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NAMO
TASSA
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'THE BUDDHIST HOUR' RADIO BROADCAST
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KNOX FM 87.6 Sundays 11:00am to 12:00pm |
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KNOXFM RADIO BROADCAST 23 JULY 2000
How near is the manifest to our assumed organisation?
This week, key Members have been working on our Corporate Governance and Reporting Report for our annual meeting that will be held on 12 August 2000.
Each year, our office bearers report to Members the highlights of the year’s progress.
A profit and loss account is presented.
Our organisation is a Company without shares. The Directors and office Bearers are elected by the financial members.
The directors of the company are responsible for its overall management. All directors belong to the CGR Task Unit.
The manifest organisation (e.g. theoretical) has been seen to be different from the assumed organisation (e.g. the subjective reality of the members) and perhaps also the extant organisation (e.g. the “objective” reality).
The subjective nature of a researcher’s position logically limits further interpretation.
The Member’s subjectivity and relative objectivity are ideally transformed by the Teaching function to become objective.
This means that our Members are moving from a position of “ignorance” to one of full knowledge and understanding (of their personal worlds).
This audacious suggestion must for the time being remain as untested hypothesis but it might be implicit in the writing of our annual report to Members.
In the body of our report, we encourage our Members to note that our annual report of our network may not in all wordings stay within the dominant discipline paradigms of the predominately western cultural community of organisational researchers.
The assumed organisation of a new Member is explained in many forms until it becomes clear that we do what we say we do.
“That the Buddha Dhamma be taught” is our manifest mission statement and our day by day activities when seen from that view are closer to making the time and space good enough that Members come to the first stage of Buddha Dhamma, Samma Ditthi- (Pali: Right View).
From having gained right view, some of the puzzles of why we are as organised as we are, becomes clear.
Now, those Members who have secured ‘Right View’ are ready to begin on the correct path and see how method and means are intertwined like two eternal lovers.
The union of knowledge and compassion is hard to achieve in a short time.
But (have no doubt) it does come from cultural change that puts socially constructed meaning of the specific and wider culture within a wiser frame of reference.
We are a knowledge based organisation.
Our library systems improve ever year with sound references. We have thousands of books in our reference library and megabytes of good information on our Local Area Network.
Several years ago, we set up our first website.
We have three Internet sites running at present.
An article run by the local Newspaper- The Free Press on 12 July 2000, stated that, our Centre is currently leading the way in terms of the number of Web sites we have developed.
The Free Press surveyed several Yarra Ranges churches and found that most had not taken their first important steps towards Internet culture.
It is no surprise we are living in an age of Science and Technology where communication and contact have produced startling results.
Dhammadutas can now reach remote corners of the globe where they can instruct, enlighten and gladden the young and the old who seek a new way of life.
In this Information rich age the call is for a rational teaching.
In Australian schools comparative religion is now being taught. With this step and the openness of the population to alternative religions, the children are taken to visit viharas where they learn about the basic teachings and traditions.
School children may visit viharas where they are taught about the specific teachings of the Buddha, and some begin to train their minds through Buddhist Meditation.
The younger generation, frustrated by the stifling nature of dogmatic faith, are attracted by the openness and the clarity in the Buddha’s teaching, they turn to Buddha Dhamma to quell their thirst for spiritual knowledge.
Our Centre understands the vast amounts of information that can be transmitted by the Internet. This is why our Centre has three Web sites and our Teacher John D. Hughes has two. We are aiming to have another four Web sites up and running in the next three to four months.
The Australian Newspaper reported on Tuesday 18 July 2000 that, “Nearly one-third of the IT skills in the market today have only emerged in the past year, exacerbating the chronic shortage of qualified and experienced staff.”
“The 2000 Icon IT Trend Index found jobs in communication, networks and the Internet have increased in demand by more than 44% in the past year. The survey also shows 67 of the 133 Internet-related skills in the market are totally new. It found demand for trainers in the communication/network field had rocketed by 150 % while the demand for IT trainers in general, had jumped by 11%.
The average salary in communications, network and Internet environments was $71 356, an increase of 17.3%. this compares with the IT average salary rise of 10.1%.”
