The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for Sunday 19 May 2002

Broadcast Script 225



Today's broadcast is entitled:
The need to preserve the minds that learn

This week, on Tuesday 21 May 2002, the Prajna Paramita Teachings at our Centre taught by Master John D. Hughes from Versak 1999 to Versak 2002 will conclude.

Our students need to preserve any good learning minds they may have developed over the last three years and three moons teachings.

You may be interested to know how they intend to do this.

Over the years, they have done many things to help others study.

They have developed our eight websites for the propagation of good information, indexed our library holdings, written weekly radio talks and maintained our Centre. This maintenance includes gardening, cooking and cleaning.

This weekend some students are preparing the final drafts of their recollections of these Teachings to present to their Teacher John D. Hughes at the final Teaching, 21 May 2002.

Already, many students have completed written records of their recall of the Teachings. These documents are for the benefit of future historians of the Prajna Paramita progress in this age.

A fortnight ago, we read a few of these responses on air.

Last week, we talked about the construction of a mandala on 29 April 2002 and disassembly on the 7 May 2002 CE as a Celebration of the 41st Birth Anniversary of Anita. Such things help learning and we photographed the construction as an aide memoir.

Students offered their written recollections of Prajna Paramita Teachings into the mandala.

Their recollections in no way claim to be a comprehensive guide to the Teachings given and intending students should study the Prajna Paramita texts and find a Teacher to guide them.

It is most unlikely the Prajna Paramita will be directly taught at our Centre within the next fifty years.

By recording their recollections of the Prajna Paramita Teachings, future students are more likely to remember what was learnt here recently.

The major offerings on the mandala included rice, milk and pink flowers.

You may view more than 137 photographs of this mandala at www.bsbonline.com.au

One of the Buddha Dhamma Suttas makes an analogy between a log floating down a stream and persons practicing the path of Buddha Dhamma.

At a certain point, you become a Stream Enterer.

If you enter down a stream and float downstream like a log of wood, you are not always safe to arrive at the ocean at the end of the river.




Sometimes, when a log is traveling down a stream, it absorbs so much water that it sinks to the bottom and progresses no further down the stream. This is like a person whose practice comes to a halt because they slowed down and did not develop the will-to-do-minds needed to continue on the path.

Without the will-to-do, we lose.

Sometimes a log travelling down a stream will become lodged between two rocks and can progress no further down the stream.

This is like a person who has become so attached to material things in the world and has little merit to overcome the attachment that they cannot progress any further because they are blinded by greed for material things. Wanting a bigger better house or car can become an endless habit.

Sometimes a log travelling down a stream will end up resting on a flood plane. The hot sun dries out the log, it withers and it cracks and splits into small pieces. This is like a person drinking or taking drugs. Without morality such obsessions prevent them from meeting with Buddha Dhamma.

Without restraint, progress is not possible.

We need to anticipate what happens to our learning process over time to avoid their attrition.

But were you to travel down the middle of the stream you could reach the ocean (the destination) unimpeded. So it is for practitioners who continue on the Buddha Dhamma Path of the Middle Way for liberation.

Much has been written about the Middle Way so we will not repeat such Teaching here today.

We want to know what causes loss of good things learnt.

Ignorance is not remembering. Alzheimer’s Disease is at epidemic levels in Australia.

What is powerful enough to stop the resistance to remembering?

First, many good causes are needed over many lives. It would be difficult to make a complete list. If you are learning or reading this broadcast, you probably have many good causes for remembering.

In Japan, a person as a human resource is valued. Much emphasis is placed on learning. It is reported that the average IQ in Japan is 130. This is much higher than the average in Australia.

Australia and Japan both have high living standards.

Why is it that in two countries with comparable living standards that the average of the tested IQ scores are so different?

Some researchers attribute this difference to the practice of teaching calligraphy in Japan. Certainly we believe this is part of the reason.

Perfect handwriting using the brush, orders the learning experiences.

Another reason is that, respect for learning is Japan’s strongest natural resource and so Japan has a highly developed learning culture that sends her brightest persons overseas to study at the best scientific learning institutions.

This national policy commenced centuries ago after the invasion of Admiral Perry’s black fleet shook up the Japanese national culture. Industrial infrastructure using foreign technology was built with self-defense in mind.

China also has adopted foreign technology to create a highly developed learning culture because humans are also seen as their strongest natural resource.

This century, it is possible that China will become the world’s Number 1 manufacturing nation.

To date, through globalisation, China has raised the living standards of one hundred million poor persons.





China prides itself on its national artist treasures, such as, woven silk tapestries. Our Teacher visited a silk factory in China 30 years ago. The creation of these unique tapestries relies on human resources. China has presented one of these hand dyed and woven tapestries to the President of the United States. The tapestries produced are free from error. Every thread is perfect.

All know the appearance of the final work. A colour master drawing is on the wall.

There are many persons working on each tapestry and yet few errors are made. If an error is made in the process of making a silk tapestry then the tapestry must be unwoven and woven again. This seldom happens.

Today, we say they have achieved high quality control.

Why is it that the many female silk weavers can work together to produce perfect work?

Firstly, they are accorded high status compared to ordinary non-skilled female persons.

