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The position of human beings is considered to be relatively high in the universe even humans are insignificant in terms of numbers.

This position was taken in 1963 and has been explained by Dr. W.F. Jayasuriya in terms of Abhidhamma. (1)

Our earth that is called Jambudipa is one of the places inhabited by human beings.

Other places inhabited by human beings are called Aparagoyana, Pubba Videha, and Uttarakuru.

Birth as a human being is a consequence of great meritorious actions in a past life.

Earthly life is so important that all Buddhas elect to be born human for their final struggle and awakening.

So, if we used that 1st order information and did not investigate deeper, we might believe as a first approximation that all human beings are worthy of praise.

However, even very superficial observation shows we can find many human beings living lifestyles certain to cause them loss of human rebirth.

When we wish to remember someone worthy of praise for their actions in Buddha Dhamma, it is a good idea to think of a person who is mature in years and who has a track record of achievement.

Quite often we see persons at our Centre who come for a few years and then drift away for one reason or another. To be consistent in anything that is worthwhile means you must add to what is given as a cultural heritage from the past.

This means that you must study history or whatever you are interested in. If you were interested in some specific thing such as the role of women in Buddha Dhamma, it would be better to read five or six hundred biographies of women who had done great things for the Buddha Sasana.

It would not be fitting for you just to read about the achievements of women of one particular nationality. This would give you a narrow, biased view. It would be more appropriate to pick out ten different countries where Buddha Dhamma had been practiced and select fifty different biographies of women, both Sangha and lay, who made their mark.

Contrary to what the popular Christian view is, only the good die old. It is a minor blessing to have long life. In a few cases, such as the Dalai Lama, in some lives he was murdered when a young boy because of some negative Karma that arose from his actions in former lives.
In general terms, as we can see from the Tipitaka, in some cases Monks in Buddha's time lived to be 140 to 160 years old. There was a Chinese Monk who passed away in 1938 who was 140 years old.

Generally speaking, persons who come into the world with no training, preparation, encouragement, support or guidance do not make very good role models.

Although they might start off with much enthusiasm and much devotion, gradually their inspiration decreases and they get discouraged and disillusioned and give up whatever they are doing.

These are the sort of persons described by Buddha as being born bright, die dark. The other three types are born dark, die dark (which certainly is not the role model you are looking for); born dark, die bright (which is a much better role model than the other two); and, best of all, born bright, die bright.

The latter is the perfect role model and such beings are still being born in the world today and will lead the next few generations of Buddha Dhamma practitioners.

The development we can expect in the 21st Century will see Buddha Dhamma firmly entrenched as an information age product. Both men and women can develop the databases needed to contain vast information accumulated over 2500 years.

International Centres could well be virtual communities that avoid creating competition between themselves and write living Dhamma that is not produced by a mundane, worldly mind frame which takes the focus away from what is been called the spiritual life.

There will be a certain hierarchy in the type of Centres that provide this information. Editors well versed in the Buddha's Teaching will avoid contentious subjects because Buddha Dhamma is not about creating schisms between practitioners.

It will obviously become clear that spurious sites will grow seeking wealth for bad information and telling people that abstract theories are not needed even although they are well expounded in Abhidhamma writings, that precepts are not needed even though they are well expounded in ancient texts, and that the Triple Gem Refuge will not be needed as a basis to practise what Westerners like to call 'Buddhist meditation'.

The specifically Buddhist audiences will be better educated with higher sati (mindfulness) because they keep precepts. If you are looking for sensation, you will believe the bigger the disturbance on the mind, the better you are in your practice.

In fact, every text explains that the mind should be strong but flexible like leather and free from shocks and alarms if it is to be fit for work in exploring the Dhamma.

The conditions for quietening the mind include not being too busy or too tired or too impatient with whatever your conditions are at a particular moment.

This is not achieved by saying; 'Don't worry about it'. Frightening people with tales about hell or hungry ghosts or animal birth or poor human birth is not counterproductive in the medium term because when they understand that these things are possible they will not want to give up their practice.

