Abhidhamma Class No. 52, 17 June 2003
Review of merit needed by participants for Abhidhamma Teaching at our Centre
2002 to 2011 CE
This survey was prepared by
Evelin Halls DipFLC and
John D. Hughes Dip. App. Chem. T.T.T.C. GDAIE
Today we complete the first of nine years of Abhidhamma Teachings at our Centre, the Chan Academy Australia.
The Abhidhamma consists of 41,000 parts (slokes). It is helpful to chant ji jee roo ni to condition the mind to remember the Abhidhamma. The student has to rote learn the Abhidhamma word for word. When he or she can do it, he or she can remember the Abhidhamma.
In Abhidhamma class 1, it was specified that the students ought to rote learn word for word the foreword of the book “The Essence of Buddha Abhidhamma”, written by Dr. Mehm Tin Mon. The foreword is like the review of the book which will give insights to the student when learnt.
Ignorance is not remembering.
We pointed out that we cannot learn Abhidhamma by using our old learning culture, so we have to undo our old culture first, and completely. Chanting out loud is a good way to learn. Rote learning destroys obstacles to learning. However, rote learning does not destroy creativity.
The Abhidhamma student needs to make vast merit to be able to learn. It was suggested that students make many offerings of rice and other suitable food, flowers, paper and printouts of Buddha Dhamma materials in the form of text and colour photographs to increase merit.
Money, when viewed as crystallised work, is acceptable.
The words Buddha Dhamma imply Abhidhamma. Taking refuge in normal Dhamma is too weak to get knowledge and vision in many cases of clouded minds.
One technology required to learn Abhidhamma is to learn key words. To begin with, the student ought to learn the 100 classifications of the Dewey Decimal System. Once the student understands a key word he or she will understand the whole concept of that comes with the key word.
Once you read the title and find the mandala you learn all.
The vocabulary must be increased. Abhidhamma covers all headings in the Dewey Decimal System. The headings provide the knowledge frame. The student must build a knowledge framework (matrix) to be able to learn.
Our standard teaching vocabulary is about 75,000 words. The normal range of vocabulary is about 850 words.
The student will have to learn the meaning of the Pali words. We have devised some conventions that we will use for the Pali language:
Write Pali words in lower case letters.
read – as negative
read + as positive
For example, read –cak as negative cak.
The convention is, the value symbol (- or +) goes in front of the property.
(minus) means ‘with indifference’
+ (positive) means ‘with joy’
Because in English plus and minus are so familiar they are easier to learn than “with indifference” and “with joy”. Intuitively we give indifference a negative value and joy a positive value.
The symbol A is used to denote body consciousness accompanied by painful feeling.
A is pronounced as a short ‘a’ as in son.
The symbol V is used to denote body consciousness accompanied by indifference.
V is pronounced as voiceless ‘v’ as in view.
There exists no plural ‘s’ in the Pali language. For this reason, the plural of the Pali word citta is citta.
We use the Bookman Old Style font to make finer minds. This font has less rectangles than the conventional fonts; it is more round and thus avoids poison daggers.
Participants who wish to complete the nine year course must continue to generate the intention to study Abhidhamma, make the effort to study Abhidhamma, arouse the energy to study Abhidhamma, make the merit to study Abhidhamma and place ardour on top to study Abhidhamma. There are many ways in that participants can do this.
The students must support and work for the Teacher.
Participants are requested to bring flowers to each session to offer.
Students are also requested to offer A4 paper.
A person who is enjoying receiving paper handouts of Dhamma without paying any attention to kamma has somanassa - sahagatam ditthigata - sampayuttam asankharikam ekam: meaning, one consciousness, unprompted, accompanied by joy, and connected with wrong view. This is a citta state rooted in lobha (greed).
If persons to not replace the consumption of merit brought about by their physical consumption of paper handouts received, they will be unable to receive an education based on printed material based learning (books, journals, web site, CD-ROMs) in future times.
