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NAMO
TASSA
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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 10 June 2001
Today’s program is titled: Finding Skill in Means
At our Centre, we use our skill in means to help a variety of persons. A Korean Monk, the Venerable Hong San and his attendant Chung Sun Lee visited our Teacher and Members on Tuesday 5 June 2001. The Venerable last visited our Centre on 14 December 1996. John D. Hughes and our President had dinner with him at the Shiraaz Indian Restaurant in Upper Ferntree Gully on Thursday evening. The Venerable wishes to teach Dhamma in the English language. We have a wide range of preferred Dhamma words in English. The Venerable has requested and selected Members have agreed that he will be taught the English language at our Centre. He has rented a unit in the City. He will be taught English several days per week in our recently refurbished Ch’an Academy study suite, (Study Area 2). Our Teacher harvested the fruit of many causes to get a quality atmosphere into Study Area 2. Our Teacher was assisted with the refurbishment and preparation of Study Area 2, by Members Rodney Johnson, Lisa Nelson, Frank Carter and Julian Bamford. Our Teacher’s professional library on Art, Chinese English and Japanese English Dictionaries, from various locations have been concentrated into Study Area 2. A professional architect’s drawing board has been positioned in front of the window of Study Area 2. The room holds a 30 volume set of Japanese national treasures with bilingual commentary that is part of the professional library. Calligraphy pieces by Master Shigioku have been hung on the East wall. Art treasures from different countries are housed there. Altars have been built for the Goddess of Learning Sarasvati and Quan Yin. These are positioned on the west wall of Study Area 2. A large bookcase has been repositioned and holds altars built for: the Dragon King, the Deva of Learning and God of Work. One example of Japanese skill in means is to use an image of Bodhidharma’s head with unpainted eyes. One eye painted on a Japanese Bodhidharma head, says that the project has begun and Bodhidharma is invited to come to help in this area. When the project is finished Bodhidharma’s other eye will be painted in place. A Pentium computer connected to our Local Area Network (LAN) will assist the Venerable’s learning of the English language because he can look up many topics on screen. On Friday, we commenced our June Five Day Bhavana Course. The subject matter is “Skill in means”. Most of our Teaching is in the English language. The main course has several practices; each with its own respective outcome: The first practice is to place jewels on our three Prajnaparamita images every day. The outcome expected is deeper understanding for the female 4 faced Prajnaparamita deity. These rare images were especially cast in India. If you have jewels you wish to donate to us please bring them to our Centre as soon as possible. Chanting practice is twice per day 7am and 5.15pm. Speed reading practice skills are built every day, twice per day 10am and 2pm for one hour. The outcome of these two activities is increased ability to read Buddha Dhamma texts, speak about their content and receive textual transmission in the future. These things display learned skill in means. The next practice skill taught on the course involves Members becoming familiar with the location of many things; noting and recording Centre assets on the asset register; and working in a refurbished administrative area. The outcome is more effective asset management. A clearer focus on how much merit is needed for each part of a person’s life plan or work plan is found if we have the appropriate mandalas of the functions we wish to be managed. Our project management plan is to examine the feasibility for the delivery of the equivalent of Aust. $1 million goods and services (in stages) within the next 12 months. The multiple expected outcomes from this planning need Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to find dollars spent by us and the equivalent dollar value of Dhamma that we deliver. The needed calculations to be done over the course will include a value of imputed dollars of the time spent by our volunteers at the Centre and on-line. The partial costing of these operations will improve our skill in means. We measure what we do. One Member, who has attended all sessions of the speed reading training twice a day, has increased her reading speed by 1200 % within two weeks. Within one year her aim is to read more than fifty thousand words per minute. This high target for skill in means may be obtainable if she makes sufficient merit over the next year. Skill in means was used to construct a suitable sattvic Food Roster for the first four days of the course. This will be vegetarian food only. The roster specifies who brings what and who prepares the food, and who cleans up using kitchen best practice. A balanced diet is essential for practice of Buddha Dhamma. Some Members may wish to undertake an extra precept of to abstaining from eating after midday for one day or more. This is fine as long as it is not stressful to them. Buddha Dhamma followers do not practice malnutrition of the body. The outcome of this vegetarian practice is to save time and help lighten the minds we wish to train and sustain the energy level of the meditators on the course. On Friday evening, the first day of the of the Bhavana Course, our Teacher John D. Hughes taught the meditators the skill in means of how to build, sustain and operate in cognitive mandalas having many items from a do list. Members were given the master do-list with the Centre’s priorities broken down into four groups prioritised within time frames: immediate, within 48 hours, within 96 hours and ongoing after 96 hours. For convenience, these may be viewed as AAAA, AAA, AA, and A priorities. The block grouping of topics in four priorities has been used at our Centre for some years. This is similar to Covey’s classifications. In the immediate time frame at the time of the course, of 4A priority (urgent and important) there were fifteen projects. Members were asked to create a 4 by 4 mandala in their minds and place each of the fifteen projects in one of the available 16 cells. The colour of this 4A mind mandala was blue. The other do lists had more tasks so bigger mind mandalas were needed. The colours of the 3A 48 hour and 2A 96 hour time frame mind mandalas were yellow and pink respectively. These mandalas could be compared to mind mapping. These correspond to not urgent but important and urgent but not important tasks. After writing down the mind colours for the first three sets of projects on the master do-list, our Teacher instructed the students to tear up this first compiled paper do list. Why did he give this instruction? Because, for lifetimes, the students had conditioned their minds to want to sabotage their time lines of written or verbal do lists. We needed such a dramatic action to break the ancient habits. By doing this most of the students understood and developed skill in means to