It is not a reward or punishment by a God or devil that we come to bad births, it is what we do as we live our everyday life. Our present situation is the result of causes created by our own actions in the past.

In the Dhammapada the opening verse is: "All that we are is the result of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. If a man speaks or acts with a harmful thought, trouble follows him as the wheel does the ox that draws the cart."

The need to select someone worthy of praise is to find someone who is well versed in the Buddha's Texts, well practiced in living a meaningful life and someone who has had Right Livelihood for many years.

So a person who had been a fisherman or a slaughterman or a pest exterminator would not be suitable to use as someone worthy of praise because they do not hold the precept of no killing.

A person who had been a drug dealer would not be worthy of praise because they do not hold the precept of no intoxicants.

There is another aspect that requires a lot of education, and that is how to look for and find a true guru (Teacher) and having found a satisfactory guru how to help the guru in practical ways without naivete or unreasonable expectations of the guru's functions.

The guru has one main function - to be a shower of the way to the student and to guide with the appropriate instructions the various minds of the student towards awakening. In a Buddhist case, this means the ability to guide somebody to Nibbana as a Stream Enterer.

Another aspect of the Guru which is not obvious in the Western translation as Teacher, is that the Teacher gives knowledge, but a Guru gives himself or herself. The real Teachings of the Guru are his or her words.

Good Gurus have many good Teachers- for example Atisha had fifty Teachers because he was skilled in many types of practice. Atisha was successful because Atisha knew how to look after his Teachers whenever he was with them in former lives.

A person not to be used as a role model is a lickerous person.

What do we mean by lickerous?

The Oxford Dictionary defines it as pleasing or tempting to the palate; sweet , pleasant and delightful. When referring to persons fond of choice or delicious food; dainty in eating; greedy of good fare. Also eagerly desirous, longing, greedy.

Of note is its lustful aspect - lecherous. G. Herbert in Temple, Discharge, wrote 'Busy, enquiring heart, what wouldst thou know, why dost thou pry, And turn and leer, and with a licorous eye, Look high and low. '

Need we say more?

In the search for role models of persons worthy of respect, our degree of urbanisation and our distance or nearness from an aware and involved middle class will affect our view.

In an urban situation, we are more likely to meet educated, politically astute, materialistic and technologically proficient persons than we are if we live in a rural society.

A skilled blue-collar class has arisen to work in the new industries in ASEAN countries in recent decades. The spectacular growth rates of industrial factories in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan produce products that are then exported throughout the world.

These socioeconomic changes have both positive and negative ramifications. Life in South East Asia has higher standards of living, broader horizons from a wider information flow, better health, higher levels of information and increased opportunities in virtually every sector of life.

At the same time, these societies are confronted with what seems to be the inescapable fate of rapidly growing cities - higher rates of crime, alienation, and corruption - social ills that are characteristic of urban Centres.

Air pollution, traffic jams and land scarcity are a few of the environmental problems in South East Asia. The involvement of large numbers of persons in political affairs in South East Asian nations is a fundamental innovation, replacing traditional hierarchical patterns of rule.

Some of the ideas we have in Australia, such as institutionalised rather than personalistic Government, is not a traditional part of South East Asian political culture, and therefore if we are to be neighbourly in the new international era we had better not choose role models along these lines if we are going to be accepted as helping rather than hindering the development of what were third world countries not so long ago.

When we come to places like Thailand, which is the home of the World Fellowship of Buddhists Headquarters, we find that we are dealing with persons who are shaping their nation into an increasingly developed society by using aspects of modernisation and development that are appropriate to traditional Thai ways.

The Thais have never been colonised by a foreign power, unlike many of their neighbours.

The Sukhothai Kingdom (C.1238-1350) was the first Thai-controlled Kingdom. In this formerly Khmer area, the Thai absorbed the cultures of the Khmers, Mons, Indians, and Chinese and began an assimilation process that is important even today for understanding modern Thai society.

