The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives
The Buddhist
Hour Radio Broadcast Script 254
Pre-recorded for broadcast Sunday
8 December 2002
Our Approaches to Wisdom and Compassion : Our
Way Forward
by John D. Hughes Dip. App.Chem. T.T.T.C. GDAIE
Vice
President, World Fellowship of Buddhists
Council Member and
Advisor, World Buddhist University
Founder, Buddhist Discussion
Centre (Upwey) Ltd.
ACN 005 701 806 ABN 42 611 496 488
and
Anita M. Hughes R.N. Div 1
Where our Dhamma Centre is at Upwey, Victoria Australia
there is enormous cultural diversity.
In the global village,
the ability to cater to a wide range of languages and cultural
differences is invaluable.
According to the 2001 Census:
The
total population in Victoria (excluding overseas visitors) was
4,612,097
In the year to June 2000, 1.1 million international
tourists visited Victoria.
Birthplace:
71% of Victorians
were born in Australia
23.4% of Victorians were born overseas (in
233 countries)
Of those born overseas:
775,911 were born in
mainly non-English speaking countries (71.8%)
304,433 were born in
mainly English speaking countries (28.2%)
43% of Victorians
were either born overseas or have at least one parent born
overseas:
20.1% or 927,272 Victorians born in Australia have at
least one parent born overseas
Religion
72.1% of Victorians
followed 116 religions
Language Spoken
21% of all
Victorians spoke a language other than English at home, with over 180
different languages and dialects spoken.
(Source: Australian
Bureau of Statistics, 2001, Census Data)
Our Australian
business culture like the business of most postindustrial societies
has adopted the language of war.
Some of the key words we hear
in relation to business are ‘competition’, ‘win’,
‘goal’, target’, ‘strategy’, ‘price
war’, ‘gang’, ‘secret’ and ‘weapon’.
All
such terms imply a winner and a loser, and promote the desirability
of winning at the expense of another. The endemic nature of this
fighting culture is evident in the writing style or language used in
numerous authoritative business journals.
One article entitled
‘Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It’, Harvard
Business Review, September-October, pp 167-176), opens with the
words:
“Imagine that you are a general taking your troops
into foreign territory. Obviously, you would need detailed maps
showing the important towns and villages, the surrounding landscape,
key structures like bridges and tunnels, and the roads and highways
that traverse the region. Without such information, you couldn’t
communicate your campaign strategy to your field officers and the
rest of your troops.”
In the article ‘How to Fight
a Price War’ Harvard Business Review, March-April, 2000, pp
107-116, the author opens with:
“In the battle to capture the
customer, companies use a wide range of tactics to ward off
competitors. Increasingly, price is the weapon of choice, and
frequently the skirmishing degenerates into a price war.”
Titles
such as ‘Cracking the Code of Change’, Harvard Business
Review, May-June 2000, pp 133-141, also borrow from the terminology
of war.
Another article is illustrated with items from what
appears to be a soldier’s survival kit, complete with a picture
of a book cover with the title ‘Crash and Learn – A Field
Manual for Ebusiness Survival; Strategies for Online Survival’
(Business 2.0, July 11, 2000, pp 166-177), followed by a numbered
list of strategies. The word ‘strategy’ is straight from
wartime vocabulary.
Postindustrial societies run on
operationally validated theories. These are characterised by high
operational learning and high conceptual learning. These things are
poorly understood by those outside the particular industry.
The
implications of such a system is that there is little call for
artisan skills that have low conceptual learning and high operational
learning.
In Australia, whole groups of conventionally trained
artisans (called tradesman in Australia) lack high training in
conceptual thinking and hence conceptual training, are often made
redundant by technological and social change and lose the job
satisfaction of “doing the whole job” themselves.
For
example, house builders seldom complete the whole job – they are
displaced by specialist tradesman who have plumbers training who now
fix and certify the iron roofing in houses and plumbing from the roof
and gutters. Under the new regulations, ordinary generalist
carpenters cannot certify roof plumbing to the building inspector’s
satisfaction.
