Buddhist Hour
Radio Broadcast 242
For Sunday 15 September 2002 on Hillside
Radio 88.0 FM
Glossary
amity: friendship; friendly
relations, especially of a public character between States or
individuals.
friendliness: expression of showing or prompted
kindness; favourably disposed; ready to approve or help; serviceable;
convenient, opportune; manner not hostile; amicable.
norms:
standards, types; what is expected or regarded as normal; customary
behaviours, appearances.
praxis: action, practice;
specifically the practice of a technical subject or art, as opposed
to to or arising out of the theory of it; habitual action, accepted
practice, custom.
This script is entitled:
The application of
friendliness to change the script.
Last week, we talked about ‘connecting with
warm-hearted friends’ and this week we continue with this theme
of friendliness.
Members of our Centre are trained in our Five
Styles. Friendliness is the first of the five styles of Friendliness,
Cultural Adaptability, Professionalism, Practicality and
Scholarship.
What does it take to practice true friendliness?
The Pali words caga and adosa can be translated as
friendliness. The Pali word dosa means hate and adosa means no-hate.
Friendliness is a suitable synonym for no-hate.
Caga differs
from the practice of metta, translated as loving-kindness, in that
caga is passive while metta is active. An alternative translation of
caga is emotional maturity. Only emotionally mature persons can have
good-will towards others and can therefore be true friends. Caga
requires a sender and receiver, it is a dyad.
Understanding
nama rupa (body/form) and thus achieving mindfulness of body in the
present is a good foundation for practicing caga (in English
friendliness).
Caga and adosa are two wholesome
cetasikas.
With a basis of cultivated wholesome cetasikas, the
students' wisdom increases enabling them to practise dana (in English
generosity) and sila (in English morality) with greater
understanding, energy and precision. As a consequence, the students
display ever increasing friendliness towards their mothers, fathers,
brothers, sisters and family friends. Their relatives, seeing the
improvements in the students' attitudes and circumstances, in
gratitude develop warm feelings towards our Centre and its Members.
This is the way we build Buddhist families in this country.
At
our Centre, we began studying Abhidhamma in June 2002 for a period of
nine years. Today we will talk about how it relates to developing
friendliness.
Unlike modern psychology, many of the Buddha's
discourses are directed toward a curative rather than analytic end.
In this manner Buddhism is highly psychological in its breadth.
However, in reaching beyond mere dry analytic reasoning,
Buddha Dhamma seeks to untangle the mind.
The Buddha's
methods, however, are not those of an experimentalist, though his
insight into the mind is indeed highly scientific. His purpose is
rather more therapeutic in scope. Statements employed by the Buddha
regarding the nature of mind are directed toward a specific end:
nibbana.
The importance of the mind and its relation to the
genesis of human action is the foundation of the Buddha's teaching.
In cultivating the mind with friendliness, one must fully appreciate
the importance of the human mind. Without such understanding, it is
not possible to appreciate the potency of the mind.
Deeper
reflection on the terms employed by the Buddha helps contribute to
such understanding. The ancient texts were in the Pali language.
Among the texts, the actual form of the words used by the Buddha can
be untangled within a suitable mind frame. This means a suitable mind
frame must be established. To do this with words and phrases is
difficult but they can be markers which come close to "knowing"
each for himself or herself.
When words are used they are
coloured by a person's cultural inheritance. This "emotive
content" has been analysed in psychological terms by many
writers and is considered socially conditioned.
English, which
relies in the main on distinct terms (ie love and hate) to render
opposition, is harassed by vague subtleties which are prone to such
social qualifications.
Three Members at our Centre understood
that they had been siblings for many past lives. In these past lives,
their interactions had been based on hate. Through the study of
Abhidhamma they can examine their own minds when hate arises and
choose to practice friendliness towards each other.
Youssuf
Karsh said in 1973, "Hate has no room in people who are
universal in thinking".
James Baldwin said in 1958, "I
imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly
is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to
deal with the pain."
How do we plan to duplicate the
natural friendliness that our Buddha Dhamma Teacher has used to train
us?
It is by our successful learning of the Buddha Way we are
establishing new and lasting friendships based on morality and
co-operation with one another.
There has never been a greater
need for the spread of the message of compassion and loving
friendliness taught by the Buddha, as at present times when violence,
corruption, and selfishness are poisoning the cordial relations
between different segments of society, the message being based on
spiritualism, co-existence and mutual respect for different paths of
religion. In fact, the Buddha's message is universal and has part to
play in bringing all nations together for World Peace.
