The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives

Does time move us? Or do we move with the times?

These notions become clearer as you become aware that Buddha Dhamma is complex and multifaceted.

You can spend a lifetime in Buddhist scholarship, prowling through its caves and passageways, absorbing little more than a fragment of the whole.

A Monk once asked his teacher, "What is the fundamental teaching in Buddhism?" The Master replied, "Attention".

The student, dissatisfied with the answer said, "I wasn't asking about attention, but was wanting to know the essential teaching in Buddhism".

The Master replied, "Attention, Attention, ATTENTION".

So, it can be appreciated that the essence of Buddhist practice is to be found in the attention!

Venerable Pannyavaro writes that, "Meditative attention is an art, or acquired skill which brings clarity and an intelligence that sees the 'true nature of things'.

But how to do it? What is the practice? Vague advice to an aspiring meditator, such as 'be mindful' or 'be attentive', while offered with good intention, is unlikely to be effective.

Our Teacher explains that this is because the student is advised about a single (in Pail eka) cause and it is in first order knowledge. We need multiple causes and higher order knowledge just to begin practice.

The story comes from the text, The Art of Attention and was written by Australian Buddhist Monk Venerable Pannyavaro, who has devoted his life to the meditational aspects of the Buddha's teachings. Venerable Pannyavaro has written in plain English, without complicated terms, which may be a comfort to you.

This Monk, Venerable Pannyavaro, is the founder of BuddhaNet, a computer information network. He first used computers for simple desktop publishing, and with the gift of a modem, discovered the on-line community.

In 1993, BuddhaNet came into being. BuddhaNet was the first Buddhist BBS or bulletin board system, which later evolved into Australia's first Buddhist web site. This electronic Buddhist information Network on the Internet's World Wide Web is now one of the largest and most popular Buddhist web sites in the world with over 17,000 hits per day.

You can find BuddhaNet, at Web address: www.buddhanet.net

You can reach our web site at www.bdcu.org.au

You may forget the basics as you try to answer the question,

"Does time move us? Or do we move with the times?"

Why? Because you forget you are in a life series of processes, like it or not like it. You are becoming involved in the change and aging of your body. Many persons do not like these body changes. According to the old texts, the first gray hair is said to be a message from the God of Death.

To illustrate the methodology of 'waking persons up' we can use good or bad examples to show the tyranny of time.

We choose to use a good example of time moving something to completion. A rare process has been happening at our Centre, commencing on 10 February 2000 and ending early this morning at 8.30 a.m., 7 May 2000.

During his retreat, our Teacher held extra precepts, such as not handling money, wearing white clothing and speaking only on Tuesdays, in order to teach.

Buddha does not approve of extended periods of silence for his Teachers. This is because one of the most effective methods of teaching is spoken.

By any conventional measure known to those who practice, it is a blessing to many, that our Teacher successfully completed his retreat and is still alive.

In some retreats, Teachers pass away. If they pass away in retreat, they can get good rebirth easily.

This is not the time to go into details of complex practice, but to keep a balanced view, you may well ask about our teacher's important thoughts on previous May 7th's in this life.

Fortunately, this question can be answered without recall, since it happened that our Teacher has kept diaries for many years.

Our Teacher was born on 9 September, 1930, in Australia.

On 7 May, 1946, while studying at Mordialloc High School, he noted in his diary, his school marks to date - French 59, Maths 1 - 58, Chemistry 78, and Physics 63.

Constructing radio receivers was his hobby at that time. This was self-taught reading. He did not have a formal teacher of such things.

Our Teacher sent away for two radio parts price lists. He implemented his knowledge that day, by building a suitable box, to improve the bass response for a loud speaker.

He initiated acquiring a resource, to help his latest radio project along, without cash, by swapping a 0.5 megohm resister for a 0.0001 microfarad condenser with his friend Gifford White.

He utilised skills for generating others' enthusiasm in and contribution to in his projects.

