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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 15 July 2001 Broadcast Script 180
The topic of today’s broadcast is: 180 not out.
180 not out would be a grand score in cricket.
Today, 15 July 2001, is our 180th Radio Broadcast in this series. 180 episodes not out in radio is remarkable.
Our enterprise began our first broadcast in this series on 22 February 1998. Since inception, the Executive Producer has been John D. Hughes.
In general terms, we dedicate our collective merit for the flourishing of Buddha Dhamma, the source of benefit and happiness for everyone throughout the universe and for the long life of our Executive Producer, John D. Hughes. May he live long and be successful in fulfilling his visions for the peaceful life of all sentient beings.
John D. Hughes founded our organisation over 23 years ago and is a Vice President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists.
Our organisation has made much merit from this enterprise over the years. Our listeners and readers share this merit. Our weekly broadcast scripts have been placed on our Internet website www.bdcublessings.net.au over the last one year.
On this website as at 7 July 2001, we have had a total of 301 visits since we started. The average visitor stayed 4 minutes 21 seconds and viewed an average of 2.3 pages per visit.
Since inception, 692 pages have been viewed. We intend to add the text of our earlier broadcasts. One year of radio scripts are available for viewing from this site to date.
This week we have added a search engine to our sites at www.bdcublessings.net. au and www.bddronline.net.au to help researchers. Click ‘Search this site’ on the Home page and wait for the search engine dialogue box to appear. Type in a word and click the ‘search’ button. Then wait for a list of references to appear. Click on the reference that you wish to look at. Once you are at that page, select ‘Edit’ then select ‘Find (on this page)’ and enter your word in again in the dialogue box that appears. The word you are looking for will be highlighted throughout the document. Our Flesch Grade reading level for the radio scripts over the past year ranged from 8.3 to 13.7. This is equivalent to a range from secondary school to second year undergraduate level.
Contrary to conventional practice in commercial broadcasting, we would rather overestimate the mentality of the public than underestimate it.
We think we are justified because over 37% of Australians have post secondary school training and about 11% have some University undergraduate experience.
Australia has an educated work force.
At times, to do a topic justice, we have to raise the order of knowledge to that required.
This is usually done by adding some formal logic to our statements.
Our assistant writers provide attenuated arguments to fill out the dialogue of the scripts.
The structure of the arguments presented will vary because of time limits of a broadcast script. Lengthy rigorous reasoning, such as the Buddhist seven fold logic is not provided in most cases although it may be inferred from statements made in the text.
Because the body of text contains references found via ISYS software searching, we do not print the 800 or so references we turn up on a typical ISYS search.
Buddhist Scholars who know the specific topic talked about will recognise our sources of our uncited references.
For general reading, we direct seekers to our John D. Hughes Collection of library references online at www.bdcu.org.au. There are about 4000 Buddha Dhamma indexed references on line at present. Our Information Officer estimates she will have the next 1000 references on line within two months.
Most of the time, because of weekly time pressures, very little “original work” in the Western scholarship sense is done for the average broadcast talk.
But from another viewpoint, is not presenting dozens of good ideas in the course of one talk as a critical review or “state of the art outline” a form of scholarship?
This literacy activity makes great merit because it brings Members into contact with many great authors. Great authors inspire us.
Walter Savage Landor (1775 - 1864) wrote, “ He who praises a good book becomingly, is next to merit to the author”.
So, whenever a broadcast team Member researches our scripts and praises an author, they make merit. In the near future, we intend to multiply our merit further by offering a website that permits a listener to hear the one hour broadcast at any time.
The number 180 is of special significance. So we celebrate with a few quotations, about what we call “radio” and what it used to be called, that is “wireless”, by older generations.
Our first quote is from the Sunday Times 1981 by an anonymous writer, who defined the wireless as an instrument with no strings attached.
Himan Brown in Newsweek (1974) states, “T.V. just feeds you. Radio involves you”.
A British person of great stature and gravitas, Lord Reith, a British Broadcast Executive, was quoted in the BBC Official Biography 1963:
“Our responsibility is to carry into the greatest number of homes everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement and to avoid the things which are or may be hurtful.
It is occasionally indicated to us that we are apparently setting out to give the public what we think they need, not what they want. But few people know what they want and very few what they need. There is often no difference.
In any case it is better to over estimate the mentality of the public than under estimate it”.
