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"Neither Christ or Buddha nor Socrates wrote for a book, for to do that is to exchange life for logical process" (W B Yeats - Estrangement, Autobiography 1936).

What is meant by educate? The Oxford Dictionary (1998) says that it is related to the Latin stem, educare to rear, bring up (children young animals), related to educere to lead forth.

That is:

1) To rear, bring up by the supply of food and attention to physical wants (obsolete form according to The Oxford Companion to the English Language - Abridged Edition 1996)

2) To bring up (young persons) from childhood, so as to form their habits, manners, intellectual and physical aptitudes

3) To train (any person) so as to develop the moral and intellectual powers generally.

4)The formal schooling of the young in preparation for life, usually as a passage through various institution set up for that purpose and arranged in levels called - primary, secondary and tertiary (The Oxford Companion to the English language - Abridged Edition 1996).

Formal education in the Western style acquired its present form only in the last century, during which the concept and ideal of universal education has grown with increasing complexity of society manifesting as kindergartens and play groups for early years on one hand and further education and higher degrees on the other.

The concept of Western education has expanded so much as to be seen as a virtual life long process (The Oxford Companion to the English Language 1996).

The basic style of western education was established over 2000 years ago with the Greeks with the establishment of philosophical communities such as Plato's Academy in Athens, followed by the provision of tutors to the offspring of the wealthy to medieval monastic structures of training.

Over the time following the Renaissance, the focus of education became less religious and more secular - with the recipients being enabled by wealth and privilege

The Western style of education has now spread to almost every corner of the modern world.

As it spread, a particular need existed for the type of goodwill that results from an intelligent understanding by the citizens of the country to which it spread of the aims, the scope, the achievements, and the problems of the school system.

To establish confidence in the schools, there had to be some method of indicating to the public that they were receiving full value of their money spent on education; of developing an understanding of what is possible in education when adequate financial support is provided and of helping the public feel some sense of responsibility for the quality of education of the school.

What goals the public are told are attainable from education varies from time to time.

Perhaps at the moment the Australian public are being told there is a relationship between educational level and income.

What sort of evidence exists for this belief?

In Melbourne, Australia, there has been a recent trend of increasing education particularly at a tertiary level.

Statistics show a general increase in education across all earning groups e.g:

There appears to be a correlation between income and education level. Of note is the polarisation within incomes.

Overseas experience indicates that multiple degrees provide an additional advantage in the workplace - which is rewarded with higher incomes - indicating that wealth is still an enabler of educational advantage.

C.P. Snow in his landmark work "The Two Cultures", originally published in New Statesmen 1956, identified two distinct cultures within our modern Western education system - "...I constantly felt I was moving among two groups - comparable in intelligence, identical in race, not grossly different in social origin, earning about the same incomes, who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common..."

These two cultures were: science based and humanities based cultures - literary intellectuals at one pole - at the other scientists - "between the two a gulf of mutual non-comprehension.

It is quite clear the Western education system goes on the science based subjects, always increasing to cover the new science knowledge.

It is not clear if some of the humanities areas will continue.

We see the downsizing or closure of the classics departments in languages, such as ancient Greek and Latin in many universities globally.

In the global pattern of colonisation, there is a war waging for cultural colonisation of the ways events are viewed.

The aggressors seek to impose what passes as their knowledge of viewing art forms on the often highly sophisticated court/clergy of the conquered country.

One way this is done by donation or funding of printed material written from the viewpoint of the aggressors and making sure it circulates by entering into the lending libraries of the targeted country.

Dr. Alan Bundy (1999), the University Librarian of the University of South Australia has stated Australian libraries have come a long way since 1935, when the Carnegie Corporation and Australian Council for Educational Research report described them as "cemeteries of old and forgotten books".

1550 libraries are now accessible to 98 per cent of Australians, of which 60 per cent use them regularly.

They are the largest educational and cultural provider in the country, and by far the most heavily used service provided by local and State governments - all for $540 million, less than the annual budget of the University of Sydney.

Dr. Bundy's view is: ...in the suburbs and country towns the poor frequent, their public libraries are too often in much need of new books, electronic databases, technology, better opening hours, space, new buildings and more librarians.

But it seems the cultural arguments for wanting much of this new information would be hallmarked for subscriptions to Western science and business publications and probably little for Buddha Dhamma texts.

