29 June 2003: Operating Written Dana: In how many ways?

The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives

Buddhist Hour
Broadcast 283
For Sunday 29 June 2003

This script is entitled: “Operating Written Dana: In how many ways?”

Walter Savage Landor 1775-1864 said, “He who first praises a book becomingly is next in merit to the author”.

Many texts are in the Pali language. You can find a Pali English Dictionary at
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/index.html.

Generosity is the English word used to translate the Pali word dana.

The meaning given in the Pali Text Society Pali-English Dictionary for dana is:

Giving, dealing out, gift; alms-giving, liberality, munificence; especially a charitable gift to a bhikkhu or to the community of bhikkhus, the Sangha. As such it constitutes a meritorious act (punnan) and heads the list of these, as enumerated in order, danamaya punnan, silamaya punnan, bhavanamaya punnan viz. acts of merit consisting of munificence, good character and meditation.

Special merit and importance is attached to the mahadana the great gift, that is the great offering (of gifts to the Sangha).

Constituents, qualities and characteristics of a dana: 8 objects suitable for gifts form a standard set (also enumerable as 10), viz. anna pana vattha yana mala gandha-vilepana seyyavasatha padipeyya (bread, water, clothes, vehicle, garlands, scented ointment, convenience for lying down & dwelling, lighting.

The Anguttara-Nikaya iv.239 reads:

The worthy man… gives clean (things), what is choice, proper, at fitting time, and with care; he gives repeatedly; and giving calms his mind; after giving he is glad.…these are the eight gifts of a good man.

Clean, choice and timely, proper drink and food
He gives in charity repeatedly
To them that live the life – fair field of merit-
Nor feels remorse at lavishing his gifts
Of things material. Gifts given thus
The seers extol. And sacrificing thus-
Wise man, believer, with his heart set free-
I’the calm and happy world that sage is born.’

Danavatthu is that which constitutes a meritorious gift; almsgiving, beneficence, offering, donation.

[Could include: five ways, called sappurisa-dana at A III.171 sq. ; eight sappdana at A IV.243. Five manners of almsgiving metaphorically for silas.]

Dana (or generosity) is the first of the ten perfections to be practiced.

The Buddha practised dana in forty ways.

Recently, one of our Members recorded ten ways she will practise dana this life by offering: food, water, liquids, flowers, light, shelter and lodgings, Buddha Dhamma texts, medicine, clothing, dedication of merits.

A Five Day Course course will be held at the Chan Academy Australia from 5 September 2003 to 9 September 2003 at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey 3158 Victoria.

The theme of the September five day Bhavana Course is “Written dana in how many ways?”. The course is an Orientation Update for Members during which time participants will produce a document on the way we do things around here for the next five years.

At our Centre we respect International, Australian and Local Laws including Copyright Law.

We will not infringe copyright by publishing material that has not been cleared by the holder of the copyright. We respect industrial and intellectual property rights. Our Founder John D. Hughes worked in the area of patents, trademarks and copyright for many years and founded AMPICTA, the Australian Manufacturers’ Patents, Industrial Designs, Copyright and Trade Mark Association. Our Teacher is a Life Member of AMPICTA, an organisation that looks after intellectual property.

In 1709 Copyright Law was established in English law where the author’s right of ownership lasted fourteen years from the data of publication, plus fourteen further years if the author was still alive at the expiry of that period.

In 1842 Copyright Law further improved in the author’s favour, with forty-two years of possession after publication, or life of the author plus seven years, whichever is longer.

Australian Copyright Council --- Subscriber Information Services reported recently that the Federal Court in Australia “upheld a magistrate's sentence for copyright offenses involving the reproduction of films on DVDs and CDs, and sale of the infringing copies at markets.

The applicant had pleaded guilty to eight offenses. The magistrate had imposed a pecuniary penalty of $8000 (to be paid in monthly installments of $100) and a 5-year good behaviour bond, and ordered delivery up of two computers owned by the applicant.

In dismissing the applicant's appeal against severity of the sentence, the Court agreed with the magistrate's conclusion that the applicant's activities were on a commercial scale, and commented that the penalty imposed was at the bottom end of the range.”

The Australian Copyright Council --- Subscriber Information Services also reported “an agreement between the Commonwealth and the Copyright Agency Ltd. (CAL) concerning government copying and communication of text and print material has been finalised. The agreement covers:

photocopying and faxing print material (apart from
newspapers);

photocopying and faxing, and making and
communicating digital copies, of newspapers; and

making and communicating digital copies of journal
and magazine articles made available internally on
a database.

