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In many parts of the world, lucky children seem to become eyewitness to their wished-for presents appearing on the 25th December.

That some persons think of the 25th December as a Christian festival eludes most children.

The twentieth century that has nearly gone now has not been kind to the Churches. Church attendance in the United Kingdom dropped like wingless angels from 24% in 1900 to 7% in 1981. The decline in faith is confidently attributed (perhaps too confidently) to the growth of a secular society. That is, a society that rejects the value of all forms of faith and worship.

Michael V. Body studied this phenomenon of secularisation in post-Christian Britain. In 1984, his findings were published in a History Monograph from the University of Leeds.

It is a melancholy tale, melancholy because it reveals the persistent misunderstandings and ensuring frustration of denominationalists attempting to sustain a value system increasingly regarded as irrelevant by those in Government. At the time of the Cross Commission in 1888, Boyd notes that the voluntary societies' monopoly of teacher training was intact. At this time, the Church of England possessed 30 colleges and provided nearly two-thirds of the total places available.

Yet this dominant position withered with surprising speed.

In 1890, the universities entered the field of elementary teacher training.

The 1902 Education Act paved the way for the growth of local authority colleges. The LEA participation in teacher training was a means of destroying denominational exclusiveness.

According to Roy Eccleston, a senior writer of The Australian Newspaper, the problem the big Christian churches face is how to make themselves relevant (in Australia).

This Sunday, there will be more persons in Australia in Pentecostal churches around Australia than in Anglican ones according to the latest figures quoted by the Christian Research Association.

According to the Reverend Dr Philip Hughes of the Christian Research Association, the Baptists will in a few years outdo the Uniting Church, which has 1.3 million at present.

The Christian Brothers was a Roman Catholic religious order of laymen, founded in 1684 for the education of the poor. The full name was Brothers of the Christian Schools.

Therefore it follows as we march toward the 21st Century, with less religious training being provided by the formal education system, that many people have forgotten what is the original festival meaning of Christmas ­ a church festival of the birth of Jesus.

Due to the successful commercial marketing of the Christmas occasion, it is the time of the year which many people practice generosity (Pali: Dana) through preparation of great feasts, gift offerings and generally lending a helping hand to older family members.

In the beginning of using the Christmas myth to blend into the process of commercial marketing, it can be guessed it was possessed of no scientific means of measuring how successful or otherwise the campaign would be in direct sales.

But with sales figures turning out to be significant, the half-conscious, instinctive or mystical phase was replaced by the conscious, poetical or literary phase of the myth as the advertising copywriters exercised their high order skills.

Such institutional artifices as the King or Queen's Christmas message to ordinary persons add to the feeling of some sort of solidarity between citizens at that time.

Once myths have become humanised, according to Steven Conner (1983), the tendency is for them to acquire ethical significance, an abstract meaning as well as a fully-defined physical shape.

So, we recognise and welcome the form of Father Christmas at present because Coca-Cola in advertising promoted that form some years ago.

It will only be a matter of time but it is certain we will see Mother Christmas forms appearing under the Equal Opportunity Act.

But the question might be asked - what next then takes the belief in Mother Christmas?

A recent survey showed 43% of Australians practised no religion at all in the previous year, so it seems unlikely the notion of Christian religions which were once based around English, Scottish and Irish migrants will tend to fade from our cultural or ethnic identity.

From a Buddhist viewpoint, this is to be expected, and is yet another example of the Dhamma-ending Age we are entering.

In such an age, the quite hard teaching about morality becomes watered down.

In the true Buddhist sense, there has been no compromise about the questions of sila (morality) because sila is the second perfection that ought be practised.

What is confusing to many ex-Christians is that what is taught as Christian Commandments about moral behaviour does not match Buddhist precepts, and what is acceptable for a Christian priest to practice is, in many cases, quite outside the vows of the Buddhist Monk or Nun.

Buddhist practitioners are not Christians in yellow robes.

Many writers are too anxious to stress the common ground for fear of upsetting persons.

In an analytical sense, a writer becomes ever aware of the dangers of an imbalance of emphasis, that in isolating and pursuing one aspect, the relation of the part to the whole may suffer.

To make the Buddha Dhamma position clear about giving Christmas gifts to one another is timely. It is a good thing. Generosity is a cause of making merit.