Our Teacher acknowledges the dedication of three Monash University Web masters, Santi Sukkha and Pennie White who worked with our IT Team headed by Evelin Halls.
They all worked long hours to apply their e-business learning in modern Internet approaches to preserving the written Dhamma for our organisation.
They self-funded our leading edge multimedia website, www.bdcublessings.one.net.au and presented our Centre with new salable products of the Web site's home page ‘Blessings’ presentation on CDs.
Their cooperation with our Junior Vice-President Public Relations & Promotions Peter Jackson using his digital video recording of peak Centre events and his digital still camera ensures the website presentation displays a modern image and style in its multimedia operations.
The new team is now experienced in working together and can train others so we build up four IT teams by December 2001 with four new web masters.
What kind of age will we be living in 2005?
In the world of information, we will see increasingly higher speeds and greater capacities, information of greater mental capacity, higher intelligence, and that is more human (human like), with a continuation of the trend toward increasing density and decreasing size.
From another angle, this means:
1. Greater choice.
In the past people visited a nearby temple to pay respect, but now they will use Internet temples, or alternatively developments in public transport may allow them to use temples in remote locations.
2. Expanding diversity.
The needs of temple followers will diversify, and the need will arise for temples to cater to these needs in a more detailed manner.
3. The conquest of time, distance and space.
The services offered by most industries are increasingly on offer 24 hours a day. It may also become desirable for temples to offer their services on this time frame.
4. Simplicity, ease of use.
All services will become simplified.
5. Reality.
The world of communication is virtual, and therefore people will come to seek that which has no limits, and is close to reality.
6. Improved reliability
People will come to demand higher reliability of information communication than they do of, for example, cars or trains.
The following are five specific examples of major changes we think will occur over the next few years.
(1) Mobile communications
The volume of information transmitted by mobile communications, typified by mobile phones, will increase to around 30 times of current levels. There will be huge leaps in the development of technology such as TV telephones that give minute detail and sense of reality.
(2) Wearable computers
In other words, people will be freed of keyboards. There will also be progress in the area of sound input and reproduction devices, and it is anticipated that these will be applied in a variety of different fields.
(3) Screening technology
This is the kind of function that allows you to, for example, confirm who is calling by telephone number display before you answer a call.
(4) Holonics
Specifically GPS and navigation technology, based on the idea of being able to see one individual in the midst of everything or everyone else. For example, in the past, it didn't matter about the individual, rather a certain family would be a member of a religion, and so people would usually see themselves as also belonging to that belief. This may change in the future.
Technology such as data mining computer simulation may be used to see into places where we have never been able to see before, such as inside the human body.
(5) Fordism policy
Fordism is an approach that allows you to dissect matter into tiny components. It was applied in industry to enable mass production. On the other hand, humans have become unable to see the total environment. As a reaction to that, there is now a movement in which people use information technology when they work in order to gain an understanding of how their own work influences the environment. You could say that this type of change will become evident in new industrial structures.
If classified into five levels of social change of hunting and gathering, agriculture, industry, information and creation, the information in the gatherer society was at the stage of discovery. Then in the agricultural society, information was accumulated and experienced, and then in the industrial society the emphasis was on how efficiently goods could be manufactured.
Now in our information society, we have arrived at an age in which the stress is on the extent to which information can be shared.
In the creation society of the 21st century, goods already exist, we have food, and we have information. In such a society, human beings will see sensibility, that is deeper interpersonal relationships, and we have entered into an age in which people are seeking to operate in a cooperative manner in their use of networks and so on.
Furthermore, as far as the relationship between Buddha Dhamma and multimedia is concerned, we would not be surprised if the world of Buddha Dhamma becomes classified as an information industry.
Even though different religious groups may have a variety of different theories and methods of practice, there is no doubt that Buddha Dhamma now tries to communicate a message of "by some method or other" or "somehow".
In its attempt to convey this message, Buddha Dhamma has used discourses, narratives, stories with a certain point or punch line, and even tile block prints. In other words, religion has unmistakably always been at the front-line of the media of a particular age. Accordingly, we believe it is significant, and only natural, that all Monks or Nuns be involved with multimedia.