Tradesman plumbers charge a much higher rate per
hour than tradesman carpenters so the net result is the cost of
building houses has risen considerably.
Artisans’ jobs
are becoming less satisfying. Computer technology tends to be Fordian
and breaks up fast.
The theme of the World Fellowship of
Buddhists 22nd General Conference 9 to 13 December 2002 is Wisdom and
Compassion : The Way Forward.
We have developed a strong
version of practical compassion of these influencing ideals as our
way forward.
Firstly, we start by forsaking the use of the
English terminology of business use of war terms in our writing. War
is destructive of materiality. If the language of war enters a
culture, it is difficult to undo it. Dana adds wholesome materiality
to the world.
There are many types of Dana known in Buddha
Dhamma.
At the first levels of practice, it is by material
assets alone that acts of merit are performed.
But the
material assets given ought to exclude weapons, poisons or
explosives.
Very interesting things happen in Australia.
For
example, the Australian government ordered the destruction of
automatic rifles a few years ago after the Port Arthur massacre
(Tasmania). The Government is now about to recall and destroy
automatic hand held pistols.
The “buy back” value of
these arms ran to millions of dollars compensation.
It is hard
to practice such “buy back” if you are poor country.
We
do not know of any other country that has taken such a strong stance
about civilians having killing weapons. Poor countries are unlikely
to afford to ‘buy back’ weapons.
Australia is one
nation with a considerable weapon-manufacturing base for guns and
ammunitions that are exported to many friendly countries.
How
can you defend yourself at death?
To train Members, we remind
them that a person does not carry so much as one weapon with him or
her when she or he passes away; in other words, a dead man or dead
woman is not materially rich but materially poor in weapons.
We
do not permit Members to carry weapons of any kind (even a knife)
into our Temple.
We recommend our Members not to work on
active military projects that can directly kill persons.
Martial
arts practitioners are advised not to train with the traditional
sword weapons.
We advise Members against working with poisons,
such as those used to kill white ants, wasps, flies, mosquitos,
locusts or other vermin.
Oceans of fish surround Australia and
even the coastal areas are crossed with rivers with streams of
fish.
We discourage persons from killing by avoiding one of
Australia’s most popular sports – fishing. Many Australians
have small fishing powerboats and they use them as small fishing
platforms using hand-held fishing lines.
One of the most
popular television programs is run by an Australian fisherman
millionaire, and deals with fishing. Although he often appears on his
show kissing and releasing fish he has caught, we cannot say others
are following this practice.
We encourage persons to write a
life plan based on no killing of anything with body, speech or
mind.
We teach persons to share about 25% of their current
wealth in the medium term with others. But first, we recommend they
must become debtless. To do this they must reduce consumption by
themselves.
The ease of obtaining credit cards in Australia is
a scandal that encourages debt.
Persons can gamble easily with
money from their credit cards and then find difficulty in
repayments.
The average Victorian gambling debts with the
advent of casinos are rising each year and the average exceeds one
thousand Australian dollars per year.
Only a wealth of merit
follows one to the next life when the good human minds engage in
dana.
We skill our Members not to be stingy towards their
families and friends by teaching the benefits of dana and sila.
Such skill may be an inherent nature of a person from their
past lives or it could come from a good friend, (a Kalyanamitta) who
shows the way. We act as Kalyanamitta to many in the world.
Most
Australians have such an abundance of excess materiality with most of
their garages full of useful goods that are no longer needed by their
owners. Persons are glad to donate these items to use for market
stalls to de-clutter their storage space.
To make storage
space for such goods before sale, we use the storage space of six of
our Members’ homes. One day we plan to buy a large storehouse
for these goods.
We make a steady income by selling those
goods at a half-day local market stall. Some of the goods are given
to the needy. We also sell some to Members for a donation.
