The Buddhist Hour
Radio Broadcast Script 260
Sunday 19 January 2002
Glossary
meanness: the condition or quality of
being mean; lowliness; insignificance; littleness of character or
mind; poverty of execution, design, etc.
stingy: (stinginess)
doled out sparingly or grudgingly; penurious, mean
materiality:
that which constitutes the matter of something
Today's script is entitled:
"The blessing of
being debtless"
There are four blessings that a human being can
enjoy.
They are: to be debtless, to enjoy material objects, to
enjoy the blessings of your own material objects, and to have caga or
emotional maturity.
These four blessings are attained only in
this order as each one is a gateway to the next. The end result of
cultivating and attaining these four blessings is emotional maturity,
in Pali, caga.
The first three involve materiality – the
stuff we want every second of every day of our life.
These things
include sealing wax and string, pots and pans, garden supplies and
wheelbarrows; as the Walrus said (in Alice in Wonderland, Lewis
Carroll 1832 – 1898) “The time has come...to talk of many
things: of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax – of
cabbages and kings -...”
When we feel we are in debt it
is as if we have an obligation to fulfil.
Meanness or
stinginess causes this sad feeling of disease.
Aristotle
thought (circa 340B.C.) “Meanness is incurable; it cannot be
cured by old age, or by anything else’.
A non-debtless
mind cannot accept kindness, emotional support, sweet words or
materiality because it is suspicious and disturbed by the offer
because it is emotionally immature. A main cause of this is greed, in
Pali, lobha.
This is because the non-debtless mind thinks:
“If I accept this, then what will I owe?”
or
“If I accept this cup of tea, I will owe them a cup of
tea.
or
“I accept these flowers, now I have to put
them in a suitable vase and change the water to keep them fresh.”
Analysis shows that the non-debtless minds are in error. The
mind with whatever we translate as debt, is a stingy mind.
We
train it out of existence by first thinking of the golden mean
expressed by Horace (circa 20 B.C) as : “Whoever cultivates the
golden mean (aurea mediocritas) avoids both the poverty of a hovel
and the envy of a palace”.
A mind with debt does not
enjoy materiality even if it is freely given.
As the American
saying (circa 1835) notes: “He is mean enough to steal acorns
from a blind hog”.
If you are debtless, you will accept
offers of materiality and emotional warmth from others with
goodwill.
Sometimes emotional warmth is felt to be more
important than physical wealth to wealthy people.
The test of
extraordinary merit is to see those who enjoy it the most are praised
by others.
People with less merit are not praised by
others.
Some can offer emotional warmth to many persons and
not appear to run out of supplies to give it.
As Proverbs
VIII, 15. circa 200 B.C say: “A merry heart doeth good like a
medicine”.
Yet some persons do not appear capable of
responding to human warmth. They act as though they are emotionally
dead.
Some people of low merit cannot respond to emotional
warmth. Emotional warmth is one of the four nutrients needed by human
beings.
As La Rochefoucauld: Maxims, 1665 says: “The
world far oftener favours false merit than it accords justice to true
merit.”
The debtless mind is one of four blessings a
human being can obtain.
Another blessing within this group of
four blessings is emotional maturity (in Pali, caga).
A
debtless mind can accept emotional support, sweet words, kindness,
materiality and other mental nutrients without becoming
disturbed.
The mind that is not debtless cannot do any of the
above.
One way of disposing of a non-debtless mind is to
practice generosity, in Pali language an aspect of dana.
Dana
is the first of the ten Perfections to be taught by the Lord
Buddha.
Because you are practicing to give freely, you make
the causes for your mind to become more free, and less attached to
materiality.
Therefore your mind becomes more and more
debtless.
“If you squander this rebirth that you have
managed to obtain, it would be an even greater pity than if you had
wasted one thousand billion precious jewels. There is no greater
loss; nothing could be blinder; no self-deception could be
greater.”
At our Centre some of us use the blessing of
being debtless, for planning the development of our Temple. The
debtless mind knows not to fund new projects by way of loans or
debt.
Since the Chan Academy Australia is interested in
trans-generational preservation and propagation of our good
information; we must sense operations of war.
We plan for our
Chan Academy library information services and Chan infrastructure to
be maintained in good condition for at least 500 years.
To
manage this long-term project, financial prudence is what we must
practice.
Seeds of projects sown in the 20th century are
flowering in this century.
Our policy is not to borrow money
to finance our new capital works or equipment refurbishment. We
remain debtless.
At present, self-induced worries of a
financial nature occupy many persons’ minds in Australia and
lead to symptoms of stress.
It would not be pleasant to have
a body of young persons lined up to pay our country’s future
debt and have a quarter killed or disabled by operations of
wars.
Wars come to a close when there is no wealth remaining
to continue fighting them.
We rely on volitional causes and
effects to generate our wealth to fund major projects.
From
the Buddha Dhamma perspective, it is clear that one factor of the
underlying causes for local recent events generating war -like talk
and causing stress, may be greed for what has been termed “cheap
oil”.
Persons cannot practice if they are over stressed;
they need some quiet reflection time to plan their future
operations.
We find it disturbing that some persons may quote
from The Koran, XLVII (verse 1007), circa 625: “ When ye
encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads, until ye have made
a great slaughter among them. Verily, if God pleased, He could take
vengeance on them without your assistance, but he commandeth you to
fight His battles."
Without this basis of the first three
stages of the Noble Eight-fold path: samma-ditthi (right
understanding), samma -sankappa (right thought) and samma-vaca (right
speech) there can be no peaceful scholarship.