In addition, religion has always been virtual.
Human beings possess both a virtual world, for example a paradise world or a Buddhist world and as well as the real world in which we live.
When you compare the two, we dwell more in the virtual world. The world that exists within our own hearts and the external virtual world as typified by the Internet are engaged in a process of fusion and expansion. Religion plays the role of navigator of that virtual world.
Now to the effects of this so-called 'informatisation' in the world of Buddha Dhamma.
Firstly the example can be given of the increasing use of information in temple management.
Computer software is used to record details of families which support temples. And we also think that the need for robots for assisting in home care of the aged, as well as systems in homes for such care are increasingly the responsibility of temples.
Next comes information as a means of communication.
As we move into an age of the mutual exchange of information, the way in which the Buddhist world receives and disseminates information is coming into question.
What was the religion of the family unit in the past, will possibly become the religion of the individual in the future, and there is a need to cater to that change.
Finally comes the question of whether or not Buddha Dhamma can remain unchanged in the midst of these societal changes of an increasing orientation towards information, a society which becomes more and more sophisticated in the area of information.
Individuals can transmit and receive information, and each individual has their own specific troubles and difficulties. Who is going to intermediate in the virtual society of the inner self?
We think that the expectation exists that the Buddha Dhamma world, or the religious world, will play such a role.
In the near future, our IT capacity will allow us to deliver affordable services to Regional Centres in other countries and engage in Dhammaduta activities to propagate the objectives of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB).
The WFB has a target- “Effective Communication” of the Two-Year Plan for all Regional Centres to have an effective and appropriate communication via Internet, E-mail and other information media such as newsletters, magazines and relevant publications to be distributed among themselves and others.
In our Conceptual Solution, we have a mission to target 1 million readers of our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review by 2020CE (Christian Era). We are planning to deliver full issues of the BDDR from our computer database to our Internet site with little fuss.
Where Is Our Organisation In IT Management?
Last year, (1999) we developed our IT conceptual solution. We have named our present LAN system TEXTLAN.
Apart from the name change, there is no change in its server configuration.
Our conceptual plan is firm and definite that this system must not be sabotaged and is not to be taken off-line from the existing Cat.5 wiring.
The conceptual plan insists TEXTLAN service must not be displaced or modified in any way because it works well.
The 1999 IT conceptual solution specified the direction of TEXTLAN we would follow to get best practice IT technical specifications. It was more evolutionary than revolutionary.
How does the current 2000 conceptual solution differ from the 1999 version? The earlier 1999 version was not a strategic solution.
It was more advisory of the technical updates needed but with the same script for TEXTLAN service.
The 2000 version has the nature of a series of strategic planning models needed for S5 managerial use.
Its major use is for identifying and describing the key drivers and variables that turn our IT systems into profit. We perform this by anticipating internet sales as the subject matter of the present conceptual solution.
This solution is much more revolutionary because it involves changing the monoculture of 12 Members who are to form the TASK UNIT.
During May, June and July 2000, these persons have been changing by the process of working together in a four stage Team building process to produce the management tactics needed to write the desired Internet conceptual solution 2000.
This solution is not waiting to be found because it does not exist in the world and is a creative act by the individual team Members acting in concert.
Present Team Members who think that the solution exists already must change their childish culture to know how to make the machinery to keep the team together in the formative stages until the team makes the creative act that is the conceptual solution.
Persons who have resigned themselves to the notion that the solution exists and is waiting to be revealed like a rabbit out of a hat do not understand.
It means they do not wish to change their belief in magic in their given life paradigm.
There is no magic for them so their primitive belief system will be detectable by their inability to cope with the 3rd stage of the process.
Those who resist the notion that we can create the IT conceptual plan 2000 leave the Team since they cannot make the desired cultural maturity change.
How are we to move towards the unknown?
To aid the insight of our Team and protect them, we have a Sarasvati altar with six images of this Goddess of Learning. The altar is in Suite three at our Centre.
