VERSAK ADDRESS
Report on the Progress of Our Spiritual Training Centre Activities for the World Buddhist University.
Written by John D. Hughes. Dip.App. Chem. T.T.T.C. GDAIE.
Founder Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.
Vice-President World Fellowship of Buddhists.
Inaugural Recipient of the Vissuddhananda Peace Award 1999
I wish to welcome you Venerable Sirs, Honorable Sirs and Madams, Members and Friends.
This Versak, I wish to report to you on one of our least known performances.
It is our Master Plan to hone our linguistic skills to preserve scholarship in this place.
If you think my talk is too full of compliments for our staff, you are correct. It is designed to give what psychologists call “positive re-enforcement behaviour”. We hold that praise for good work adds to our Member’s self-confidence. Some persons are automatically suspicious of those who praise them. How many times have you heard the phrase, “Oh you’re just saying that”?
Real compliments are a fine art. Most compliments have one of three weaknesses.
These common weaknesses are: the compliment, “damning with faint praise”; the “gotcha” compliment; and the “patronizing parent” compliment.
One Buddhist precept is not to flatter. The reason for this precept is obvious. Kurt Vonnegut says he hates the words, “I love you” because the only possible answer is, “I love you too”.
For Vonnegut, dealing with his incomprehensibility of suffering and death, what else could he say?
One writer has commented that:
“The purpose of Vonnegut’s comedy is not to provide access to reality.
The characters of Cats Cradle (Delacorte, 1971) are free, but their experience does not make sense to them.
Though there is no logical answer to man’s question, “I? Why?,” to Vonnegut existence is compelling.
Unlike conventional Western inclusive comedy in which all ends well, Vonnegut’s is exclusive, annihilating by treating it as a joke.
Because logic cannot make logical an illogical world, he has tried boundless illogic.”
Another writer commented that:
“Numerous traditional aspects of American humour are present in this work: the tall tale; the unreliable narrator, the Negro minstrel (Bokonon), comedy in a grim situation (ice-9, the ultimate weapon), grotesque naturalism, incongruous language, narrative objectivity in a chaotic situation, satire, anecdote, the Westerner character, alazon-eiron relationship; point counter point, avoidance or deprecation of extramarital sex, the humourless narrator, and sentimentality.”
This is the old yarn spinner overwhelmed by his own tale that is antilinguistic devices.
You, too, do not wish to think you give praise only as a response to flattery.
One way to enhance your power of praise is to take opportunities to use it in public. So brace yourself, you may be the next person I praise.
Long range planning for our learned papers is risk-taking decision making. It is the responsibility of our style policy maker, whether entrepreneur or manager.
He or she must be rational and systematic and must not substitute facts for judgement, nor science for good management.
The systematic organisation of our long range style planning research task to supply our Members with knowledge should strengthen our manager’s judgement, leadership, and vision in how to generate credibility for the World Buddhist University in Thailand.
We are a Regional Centre of the World Fellowship of Buddhists.
We have a charter for the World Buddhist University as a Spiritual Training Centre.
Perhaps, to hone our skills we should state we are all amateurs in linguistics. This means to some extent that some of our words may be obscure. At present, we have no doctorates majoring in linguistics at our Centre.
Very simply put, we write in a style suitable for critical readers. We try to write in an international style for those persons who use English as a second language.
At times our research papers may be addressing our fellow Australians or local Politicians, so in such cases, we can use a little of the local argot.
But, we strive to be clear in what we teach.
We often supply a glossary that selects to define what is obscure. Our glossary may supply translations or offer the meaning of foreign words we chose to use.
The short definition may not give us what we want to convey.
We accept that our style could let occasional prolixity occur in our glossary writings. We do not demand our writings should always be easy reading, but we do not wish them to be florid or trite.
We concur with Swift that proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
For example, we sometimes introduce an “unpopular” story. If we mention the social security system in our radio scripts we are not against telling our fellow Australians of the future reduction in average pensions that must occur. “Antilinguism” is avoidance.
Covertly our big picture is, we are trying to train “antilinguism” out of popular Australian culture.
Do not misquote us, that we have an “antilingham” policy or you will not get the comfy armchair treatment at our Centre.
Our work force, like our population, is getting older. We must tell Members that the current Australian social welfare culture is no longer feasible in economic terms unless there is more wealth generation in Australia.
To hone our work skills we need to reject “antilinguism” arising because it stops thought about reality.
Australians admire laconic fellows. One of them was a suicidal sheep poacher. He didn’t say much as his billy boiled.
Another of our heroes is Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee). His narrow vocabulary resonates with “antilinguism” of the childish persons in our society.
We hate to admit “Paul Hogan” is late middle-aged and is slowing down. We have to admit that most persons slow down at his age to become more laconic.
Be warned - if we live long enough, this could happen to you. But help is on the way.
Our Buddhist counter-culture combats “antilinguism” by writing radio broadcasts as a more subtle culture than is commercially available. We praise older persons (not merely on the grounds that they are old) but because they are worthy of praise, if and only if they refine their work skills.