Some
times donated goods are used to refurbish our Centre, such as donated
wall to wall carpet. One of our Members is a professional carpet
layer who cleans and installs the donated carpets for us, free of
charge.
Excess building materials from building sites are
donated to us by builders on a regular basis. Some of the wood off
cuts are used as firewood in winter, and larger material is used to
repair existing garden buildings if they become dilapidated by
weathering.
In the area where our Centre is located, the
summer sun is very hot and the winters are very cold. Heating fuel is
expensive to buy locally. We save thousands of dollars a year by the
systematic collection of firewood. Fallen trees are cut up and dried
out over summer for this purpose.
In this way we train our
Members to get the needed artisan skills they need to stop being
stingy, we use chain saws. They learn to recycle old wood for fuel
rather than wasting it and perform wholesome actions with material
assets without spending money.
When the wasteful animal
consuming tendencies of persons stop, performing good conservation
deeds can be aided with discernment, discrimination and heedfulness;
by this we mean sati.
Conservation and recycling of useable
assets is not widely practised in Victoria in all sectors. It is
stated it is not economic to practice certain types of
recycling.
Even if they are not conservation minded, we say
they can contribute some of their spare materials to help us maintain
the beautiful Chan garden.
This appeals to most persons
because they develop artisan skills of low conceptual learning but
high operational learning. They feel useful in their role and can
understand what is happening in the postindustrial societies.
After
all, they have had so many animal lives in nice safe forests; so they
feel at home with the natural animals at a Centre where there is no
killing. There is little to remind them of the fear animals feel
towards humans.
Overtime, they learn to understand
globalisation theory.
The word “merit” is not
actually a convenient translation of the word “punna”. The
Suttas describe it as “an action that cleanses”.
The
purpose of practice is to finish child like behaviour.
We
explain the most likely return when we can lay down a store of merit
as by attending to a Temple, the Sangha, a mother, a guest, a person,
or even an older brother. We attain all the good things from merits
made to this class of persons. Our Temple policies are successful in
re-building strained family bonds.
This store of merits made
to close family bonds is said to be unlosable. The store of merit
follows us from life to life and the benefits of this merit cannot be
destroyed but become exhausted from use.
We teach the Temple
community the path of our real family. We ought to care for one
another and lend a helping hand to others.
The ideas that
there are Dana actions that cleanse appeals to many persons in
Australia.
Our society gains from individuals who walk the
path of goodness and build a storehouse of unlosable merits.
We
will not teach persons to fish or shoot animals for sport.
We
teach that performing good sila is an upward path. One has to strive
to accrue merits in the face of challenges and obstacles. Confidence
in the Path makes this do-able.
With confidence, we invite
them to study conceptual thinking at some University course or other
literary institution. Hence, they have the skill and high conceptual
thinking to enter postindustrial society with specialist abilities
within three years or less.
By high, we mean second, third, or
fourth order logic thinking. A store of decent and recent merit gives
good physical health, appealing physical looks, skilful mental
faculty and a retentive memory. In fact, when Members practice at our
Centre, they say they “ feel clean”.
We relate
success stories of the value of merit. This week, one of our Members
drove her small car into a small tree, which fell over the car. The
car was badly damaged, but she was not hurt in any way. Such is the
blessing of a store of merit.
The Buddha related how a human
being could rise to become even a wheel-turning monarch all because
of the accumulation of merits.
To obtain liberation from
samsara and attain nibbana, one must count on punna (merit).
Punna
plays its part in two different scenarios, one is the condition of
right livelihood in the worldly life and the other is the path of
self-realisation.
The acts of giving in the Buddha Dhamma
sense is to support the practice of precepts. In fact, keeping of the
five precepts is mahadana as said by the Buddha.
When one
obtains the benefits of a good field, only then can one share the
harvest of merit with others. We recognise regret is unwholesome.
Some of our Members specialise in removing a feeling of guilt from
new Members.
