NAMO TASSA
BHAGAVATO ARAHATO SAMMA SAMBUDDHASSA

'THE BUDDHIST HOUR'

RADIO BROADCAST

KNOX FM 87.6

Sundays 11:00am to 12:00pm

Knox FM radio broadcast for 1 October 2000

The title for today’s broadcast is: How ought we view our ancestors? Where are they reborn now? How can we help them today?

These things become known by persons who cultivate their minds.

By understanding at least a few of our own past lives and deaths before we were born human this life, we can learn the causes that brought us to this present condition, and gain an insight into that of our ancestors.

Whatever birth they have come to may they find peace.

There is a saying that, “A teacher for knowledge is easy to obtain, one for morality is hard to find”.

In Chinese educational history, the scholastic tendencies demonstrated under the civil service examination system of old China meant the scholars became obsessed with gaining official recognition and neglected moral principles. The so-called ‘Master’ was one who could help a scholar prompt his official rank. Therefore, the relationship between Masters and students was totally dependent on mutual benefits, and the spirit of teaching deteriorated accordingly.

‘A teacher of morality’ refers to an expert or professor in teaching techniques whose inner nature and behavior can be a demonstrative example for ordinary people; thus it is difficult to find a good teacher such as this.

Nevertheless, in Buddha Dhamma there are teachers of morality simply because of the ten perfections that are needed to be cultivated, and the second of these perfections is sila in the Pali language, which is generally translated as morality in the English language.

The story of Buddha’s Ancestry.

The capital of the Sakyas was the city called Kapilavatsu perhaps after the name of the great Rationalist Kapila.

There lived in Kapilavatsu a Sakya by name Jaya Sena. Sinahu was his son. Sinahu was married to Kaccana. Sinahu had five sons, Suddhodana, Dhotodana, Sakkodana, Suklodana and Amitodana. Besides five sons Sinahu had two daughters, Amita and Pamita.

The Gotra of the family was Aditya.

Suddhodana was married to Maha Maya. Her father’s name was Anjana and mother’s Sulakshana.

Anjana was a Koliya and was residing in the village called Devadaha.

Suddhodana was a man of great military prowess. He was allowed to take a second wife and he chose Mahaprajapati. She was the elder sister of Maha Maya. Suddhodana was a wealthy person. The lands he held were extensive and the retinue under him was very large. He employed he said, one thousand plough to till the land he owned.

He lived quite a luxurious life and had many palaces.

To Suddhodana was born Siddhartha Gautama who was the Buddha to be.

The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “Ancestors” as, “A person more remote than a grandparent, from whom one is descended; A forefather; A source, A precursor. A person who proceeds another in the course of inheritance. An animal or other organism from which another has evolved.”

Throughout the twenty years the Buddhist Discussion Centre(Upwey)Ltd. has been an active learning Centre many Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)Ltd ancestors have contributed to the growth and prosperity of the Centre.

For this reason we give thanks to all those past ancestors who have helped the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd to continually develop.

The Buddhist scriptures traditionally refer to the eighty-four thousand illusions (misunderstandings), or causes of sufferings, that plague all living creatures, and also to the eighty-four thousand Teachings of the Buddha designed to combat these illusions through understanding things as they really are.

Certain types of infrastructure work chosen by our ancestors makes it now possible for suitable conditions to continue to arise at our Centre for the ongoing teachings of Buddha Dhamma.

Our Ancestors that practiced the Buddha’s Teachings of the Ten Perfections, the Five Precepts and the Noble Eightfold Path made it possible for persons in the present to hear the Buddha Dhamma in a a suitable location.

Many human beings wish to improve and are willing to allot time and energy to work in return for rewards.

The Buddha taught the Ten Perfections as a method of self-development.

Morality (Sila) is the second Perfection of the Ten Perfections.

The Ten Perfections are:

1) To be generous (dana parami)

2) To be virtuous, moral (sila parami)

3) Not to be selfish or renunciation (nekkhamma parami)

4) To be wise (panna parami)

5) To be energetic (viriya parami)

6) To be patient (khanti parami)

7) Truthfulness (sacca parami)

8) Determination (adhitthana parami)

9) Loving Kindness (metta parami)

10) Even mindfulness (upekha parami)

Because of the karmic force of these ten perfections, Bodhisattvas will be born many times in the existence of Samsara to fulfill these parami or perfections until they attain enlightenment.

Samma Sambuddha is a fully awakened one or Lord Buddha who was self enlightened without any external guidance in the final life. One who wishes to become a Samma Sambuddha has to practice the ten parami or perfections in thirty ways to purify the mind. In a suitable time after completion of the necessary perfections, he will become Samma Sambuddha in this world. Only one Samma Sambuddha will appear in a given world system at one time. In the future Samma Sambuddha will be the Lord Buddha Maithereya, (Maitreya).