We
receive regular articles from the e-PRAXIS ‘Inter-religious
E-mail Conference’, an information and advocacy initiative,
dedicated to raising consciousness and informed awareness to the
relevance and meaning of civil and religious cooperation and
engagement on a range of issues both African and global.
The
editor of e-PRAXIS is committed to those norms and values entrenched
within the United Nations ‘Universal Declaration of Human
Rights’ (1948); and seeks and strives towards a transformation
of society founded on the inherent dignity of the individual,
non-violence, freedom, equality, justice and peace.
On the
topic of “A Holistic Peace Process for the Middle East”
Yehezkel Landau suggests that ‘it is time to explore other ways
of healing this seemingly intractable conflict’.
Landau
writes, “On the cognitive level, new understandings of identity
- who I am in relation to the “Other” - have to be
nurtured. It is much more challenging than simply changing the notion
of ‘enemy’ into ‘peaceful neighbour’”.
One
of the chapter titles in Menachem Begin’s book THE REVOLT is “We
Fight, Therefore We Are”. Who do we become when the war is over?
How do we justify what we have done, or what others have done in our
name, when we no longer have the other side to blame for all the
horrors of war? How can we move from partisan scripts to more
inclusive renderings of history?
Landau’s ideas may be
generalised thus: The process of peace may begin with declarations of
“mutual recognition” - but unless both sides can perceive
the ‘enemy’, and one’s own self and community, in
non-dualistic terms then the dualist world view of pitting ‘us’
against ‘them’ continues. Inculcating a more inclusive
humanistic vision will require the diligent labour of many
professional educators over the coming years.
Landau goes on
to say, on the emotional level, we need to address and transform
intense feeling that keep both peoples locked in antagonistic
interdependence. The most obvious one is fear. Transforming fear to
mutual trust requires re-humanizing encounters with the “enemy”
at all levels, from the political echelon down to the classroom,
ideally at kindergarten age.
Landau then says, to prepare
people to actually meet their dreaded counterparts, video
representations of the positive qualities in the demonized “Other”
should be broadcast on both local and national television networks,
replacing the negative accounts we are fed daily; we have to
challenge communications professionals to change the “script”.
The messages we receive every day not only perpetuates our
cognitive dualism; they also keep us trapped in “visual
inertia”, preventing us from taking responsibility for our
conditioned feelings and response patterns.
Fear, in
particular is a powerful irrational force driving much of destructive
behaviour in many places. If we want to over come our fears, Landau
suggests, organising widespread harmonious meetings between peoples
of all ages.
Some years ago the Fourteenth Dalai Lama made the
suggestion that National Leaders should meet each year in order to
spend time together without an agenda. In this way they could get to
know each other better, forming stronger relationships which would
then facilitate more positive communication when dealing with
pressing national issues.
At a conference in 1997 in San
Francisco called "Peacemaking: The Power of Non-violence"
the fourteenth Dalai Lama said "I had a very bad temper when I
was young. My life could have gone another way, but because of my
training, my life was changed and transformed to loving-kindness.
Everyone has the potential of greatness of heart. A peaceful
atmosphere comes if we have a friendly compassionate heart. If you
want friendliness from others, it must first be in yourself."
How
do we apply friendliness to change the script?
Each Sunday, we
hold a stall at the Camberwell Market selling brick-a-brack to
generate funds for our Centre. Members work together developing
friendliness towards each other and the customers who come to the
Camberwell Market Stall.
At the Camberwell Market Stall we
have a collection box for the Dhammarajika Orphanage in Bangladesh
where we have been sending funds over many years. The orphanage uses
this much needed money for necessities like food.
We see the
Camberwell Market Stall as an opportunity to apply friendliness to
help others and thereby change the script.
How can you
help?
You can help by sending money for the Orphanage in
Bangladesh or by providing brick-a-brack items to for us to sell at
the Camberwell Market Stall.
To find out the other ways you
can apply friendliness to change the script please call us at the
Centre on 9754 3334.
During next week's broadcast we will talk
about the practice of metta, (in English loving-kindness).
May
you develop the wholesome cetasikas of caga and adosa.
May you
be free from the dualistic world view of 'us' and 'them'.
May
you be free from suffering and live happily.
May you be well
and happy.
This script was written and edited by John D.
Hughes, Julian Bamford, Leanne Eames, Evelin Halls and Pennie
White.
References
Brown, Leslie (1973) The New
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Landau,
Yehezkel (2002) A Holistic Peace Process for the Middle East,
e-PRAXIS “Inter-religious E-mail Conference”, 12 September
2002.
Some references were found using an ISYS search on
“friendliness” from our LAN1 data warehouse.
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