On 7 May 1951, hitchhiking around Australia, our Teacher went to Wonthaggi to post some early gramophone records to his home in Mordialloc. He found these rare jazz records in country op shops. Because of his self taught know-how, by reading rare catalogues he could recognise the names of long-gone bands and identify rare records.

He bought an overcoat costing four pounds, thirteen shillings and sixpence noting that day:
"I feel very pleased with myself. At last I feel I am ready to weather the best winter Australia can turn on".

At this time, he was teaching himself how to play jazz on cornet without a music Teacher.

He noted: "I got a cornet tutor at Wonthaggi with complete minor scales. Very handy".

On 7 May 1991, our Teacher was painting in Ch'an Style at the Nobbies, Phillip Island, Victoria.

This was in the tradition of a group formed in France in the second quarter of the 19th century known as the Barbizon who withdrew from Paris and set themselves up in a small village on the edge of the Fontainbleau Forest. They set up easels in the open air and painted woodland scenes.

All real artists, according to view of those who knew what was what in Paris at that time, worked in studios.

It was not until 1840 that the collapsible tin tube was invented by an obscure American artist named Rand. It was far more convenient to perform in a studio the chore of grinding powered pigments into an oil medium than to lug the paraphernalia on an outdoor painting jaunt.

Years earlier, our Teacher had milled paint in a laboratory and then used the milled paint to paint outdoors. He developed the technique of completing full landscape paintings in one attempt.

On 7 May 1993, our Teacher was studying a post-graduate subject at Deakin University.

This was dealing with adult and community education off campus.

He funded himself to improve his knowledge on training and current issues.
These subjects updated his earlier Teacher training with details of current research.

It may be deduced from just these few events from our Teacher's life spaced over a reasonable time that some basic patterns have emerged in this life.

Our Teacher demystifies such patterns by telling us not to doubt that the seeds of the present basic patterns were sown by what he thought about in his former human lives.

His willingness to teach us by example that "emotions that are the robbers of attention and effort" should not be listened to if they kill our desire to learn with or without formal Teachers.

Our Teacher, aged 69 years, talks and writes with vigour, and he insists that a Vajrayana Teacher who takes an interest in artistic and poetic expression or compassion is not operating from soft-hearted sentimentality.

As his students know, he is capable of helping them go to the site of their trouble as does a dentist with his or her drill. Sometimes time is painful but it gives quick relief through insight.

He has a lightness that Buddhist Teachers have in those who have entered the stream (a sotapanna or better).

Our Teacher gives us the confidence in the notion that complexity of experience and a wide range of interests is not a bad thing.

Kendra Smith (1975) has the notion that Western thought, influenced by modern physics, is moving away from what Buddha Dhamma would call dualism. More and more, Western science is demonstrating the inter relatedness of things.

Our Teacher, who trained as a scientist, believes lack of scientific training in expressions in mathematical formulae blocks access to most persons to these insights about the 'sameness' of things.

These scientific experiences helped our Teacher to see things in a range of ways.

Buddha Dhamma helped our teacher to see things from an even wider viewpoint.

Outsiders talk about diversity of experience, but insiders like our Teacher, can live multiculturalism with zest.

Wurzel maintains that it is necessary to go through seven "stages" to awaken.

These are:
monoculturalism
cross-cultural contact
cultural conflict
educational intervention
disequilibrium
awareness
multiculturalism

According to Sonia Nito (1992) there are at least four levels to awaken:
tolerance; acceptance; respect and affirmation, solidarity and critique.

Extracurricular and out-of-school activities seem to contribute to the development of important skills, including critical thinking and leadership qualities.

To become a multicultural person means learning to see reality from a variety of perspectives.

Persons who think there is only one right answer rather than a solution set become just the opposite of a multicultural person.

It is talked about as if it depends on having a long life and to have heard much.

It might be a good idea to look more closely at the origin of this word 'age' in various ways.

But before we do, it is necessary to tell you the higher orders of Buddha Dhamma are not taught by the way of the dictionary as most higher learning in Europe demands.

