The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives

If you could find a net of advantage that would hold useful things, it would not hold lies and it would act as a sieve so we could start to know how to manoeuvre facts (as they appeared) to our advantage.

As Robert Dessaix explained in an address given at a School of Languages Postgraduate Conference at Melbourne University in October 1999, it was Wittgenstein who proposed that "the limits of my language are the limits of my world".

You don't have to be Wittgenstein to grasp that if you only have one word (let's say "depressed") to describe your mental state, and can't wonder whether you're actually more dejected or suffering from ennui rather than depressed, or melancholy, triste, despondent, disconsolate or just plain glum, then your experience is drained of colour and possibilities.

Without a decent background of language, you cannot have a net of advantage to decipher your problems.

This is why scholarship is one of our five styles.

So before you decide to sit down for five minutes or so to solve the meaning of life, it is quite likely there are some other things you need to learn, and one of these is how to find a better view that does not reference nihilist or eternalist views.

These two extreme positions stop analysis of most situations.

The human side of outsourcing needs as much attention as the outsourcing contract. We are not considering outsourcing our IT functions.

If we were, we would need a smooth transition that would transfer skills and knowledge without disruption of services while retaining sufficient in-house skills to cover ongoing operations and enough skill to manage the contract.

If you learnt a skill on a nihilist or eternalist mindset, then remove the mindset, it should not come as a surprise that you run the full gamut from fear, anger, despair, insecurity, distrust and resentment to hope confidence, optimism and growth.

This is what happens to many Westerners when they begin to practice Buddha Dhamma.

You may or may not accept our word that a person is approaching maturity when they adjust to living with Triple Gem refuge without the cloud of these two extreme views.

Nihilism and eternalism lead to potted thinking.

In Australia, the parochial style of jingoism is less widespread than earlier this century.

At that time, many persons found a form of contentment in arriving at "mysteries" which look like some sort of "chicken and egg" endless loops.

This means they strive only to arrive at futility without understanding.

When a famous Australian popular poet (Lawson?) suggested rebirth was true, that view was dismissed out of hand without looking at evidence by a "dumbed down" population of the time.

Over the last decade, the Dalai Lama states rebirth is true on all of his Australian tours, and this fact is accepted by the mass of educated Australians.

Is it true that is it no longer expedient to accept that "dumb downing" has no advantage?

It is not a known expression to suggest a person can "dumb up".

In the 1920's one popular known expressions was to "wise up" (to something).

According to the Macquarie Encyclopedic Dictionary, first published in 1990, the expression "wise up" is still in colloquial use and means "to become aware, informed, or alerted; face the realities." It further notes that it is from Middle English and Old English wis, c. Dutch wijs, and German weise.

Some persons think they are being "cool" and being fashionable by putting their minds to work to "dumb down" and talk in the manner of Seinfeld dialogue.

By cause and effect, if they carry on like that, they had better ask themselves at the same time if they know that they may causing themselves to believe that it is OK to allow themselves to become mad, bad or sad through intense self-generated flurry and worry.

It is better if they think of a wake up call that they need to learn how to learn and analyse and that it is possible to come to their personal net of advantage. These are good minds to be developed.

Just as muscles have to be tuned to become strong, so must minds be tuned if you want something mental inside you that can be entrusted to learn new skills.

Some learning that persons use is mechanical and conditioned by reward and punishment by taste and bells like Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to produce saliva.

It may be distasteful to you to recall that some sentient beings can be taught skills by beating. This was the way many animals, such as Russian dancing bears, were taught in the past.

You may wonder what topics you would choose to learn without outside guidance, prompting, showing the way and so on.

Coercion in learning is outside the Buddha Way of doing things.

In our case, when persons come to our Centre requesting to be taught, we do not discuss questions of why we think they want to learn directly.

Instead, in most cases, we do respond by providing them with a suitable location and instruction for an hour or two. This is gives access to 1st order learning.

Then, if persons wish to continue learning, we offer the means to put into practice what they have heard. This is 2nd order learning.

Putting things into practice is the difficult second stage of learning.

For Members who practice within information impoverished organisations, it is difficult to find the information they need without resorting to devious means.

They must develop patience to obtain the investigation skills they need to make judgements of what texts contain the correct moral information that is needed.

Many spurious texts are likely to appear in organisations that have not further references because they failed to practice adoption of the three strong technologies of knowledge management.

These three strong technologies that overcome the increasing "infoglut" and "infofamine" are semantic organisation, collaborative extensions and visualisation User interfaces (UI).

Our organisation policies ensure we have the potential to become more information rich every day by tracking these three technologies.

Most persons experienced enough in life processes realise that if they hold some idea strongly for 10 or 20 years, it seems it would take a lifetime to straighten out strong wrong views.

For such persons who have conditioned themselves thus, we supply a "hot line" where they can find quickly the detailed information they need to start their practice.

It is not pessimistic to agree with some persons that if they cannot to enter in some new area of information sufficient for cultural change, it could be so difficult to conquer by change.

Without our rapid information supply chain, it could well take the rest of their life.

