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The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines methodology as 'The science of method; a treatise or dissertation on method'.

We use methods, systems, processes, electronic, virtual and physical, to manage information.

The touchstone of our methodology for gathering, processing and utilising information is knowledge management. The content is Buddha Dhamma.

If you do not have a correct knowledge management methodology you cannot find the information you need to get out of suffering.

With knowledge management there is worth assigned to the knowledge base. Without knowledge management the information gathered is regarded as not valuable enough to preserve, to store systematically, to be easily retrievable.

We need to operate on a broader level because due to technology in today's environment there is a doubling up of knowledge every eighteen months, which is the first time this has happened in history.

This phenomenon has changed the notion of work. So a greater part of people at work are involved in the processing of information, hence the term information worker, and therefore the need to manage information that is knowledge. Not all information is knowledge.

At our Centre we are concerned with the knowledge and the practice of Buddha Dhamma.

One of our parameters is not to be too old fashioned. We use current and affordable technology, which is the driving force for creation of new information.

In his book 'Wise-up - The Challenge of lifelong Learning', Guy Claxton comments that "Once the foundation stone of resilience has been laid, the how of learning can be built on top: the repertoire of learning strategies that comprise the good learner's tool kit. As well as being resilient, learners need to be resourceful in the face of uncertainty. They need to know what to do, identifying the major compartments of the tool kit, and exploring what they are good for and how they themselves develop.

The tool kit, or methodology, can be described as knowledge management.

We have a strong version of knowledge management.

We do not see the whole history of technology as one long blind alley. We see it as the process that saved humans from brutish labour with little material comfort.

Non-brutish labour involves reading and writing and thinking on paper with 2nd and 3rd order knowledge.

The sooner we learn insight from analytical and logical writing, the quicker we can raise our living standards.

This is now evident by the successful application of best work practices which are becoming increasingly integrated into our work activities.

But, it is necessary to become aware that what we are looking for is not merely to be a copy of one or the other managerial style of some person or organisational culture.

Sometimes, the good heart may not always be expressed publicly for fear that amplification down the line might threaten the balanced development of the organisation.

The reason for this is that immature Members who lack an interest in history or anthropology fail to understand that civilised living has the essential character of forethought.

Integrating a system of effective world's best practice technologies with the insight gained by the practice of Buddha Dhamma gives us the leading edge we are looking for.

We benchmark our learning with the quality of learning in public and private schooling.

Lyndsay Conners, in her 1999 Radford lecture, delivered to the annual conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, stated that a love of strangers is disappearing from our public institutions in Australia.

The basis of non-government schools in Australia rests on their formal freedom to select and discriminate on grounds that are forbidden by law in the public sector.

The claim that there is a constructive convergence taking place between public and private schools means the terms government and non-government are anachronistic.

All schools are government funded, so the story goes, but some schools just get higher subsidies than others.

The so-called enrolment adjustment benchmark (EAB) has the effect of reducing the legislated funding amount for those remaining in the government school system.

One of the profound indicators of the effect of the Commonwealth's entry to schooling has been a net shift from public systemic schools to non-government, non-systemic schools.

At the heart of our school system there is a sad lack of authenticity; there are follies and foibles that are not worthy of an honest, mature, confident, intelligent society entering the knowledge economy.

At present public schools get about 38% of funding and non-government schools get about 62% of the total funds the Commonwealth provides for schools.

In 1973 non-systemic non-government schools ranged through a scale of 40 to 270 against the government average of 100. Connors estimates that the scale has become more like about 90 to 500 in 1999.

Our speed learning benchmark is to be at least 10 times faster at training than government schools

This means at a scale of 1000 compared to a government school average figure of 100.

To do this, the private museum needs to operate as a change agent.

No matter how sober and rational a society pretends to be by modern standards, the more a change agent can collect and disseminate the critical mass of high level information made available to that society, the higher the possibility that it may wake up .

The action of waking up means persons can recognise and come to terms with the enormous influence that superstition has shaped his or her human past actions.

There is an inconceivable complexity of 1st order thought over a long history associated with views and opinions about the "magic" of rocks and minerals (as opposed to relatively few "facts" of geology science).

Having raised the health, wealth and happiness of the masses, we can now raise their practice away from primitive religions.

This is the reason Buddha Dhamma is sweeping the western world cultures.

