The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives

From the outset, let us disclose that the methodology of this paper will be found to be extremely suspect if we only sieve it for its core messages.

Let me tell you what it is not.

It is not a comparison between the status of women between Australia and other countries.

Much research has been done on, for example, 1978 comparisons of the situation of Indian middle-class women compared with those in China.

In China, tremendous efforts have been made to release women from their traditional subjection.

It is doubtful if comparable subjection of Australian women has occurred since the 18th century - the days of the convict settlements.

It is reasonable to claim that Australia has removed the notion that women are still chattels and virtual slaves within the last three decades.

Economic liberation and Government funding meant women could leave their husbands and, at times, live at a higher material standard in better housing than if they stayed with them.

Many women used these new laws, that weakened the marriage bonding at law, as a reason to leave home. In some cases, it is fair comment to state that it was just boredom with the status quo and, having no sense of moral shame, it was easy to leave.

One proof of this statement that may infuriate some persons as too simplistic is that the local divorce rate is over 35%.

When it is realised that as high as 40% of women living with men are in de facto relationships, of which the Government has no hard figures, it is more likely that 'true divorce' rates are of the order of 50% or more within a seven year time frame.

This means there are about half a million or more single Australian parents.

With such a breakdown of traditional relationships at epidemic level, our Centre's policy is that we think it is pointless to get into unresolved ideological questions of whether women will ever be fully liberated in any capitalist system.

Such things are outside the Buddhist mandate to help because it is quite clear that to bring politics into the issue of the role of women only adds more heat than light to such discussion.

Therefore, let us make the point in a nutshell that we are writing to remove the heat generated by those extremists in Australia who think they have a sense of energetic social engagement. They are really just pawns in the political posing of the hard left, who want women to sacrifice their whole life bringing about social anarchy that is a form of nihilism. While the extremely chauvinistic extreme right wants women removed from a public life that looks like a variation of eternalism.

Neither position is acceptable to followers of Buddha Dhamma.

Until World War Two, there was little place in regular Australian society for roles of women who wish to claim the high ground between nihilism and eternalism.

In Australia, the rarity of such persons means they stand out in a complex history.

The traditional Buddhist families do not have to contest with their neighbours that nihilist or eternalist views are false. So, we ask your tolerance of Australian women who have just come to this view. They may be a little tedious in stating what is obvious to the traditional Noble Buddhist families who trace their teaching directly to Lord Buddha himself.

Australian women do have the advantage of living longer than some of their sisters in Dhamma overseas and their personal wealth is most likely more than most.

So we appeal to Buddhist women in your many countries to gently coach our women in how to be more modest and less brash if you would be so kind.

Our traditional culture does not match Asian family models.

Whatever the strengths of Australian women, this is our great weakness.

Our Centre has a vigorous policy of helping Australian women meet with women born in Buddhist countries and helping our Dhamma sisters adjust to the Australian felix.

We believe the only way women in Australia are to find the way out of the commercial model, is to bring Buddha Dhamma Teachings to all women and men.

To understand the climate of Australian women's issues there is a need to examine the rustic adaptations or open copies of the manners of the British persons between 1750 and 1850.

The Victorian Era in Australia was an age where there was a malignant psychotic undertow below the surface of what Mumford calls "pliant reasonableness, based on polite conformity and well-controlled emotion".

The original settlements by the British were penal colonies. According to Ronald Convey (1971), the Australian adoption of British behavioural trends took 10 to 20 years. The harshest extremes of patrist-authoritarian convention fell squarely on a generation when the infant Australian colonies were struggling towards self-government and national awareness.

Having said that, we must be careful not to put up the "nothing but" fallacy in our historical musings. This means the error of ascribing a single cause for an action. This is because Buddha taught that things arise from the operation of many causes, but, never from a single (eka - Pali for one) cause.

So, any claims of the simple form of A causes B logic is spurious from the Buddhist view-point. We distance ourselves from such analysis.

Obviously, there are other influences apart from the British military officer's wives proscribing what was or was not an acceptable role model for women in this new colony.

At that time, the officer's wives were expected to be class conscious and look down on the convict women and non-British persons.

We cannot doubt that women saw Chinese Temples and employed the wives of Chinese tradesmen. It was likely those women who had Buddha refuge did many flower offerings under the willow tree (the Quan Ying tree).

Cuttings of the willow tree escaped into the waterways and grew on the banks of nearly every local stream in New South Wales. Later, they spread along the river systems to Victoria.

Chinese miners who came to Victoria from the USA's exhausted gold fields must have been comforted to see a landscape with such strong influences from China.

Very few Chinese women came with the miners, but when the miners got rich they arranged for their wives and families to come to Victoria.

Many Joss houses (some with Buddha images) were then built in the cities with wealth from the gold fields.