Modern Dhamma books appear less unlikely to be written and published locally in Australia because of the removal of protectionism in the form of a book bounty which encouraged local printing and production.

Also, a little under two per cent of Australians claimed to practice Buddha Dhamma on the last census, it is unlikely most secular librarians would feel they could justify using money to purchase strong Dhamma material because it was "religious".

In the last two years, our organisation has had a small amount of experience in offering Dhamma books for sale to Victorian bookshops.

Almost every bookshop in Melbourne stocks Dhamma books.

Most have a "New Age" or religious section.

Many of the bookshops prefer to stock "block buster" titles; for example books by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Despite this there has been great interest in our books and sales have been made.

It is too early to analyse sales results but it appears the overall direction of the global influx of "blockbuster" books are most likely to sell and are sought by the Australian buying public in the same way the "standard" global audience in other countries now form a homogeneous cultural block.

Such sales do not mean all the persons buying the books will ever come to practice, because they are only interested in "ideas" about living.

This homogeneous cultural block interested in "ideas" is the same buying public that consumes popular overseas scientific writers presenting books having popular secular theories.

These sell in quantity at a better price than most decent Dhamma books. Just as some seven per cent of them might study science after reading such books, some 18 per cent might study Dhamma this life at some level.

This means in the medium term, about 10 per cent of Australians could come to practice within a decade and 28 per cent come to practice within two decades in this country.

Australian surveys show that the book buying public is unlikely to read the full text of such popular science books but are likely to read the whole text of a Dhamma book.

There are three main positions on mind held in Western science.

The authors of these popular books know there are many ways of dealing with unsolved problems in science.

One technique is to ignore them until you have the means of arriving at a solution.

The idea that the mind can be described solely in terms of the working of the brain is fundamental to the materialist point of view.

Crick, the British biophysicist who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for determining the molecular structure of DNA states: "You're nothing but a pack of neutrons".

This, in essence, is the position many neuroscientists are holding.

The mysterium viewpoint arises not from religious thinking or mysticism but on a hard analysis of the way that scientific theories work.

Australian philosopher, David Chalmers, rejects the materialist view approach to consciousness, arguing instead that mind is an immaterial substance that cannot be defined within the framework of science.

A third group deny consciousness exists.

These three scientific viewpoints are limited in viewpoints on material things (rupa) and are not strong enough to displace Dhamma insights.

Such viewpoints precede modern science.

We know from the ancient texts that viewpoints were common in Lord Buddha's day.

The Buddha refuted each such position by insight expressed as logic 2,500 years ago.

The Buddhist general position is that all properties of consciousness (Pali: vinnana) can be found by insight after nibbana access has been achieved each for himself or herself.

Although science has its uses and many of our Members are trained as scientists, we feel no requirement to debate with Western science within their closed materialist form.

But there is a more powerful second level of popular cultural colonisation occurring on a grand worldwide scale.

This is where the relatively uneducated population such as soldiers, traders, tied labourers influence their class counter-parts with their culture.

So many soldiers double as traders (which may be the same person) use trade in drugs, arms or slaves to support their own cultural characterisations which depict their mercenary heroes.

The gun loving cliques, legal and illegal, around the world share their cultural heroes in common - be they Italian tenors, English girl groups, American West Coast acid rock, American east coast Jazz, French cabaret style, Brazilian Tango and Spanish Flamingo, they have globalised to over eighty countries what was originally existed in one geographically restricted area.

Within the last decade, gun loving culture (kill the pigs) and pop group listeners tastes tend to homogenise their rap culture around a series of no precept dictates.

In ancient times, this homogenising took from several centuries to several decades to achieve.

Now parents and their children embrace this "artistic" global culture and little remains of how even persons four generations ago amused themselves.

There is not time today to debate whether such cultural loss is a good or a bad thing.

This debate is the fore-front of educational change within a society.

To colonise a society to think favourably of our culture you promote your culture by degrading it to the popular level.

When the persons' buying patterns are habituated and popular supply is readily accessible then smaller more individualistic works designed to depict persons at each age demographic the indigenous national culture is devalued and its transmission between generations erodes and ceases over time.

Every single event that weakens the local culture and its transmission pathways, such as, the closure of a local newspaper or the closure of a local art gallery, or the closure of a local bakery - then the colonising culture fills the vacuum effortlessly.