Personally, we think it difficult to better the sentiments of Albert Einstein in addressing the Opening of the 1930 German Radio Exhibition.
“The radio is of unique usefulness for bringing peoples together. Until it was invented they saw each other only in the distorting mirror of the newspapers. But the radio shows them as they are, and reveals their most attractive side.”
We hope we have managed to prove there is an attractive side to Buddha Dhamma Teachings. Our listeners and readers have had the opportunity to hear over 180 broadcasts.
The first use of the word “broadcast” in 1767 referred to seed being scattered abroad over the whole surface, instead of being sown in drills or rows.
By 1922, the word came to mean disseminated by means of radio or television and also the action or an act of broadcasting by radio or television.
We like the idea of our words scattering over a wide range of persons. Blue collar workers can hear Buddha Dhamma with profit.
For us, the secret anniversaries of our radio heart are most important.
On this special occasion, of being 180 not out we need to explain how we credit the long life of our program to being able to dedicate the merit we have gained through the studying and writing of these teachings.
By the tagging of merit new possibilities open.
For example, the coverage extended when this station opened another channel on AM band at 1620 kilohertz. We believe this fact will bring more persons to search our library websites at www.bdcu.org.au.
We have many testimonies of the practicality of the advice given by our programs.
In a message from Honourable John Pandazapoulos MP, Minister Assisting the Premier of Victoria on Multicultural Affairs, the Minister wrote:
‘I am pleased to offer my congratulations to the Members of the Buddhist Discussion Centre on the occasion of 180th radio program.
For more than three years, the Buddhist Hour Radio program has been broadcast on Hillside radio. In this time your enthusiastic radio team have quickly learnt skills of radio script writing, presentation, and production. The Buddhist Radio Hour has evolved into a stimulating discussion of ideas and philosophies promoting the Buddhist way of life.
Buddhism is Australia’s ninth largest religion and one of the nation’s fastest growing. it has succeeded in gaining universal appeal and uniting people of diverse cultural backgrounds through its teachings of wisdom, moderation, tolerance, contemplation and harmony.
The Bracks’ Government’s approach to Multicultural Affairs is similarly concerned with supporting and nurturing tolerance in our culturally diverse community. Victoria has become a shining example of the numerous benefits of a multicultural society.
The Bracks’ Government has moved to protect our diversity through the Racial and Religious Tolerance Bill, which recently passed through the Parliament. These new laws will help to protect all Victorians from racial or religious vilification.
The Buddhist message of peace and harmony is one from which all people can draw inspiration. On behalf of the Victorian Government, I offer my best wishes to Victoria’s Buddhist community and continues success for the Buddhist Radio Hour.
John Pandazopoulos MP’
The Honourable Dennis Napthine MP, Leader of the State Opposition and Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Party, wrote:
‘It is with great pleasure that I send my warmest wishes to the Buddhist Discussion Centre on the occasion of the 180th program of Buddhist Hour Radio.
You have been successfully broadcasting for more than three years, since the programs inception in February 1998.
In that time, you have promoted the centre’s commitment to learning, friendliness and humanitarian activities.
One of the greatest aspects about living in Victoria is that we come from a diversity of backgrounds.
We come from 208 nations, speak 150 different languages and follow more than 100 faiths.
The Buddhist Discussion Centre’s contribution to this diversity is to be commended.
I wish to congratulate all those involved in putting together the 180 programs of Buddhist Hour Radio.
You can rightly be proud of your achievements and can now look forward to many years of successful broadcasting.
Dennis Napthine MP.’
In a congratulatory message to our Centre from the Honourable Andrew Olexander MP, Member for Silvan Province, he wrote:
‘The Member for Silvan, The Honourable Andrew Olexander is pleased to be able to congratulate the Buddhist Discussion Centre on the airing of the 180th radio program: “180 Not Out”. Mr Olexander extends his congratulations to Executive Producer John D. Hughes on a job well done. To all supporters, presenters and listeners, congratulations and may your programs continue to grow and prosper.
Yours sincerely
The Honourable Andrew P. Olexander
We thank our honourable politician friends for their accolades and wish them all success.
In a message from Steven K H Aung, MD, FAAFP, President International Buddhist Friends Association, Alberta, Canada who wrote:
Greetings and best wishes to you, your family, our WFB colleagues. Thank you very much for inviting me to write this letter of congratulations. On behalf of myself personally and as president / founder of the International Buddhist Friends Association, I would like to write this official letter of support and best wishes to you. I believe that your broadcasting radio services on the Buddhist Hour will no doubt be a very prestigious and fruitful example of this type of event. I am extremely interested in your program, and I would be very grateful if you would send me the final publication.