The absence of “guilt” (regret) is most
refreshing. It “cleanses”.
It is unwavering saddha
(confidence or faith) that makes all this possible.
The Buddha
said:
“There are differences between humans. One who has
practiced alms giving (dana) in his of her life will surpass the
other in five ways.
1. Lifespan (dibbena ayuna)
2. Good
looking features, beauty (dibbena vannena)
3. Happiness (dibbena
sukhena)
4. Honour (dibbena yasena)
5. Power (dibbena
adhipateyyena)”
Fortunately, all sane persons want to
have these five things.
All of the above has been well
expounded by Tan Aun Phaik in his book Dana Making a Treasure Store
of Boons, Published in Penang 1998, compiled from the authenticated
translations of the Sutta Pitaka.
For such reasons, we sell
the notion to all our Members that they undertake various activities
to donate their goods and services in an artisan role to our Temple.
They find satisfaction in such roles.
For example, we have
grown Temple plants in pots at our Temple and donate these potted
plants to other Temples. Last year, we donated hybrid rose plants we
were given to 27 Temples in Victoria to beautify their Temple’s
grounds.
We understand the power of giving flowers and the ten
blessings arising from this action.
As a result of many years
of our dana with flowers, on a fairly average day you will find over
50 bunches of flowers in vases distributed in-front of the various
Buddha altars and images at our Centre.
Our visitors are
always refreshed and impressed by the variety of flowers we have on
any given day. Rare orchids in Australia, such as Thai orchids, find
their way here on a regular basis. We give most visitors gifts of
flowers they admire to take with them.
Members are taught not
to pick the flowers from our extensive garden so that walking in our
garden at any season produces a visual impact of a high order because
of the variety of flowers that appear over the four seasons.
Members are taught to offer the flowers to the Triple Gem
without destroying them.
This is one of the ways we teach
dana. Because many of the native plants in Australia, such as
‘wattle’ have hundreds of thousands of flowers on their
trees it is fairly easy to offer over one million flowers in spring
and summer without destroying seed.
One of the 227 rules of a
Buddhist Monk or Nun is not to destroy seeds.
We have humus heaps
to mulch dead flowers and make new soil. We have a tiger-worm colony
in one humus heap.
At present, at our Centre, it is late
spring (November 2002) with summer approaching. Most of the state of
Victoria is experiencing severe drought caused by the El-nino
effect.
After six years of below average rainfall, Melbourne’s
water stores dropped to 54% capacity, forcing the city to enter the
first stage of water restrictions on Friday 8 November 2002.
Our
merit is such that our Centre is located in an area where we have
regular rainfall to keep everything green and our have auxiliary
water tanks full of water. These are useful for fire fighting.
Since
our auxiliary water tanks are full and we have regular rainfall we
consider we can go through summer keeping our garden green and
lush.
This situation we say is the kammic outcome of no
killing in our garden and not permitting intoxicants on to our
premises.
We have mentioned only a small fraction of the
benefits Members obtain from our garden. The main thing is that they
become able to study for useful high conceptual work in the
postindustrial society. Because of the rate of technology change, we
estimate, the average Members will have to go through 11 job
re-trainings this life.
As we update our computer systems on a
regular basis, they become used to the notion of technological change
having high operational learning and high conceptual learning. We can
change systems fast and retrain fast.
Another aspect of
practice is food preparation for Venerable Monks and provision of
care for two resident practitioners. Persons can operate under our
Kitchen God to prepare wholesome food.
Secondly, we make
arrangements for Members to develop a wide range of artisan skills of
high operational learning that we need at our Centre to give
flexibility for our helpers.
In Australia, skilled trade
persons may charge higher hourly rates than general physicians.
With
several years’ experience in a range of artisan activities,
Members become more aware of the complex nature of running a Dhamma
Centre in a modern Western capitalistic society.
Our Centre
reflects some of the high-end conceptual learning of the business
community.
