The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives

We do not believe in "luck".

For us, life is too precious to gamble.

Our Centre prospers from honest work with added value.

We make our own luck by moral actions based on cause and effect.

By helping others, we make causes which help ourselves.

Teachings about Buddha Dhamma methods are not for lazy persons who wish to gamble, because persons who are addicted to gambling are unlikely to have the mental space capable of turning their thoughts away from greed into right action.

Sometimes, in the business world, plain talk and simple concepts are valuable because they are more likely to lead to action. In addition, underneath the apparent simplicity is a mass of cost benefit probability analysis figures.

When Steve Jobs took over Apple Computers in July 1997, he found they had 15 computer models. The complexity not only confused customers, it also meant persons inside Apple Computers were often unsure about where to focus.

He decided to concentrate the company on "four great products".

Whether this simplifying notion works remains to be seen.

How many times do we start off with the notion of some simplifying idea to do something different (such as to gamble) then, because we find things do not go as we wish (we lose money more than we gain it), we cool off the idea, then drop the idea, but later start the gambling process again?

There is no doubt that the crazy gambling mind is destroyed by Buddha Dhamma practice.

Many of the 227 Buddha rules for Monks and Nuns are designed to stop the notion of living by chance within the Sangha life.

Although originally designed for Monks' training, these rules are not sexist - they also apply to Nuns.

It is evident some of these rules are far removed from the way householders behave in their ordinary life.

It would come as a surprise to most persons that following a few of these simple rules is potent enough to destroy the mind that gambles.

That being so, if you incline to gamble, pay special attention to what we are about to disclose. If you like what you hear, put it into practice.

It would make life simple if these rules were applied to ordinary life.

Some of our Members are invited to consider holding some of these as additional precepts.

For example, agitating to re-open an issue, knowing that it was properly dealt with, is an offence.

Not informing other bhikkhus of a serious offence which one knows another bhikkhu has committed - either out of a desire to protect him from having to undergo the penalty, or out of a desire to protect him from the jeering remarks of other bhikkhus - is an offence.

Refusing to give up the wrong view that there is nothing wrong in intentionally transgressing the Buddha's ordinances - after the third announcement of a formal rebuke in a meeting of the Community - is an offence.

Saying something as a ploy to excuse oneself from training under a training rule when being admonished by another bhikkhu for a breach of the rule is an offence.

Using half-truths to deceive others into believing that one is ignorant of the rules in the Patimokkha, after one has already heard the Patimokkha in full three times, and a formal act exposing one's deceit has been brought against one, is an offence.

Complaining about a formal act of the Community to which one gave one's consent - if the act was carried out in accordance with the rule, and one knows that it was - is an offence.

Getting up and leaving a meeting of the Community in the midst of a valid formal act - without having first given one's consent to the act - in hopes of invalidating it, is an offence.

As you will now know, it is uncommon for these simple rules to be held by ordinary householders who are lay men or lay women.

Since experience shows that the more training rules observed, the greater the benefits of Buddha Dhamma practice, wise persons retain the good idea that when the time is right, they could observe a few extra rules.

These rules are not harmful and since you are less likely to become more selfish or immature if you observe these rules, they can help you uncover the Middle Way.

If you care to examine and practice each of these rules, you become aware that if you and others in your organisation tried them, they have the effect of cutting things out of your life, therefore, it saves time and money to follow them.

The knowledge you learn in the practice of Buddha Dhamma is that living is extremely complex and if you try to cut out the wrong things your life will not work for long because you cannot meet the suitable timelines of what must be done.

It is like balancing the books at the end of the financial year -it must be done at the right time.

We obey this rule and prepare our final balance sheet of assets and liabilities at the end of each financial year on 30 June and prepare quarterly Profit and Loss Statements.

At other times, we must make the financial effort to have funds at the right place at the right time if we are to win peace of mind.

Last Sunday on the Vesak full moon in May we celebrated Lord Buddha's birth anniversary at our Centre. Members and friends offered dana to four visiting Monks.

New persons at our Centre who attended the celebrations found, to their surprise, they could practice with ease and gain many insights on that day.

This uncomplicated fact of right timing has been known to Buddha Dhamma Practitioners for thousands of years.

Vesak month celebrations continue at our Centre and throughout the world for this turning point in world history.

Last weekend, as part of their practice, Members labelled copies of our flagship Buddhist journal, Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, ready for posting on 31 May.

This day was our publication deadline for that issue.

We paid postage and handling costs of $269 for copies posted within Australia and $1,007 for those sent overseas.

The money for these costs was raised by our Members.

Giving money to print and post good information is one way we make merit to ensure we meet with Buddha Dhamma (Buddha's Teachings) again and again both in this life and in future lives.