Buddhism and Brahmanism were introduced to the Thais during the Sukhothai era. The Sukhothai Kingdom expanded and retracted, depending on the fortunes of military campaigns, until the Ayuthaya period (1350-1767)N.

The Thais adapted much from the Indianised Khmers who had dominated the Ayuthaya period. In particular, the Kings were transformed from paternalistic guardians to autocratic god-kings with the attributes of a Brahmanic deity.

The perception of the kings as god-kings remains even today as an important element of the veneration shown the king by his subjects.

Notwithstanding this aura of godliness, the kings did not enjoy absolute power but were limited by court factionalism and competition for power and by an assumption of kingly virtue. (4)

Problems of incorporation of Buddha Dhamma in the work life and the fact that people keep the Buddha Dhamma and work life separate.

One of the most famous Teachers in Tibet was Marpa. In addition to being a great Teacher of Dhamma he was a husband, a father of seven children and ran a farm. In his life he made little distinction between his various roles.

The problem is that in reality there is a reluctance to give up any part of our established way of life, even if it causes us trouble.

Anytime we feel there is a conflict between our habitual actions and the Teachings we gloss over the situation in order to eliminate any further conflict so that we run away from having to do the work of checking our behaviour against the advice of the Teacher.

The Teachers teach word for word what the Buddha taught concerning Buddha Dhamma.

This is why our Centre needs our Dhamma library collection with the authentic texts.

We are encouraged to check our Teacher's words against the original teachings.

There is a twenty-year learning process running at our Centre needed to equip the student with a thorough grasp of the meaning of key words of the language of Dhamma.

'Thorough' means mastery of the Dictionary meaning of words in the listener's native language.

A great difficulty was evident a century ago when the original Pali texts were found to be intact in places where the foreign powers took over the country. In cases like Burma and Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka), scholars negotiated with Monks to get copies of the Pali Texts. A competition to translate them first became a matter of national European prestige.

There was a German Monk at Kandy in Sri Lanka who had taken robes and did much to assist in the understanding of translation from Pali to English. There was a Burmese Monk who received a good education in English and translated Abhidhamma texts. But, in general, most of the translations were done by native born English scholars at the Pali Text Society.

We have a complete set of the Pali Text Society translations at our Centre's library.

Although Buddha Dhamma is not taught by the method of the dictionary, it is vital that students develop a superior working knowledge of the English language. Later they are taught Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese or other key words in those languages.

Our Teacher has a thorough grounding in the Texts to a high level of a scholar because for fifty years or more, he has been reading voraciously.

This fact is forgotten or unknown to his students because he mixes original translation stanzas, word for word, with a knowledge of presentation suitable for the language level of the listener. This is possible for him because of his fluency in different levels of English argot.

His writing style is that of a scholar, his speaking style is that of a raconteur, and his body language and mudra carries 90% of the content of what he intends to convey almost at a subliminal level.

In some senses, this prolonged scholarship is merely standard for all Dhamma Teachers.

In this sense, the Dhamma Teachers are elite. To summarise the elitist paradigm is not easy but it holds that elites themselves are the pivotal actors if there is to be any basic change in the nature of a society's politics. Even though they may intend to act wholly in service of liberal values, non-elite persons, and leaders of other societies, can usually do little or nothing to promote the consensual unification of a disunified elite.

Worse, the historical and contemporary evidence is overwhelming that disunified elites are rarely able or inclined to undertake deliberate unifications themselves.

The consensual unification of a disunified elite requires that elite persons lessen their allegiance to non-elite followings, and that they tighten their relationships with previously hostile elite factions.

Because of the greater range and strength of non-elite interests that can assert themselves once societies have reached a higher development level (level three), elites in more industrialised societies may have insufficient freedom to carry out such deliberate unifications.

It appears that a large number of countries today with disunified elites in the middle ranges of development today have little or no chance of a consensual unification of their elites, and thus little chance of achieving stable, representative Governments.

The meaning of this is that when a society approaches the highest level of development (level four), an imperfectly unified elite may manage to form, as for instance in France, Italy and Japan after World War Two.