Departments and agencies are required to sign up individually, and fees will be calculated for each individual department or agency.”

For further information, see
http://www.ag.gov.au/WWW/ENEWSCOPYRIGHTHOME.NSF/HEADINGPAGESDISPLAY/HOME?OPENDOCUMENT”

We produce very little original work in the Western sense. We prefer to make reviews of how to do things.

We have a large data store on our Local Area Networks and software that helps us retrieve information quickly on the selected topic searched for.

We hold copyright in what we write.

Andrew Alexander writes in “Computer networks and copyright – are our laws adequate?”:

“The linking of computers through networks such as the Internet has made possible the rapid and cheap transmission of vast amounts of information to a large growing audience. Members of this audience can access, reproduce and manipulate much of this information at will. The effects of these developments are just beginning to be felt: they are clearly going to be profound.”

“One such effect is the challenge being posed to the viability of current copyright laws – which allocate rights over intellectual goods. Copyright Laws govern the reproduction and exchange of the expression of ideas in the form of books, journals, films, and so on.”

“The basic rule for attributing copyright if that the author in the holder of copyright. An author is the person who reduces an intellectual idea into the relevant material form, not necessarily the person who first had the idea.”

Our publications have precise working instructions and an invitation to practise.

Would not infringe copyright because it is stealing.

The bad consequences of such stealing are poverty, misery, disappointment and a dependent livelihood.

The undesirable result of covetousness is the non-fulfillment of one’s wishes. The consequences of ill will are ugliness, manifold diseases, and having a detestable nature.

We acknowledge our sources on our online version of the weekly Buddhist Hour broadcasts at www.bdcublessings.net.au

A person should always perform good actions and restrain himself from doing unwise actions. If, however, a person has performed an unwise action, it is necessary for him or her to realise where he or she has done wrong and make an effort not to repeat the mistake caused by lack of wisdom.

When a person understands the Law of Kamma and realises that unwise deeds bring unwanted results, he or she will then practise right understanding and avoid performing these unwise actions.

The Buddha taught ten meritorious deeds for us to perform in order to gain a happy and peaceful life as well as to develop knowledge and understanding.

Moral conduct benefits all beings with whom one comes into contact.

Mental culture brings peace to others and inspires them to practise the Dhamma. Respect gives rise to harmony in society, while service improves the lives of others.

Teaching and listening to the Dhamma are important factors for happiness for both the teacher and listener, while encouraging both to live in line with the Dhamma.

But to do this, we set up a library of worthy references.

Straightening one’s views enables a person to show to others the beauty of the Dhamma.

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha taught:

‘Should a person perform good,
He should do it again and again;
He should find pleasure therein;
For blissful is the accumulation of good.’

‘Think not lightly of good, saying,
‘It will not come near to me’ –
Even by the falling of drops a water-jar is filled.
Likewise the wise man, gathering little by little,
Fills himself with good.’

The merits from giving Buddha Dhamma texts to our library are great because we intend our library to last 500 hundred years.

A person who is enjoying receiving paper handouts of Dhamma without paying any attention to kamma has somanassa - sahagatam ditthigata - sampayuttam asankharikam - ekam: meaning, one consciousness, unprompted, accompanied by joy, and connected with wrong view. This is a citta state rooted in lobha (greed).

The Buddha said Dhamma Dana is the highest dana.

We practise Dhamma dana in many ways.

Our strength is that we offer Dhamma at no charge from our five websites.

We want to deliver a mass education system about the best insights that Buddha Dhamma can deliver.

Our conceptual solution for Information Technology is robust enough to meet our mission to target 1 million readers of our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review (BDDR) Online by 2020 AD.

If we were to be asked for an analysis model for explaining this figure, we would take a bold view of the year 2020, and having the assumption that there will be 1 billion persons interested in the Buddha way, we want to reach 1 in 1000 persons. At the lower end, if the world figure is 500 million in 2020, we want to reach 1 in 500 persons.

More and more, we plan that more of our ranges of teaching are delivered by Internet.

Presently we run five websites.

Our flagship journal the Buddha Dhyana Dana Review can be found online at two websites at www. bdcu.org.au and www.bddronline.net.au.