Secondly, these silk weavers were chosen because they had a highly developed concentration and manual dexterity needed for dedication to quality work.

What learning styles are said to be best?

We say learning styles ought to be varied over the four seasons to be in season.

At present, it is Autumn in Victoria and to help our present learning style we can think of an ink painting of the chrysanthemum.

In the various classic works of chrysanthemum painting the flower is perceived as “defiant of frost and triumphant in Autumn” a saying that expresses the essence of chi of its character.

This idea must be clearly understood so that the transmittal of it originates in the heart and passes through the mind to the brush. Colour cannot convey the idea.

The general principles of composing the plant means seeing the chrysanthemum as a flower of proud disposition, its colour is beautiful, its fragrance lingers. As the chrysanthemum’s proud blossoms can brave the hard frost it can be classified with the pine.

The stem is solitary and strong yet is supple as the stems of spring flowers.

A straight stem should not be drawn as though it were rigid, nor should an inclined stem bend too far.

Although petals have a great variety of forms, all grow from the same kind of base or pedicle.

The form of the flower should be integrated.

The leaves should not appear identical.

Young leaves on a stem should be pliant and delicate, their colour light and clear. The leaves that are fading at the base of the plant should be yellow, their colour indicating they are beginning to whither.

The chrysanthemum season is mid-autumn and it has the most honourable of colour, gold.

A confused conception can be a fault in memorising the nature of a chrysanthemum and this obstruction of mind and brush, heart and hand would cause too few leaves or too many flowers, vigorous flowers on a weak stem, flowers not properly attached to stems and so on.

The cultivated mind needed to study in autumn is obviously of a different nature than the mind used to study in the other three seasons.

It would be useful to think if we brought a spring mind to study in the autumn season, we are in error.

In our view, we have to design study mechanisms that are suitable for the four seasons, just as we adjust our food, clothing and heating arrangements in our home over the four seasons.

We need to preserve the seasonal developed minds that learn.

If we concentrate today on learning in an autumn season mode it would be timely.

There are advantages in approaching the preservation of our minds that learn by thinking of them as being in the stage of apprenticeship over the four seasons.

With a viewpoint of a different style of learning suitable for one season only, with higher levels of learning mastery, is it useful to refer to the different classes of minds by name.

There are 121 states of consciousness listed in Buddha Dhamma text.

Fine detail and structure can be learned after a broad view of the subject matter is understood.

Applying colours comes after the groundwork.

If you walk into the garden and pick up a few autumn leaves that have not yet reached the state of decay and consider them, your mind will soon attune to the autumn mind of learning.

The method we recommend is universal elixir to preserve things learned the chanting as follows three times:

Om Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammasambuddhassa
Om Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammasambuddhassa
Om Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammasambuddhassa

Buddham Saranam Gacchami
Dhammam Saranam Gacchami
Sangham Saranam Gacchami

Dutiyampi Buddham Saranam Gacchami
Dutiyampi Dhammam Saranam Gacchami
Dutiyampi Sangham Saranam Gacchami

Tatiyampi Buddham Saranam Gacchami
Tatiyampi Dhammam Saranam Gacchami
Tatiyampi Sangham Saranam Gacchami

Our Members who had studied Prajna Paramita committed each for himself or herself to chant these words twice a day for the rest of their lives. Others took extra precepts.

As we said a fortnight ago, the Prajna Paramita is not a tea party for ordinary persons.

Attention to anything is a scarce commodity because of three factors. Firstly, ordinary persons do not seem to produce more than 24 hours of attention per day.

Secondly, for ordinary persons their capacity to pay attention is limited and as a result of these two things persons are inundated with so much information they do not know what to pay attention to.

We have audio taped the Teachings over the years and in the later days, we videotaped the Teachings. In due course, we will be selling copies of these records to interested persons. For inquiries ring 9754 3334 and ask for Julian Bamford.

It is important to lead a sober life and make sufficient offerings and gain merit by helping our Centre to be able to remember Prajna Paramita.

Our Prajna Paramita students have taken refuge in the Triple Gem for this life.

He or she takes no other refuge in this life.

The Prajna Paramita practitioner must practice 4 things: to recognise blessings, cherish blessings, cultivate blessings and constantly sow the seeds for blessings.

The student learning Prajna Paramita come to understand the law of causes and effects. Mysteries vanish.

May you come to access the minds appropriate for learning preservation over each of the four seasons.

May you wish to preserve the minds that can learn.

May all beings be well and happy.



This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes Dip. App. Chem T.T.T.C. GDAIE, Anita Hughes R.N. Div1, Julian Bamford B.A. App. Rec., Lainie Smallwood B.A. Bus. B.A. Communications and Pennie White B.A. Dip.Ed.


References

Sze, Mai-mai. (Editor) The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. Princeton University Press. United Kingdom 1978.


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Document Statistics

Counts:
Words: 2052
Sentences: 121
Paragraphs: 102
Characters: 10102

Averages:
Words per sentence: 16.1
Sentences per paragraph: 1.4
Characters per word: 4.7

Percentages:
Passive Sentences: 18%

Readability Statistics
Flesch Reading Ease Score: 58.3
Flesch-Kincaid Score: 9.1
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May You Be Well And Happy

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