The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives

The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Script 75
Sunday 5 March 2000

Today's Program is entitled: Buddha Dhamma and What It Means to be Human

 

On Thursday March 2, 2000, a very large Buddha Rupa image arrived at our Centre. On Friday March 3, 2000, it was installed on a pavilion that had been constructed especially to house this magnificent example of Buddhist artistic piety.

The design of this image had been conceived by an Australian Monk whose devotion to Buddha Dhamma is such that he thought of building this Buddha Rupa image as a tribute to the years of collaboration our Teacher has had with many Buddha Dhamma organisations throughout the world.

This is one striking example of the ability of human persons who collaborate for the benefit of many other humans, both now and in the future.

The complete working through of such a high enterprise is counterintuitive and could not have been achieved merely by the notion of managing a series of tasks.

It is difficult to come to terms with the total costs involved in such a grand scheme, but it is undoubtedly in excess of $100 000 if our volunteers' tracking time were included in the costing.

This is an example of what can be done when an organisation decides to stop planning what they are doing by using narrow modes of thought Members inherited from their parents.

There are superior types of thought possible that transcend the very mundane thought that is inherited by every person from each of their respective family's mores.

If there were no possibility of awakening to a superior modus operandi in thought, there would be no Buddha Dhamma that could be practiced by human beings.

Human beings have little moral value at birth.

A typical young baby has so few precepts that it is not surprising that young children are kleptomaniacs, sadists, and generally anarchic in their relations with their tribe.

To be born human is rare but to be born corrupt is not rare.

When you consider most persons you meet are just out of a long series of animal births, you ought not be surprised at the behaviour of children.

This week, many persons in the human world, where bad news travels fast these days, were horrified (they said) to hear of a six-year-old child taking a gun to school and shooting to death one of his school mates.

Such equivalents of poor behaviour have occurred again and again in the human world.

It is understood better by non-theist religions such as Buddha Dhamma than by other human religions that believe each new baby is an example of some creator God.

We use the term "human" advisedly because there are obviously myriad sets of celestial religions practiced in many heaven worlds.

All religions most definitely are not the same either in human birth or heavenly birth as the systematic practice of Buddha Dhamma which can allow a person to discover each for himself or herself, and over time this truth is very evident in human birth.

So, from our perspective, most persons squander this human life simply because they lack merit to do otherwise. This then is part of our understanding of what it is to be human.

Human birth is very rare and this fact escapes most human beings. It takes an enormous amount of merit to even make it as a human. To be in a position to take advantage of this rare opportunity is uncommon among human beings.

This lost window of opportunity results in the being leaving human birth, in most cases, without even being able to wonder what happened, exiting to a lower birth to continue in the round of samsara.

Let us suppose this same individual had enough merit to be able to take advantage of this rare occurrence.

To refine this notion further, to have enough merit to come into contact with persons holding the qualities and merit to be taught the Buddha Dharma is a rare jewel.

What is this notion of merit and its relationship to the idea of what it means to be human?

To put the teachings of the Buddha into practice will get us out of suffering. This is the aim of the Buddha's teachings. Only human beings and certain Devas have the opportunity to follow the Buddha's way to end suffering for themselves.

It is merit which fuels the learning process required to 'calm the mind and discern the real' so as to find the way out of suffering through your own effort and experience.

The accumulation of merit is what allows Students to advance in their practice and become aware of the many levels of thinking, which is one of the characteristics that distinguishes them from beings living at lower levels.

Animals, for example, cannot be taught Buddha Dharma because their minds can only go up to first order knowledge. But in order to understand the Dhamma a being needs to be able to think in 2nd order thought or better.

In fact, if we want to learn the teachings of the Buddha, we have to abandon 1st order knowledge completely.

The limitation of 1st order thinking, where the individual operates in metaphors and simplistic phrases, lacking a cognitive structure that permits comparative judgement between alternative abstractions, or any other intellectual assessment, means that a first order thinker will attempt wherever possible to reduce the description of reality to glib 'one liners'.

In Nagarjuna's Seventy Stanzas - 'A Buddhist Psychology of Emptiness', there is a quote from T. Stcherbatsky's Buddhist Logic that states:

"Reality according to Buddhists is kinetic, not static, but logic, on the other hand, imagines a reality stabilised in concepts and names. The ultimate aim of Buddhist logic is to explain the relation between a moving reality and the static constructions of thought."

