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NAMO
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'THE
BUDDHIST HOUR'
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Hillside
Radio 1620 AM, 87.6 FM & 88.0 FM |
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The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for Sunday 29 April 2001
This script is titled: In
praise of Fifty Years of flavours and interests generated by the
The Headquarters of the World Fellowship of Buddhists is delighted to publish a commemorative book consisting of both academic and general contents on the occasion of the WFB reaching its Fiftieth Anniversary in B.E.2543/C.E.2000. Our Teacher and Founder of the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., John D. Hughes, was asked to write an article giving his personal ideas and experiences about his participation with the World Fellowship of Buddhists from the beginning to the present to be published in the commemorative book. Today in the Buddhist Hour radio show, we would like to read for you what John has written in his article called “In praise of Fifty Years of flavours and interests generated by the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB)”. The personal experiences and ideas that have been generated through contact with the WFB have passed through the usual stages of tastes and interests; first, of that uncritical admiration of the glittering and the sympathy with crude and exuberant sentiment which are natural to youth; second, then of mature search for intellectual or moral sustenance and Enlightenment; and finally for desire for pure refreshment of the mind in the company of “serene creators of immortal things”. By training, the author is a scientist whose first discipline is chemistry. As it was taught, there was never any suggestion that mind could exist and influence materiality in any manner. In general, it appeared that the assumptions of the foundations of physics, chemistry and scientific method that I was taught had a specified amount of uncertainty in quantum mechanics but for the massed property of stuff, it appeared to follow set laws. It was silent on questions of moral value or how to live. Fortunately, driven by what I could remember of Buddha Dhamma learned in past lives, I set out on another quest for meaning apart from that of earning my living as a textile technologist and joining in the higher aspects of post World War II cultural life in Melbourne. Because of Australia’s vigorous migration program at the time, I met with many ideas from Europe that seemed to challenge the position and standards of Christian ethics that held power within the establishment of Australia. Existentialism had an appeal because it suggested that insight could be obtained by exercise of the human will. This was the period of the Cold War. The causes of economic differences of why some persons were poor and some were rich was expressed by Marx’s theory or just plain luck. I attended the inaugural meeting of the Buddhist Society of Victoria in Melbourne where I gathered an impression that is was a battle between Sri Lankans who wanted a place to practice their traditional rituals and some Australians who seemed to me to be somewhat anti-cleric in their approach to what was needed in the sense that the Theosophical Society (U.S.Version) thought processes of that time were dominant. Little, if any, real understanding of cause and effect was taught. The word “kamma” was loosely known. Any earlier Buddhist heritage from the Chinese in Victoria was lost or neglected by the white Australians. Racism was accepted. What I thought were reasonable questions of purpose of teaching and social structure for outsiders in the organisational sense seemed to be dismissed by the assembled company. It did not seem clear that good information flow have a high priority. I did not follow up this organisation to any great extent for some years as a possible source of learning about Buddha Dhamma because culturally I did not feel I could relate to what seemed to me to be a narrow agenda of a very set pattern with little opportunity for questioning. Instead, I read everything that was available locally, which was no more than about 20 books of dubious lineage which did not seem to add much light to what I already knew from intuition and past kamma. I resolved to get superior information of the state of the art of Buddha Dhamma overseas. I could see an opportunity through funding from the Australian Schools Commission to undertake a systematic study of the half dozen Buddhist societies that existed in Australia in 1976. This project took three years of my spare time. I thank all those Monks and Nuns who helped me come to terms with what they were doing. To get good references, I had to search overseas publishers and I received some help from editors in London. Mr Russell Web was the editor of the Pali Text Society journal and introduced me to several eminent Buddhist Scholars in America and Taiwan. I obtained Buddhist Text Information publications from an American University which ran the Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions. Dr. Richard A. Gard was especially helpful as was a Taiwanese Venerable Abbess Nun, who was a great Buddhist Scholar and fluent in English. I established a Buddhist Centre at Upwey in Melbourne. In 1978, I attended a world conference in Sri Lanka of World Buddhist Leaders and Scholars and at this conference, I was fortunate enough to meet the key executives of the World Fellowship of Buddhists who moderated the conference. I met eminent Monks whose books I have read, I met leaders of Buddhist organizations who could help me formulate policies suitable for the development of the Buddhist Centre in Australia