Samma Sambuddha has capacity to teach others to show them the Path of Wisdom to attain enlightenment. Samrna Sambuddha has four kinds of disciples or Savakas. They are Monks, Nuns, lay men and women. When one of these Savakas becomes fully enlightened such a one is called Arahat Buddha. To become Arahat Buddha, one has to practice only ten parami to purify the minds.

The word morality however has different meaning depending on what religion or ethical system you follow because of morality practiced during one life your future life is modified.

By the practice of morality you come to peaceful rebirth in wealthy places like Australia. If you are determined you want to be born an animal next life, I don’t think today’s talk about morality would be good to you.

The Buddhist Hour Executive Producer John D. Hughes found a hilarious quote from an unread book that was being classified in the new Store at 33 Brooking Street in Upwey. It read:

“I can’t help wishing you were all animals. Of course technically you are, but if only I could look down into a sea of furry faces, I would know better what to say. If only your ears were the movable kind that cock forward or prick to attention, I would know what kind of sounds to make soothing murmurs if you grew restless, little chirruping noises if your heads began to droop and your eyes to close. But what sort of sounds to pour into immobile human ears, about that I am not sure.”

As you know animals kill animals without regret. One of the tasks of humans is to educate persons in precepts to try to stop them killing each other. As you know humans are very poor at learning lessons about such things.

Humans kill insects for sport, they kill animals for sport, or they kill fish for sport. It would be better if they played out their aggressiveness and turned their instinct towards competitive sport such as the Olympic Games.

For our Teacher, personally, apart from sailing and skiing, surfing at Anglesea and Cape Shank and bush walking, he has never been one to take sport seriously, much preferring to read voraciously and listen to music.

Although he played football and basketball with the rover scouts, he did not find much joy in the injuries of bruised muscles that he received and so did not manage to work up a killer instinct with regards to competitive sport.

When John D. Hughes was a little boy, his father and his brothers (they were his Uncles) took him fishing off the coast of Mordiallic were he grew up.

When his father invited John to kill a fish that he had caught by sticking a knife through its brain, he did as he was told.

However, the instant the fish was stabbed he became acutely aware of its pain and would kill no more. John managed not to go fishing after that.

So our Teacher did not manage to become one with the idea of killing. He found out much later why he had this disposition which had been inherited from former lives where John had practiced morality.

But he does not expect others to have the same sense of what is what in this area because they have different causes effecting them from their different past lives. We are not the same as our parents in some cases so we have the possibility of escaping from their culture.

Although it is illegal to own a machine gun, we have yet to see any signs of the reduction of production of killing weapons such as machine guns. These are not sporting weapons. The idea of freedom has become berserk in the hands of terrorists with machine guns and fear has almost become a god.

The amount of security that has been mounted for the Olympic Games is one example of the fact that we could be a target for terrorism at any time. We must remember that nuclear disarmament is not a fact of life because there are many countries with missiles that can be activated at a minutes notice. We do not think it is irrelevant to try and make a case for protecting animals. You cannot stop killing by killing. We hope human beings can settle differences in most cases without shedding blood.

Our teacher is not pessimistic when he says this view is but realistic, and he wants to call on everyone listening today to see for themselves that this juncture of world turbulence and disaster is real. Distracting ourselves with the Olympic Games, although noble, is still only one episode towards building peace between nations. He only hopes that you understand that things were not much different in Lord Buddha’s day when he stopped wars and taught about the way out of the suffering.

We must send loving kindness into the world.

Of course, for most of us this can’t be achieved in a day, or even this life but it will be a fruit in the future when the time is right. The tendency towards humanistic thought, religious feelings and mind nurturing among young persons is not as widely spread as you think. Many fancy themselves as Rambos.

It does not help much to slander those who killed our ancestors for how they behaved towards them. Unless we can take the necessary steps to reduce vandalism, bullying and a rising suicide rate among our younger persons, we are heading for trouble.

The Vietnamese Monk Thich Nhat Hanh whose power of peace works during the Vietnamese war are now legendary, used to say, “Remember Brother, man is not our enemy”. Of course today it is not politically correct to be so gender specific as to say man so perhaps we better say human beings are not our enemy.

We have become immune to suffering and are like the Irish Singer/musician Bob Geldorf who said about Africa, “I get sick of seeing people dying in my living room”. His sense of urgency lead him to organise, ‘Live Aid’, a concert that raised millions of dollars for famine relief in Africa.

We have in our community today descendants of Cambodians who are Australians and descendants of the Aboriginals of this country who are Australians.

All of you listening have ancestors who have been treated badly by other human beings.

We cannot find any real difference between us in this regard.

All of us listening today are human beings in this present good life who meet with good will as Australians. We were not eaten by a white shark on the way here.