We believe the
reason peaceful scholarship exists at our Chan Academy Australia is
because some of our Members practice the first three stages of the
Noble Eight-fold path and they have the will to contribute writing on
peaceful scholarship for the rest of their lives.
Being
debtless is the way we accumulate and preserve use of educational
resources in our library.
Australians are wealthy enough to
sustain our specialised library resources.
However, in fact,
most of our library references are gifts from overseas Buddhist
organisations. But, our Internet use and computer infrastructure is
generated with locally raised funds.
This is a good position
to be in when operations of war that involve our country appear
overseas.
It is unlikely that the government would confiscate
desktop personal computers that are one generation behind modern
systems, as ours are.
Our strength is we can remain
educationally viable year in, year out.
We believe this maxim
applies even if operations of war commence.
Genpaku Sugita
(1733-1817), a Dutch scholar of the Edo Period, referred to the
“Seven Don’t’s” to maintain health. They are as
follows:
Do not take seriously what happened yesterday
Do
not worry about what might happen tomorrow
Do not overeat - be
satisfied with an 80% full stomach
Do not eat unhealthy food
Do
not take medicine without good reason
Do not do things to the
excess
Do not indulge in a lazy life but take regular exercise
He
wrote the above rules when he fell ill at the age of seventy and
observing them, he recovered. One day, when he was passing in front
of a temple, the following notice happened to catch his eye:
1.
A little meat, many vegetables.
2. A little salt, a lot of
vinegar.
3. A little sugar, a lot of fruit.
4. A little food,
chewed well.
5. A little clothing, frequent bathing.
6. Little
use of vehicles, a lot of walking.
7. Little trouble, deep
sleep.
8. Little talking, frequent action.
9. A little anger, a
lot of laughter.
10.A little desire, a lot of serving.
These
seem to be common sense and the point is not to memorise them but to
put them into practice in our daily lives.
We do these things
on a regular basis everyday at our Temple, war or no war. These
practices bring long life, good health and other resources we need.
May you make the causes to become less attached to
materiality this life.
May you attain the four blessings that
a human can enjoy:
to be debtless,
to enjoy material
objects,
to enjoy the blessings of your own material objects,
and
to have caga or emotional maturity.
If you are
interested in these teachings, please visit us occasionally at our
Temple at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey, Victoria, 3158. Please telephone
us for an appointment on 9754 3334.
To read more on these
subjects, please visit our searchable websites regularly. Our five
websites are updated weekly. They
are:
www.bdcu.org.au
www.bddronline.net.au
www.bsbonline.com.au
www.bdcublessings.net.au
www.buyresolved.com.au
This
is our 260th weekly Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast and we are very
proud of our writing and production teams who have made this success
possible.
If you are interested in learning how to write and
produce radio broadcasts and wish to become an excellent wordsmith
over the next ten years, please contact our President, Julian
Bamford, direct on 0400 267 330.
May you contribute writing on
peaceful scholarship for the rest of your life.
We are
celebrating our 260th Radio Broadcast with a garden party in our
heavenly Chan garden, from 3:00pm to 5:00pm today, Sunday 19 January
2002.
The celebration garden party will be hosted by John and
Anita Hughes, our Resident Practitioners at the Chan Academy
Australia.
When you come you can buy raffle tickets in our
Summer garden raffle. The first prize is $750 of flowering plants for
your garden. Tickets are just $2 each and you can purchase a book of
ten tickets for just $20.
Or, you can pay $33 to have your
name painted in 22 carat gold on the foundations of our new Dining
Hall.
May you be well and happy.
The authors and
editors of this script are Julian Bamford BA(AppRec), Evelin Halls
DipFLC, Rilla Pargeter, Amber Svensson and Pennie White BA
DipEd.
References:
Mencken, H.L. A New Dictionary
of Quotations, Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New York 1991
Edition. p1272, p 773, p781.
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations,
Oxford University, England.
p135
Abhidhamma Class No. 19,
29 October 2002, The cetasika confidence applied to our core
business. LAN2 I:\abhi19.rtf
LAN 2 I:\wfb02.rtf Our approaches
to Wisdom and Compassion: Our Way Forward by John D. Hughes and Anita
M. Hughes 2002
Pabongka Rinpoche. ‘Liberation in the palm
of your Hand,
A Concise Discourse on the Path of Enlightenment’,
ed. Trijang Rinpoche, Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1997.
Matsunami,
Kodo. Buddhist Approaches to 108 Life Problems. ‘105 For those
who encounter a dying person’ p121. Kinryuji searchlight Centre,
Tokyo, Japan 1992.
Readability Statistics
Counts
Words:
1784
Characters: 8710
Paragraphs: 110
Sentences:
100
Averages
Sentences per paragraph: 1.2
Words per
Sentence: 16.0
Characters per word: 4.6
Readability
Statistics
Passive Sentences: 12 %
Flesch Reading Ease score:
57.0
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score: 9.0
Readability
Statistics
When Word finishes checking spelling and grammar,
it can display information about the reading level of the document,
including the following readability scores. Each readability score
bases its rating on the average number of syllables per word and
words per sentence.
Flesch Reading Ease score
Rates
text on a 100-point scale; the higher the score, the easier it is to
understand the document. For most standard documents, aim for a score
of approximately 60 to 70.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
score
Rates text on a U.S. grade-school level. For example, a
score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader can understand the document.
For most standard documents, aim for a score of approximately 7.0 to
8.0.
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Accordingly, we accept no liability
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member, employee or other person associated with the Chan Academy
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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".
For more information,
contact the Centre or better still, come
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© 2002. Copyright. The Buddhist Discussion Centre
(Upwey) Ltd.