The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for Sunday 14 April 2002

Broadcast Script 220

Glossary


dilettante: A lover of the fine arts; a person who cultivates the arts as an amateur; a person who takes an interest in a subject merely as a pastime and without serious study, a dabbler.

paradigm: An example; a pattern followed, a typical instance; an epitome; Philos. a mode of viewing the world which underlies the theories and methodology of science in a particular period of history.

prolix: extensive, extended. Of long duration, lengthy, protracted.

prolixity: the quantity, state, or degree of being prolix

Today's broadcast is entitled:

What we mean by education without boundaries.

The lemma of our organisation is 'lifetimes of learning'.

By past nature, delivery of education was bound in time and place of delivery.

Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, describes the old art gallery in St Kilda Road as “...as temple, a sacred space. It is a fortress: a great square of masonry surrounded by a moat. The whole symbolism is about either keeping people out or protecting something very sacred” (Vaughan 2002).

In the past, education was something that happened with closed doors.

In contrast to the past, the new arts gallery building “is designed with a whole series of entrances so the public seep into it from all over the place. It’s the exact opposite of this temple of the arts concept.” (Vaughan 2002).

Today, we have open learning, yet there is no such thing as open learning. We have open doors, but there is a frame to support the doors. In Buddha Dhamma practice, the doors are the vows, such as Bodhisattva vows, Vajrayana vows and so on. These doors are your path of practice.

When thinking about education today, systems like distance education, flexible learning, online delivery and e-learning come to mind.

You may consider these systems as ‘education without boundaries’ because of the space and time flexibility of these learning environments.

In the past ten years, we have seen some extensive changes in what we perceive as a learning environment on local and global levels.

Many persons have some association with a learning organisation or are an 'education person' like a retiree who is following the ambition of lifelong learning.

Our Centre operates as a learning organisation on local and global levels. As you are aware, the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. offers teachings by producing weekly Buddhist Hour broadcasts. The texts of these broadcasts are on our website www.bdcublessings.net.au.

We are an associated Centre of the World Buddhist University with the headquarters in Thailand, which means we function on both the global and the local level.

While we differentiate because we teach step-by-step, we also understand that Perfect Wisdom minds are not too discriminating.

They can see knowledge as vast as the number of leaves in a forest, but teach only equivalent to a handful of leaves.

The reason is that too vast a learning in itself is not a cause for liberation of the mind. There is always more to view.

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 living Members of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, it is necessary to practice with vigour to stop being overwhelmed or bemused by such richness of experience.

Among this vast richness is the practical information needed to run a Buddhist organisation suitable for 21st Century.

It is for this type of reason that one cultivates the non-broadband propagation of Buddha Dhamma just as a person cultivating a fine art must shut off much other learning or risk becoming dilettante.

While pictorial art and music first appeal to the eye and ear sense bases, Buddhist literature seems to make an inner appeal more directly and immediately to the mind. The need is to remove the dust from the mind to be able to see correctly.

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 is there if we submerge ourselves in poorly crafted Dhamma writing and of those who applaud it because we think it is the full story.

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.

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 that the processes we see among the World Fellowship of Buddhists and the World Buddhist University are truly scientific and we are genuinely appreciative of such good sense.

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.

Our Teacher’s advice to his students is "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 World Fellowship of Buddhists and World Buddhist University 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 websites 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.

We wish the World Fellowship of Buddhists all success and stability with our wholehearted support for the next fifty years at least.

We are a Regional Centre of the World Fellowship of Buddhists and we have a charter for the World Buddhist University as an Associated Institution.

Perhaps, to hone our skills we should state we are all amateurs in linguistics. This means to some extent that some of our words may be obscure. At present, we have no doctorates majoring in linguistics at our Centre.

Very simply put, we write in a style suitable for critical readers. We try to write in an international style for those persons who use English as a second language.

At times our research papers may be addressing our fellow Australians or local Politicians, so in such cases, we can use a little of the local argot.
But, we strive to be clear in what we teach.

We often supply a glossary that selects to define what is obscure. Our glossary may supply translations or offer the meaning of foreign words we chose to use.

The short definition may not give us what we want to convey.

We accept that our style could let occasional prolixity occur in our glossary writings. We do not demand our writings should always be easy reading, but we do not wish them to be florid or trite.

We concur with Swift that proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.

For example, we sometimes introduce an “unpopular” story. If we mention the social security system in our radio scripts we are not against telling our fellow Australians of the future reduction in average pensions that must occur unless Australians raise productivity.

“Antilinguism” is avoidance.

Covertly our big picture is, we are trying to train “antilinguism” out of popular Australian culture.

Our Buddhist counter-culture combats “antilinguism” by writing radio broadcasts as a more subtle culture than is commercially available. We praise older persons (not merely on the grounds that they are old) but because they are worthy of praise, if and only if they refine their work skills.

In the Mahayana cosmology, "Prajnaparamita" (the perfection of wisdom) is a goddess who has been called "the mother of the Buddhas"; her presence here can be interpreted either cosmologically or etymologically.

According to the Prajnaparamita, even your mother, father or any other relative cannot do you as much good as your own properly directed thought.