Members learn to share computer files and work in
teams to produce much of our written output. Our writing has been
measured for Flesch Reading Ease Score and shows that undergraduate
level of difficulty is often obtained. This is post Fordian
conceptual training.
Third, fourth and fifth level Office
Administration competency skills are needed because of the amount of
communication that emanates from our Centre to the world. These are
learnt mainly at University study plus experience on the job at our
Centre.
Each Member has a personal assistant or two and trains
that assistant in the requisite skills needed. This type of
organisation structure allows persons to experience the satisfaction
of high conceptual learning and completing the job as a team member.
We have been running this type of structure for over twenty
years along with a continuous improvement program, to the point where
Members have become highly productive and efficient in their artisan
roles. They understand the problems that in underdeveloped world is
built on artisan skills and lack of education in high conceptual
learning. Some of our writings allow transfer of our skills.
The
tasks and projects supplement thoughts about Triple Gem Refuge.
Formal activities compromise morning and evening chanting in Pali and
English and other formal practice sessions that at present take the
form of Abhidhamma classes, taught every Tuesday evening for the next
nine years.
Our Abhidhamma class notes are placed on our web
site at www.bddronline.net.au, so Members and the general public can
access the lesson information. We have received valuable support from
a Buddhist Master in Myanmar with written material in the English
language.
From time to time Members are encouraged to visit
other Dhamma Centres both local and overseas. Because of high land
prices, most local City Centres do not have gardens comparable to our
own.
We produce experienced Members who in time join the
committees of other local Centres.
This is our path of service
to others which lends a helping hand to others to others on a rather
large scale under controlled conditions.
Members who have
experienced more than ten years of our method of getting them to make
sufficient merit to allow them to get more insights into the Buddha
Dhamma path become useful to themselves and others.
We
recommend this post industrial methodology to other Temples and
institutions, to engage their constituency into sufficient action to
change their lives by allowing access to a peaceful location.
But,
first, the hard work of building and paying for a suitable
infrastructure to contain the peaceful location must be
achieved.
Our Founder planned 40 years ago that our Centre
must be in a beautiful garden setting.
The rain forest he
chose to establish our temple is characterised by clean air and clean
water, above the pollution level of Melbourne City. It is not too
busy, away from the main road. Thus, it is conducive to quiet
reflecting on how to manage what is being done on the four season
garden plan.
Members learn to lend a helping hand to one
another in the hard work aspects of tending the garden. For example,
they learn to build dry rock walls from local rocks donated to the
Centre. Raising awareness means they can pick what rock will fit next
to the last placed rock. This becomes intuitive with good minds
.
They work in small matched groups and learn to cooperate
without gender bias. In their every day life of running a Chan garden
they help each other with artisan skills that are not too modern work
related or competitive.
Thirdly, they understand how the
classical world was built by artisan labour with the help of Devas
and Devatas guiding the process.
We can teach the language of
work in the garden to teach cooperation and kindness.
They
develop a sustaining social network around the Temple garden so they
do not feel alienated from our capitalistic society and do not feel
the need to take refuge in drugs or alcohol to get peace.
Their
clean living practice of working in our privately owned Buddha Dhamma
garden accumulates merits around the Bodhi tree.
We have
large beautiful superior Buddha images in the “village square”
section of the garden, so they by nature can pay respect in the fresh
clean air over the four seasons by offering flowers at the base of
the images. Members buy the flowers or bring them from their own
gardens.
It is wisdom to arrange a Centre’s garden
artisan activity in this manner.
Visitors from all over the world
express their experience as a sense of peace and serenity as soon as
they enter our garden. Our Buddha relics help this
ambience.
Fourthly, we do not borrow money for materials to
build gardens, but teach Members to save their donations and build,
say, one rockery or one gate at a time.
We have three
professional builders who volunteer their services to train Members
in the safe use of power tools used on work, in the design of
requirements of material sizes and construction techniques.
We
have two occupational health and safety officers on the job.
