The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for Sunday 9 December 2001

Glossary

Compendium: a work presenting in brief the essential points of a subject, a digest, an epitome, an embodiment in miniature, an assortment, a varied collection.

Parchment: the skin of an animal, esp. a sheep or goat, dressed and prepared for writing, painting, book-binding etc.

The topic of today’s broadcast is:

A Compendium of Previous Broadcasts

Interview with Andre Sollier

In today’s broadcast, we will continue on from last week’s broadcast, borrowing from the past to bring you the essence of our previous shows.

We are always borrowing from the past. Good things arise from good causes. There are ceremonies to provide minor blessings which we borrow and adapt into the English language. Because of past causes, these are useful to help our Members and other persons get what they want. We perform these borrowed events about every seven years. The ceremony is a visual method of teaching persons that good human actions done regularly and with the right motive this life will enable the future person you will become to have sufficient merit and good qualities you need to have a good future.

You may think we have what amounts to mania when we insisted that every written word in reports presented to our Members at their annual meeting in 1999 must indicated something that is meaningful. At his lecture given in London on 19 May 1840, Thomas Carlyle said: “With the art of writing, the true reign of miracles for mankind commenced. It related, with a wondrous new continuity and perpetual closeness, the past and distant with the present in time and place; all times and all places with this are actual here and now. All things were altered for men”. We hold this as true. We have a number of Members with Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts qualifications who are highly qualified wordsmiths with superior writing skills that are utilised to help managers write reports.

Superb administrators of a vast empire encapsulated the essence of such matters with the Latin phrase: “Vox audita perit; litera scripta manet”, which translates as; “The spoken word perishes; the written word remains”.

Our radio broadcasts and transcripts of interviews can be found on our websites.

Writing requires considerable skill and powers of concentration; traditionally it was a solitary craft that required a kind of monastic dedication. Just as it is going to be hard for computer literate generations to imagine a pre-electronic world, it will be hard for persons who are passably literate by the standards of a print culture, with all its standardised lettering, to imagine life in the now vanished scribal cultures, the worlds of clay tablets, papyrus rolls, parchments and manuscript copying.

Many persons find it useful to learn about the secrets of how to lower stress in their life about various things. It is simple in theory. Observe more precepts. But in practice, because habit is strong, it is not easy to live with extra precepts. It is about the only means you have if you decide to alter your lifestyle. However, the good news is that when laypersons become more aware of the possibility of increasing the number of precepts they might apply to their own life, their minds gain a certain type of lightness.

The Buddha recommended mutual confidence (saddha), morality (sila), self-denial (caga) and prudence (pannya) as virtues when persons are close together. These four properties are virtues that ensure happiness and success. In other words, mutual confidence means dependability, morality implies strength of character, self-denial or the joy of selfless service to others denotes emotional maturity, and prudence shows intellectual maturity. It is said that when these qualities of caga are displayed between persons, their relationship can continue even after death, because they meet again in a future existence.

Persons, at times, become careless of the fact that their future depends on outcomes generated by their present actions.

Just as the Buddha guides us along the Path, all sentient beings help us to achieve our goal. If a being causes us trouble, we have the opportunity to practise patience. If a being is in pain, we have the opportunity to develop compassion. If a being is unhappy, we should practise loving-kindness.

We do not always come to safety by running away.

It is very difficult to convey to persons who live in a land such as Australia that has not a long history of Buddha Dhamma, that persons could gather and practise in a culture of quiet surroundings. The best teaching condition for many things is that the background noise be as quiet as possible.

May all beings live without excessive noise.

We encourage true generosity (dana) by not providing tax deductions for donations. One form of dana is offering food to noble persons. One method of making merit for yourself is to give donations.

In our organisation, there exists a series of information bundles in dispersed, impermanent forms, such as unprotected documents, unlabelled photographs and jotting from past visits or event. These valuable historical resources need to be preserved by turning them into knowledge.

Active membership in our organisation means a willingness to not be too old-fashioned by leaving dispersed information, such as unprotected documents, unattended.

The basis of our organisation is a rapidly growing data warehouse.

Knowledge assets management is a strategy for developing structures that pre-empt problems which may evolve in an organisation, rather than a measure for problem solving.

Today, our Members with degrees and responsible jobs agree they need to learn in faster ways than they learned when studying for their degrees.

This is needed in their work since modern information age work styles requires extra, more and more scrutinising of fresh information.

Obviously, the true followers of Lord Buddha understand it is their duty to help our Centre strive to assemble something we plan to last for 500 years.

Through the power of the prajna-paramita, it becomes obvious to Members who persist with the development of our Library Collection even for one day over the last two decades that we are not driven by purely commercial interests based on greed or other akusala motives.

Farmer's plant seeds and cultivates things before they can harvest the good things.

Our vision is for multiple access to single entity resources.

We have been developing our systems to give more and more service to a wider range of persons, whilst protecting the integrity of the knowledge base supporting those services.