Our Members continue the tradition of flower offerings on our Chinese Image altars. However, the availability of affordable local and exotic flowers over the four seasons allows our Members bring dozens of flowers to offer, rather than a single flower.

Visitors from overseas are amazed to see we have altars with examples of Buddha rupa from many countries loaded with flower offerings.

The texts show the wisdom of offerings to many Buddha rupa because each offering brings ten Blessings. The Buddha taught that due to cause and effect there are ten Blessings arising from the offering of flowers. These are:

1. Long Life
2. Good Health
3. Strength
4. Beauty
5. Wisdom
6. Ease along the Buddha Dhamma Path
7. Being born in beautiful environments
8. Born with good skin, hair and beautiful to look at
9. Always having a sweet smelling body
10. Pleasant relationships with friends

Up to 1000 offerings a day can occur in our Temple

Devas of boundless light visit our Temple.

In Melbourne, the gold rushes did little to uproot the dislike of disconcerting social change entrenched in Sydney.

Only Melbourne had the character of its population greatly changed in the 1850 to 1860 gold rushes. It was truly multicultural with few racist tensions. Racism appeared much later into the Australia felix.

Persons in search of easy riches rarely have a clear philosophy of life, let alone an embryonic loyalty to an alien land.

But in the case of Buddha Dhamma practitioners, they endowed the Temples with beauty.

There is prima facie reason to think such itinerant persons actually delay the growth of national awareness.

The very rich went back to China, but China- Australia trade to Melbourne flourished in surprising ways. Chinese whisky almost became the miner's only drink.

Native born Australians followed their father's taste for alcohol.

Women were not invited to the local taverns in the early days.

The pattern of men drinking away from home by choice left little role modelling for the next three generations. There does not seem to be any strong surveys of how many women took to drinking in their own homes.

Drinking and fraud might not be correlated by theory but there is no doubt the land swindles of Crick and Willis introduced into the public morality half of the hard drinking members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.

One Australian writer holds the view that:

"Mateship was primarily a necessary fraternity between exiles, not a voluntary league between brothers."

In those days, Australians had the habit of grabbing at ideologies and slogans just when they had gone out of style overseas. This persisted as a culture.

The Edwardians were fortunate in being able to witness the experiment of federation. Australia's second Prime Minister, A. Deakin, was born into a rude culture that was contemptuous of spiritual idealism.

The story of ANZAC, the military forces of World War I, is too well known to be recounted here.

In wartime, the precept of no killing is censored out of existence. The War was followed by the 1930 depression that warped the psychological attitudes of a whole generation.

Fortunately, Australia did not provide the vast polyglot society which could throw up public enemies of the stature of Al Capone.

Soldier settlers were given farm land.

The urbanisation of the Australian society was rapid. The percentage of persons who lived in rural communities diminished with each generation.

More and more persons moved to the cities. Then the cities expanded to the suburbs and the rural communities close to the city centre ceased to be devoted to primary production.

Former Chinese market gardens that supplied produce to the city of Melbourne markets by horse drawn carts have changed into airports or suburban villas.

There was more wealth from sub-division than produce.

One market garden in the foothills that had been producing apples for three generations was subdivided and the farmer's family had sufficient wealth to invest and produce a higher income annually than was ever possible from the cultivation of apples.

Gardener families found wealth and their poorly educated wives found it difficult to fit into the class of established wealth. Charity work became more common.

At this point in time, the mission of religions has also diversified.

Religions aiming only at the salvation of individuals have no meaning anymore in the context of modern societies. That is because individuals have closely merged with the society where they live. With ongoing urbanisation, this relationship has been more acutely emphasised than at any other time in the past. We never did our charity work outside our Dhamma Teaching. Our Centre found a role for religion in an urban context coupled with Charity work.

The founding message given by the Venerable Sotaesan (70 years ago) went as follows:

According to the development of a scientific civilisation, the human spirit, which makes use of material things, grows weaker whilst material things themselves, which should exist only for human use, increasingly flourish and assert their domination over the enfeebled human spirit. Thus, human beings, find themselves chained to the servitude of materialism.

A new mode of living, more commonly called urbanism, may be considered as a by-product of the migration of the agricultural population who are seeking new - perhaps better- jobs in the cities, even though the city population itself was growing.

The most powerful, yet hidden, influence between the wars was the steady increase in the domestic power of the women and the mother.

The gradual withdrawal of the husband from domestic influence had a far-reaching effect on the parental role-change.

In the intense mastery of her children, she was to discharge the overt love and the latent hostility that gross defects in male sensitivity had allowed to accumulate for so long.

The Second World War rattled Australians to become afraid and seek strong and powerful friends who would fight for us.

This brief burst of patriotism caused by the Japanese threat became weak after the war and was not helped by an education system that never produced a satisfactory philosophy of education.