All
Members, male and female help with building work in the garden. At
times, it is hard physical work working from our plans, so Members
physical health improves. Their mental health improves.
The
main theme of our Centre is to create beauty by self-help, practised
through the “Way of the Garden”. Naturally, five precepts
are found in the “Way of the Garden”.
This self-help
funding debtless notion extends to all our developmental activities.
Fifthly, we seldom pursue government project funding of any
sort.
In this way, we teach Members to live without spending
too much money. A special advantage of this practice is that they
have full control of who comes to the Centre and who does not.
In
Australia, Government social funding specifies including
disadvantaged groups in projects. Some may not be teachable because
they are isolates and suspicious of compulsory group activity because
they see it as indoctrination.
It is a totally different
matter, if an isolate on a sickness benefit, comes of their own
accord to us seeking help with their personal problems, than if an
isolate is told to come by the government to a funded project or lose
their sickness benefit pension.
At present, we have two
helpers on work experience funded by government money. They develop
our information technology systems.
We find it takes about
three years to change postindustrial isolates behaviour patterns to
make them more human, compassionate and able to relate to the broader
issues of human community in the multicultural postindustrial
Australian society.
For various reasons, the I.Q. of children
in postindustrial society is rising slightly.
In addition, we
teach persons to be tolerant towards their complexity of origins and
cultural differences of their parents. Such issues are unlikely to
arise in mono-cultural societies. Australia is the melting pot for
rigorous generational change.
It is interesting that our
Members have not been in trouble with the police or government
officials since they started work on our programs.
This is
interesting because Australia overall has a rising crime rate in
recent years. Burglary has become more common.
Our Centre is
in a safe area having low burglary rates. Our Centre is kept well
lit, always staffed and well locked up in the evenings.
In
some very rich Victorian suburbs, burglary is at epidemic
proportions.
In Western literature terms, the nearest
education model of what we do at our Centre can be described in terms
of one William Glasser, who worked in United States of America
prisons, to bring about a more social and less destructive
community.
The sociologist William Glasser used a written
social contract that Members in his prison community would agree to.
For example, when the prisoners broke windows, he would not repair
them. They had to find the money and pay for a glacier to repair
them.
We are not a prison. Within our ‘social contract’
that Members write us is their “life plan” over time
officiating what they intend to do for work, pleasure and
progress.
There are the five precepts that Buddhist persons
observe and we coach these to be written into their life plans.
So,
fishing (killing) as a recreation sport would be unacceptable because
it breaks the precept of no killing.
The way we train Members
to relate with one another is important as it avoids the military
style of attack because, responding to persons using harsh speech
with harsh speech is not our code because it is not Buddha Dhamma
Practice.
Yet, on occasions, when called for, we teach
hard.
The selection of language of the life plan we want
Members to write is to have a powerful softer word medium (no war
language) in directing and perpetuating their planned future
cultures.
By acting in this way, they lose the aggression of
fierce competition and have but become very effective in work team
situations.
We ask them to take the high ground and consider
taking Bodhisattva vows.
It is suggested that Buddhist
organisations in postindustrial capitalistic nations intensify their
efforts to involve their laity in more cooperation exercises, such as
artisan activities, than merely asking them to raise or give money to
the temple.
We have found that our high ground moral
expectations are met because many Members now have such a positive
mental attitude about the feasibility of practising and living
practising five precepts.
New Members sense this moral
confidence and are willing to apply their own efforts to start their
sila process.
Without sila, there can be no wisdom or
compassion.
The question of if it is possible to follow the
five precepts considering our contemporary situation has been
answered by Venerable Thich Nhat-Hanh as follows:
“Until
recently, I have used the term ‘precepts’ instead of
‘mindfulness training’. But many Western friends told me
that the word ‘precepts’ evokes in them a strong feeling of
good and evil, that if they ‘break’ the precepts, they feel
they have completely failed. Precepts are different ‘commandments’
and ‘rules’.