We improve the culture of our Members through the use of real systems that stay long enough before change to allow Members to be able to use them at the lower end of their power. The average work power of our systems has increased by a factor of 20 over the last three years. Normally, the attainment of one four-year business degree would increase a persons power by a factor of 8.

This increase in power (due to achievement of tertiary qualifications) has a half life of 1.5 to 2 years. Their power is little as most graduates have no respect for the Devas of Learning.

Are we different?

The answer is clearly YES, and is obviously so when we compare the methodology of learning taught in Buddha Dhamma to mainstream education systems.

A respect for ever higher learning, for those more learned than ourselves, and for the process of learning is basic to Buddha Dhamma.

Clearly, such respect is only one way that identifies Buddha Dhamma methodology as superior for learning.

The significance of how we train persons and use our systems is that even if we did not change our information system architecture from the current model, it would still have a half life (person power) of 80 years. The Devas of Work & Learning advised us in building our current system, and prevent configuration changes that downgrade the half life use.

For these reasons, we do not wish to move from our IT Conceptual Plan 1999. This conclusion is derived from the above information plus additional knowledge we have given to listeners in earlier broadcasts.

Our recent experience showed us that through skilful means in applying technology we moved from being a seventh-rate library to a third-rate library.

We do not intend to wind back the clock.

We have found that by providing leading edge IT in some areas, our most active Members find faster new ways of doing things.

Every day, the 28 Members can read and send emails over our present IT system. By email, they transcend time to experience a "connective" ascendancy with many other Members of our organisation at an intensity never before possible.

In addition, email use has accelerated their ability to speed read and learn on screen.

They come to be aware of the culture of Members who work daily with translations from their home site in Victoria to Tokyo, receive bank payments by direct transfer or find current standards from the Internet.

We feel sure the opportunity for Members to run with our conceptual solution will enable them to leave old-fashioned non-connected work places and find better paid and more interesting work.

The best thinkers of the future are going to have thoughts which may not fit easily into the minds of persons who have not had the freedom of moving through a conceptual solution with our organisation.

Voluntary acclimatisation time of three months of use is usually enough in such cases. The conceptual solution shows the future of knowledge management delivery in our organisation lies with IT delivery modes.

Do you not put yourself in a double bind if you refuse to get beyond your simple ideas by demanding that teaching be expressed in simple terms?

It would be like asking an international hotel to deliver top service without insisting it be fully staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Does it make sense to leave the inquiry desk unattended?

So, do not demand you can practice Buddha Dhamma attention part-time.

The first thing you learn about Buddha Dhamma is it is not wise to treat it like washing your dirty clothes by letting them pile up and wash the pile once or twice a week.

You most likely have in your minds a model like Kanungo's instrument with scores ranging from (1) "agree completely" to (6) "disagree completely".

If you were pushed to give a schematic representation of a career-based theory of job involvement you might use McKelvey and Sekaran's model where the front end input is shown as cultural factors and personality factors. Other inputs along the way show career-based and intervening factors, the ego identity type, preferred pattern of work setting factors and, if and only if, there are enough drivers, then you can have high job involvement.

One study along these lines gave an "r" value of 0.12 At p = 0.05 for an internal locus of control and (negative) 0.09 for external focus of control .

When multiple regression results of predictor variables on job involvement with N = 210 was reported in 1991, it found the statistically non-significant relationship between many of the variables that correlated significantly with job measurement performed on a standard method.

It found external locus of control had SEB value of Negative 0. 017 and beta of 0.03.

For those of you without the training in such approaches, you are out of the universe of discourse in this field. But like all things, you may be able to learn such methodology.

It is an inhuman reply to such things to say you do not understand the basis of the discussion. It does not alter the results.

Why is it inhuman? Because it infers that the respondent is unwilling to take a systematic approach to the area of inquiry, and cannot identify with the advantages of the use of methodology.

The ability to use such modelling techniques, and also understandi how a modelling method may work, could only be considered a basic skill set for modern information workers.

Reading through the early as well as late Buddhist texts we find that the theory of causality occupied the most important place in Buddhist thought.

According to many of the early texts, the Buddha's discovery consisted of the realisation that all phenomena are causally conditioned. In our daily experiences we are accustomed to distinguishing between occurrences that we regard as being regularly connected and occurrences that we consider to be accidentally or casually conjoined.

To state very briefly, there were four main theories in Buddha's time.