In fact, the first perfection in Buddhist taxonomy is generosity (Pali: Dana).

The act of generosity does not involve the worship of a god, but the paying of respect to Deities in the different heavenly realms is sound practice.

It is wise for people to pay respect to Deities.

For if one ignores the existence of Deities who can protect them while they practice meditation, one will meet demons.

Certainly the Buddha knew that millions of beings superior to ourselves in lifespan and happiness (the devas) exist in birth-and-death (Samsara), and he frequently taught them.

Many deities then became protectors of the Dhamma and so powerful forces such as these are available to protect a practitioner.

Because some say "Buddhists teach the extreme doctrine of "no-soul", they reject the existence of a conditioned "soul" along with the absolute "soul" (atman).

This domain is an extremely complex topic to expound.

The teaching of the fact of "anatta" meaning "no (permanent) self-entity" is unique to Buddha Dhamma, so a background in any other religion cannot help understanding.

Lack of understanding of anatta is one of the major divides between the truth of Buddha Dhamma and other systems.

We will not address this concept today, but leave it for another time.
Come to our 5 day Course starting on 27 December if you are interested.

This gives you a chance to visit our Centre and talk to our Teacher.

Please note our Teacher will be in retreat for three months next autumn when he will be unavailable for one-to-one teachings.

But today, we will look more towards how belief or myth does condition our actions.

We start from the notion that it would be arrogant and wrong to suggest we are better off mentally today compared with some of the great humans who practised centuries ago in Asia.

These beings sometimes left behind clear instructions and details of how to achieve insight into different fields.

By reading ancient texts, we learn of the history of the culture of religious Buddha Dhamma institutions at such times.

The Buddha Dhamma practice of placing texts in a type of time capsule for future generations to unearth and read has been practised many times in Buddhist history.

In recent times this century, many "buried treasure texts" have been discovered. These are called terma.

In ancient Buddhist kingdoms, many archaeological sites await excavation.

A voluntary organisation named "Young Men's Buddhist Association" (Y.M.B.A.) - Comilla, Bangladesh, has been formed by the Buddhist youth of this area with the intention to protect this ancient civilisation.

This organisation shall also endeavour to promote better understanding among the Buddhist youths of the world.

The Young Men's Buddhist Association of Bangladesh is ambitious to establish a "Bangladesh Buddhist Cultural Academy" and "New Shalban Vihar" in the ancient Buddhist archaeological sites of Shalban Vihara, Koybari, and Comilla, and this Academy shall unearth the history of this culture and civilisation.

Specialists will be grateful to the fact that the ancient Buddhist images and artefacts are available for study rather than smuggled out of that country and sold.

It is possible the new discoveries may show much more information of the earlier Teaching Buddhas who took birth before the most recent and present Buddha two and a half thousand years ago. It is a blessing to hear the name of any Buddha.

Teaching Buddhas are termed SAMMA (meaning correct) SAMBUDDHA.

The names of the LAST TWENTY-EIGHT SAMMA SAMBUDDHAS are:

Gotama is the latest teaching Buddha. He sat under a tree that is a member of the fig family. We have grown a Bodhi tree at our Centre from seeds of the Indian original tree.

Our library has many references to the history of this most famous of any documented tree in world history and the blessings that can be obtained from such a tree that attracts many heavenly beings. These Devas help us.

Of course, we do not worship the tree. Some persons know how to see such beings.

Buddha Dhamma is not established on the basis of theology but on rational belief, pure and simple, and also may be said to be a living practical knowledge of empirical metaphysics.

As the Chinese Master Hsu Heng Chi expressed it, from such Buddhist Tenets as understanding the law of causality, generally interpreted as "reap what you sow" automatically applies.

It may be seen that to the concept of some religion that the "Creator" has the highest authority over everyone and everything; Buddha Dhamma is fundamentally and diametrically opposed.

The truth of Buddha Dhamma when mixed with superstitious practices in connection with demons and spirits handed down from social customs over a thousand years ago, can only do a gross injustice to the Buddhist cause.

Although every Buddha teaches the same Buddha Dhamma, and they have many events that are similar in their lives, history does not repeat itself in exactly the same way.l

Accordingly, not only is the name of each Buddha different, but the type of tree under which they sit to awaken varies in each teaching era.

