This important Buddhist holiday – which marks the birth, enlightenment and nirvana of the Lord Buddha – should also serve as an opportunity for people to consider and realise the status of impermanence; everything in the world takes form and disperses constantly and birth and death are two faces of the same coin.

In his speech to mark the Visakha Puja Day, His Holiness also urged Buddhists to let go of the pre-occupation or obsession into Maya (deceitful things) and the attachment to one’s ego or self.

Once the gap between one’s self and others is narrowed, people would be able to end persecution, aggression, and hatred, he said. If any society could achieve that realisation of impermanence and let go of attachments, that society would be full of mercy and have true peace.