First is the Upanisadic theory of self or soul (atman).

The theory of causality presented by these substantionalists (atmavadins) may be described as 'self-causation' (attakata sayam kata). They did not accept the reality of anything except the self (atman). This self or soul was considered to be a permanent substance and functioned as the cause or the agent (karta) as well as the enjoyer (bhokta) of the ground that 'to maintain that it is the same person (or self) that does an act and experiences the effect is to admit the existence of a permanent entity (so karoti so patisamvediyati sayam katam iti vadam sassatam etam pareti (Samyutta Nikaya).

Opposed to this theory of self-causation were several theories which could be grouped under the so-called theory of 'external causation'.

The Jain philosophers tried to combine the two causal theories.

The Buddhist texts refer to a theory of causality which is a combination of 'self-causation' and 'external causation' (see Samyutta Nikaya).

Here the Buddha discusses two problems, namely paticcasamuppada (causality) and paticcasamuppana dhamma (causally-conditioned phenomena)

The difference between these two may be made clear if we are to compare this description with what a modern philosopher has to say about the content of our knowledge. Bertrand Russell said that "What passes for knowledge is of two kinds, first, knowledge of facts; second, knowledge of the general connections between facts".

Logically speaking, a discipline can be roughly divided into 3 stages; its fundamental concepts at the bottom level, its major theory at the middle level and the elaboration of its theory at the top level, somewhat like the root, the trunk and the branches of a tree.

In the actual process of development, when a new discipline is introduced, the middle part usually comes first; it is the less sophisticated portion of the entire task and it can be easily formalised mathematically.

Fundamental concepts are taken for granted at this level without being thoroughly investigated.

The bottom part usually come last; it is normally the philosophy of that discipline.

In Asia Pacific Human Resource Management Vol. 29, No 3, Spring 1991, Institute of Personnel Management, Kevin A. Collins posits that "For more than a decade Australian employers have been openly critical of the attitudes, competencies and behaviour of high school leavers, complaining that schools have been inadequately preparing students for employment.

Collins paper examines a number of surveys of employers to identify the major complaints of school leavers, then discusses each in turn to ascertain their accuracy. Comparative statistics for school retention rates and comparative levels of academic achievement of students in other countries are included in this discussion.

Finally, the results of a survey conducted to determine the perceptions of Japanese and Victorian Year 11 students concerning the importance they feel employers place on various school subjects, attitudes and behaviours are examined.

It seems the notion can be drawn that neither schools nor employers give much emphasis to the development of non-work oriented skills, abilities and attitudes. Such approaches do not address the broader developmental issues needed for adult living. In western society, there is no comprehensive morality that helps us do this.

Right Livelihood is one-eighth of the Noble Eightfold Path taught by Buddha. It suffices to say that implicit in Right Livelihood is the idea that one's actions in employment should not harm oneself or others. Other elements of the Eightfold Path, such as Right View and Right Action, are a basis for Right Livelihood.

Our management styles concentrate on high levels of autonomy and delegation. For this to be successful, our Members must be able to work without trouble in a team environment.

We are able to organize and implement large events involving groups of more than 1000 persons in one day. Every aspect of these events is planned in detail by our Members, who are concerned with the right implementation of the processes that make up a successful event.

A report published in 1976 Commonwealth Department of Education working party paper on the Transition from Secondary Education to Employment states;

From an employers point of view, there seem to be four areas of problems that school-leavers have regarding entry into the working life: These are:

--Lack of understanding of the nature and operation of industry and commerce.
--Upon taking up employment there seems to be a lack of understanding and appreciation of what is expected of them and their basic responsibilities.
--There seems to be a general lack of any labour force skills.
--Expectations of employment beyond their immediate capabilities and often beyond the capacity of industry and commerce to fulfil.

The experiment by the Fascists of Italy during the 1920s 30s of attempting to force large social change through education was largely seen as a failure.

To prevent Buddha Dhamma education from falling into mediocrity, it is suggested that Buddha Dhamma papers should be written without the uncertainty of the conditional mood.

Uncertainty is best left to poets of hypothesis, such as Emily Dickinson, who suspend conclusions, undermine the positions from which they start, balance different and other antithetical attitudes and play them off against one another.