Yet, the support of mother and father, the cherishing of spouse and children and peaceful occupations are some of the 37 Supreme Blessings.

What we teach is that there are learning processes that some of you can learn which gives your mind sets a platform to develop in confidence, awareness, concentration, energy and wisdom on a non-conflict paradigm of learning.

We are not against conflict in learning models; our model is framed on a different paradigm. It requires great effort over several lifetimes to train yourself to manage the various wholesome minds.

In our system, the Buddha rule is a person must request three times to be taught. The ethics of the Buddhist teacher code is that no one is taught against their will.

Almost certainly, today, were someone to say, on ageism or politically correct grounds, to read less or write less Buddha Dhamma and use the time saved to sleep for longer hours or just laze around, we would tell them that this is not what this organisation is on about here.

Our journal Buddha Dhyana Dana Review can be found on the Internet at the website www.bdcu.org.au and www.bddronline.net.au. It is a good read.

We also have seven other websites. This is what we call the globalisation of dana, we are making it possible for people all over the world to access the Dhamma, written and practised in Australia.

Every week, our Centre receives journals, newsletters and reviews from many friends in overseas Buddhist organisations.

We teach speed reading. Members who have learnt to speed read enjoy more pleasure in general reading than those who did not make the effort to improve their study skills by this relatively simple tactic.

In general, the open learning nature of the information age needs more persons with more powerful reading skills.

This week, new equipment may enable us to search photographs online.

We need many references for our research writing.

Speed reading and speed learning is needed to scan the many references we can produce on the screen. To rest our eyes, no more than 25 minutes of a screen reading per session is recommended with 10 minute rest periods at our workstations.

We provide super VGA or XGA monitors at our workstations to ease eye strain. Our immediate need is to provide more powerful reading areas by turning our resources into the modern study areas. In such suitable locations on site at our Centre means we will train a new generation of skillful readers.

Our previous policy on workspaces was that these areas be suitable for multitasking. It is being amended to some degree.

From such learning experiences at our Centre, persons generate the appropriate causes and knowledge for them to set up high grade study places in their own home or office.

Then, they are ready for the pace of the 21st Century open learning.

The higher level of open learning is termed “textual transmission”.

Learning depends on the development of competence. Competence is the power, ability or capacity to perform a given task.

Scholarship is the result of having access to good research tools to access higher order knowledges and the help of many research assistants who can understand the scholar’s needs.

To be learned about anything means you have to have heard much. As the Buddha said: “One who has heard much and learned much is daring and confident he (or she) wavers not. It is like having a friend with you day and night who guides you to good directions.”

To help us learn, we chant a lot, beginning with “namo”. Namo praises our Teachers and protectors.

In the Tao Te Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, it is written:

When the mandala governs, the people are hardly aware that it exists...
The mandala doesn’t talk, it acts.
The people say, “Amazing:
We did it, all by ourselves!”

The knowledge of how to use mandalas to guide learned actions is ancient. Students at our Centre are guided in making sufficient merit and the right causes to learn how to construct mandalas over time and to let them dissolve again after the knowledge on them has been turned into action.

The Teacher uses skill in means to help the students understand how to construct and learn to use mandalas under the control of “namo”.

New learning mandalas are hard to conserve.

We care for the words that have been written about in many Buddha Dhamma texts. In Buddha Dhamma, although some words and phrases take on special meaning, free of doubt or confusion, Buddha Dhamma is not taught by the method of the dictionary. Secondly, we provide it in proper written form so that seeing consciousness can be used. Thirdly, we place it on the Internet with hypertext to awake the mind.

What do we mean by Education without boundaries?

We mean studying the rate of visual presentation of text of photographs so our trained persons can make educational sense of rapidly changing sense data, eg. 200 photographs per 5 minutes.

How do we operate with unseen beings?

The skillful methods in Buddha Dhamma we teach here enable you to praise both the known and the unknown persons who help in a range of subjects. Can we give credit to those persons, seen or unseen, who helped you to come here? With Buddha Dhamma practice, this task is possible.

Although there is no royal path to learning, may you be well and happy and come to ease in open learning this life.

May you be well and happy and read well and learn much at higher rates.

May you come to think in useful mandalas this life.

May you and your family be well and happy with your new learning.


Today's radio script includes a compendium of weekly broadcasts from 29 April 2001 up to and including 17 June 2001. You can find this radio script and previous scripts online at: www.bdcublessings.net.au

This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Evelin Halls and Pennie White.


References

Vaughan, G. “The collector”. The Age, Profile Saturday Extra, 6 April 2002, p. 3.


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.


Document Statistics

Totals:
Words: 2348
Sentences: 127
Paragraphs: 85
Characters: 11311

Averages:
Words per sentence: 18.2
Sentences per paragraph: 1.5
Characters per word: 4.6

Percentages:
Passive Sentences: 14%

Readability Statistics
Flesch Reading Ease Score: 57.7
Flesch Kincaid Score: 9.6


Readability Statistics

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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.

(Reference: Lotus Word Pro Help Files)


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May You Be Well And Happy

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