One of our Members is about to supply our library with a copy of a rare text in the Chinese language that lists the names of 10,000 Buddhas. We are planning to arrange for the translation of the Chinese text to the English language next year.

Because he spent much of his time walking over India teaching the Dhamma, the Buddha arranged for a cutting of the Bodhi Tree to be planted near his main temple.

He stated that in his absence from the Temple visitors can honour the Buddha by treating the tree as if it were his body.

We use the form recommended to follow this custom with our Bodhi tree at our Temple.

This week, because of the generosity of a Buddhist Monk who has paid for the timber, our Members have been working to build a suitable wooden protective glasshouse around the twin brick platform that holds the Bodhi tree at our Centre.

This covering will help protect the tree against frost damage to the leaves next winter.

Naturally we are practical, and always try to find a lot more about protecting our rare plants and trees in the Hills setting of our Centre.
future generations.

This week, we continue to scan our past records and continue to scan our thousands of photographs to digital form.

We are implementing document-imaging system to allow on-line storage and retrieval of externally generated documents and our own historical records and documents.

ISYS- image 5.03 software allows automatic scanning, OCR, file naming and saving of paper documents. ISYS- image 5.03 software fully integrates with our ISYS DESKTOP 5
retrieval software.

In a secondary archive library site, we store excess copies of past publications and Company financial data and receipts from past years that we are required to keep by law.

So, by scanning, although we transfer the physical paper of some of our files to free up premium reading room for current paper archives, we have instant access on screen to any document requested.

Although our systems are designed for the use of the English language, the scanned original may be viewed to show, for example, an organisation's letterhead in say the Thai language.

It will be seen that Members receive superior office management training by helping us in many ways because our administration systems are more electronically advanced and have superior response time to those of some commercial organisations.

Sound communication is one way we increase the job skills of Members. We average about 450 e-mails a week to Members to keep them up to date. We provide them with a weekly bulletin to keep them in touch. We do offerings to the Deva of work and the Deva of Learning requesting their help in bringing the resources we need to run to e-commerce for fund-raising next year.

Yesterday, with local council permission and authority from the State Fund Raising Authority Board, some of our Members ran a flower stall to raise funds.

This dana helps persons get suitable gifts to their loved ones.

We are sometimes asked, how do we spend Christmas?

Last evening, after working selling flowers, those Members who could not be with their parents because they live interstate (who lightly we term "our Christmas orphans") had a Western traditional dinner together at our Centre.

Some of our Members are vegetarians ­ some are not.

This is one traditional method of practising dana.

Because of precepts, we remain sober and do not serve alcoholic drinks.
We give small gifts to our visitors.
We make offerings to our protectors
We send New Year Greeting cards to many countries.
We addressed our publication Buddha Dhyana Dana Review Vol. 9 No.3 for postage to 38 countries.

In our archives building, we had set up an altar for the Deva of Protection of Archives, which is also known in some cultures as the Deva of moats, drawbridges and protective wall mounds.

Suitable offerings for this Deva is to give him what he can enjoy - offerings of sea shells.

Please consider that all the Lord Buddhas had a tree of enlightenment and taught the four Noble Truths.

Each Buddha used a different tree of enlightenment to provide shade until he gained his enlightenment.

The most recent Gotama Buddha, for instance, sat under the holy Bodhi Tree at Bodhagaya during his Attainment.

We have a Bodhi Tree at our Centre grown from seeds of the original. Our current project we are working on this week is to build a glasshouse around it to protect it from winter frosts.

It is the duty of Buddhist laypersons to look after the Bodhi trees that keep the popular memory of Buddha alive more than any cathedral.

One symbol of Christianity is the Cross ­ an instrument for inflicting a painful death.

If you are trained as a Catholic priest, you are well trained to protect life in the shadow of this death-giving symbol.

Buddha does not permit death symbols in his Temples.

For example, in the training of a Buddhist monk and nuns, he or she is not allowed to keep a weapon at all. No killing is one of the precepts.

He or she has been advised, he or she has been shown the way, he or she has been told, he or she is made to grow in awareness that "I shall not keep a weapon".

Therefore, from cause and effect, there is no weapon inside Temples. Protectors with weapons stay outside.

The only weapons he or she has are the weapons of cultivation of good mindfulness and karuna (compassion); cultivation of mudita (joy for others successes) and upekkha (equality of view of things).