In 1950, no nation in the world had such a homogenous population as ours. The provincialism of Australians at that time was noted by Donald Horn.

Since then, much has been written of the changes in Australia but there is no consensus on what facts ought come under review in the bigger picture.

We suggest the following scenario to help our cultural development.

In spite of e-mail use, effective operations depend on a willingness to get in the same room with Members and work fast head-to-head.

Persons of low culture cannot understand group-working because they want to do the job 'alone'. Working alone is like magic operations in the dream world - there is no mechanism for a reality check that looks like a clash of views.

The desire to be 'left alone' to do 'my work' has no place in S5 management.

It is too slow, and allows others to strip a person of our assets under the pretence that there is no need to sweat to get things out on time, because that only creates a bottleneck for the next person.

Members are reminded we went from indexing 14 books in one week to 101 in one day by removing a person who 'just wanted to be left alone to do their work'.

A professional observer has acidly described some tense business enterprises as 'hatcheries for psychotics', so, we are not going to follow those models.

As J.B. Priestley pointed out about such business culture, "They are tarts with degrees. Science is now street walking and soliciting".

Election of a person to a key position on a one year basis is a heritage position from a time when Australians had slower moving economies that moved under the same formative forces at work that were in Australian colonial society.

The major reason women are so active at our Centre is the fact that, whether married or single, they all can afford to drive their own motor cars.

This means they can visit the Centre for an hour or two at anytime. The other factor is they have ease of communicating with each other and other Members by telephone at home or at work. Some of them have mobile phones as well.

All women Members have been encouraged to become proficient on our elaborate range of software and search engines using Centre's computers and they have computers in their homes.

Our Centre has an internal e-mail system on our local area network, and Members who have access, can store messages easily and send them to one another.

It is this stress on a high order of communication for Members at our Centre, that give Members certainty that others know their worth, their role and the width of their power to make a difference to the way things are done around our Centre.

Our culture is non-sexist, non-ageist and non-racist and this has been highlighted by the diversity of places of birth of our Members.

There are only two fifth generation Australian women on our Task Units, so the old paternalistic culture that came to Australia with the British in colonial days has almost been extinguished.

It is difficult to be too paternalistic when your wife brings in twice the husband's income to the family home - something that is observed more and more among our Members each year.

We have a policy of encouraging all Members to undertake tertiary studies.

This means over the years we are comprised of more and more women graduates or women who have had good commercial experience as sales managers in charge of men.

The notion that there is somehow a leadership role for men and not for women is not encouraged at our Centre. If a person can do the task, they do the task. Perhaps this is why there are many women Members who actively participate in running our Centre.

One of our younger Members, Leila Lamers is an electrician at local University. She was encouraged all the time during her apprenticeship by our Teacher. Leila gives sound advice and looks after the safety and new wiring for our electricity needs of our Centre.

Some of our men and women who are sober, industrious and honest, because they keep the five precepts, have been encouraged to work as consultants to industry. Because other consultants do not necessarily keep the precept of no intoxicants our Members get better results than average over time.

Our five styles are Professionalism, Friendliness, Scholarship, Cultural Adaptability and Practicality. Development of these qualities in our Members adds financial value to our Members who work as consultants.

Because of the intensity of the coaching Members receive in understanding the supply chain management of our management models, Members find they do well in modern state of the art subjects when furthering their education.

The role of the Deva of Learning and the God of Work is strong at our Altars.

No special concessions are made to women - when a new system is found to work better than the old system there is a change over time when old Members must forgo the use of the old way.

Resistance to change is not encouraged.

Anicca is well taught.

Members are taught the ancient style of Healing like Chinese healing methods used in Taipei in Taiwan. Our Centre is visited every Chinese New Year by many Vietnamese and Chinese visitors who request this ancient style of healing from our Teacher and women Members.

At our Centre cooking is done mainly by women Members.

At the 20th General Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists held in Australia in 1998, one of our members, Anita Svensson, was nominated as the Public Relations Officer for the Standing Committee on Women.

The following policies and objectives were agreed upon by the Standing Committee on Women:

1. To uplift the status of women in the society
2. To promote the roles of women in Buddhism
3. To strengthen women's roles in the World Fellowship of Buddhists
4. To improve women's roles to assist the World Fellowship of Buddhists in achieving its objectives

Activities of the Standing Committee on Women since the 1998 General Conference include: the planned publishing of a quarterly Newsletter; writing and production of a brochure on the Standing Committee on Women; a booklet titled "The Roles of Women in Buddhist Activities in World Fellowship of Buddhists Regional Centres"; conducting of joint research on social services for women; creating networks, partnerships and exchanges of documents and information, and to have closer communication and cooperation.

The Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Women, Dr. Sritaptim Panitpan, has requested our Centre's input into the design of the planned booklet, and views and vision concerning the WFB Standing Committee on Women.