First order thinkers mistakenly attempt to define reality by vacillating between memory of the past and projection into the future, without directly perceiving the present.

An interesting area of study highlighting the inherent dangers of 1st order thinking is the act of starting rumours, one of the negative characteristic of humans which The Buddha warned against in the Kesaputta Sutta.

The Buddha advised the Kalamas of Kesaputta "Be not misled, but when you know for yourselves these things are unprofitable and conduce to loss and sorrow do you reject them."

Blind belief is condemned in the analytical teaching (vibhajjavada) of the Buddha. There is no place for rumour.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines rumour as "general talk, report or hearsay, not based upon definite knowledge".

The U.S. psychologists Gordon W. Allport and Leo Postman offered the generalisation that rumour intensity is high when both the interest in an event and its ambiguity are great. The U.S sociologist Tamotsu Shibutani agreed, contending that rumours abound when the demand for news is greater than is the supply provided through institutional channels.

There are four conditions that must arise for rumour to occur. These are;

1. Interest to the receiver must be very high for he or she to pass it on, otherwise it extinguishes;

2. Ambiguity of message; It must be handed over or perceived in first order for distortion noise (hash) to enter the relay signal.

3. When a group of people need to act but are reluctant to do so until the situation is defined; (An aversion to work or action, they give themselves reasons not to act)

4. When the situation requires that members of a group act in concert rather than individually (Mob rule interest or herding instinct).

There are three major kinds of situations where the four conditions are met and rumour runs rampant;

1. In a social order in which information is, or is believed to be strictly controlled by authorities, rumour is intense.

2. Rumour also spreads when events threaten the understandings upon which normal life is based; such as a major disaster or scandal.

3. Rumour springs up when a strong, shared incentive to act is blocked in some way, even by merely the lack of an occasion for action.

Overcoming hearsay or rumour can be achieved by the skillful use of the grapevine - the unofficial communication channel.

Our reasons for wishing to overcome hearsay are to re-frame what persons can expect in terms of the relationship between effort and reward.

To put effort into negative actions will only bring negative results.

Only when you stop generating the hearsay and focus effort on truth does the relationship between effort and reward change to positive results in the future.

So to continue with the notion of coming to human birth.

What happens when the person has enough merit to be born human and to find a Buddha Dhamma Teacher and the set of conditions and an environment favourable to learning and practice of Buddha Dhamma?

While human birth is rare, it is not rare to be born corrupt.

How then, if a person is born with few or no precepts, does the idea of morality take birth in their living? To take advantage of this human birth, one must have morality as a base.

Without morality (the second of ten perfections needed), it is impossible to transcend the existential anguish, that life is dukkha or suffering, which the Buddha expressed in the first Noble Truth.

Can morality be taught?

Are we being unrealistic to expect that a most corrupt person could come to the morality of a saint in this life?

Well, we know, on the one hand, it likely that in most cases humans do not change that much in one life.

But, on the other hand, we can recall that one of Buddha's Monks was a mass murderer - having killed 999 persons before meeting the Buddha.

He was feared by all and had a garland of the little fingers of those he had killed to keep score.

His name was Angulimala.

The killer thought he would catch up with and kill the Buddha who seemed to be walking slowly away from him.
No matter how fast he ran, the Buddha who appeared to be walking slowly was drawing further and further from him.

He called out for the Buddha to stop and in a masterly way the Buddha invited the killer to stop and alter his culture.

Because of many good seeds planted in his past lives, Angulimala took precepts and finally became expert in the Buddha methodology.

Our Teacher has remarked that by telling this story some "no-hoper" rogues and villains have changed this life.

Such is the power of truth for those with good seeds.

But the very coarseness of most persons' lives lead us not to expect such dramatic change very often.

Remember, unless someone wishes to learn, it is doubtful the story would have much impact.

The task of teaching morality and the practical consequences of one's own actions usually falls on the parents of the offspring. And if the parents lack morality, what then?

The mental qualities of the parents, and the cultural environment with which they are karmically linked, have a decisive and penetrating influence on the child's life and development, not only in the present life but also in future lives.

As we progress from childhood to an adult working life, we carry with us the cultural norms learnt from our parents and childhood teachers.