Buddha Dhamma may use the passive quality of the correct type of indifference to remove much small talk. There is no need to react to everything in the world.

The true nature of things is void of the cheap sentimental values of pop songs. Thus in everyday life, in conducting daily life, Buddha Dhamma appears as a tremendous beneficial influence and as a result a great, positive bright happy life having true freedom and equality will be realised.

Our Centre can form some sort of a social institution that protects persons from what the American educationalist John Dewey noted as the boisterousness, hoodlumism and "flippancy towards parental and other forms of constituted authority" which seemed to follow from the decay of older religious and social authorities.

Mindful of the real material benefits that technological progress had bought persons in the 19th century, Dewey always assumed a perpetuation of that progress, and he regarded applied science as the best example of creative intelligence in action.

Dewey thought individuals should direct their energies within institutional channels.

This training produces or has conservative impact effects but does not explain the motivation behind Dewey's educational work. Dewey showed no long-term anxiety about social order. Dewey did not think of himself as a spokesperson for the middle class and his concerns seem much narrower.

His struggle was not one of social concern about order and control, but rather a long struggle to re-establish the place of the philosopher, and in general terms the intellectual, within American society.

In the early part of the 19th century in America, the college philosopher was an important figure. The president and moral philosopher of colleges were usually one and the same.

According to J.O.C. Philips (1983) the president's final-year course on moral philosophy was conceived of as the highpoint of the college career.

Over time, Protestantism lost its heavy intellectual heritage and replaced what was a tough-minded theology with a sentimental style.

The egalitarianism of the mid-19th century America undermined the old political power of the college-educated elite, while many businessmen and professionals were no longer college graduates.

By the 1860's and '70's, the years of Dewey's youth, a set of images about college life had become established.

The college was seen as aristocratic, genteel and aloof, concerned with theory and not practice, isolated from the buzzing commercial world.

The culture split into two ­ the spiritual and the material ­ with the college professors belonging to the former.

The Sunday morals at church were divided from the business morals of the rest of the week.

When John Dewey entered John Hopkins in 1882 with the hope of becoming a professional philosopher, the new scientific style was transforming philosophy into a specialised science that seemed to take it out of the sphere of popular discourse.

Dewey wrote later that as the centre of scholarship gets removed from the mass of persons and the things of daily life, culture becomes tangential to life, not convergent.

As a young instructor, he tried to launch Thought News, an intellectual newspapers that planned to inject philosophy into the daily world. The idea behind this publication was not to discuss philosophical ideas per se, but to relate them to issues of common interest, and hence to questions of science, letters, state, school and church.

The clear elitism of Thought News made Dewey withdraw from the project. Thought News had more to do with the problem of the "remoteness" of philosophy rather than the weakness of journalism.

George Santayana explained the" moral loneliness, isolation and forced self-reliance" of the college philosophers of that time as being " like clergymen without a church".

Dewey was keen that schools teach economic history. He was anxious to accommodate intellectual life to the everyday experience of Americans.

Our position is that we encourage the discounting of such experience where it is dull and brutish because if you take things out of dull mass-produced social life there is very little left.

We insist and encourage any educative process that starts by explaining better life styles. So when a person learns to want to know finer things-finer culture, finer thought processes, finer reflections on how things are to escape the suffering of life-and they want to learn, we are ready to help.

One of our Dhamma schools uses the "Mind only" approach of Chan (Zen) for those of strong will to show the cultivation, the positive cultivation to meet the negativity of evil or unwise minds.

Evil is unwise conduct of using negative minds, while goodness is non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion.

For those who are defeated by drugs and not willing to change their bad habits, we cannot help.

There is no place at our Centre for saying "It's my kamma-I'm bound to fail".

Because of greed, because of hate, because of delusion, persons kill, persons steal. It is a dynamic commitment that is needed.

In other words: we Buddhist practitioners must be uniquely good.

In one sense, we could say we must have more harmless fun than others.

This is rather life enriching. The necessity for cultivation in the new year and every year cannot be too strongly stressed.

The happy new year is for the person who practices.

So, we wish you to say goodbye to the notion of Mother Christmas who gives you something for nothing and say hello to making good causes by helping others.

May you have a good year by wanting to study the causes and effects that make your thoughts sane.

May you be well and happy.