When countries form strong elites which are biased one way or the other, efforts by foreign elites to encourage another process are unlikely to be successful.

For this reason, it might be seen that it is unlikely that much Buddha Dhamma overall could influence the behaviour of these three countries' consensual Government.

Buddha Dhamma is worldwide in its potential reach but is unlikely to gain much ground when other power elites antagonistic to its viewpoint are strong.

Australia seems to be content to live with disunified elites and therefore the widespread acceptance of the democratic injunction that elites should represent their followers fully and openly rather than covertly suits the spread of Buddha Dhamma in this country.

Once it is realised that representative politics cannot operate successfully without the mediation of an internally trusted and collectively assured elite, then the trust of Buddha Dhamma Leaders will become more widespread throughout our society even though it would not be advisable for practitioners of Buddha Dhamma to enter into politics as a political party.

This position is a good reason for the dispassionate nature of the well developed mind to occasionally make a social comment or two on future directions of where we should go as a nation.

It would be totally wrong in our view to form a political party "The Buddhist Front" because that would mean members could lose their freedom of practice to give or not give comments or advice about the mundane issues that need to be addressed in running a country from time to time.

As Buddhist scholars know in their wisdom from study of the ancient texts, many issues are not to be addressed in any circumstances in dialogue with others.

These are the famous 14 issues that are held to be outside the scope of Buddha's comments.
If a Dhamma Teacher were to enter into discussion of these issues, you ought to know that person is not trustworthy as a role model.

It is perverse to think that all topics are to be discussed in public.

This is particularly true in the cases of Vajrayana (Tantric) Teachings whereby practitioners who hold 40 vows are prohibited from teaching these doctrines to unsuitable persons.

If they do, they are warned (and it is true) they may well be reborn in a vajra hell.

Because Buddha Dhamma is about the development of your wholesome minds and these lead to a type of awakening each for himself or herself, students are well advised to stay clear of manipulative control of other persons in the political sense.

This is why good Teachers avoid political comment, and they know how to do this quite well.

On the contrary, we have reservations about some Teachers who have little experience of the validity of the Teachings and yet frames them or transmits them to their students as an inspiration to act in politics.

The inspiration of the Teacher helps the student to wake up, and by this process the Teachings are always fresh, not like something like a family heirloom that is not understood.

As The Buddha intended that written Dhamma be handed down from one generation to the next; and this Dhamma is the refuge, it follows that all Teachers ought to have made the effort to gather the texts and encourage students to work from authentic support of the texts in a suitable location because these texts are the final reference point of appeal.

It is not freshness of real experience that can be relied upon that matters because the experiences are flawed because they represent past karma and habit that gives us the experience.

Do not trust the experience - check and see if it matches the authentic Buddha words.
If it does, nourish it.

You can trust persons who give you that advice - but do not trust someone who tells you every thought you have experienced is valid.

Recognise the truth as subtle.

There are many reasons why it is hard to practice Buddha Dhamma at work. For example, if you interact with people who are not holding 5 precept, if you are not careful you drop the precepts in order to interact with them.

May you develop your wholesome minds.

This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Lisa Nelson, Vincenzo Cavuoto, Philip Svensson, Isabella Hobbs, David Igracki, Julian Bamford and Leanne Eames

References
(1)Jayasuriya, Dr. W.F. 'The psychology and philosophy of Buddhism'

(3) Lama Anagarika Govinda. 'The Way of the White Clouds', Rider and Co. Ltd., London, 1966

(4) Neher, Clark D. 'Southeast Asia in the new International era', Westview Press, 1994, Boulder, Colorado

(5) Chogyam, Trungpa. 'Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism', Shambala Publications, Boston & London, 1987

(6) Edited & introduced by Anne Bancroft, 'The Dhammapada', Element Books Ltd., Massachusetts, USA, 1997

(7) Venerable K. Gunaratana Maha Nayaka Thera, 'Golden Discipline', for free distribution - Sintai Press Sdn Bhd. 1986.



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