Sarasvati - (Sanskrit) (Chin. Ta-pien-ts'ai -t'ien nu, Miao-yin mu; Japan.: Benten; Mon.: Kele-yin ukin tegri; Tib.: Nag-gi-Iha-mo, dByangs-can-ma, (phon. Eng.) Yangchenma) ("the melodious lady" or "melodious voice") A Hindu deity who Vajrayana Buddhism accepts into their pantheon. The deification of the river into the Goddess of Learning, Music and Poetry, she replaced Prajnaparamita as Goddess of Wisdom through tantric influence. Conferring learning, intelligence and memory, she is associated with Dhyana Bodhisattva Manjushri being his shakti.
Visioning is proceeding at a great pace, and drives the movers to complete the next stage of the four stage Team building process.
Visioning brings understanding of why the conceptual solution 2000 is not something that pre-exists and has to be discovered but it is something created by the will-to-do of the players who dedicate themselves to team manage it to success.
But if you have little faith or little trust in logic, you are unlikely to follow these instructions.
Some persons have trouble in remembering what they read. It is as if their minds are jammed full of trivia and had no space to remember new knowledge presented to them.
There is not just one factor to be added to be capable of reading and learning well. You can draw an analogy to providing extra storage space in your home.
You decide you are sick of the clutter and desire to do something about it to reduce it. This is will-to-do (in pali: Cetana). You can give some cluttering things to the Op-Shop.
This is dana - merit making by generosity. You can re-adjust your shelf spacing to stop losing space above objects. This is like sila - morality.
You then work to find the available space you need to have for what it is you want to store and so on.
Designing just for extra storage space is indicative of persons possessing narrow view. Plans must incorporate strategic thinking that encompasses the broader perspective or the total mandala of storage.
The broader view or functional mandala must be adopted as part of our strategic planning. This can not be achieved by the method of transactional processing which involves only data collection.
The sub mandala of storage can be inspected to assess whether it has reached its capacity. If so, there can be no further increase in storage efficiency and further improvements would not be possible.
If an analysis performed on a sub mandala reveals that it is full or complete, persons should not waste time thinking or dwelling upon it. If no gain is possible one must move to review the mandala of next area.
John D. Hughes is aware that the storage system of the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd can be improved because the storage mandala is not full.
The New Shorter English Oxford Dictionary describes a ‘Mandala’ as ‘A symbolic circular figure, with symmetrical divisions and figures of deities. Used in Buddhism and other Religions as a representation of the universe’.
Mandalas are closely associated with mantra and mudra. This is a diagram that shows the gods in their mystic connections usually painted on cloth or paper or drawn on the ground; The gods are pictured in their visible forms or as Sanskrit letters. Tantrists divide the Buddhist ideas into groups, such as for example male and female, peaceful and dreadful aspects.
Entry into the mandala is called abhisheka or initiation into the secrets of the School. According to the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, the mandala image is merely a temporary form birth, no reality at all, to be abandoned whenever the viewer becomes aware of the Buddha essence within him. The esoteric Buddhist symbol of the mandala is the circle which expands from the core. Some mindless mandalas are of mathematical construction. Mandalas are still painted by Buddhist priests in Japan.
If greedy "outsiders" become deeply entrenched in an organisation they may join in fundraising with greed as their driver.
No matter how much flair they appear to have for appeals it is unwise to encourage them to operate in an activity which increases their greed. To diminish their greed, it is better preparation for them to offer food to others or clean the Assembly Hall.
Like it or not like it, because most lay persons have not perfected the skill of giving correctly (Pali: dana parami) few are able to give freely.
Skill in dana is the supplementary training which broadens the horizon or mandala of the minds.
A horizon bound conviction that were a person to donate goods or monies to an organisation, he or she can expect some say in the projected direction of that organisation is not rational.
Successors - in - training (as part of the set of future users) need training in cause.
As a general rule, having found a suitable site, it is not desirable to change location.
What must not be displaced?
Our organisation tasks are organised and managed by e-mail messages linking different Members arriving and leaving at different times and operating in different task units.
The e-system has developed to become more than a lucky dip of who does what when.