There are over 300,000 artefacts at the Temple.
All things depend on nutriment. From dana of food five blessings arise. From dana of flowers 10 blessings arise.
Participants must not allow their bodies, speech and minds to become coarse. They ought avoid eating coarse (sattvic) food.
Participants need to be involved in the funding, cleaning and maintenance of the Temple, Library and surrounds.
Participants are encouraged to chant for the long life and good health of their Teacher John D. Hughes and his wife and carer Anita Hughes.
See our roster sheets for these purposes and place your name of them. Merit making is not a spectator sport.
Participants must increase their present merit making by a factor of 100. Ideally, they can do this by spending more hours a day at the Temple if they can arrange it, at least three times a week and in their holidays three hours each day.
Below that, the consumption of merit overscores the production of merit. This means a person cannot get to our Temple.
Buddha rules forbid us to detail the healing and wealth blessings that arise at our Buddha Dhamma Temple if our recommended pujas are completed.
Suffice to say, the blessings here have been so great in number that they are almost too many to list even if we tried.
Some blessings fruit in this life and some in future lives. We want both types.
The practitioner who has just entered the door of Buddhadharma has immense karmic obscurations and a lack of merits and quality.
In order to eliminate the obscurations and improve merits and quality, the aid from the blessings of the boundless power from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas is the only way to change his or her life in the short run.
There are billions of meritorious deeds possible that can be done as a human being.
The merits of perfection can be done in many ways.
The Abhidhamma covers all areas of knowledge. One of the requirements to learn Abhidhamma is that students develop a knowledge framework into which they can store and from where they can retrieve, what they have learnt.
Participants must read voraciously.
Participants are expected to read our Buddha Dhamma texts and handouts given on a weekly basis. Participants must continue to increase the amount of data they handle.
Also they ought to read our Buddhist Hour weekly radio broadcast, our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, our Brooking Street Bugle, our Longhair Australia News, our photographs, reports, papers and any other written materials published on our web sites and elsewhere.
Much of our material is available online on our web sites, so that participants can research off-site. We will also prepare CD-ROMs for offline reading at our Centre.
When learning Abhidhamma, students use their own merit and energy to learn. Internally, they examine the content of their own mind, not their Teacher’s mind nor the mind of others. This differs from learning Prajnaparamita, which was taught at our Centre prior to the Abhidhamma Teachings.
It is recommended that students sit quietly after Abhidhamma class for approximately 45 minutes, because it takes a certain amount time for the Teaching to consolidate. Otherwise, in most cases, the Teaching will stay in the short term memory only, unless the student is a speed learner. It is suitable to chant while what was taught becomes consolidated. Most importantly, the mind needs to be kept quiet as a busy mind can neither learn, nor make merit, nor remember.
There is no royal path to learning.
“So the ultimate analysis in Abhidhamma is not for the pleasure of reading nor for the sake of knowledge alone; it is also to be scrutinized by the samadhi-mind in order to develop insight wisdom leading to the Path and its Fruition (magga and phala).”
(Mon 1995, p. 19)
May the merit of this paper inspire generations to study the Abhidhamma at our Centre or in another suitable location.
May you be well and happy.
References
Mon, Dr. Mehm Tin (1995), “The Essence of Buddha Abhidhamma”, publisher Mehm Tay Zar Mon, Yangon.
Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., “Preparation and review of merit needed by participants for Abhidhamma Teaching at our Centre 2002 to 2011 CE”, prepared by John D. Hughes, Anita Hughes, Evelin Halls and Julian Bamford, our file reference LAN 2 I:/exam.rtf
Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., “Examination of Training Issues at our Centre for the next nine years”, written by John D. Hughes Dip. App. Chem. T.T.T.C. GDAIE, The Buddhist Hour, Radio Broadcast 233, Sunday 14 July, our file reference LAN 2 I:/radio233.rtf
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