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'THE
BUDDHIST HOUR'
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Hillside
Radio 87.6 FM & 88.0 FM |
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The 'Buddhist Hour' Broadcast Date: 12 midnight Sunday 31 December 2000 This program is called: Meeting with the New Hillside Radio Live New Year 2001 Broadcast. Our Members who are live on air have generated sufficient merit from this morning’s broadcast and during the 5 day Bhavana course that was completed yesterday to run this evening’s program. We wish to thank the station’s management for their help and efforts over the year. We dedicate the merit of this evening’s program to them. We wish to come together with them again and again to bring the Buddha Dhamma to persons like you now and in the future to help world peace. We stir up the energy to arouse the intention to show our listeners the ancient Path to come to peace. Our Members have chanted good things for you so you can start the year on the right mind.. We thank our listeners for their attention and send our New Year's Greetings to you and your family for the coming year. Our wishes are that you be well and happy and free from harm. Members and friends of the Centre that are not at the live broadcast are enjoying their New Year get-together at our Centre. As a social group, we take responsibility for making sure our members are employable. It is no good preparing persons for today’s ways of doing commerce. An estimated 60% of present job skills using first order knowledge will not be needed within the next decade. There is little present day formal training for an estimated 40% of the new job skills needed. We can compare our present Australian economy with the state of mind of America when their President set a national task to place a person on the moon. The 8000 key skills needed for such a space program did not exist at that time anywhere in the world. All that was available was billions of dollars for research and persons of vision who believed they could find the technology to make it happen. We have not a lot of money but we do have know-how on websites and vision of what job skills are needed by our members. There are many projects that you may think involves work for ordinary persons in Australia. For example, some will tell you that Australia needs to plant 5 billion trees to control salinity. But it is not affordable, if you use unskilled labour. Perhaps if tree planting on such a scale were mechanised, it would be affordable. It is not affordable if using the “billions of impoverished, uneducated individuals in the developing world, and tens of millions of unskilled, non-professional workers in the developed world” described by P. Kennedy in his novel Preparing for Twenty-First Century (1993). Kennedy examines this large population of persons, describing their prospects as “poor” and in many cases “getting worse”. He continues: Their plight is the concern of the pessimistic writings about the demographic explosion and environmental catastrophes by the Ehrlichs, the Worldwatch Institute, and others, and it inspires studies on future career trends and their social implications, like the work of Robert Reich. Initially, it might seem that only one school of thought must be right, but it could be that each has examined different aspects of a single phenomenon, so that the optimists are excited about the worlds “winners” whereas the pessimists worry at the fate of the “losers”. We subscribe to both views as being correct and that the gap between the rich and the poor in Australia will widen as Kennedy suggests. Low skill sets means first order knowledges are used. It is our Centre’s capacity to increase the third order knowledge of trainees. The associated skills that result from this training will make these persons employable in the next century. The ability to work in a group with new software on a multi-million dollar project every day for ten hours a day until the project is complete will not only become more common, skills and aptitudes like these will become a necessary requirement for persons maintaining a common work ethos. A year ago, we identified 8 areas where we could train our members for future jobs. These are: · Acquiring Information – Psychological accessibility is needed. The individual must be able to recognise his/her need for information, be willing to seek this information and be able to convey the need to a second person (the information specialist), when necessary. Using computer search engines, paper based technical libraries and Internet products and services our Members will identify information requirements, and develop sifting and gathering skills. · Ability to Perform Practical Tasks – Emotional maturity is required to accept the demand for rapid learning of new skills. Members will need to train themselves to develop advanced skill sets, and be willing to implement learned knowledge to own and proficiently perform tasks on an unsupervised basis. · Ability To Work In Groups & Teams – Cultural adaptability, pliability of mental states and the rapid exchange and processing of information are required by individuals in the information age, where modern organisational culture typically structures projects around team work. Members wishing to work on our projects must develop these skills. · Scientific Knowledge - Our Geology Museum will allow scientific training to be acquired by our Members who volunteer their time. Scientific literacy will be a minimum prerequisite for all skilled workers and professionals. · Third Order Matrix Thinking & Problem Solving - The increasing complexity and volume of information will render first and second order ways of dealing with information and solving problems obsolete. · Enterprise & Excellence - The nature of enterprise in the 21st Century will be marked by a demand for frequent and rapid changes to business. Greater competition will force a culture of excellence upon those organizations that desire to stay viable. · Perseverance – Project ownership requires persistence and commitment to the tasks undertaken. Our project management professionals must develop this quality. · Performance Evaluation - All systems must be better integrated to provide performance evaluation information at much higher levels than at present . Many listeners will recognise that persons having mastery of these eight things must be the future managers. Over the last 12 months, we have taught present members these skills on a regular basis. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus wrote “An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society” (London, 1798) focusing on what appeared to him the greatest problem facing the human species: “that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”. The “ power of population” was answered not so much by “the power in the earth” itself, but by the power of technology – the capacity of the human mind to find new ways of doing things, to invent new devices, to organize production in improved forms, to quicken the pace of moving goods and ideas from one place to another, to stimulate fresh approached to old problems. Overpopulation, pressure upon the land, migration, and social instability on the one hand, and technology’s power both to increase productivity and to displace traditional occupations on the other – still confront us today, with greater force than ever. In other words, we should see the demographic and economic conditions of the late eighteenth century as a metaphor for the challenges facing our present global society, two centuries after Malthus’s ponderings. Lord Buddha said that giving detailed instructions of how to wake up the minds and practice to get out of suffering is the highest gift. The Pali word dana means something like "giving something of value to others". So Dhamma Dana - the giving of the instructions of how to wake the mind to come out of suffering - is the highest gift. There is nothing higher than this. For high skill learning at a fast rate, an awakened mind is needed. Until recently, the history of education was a neglected focus of interest amongst historians, sociologists, educationalists and feminists. According to June Purvis (1980), even standard histories of education texts offered limited discussion of the issue. Most adult-education provision in the 19th Century in the U.K. was the result of voluntary rather than State effort; state provision did not develop until the second half of the century, especially during the last few decades. Why did more working class women than men become scholars at these schools? Unfortunately, most of the research in this area relates to working-class men rather than working class women. The statements made by Dr. Pole in his address of 1813 illustrated that the kind of benefits that many middle-class persons hoped the Sunday-schools might bring, included "meekness, Christian fortitude and resignation". The latent functions appear to be aimed at social control and class control. The working classes were regarded as culturally and morally deficient; one way to improve them was to use adult education as a vehicle for socialisation into a different group of values. The Mechanics Institutes movement, which began in the 1820s, is usually regarded as the major adult-education movement of the 19th Century. These institutes never aimed to attract female scholars. It was not until 1861 that female members were allowed to vote or hold office. Institutes of the more popular kind, called Lyceums, attempted to recruit both working-class women and men by offering a varied program of education and entertainment at much cheaper rates than most mechanics' institutes. Why were reading rooms regarded as a male preserve? Separate never meant "equal". In the second half of the 19th Century, working men's colleges and institutes were established. The "useful knowledge" taught not only included the 3 "Rs" but also a broad range of subjects - Latin, Greek, French, German, mathematics, literature, logic, elocution and drawing - all for nine pence a week. Working Men's Colleges were established widely and tuition was extended to include chemistry, geometry, history, algebra and logic. The choice of such subjects is understandable since "Cambridge men", according to Jonathan Ree (1980), dominated all working men's colleges. We would now like to explain our views on how we provide access to high grade education. Blatantly, we hold that superior mind cultivation is the first tool needed for education. We do want to make clear is that from our viewpoint there are still three paramount issues that need to be articulated into our version of a Western civilization learning curricula. The first is that it is fundamental to work ethics that killing of sentient beings ought to be eliminated or at least minimized, and this precept has been sidetracked from deep analysis in work culture. The second is that the s-curve nature of the limits to growth of bio-systems has been worked out, and there is no reason to doubt that economic limits apply to conventional education using face-to-face delivery. The third thing is that the foundations of most Western accounts of education tend to be "normalized" to produce a curious and ideological illusion about the economic limits of education. In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky suggested that Western culture and education has been embedded with normalisation by certain government and non-government organisations aiming to achieve political and economic power. Normalisation appears as what "everyone thinks they know" when their minds manufacture pathways to consent to sustain the greater portion of their anti-work, anti-study lower class thinking. We are not interested in maintaining the causes and the culture of poverty among our Members by setting up a low skill organisation. Since we teach in these three frames of reference we aim to cut the effects of normalisation from our Members' minds and teach them high skills on our computer systems and our 8 websites. We do not wish to waste our valuable volunteers' time, our most precious resource, on lay persons who neither want to work in right livelihood occupations nor study work-related skills. We have simple tests to identify who is teachable. Our Centre is not to embark on an uncritical and unhistorical revival of educational idealism, with all its gaps and elisions. Although we structure our learning from the ideological standpoint of that Buddha Dhamma it is taught as method and means of the information age. It is not taught as "pure" blind theory nor is it taught as "pure" blind practice. You might say we teach theory and practice to overcome the impression that we are dealing with 1st order knowledge that is has been compared with little more than a set of proverbs. Our learning systems are exercises in cognitive structuring up to 4th order knowledge. The Indra Analogy (Indra’s net) We need to highlight the existence of these gems on our Websites. To talk of advantages of convergence we use an Indra net analogy as an explanatory device to give guidelines to our publications and activities leaders. Indra’s net is exemplified by the following quotes: - Indra’s net is