They are the insights born from the
mindful observation and direct experience of suffering. They are
guidelines that help us train ourselves to live in a way that
protects us and those around us. As we continue the training, our
understanding and practice deepen. No one can be perfect when he or
she just begins training, and even during the time of training.
Precepts are the most concrete expression of the practice of
mindfulness”
We have numerous fund raising activities not
only for our own funds but also for orphanages in Bangladesh and
India.
The Monks who serve the orphans in these places inspire
Members.
A genuine belief in altruistic attitude towards other
persons can be infectious when it reaches critical mass within the
opinion of Members.
This has happened within recent times
hence, our Centre becomes a very pleasant place to visit and
practice.
Members are taught to take pride in quality writing
by our scholars and avoid the language of war used in business
expositions. We write about business writings using a different
sociable discourse model.
We present The Buddhist Hour, a
weekly radio broadcasts on a local radio station .
Our
websites provide affordable inspirational publication and
photographic scenes of our venues, for our propagation of Dhamma
publication needs.
Please come and visit our websites and see
for yourself.
We train our own webmasters who we insist, must
be Buddha Dhamma followers, to chose language other than the common
warlike jargon, so we can be quite sustainable in our policies of
cooperation with others globally.
Our internal local area
network of computers is modern with good search engines so that
research for suitable non-warlike words preferred becomes easier than
in the traditional library.
We have an English vocabulary of
at least 80,000 words suitable for our purposes from a total of two
and a half million, and help many persons to know English words.
We
are confident our Centre’s garden policy is sustainable for 500
years and we intend to continue along our methods of word
practicality, word friendliness and word cultural adaptability for
which we have some renown.
We present ourselves as “Chan
Academy Australia painting a better world....”
Being a
very active Regional Centre of the World Fellowship of Buddhists and
an Associated Institute of the World Buddhist University, allows our
Members to develop professionalism and maturity of English as a
second language within a global perspective.
We have six
Members attending the 22nd General Conference of the World Fellowship
of Buddhists Malaysian conference and two unofficial observers with
our party.
These unofficial observers organise another
Melbourne based Buddhist group and it will be of great benefit for
their organisation for them to observe the work process at our World
Fellowship of Buddhists conference.
I wish to thank all the
Members of the World Fellowship of Buddhists and World Buddhist
University, for all their help and support over the years and wish
them to succeed by the merit they have made, this very life.
We
will continue to build the words-smiths needed for this century and
export our research findings.
At this conference, the author,
Mr John D. Hughes is seeking a second term as Vice President of the
World Fellowship of Buddhists.
May this conference show the
way to sustaining the World Fellowship of Buddhists and the World
Buddhist University for at least the next 500 years.
May all
our colleagues be well and happy.
References
Venerable
Thich Nhat-hanh cited in Young-Nam Lee, The Five Precepts, Lotus
Lantern Volume 4 No. 15 Autumn 2546 B.E. (2002) Venerable Yang San
(Editor), published by Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, p
17-18.
Victorian Office of Multicultural Affairs (2002)
‘Valuing Cultural Diversity’, State of Victoria, p
8.
Phaik, Tan Aun (1998) Dana Making a Treasure Store of
Boons, Penang. Publishers: Perniagaan Juta Ria. p 299.
‘Waking
Up IBM: How a Gang of Unlikely Rebels Transformed Big Blue’,
Harvard Business Review, July-August 2000, pp 137-148.
‘E-Loyalty:
Your Secret Weapon on the Web’, Harvard Business Review,
July-August 2000, pp 105-114.
‘Best Practice –
Cutting Costs Without Drawing Blood’, Harvard Business Review,
September-October 2002, pp 155-165.
‘The Bandwidth Bomb’,
Harvard Business Review, September-October 2002, pp 179-186.
‘Having
Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It’, Harvard Business
Review, September-October 2002, pp 167-176.
Quote from Free
Press Leader Newspaper November 6, 2002, p 8.
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