Without being aware, we internalise many attitudes and practices which are not based on a clear understanding of the causal relationship between effort and reward.

Behavioural scientists distinguish between extrinsic and intrinsic factors of job satisfaction and argue that extrinsic factors (like bosses, rewards and situational factors) are secondary to the work itself. The design and control over jobs are the clues to increasing satisfaction.

When we consider the management skills required to effectively run a Buddha Dhamma centre we need to ensure that the inherited cultural influences of the organisation's members do not limit the achievement of its objectives by jamming the style of thinking at fourth order or lower levels.

Therefore, as long as these states of mind exist as the property of key Members, our key players cannot rise to the level of higher synergy they need to implement a system of management by objectives.

All they can do is manage tasks.

They have no way of knowing if the priority they assign to their tasks is the same as the priority of the set objectives.

We might have an objective entity set to plan to develop, say five persons with the fifth order skills needed to be, say, Vice President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB).

If they keep working on 3rd and 4th order mindsets in managing ONLY TASK MANAGEMENT, they think ALL management is, is to deal with a series of tasks.

This task view of management is so shallow it thinks management is about getting the job (a series of tasks) done.

Management is not that simple.

By using the superior 5th order level of thinking and taking on board the management by objectives culture, the individual can work with the vision and creativity this thinking level holds, while transcending the limitations of the parents' culture without lessening in any way the respect for the parents which is one of the highest blessings outlined in the Mangala Sutta.

The capacity to grow requires the development of an ability to recognise the limiting influence of childhood conditioning, which has become an internalised set of drivers that prevent our ability to develop higher orders of thinking.

We imagine we are different from the cultures we work so hard to differentiate ourselves from, but we overlook the fact that even this reaction is the result of our earlier cultural conditioning.

For example; one might be asked the question 'how many star performers do we want in our organisation?.....your answer might be 'the first number you think of, lets say 10 out of the organisations 60 members, whereas someone operating on 5th order might say 'as many stars as we can get'.

The sad reality is that we carry these habits of thought in our management culture, and when we become managers we limit the potential of ourselves and others we work with to overcome the inherent cultural limitations.

What does this expose?

That as our Members experience the nature of these cultural limitations within the management environment, they recognise that they can shift to a higher level of awareness that enable management by objectives to be a reality.

Without this awareness, the only management possible is one stuck at 3rd or 4th level thinking.

At that level, management can only be seen as a series of tasks.

To have effective management by objectives, Team Members need to develop synergy in real time every time they come together to work on a project.
Each time our Members meet, they cannot take for granted that what worked in the past will work again in the new setting.

Even though the same persons meet again to work together on a project, they have to go through the process of synergy building, as the set of conditions including the people themselves have changed because of impermanence (in Pali anicca)

In each situation a new set of components come together that have never arisen before.

This process can only be facilitated by a higher degree of awareness using fifth order thinking.
Empowered with clear objectives and a shared vision, the result is increased awareness giving the cutting edge to your existing skills.

At the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. this process of synergy building is one way in which we define what it means to be human. In the synergy building there is also enthusiasm being generated among the Team Members.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines enthusiasm as the 'rapturous intensity of feeling on behalf of a person, cause etc., (the) passionate eagerness in any pursuit'.

In Buddha Dhamma, we describe this synergy as clarity of purpose, generating an operational level of activity resulting in minimal waste of energy.

Once we get to this level of team operation we learn to maintain the level of creativity necessary for optimum work performance.

Last Saturday, three of our members worked together on this script as a team for the first time, experiencing the synergy for real of working in the fifth order. They noticed the following characteristics:

--working without fear of judgement by others
--lack of ownership of the project by notions of 'i', 'me' and 'my'
--ease of new ideas being incorporated into the document
--personalities of team members were not an issue

They discovered that inherent in the notion of Management at lower orders is a checklist approach that sustains 'pecking orders' and personal judgement between team members.

The process clarified for team members that habitual regimentation blocks the creative and synergistic qualities needed to work in fifth order.

It is not impossible to develop ourselves to manage on this level.

Having reached this level of management operation the team can become the catalyst for facilitating other organisation Members to move to the fifth order management style.

The underpinning of Buddha Dhamma and what it means to be human is sila (or morality) which from our point of view is the most important thing in life to have.