Her poetry is moving but Andrew Gibson (1983) suggests she echoes remoteness from human concerns. This remoteness is shown in her poem beginning:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Remoteness from human concerns, uncertainty or doubt of position is unsuitable for Buddha Dhamma scholarship.

Each discipline or field of knowledge uses a special terminology. Meanings for some of these terms may differ somewhat from the same words in a lay person's vocabulary. In research, words such as reliability, validity, and objectivity are of prime importance. In Buddha Dhamma methodology, a deep realisation of the Pali word, dukkha, is needed for the special terminology to be understood.

The Pali Text Society Dictionary lists dukkha as: "unpleasant, painful, causing misery (opposite: sukha - pleasant)...There is no word in English covering the same ground as dukkha does in Pali. Our modern words are too specialised, too limited, and usually too strong... dukkha is equally mental and physical...The five groups (of physical and mental qualities which make an individual) are accompanied by ill (dukkha) so far as those groups are fraught with asavas and grasping... all suffering caused by the fact of being born, and being through one's kamma tied to the consequent states of transmigration..."

Pondering on a series of observations delivered over time can bring vivid insight or a series of insights for some persons that are not mere derivatives of some speculation or other.

We do not intend to slander the motives of authors.

The pen name Jiro Osaragi means "near the great Buddha". It was chosen by an author who lived near the temple of the Great Buddha at Kamakura, Japan. In his novel, The Journey, one of the male characters, Takabumi, thinks it is quite strange that a system which had the privileges of nobility was generally accepted in the World.

Takabumi believes nowadays that such a man is a decaying house whose foundations have been removed. For him, it is only natural that such a house should lurch over and collapse. He sometimes wonders whether it is not because we are lucky enough to enjoy a pampered upbringing that we are now incapable of understanding despair in its real sense, however bad things become for us.

He labels this easygoing attitude, this false optimism of ours which is an essential part of our nature as "a congenital disease, so to speak". Takabumi concludes that only those persons who know what despair (one form of dukkha) means are capable of living in this World - of really living.

Can this Japanese view echo the uncertainty of Emily Dickinson?

Observations of the true understanding of all forms of the nature of dukkha, the causes for arising of dukkha and so on, to the path leading to the cessation of dukkha, are the Four Noble Truths. These Truths are useful when they awaken persons by giving them an insightful lift to the need to add harmony to the common human World.

Let us describe some of the components of our methodology.

We have already talked about the respect for the Deva of Work and the Deva of Learning.

Another element is the value creation aspect of our management and learning systems.

How do we add value?

The provision of a service from design and development to the supply to the end users, our clients, can be described as a supply chain process. At each stage of this process the added value is given by the development of cognitive skills by those performing each task in the chain of delivery.

As we have outlined before, because our management system is in S5, operating in the present, we begin with as Stephen Covey has described 'the end in view' and, continuously working to improve output by monitoring and improving inputs.

In the Conceptual Solution devised by John D Hughes for the Geological Museum@Upwey, the author starts from a premise that when a critical mass of entirely independent and well-authenticated facts about an issue are collected by society, that society's thinking changes.

The raison d'être for establishing a museum is to use it as a vehicle to raise the level of thinking of those involved in the project.

The conceptual plan proposes that the Geological Museum is supported to provide a skills incubator where Members of the B.D.C.(U) Ltd. experience learning about the global nature of scientific knowledge and its administration.

The objective is to train persons who feel nourished by a multipolis culture. One description of a multipolis culture could be a community of individuals and organisations with high levels of skill, ability and networks, sharing a common goal or mission and specialised focus of activity in areas such as Information Technology.

From our viewpoint a multipolis culture would be focused on the teaching and practising of Buddha Dhamma with strong emphasis on scholarship and research.

The Geological Museum aims to be a support catalyst for the wider spread of scientific method by presentation of an elegant pathway, to encourage persons to develop 3rd and 4th Order knowledge at our Centre now, so that in future Members will be advocates for a multipolis culture to evolve on this site.

The other three knowledge incubators having full Conceptual Solutions are:

1. IT Planning (1999)
2. Chan Academy (1999)
3. Radio Broadcasting (1999)

Students at the Centre have implemented these full solutions with alacrity.

The improvement from taking up these conceptual solutions is calculable.

One KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is the amount of graphic data we have on site that is machine-readable.

For October to December of 1999, Members scanned colour photographs and used a digital camera to record rock specimens; giving a 98% increase in our Centre's store of networked graphic information.

