5 Minute talk on
Cultural Adaptability
9 September, 2004
By Leanne Eames, B.A., M.A., Chief Information Officer
Welcome to the Venerable Sangha, Members, Friends, Family and other guests here today who have joined us to celebrate Founder's Day.
The fourth style element is to cultural adaptability, since Australia is a multicultural society and Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. has many contacts with organisations in overseas countries.
Recently I was listening to radio station 774, and I heard a sociologist talking about multicultural society. He made the comment that "societies can be multicultural, but individuals are not."
So what does it mean to be culturally adaptable? It means that we should have equanimity to other cultures.
It may not be possible to be multicultural as an individual, but we can be culturally adaptable, and there are a number of aspects of what we do around here that are designed to be culturally agreeable to people of all cultures.
The first things taught at our Centre are to be friendly, and to be culturally adaptable.
A major part of the work of this Centre consists of creating written documents. As well as printing documents in size 14 font for ease of reading by people who may have less than perfect eyesight due to age, we use a font that is rounded, with no sharp points that the mind may find harsh. As well as not being ageist, neither are we sexist, and we take care to ensure that references to people always include male and female, by using "He or she" and so on.
We also have a policy of using English in a way that makes it easy to understand for speakers and readers of English as a second language, and include glossaries at the front of our documents where appropriate.
The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. needs many language skills to operate our mandate to show the way of how persons can come to realise the Buddha Dhamma each for himself or herself.
For this reason, we resist any tendency to discount the wisdom of persons who may not be fluent in our own version of the English language.
In our library, a collection of many language dictionaries testifies to our need to be ready to have the tools to be culturally adaptable.
Our Centre has built up the nucleus of a good Buddhist research and reference library and our databases have been searchable by modern search engines for the last two decades.
To stay culturally adaptable, we maintain regular contact with many Buddhist and religious Centres, both in Australia and internationally.
Australia is the most multi-cultural society in history so, as you would expect, all forms of Buddha Dharma are practised.
As you may be aware, for many years we created opportunities in the Chinese New Year season to gear our organisation's blueprint by forcing ourselves to develop more and better Asian know-how so we could add culturally adaptable events where the non-racist values of tolerance were taught for all sections of Australians.
Our key Members also become more culturally adaptable through helping the WFB. In the future, some Members may further their studies at the World Buddhist University (WBU) in Thailand. One of our Members, Pennie White, visited the World Buddhist University last year to do research for her master's thesis, and we congratulate her on her efforts.
Should we fail, within our own generation, to arrive at a thorough familiarity with our own, indisputably multicultural society, we will remain ill-equipped to operate within an effective communicative band with persons and associations in overseas countries.
If enough of our Members learn to be thoroughly culturally adaptable, the cultural legacy we will leave for future Members will in turn be adequate and will not compromise the development of their communicative ability, which is so integral to the work we do at this Centre.
May our Members always be conscious of the need for cultural adaptability in the work that we do, knowing our audience in order that we may continue to maximize the value of our written contribution to the world's Buddha Dhamma resources in the 21st century.
May you be well and happy.