We have an IT plan that is scalable so we can deliver full issues of the Buddha Dhyana Dana Review from our computer database to our Internet sites with little fuss.

Our Longhair Australia News online publication, which we plan to publish four times each year, is dedicated to persons who will come and help us in the future with information technology.

In line with our goals to preserve our Buddha Dhamma texts, some of the aims of Longhair Australia News are to:

- keep an accurate record of backups for what has been uploaded onto our sites and when, as well as a list of Compact Discs we have burnt;

- publish documentation on our recording and library practices;

- map and picture ways of finding out what happens
on our websites (Site Maps);

- make our publications accessible (Longhair Publications including monographs);

We keep up to date with the latest International Computer Technology (ICT) philosophy and developments to guide our preservation strategies. Our actions include:

reading technical literature;

understanding and making use of computer technology in an everyday context;

using digital products already available, to carry out tasks as a student, teacher or researcher more quickly and efficiently, and to combat sectorial specialisation, which is suffocating philosophy, in favour of a more fruitful interdisciplinarity;

enlarging the range of products that are theoretically feasible. As elementary examples, one may think of the opportunity of listening to Buddhist Hour programs or viewing hundreds of Buddhist Images on the Internet;

presenting ourselves not only as philosophers but also as informed and intelligent users, who can enter into dialogue with industry and promote the production of new technological solutions in order to obtain increasingly adequate and flexible services from the International Computer Technology (ICT) market.

We, as scholars, should be able to get the most out of what has been made easier by ICT, get the best out of what has been made possible for the first time by ICT, and finally suggest new ICT applications for future needs. Our aim is to fulfil these goals.

The John D. Hughes Heritage Collection is the oldest Buddha Dhamma reference library in Victoria at the same site. Preservation of the collection is our priority. The collection includes:

Rare and valuable texts including the complete Buddhist Cannon.

A catalogue that contains over 4000 entries on texts in our Library

Commentaries by renowned Teachers

“Books of Guidance” in English on various foreign languages

Journals and newsletters

Audio tape recordings of Teachings

Buddhist artifacts, ritual objects from all traditions and original works of Calligraphy

Video recordings of Buddhist Monks and Nuns

Buddha Dhamma data warehouse including electronically formatted texts and material

Audio and digital versions of over 150 of our Buddhist Hour radio broadcasts

Chan Academy multimedia learning CD-Roms

Photographs taken locally and internationally, including over 3000 digital photos online

We preserve texts to propagate Buddha Dhamma by use of different media.

283 Buddhist Hour radio programs have been produced over five years.

The text of the programs are preserved in multiple paper copies in our library, recorded on audio tapes, digital tapes, backed up on our bdcublessings website and from time to time we burn to archive onto CD’s.

We preserve Dhamma texts by publishing globally with input from papers from many great Masters.

Some sites contain audio chanting as well as video instruction.

We intend to develop more and more Internet sites so we must operate under many different regulations in different countries.

New translations of Suttas from Pali to English by Sister M. Uppalawanna have been added to our Internet sites. The Suttas Majjhima Nikaaja 1 – 101, Majjhima III, Anguttara Nikaaya I – Ruupaadii Ekaka Vagga I are on our websites:

http://www.bddronline.net.au/bddr12no3/
http://www.bdcu.org.au

We have loaded an English Translation of a French publication about the History of Pureland Buddha Dhamma to our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review Online website.

We are learning to systematise the handling and preservation of captured data in digital form. We have hundreds of colour photographs from three digital cameras that we have backed up to CD’s for storage and use by our webmasters.

In the case of the Brooking Street Bugle, we have found how to increase the very human approach online of our publication.

Now we understand we can illustrate an article with 200 colour photographs or more on our web site, whereas if we were to print it we would have to limit the range of illustrations because of physical space and economic considerations.

We have around 3000 colour photographs online on our five websites.

We want to distribute and preserve more Chan Academy Australia branded information in various modern media.

We aim to be the fifth most popular Buddha Dhamma e-resource in the world by 2008. By that year, a new fast Internet service ought to be operating.

At our Centre, our library contains most of our sources of research information. During the last three decades the library collection has been assembled by our Teacher. This is called the John D. Hughes Collection at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey 3158 Victoria Australia.

Internally, we use search engines to find good information for researching our position papers, reports, documents for the Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, the weekly Buddhist Hour broadcast scripts as well as, for example, searching for web site addresses and matters of administration and corporate governance.