This action is a cause to obtain writings about Buddha's Teachings.

Our Members win by their good actions taken over time.

Consider our library.

Our library web site at www.bdcu.org.au can now be accessed through the Australian Libraries Gateway at www.nla.gov.au/libraries.

Our Teacher has stated this good entity link is caused by the wholesome causes of giving out free Buddha Dhamma writings to many persons over decades.

The link that has been created is a blessing to us because it will have the effect of increasing the number of new books and journals we receive which are needed to build up our library resources.

Many nice things happen when you are concerned with helping inhabitants in our secular country access to good information about our training methods.

Our development plan has the integrity, wisdom and maturity for accumulating sufficient library materials from all over the world, which enable us to become a third rate library by world standards.

Even though the full moon of Vesak has waned, our Members continue to practice and their determination does not wane like the moon. If anything, our Member's clarity about what is practice and what is not has become better understood this Vesak moon month.

Dhamma in the mind brings such a sweet feeling that often it has been compared to tasting honey.

We would like to call Vesak the "honey-month" except that it might be mistaken for the old English term "honey-month" that was in vogue from 1696 to 1710, which referred to the first month after marriage (or "honeymoon" as we call it today).

According to Johnson, the compiler of the first English dictionary, originally the term had no reference to the period of a month, rather it compared the mutual affection of newly-married persons to the changing moon which is no sooner full than it begins to wane.

Talking of honeymoons, what is called for when the honeymoon time for gambling relationships is over?

According to the teachings of Korean Dharma Master Ji Kwang Dae Poep Sa Nim, persons have a hard time making decisions in their relationships, especially man-woman relationships.

When the honeymoon phase is over in our friendships and one of the friends thinks the time has come for cutting off a relationship, the Buddha Dhamma teachings can help.

The Venerable taught that a difficult situation in this life is the result of not having a good relationship in a former life.

The persons have made kamma (action - wise or unwise), in former times which they now inherit as events experienced together in these times. The phonetic spelling of the word for "action" in Sanskrit K -A -R -M -A may be spelt in Pali K -A -M -M -A.

At our Centre, in general, we treat both words as if we were in the ancient times, where they had identical meanings.

In more recent times, the word karma K-A-R-M-A has been used by Hindu practitioners to refer to their word Kama K-A-M-A, however this is slightly different in meaning.

You must make an effort to eliminate or moderate your karmic output.

The person who has a good relationship has a great energy advantage.

Therefore, you might observe if you had not been friends in past lives, unless you do something different, it is unlikely you will become friends this life.

So when you have problems getting along, do not argue over the situation, just try to respect each other and the solution will come automatically in most cases.

But remember, problems may not be resolved by pleading that you love someone and for that reason alone he or she should treat you in some different manner.

The strength of feelings between persons, like everything else in the world, is subject to change.

The Pali word "anicca" means change is a fact of all our lives.

As a wise Monk in Thailand put it: "You must remember if two persons sit down to eat, one must finish first".

You are not greatly different from the person with whom you are having difficulties.

In some cases, you may need professional help if you are too far gone into mad, bad or sad scripts of functioning.

When you are well-practised, you can put mental states of loving kindness or compassion or sympathetic joy or equanimity into a given situation so you do not walk away leaving hate behind you.

Sooner rather than later, hate will be associated with other sicknesses which make it difficult for you to reason.

Remember, just as we service our car or our printer, we must make sure to have a medical check-up from time to time.

So remember to see your doctor.

Sooner or later, persons ask our Teacher if they have to make merit every day and practice the various perfections.

Although, obviously, the authentic answer is: "Yes! - if you wish to come out of suffering"; our Teacher seems to know when a person has a longing to fall back to a gambling fantasy world.

Questions which are framed on a thesis statement to begin with may just be a path to reach the antithesis.

When the antithesis you are looking for can be shown not to be captured on a morality sieve, then if you are wise you would be better to revert to the thesis which will not fall through such a sieve.

The methods of Buddha Dhamma are a much broader field than the arguments and reasoning used by the ancient Greeks.

Although the Buddha was the son of a King, and on occasions, advised Kings, and gave advice to the four classes of persons, he was not involved with too much discussion of what we call the social contract.

Professor George Catlin in his book published in 1950 on a history of political philosophers gives five references to Buddha Sakyamuni.

In his introduction, he asks: "(WAS) Buddha or Christ (concerned) with party membership? Were they "dividers of goods?".

He suggests that Buddha "....led one of the greatest of all religious secessions. A route away from the oppressions and injustices in caste-organised society was found..."

The Buddhist sage strove for neither power or wealth. He suggests Buddha was uninterested in war and in calls of "justice and honour" between nations.