Much later, perhaps several years and many insights later on, we ask them how many skilful ways of mental learning that do they know and to use something that does not depend on an outside reward for them in the future.

Buddha Dhamma is not trivial.

In the long run, because we are a peak organisation, Members meet a range of Buddha Dhamma Teachers who challenge Members to attend to our Centre by developing their right motivation to head towards the experience of a net of advantage array.

With right action, it becomes clear that the major means of making merit our Members use is to help others by lending a helping hand with maintenance and development at our Centre.

We need many practical trade skills as soon as we get a permit from the Shire to build a new bedroom and store room at our Centre.

When the new accommodation is in use, helpful persons such as those on our new IT projects could rest a few days on site before proceeding with the demanding work they are called upon to undertake.

By such means, persons in residence at our suitable location could develop their particular "net of advantage" for their finest work and development minds.

Then, they could gain another aspect of what we mean when we use the generic term "skill-in-means".

For some persons, skill-in-means may arise from applying the precepts, (sometimes called "Mahayana Precepts") found in a Sutra translated by Kumarajiva.

This Sutra was most likely that known in Sanskrit as the Brahmajala- sutra.

In Chinese it is Fan-wang-ching and Japanese Bon-mo-kyo (Taisho No. 1484).

In the English language, we can refer to it as the "Sutra of Brahma's Net"

It contains 10 major and 48 minor precepts.

It provided the foundation for Saicho's establishment of the Tendai School in Japan.

This sutra has been highly valued in China and Japan.

Also, the Brahmajala Sutra exists in Tibetan translation in The Kanjur under the title of Tshans-pahi-dra-bahi mdo (TT Vol.40, No.1021)

In the Theravadin texts, we find the Brahmajala is the first sutta of the Digha-nikaya.

The Buddha begins his discourse by advising the Monks that in the face of both praise and blame they should respond with equanimity.

A large amount of information is given of the various heretical philosophies prevalent, of which speculations the Buddha claims to be free, and by virtue of which freedom he considers himself worthy to be praised.

There is a great deal of detail and discussion of the numerous current schools of teaching that are classified as 62 in all. Because they are based on contact through the senses, all of them receive these sensations through continual contact in the spheres of touch.

To them, on account of craving, arises the fuel that acts as the food necessary for the basis of future lives.

From the fuel results becoming, from the tendency to become arises rebirth, and from rebirth come death and grief, pain and so on.

The Buddha analyses the causes of these 62 false views in which he considers these speculators entrapped as in a net.

At the end of the discourse, asked by Ananda by what name the sutta should be remembered, he says it should be remembered as the NET OF ADVANTAGE (Atthijala in Pali); the NET OF TRUTH (Dhammajala in Pali); the SUPREME NET (Brahmajala) or the NET OF THEORIES (Dittijala in Pali) or GLORY IN BATTLE (Sangrama-vijaya).

The steps on this path are taught at our Centre.

Although the ancient path can be approached in different ways, we have been practical enough to blend a series of IT methods and put to use in the information age to make more rapid searching of information about the Buddha Dhamma. In our systems, users are invited to pay to help others how to learn.

Our Teacher has shown us how he managed to fund the delivery of Buddha Dhamma to over 1 million persons in the last few decades at home and abroad.

So we can afford to practice, our Teacher taught us the practical ways to come to a path of "self-help" where we do things for ourselves.

By searching for legimate methods for raising monies to pay the bills for and help others, such as Bangladesh orphans, we do have to charge high fees for the quality services we deliver to guide persons to deep knowledge access.

We help many to find the net of advantage array each for himself or herself.

When you access the net of advantage array you begin to understand the complex series of skilful ways that clever persons use to keep their various learning skills fresh, robust enough and good enough to change with the times to keep them in high-grade employment. They do not become too old-fashioned.

By training and giving attention to this kind of professionalism among our Members, within a decade they become persons with sufficient poise to appreciate the need for speed in IT.

Where do we get the time for this change?

Because of good planning, which means we do important things before they become urgent, we are not in a crisis situation.

IT changes are planned for the next to the after next stage of development of our current information age equipment because by the time we get one delivery platform speeded up we find the output system needed must change to keep pace.

The Members' time we save is considerable and most of our re-engineered projects can run into thousands of hours per year per Task Unit.

It is this saved time that allows Team Members to practice towards changing work culture and building. We use about 12% of time to provide Members with hands-on training on our latest IT systems. They know that what we will have for the next operating IT platform could arrive tomorrow or next month.

To end up knowing something about that skill for ourselves, we have to sit with someone who knows that skill and copy what they do many times before we learn to grasp the skill and make it our skill.

How many ways can you learn?

What do you have in your information architecture that would make you feel comfortable to go about it?

Because they were not born to Buddhist parents, very few Western educated persons can live and discover Dhamma by sharing their faith with immediate family.

In Australia, as more and more persons follow Buddha Dhamma, the chances of rebirth in a local Dhamma practising family are improving every year.

We think by the year 2020, 28% of well-educated Australians will visit a Buddhist Temple at least once a month.

Then the critical mass we have been building the last two decades will be ready to help them explore every single one of their common interests.

May you be well and happy.

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.