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

The conferring of the Visuddhananda Peace Award 1999 to our Founder, John D. Hughes, recognises the value of his "radical Buddhist Missionary activities belonging to upliftment and propagation of Dhamma, Peace, Harmony through Buddhist Philosophy and idea in Australia and different parts of the world".

Dr. Bhikkhu Sunithananda, President of the Visuddhananda Peace Foundation, has advised that a delegation of eight members will visit our Centre on 5 January 2000 to present the award. The Most Venerable U Pandito Mahathero, who is President of Bangladesh Rakhaing-Marma Sangha Council, will lead the delegation.

Our Teacher is very happy to receive this excellent award because it is a great blessing to the people of Australia, our brothers and sisters and all the people in Bangladesh.

Our Teacher met the late Most Venerable Visuddhananda Mahathero many times and he was priviliged that the great sage visited and stayed at his Upwey Centre. It is an inspiration and a blessing to recollect the tranquil sight of the Most Venerable sitting in our Centre's heavenly garden on a pleasant afternoon surrounded by his disciples and good friends.

During the visit, our Teacher helped translate into English the essence of what the Mahathero taught. The classic practice the Venerable taught at that time involved looking inside the forehead to identify the earth element nature of the front of the skull.

By recognising that something solid like "bone" in the human body is unsatisfactory, is lacking a permanent owner and must one day pass away, the truth rupam anicca dukkha anatta comes to "mind". With this in mind, objects provoke fewer conscious and unconscious fantasies. The danger with conscious fantasies is they give rise to speculative conjectures and pure fabrications. Pure fabrications supply the mythological background of many secular systems having underlying naivete of cause and effect.

It is not the function of the Dhamma to merely suggest an increase in raw, undisciplined, undirected, lawless "pretend" compassion (karuna) or loving-kindness (metta) is "all you need", as one of the earlier mass marketed pop-groups sang.

It is hardly worthwhile to discount some of the popular culture without hate for its performers unless efforts are made to replace it with learning more skill in the Buddha Dhamma arts.

The main use of Buddhist art is to expose and then break the primary human fantasy in the virtual (nascent) minds which "pretend" that weak akusula (unwholesome) minds that give lip service about compassion are good enough.

Negative influences (akusala) masquerading as "useful" (kusala) forces guard these virtual minds, thus preventing a person from awakening and giving recognition of their real nature.

Buddha Dhamma discounts the notion that the troubles in the present world are about to be fixed by some redeeming, supernatural event.

Our Teacher insists our Members join in and work with the agenda set with our friends at the World Fellowship of Buddhists' Headquarters.

By right action and example, we help persons walk down a sane human path of action that leads to the good things and blessings (mangala).

Our Teacher shows the way to reduce our attachment to the akusala notions and then we stop joining with those ignorant human agents who live and drive their world with slander, hate, greed and lack of right work practices.

By a change of heart and clarity of mission, we move away from those who enjoy sowing the seeds of economic, social, cultural or religious crises in the human world.

By a change of heart and clarity of mission, we prepare concrete approaches that impact the mundane processes of the human world and help disadvantaged groups.

By a change of heart and clarity of mission, we cultivate the minds that can practice.

We generate the will to do heroic right action and hold confidence and faith that when our kusala mind series come to fruition, then we cease to be enslaved by our akusala minds.

Living in such totality does not depend on being "chosen" or "called" by some divinity.

For anyone who is not yet aware of this simple fact, such an interpretation would be novel and impressive. Our Teacher, the recipient of the Visuddananda Peace Award 1999, has given this sound advice to one million persons in many countries.

His advice is simple: follow Buddha Dhamma and help other persons not because you are one of the "elect" but because you can see the senselessness of a merely functional existence driven by dependence on your ignorance.

Some divinities are very useful. Some divine heavenly beings operate at our Centre as DHARMAPALA (protectors). They share our merit and are taught Buddha Dhamma. They are not worshipped.

Our Teacher guides us to the best nudity - exposure to the true light of Dhamma.

Our Teacher stresses it is difficult to form a correct estimate of the significance of contemporary events and there is the danger that our snap judgements are biased. This insight gives us a sound motive to continue to help ourselves and others in practice.

John D. Hughes

Editor

Today's radio script: "When Are You Ready to Give Up Belief in Mother Christmas?"

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