So certain types of know-how are lost overtime as new technologies and ways over take them.

For example, the skills required to construct dry stone walls was all but lost in Victoria until the local road authorities decided to widen some wall lined roads.

On trying to locate skilled dry stone wall makers - it was discovered that the trade and its secrets was all but lost in Victoria.

Either expertise had to be imported and new training chances were made to retain our local trades people who knew this art and could train a new generation in the secrets.

Often, by the time, we realise something is of great beauty, the skill of those who can create has been lost.

In Sri Lanka, a modern furniture factory, decided to pay an ancient workman who knew the traditional methods of wood craving to teach other young persons.

In Buddha Dhamma, there are ancient techniques for training persons to show good minds which are very useful.

Our Centre trains suitable persons in these methods.
At the same time, our Centre encourages Members to attend and study current Diploma courses and selected Degree courses at university.

We advise our Members to understand that the effort is needed when they select the courses they expect to follow with rigour.

In the worst case of not having reviewed a course of study sufficiently and running into conflict with mentors, we advise each Member as a last resort, if he or she finds staying with a given mentor is not helping his or her education and if the mentor seems to want him or her to stay simply to have someone to look after the mentor's career path needs, the pupil is justified in leaving and taking dependence with a new mentor at a another institution.

We do not advise Members to abandon studies.

In traditional values, the student-mentor relationship was a high one from both sides.
For example, the student ought care for the mentor when he falls ill, not leaving him or her until he or she either recovers or passes away.

According to the Commentary, a pupil is freed from these duties when the pupil is ill. Otherwise, he should observe all the above duties to his preceptor as long as he is in dependence on him, and has duties even after he or she is released from dependence, as long as both he or she and the preceptor are alive and still ordained.

As for the duties to one's teacher, the Commentary lists four types of teachers: the going-forth teacher (the one who gives one the ten precepts during one's ordination ceremony); the acceptance teacher (the one who chants the motion and announcements during the ceremony); the Dhamma teacher (the one who teaches one Pali and the Canon); and the dependence teacher (the one with whom one lives in dependence).

With the dependence teacher, one must observe all the above duties only as long as one is living in dependence on him.

The Commentary adds that if the mentor already has a pupil who is performing these duties for him or her, he may inform his remaining pupils that they need not take them on.

This exempts them from having to observe them.

If he or she neglects to do this, the pupil who is performing the duties may inform his or her fellow pupils that he or she will take responsibility for looking after the mentor.

This also exempts them.

The mentor's duties to his or her pupil are:

1. Furthering the pupil's education, teaching him or her the Dhamma and Vinaya through recitation, interrogation, exhortation and instruction.

2. Providing requisites for the pupil.

If the pupil lacks any of his or her basic requisites, and the mentor has any to spare, he or she should make up the lack.

3. Attending to the pupil's personal needs when he or she is ill.

4. Assisting the pupil in any problems he may have with regard to the Dhamma and Vinaya.

It will be seen that these ancient rules are acceptable in a democracy such as Australia.

It should be noted it is generally accepted that a democracy is most likely to be successful if the electors have a good basic education and are well informed about the contemporary world.

You may have wondered what is the current thinking of some Buddhist leaders on education from their alternative cultural viewpoint.

One of the greatest Buddhist mentors alive at present is His Holiness, the Dalai Lama has stated that the traditional Tibetan educational system, which was dominated by Buddhist monks, is entirely inadequate to the needs of modern society.
In theory, all Monks of the Tibetan Orders pay respect to this Venerable as their mentor.

The Dalai Lama said; "It's a paradox. Most Tibetan monks love me deeply and respect me because I am the Dalai Lama.

But very few of them show their respect by listening to what I tell them."

In his view, the old curriculum, which was built entirely on a foundation of classical Indian Buddhist sutras and tantras, should be replaced by a curriculum based on modern European logic and philosophy and on the sciences, both the natural sciences and the social sciences.

His Holiness has stated in writing that embracing modern philosophy and modern languages represents the true spirit of Buddhism, whereas clinging to medieval patterns of thought and dead languages runs counter to the spirit of Buddhism.

He is aware that educational reforms will inevitably result in the reform of many of Tibet's medieval religious institutions.