May you all be blessed with every happiness, peace and good health.
Sincerely, with Metta
Steven K H Aung, MD FAAFP Associate Clinical Professor, Departments of Medicine and Family Medicine University of Alberta, Adjunct Professor of Extension, University of Alberta Associate Clinical Professor, New York University College of Dentistry President, International Buddhist Friends Association.
We thank our Buddhist friends for their accolades and wish them success.
We define four platforms of our public usefulness.
The first platform is the development of our Members in direct public presentation techniques. This involves considerable literacy acquisition on pronunciation and timing for spoken meaning.
We coach Members in these useful job skills. Harmonious team working and 100% delivery of content under pressure is a valuable commercial skill. Because each week, we cover a different topic, over time Members come in contact with a wide range of advice on practical new management subjects and how they can be financed.
We believe our version of literacy acquisition is not simply a cognitive process but a social and communication based skill.
By coaching Members, we raise above average persons to the level of a professional presenter. We encourage our Members to be tastefully dressed for the radio broadcasts because we know the way a person dresses influences their behaviour and the clarity of their diction.
Radio Professionals have remarked that our teams display all the marks of true professionals.
Members also learn the technical skills of switching channels using an audio console and master volume control during the whole one hour program.
Radio Team Members show a steady rate of literacy acquisition.
We have found our speed reading courses help them.
After a certain amount of literacy acquisition comes Members’ literacy development.
Our second platform for the radio team is to coach for adequate literacy development.
This process is done by involving them with script writing.
During the twentieth century, the idea grew that schooling should not only enable, but ensure, adequate literacy development.
This in its turn was not only a necessary part of economic well-being at the personal level but was also an assurance of social stability and economic advancement at the social level.
By the mid-twentieth century, the ideology of literacy that had underpinned nineteenth-century schooling took on a new charter.
The result of mass education movements, and the achievement of more or less universal literacy in the advanced industrial societies, reshaped the ideology of literacy.
First, literacy was no longer only a personal goal for individual citizens, it became institutionally a basic human right.
The charter of UNESCO assured all countries that literacy along with political freedoms represented a human right for all people.
Secondly, literacy in the form of writing systems is not merely a means of storing and transmitting information, it has become a supra-technology which enables other technologies of information storage, retrieval and transmission to grow (Oxenham 1980).
Literacy itself no longer represents progressive development for people and societies but rather, as the fundamental technology on which modern societies are built, it becomes the precondition for any future change or progress.
Our use of computer technology is kept up to date.
Our Education processes do not merely promote literacy, and our schooling does not just develop it; rather, we raise awareness so Members can see that without literacy there is neither schooling nor education.
Because we operate globally, we teach Members to write in a format of ESL (English as a second language).
The third platform is the need to give listeners and readers as much pleasure as we had in the writing of the scripts.
As with most things, termination comes with every project. We have to drive our one hour radio script to a satisfactory termination each week.
Project death must be quick and clear.
The termination stage of the radio script has to do with the quality of life after the broadcast.
It has a great deal to do with residual attitudes towards the broadcast - “the taste left in the mouth” of our client, the listener or reader and the feeling of completion left with our Team presenters. We say: “Thank you for having us at your place”.
Project termination means the ship does not go down, but will sail again next week.
Technically, this is done by commencing the transfer of merit about half way through the program to remind persons that no matter how charming and sweet we sound, we must stop chanting and talking at the end of the Buddhist Hour.
The major factor to be considered is whatever unit of training we present during a broadcast, the instructions must be complete.
It is for these reasons, that we tend to structure to place a series of climaxes half way through the program, rather than leaving it hanging “in air” till the last minute.
It would be bad manners to close the book halfway through the exposition of some topic. Our Executive Producer rewrites often to ensure we have resolved this issue, The Blessing.
Saying, “May you be well and happy”, helps in this regard.
The fourth platform is the unending analysis of what we produce in terms of image and style to get our standards unsullied.
The fourth platform has three components.
The first being to produce derivatives of the program for public relations or marketing purposes. These will include CDs having the one hour program, CDs having excerpts of chanting and bell pujas and later, we will video the broadcasts as we videoed the midnight broadcast on New Year’s Eve 1999.