Members are currently researching to write an article for the planned WFBW publication "The Roles of Women in Buddhist Activities in World Fellowship of Buddhists Regional Centres".

The article will be titled "The Roles of Women In Buddhist Activities of A World Fellowship of Buddhists Regional Centre In Australia".

Researching, editing and report writing skills are developed by our women Members through a range of high level activities, including the publication of our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, the weekly Buddhist Hour Radio Program scripts, internal newsletter the Brooking Street Bugle, and correspondence with Buddhist and other organisations both locally and internationally.

At the 20th General Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, held in Berkely NSW Australia in 1998, our Centre provided a team of eight rapporteurs consisting entirely of women Members from our Centre.

They provided 24 hour support for the Standing Committees and our Teacher with tasks including taking of minutes of all meetings, production of meeting reports, writing, printing and distribution of daily bulletins, making of computer files, and assisting all delegates in typing, printing and distribution of special reports and documents.

The rapporteurs were supported by an Information Technology specialist from our Centre and operated with a resource of twenty laptop computers, desktop computers, photocopiers and printers.

In line with our tertiary studies policy, many of our Women Members are currently involved in furthering their education.

Pam Adkins, a trained nurse, an accountant and our Treasurer, has recently added to her qualifications by completing a Bachelor of Business degree.

Evelin Halls, a mother of two boys, is doing a Bachelor of Arts degree at Monash University, majoring in English and Information Management Systems.

Vanessa Macleod has completed Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees.

Arrisha Burling is a Communications Co-ordinator for a superannuation company. She has completed a Bachelor of Arts and is undertaking a Bachelor of Business.

Lisa Nelson is studying Information Technology, Further Mathematics and English as part of her Victorian Certificate of Education.

Anita Svensson is a State Registered Nurse, a mother of three, a wife and a Nurse Educator in Acute Aged Care.

Pennie White is a secondary teacher with a Bachelor of Arts, Graduate Diploma of Education and studying a Masters in Education (Information and Communication Technologies).

Lainie Smallwood is completing a Bachelor of Business (Tourism and Marketing) and Bachelor of Communications (Public Relations and Sociology) Degrees.

Lenore Hamilton is studying a Diploma of Management and Tourism.

Isabella Hobbs is a nurse, studying a Diploma in Community Health at Swinburne University, TAFE Division.

Jocelyn Hughes has a Bachelor of Business Marketing and in her role as a Marketing Executive is currently studying International Business.

Julie O'Donnell has a Certificate in Bookkeeping, has studied Bachelor of Business subjects and is currently learning computer applications in her position as Sales and Marketing Manager.

Rilla Oellien is studying for a Diploma of Marketing and is a Product manager for a large food manufacturing company.

Maria Pannozzo works in Corporate Sales and is undertaking studies in Multimedia & Events & Conference Management.

Our Centre has been accepted by the World Fellowship of Buddhists as a Spiritual Training Centre of the World Buddhist University.

To further the objectives of the Standing Committee on Women we seek to propose that the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., as a Regional Centre of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, establish an Australian Branch of the World Fellowship of Buddhist Women at our Centre at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey Victoria.

We have in place operating Information Technology infrastructure to support the regional and international activities of a Branch of the World Fellowship of Buddhist Women.

Our women Members have the skills required to run the proposed World Fellowship of Buddhists Women Branch within the five styles of our Centre, which are, friendliness, practicality, professionalism, cultural adaptability and scholarship.

We hope to remember to use study of many things as a tool.

We hope to remember to continue our funding of orphanages for boys and girls.

We hope to remember not to hate men.

We hope to remember to be kind to our parents and grandparents.

We hope to remember Lord Buddha's place in our role as daughters and mothers.

We hope to remember to create opportunities for sisters in Dhamma

We hope to remember to create the conditions described in the Mangala Sutta.

Thank you very much for your attention.

May You be Well and Happy.

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

Reference

1. Cassen, R.H. 'India - Population, Economy, Society' MacMillan Press Ltd 1978
London UK.



Disclaimer:

As we, the Chan Academy Australia, Chan Academy being a registered business name of the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., do not control the actions of our service providers from time to time, make no warranty as to the continuous operation of our website(s). Also, we make no assertion as to the veracity of any of the information included in any of the links with our websites, or another source accessed through our website(s).

Accordingly, we accept no liability to any user or subsequent third party, either expressed or implied, whether or not caused by error or omission on either our part, or a member, employee or other person associated with the Chan Academy Australia (Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.)

This Radio Script is for Free Distribution. It contains Buddha Dhamma material and is provided for the purpose of research and study.

Permission is given to make printouts of this publication for FREE DISTRIBUTION ONLY. Please keep it in a clean place.

"The gift of Dhamma excels all other gifts".

For more information, contact the Centre or better still, come and visit us.

© 2002. Copyright. The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.