The difficulty of language in expression can be overcome by the careful use of syntax. However, even that has limitations.

Xavier Herbert explained his method in 1960 in the Meanjin, 'A Quarterly of Literature Art Discussion', noting "Actually my sentences were not unduly long, and were more markedly divided than by the conventional method, because two stops were used instead of one.

My own syntactical system demanded that a paragraph consists of an entity of the whole composition that was self-contained and hence could have but one initial capital and one concluding stop.

Pause between parts of this entity which conventionally would be marked with a full stop, were marked with two points, thus.. I believe that my system emotion could be better expressed than with the conventional, which would demand conventional reading".

Much time is saved searching if you can access good reference material.

At our Centre, fortunately our reference library is strong in such things as Etymological Dictionaries.

A person welcoming diversity enjoys such things as a multicultural perspective.

As we were saying, the quick test of maturity in these processes is how a person reacts to a decent etymological dictionary.

The next part of this radio program was written by two persons who have achieved this maturity.

One example is, 'Origins - A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English' by Eric Partridge, who describes in its foreword the drawing of previous works in this area, by others such as, Professor W. W. Skeat's Large and Small Etymological Dictionaries; Ernest Weekley's Concise Etymological Dictionary & Ferdinand Holthausen's Etymologisches Woerterbuch der Englischen Sprache.

He also introduces words not usually found in British Etymological Dictionaries, but forming common currency of standard English as spoken and written in the United States of America, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and Pakistan.

In Partridge's 'Origins - A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English', he explores the origins of the word 'age'.

age; coeval-mediaeval; (or -aeval); eternal (and sempiternal), eterne, eternity; aeon or eon; ay or aye, always; perhaps EVER, quod vide - meaning - which see! separately.

1. There are three Indo-European subfamilies represented: Germanic, Latin, Greek. In the first we have ay, aye, always: Middle English ai, earlier ei, from Old Norse ei, intimately akin to Old English a, awa, always-confer,compare! Old Frisian a, Old Saxon eo, eo, io, Gothic aiw, always: and aiws, an age, and Old High Germanes, always: for anterior etymology, (see paragraph 6).

2. Medieval Latin aevum (earlier aeuom; stem aeu-), an age, a lifetime, appears in coeval (formerly co-aeval), adjective, adjectival hence noun, an -al formation from Medieval Latin coaevus (prefix co-+aevum), contemporary, and in medieval, mediaeval (medius, middle+aevum+-al), and in primeval (earlier primaeval), an -al (primus, first+aeuum); less clearly in English age, Old French aage, Vulgar (or low) Latin *aetaticum(a presumed word or form of a word, or sense), from Latin aetatem, accusative (or objective) case of aetas, a contraction of aeuitas (Medieval Latin aevitas), from aeuum.

3. Aet-, the oblique stem of Latin aetas, recurs in aeternus (adjective, adjectival suffix -ernus), whence the literary eterne; aeternus has the derivative Late Latin (circa, about in the dates Anno Domini, in the year of (our) Lord 180-600). variant aeternalis (aet-+ the ernus+-alis), whence, via Old French-Medieval French (13th to 15th Centuries) eternal (Early Modern French 1500 to 1700 -French e-) the English eternal, and the derivative Late Latin (circa, about in the dates Anno Domini, in the year of (our) Lord 180 to 600). noun aeternitas, whence, via Old French-Medieval French eternie (Early Modern French 1500 to 1700 -French e-), the English eternity. But eternise goes no further back than Early Modern French 1500 to 1700 -French eterniser, from Early Modern French 1500 to 1700 eterne.

4. Sempiternal comes from Medieval Latin sempiternalis, from Latin sempiternus (whence the rare sempitern), a contraction of semperaeternus-semper, always.

5. American English eon, English aeon (adopted from Latin), comes from Greek aion (stem ai), lifetime, age, intimately akin to Primitive Latin aeuom; Greek aionios, eternal, yields aeonian (adjective, adjectival suffix -an). Celtic feminine Greek aiei (stem ai-), always.