We are very careful to avoid criticism of the elderly who are incompetent or incoherent in their arguments because we remember the bad press that a former Australian Prime Minister drew on himself by calling a heckler a “silly old bugger”.
We avoid such vicissitudes of language in the interests of international public relations. How tactful ought we be when we tell our older Members to change their culture or waste the rest of their life. Talk or perish miserably.
This is what we tell Members, this is our pitch.
How do we introduce our pitch?
We say in our Western culture, several factors contribute to the belief that there is an approaching “Death of Language.” In the 1930’s and 40’s, logical positivism and so called “general semantics” questioned the adequacy of language for communication.
We say some prominent aestheticians have argued for the superiority of “thinking in and through visual patterns” over verbalisation.
In ‘Reading the Mind - Advice for Meditators’, Ajarn K. Khao-suan-luang says ‘If you concentrate on knowing just a little, you’ll end up with more true insight than if you try knowing a lot of things.
It is through wanting to know a lot of things that we can end up deluded. We wander around in our deluded knowledge, thinking and labelling things, but knowledge which is focused and specific, when it really knows, is absolute. This is Prajna-Paramita.’ We teach this.
Our pitch continues with:
There is an “antilinguism” in voguish practice of transcendental meditation and among the exponents of body language. Computerised language gives us a “quasi-mathematical” type of “reductive sub-language.”
Our pitch concludes with:
The contemporary youth cult embraces an “infantile style of speech, in which a minimal vocabulary is generalised to all contingencies, words become the barest labels, and the act of speaking consists in making vague gestures”.
We will not entertain “antilinguism”. We are more interested to see our Members run towards refulgent scholarship.
Our pitch is actualised in two ways.
Firstly, we strive to be two levels above popular culture in Australia in our choice of words for our radio broadcast scripts.
Secondly, we aim to design about 3% to 5% of our typical radio script content to third order knowledge, and about 12% to 18% to second order knowledge.
We have no wish to develop the next level of “antilinguism” within our World Buddhist University scholastic boundaries.
We have shown you the high ground. Will you accept our mission? It is not impossible.
Thank you very much for your kind attention. Please accept our sincere praise for listening with sustained attention to our pitch.
May you be well and happy.
Thank you very much. Perhaps next time, we will offer you the comfy armchair.
Footnotes:
Footnote 1. Naming Stages of Technology
We use sets of comparative terms.
For example, we might say there are three stages of technology.
1. Primitive or eotechnic (middle ages)
2. Intermediate or paleotechnic (18th Century)
3. Modern or neotechnic (late 19th Century)
However, in depth analysis will show there are logical absurdities in this defining pattern.
Yet these items might be useful at times for our radio broadcasts.
At times, our research and development will need finer divisions to cover technology developments.
Footnote 2. Our Level of Scholarship Nomenclature
Our universes of discourse vary.
As a means of allowing researchers to select the level of scholarship needed of a given project, we have designed a four level nomenclature.
Series 101 Comprises surveys of available historical data organised into a structure for ease of study, and would include glossary, roughly corresponding to Undergraduate First Year Level.
Series 201 Comprises small action research projects directly toward research development.
Roughly equivalent to Undergraduate Second Year Level
Series 301 A minor research thesis roughly equivalent to Graduate Level
Series 401 A major research thesis equivalent to Post Graduate Level
Footnote 3. Some of Our Current Scholarship Research Projects to Counteract “Antilinguingism”
Project 301 Schools Commission Project
Research & Development Project Series Level 301
The research project by John D. Hughes was researched and over 1977 to 1979.
This project belongs in the Buddhist Historical Archive Website.
The project team leader to edit it and load it to a website is: Maria Panozzo.
Her project tasks are:
1. Type out the project and put on-line
2. Put photographs - currently held as slides - on line
3. Transcribe tapes and put text on-line
4. Re-record as radio talk?
5. Acknowledge copyright of the two volume Application to the Schools Commission with supporting evidence is held by John D. Hughes. Acknowledge copyright is owned by the Commonwealth Government.
Project 201 e-Book Project
Research & Development Project Series Level
Joint copyright is Monash University and Evelin Halls.
Project Leader: Evelin Halls
Project 401 Chanting Projects - Translation of and notes on our many recordings
Project Leader: John D. Hughes
So, chanting helps you see the Middle Path. Just remember as you chant, we are not here to praise you. I want you to get it right and wake up to the real.
Project 201 Geological Museum @ Upwey Project
A virtual on-line Museum
Project Leader: John D. Hughes
Outcome
We must leave a decent heritage for future Members. We have never heard of a perfect appraisal system, but we do insist all Members must strive to enrich Australian society and think about how we will praise themselves.
References:
Ewing, David W., (1972), Long-Range Planning for Management, Harper and Row, New York.
Fowler, H.W., (1990), A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Oxford University Press.
King, P., (1989), Performance Planning & Appraisal, McGraw-Hill Book Company.
K. Khao-suan-luang, (1996), Reading the Mind Advice for Meditators, Wisdom Audio Visual Exchange, Malaysia.
University of Colorado Department of English, Abstracts of English Studies, Volume 18 1974-75, University of Colorado, USA, p. 266.