross, but they all seek the fundamental truth of the universe, and try to understand the will of the Divine One.
People often become friends even if all they have in common is the same particular hobby. When two strangers meet and discover they have the same hometown, they can immediately communicate as if they had known each other for decades So it is truly tragic that religions, which share the same teachings more than seventy percent of the time, still struggle to understand each other and communicate happily. They could talk about the things they have in common and talk each other by the hand. Instead, they emphasize their differences and criticize one another.
Our experience when compiling world Scripture leads us to believe that it is not the religions of the world that are in error but the ways the faiths are taught. Bad teaching of faith brings prejudice, and prejudice leads to conflict.