All Members will learn to be successful in the use of this technology this year.

The processes we teach and practise through use of the Museum platform will bring the cultural change needed to result in a change in the order of knowledge persons use for the rest of their lives.

Using 2nd, 3rd or higher orders of knowledge gives greater advantages over using 1st order knowledge.

A Rank 1 thinker can form metaphors and proverbs, and thus get abstract ideas into his or her level of cognition.

We call this 1st order.

But a Rank 1 thinker lacks a structure that permits comparative judgement between alternative abstractions, or any other intellectual assessment.

Writing is critical not only because it allows the stable representation of thoughts but it also forces thinking about thought. The meta-lingual definition allows a Rank 2 culture explicitly to convey its abstract knowledge through rationalisations. The Rank 2 abstractive system has two mechanisms available to it: metaphor and meta-lingual definition.

Rank 2 thought consists in the explicit and extensive elaboration of meta-lingual definitions. Rank 2 thinkers developed a perspicuous notation and algorithms.

We call this 2nd order.

Rank 3 thinkers exploited calculational algorithms effectively (W. L.Benzon & D.G.Hayes, p10, 1979).

We call this 3rd order.

Rank 4 science uses sophisticated logic and mathematics to such an extent it becomes even more necessary to thought. The central work is Turing who explained what an algorithm was.

His universal machine, a purely abstract construction, was an algorithm for the execution of any algorithm whatsoever. Von Neumann and others embodied Turing's account of the algorithm into a physical device: the computer.

Rank 4 models of non-observable phenomena are useful. New "interdisciplinary" ventures can be distinguished as those that lay out two recognised disciplines side by side without generating much that is new, and those that do the same only to transcend them.

We call this 4th order.

Our museum stakeholders will advocate 3rd and 4th order thought.

The conceptual plan for the Geology Museum@Upwey is to develop immediate research opportunities to allow 3rd and 4th order thought to occur and transform such thought into the useful knowledge body of specialist monographs produced either in-house or externally for the Museum.

The Geology Museum conceptual solution holds that one of the objectives of the enterprise can be achieved by users of the Museum if they are encouraged to develop themselves by undertaking curiosity-driven searches to get to 3rd order knowledge or higher.

In turn the achievement of these orders of knowledge by our Members gives them complete access to the five styles of our organisation.

These five cultural styles are Friendliness, Cultural Adaptability, Professionalism, Practicality and Scholarship.

By their use our Members lead useful lifestyles with active morality and continue to study to obtain or retain their employment.

It is problematical that persons who have a culture outside the 5 styles we practise would find much of interest in "the way we do things around here".

In Dhamma, our Centre is a "one-stop-shop" because we teach in five styles to maintain functional situational experiences.

One of the functional levels of our five styles mentioned earlier is "professionalism".

The number of hours per week a person can strive on our projects is a mark of their achievement.

When we look at input-output ratios of Members at our Centre, cause and effect becomes clear and we are not surprised that those Members who consume more than they contribute cannot last as Members here.

The Members we treat as "professionals" know cause and effect and, over time, develop a realistic sense of becoming knowledgeable about the costs of the goods and services we dispense to Monks, Nuns and lay persons.

Professional Members at our Centre are taught to make "a field of merit" more valuable and greater than that field that would arise "if all the sands in the River Ganges turned into jewels".

A Noble professional person "pays his or her way" by raising funds.

These funds allow our organisation to continue to develop while, at the same time, practicing DANA - giving goods and service freely to benefit less fortunate persons.

Involvement in the supply chain of supply and preparation of nutrients rather than just taking from our supply chain is the mark of a true professional.

It takes time and effort for a "non-professional" Member to arrive at the correct view (samma ditthi) of the professional Member.

We charge a membership fee which most persons find reasonable.

The joining fee is $30, then Membership is $30 per year. The library fee is $30 per year and there is a software fee for those who want our library catalogue on their PCs.

The tangible identifiable costs of supporting a Member exceeds $20 per week (say $1000 per year).

On some regular intensive events, such as 5 day courses, the costs rise to an estimated $100 a week per participant.

Our Task Unit Members have developed their own version of professionalism which is praised by their Teacher and the executive of The World fellowship of Buddhists (WFB).

In terms of the assessment of the practical use of research done in Buddha Dhamma, key Knowledge Management Task Unit Members need a comprehensive and well-maintained body of relevant research information.