Last Tuesday we commenced our second year of Abhidhamma classes at our Centre. Students use their own merit and energy to learn.

If students do not replace the consumption of merit brought about by their physical consumption of paper handouts of Buddha Dhamma, they will be unable to receive an education based on printed material based learning (books, journals, web site, CD-ROMs) in future times.

We are literate.

Students are expected to read our Buddha Dhamma texts and handouts given on a weekly basis. They must continue to increase the amount of data they handle with higher order analysis.

Also, they ought to read our Buddhist Hour weekly radio broadcast, our Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, our Brooking Street Bugle, our Longhair Australia News, our photographs, reports, papers and any other written materials published on our web sites and elsewhere.

Much of our material is available online on our web sites, so that participants can research off-site. In the future, we will also prepare CD-ROMs for offline reading at our Centre.

As our Teacher John D. Hughes recovers, he continues to teach the Dhamma.

One day while in hospital he indicated to his wife Anita from his hospital bed that she should read the Metta Sutta, or Sutra on Loving-kindness, to two patients nearby in the hospital ward where he is now being cared for.

Anita initially declined, saying that she would stay by his side in order to devote all of her energy to his recovery, but she was persuaded by some words he wrote down:

“The gift of one piece of Dhamma is more wealth than all the jewels in all the worlds.”

Anita then informed the nearby patients that her husband would like her to read a Buddhist prayer for them. They were delighted, and so she read to them the Metta Sutta.

Rare is a chance to meet great Teachers of Buddha Dhamma in Victoria. When a window of opportunity opens, we ought plan to be there.

When Buddha Dhamma statements are studied, they are found to be a practical guide of how to live in the world if a person chooses to stay within the becoming of birth and death processes.

The John D. Hughes Collection requires monetary donations to fund these worthwhile causes. We invite the donations of Buddhist texts, commentaries and Dhamma material to assist with the growth of the Collection now and throughout the 21st century.

This will help us to create a more complete reference resource, and allow greater use by Buddha Dhamma Scholars and Practitioners.

Your donation to the Collection will not only increase our library’s holdings, but also will also contribute to lifetimes of learning and preserve Buddha Dhamma material for future practitioners.

May persons develop generosity with written texts to benefit both self and others.

May each person know the truth of the written Dhamma himself or herself.

May you know peace that comes from hearing Buddha Dhamma.

May persons be well and happy in gathering Buddha Dhamma texts for us.

This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Anita Hughes, Julian Bamford, Evelin Halls and Pennie White.

References

Alexander, Andrew, “Computer networks and copyright – are our laws adequate?” in What’s and Issue? Perspectives on Contemporary Australian Concerns, Oxford University Press, Australia, Chapter Five, pp 41-51.

Australian Copyright Council --- Subscriber Information Services, Chen v NSW Police Service [2003] FCA 589, 2003 available at URL http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2003/589.html and http://www.ag.gov.au/WWW/ENEWSCOPYRIGHTHOME.NSF/HEADINGPAGESDISPLAY/HOME?OPENDOCUMENT

Dhammananda, K. Sri, What Buddhists Believe, Buddhist Missionary Society, Malaysia, pp157-160.

Hare E. M., Gradual Sayings IV [Anguttara-Nikaya], Pali Text Society, Oxford, 1989, p 318.

Landor, Walter Savage, cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Second Edition, Oxford University Press Australia, 1954, pp. 308-309.

Seymour-Smith, Martin (editor), Novels and Novelists, Winward, London, 1980, p 272.

Hughes, John D., Johnson, R., Carter, F, The Conceptual Solution. Discussion Paper On Information Technology Planning 1999. Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.

Longhair Australian News, ISSN - 1446-5124 (Print) Volume 2. No. 2 Publication Date: 1 July 2003, Winter Edition

2003 Outline of Program for Teachings, Seminars and Classes, Chan Academy Australia. September 2002

International Dhamma Activities (IDA) Task Unit Report for the Period 1 July 2001 to 30 June 2002. Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., Australia

Abhidhamma Class No. 52, 17 June 2003
Hughes John D., Halls, Evelin., Review of merit needed by participants for Abhidhamma Teaching at our Centre 2002 to 2011 CE.’

‘The gift of Dhamma excels all other gifts”. The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Script 270 Sunday 30 March 2003

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.