that I had established. The remarkable ability of these persons exceeded any measure that I knew of judging persons they were of a quality beyond any expectation that I could have imagined before meeting these Noble Persons. All WFB delegates gave me very sound advice and I knew enough to know their advice would never have been obtained from secular persons in Australia or (without disrespect) from Christian advisors. What I learnt from meeting persons at this conference was that there were people in overseas countries who really could understand the Teachings of Lord Buddha and could put them into practical use to lead ordinary persons out of suffering. Yet, at the same time, I knew I must develop my own Centre in Australia and train persons to a sufficient level that they could join in such high level conferences in a constructive manner with good fellowship as I had seen manifested in Sri Lanka. Quite simply, I resolved to put into practice that there could be no compromise in making sure that the World Fellowship of Buddhists’ Agenda, that is, “to establish in unity and strengthen the WFB, to make the utmost endeavour to study, observe and practice the Teachings of the Buddha that we (the Members of the WFB) be radiant examples of the living faith, and to strive with all might and main to make the sublime doctrine of the Buddha so that its benign teaching of compassion, tolerance, service and sacrifice may pervade the entire world, inspiring and influencing the peoples of the earth and their Governments to lead the Buddhist way of life, which is for all ages and times, so that there be peace, harmony and happiness for all beings”, be upheld at my Centre. Over time many Buddhist Monks came to visit Australia to advise me. I would apply to the World Fellowship of Buddhists to become an official Regional Centre of that august body when I had trained enough mature persons. This, WFB view then, was to be the policy of the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. and the medium term was that when my Organisation had enough mature persons trained by me and others to represent authentically the correct Teachings stated with no alternatives. There was no question of aligning to other organisations. In due course, after intense study of the World Fellowship of Buddhists’ publications, and much practice, the time became right and a Charter was granted to our Centre on 22 October 1990. The manifold experiences that it has been my personal privilege to experience through association with the WFB is of substantial value because it contains matter of unforced and universally comprehensible human interest in its serious, humorous, imaginative and realistic styles. Since then I have attended conferences in Taiwan, Thailand, Australia and again in Thailand. As personal values, the writer holds strongly that form without substance is of no value. An organisation will never survive long if devoid of some considerable virtue of good form. In this area of the writer’s expertise I uphold the sentiments of professor T.G. Tucker who was Professor of Classics at the University of Melbourne and who wrote in 1925, “That if anyone is disposed with these frank principles then he or she shall I offend”. The appreciation of the Fellowship aspects of the WFB is a wide and rather complicated subject and if I seem to dwell unduly on some reiteration of a point here or there, it is of the importance of driving it home. When I review the decades of advice I have received from the many Venerable Monks and Nuns and Bodhisattvas that comprise this Fellowship, I am grateful of the fact that I made enough merit in former lives to be able to comprehend the many doga songs, fables, myths, legends, sagas and proverbs which may be called the oral literature of Buddha Dhamma that they have carried forward in a grand tradition of love of the Dhamma. When the mind is seeking the truth in all its vastness and when meeting with the vast accumulation of contents of Dhamma held in the minds, body and speech of Members of the WFB, it is necessary to practice with vigour to stop being overwhelmed or bemused by such richness. Among this richness is the practical information I sought to adapt to run a Buddhist organisation suitable for the 20th and 21st Centuries that has the capability of broadening the vision and comprehension of followers who we impact by our local activities. It is for this type of reason that one cultivates the propagation of Buddha Dhamma just as one cultivates a fine art. While pictorial art and music first appealed to the eye and ear sense bases, Buddhist literature seems to make an inner appeal more directly and immediately to the mind. We should argue that just as we expect the untrained ear to miss the best in music and the untrained eye to miss the best in paintings, so the best is missed in Buddhist literature by the untrained mind. If we become immersed in indifferent music or low grade painting before long we take some sort of pleasure in seeing and listening to inferior work. How much more danger there is if we submerge ourselves in poorly crafted Dhamma writing and of those who applaud it. As any true musician or serious student of painting would assert, what is coming over in the popular culture of the Western world is a retreat from refined and cultivated works of art and music. In Australia, there is material well-being although some persons believe Government policies have created a culture of “passive welfare”. This passive welfare has dismembered the family and attacks the culture which tends to be high or elitist. Many persons lives are dominated by bureaucrats and departments. All main stream parties offer the fool’s choice, the same dominant intervention to bring about a dulling of cultural