made of precious gems and hangs over Indra’s palace, Because new untrained Members lack good vision at the beginning of their practice they may be able to see only one or two of the eighty four thousand jewels of Dhamma. Given time and merit they will meet all the gems. A limited view is caused by lack of fundamentals of Dhamma. A text that is valuable is the Middle Length Sayings, Discourse on the Synopsis of Fundamentals (Mulapariyayasutta), in which Dhamma is described as an important word with several meanings, such as: conditions, mental objects, states of mind, and things. It would seem to untrained persons (in Pali: avinita, it also means: untrained, not led, not disciplined) that the Dhamma is “inexhaustible” (akshaya in Sanskrit) and for this reason the vows of the great Maha Bodhisattvas seem “inexhaustible” because they vow to benefit many beings within all the worlds. The development of Mahayana teachings in China and the doctrine of Jodo or Pureland bought a close association of Pureland teaching with Ch’an (Zen). These are great jewels. In this jewel sense, we view Mahayana as a historical process still in forward movement across the existing jewels. We think it is helpful to call Mahayana Buddhism primarily a religion for laypersons. Monks and Nuns in Mahayana are often there for the purpose of leading and serving laypersons in accordance with the Bodhisattva ideals. It is important for us that we learn all the 84,000 Dhammas and write them down. To think globally, we must operate globally. Recently, eight of our members were being given peak training exercises in Bangkok. The 21st General Conference of the World Buddhist Fellowship held at the same time as the 12th General Conference of the World Buddhist Youth held from the 6th December 2000 in Bangkok have been an integral part of the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the World Fellowship of Buddhists which was founded in 1950 in Sri Lanka by Dr. G.P. Malalasekera. To mark this significant event there was the inauguration of the World Buddhist University on the 9th of December at the conclusion of the two Conferences. The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd has participated at this Conference with a delegation comprising John D. Hughes - Vice President WFB, Julian Bamford and Vincenzo Cavuoto as delegates - Julie O’Donnell and Anita Svensson as observers, Jocelyn Hughes and Vanessa Macleod as Raporteurs. Participation at this Conference by our Centre has become a very significant training device for our Members in order to: - Get them to interact with persons for whom the practice of Buddha Dhamma is an essential part of their history and culture - Take them away from their habitual environment so they can better experience a Buddha Dhamma culture - Create a more homogenous culture at our Centre within the spirit of Buddha Dhamma - Get them to practice working for long hours and learn to handle the stress of a high-pressure environment in a skillful way - Enable them to gain a better perspective on the high profile our Centre has in the Buddhist world and on the leverage opportunities to preserve this Buddha Sasana - Update and increase our network of contacts with Buddhist Organisations around the world - Practice our Five Styles at a global level Our Centre is well positioned to play a leading role within the context of the WFB and these are only just some of the reasons. Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana and Ch’an are being taught and practiced at our Centre. We are culturally adaptable. The process of globalisation is, to a greater or lesser extent, producing some kind of disorientation in traditional Buddhist societies, which is weakening the confidence in the relevance of Buddha Dhamma in the younger section of the population. This erosion of confidence (saddha) is a subtle process and not immediately obvious, but nevertheless is real. In the push to achieve wealth and an increased standard of living that Western societies seem to enjoy, there appears to be an uncritical acceptance of Western life styles and value systems. In the long run this may have the effect of undermining their traditional Buddhist culture and value system. We have a role in showing others how to hold Buddha Dhamma morality with good job skills. We wish our listeners
the best for the New Year and will continue to upgrade our
websites at: Each new website is developed like another Suite or nascent office module for our Centre. We will continue to place more and more management information, newsletters and our flagship journal text with illustrations on our websites. The advantage of websites is that they are time and place independent, as other persons are able to choose on their terms, when and where and how they read our material. We do not borrow money to broadcast our data worldwide. In the course of time, we will own our own broadcast facilities. Such broadcast globalisation gives our overseas contacts quality information without us building more and more office space. In fact, we believe it is improbable that the Internet system will last five hundred years. Technology breakdown would be expected to occur in future time. We have proved it possible to go from local to regional, from regional to national and from national to global in a rapid period of time without incurring IT debt. 11% of Australians now follow Buddha Dhamma. May you follow them in the good things they do and learn more job skills of use for your future this year. If you are interested in exploring some new skills, please contact us on 9754-3334. Thank you very much for your attention and support. May you be well and happy. This script was written and edited by: John D. Hughes, Maria Pannozzo, Lisa Nelson, Vincenzo Cavuoto and Tim Browning Disclaimer:
As we, the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., do not control the actions of our service providers from time to time, make no warranty as to the continuous operation of our website(s). Also, we make no assertion as to the veracity of any of the information included in any of the links with our websites, or an other source accessed through our website(s).
Accordingly, we accept no liability to any user or subsequent third party, either expressed or implied, whether or not caused by error or omission on either our part, or a member, employee or other person associated with the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.
Flesch Grade Level
13.2 For more information, contact the Centre or better still, come and visit us. |
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© Copyright. The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. |