The second component is the fact that the radio broadcasts enter into our searchable computer systems and can show up on future searches on that specific topic.
Radio programs, including the references used, are put on our website at www.bdcublessings.net.au. The scripts also acknowledge those who worked to write and edit the programs. We acknowledge our writers on air each week.
By including the names of persons who worked on the script means that we can analyse who contributed to how many broadcasts and they can also put it on their curriculum vitaes.
This acknowledgment raises participants’ awareness to a critical consciousness of what a rare thing they are doing and how future historians will be in awe of their ability to work as a dedicated team to consistently produce such superior quality.
The third component is the way we see the influence of religion on society.
The influence of religion on society is closely related to its intimate relationship with a society’s culture. Its use of symbols and rituals, its emphasis on tradition and, in many cases, its organisations penetrate deep into the life of social groups so it becomes almost inseparable from their culture. In some cases, religious identity may be almost synonymous with ethnic identity.
In multicultural societies, such as Australia, religious affiliation can increase in importance since it helps to define a social group and give it a collective identity.
Attendance at the local temple is a means of establishing emotional ties and networks with persons who share a similar cultural background and with whom members feel comfortable and at home.
The Buddhist shrine becomes a focal point for a community based not on nationality but on religion.
The social correlates of religion have been studied and as far back as 1991, 7.8% of managers and administrators practiced Buddha Dhamma and 14.6% of professionals. This figure for professionals was higher than any given Christian group.
In 1991, the important composition of the top level of the work force had a sympathetic seeding affect for the acceptance of Buddhist followers within the Australian community.
In the last decade, since these figures were collected, Buddha Dhamma has been quietly shaping the most important institutions and traditions within Australia in a conservative direction.
Our radio broadcasts do not advocate violence nor radical change in society and do not encourage a false consciousness about society.
For example, we view the combination of Marxism and Christianity in the form of liberation theology as a dangerous trend in the world. We note with approval that the Pope does not support liberation theology.
We do not have a rapid turnover in membership and exert a reasonable amount of social control over our Members who would normally be excluded from writing our radio scripts if they failed to act in accordance with the precepts of Buddha Dhamma.
We accept the social environment as a given and comply with Federal, State and local Council laws.
We do not see secularisation as a problem for Buddha Dhamma.
Secularisation is defined as the process whereby religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance. We lead in maintaining social norms, values, social action and consciousness.
Secularisation is not an automatic and universal process. As the West has accepted the decline of religion and is turning to science as an alternative source of knowledge, rationality and reason have become the lode stone of human existence.
Religion has become compartmentalised off the mainstream of social life and restricted to the private life of the individual.
The rise of Buddha Dhamma throughout the West is the countermeasure and antidote to this loss of dialogue with society.
Cooperation between various religious traditions is reflected in phenomena such as the World Parliament of Religions which was held in Chicago in 1993.
Our Teacher will be attending the International Conference on Religious Cooperation in Taipei, Taiwan in September this year.
The outcome of these three components is that our Members become socially responsible citizens.
May you consider joining us in our aspirations for world peace.
This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Vanessa Macleod, Lisa Nelson, Julian Bamford, Anita Svensson, Pennie White, Evelin Halls and Rilla Oellien.
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.
Glossary
ISYS: text retrieval software UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization gravitas: solemn demeanour; seriousness.
References
Compiled by Jonathon Green (1982) A Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations, David & Charles (Publishers) Limited, England, ISBN 0-7153-8417-1, pp. 172-179.
Selected and Edited by H.L. Mencken (1991) A New Dictionary of Quotations - On Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York, p. 1002.
Edited by Jenny Cook-Gumperz (1986) The Social Construction of Literacy, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, England, ISBN 0 521 30348 6.
Gyeltsen, Geshe Tsultim (2000) Mirror of Wisdom, TDL Publications, USA, ISBN 0-9623421-5-7.
Meredith, Jack R. & Mantel Jr., Samuel J. (1995) Project Management - A Managerial Approach, Third Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., ISBN 0-471-01626-8.
Haralambos, Michael et al (1996) Sociology: themes and perspectives, Australian edition, Addison Wesley Longman Australia Pty Limited, ISBN 0-582-81023-X.
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This Radio Script is for Free Distribution. It
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research and study. © Copyright. The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. |