6. Greek aion apparently derives from Primitive Greek aiwon, stem aiw-: confer, compare! the Latin root aeu-, Old High German ewa, a long time, eternity, and Gothic aiw (always). Celtic feminine further the Sanskrit ayus, Avestic (or Zend) ayu, life, with stem ay-: confer, compare! Old Norse ei (always). Clearly the Indo-European root is *aiu-(a presumed word or form of a word, or sense), (or *aiw- a presumed word or form of a word, or sense), with variant *aeu-(a presumed word or form of a word, or sense), (*aew- a presumed word or form of a word, or sense), basic sense 'duration' - usu 'long time' and often 'limitless time, eternity'.

"What did you say?", "What did you say?", "What did you say?" is a mantra of many older persons.

"Hearing does not change much with age for tones of frequencies usually encountered in daily life. Above the age of fifty, however, there is a gradual reduction in the ability to perceive tones at higher frequencies.

Few persons over the age of sixty-five can hear tones with a frequency above ten thousand cycles per second.

The Encyclopedia Britannica Macropedia states that this loss of perception of high frequencies interferes with identifying individuals by their voices and with understanding conversation in a group. However it does not represent a serious limitation to the individual in daily life.

Listening habits and intellectual level play an important role in determining the ability to understand speech. There is often a disparity between measurements of pure tone thresholds and ability to perceive speech".

The same applies to sound. The younger person, provided they have no hearing damage from going to concerts with loud noise, will complain that the setting is too loud. The hearing loss of young persons is at epidemic levels. Just attending a concert with 6000 watt amplifiers once is enough in most cases.

The effect of kamma can be seen by most young musicians who have acute hearing loss. This is because they were in the supply chain management of loud pop culture.

Our teacher recalls a joke made about such music decades ago, "it may not be good, but it's loud".

This aspect of premature aging is well known to Secondary School teachers whose pupils cannot hear very well.

Similarly, sight changes with the aging process.
"Visual acuity, ability to discriminate fine detail, is relatively poor in young children and improves up to young adulthood.
From about the middle twenties to the fifties there is a slight decline in visual acuity, and there is a somewhat accelerated decline thereafter.

This decline is readily compensated for by the use of eyeglasses.

There is also reduction in the size of the pupil with age.

Consequently, vision in older people can be significantly improved by an increase in the level of illumination.

This is why older persons and younger persons looking at the same computer screen cannot agree on the brightness level.

If the older person is comfortable with the setting, the younger person complains it is 'too glarey'.

Aging also brings about a reduction in the ability to change the focus of the eye for viewing near and far objects (presbyopia), so that distant objects can ordinarily be seen more clearly than those close at hand.

This change in vision is related to a gradual increase in the rigidity of the lens of the eye that occurs primarily between the ages of ten and fifty-five years.

After age fifty-five there is little further change. Many people in their fifties adopt bifocal glasses to compensate for this physiological change.

The sensitivity of the eye under conditions of low illumination is less in the old than in the young; that is, "night vision" is reduced.
Sensitivity to glare is also greater in the older than the young.

The incidence of diseases of the eye, such as glaucoma and cataracts (characterised respectively by an increased intraocular pressure and opaque lenses), increases with age, but recent advances in surgery and the development of contact lenses have made it possible to remove cataracts and restore vision to many individuals."

Along with changes in sight and hearing, there is a general slowing of responses and other sensory impairment in the elderly.

For example, after the age of seventy, there is a reduced taste sensitivity, the sense of smell becomes less effective, reflexes become more sluggish and the speed of conduction of impulses in nerves is slightly lowered.

The slowing down of reactions with age is greater in situations where a decision must be made.

For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica Macropedia describes an experiment, where more time is required to initiate a response in experiments in which the instructions "press the button with your right hand when the green light comes on, but with your left hand, when the red light comes on" than if the instructions are "push the button if either light comes on".