This is contained in the John D. Hughes Collection.

Multidisciplinary study is a noteworthy and characteristic feature of scholarship in the late 20th century.

It is evident that cultures proceed only by accumulation, and, despite so-called revolutions or renewals in thought and behaviour, continue to transmit an expanding body of knowledge with every succeeding generation.

The absence of this accumulative process, formed by a kind of dialogue, or argument, with the past, would mean the frustration of cultural growth, its diminution and eventual dissolution.

This means we must develop those who hold post graduate qualifications. Possibly, we could send some Members to further their studies at the World Buddhist University (WBU) in Thailand.

Should we in fact fail, within our own generation, to arrive at a thorough familiarity with our own, indisputably multicultural society, we will remain ill-equipped to operate within an effective communicative band with persons and associations in overseas countries.

They exhibit ancient, clearly delineated, sophisticated, and effusively expressed forms of indigenous culture. Our key Members could become more culturally adaptable through helping the WFB.

If enough of our Members do this, the cultural legacy we will leave for future Members will in turn be adequate and will not compromise the development of their communicative ability.

We agree with the Sinologist P. Ryckman's (1996) view that a culture is characterised by its indivisibility.

A culture may not have some part that may be seized by the observer as an "essence" or determinant.

For any person who wishes to acquire and or use culture, or more abstract knowledge, he or she should find that it presents no optional or dispensable elements that can be substituted at will in any application, nor any that may be exchanged without loss, with other cultural components deemed equivalent and expendable.

World cultures cannot suffer reductionist analysis.

The ongoing process of transformation is, perhaps, the one enduring condition we can rely upon in any study of the forms of discrete cultures.

Our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review (BDDR) is a forum in which Australians and persons of the international community may nourish the memory of Lord Buddha and his learned disciples.

The Buddha Dhyana Dana Review (BDDR) furnishes a vital link with past cultural practice and assists in the formation of positive future directions.

What have we learnt?

As our culture evolves, we differentiate and become more complex, we need cognitive mechanisms that give us new types of thinking.

The general effectiveness of our culture is not determined by the achievements of a few of our gifted Members.

Is it true that what matters are what a significant, though perhaps small portion of our population can achieve on a regular basis?

If yes, it probably means a spread of cognitive ranking of thought is useful.

What does our twenty-year target look like?

We know that our conceptual solution is robust enough to meet our mission to target 1 million readers of our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review (BDDR) by 2020 AD.

If we were to be asked for an analysis model for explaining this figure, we would take a bold view of the year 2020, and having the assumption that there will be 1 billion persons interested in the Buddha Way, we want to reach 1 in 1000 persons. At the lower end, if the world figure is 500 million in 2020, we want to reach 1 in 500 persons.

In 1999 we wrote our IT plan which is scaleable so we can deliver full issues of Buddha Dhyana Dana Review (BDDR) from our computer database to our Internet site with little fuss.

Our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review plan should encompass more Members in writing and editing because they need to be involved in the development and use of a written Dhamma system.

Our methodology includes a feedback system to ensure that we actively address the factors which could derail our organisations effectiveness in achieve our strategic objective, that the Buddha Dhamma be taught.

We will use as our operational criteria, the Gartner Group planning checklist list of factors that can derail IT effectiveness, which was printed in the Australian Newspaper 21 September 1999 in the Computer Section p2. under the heading, Pitfalls on the e-business road.

Do not confuse vision with technology. E-business fails for the same reasons projects fail: poor planning, staff with the wrong skills, lack of buy-in from key stakeholders. Upper management must support the IT project.

In place of big efforts, develop by choosing tactical projects and implement them successfully. Any technology can be misapplied and become a drain on the enterprise. Select technologies based on their fitness for the purpose intended and be prepared to swap them out as the EC product market matures.

A major error is assuming that you know who your competitors are. We need to develop a comprehensive e-business survival plan that anticipates the actions of three or four top competitors and embraces the radical change necessary to beat them at their own game. Enterprises that focus only on existing customers are likely to miss opportunities to explore who their customers should be. Make Electronic Commerce planning someone's job.