break the obstacles that had prevented them from building, sustaining and operating in mandalas at the 4A level. To create strong volition to work at the 4A level alongside the Teacher’s mandala, students were requested to chant the tasks from the do list within each desired mandala three times. For the second and third chanting, students were requested to increase their chanting speed. It became clear to the students that the faster the chanting speed, the stronger the volition to want to do the task became and hence, the tasks were easier to do. Some of the tasks were not too grandiose. They included painting the hand rails of the Emerald Pavilion. Others required higher training in OH&S. Students are taught to avoid the mindless chanting of first order knowledge. This prevents logic processes from operating. A material (mandala) of knowledge gives 2nd or 3rd order knowledge of the subject because tasks form relationships, linear or otherwise. The students speed read the do list three times. Naturally, each reading became faster than the previous one. By scanning the do list in this way, students could see each for himself or herself the necessity for mandalas and the sheer brilliance in operating in mandalas compared to ordinary modes becomes clear. The broader picture was always in mind. As some students commented, mandalas are a structure that can help them maximise their merit and to move effortlessly between projects listed on the same mandala without becoming attached to any given task. Our Centre provides the framing of the skill in means opportunity to build, sustain and operate in such practical mandalas, to help persons find the skill in means to transform his or her life chances. The merit is dedicated to the local Deities. The Buddha has said, when a person makes offerings to the local deities, good fortune will come. In the following text, read ‘he or she’ to make gender corrections. “Because
their love for him is like In ancient times of barter, there was no credit available. In this Dhamma ending age, credit is easy to obtain. It is becoming more and more difficult to pay bills, fees and other costs before their due date. The result, of delay in paying slowly is resources do not come easily when you need them. In order for Members and friends to have ease of access to Library resources in the future, Members and friends were encouraged to renew their annual membership or join the John D. Hughes Collection multilingual Library prior to the commencement of the course. The annual membership falls due on 30 June each year at the end of the Australian Financial year. As we plan to avoid handling money as much as possible during the course, those persons wishing to join the library were encouraged to pay before or do so after the completion of the course but not during. If you would like to join our library the cost is $33 including GST for one year’s membership. An initial joining fee of $33 including GST applies the first year. The library membership entitles you to enter the peaceful surrounds of our Reading Room that houses the recently jeweled Prajnaparamita deity, rare Tibetan texts and the heavenly musicians. As a Member, you are entitled to borrow certain books from the library. Digital photographs of the Prajnaparamita altar located in the Reading Room can be viewed at website address www.bdcu.org.au. Click on Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, Vol 11 No.1. On the second day of the course our visiting Teacher, Master Andre Sollier, Zen Master taught some of our students Sumi-e. Members arranged lunch for this Teacher and students. Ch’an originated in China and became Zen in Japan over time. Sumi-e comes from Japan. On the second day of the course, we produced our latest issue of the Brooking Street bugle. You will find this at our Web site at www.companyontheweb.com/buddhamap. We have a CD Burner. We have burnt CD’s with our Library catalogue and our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review and our BDC(U) Ltd. Newsletter, and Brooking Street Bugle new series data. These CD's are not for general release. Strictly speaking, they are for use as backup copies for our own purposes. The CD’s are not to be taken off the premises. When edited further, new CD's will be burnt. We may offer these for sale. We look forward to Members and other helpers doing this editing as soon as possible. This presentation exercise is a high priority task for International Dhamma Activities presentation. We need to hurry with this project because John D. Hughes wishes to take edited CD's of our publication, the Buddha Dhyana Dana Review to a Taiwan International Conference in September this year as information for the delegates. This means they ought to be completed in the next six weeks to allow us sufficient time to burn several CD's, and print suitable labels for them. Members have purchased blank CD's and offered them to the Centre for this purpose. Teaching safety is a large part of our activities. We are very careful to keep our housekeeping of study areas as safe areas. For example, the Ozone filters of the laser printers were replaced on 7 June 2001. Our Speed Reading Training continues at least twice a day over the course. If these are the type of things that interest you come along and inquire if you are eligible to learn a thing or two. There is no charge for these round of teachings if you qualify. Another aspect of the course was to write this broadcast script on skill in means. Other aspects of the course include a complete review of our tool storage arrangements and some general maintenance, including painting of existing buildings. If you can help, please come along. If you wish to participate in some aspects of the learning course, note it is being held at our Centre till Tuesday. Please contact us on (03) 9754 3334 if you wish to visit. The great variety of things done by many Members at the same time is interesting. Thank-you for your attention. Photographs of the aspects of the course are on our website www.companyontheweb.com/buddhamap. Our Members learn to cooperate in use of resources. May you come to skill in means this life. This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Evelin Halls, Julian Bamford, Vanessa Macleod, Pennie White, Lisa Nelson, Joel Svensson, Anita Svensson and Amber Svensson. 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.
References Chodzin, Sherab. The Awakened One: A Life of the Buddha, (1994) Shambhala Dragon Editions, USA. p 136. Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, Volume 7 No. 1 (1997) Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. Australia. p 5. Hawkins, Kathleen. & Turla, Peter. “Speed Read to Win, Read faster to reach your goals in record time” (1990) Day-Timers Success Enhancement Series. Document
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For more information, contact the Centre or better still, come and visit us. |
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This Radio Script is for Free Distribution. It
contains Buddha Dhamma material and is provided for the purpose of
research and study. © Copyright. The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. |