Yet for most of history this land here has been underwater for millions of years and the ancestors of the present sharks swam here killing every day.

It was hardly a suitable place to build a Temple in those days.

The ancient sharks were about three to ten times bigger than the present day great white sharks.

When writing this script our Teacher noted: I cannot see how anyone can dispute the fact that we are in a safe, peaceful place here today.

For the time being this life, we stopped being born as great fish like those sharks.

If during those days so long ago, I ate you; all I can say was it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I do hope you will not hold my animal behavior against me after this time has elapsed.

I mean you no harm now or in the future and I certainly do not wish you to turn into cannibals and eat me by using some twisted mind.

As for being divisive in our society, I suggest you let the dead bury the dead because they have taken rebirth as something else.

To do otherwise, just for a moment pretend our differences whatever they are do not override our humanity as human beings. Even if we may be old fish taken rebirth as humans who would drown in a water element, let us forget it and be kind to one another.

That is the message of the Lord Buddha on how to remember our ancestors.

Our attitude is determined from many causes and we would like to know what we are like.

First of all, we do not expect Pol Pot who is now taken rebirth in hell to feel remorse for his killings in Cambodia.

Hell beings have dark clouded minds.

We depend so much on cause and effect, we cannot think otherwise and be reasonable.

So try to be tolerant and do not be too hasty to keep ourselves in our own separate worlds.

Personally, as some of you are aware, our Teacher does not spend a great amount of his time just feeling good with other nice persons at interfaith dialogues. He thinks it is better if he spends his time showing the way as a practical method to his followers.

It is this idea of knowing that it is hard to practice charity if you are poor and you need to fix up your own mandate first and foremost.

What is reasonable to expect from others?

In Buddha Dhamma, John D. Hughes teaches the Members the peaceful way to develop something is to do it yourself and not expect the Government to pay for grand schemes.

He does not expect other religions to fund our Buddhist Centre and pay our air fares to the World Fellowship of Buddhists Conference in Thailand this December.

He expects to get funding from our Brothers and Sisters in the Dhamma. That is the true charity.

Our websites and international journals are not devoted to listing what common ground we have with others but where the Buddha Dhamma differs from other faiths.

We raise money to support orphanages run by Buddhist Monks in poor countries and do not spend more than 2 percent of our resources supporting other religion’s charitable works.

If as an animal you were killed by a human, and then took rebirth as a human, you would be unlikely to grow up trusting humans and would see nothing wrong with killing animals.

If you were a human killed by a human, and then took rebirth as a human, you would be unlikely to grow up trusting humans and may see nothing wrong with killing humans.

Discouraging Euthanasia.

The Australian Senate has agreed that the Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee inquiry into and report on the provisions of the Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996 and in particular:

- the desirability of the enactment of the provisions;

- the constitutional implication for the Territories of the enactment of the provisions;

- the impact of the enactment of the provisions on the Northern Territory criminal code; and

- the impact on, and attitudes of, the Aboriginal community.

Certainly, the Minister for Immigration, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and the Prime Minister have recently spoken out against racism. But the assault on racism, as on sexism and other ideologies that legitimate domination, will require a coherent and sustained analysis and a genuine desire for change. Such an assault would have to confront the entrenched structures and ideas we have been discussing today - that is, not just making people more tolerant, but redistributing resources and power.

The last two decades 1976 - 1996 have altered Australian cultural values beyond recognition. Our ‘traditional’ culture has been replaced by multicultural values; our Aboriginal community has been recognised; our Asian communities, because of their linguistic and cultural skills are clearly in the forefront of cultural change to make us more productive.

"Attention should be drawn to the fact that the diverse cultures referred to in the above statement of Objects include the cultures of the Aboriginal peoples, who form an integral part of the multicultural Australian society."

This applies equally to all Australians, whether Aboriginal, Anglo-celtic or from a non-English speaking background, and whether they were born in Australia or overseas.

So, from the merit we have made here may all the ancestors share with us the causes to be well and happy.

Today’s script was written and edited by John D.Hughes, Lisa Nelson, Julian Bamford, Evelin Halls, Pennie White, Anita Svensson and Amber Svensson.

References

Alexander Bernhardt Publishing Co. (1987), Buddha, Vomperberg, Tyrol.

Ambedkar, B., R., (1997) The Buddha and his Dhamma, Buddha Bhoomi Publication: Taiwan.

Caldecott, (1957) Medal Books:1938-1957, The Horn Book Incorporated: Boston.

Vygotsky Lev Semenovich, (1962). Thought and Language, edited and translated by Eugenia Hantmann and Gertrude Vakar, pub. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Massachusetts Extract from Piaget's Theory on Child Language and Thought.

NB: Some information for this radio script was gathered using ISYS Query, a LAN based search engine we have at our Centre.

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May You Be Well And Happy

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