A conclusion from an experiment of this type is that the primary site of slowing of responses is within the brain rather than the end organ, for example, the eye itself.

Other changes with age include the gradual loss of elasticity of the skin, and the excretion of both male and female sex hormones diminishes with age along with a progressive reduction in sexual activity.

Bones gradually lose their calcium becoming more fragile and likely to break even with minor falls.

The vital capacity that can be expelled from the lung after the maximum inspiration diminishes.
The concentrating ability of the kidney fails so that a greater volume of water is required to excrete the same amount of waste material.

The capacity to perform muscular work diminishes and there is a greater increase in blood pressure, heart rate and respiration.

Furthermore, recovery of blood pressure, heart rate and respiration to resting values takes longer in the old.

With the relentless advance of age, and loss of bodily strength and agility, there is a need to increase the strategies that we can develop to compensate for the slowing down of our sensory capabilities.

It is better to train in these things when young.

We must develop our awareness of the impact of aging to manage our future environment.

Aging, in the sense of taking longer to do things, may be caused by poor will-to-do.

During the recent Bhavana course, our Members wrote last week's broadcast script, which put the radio team ahead with one complete script and the opportunity to complete a second in the same week.

We have a weekly objective of writing two scripts each week. Practically, this means that there is always a backup. This has not been achieved.

Every week our Teacher helps three Members of our Broadcast Team who are showing signs of aging to recognise it, but they ignore it.

Although practicing Dhamma Dana each week, they are aging more and more, slowing down with their senses weakening.

Why is this happening?

It is because they adopt a monoculture viewpoint.
Writing the weekly radio broadcast scripts is a teaching tool for Members.

In the past, when our Teacher wrote them, the scripts were read on the Friday evenings.

It is important that Members read the script prior to broadcast.

This enables proof reading under actual teaching conditions. But lately, the Radio Team left writing to Saturdays. Members are encouraged to allocate their time better to spend at least four days out of each week at the Center, practicing Dhamma Dana. But, they are spending less time at the Center and the scripts are late.

This is the same as a drift in behaviour of aging persons.

There is a part of a person's mind which says that there is plenty of time available to perform any activity. But the estimate turns out to be wrong by a factor of two.

Our Members have the perfect opportunity to be able to write two scripts in one week, alleviating the pressure on a Saturday of spending many hours writing in order to complete the script for the following morning.

Having a script ready earlier enables presenters to familiarize themselves with the topic on Friday evenings, making it easier for them to read during the broadcast.

The fact that this is no longer done means reading on air falters at times.

It is a habit of human beings to become comfortable whilst they feel they are ahead of schedule, falling into the habit of the discursive mind, losing focus and wasting time.

In the process of writing the weekly broadcast scripts, our script writers have experienced this lack of concentration and avoiding doing the things that make the job easy, for example, making offerings to the Deva of Learning.

Persons fall into a false sense of security that they can do it themselves, when in fact, it is much harder to do it without help.

Each person dropped because they became neglectful of the Five Styles of our Centre which are;
Friendliness
Practicality
Professionalism
Cultural Adaptability
and
Scholarship

We need all styles at once displayed in every radio script if we are to do justice to the greatness and wealth of Buddha Dhamma.

Key Members have taken heed of the lessons learnt some time ago when we wrote a Conceptual Solution for broadcasting.

Lately Members have not read this solution and put their own weaker monocultural solutions in place.

We are about to reverse this trend.

May you know you are aging.

May you become a multi-cultural person.

May you develop the ability to pay attention!

May you be well and happy.

May all beings be well and happy.

References:

1. Xavier, Herbert. "I Sinned Against Syntax", Meanjin, A Quarterly of Literature Art
Discussion, University of Melbourne, No.180 Volume XVIV No. 1 1960.l

2. Partridge, Eric. Origins - A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English.
Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited. 1966.

3. The New Encyclopedia Britannica Macropedia - Knowledge In Depth, Volume 20,
page 483. Encyclopedia Britanica, Inc. USA 1987.

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.