To apply our methodology our Members should display the following skills and attitudes:

to get beyond "ego" boosting personal satisfaction type of objectives
not to be blinded by the convergent tendency of self-experience
to be highly socialised
have a mind-set able to operate and be comfortable with near personal distance
believe planned action is superior to unplanned action
know that all probability is not due to chance but operates as cause and effect
appreciate that a free-flowing knowledge warehouse makes for superior practice
not to group-think
know the time and know the place ­ know when to take rest

It is imperative that we build in our Members an inclination to perform and learn.

For a bird to fly straight it must use two wings ­ one is not enough.

Members must be inspired to incline to do more than just learn each for himself or herself (which is not financially sustainable) ­ they must perform to raise funds so they and others can share in the learning queue.

Members must become flexible enough to accept that the funds they raise for KM, at times, may be diverted from what they had in mind to what is urgent and important.

Some Members will regard planning as liberation for vision, but others see it as an obstacle to the promotion of their pet projects.

IT and research departments need to create a framework and context for their functions but the self-interest of the IT planners must not distort the core business of the organisation which is held in the Teacher's mandala.

This is consistent with the concept of the multipolis discussed earlier because inherent in the Teacher's mandala is the strategic objective of our Centre which is, as stated earlier, that the Dhamma be taught.

We would like to summarise this bird's eye view of the processes which have contributed to the adoption of our operating methodology by stating that:

--information technology has enabled the transformation of the way our information is turned into our useful knowledge
--this enabled us to introduce the notion of our knowledge management
--the combination of the above have enabled our organisation to become more effective as a learning organisation.

Therefore, we have been able to adapt the way we work to deliver our learning about Buddha Dhamma in accordance with the Sutta dealing with the origin and behaviour of all thoughts - the Mulapariyaya Sutta.

There is nothing higher in logic theory than this Sutta.

The Western educators are slowly coming to terms with the fact that the meta-systems they are looking for have been known by Buddhist Pandits for the last 2500 years.

The reason we have such an edge in our learning technology is we use this method to develop higher orders of knowledge .

This means we are at a great tactical advantage to most persons in the world when it comes to writing about such learning tactics.

For the last few decades, our Teacher has been using this advanced methodology.

This is why his talks and writings do not reach a "use-by date" that occurs with other types of learning paradigms.

We have a superior methodology that does not date. In fact, yesterday, one of our advanced thinkers wrote in the margins of this radio script what order knowledge was being expressed by what paragraph.

Some of our Members are more proficient than others in reading higher order knowledge statements.
A part of our methodology that we are working on is to try to match the person reading a portion of a radio script with the order of knowledge written in that part of the script being read. We analyse the taped broadcast after the program to see if this benchmark is being attained. We apologise to listeners for any mismatch but as you appreciate some of our Members are interstate or overseas from time to time.

For us, with our Teacher in retreat, we frankly admit the next few months will be difficult for us. We have two of our senior Members putting in place a vigorous training program for the next few months to stop us losing this aspect of our methodology.

In past times, our Teacher would teach the script on the Friday before the broadcast to help persons to get the right mind to read it.

Because our Teacher is in silent retreat, this does not happen at present.

Our senior Members have vowed they will not let our reading performance drop by more than 20% within the next 4 months. They will do all in their power to improve this aspect of our teaching tactics.

Other Members are responsible for adapting similar learning tactics to be used across writing within our Local Area Network.

One rapid advance in learning we have in mind to perfect step by step is to force the use of higher order of knowledge methods taught by Lord Buddha so very quickly all key statements consolidate our learning paradigm to third order or better to get Members to more insight knowledges.

To do this, we mature Members by forcing them to cognate that loss of individual "ownership" of some type of "private inferior" knowledge, even if this is of second order, is desirable. But how are persons to access the sorts of knowledges that the Buddha states unequivocally are better than second order?

All Buddha Knowledge has higher states than this essay can express in such a short time. If you wish to learn some aspect of Buddha Dhamma come to visit us.

In this way, if you are interested and have the time to become one individual Member who might help us at our Centre, say, during a week day morning, over time you may be offered an opportunity to work with another Member who visits in the weekend on documents such as this radio script.

Obviously, the final say is from our senior Members who are responsible to edit the script last on screen in a rapidly changing environment.

The Buddhist Discussion Centre has adopted such notions of knowledge management as its modus operandi and as such has become a peak Buddhist organisation in the world.

This methodology allows us to reach more teachable beings today than was ever possible at any time this Sasana.

May all beings develop and use higher order knowledges this life.

May all beings 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.

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