We thank all Office Bearers, Members and Friends of our Centre who have contributed to make it a quality international working Buddhist Temple and Library.

One of our strengths is that we use our resources better than most other organisations. Since we are self-funding, we are light on our feet and can change the direction. As a regional Centre of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, it is important our organisation does not become sectarian or rigid in outlook.

The major way we prevent this happening is for our producer to write and operate from at least a 3rd order of understanding of Buddha Dhamma.

In Buddha Dhamma, a distinction is made between four types of knowledge. One type is called “general knowledge” (sammuti-nana). This is usually first-order knowledge.

Tactically, our Intranet may be thought of as equivalent to causing Members to enter into the Sphere of Infinite Knowledge--2nd Arupa Jhana. By searching for content there, Members come to know that our rich heritage culture has many value-creating mechanisms. It becomes evident to them when they can recognise our organisation has a history of writing down and supporting clear, value-creating objectives that they too can transcend mere personal development.

This vision can free Members from the stationary knowledge of what they think the organisation stands for.

To focus on trivia is 1st order. In day to day living, many persons operate at 1st order, which is a hunter-gatherer mindset somewhat akin to Homer Simpson, whereas Bart is much more cognitive, and operates at times as a 2nd-order thinker. However, things can be learned in different ways. For example, like it or not like it, there have been in existence for 2,500 year's pathways leading to 4th or higher order thought. This has been through mental cultivation (called bhavana in Pali) taught as Buddha Dhamma. Our cultural Centre teaches the ancient secrets of mental cultivation in a practical training library atmosphere, where we introduce Members to good information.

Without a decent background of language, you cannot have a nett advantage to decipher your problems. This is why scholarship is one of our five styles.

We encourage our Members to become more employable by study.
We encourage our Members to become wise by study.
We encourage our Members to help other persons to study.
We encourage our Members to think about one of our slogans: “Lifetimes of Learning”.

To meet with one encouragement to study this life is a blessing.
To meet with four encouragements to study is a rare blessing.

The Four Blessings for improving well-being are:

1. Always recognise Blessings
2. Cherish Blessings everywhere
3. Cultivate Blessings all the time
4. Constantly sow the seeds of Blessings.

Now is the time to decide to learn.

Up until October of 1999, our Executive Producer wrote all radio scripts. Wishing to encourage Members of the Radio Broadcast Team to develop and use and written radio style manual to edit information accessed from our data warehouse. Members have learned that our editorial policy on scripts is not to slander others. When they write scripts themselves, they must keep this precept combined with our editorial policy so that we guard what we say.

This broadcast will be continued next week.

Today’s radio script is a compendium of our weekly broadcasts from 4 July 1999 up to 7 November 1999. You can find this radio script and previous scripts online at www.bdcublessings.net.au.

May you come to live in Buddha Dhamma this life.

May you be well and happy and accumulate blessings.

The authors and editors of this script were: John D. Hughes, Leanne Eames and Evelin Halls.

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

1. Heroes and Hero-worship

Document Statistics

Total:

Words: 1,670
Sentences: 91
Paragraphs: 60
Syllables: 2,578

Averages

Words per sentence: 18.4
Sentences per paragraph: 1.5

Percentages:

Passive Sentences: 14

Readability Statistics

Flesch Grade Level: 11.8
Coleman-Liau Grade Level: 13.3
Bormuth Grade Level: 10.6
Flesch Reading Ease Score: 54.1
Flesch-Kincaid Score: 9.7

Readability Statistics

Display’s statistics about the document's readability, such as the Flesch Grade Level and Flesch Reading Ease Score. These statistics help you determine if you are writing at a level your audience can understand.

Flesch Grade Level: Flesch Grade Level indicates the Flesch Reading Ease score as a grade level. See the Flesch Scoring Table.

Coleman-Liau Grade Level: Indicates the grade level of the document based on the average number of letters per word and number of sentences per 100 words.

Bormuth Grade Level: Indicates the grade level of the document based on the average number of letters per word and per sentence. These scores indicate grade levels ranging from 6.3 to 11.6.

Flesch Reading Ease Score: Indicates how easy the document is to read based on the number of syllables per word and number of words per sentence. These scores indicate a number between 0 and 100. The higher the score, the easier the document is to read. See the Flesch Scoring Table.

Flesch-Kincaid Score: Indicates the grade level of the document based on the number of syllables per word and number of words per sentence. This score predicts the difficulty of reading technical documents, and is based on Navy training manuals that score in difficulty from 5.5 to 16.3. It meets military readability specifications MIL-M-38784 and DOD-STD-1685.

Flesch Scoring Table

(Reference: Lotus Word Pro Help Files)

For more information, contact the Centre or better still, come and visit us.

May You Be Well And Happy

This Radio Script is for Free Distribution. It contains Buddha Dhamma material and is provided for the purpose of research and study.

Permission is given to make printouts of this publication for FREE DISTRIBUTION ONLY.

Please keep it in a clean place.

"The gift of Dhamma excels all other gifts".

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