Humans have the ability to hold Sila (morality). The Buddha teaches us to hold a minimum of five precepts, which are:

--to abstain from killing
--to abstain from stealing
--to abstain from sexual misconduct
--to abstain from lying
--to abstain from the intake of intoxicants that cause heedlessness

Animals cannot hold five precepts.

For example, animals have to follow their nature to survive and many have to kill other animals as otherwise they will starve to death.

However, not all human beings hold five precepts either.

Not holding five precepts causes people to suffer and makes them unteachable. Although they have a human body, their mind is still much in an animal state.

Some say that every human being has the potential to eventually learn and practise Buddha Dharma.

As far as our research shows, there does not appear to be a basis for such optimism in the original teachings and only by following the Buddha's teachings can people truly change.

Human beings use language to communicate. Actually language is much more than just communication. Claire Kramsch states in the book Language and Culture (Oxford University Press, 1998) that language expresses, embodies and symbolizes cultural reality. Language is part of the culture of a particular group or society. Language is developed and learned and it reflects how a culture behaves. Many language choices we make are culturally determined but this normally happens largely at an unconscious level.

In Buddha Dhamma culture too, language plays a significant role. Language is used as a teaching tool and to preserve the Dharma. It is part of human nature to want to write down history and preserve the values of a particular culture.

Walt Disney World Co. research revealed that human beings like to hear stories and the company has used this fact in a highly successful way. Also, people seem to learn better if they can hear or read a story with the teaching.

Presently, most cultures write down their history in written tradition. There are a few cultures, such as that of the Australian indigenous people, which still pass on their values in an oral tradition. However, today the Australian Aboriginal people also write down more and more events in their history as it is clear that the oral traditions are more difficult to preserve.

At the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., members take great care to preserve the teachings of the Buddha for the next 500 years in order to make the teachings available for many beings.

In a Dhamma ending age like ours, the medium of the spoken word features prominently in the transmission of the Teachings of the Buddha.

It is through the availability and access to libraries that human beings can develop scholarship. In order to learn Buddha Dhamma, scholarship is sooner or later essential for the student.

Language reflects the way we think. To understand the teachings of the Lord Buddha, mastery of language is a needed tool to comprehend Buddha Dhamma culture. Humans have culture. Kramsch (1998) writes that "nature refers to what is born and grows organically (from the Latin nascere: to be born); culture refers to what has been grown and groomed (from the Latin colere: to cultivate)".

Culture is developed and learned; it reflects how we behave.

If we want to come out of suffering and learn Buddha Dhamma, we have to change our culture, to come out of the culture we learned and grew up with. Only then can human beings, and some Devas, put an end to their suffering and become truly happy.

Only then can those beings come to understand Dukkha (suffering), Anicca (impermanence), Anatta (no self), and access Nirvana. Buddha culture is to understand the Four Noble Truths and follow the Eightfold Path.

We Buddhists are grateful to individuals and organisations in the past who worked to create and maintain the written record of the Buddha Dhamma, which allows us today to validate our practice.

Buddha Dhamma has a long history of translation of its texts and reflects the lifestyle, attitudes and values of persons in many cultures. It might be said that the Buddha Dhamma library provides a "Menu" for what it means to be a human.

Our objective is to make sure the Centre's Library, the John D. Hughes Collection, maintains its relevance, its validity and its raison d'etre over the span of time for which it is to be operational.

To achieve this, we have developed our computer systems and information technology over the last decade to enable us to conquer time and space and make possible "a library without walls".

As a first step, it was necessary to provide a company culture which could adapt the present store of "good" information for the benefit of society at large and Buddhists in particular, so that data conducive to their well being becomes easy to retrieve and apply to their lives.

The library computer information systems were not designed or used to become a mere cultural oddity producing trivia.

The building and maintaining of libraries is another way that the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., which houses the John D. Hughes Collection at 33 Brooking Street, Victoria, gives us meaning in being human.

Historically, the process which culminated in the evolution of libraries for recorded language had very humble beginnings with the creation of the alphabet.

The origin and development of the alphabet is the result of successive developments which began almost as soon as human beings could speak. Later still came phonograms, which were symbols used to express the sound of objects or ideas. There were three kinds of these:

1. Symbols representing complete words;
2. Symbols representing syllables;
3. Symbols representing the individual sounds from which syllables were formed.