maturity among ordinary people. The indigenous Buddhist culture that the Chinese brought to Australia has been fundamentally broken because indigenous languages such as Chinese and the culture have been lost to the mainstream of Australia that revolves around European culture and values. At that time, most Australians seem to be happy with the notion that the Government should have the last say on the design of all major public buildings and none should reflect Asian cultural architecture. Permits would not be granted for such buildings. Later, this was modified to push USA business architecture of the skyscrapers. Buildings reflect spiritual values so Buddhist mandalas could not be built. The result is that learning in some forms of art, such as Ch’an painting and Buddhist calligraphy, will not be found within Government initiatives nor within the curriculum of Australian universities in this country as a strong value set. Overseas cultural imperialism was the natural order in the Cold War. Recently, it has become clear that a number of Australian citizens are dropping below what Australia calls the “poverty line”, to the point where in South Australia one in four persons are below this poverty line. Poverty, as defined in Australia is luxury by some third world standards. The widely accepted Henderson poverty line, ranges from an income of $210 a week for a single unemployed adult and $628 for an employed adult with four children. There is no single solution for reversing this process but Buddhist cultural values do not require a lot of money and can be found in every country where the leaders of the WFB ply their craft. It seems to me timely to teach Buddha Dhamma and it is growing fast. Australia is just about to appoint the Anglican Archbishop, Peter Hollingsworth, as Governor- General. This is the first time a spiritual leader has been appointed to this position. Traditionally, this position has been filled by ex-politicians, judges or military persons. The position of Governor-General started 100 years ago as primarily representing and protecting the interests of the British Government. It was more than 30 years after Federation before the first Australian, Sir Isaac Isaacs, was appointed to the office and it has only been in recent decades that the Governor-General has played a more assertive role rather than being simply the Queen’s representative in this country. It is true that Hollingsworth is the first cleric to be appointed as Governor-general, but another three Members of the clergy also became state Governors. This does not mean however, that Australia is a Theocracy. Hollingsworth is giving up his position as Archbishop of Brisbane to become the Queen’s representative at the head of a secular state. An earlier Governor-General was a professed atheist. Hollingsworth was named Australian of the Year in 1992 and Father of the Year five years before that. Through the Buddhist values we acquired over decades of practice, our Centre occasionally lobbies the Government on issues of interest to Buddha Dhamma practitioners. Our cultural maturity makes it clear to us that we should not overtly support one political party against another. Current psychological research in the western world is tending more and more to treat people as types as opposed to individuals, so it is not a big step to dehumanise them. This dehumanisation is probably a key factor in racism. Evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides from the University of California believe the fear of ethnic groups that results from this lies in our minds, having evolved millions of years ago when we were living in small clans and groups which, most historians agree, had an optimum size of about 150. Strangers were perceived as a potential threat, either as enemies or the carriers of disease. Your ability to recognise family and friends was a fundamental survival skill. It was also important to tell friend and foe from a distance and judge gaze direction accurately. In the family sense, we have formed one of the most powerful clans of Australia with our key Members bound together in their levels of attainment of Buddha Dhamma. Under Buddha rules, we are not allowed to say publicly the level of attainment of any individual Member but we can say we have a set of persons who have vowed to look after the substance of the WFB values for several generations forward and we intend to train more to pursue this end. As one of our Australian born Members, who has worked as a rapporteur at two WFB Conferences, said, “To have had the privilege to attend and assist at the last two WFB Conferences, to have met the many great Teachers and practitioners at these Conferences, I owe to my Teacher, John D. Hughes. Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu. I vow to support all future initiatives of the WFB”. The inspirational value of the WFB Members is lovely and of good report and could be compared to drinking pure drafts of amrita from a heaven world as opposed to drinking, as George Eliot neatly phrases it, “spiritual gin”, from some of the lower degenerate forms of pop religion. So what is the moral effect of involving ourselves with the WFB? Let us interpret the word “moral” in an earlier and more liberal sense. “Moral” is properly that which pertains to, or affects, our moras, the Latin name for “ways”, our whole character, or mental breeding, or to put it more simply, our tone. That “tone” runs through not only all we do, but all we think and feel. It spontaneously determines our attitude to all we see or hear. Nothing is more indicative of a person’s culture or tone than what he or she finds interesting. Hence, we become “ethical”. So we’re saying that our membership of the WFB is good for our “tone”. The Greeks rated