Breaking Silos of wisdom traditions
Universal Enlightenment and Flourishing, UEF, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to human flourishing and religious literacy. Our approach is based on universal concepts, marrying ancient wisdoms with findings of modern physical and social sciences. UEF creates, curates, and distributes content related to human Flourishing and religious literacy.
Scholars from across disciplines and leaders of all faiths have battled with the fundamental questions of living a fulfilled life- that of good and evil, truth and falsehood, right and wrong, life and death, the meaning of life, and the purpose of our existence.While distilling through the vast array of these approaches, I found a beautiful simple insight that emphasizes a common universality for all humans. In our view, “To Flourish is to Love, Learn & Play”. These three are the most deep-seated of our existential longings. We can truly flourish if we approach everything we do with an LLP(Loving, learning, and playful) mindset. This framework is as simple as it is profound.
Our Vision
Our goal is to enhance Human Flourishing by integrating knowledge across the silos of time, civilizations, geographies, and the academic disciplines of social and physical sciences; and sharing actionable insights, which have been validated through science and lived experiences.
Our Mission
UEF facilitates the research and dissemination of ideas around human flourishing and religious literacy through published literature, dynamic social media content, partnerships with educators for school children, and events such as seminars and bootcamps. Our key insight is that we can truly Flourish simply by engaging in our three deepest human longings – Loving, Learning, and Playing in everything that we do.
UEF seeks to explore and demonstrate how the LLP framework is applicable at all stages of life, across all professions and vocations, across cultures, ethical traditions, and other belief systems. Most importantly, the insights from UEF’s flourishing framework are compatible with all belief systems and of high relevance for all faiths.
Over the past four years the UEF team has researched over 60 commonalities found across all religions, which we share with email subscribers in our Weekly Wisdom Bytes. You will be pleased to know these findings have been collected and organized in my first publication, Bridges across Humanity – Many Religions, Same Learnings, to be released this Summer. To the best of our knowledge, a literary work of this kind has never been done. You can read a summary of these themes here.
Two more books, one on Human Flourishing and another on Happiness, are in the works. Our team is composing a new series of articles on these and adjacent themes; focusing on the missing dimensions of happiness, and why happiness remains an elusive state for so many.
This year we continue to create and share new content, and will launch opportunities to connect with you through conferences, discussion groups, social media, and more.
We hope you are inspired by our mission, and our pursuit to unite humanity through Flourishing. We invite you to engage with us intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. There are several ways to contribute, be it pro bono or professionally, full time or part time, participation in discussion groups, as an editorial contributor, to sharing feedback.
We would love to hear your thoughts. Life Is our Journey, together. The internet enables us a historic opportunity to communicate our insights on human flourishing to a global audience. We at UEF believe our insights into flourishing will appeal to an increasing number of people disenchanted with traditional and modern religions (capitalism, consumerism, postmodernism); searching for new paradigms to finding meaning in life.
Our Team looks forward to your active participation in continuing our mission to enhance human flourishing and religious literacy.
Our Book
“Bridges Across Humanity” explores an amazing number of common themes (54 of them – yes, 54!) across the world’s religions. This book is a culmination of five years of research I undertook with the help of Allen Simon, a Harvard Divinity School graduate.
In today’s world, which is torn apart by many divisive forces that play on our ignorance, “Bridges Across Humanity” offers a message of oneness, unity, and solidarity. There are many wonderful books on world religions that take a siloed approach in presenting each religion, focusing on the particularities of each religion. In the academy as well, religions are being taught primarily through a siloed approach. Religious practice, of course, also emphasizes particularities. With such little focus on building bridges between traditions, we should not be surprised that there is so much of an exclusivist mindset associated with religions.
“Bridges Across Humanity” is my attempt to break from the siloed approach of understanding each religious tradition as entirely separate and irreconcilable. This book takes one theme at a time and shows how it is present in all religions!!!
The book begins with a wonderfully written foreword by Francis X. Clooney SJ, Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at Harvard Divinity School, and current president of the CTSA (Catholic Theological Society of America), which is the largest theological association in the world.
With religiously motivated conflicts and violence still being so prevalent in our world today, my hope is that this book will be just the first of many steps toward reconnecting humanity through the restorative meaning-making potential of religion.
Our Team
Our Contributors
Partners
Harvard University's Human Flourishing Project
Tyler J. VanderWeele, PhD
Interdisciplinary program that “aims to study and promote human flourishing, and to develop systematic approaches to the synthesis of knowledge across disciplines.”
The Center for the Study of World Religions
Charles Stang, PhD
A research institute affiliated with Harvard Divinity School, which promote the study of religion through lecture series and other events.
Harvard Divinity School’s Religious Literacy Project
Diane L. Moore, PhD
Professor Moore launched a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) through HarvardX on January 8, 2018 entitled Religion, Conflict, and Peace in Contemporary Global Affairs.
Stanford University’s Stanford Civics Initiative (SCI)
Josiah Ober, PhD
A newly inaugurated program of interdisciplinary courses and faculty, run through the Political Science department at Stanford University.
Columbia University’s Center for Clinical Medical Ethics
Lydia Dugdale, MD
An organization concerned with fostering flourishing relationships between patients and medical professionals.
The Paul Hodges Trust
Jenny Carlen
Grant-giving charity breaking the cycle of poverty in Africa through women’s advocacy, education, and empowerment.
San Juan Public Library
Ms Connie Estades
Founded in 1987, the San Juan Community Library is one of the few lending libraries in Puerto Rico and has more than 30,000 books in Spanish and English in its collection.