Some early Greek inscriptions were written from left to right and after 500 BC Greek writing invariably proceeded from left to right. The Greek addition of vowels to the alphabet to make it an analogue of the sound pattern produced a writing system that was both manageable and accurate.

The first writing system consistently based on the sound structure of a language was Linera B, a Mycenaean Greek orthography developed around 1400 BC and deciphered in modern times by an English architect, Michael Ventris, in 1952. According to Geoffrey Sampson, the British linguist, "Most, and probably all, 'alphabetic' scripts derive from a single ancestor: the Semitic alphabet, created sometime in the 2nd millennium [BC]."

Since we are seldom human, we have little kammic drive to read and write.

Because vowel sounds generally distinguish grammatical rather than lexical meaning, some Semitic writing systems never developed any device for representing them. Consequently, some scripts, such as Hebrew, added matres lectionis - literally, "mothers of reading" - a pointing system to distinguish vowel sounds.

The transition from consonantal writing to alphabetic writing, writing with full representation of both consonants and vowels, occurred when the Semitic scripts were adapted to the Greek language, which occurred around 1000-900 BC.

Scholars have traditionally considered the Greek inventions as a stroke of genius.

It is now recognised that the invention of the alphabet was, in fact, the rather straightforward consequence of applying a script invented for representing one kind of language to a quite different kind.

For persons who cannot read, it must seem like magic that a person could get information from a text.

The Romans borrowed the Greek alphabet (along with many Greek words and much of the Greek culture) to form the Roman, or Latin, alphabet. Written "learned" Latin was the "lingua franca" - language of the state and of scholarship in Europe - until the end of the Middle Ages.

During that time, and until recent times, Christian religious services were held in Latin.

The thought patterns of religions were limited to poor Latin of about 800 words.

Whilst the evolution of the alphabet was seen as an invention of enormous importance for Greek and all Indo-European languages, it was of no use at all for Chinese, which is a monosyllabic language with a great many homophones - that is words of the same sound.

In modern universities the lecturer should encourage the students to take notes.

Unless we make the effort, we forget half of what we learn within half an hour of hearing it.

Most of our Members were born into families that had poor or low reading and learning skills.

Their parents were not Nobel Prize winners.

Members must be encouraged to supplement their learning skills. This is because in their past lives, they made few causes of giving "good" information to their children or paying private tutors to skill their children.

History shows their was no public schooling until recent times. Education for the masses, as opposed to user pays, is a very new idea.

A few Buddhist monasteries encouraged reading.

It was "normal" not to read and in some rare cases the teaching of reading outside of official schools was punishable by death..

We have an operating culture where our Members use e-mail for high order communication regarding the activities of the Centre. Each person writes not only good information but includes references to encourage further reading on the subject they are communicating to others about.

What we are trying to do in 5th order level management is to write word statements that are precise yet do not constrain future attention to the topic at hand.

The structure is that of scholars.

In general, scholars have access to a richness of modes of expressing how to be truly human.

Buddhist scholars have the 'good' information of Dhamma that allows persons to be reborn as humans in a better situation so they can continue to accumulate merit and practise Buddha Dhamma.

If it is so important to be born human, how then can one make sure to be born human in his or her next life?

It will be a result of our own actions (karma). The student has to learn to create causes to be born human again.

Only if the causes are good and the merit is sufficient will we be born human. The Buddha teaches us the wisdom of holding Sila (precepts). A being that dies without having held Sila will get a lower birth such as animal or in the ghost or hell being realms.

We need to have a long and healthy life and look after both body and mind. If a person dies young, the merit will not be enough to be born human.

Young humans mostly consume more merit than they make and usually only in the adult and later years do we make sufficient merit.

However, the safest way to be born human is to enter the stream in this life and become Sotapanna (stream enterer) or better.

The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. provides the opportunity for Members to make vast amounts of merit during this life, essential to being teachable for Buddha Dharma in the future.

Without coming to the Teachings of the Buddha, we will be continuously stuck in the endless circle of birth, sickness, old age and death.

A cursory look at recorded history shows that human beings, out of ignorance, in one form or another, always managed to organise themselves into social classes as a way to perpetuate unreal barriers among people.

The Lord Buddha taught the importance of eliminating the separations.