persons as imperceptive or insensitive if they lacked this tone. They were stupid or dull-witted, tactless, tasteless, gross and represented the vulgarian. To those hard and harsh materialistic persons who are arising in this materialistic age we call them Philistine. Such persons prefer the loud and common to the fine and choice and become ingrained with crude psychological daubing and movies culture. Such persons assert they know what they like and leave it at that. They are unteachable because they have no respect for Teachers. We intend to raise the tone in Australia by the systematic propagation of the best of Buddha’s Teachings because we know it works, because it gives a particularly wide and deep culture - unusual knowledge, insight, sense of trueness and fitness and a sympathetic response to good things. We are quite happy to quote the best words we find and we know clearly that a developed, analytical mind is one of the rarest of possessions and above all others deserves the name of “scientific”. We are saying then that the processes we see among the WFB Members are truly scientific and we are genuinely appreciative of such good direction. We do not wish to associate with foolish persons unless we can help them. What we are after is attainable as a great law of culture which we can learn to express by the expansion and clarifying of our thinking and feeling through propagation over the local radio stations and our Internet sites. This is our Dhamma Dana. Naturally, I do not expect that all Australians will agree but we are not here to dictate but merely to suggest and show the Way to the masses. I hope I can always offer some reasons for this faith in Buddha Dhamma. The surest way of learning to appreciate the Buddha Dhamma is by earlier association with its most perfect examples. As with literature, the effect is increased tenfold when you not merely redefine work to right livelihood but also put it into practice. We do not kill. The question is not whether a writer is excellent for his time and country, but whether he or she remains always everywhere excellent. We can read ancient texts and feel their freshness now. We can talk to Members of the WFB who have memorised the ancient texts and when they express them it’s as if we are hearing the living voice of the Buddha teaching us. They never bore us with light conversation or awkward conversation brought about through lack of ideas. Some great authority once said, “read no book until it becomes famous”. Presumably, he was addressing students to direct their energies away from reading trivia and towards substance. We challenge many Australians and others to stop wasting their time and enfeeble their faculties with third rate literature when we can produce first rate literature written by living scholars who are Members of the WFB. The power of Dhamma Dana is well known. We are the heirs of all the ages of Buddhist scholarship and it would be a shame to neglect our heritage and go feeding upon the husks. Good Dhamma is worth reading a thousand times. Good Members of the WFB are living Dhamma. This then is my advice to my students. Go straight to the best and you get a better selection than if you limit yourself to one person or time or country. Seep yourself in discussion with the best of WFB Members and make an intense study of what they have written for us. This means do not be afraid of beginning with the hardest or driest literature. When penetrated, the best literature is not hard. Poor literature is always dull. We avoid poor literature on our web sites to the best of our ability. In the earlier stages of what might be called a literary education, readers tend to pick up some strikingly clever phrase or other but as reading extends and the mind matures, readers can look more under the surface and estimate more truly the relations between the language and its contents. As another one of my students said after I taught her this viewpoint of reading, “Don’t give up. Refer to the Oxford English Dictionary for the meaning of words”. And another Member said, “With the direction of my Dhamma Teacher, John D. Hughes, I am able to use the skills needed to strengthen Dhamma minds. I thank the WFB for making their literature available and as Assistant Secretary of the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. I read with delight all correspondence from the WFB”. The meritorious actions of the WFB are vast. Without a complete understanding of these actions, it is unwise to criticise. We thank the Members of the WFB for their great compassion and wisdom in continuing to propagate the Dhamma for the benefit of all beings and we vow to continue to support the WFB in all its future actions. We wish the WFB all success and stability with our wholehearted support for the next fifty years at least.
This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Julian Bamford, Tim Browning, Leanne Eames, Isabella Hobbs, Lyne Lehmann, Vanessa Macleod, Lisa Nelson, Nick Prescott, Anita Svensson, Michelle Johnstone and Evelin Halls.
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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.
References Gard, Richard A. (Ed), (1986), Buddhist Text Information, December 1986, The Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions, New York, USA. Rossiter, Nicholas, (2001), Face Values in The Australian Magazine, April 14-15 2001, pp.27-28. Tucker, T.G., (1925), The Judgement and Appreciation of Literature, Melbourne University Press, Australia. World Fellowship of Buddhists, (1992), Constitution of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, World Fellowship of Buddhists Headquarters, Bangkok, Thailand, p. 1. Document Statistics Totals:
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