A well-educated populace will not be as likely to believe in divination, and as people become more skeptical about divination, then the influence of sprul-sku (tulkus) will naturally decline.
The universally Buddhist system of electing monastic leaders by ballot will eventually replace the uniquely Tibetan system of choosing leaders through medieval shamanistic practices.

His Holiness has noted there will undoubtedly be some resistance to all these reforms, especially among the more conservative Tibetan monks, many of whom are personally threatened by modernity.

Professor Charles Taylor (Philosophy, McGill), who has made some very interesting and critical observations of modernity, advised the Dalai Lama not to be too eager to embrace Western philosophy and institutions, lest he lead the Tibetan people into the moral and spiritual void in which modern European and North American society finds itself.

"For all of our wonderful ideals and institutions," said Taylor, "we don't seem to have the ability to provide religious and philosophical and political leaders of the calibre and moral integrity of His Holiness."

Several representatives of human rights groups who specialise in India, the Philippines and Southeast Asia also warned the Dalai Lama that there could be dangers in being too precipitant in replacing traditional Tibetan institutions with new ones based on European cultural presuppositions.

Since ancient times, monasteries performed religious functions for the state and, most vitally, served as schools, universities and centres for Tibetan art, craft, medicine and culture.

The role of monasteries as highly disciplined centres of Tibetan education was the key to the traditional Tibetan way of life.
Monasteries bore all expenses for their students and provided them with free board and lodging.

Some monasteries had large estates, some had endowments which they invested.

But other monasteries had neither of these.

They received personal gifts and donations from devotees and patrons.

The revenue from these sources were often insufficient to provide the basic needs of large monk populations in some monasteries.

To supplement their income, some monasteries engaged in trade and acted as money lenders.

The largest proportion of land in old Tibet was held by peasants who paid their revenue directly to the state, and this became the main source of the government food stocks which were distributed to monasteries, the army, and officials without estates.

Some paid in labour, and some were required to provide transport service to government officials, and in some cases to monasteries. Land held by the peasant was heritable.

The peasant could lease it to others or mortgage it. In practice, the peasant had the rights of a free-holder, and dues to the state were a form of land tax paid in kind rather than rent.

A small section of the Tibetan population, mostly in U-Tsang province, were tenants.

They held their lands on the estates of aristocrats and monasteries, and paid rent to the estate-holders either in kind or they sent one member of the family to work as a domestic servant or an agricultural labourer.

Some of these tenant farmers rose to the powerful position of estate secretary. (For this, they were labelled by the Chinese as agents of feudal lords.) Other members of these families had complete freedom. They were entitled to engage in any business, follow any profession, join any monastery or work on their own lands.

Although they were known as tenants, they could not be evicted from their lands at the whim of estate holders.

Some of the tenants were quite wealthy.

The present Fourteenth Dalai Lama attempted to introduce far- reaching administrative and land reforms.

He proposed that all large estate holdings of monasteries and individuals be acquired by the state for distribution amongst peasants.

He created a special reform committee which reduced land tax on peasants.

The reform committee was authorised to hear and redress complaints by individuals against the district or local authorities.

He approved the proposal for debt exemption submitted by this committee. Peasant debtors were categorised into three groups: those who could not pay either their accumulated interest or repay capital were freed from debt altogether; those who could not pay the interest out of their annual earnings, but had saved up enough to repay the capital, were ordered to make repayments in instalments and those who had become wealthy over the course of years were made to pay both capital and interest in instalments.
Some types of education pays attention to the inner nature of words, because they are thought to profoundly and directly affect human mental cultivation,and are believes to influence behaviour motivated by the effect of our environment.

Our Library obviously contains many such words.

Persons who find that the inner nature of literary texts of Buddha's Teachings are a source of realisations and insight wisdom when they are put into practice will have no doubt about the nicety of preserving the ancients texts.

The instructional nature of the texts available at our Centre's library are an indispensable part of the 'sensory education' required by Buddhist Practitioners.

Thinking must be to some design if we are to stay logical.

Creative thinking, unless completed to a satisfactory outcome, has a limitless potential of chaos. The Buddha has warned of the unwholesome results of excessive, uncontrolled imagination.

If we recall our broadcast of the 23 May 1999, we explained vimutti as underpinning all Buddha Dhamma practice such as saddha, ceto and panna.


May you be well and happy.

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

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