Classes are one type of barrier among human, communication is another.

It is the nature of humans to want to communicate but unfortunately we create barriers which we do not know how to overcome.

By learning and practising the teachings of Lord Buddha, humans are shown the unwholesomeness of not wanting to communicate with and help other human beings.

So how do they keep repeating this same mistake?

It is by unwisely taking refuge in self-centred actions, wealth and power, that persons actively reinforce the sense of separation from other human beings, often without realising it.

How do we avoid this mistake?

It is mainly through contact with and helping other human beings that we are able to accumulate the vast amounts of merit required to escape the cycle of rebirths in samsara.

In a management sense, destructive conflict may arise from internal or external organisational causes. The most frequent cause of conflict is the formal structure demanded by law and this can be in sharp contrast to the informal structure that is designed by Members who do not hold Five Precepts.
There are only two ways, to teach the Member precepts or remove them from the organisation before they can cause a basis for legal action. This threat of expulsion is a form of fear and it is true that fear motivates persons to do things that they would not normally undertake.

The main difficulty is time. If persons do not change within a few years how can we find the next generation of managers who can run the Centre and obey the law? Because of this harsh fact, we introduce performance indicators in an informal non-threatening manner.

We feed into the informal communication system (our grapevine) the idea that we encourage Members to make merit because they cannot stay together unless they behave towards each other in a friendly manner.

While it is true that persons may become friends, it is the kammic condition of hundreds of thousands of previous lives that really brings a powerful "togetherness" feeling.

The view we introduce on the grapevine (and it certainly appears to be so) is that Members learn to enjoy one another's company over time through working together in harmony, meeting in harmony and separating in harmony. There is no external agency or all-powerful being who distributes the gift of friendship to different persons in diverse measures.

We teach Members to abandon unprofitable friendships.

Not to associate with fools is one of the Highest Blessings.

We do not wish Members to attempt to form a unity with one another by mutual use of their unwholesome minds. Friendship between thieves is not possible. Friendship between liars is not possible, and so on.

These acts are the nature of first order knowledge.

Unless Members were connected very strongly in the past, it is unlikely that we are going to be connected in the future without an enormous effort to cultivate adosa (friendliness). It would be better if we could practice strong metta (loving kindness) towards one another.

The eight factors making up the Noble Eightfold Path are in three groups: virtue, concentration and wisdom or insight (sila, samadhi, and panna). This is the only path; there are no shortcuts to enlightenment and deliverance of mind.

We introduce into the grapevine a view that suggests that the only way Members can develop a unity between themselves is to help each other achieve some small part of an overall project or work together on some small part of gardening or building around the Centre.

This suggestion, when followed, improves their physical health and quickly they see something tangible for their effort. It is a form of materiality no doubt, but it is impressed upon Members that it is for the use of others as well as themselves.

The skill of the Teacher is knowing the potential within each student to learn and the merit they need to make to do so, which in most cases the student is unaware of, for if they were, they would have already done it by themselves. Looking at the behaviour of most human beings, one could conclude that they seem to be very keen to escape rebirth in the human world, since they avoid the keeping of five precepts.

By teaching the preciousness of human rebirth the Lord Buddha uncovered a coherent view of reality which became cause for his Teachings on generosity, morality and wisdom.

Putting the teachings into practice in one's own life and becoming a living example of the transformational power of the Buddha Dhamma is what it means to be human.

We should be grateful to our parents for giving us birth as humans, and the care shown in our upbringing.

The Buddha inspired the writing of the Sutta of the kindness of the parents and the difficulty in repaying them.

This sutta concludes that there is no other way to repay the parents than to teach them Buddha Dhamma.

On the night of Buddha's enlightenment, of the many things he saw, he was able to perceive directly the death and rebirth of all beings.

He saw that of the five realms into which the beings could be reborn, the realm into which they were in fact reborn was the result of their own actions; their rebirths were determined by their own karma, a word which literally means action. (Nagarjuna's "Seventy Stanzas", A Buddhist Psychology of Emptiness, Snow Lion Publications, New York 1987).

The purpose of the Buddha Dhamma is to achieve wisdom.

That is the highest expression of what it means to be human.

May you develop higher orders of thinking.

May you understand what it means to be human this very life.

May you be well and happy.




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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.)

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