In Catlin's view, Buddha was uninterested in money and in "social justice" as a matter of wealth between men (sic).

He was uninterested in "liberty" and caste or servitude or emancipation.

Catlin's view is that Buddha was uninterested even in the striving to perpetuate human life, whether of the individual or the species. In his reading, Catlin concludes that the perfection of goodwill is the end of striving and that what he calls "primitive Buddhism" was not interested in any talk of gods or spirits, immortality or sacred writings and that it had no bearing on ..emancipation in this life and in this world.

In his text, Catlin italicises the words "IN THIS LIFE AND IN THIS WORLD".

Catlin asserts that the self-hypnotising theory of periods of ruin of civilisation and of degeneration came from Zoroastrianism and the thesis is that truth is found, lost and is found again.

It is perhaps of no small importance that Europe tended to accept this idea (although this tendency was intensified by Christianity). The pacifist tradition of Buddha Dhamma was not adopted in Europe.

Our program today is not to dispute with the views of Catlin.

We suggest that there are now certain ways of thinking about national boundaries and about work, even part time, in one country while being a citizen of an adjacent country, which were not found in historical practice.

The notion of being able to cross frontiers without a visa is a revolutionary change in Europe.

In some ways, the European Central Market tends to not reject pacifism and some persons think that the new order promises the best chance in twenty centuries of a period of peace in Europe.

According to Huxley, the maxims of Christ were anticipated by Plato and Buddha and the teaching of the sages is astoundingly uniform over time.

We praise developments which are well thought out and transcend gambling on outcomes, because the question "how" was asked not just "why".

Conversation that focuses not on faults but on ways of overcoming them is within our culture.

Discussion is fine, plans are fine, but the work remains to be done. Grand schemes are just things unless they can be funded without gambling.

Some of our present systems are not scalable beyond a certain point so they cannot handle a task when it increases in quantity.

Our present library system software can handle, say, 5,000 books but we doubt it may be suitable to handle, say, 100,000 books.

So, sooner, rather than later, we are planning to install a new library cataloguing system using ATHENA software which we can purchase for $5,000.

However, we will keep our heritage system in place for some time. We hope to be organised enough to introduce our Members to a demonstration of the ATHENA software during our five day bhavana course held between 11 to 15 June 1999.

Persons interested in helping us are invited to attend. Please contact us at 33 Brooking St Upwey or by phoning on (03) 9754 3334.

We have decided to follow the library knowing-doing practice rather than the old-fashioned slow practice of sending persons to seminars and training programs.

What we prefer is the need to be driven by a love of libraries and the words of Walter Cronkite:

"Whatever the cost of libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation".

While we can still remember history, such as the burning of the great library at Alexander, we can understand that little seems to be truly modern.

For example, last year, in the Buddhist country Cambodia, Irish librarian Anthony Butler completed an assignment to reorganise the library of the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, which had been ravaged by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Pol Pot.

Butler's progress report was dedicated to the librarians slain during the upheaval.

In Bosnia and Hertzegovina, efforts are being made to resupply libraries destroyed by fighting.

Last year in Guinea-Bissau, solders seized the National Institute of Studies and Research and reportedly destroyed most of the contents.

So, we see what the ancients see and most of us do not feel comfortable with this type of behaviour.

A burst water main caused more than $10 million worth of damage to the Boston Public Library in August last year.

Far too often, natural forces such as volcanoes and hurricanes, destroy libraries.

On the other hand, we think that duplication of resources, as information, from our viewpoint, has certainly reached break-even point compared with printed paper on our Internet site.

Through our site at www.bdcu.org.au we are now able to deliver good information about Buddha Dhamma to a wider audience then we could when using only printed library materials.

The honeymoon period with our library passed decades ago.

Our vision for our Library, termed THE JOHN D. HUGHES COLLECTION, remains with the will to continue to develop the collection so that it remains as a satisfactory 20th Century Centre for Buddha Dhamma studies.

We want to run a third-rate library to serve our fellow Australians by making more data available about the contents of our library.

Our motive for this view will be explained at the five day course from 11 June to 15 June.

In addition, we will develop our OH&S inspections in our workplace.

At the five day course, you will be taught to balance your plus and minus energy without gambling and let your minds settle by using a skillful manner of making fresh kusala kamma. This will help end some of your troubles.

There is no charge for the five day course although any donations will be accepted.

A Monk is in residence at our Centre.

Please contact our Centre at 33 Brooking St Upwey or phone (03) 9754 3334.

May all beings be well and happy.

This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes and Leanne Eames.

Disclaimer:

As we, the Chan Academy Australia, Chan Academy being a registered business name of 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 another 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 Chan Academy Australia (Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.)

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 and visit us.

© 2002. Copyright. The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.