We called this e-system TEXTLAN. It must not be displaced. Members who can now prioritise their own tasks are beginning to understand the complexity of leadership and have completed the familiarisation, conflict and reconciliation stages with their task unit Members.
One presently perceived IT risk.
Speed wanted for our new LAN (called PHOTOLAN) topography.
We are designing options for our LAN topography. We need a quick, practicable and affordable solution to meet our deadlines.
The issue of if we want multiple redundant servers, multiple replicated cable segments, high security and the need to be super vigilant is secondary to the need to get PHOTOLAN operating in-house.
At stage 6 of our conceptual plan we decide how we connect PHOTOLAN to the Internet, and ensure fast delivery of content to local and Internet clients.
We are to build a second LAN called PHOTOLAN that is 10 times faster than the present LAN that we call TEXTLAN.
Major issues for consideration relate to whether or not we have most of our servers live on the Internet. Could various attacks crash or slow our servers? We do not have to deal with this question now.
Would it be preferable in the short term to run our Internet servers off-line from our network? How does this effect our speed to market? This type of question is put to one side as it has no effect on the conceptual solution at this stage.
A new network will run at 100 Mbps. The new cabling will carry this.
Our current LAN runs well enough that we do not consider major upgrades as desirable at this moment.
To build an effective working IT team they build and manage an affordable and profitable on-line photo warehouse.
We call this project - PHOTOLAN
We develop PHOTOLAN in-house using HTML.
We are starting to build a management team that will be able to manage PHOTOLAN in HTML within a time frame of two months.
To force the practical conceptual solution, and cater for Member's self - interest, a PHOTOLAN data warehouse will be built to carry our Centre's photographs of Buddha Dhamma persons, places, events and artefacts.
Visitors can be sold instantly printed colour prints of any photo on the system.
With this target, we must take great care not to infringe copyright.
Written permission is to be given if third party material is scanned into our system.
Brendan Hall has commenced scanning in our organisation's available photographs to digital format. Well over a thousand have been processed to date and over 600 photos have been scanned.
The PHOTOLAN will store a picture warehouse.
It will be loaded with thousands of existing photographs of our historical activities since inception.
A digital camera will be obtained.
One high definition digital photo (1 million pixels) can take up to 35 Megabyte of storage. Since we intend to load tens of thousands of new high quality digital image of artefacts in the John D. Hughes collection, the PHOTOLAN storage space will be a series of gigabytes.
We will call this PHOTOLAN.
Maturity comes from responsibility being given to a Team. This means the team must not waste time in futile talk, idle chatter, antisocial behaviour or defeatist refusal to take a quantitative approach to the conceptual solution.
They must not shoot blind at solutions that depart from linearity projections.
This gives us about 4 weeks to discard all unpromising data that stands in the way of a decent conceptual solution.
On Tuesday 9 May 2000, our Teacher corrected 10 Members paltry views towards IT and started to define our need for vigour in writing a conceptual solution to give in house Web site co-ordination.
The clarity of the need to achieve a workable IT conceptual solution for our new series of profitable web sites could not be disputed.
For the last few months, our Teacher insisted that the old culture preventing us taking all the steps marked out to put business into our e-business be annihilated.
It works with the intention that all players understand that our best PR. statements are to be lived every day by Members who lead or follow our IT team with our “5 Styles”.
It would take them fifty times longer (6 human years) to read our paper based library material.
Our Centre offers persons the opportunity to learn new IT skills within the frame of Buddhist morality code. To realise the vast resources at our Centre and our IT awareness please visit our web sites at www.bdcu.org.au and www.bdcublessings.one.net.au.
May you learn earnestly.
This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Vincenzo Cavuoto, Pennie White, Evelin Halls and Lisa Nelson
Disclaimer:
As we, 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 an other 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 Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. Bibliography
Piyadassi, 1991. The Spectrum of Buddhism, The Corporation Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, Taipei Taiwan.
12 July 2000. Free Press Newspapers.
Foreshew, Jennifer.12 July 2000, "New IT trends deepen crisis", The Australian.
Prescott, Nick. 2000, "An Organisational Analysis of a Melbourne Buddhist Centre".
For more information, contact the Centre or better still, come and visit us. |
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