Buddhist Hour
Script No. 383
Broadcast live on Hillside 88.0 FM
on Sunday 29 May 2005CE 2548 Buddhist Era

This script is entitled:
Buddha Dhamma and Challenges in the 21st Century
Part III

In the 2549 years since the passing into Parinibbana of Shakyamuni Buddha, many beings have undergone great efforts to preserve his teachings.

In Years of Buddhism, written by Professor P.V. Bavat, he recalls the first Council thus:

“According to the Pali tradition recorded in the canonical and non-canonical literature, three Sangitis (recitals) or Councils were held to draw up the canonical texts and the creed in their pure form. The First Council was held at Rajagrha immediately after the Parinibbana of the Buddha.”

From the very moment of the Buddha's passing, the Sangha were constructing a method in which the Dhamma and the Vinaya could be preserved in its original purity.

The first scriptures were written on palm leaves or early papers or were inscribed onto stone.

Over the two and a half thousand years that have elapsed since then, and the technology of the written word has advanced in ways which were not fathomable even five hundred years ago.

With the invention of the printing press, important texts and scriptures became widely available as the time it took to re-create a text was substantially shortened.

In this modern age the technology of the written word has developed to a very high level. We now see the advent of digital versions of important texts and scriptures, and they are widely available for free distribution on the Internet.

Also, with the development of high-capacity digital storage devices, we can see that the contents of a whole conventional library could potentially be stored and accessed from a single workstation.

Master John D. Hughes took note of this technology and the potential that it offered to the aim of preserving and propagating the Buddha Dhamma.

In preparing for the coming age of information and communication technology, he wrote a paper entitled, “Buddha Dhamma and Challenges in the 21st Century”, which we will conclude in this program, as the last in a series of three.

If you have not heard the first and second instalments of “Buddha Dhamma and Challenges in the 21st Century”, we encourage you to visit our website, , where you can read the scripts from the previous weeks. In the future we will be uploading mp3 audio files of the actual broadcast.

We hope that in reading this paper we can inspire many people to take actions towards preserving and propagating the Buddha Dhamma for the sake of all beings.

18.0 Sustaining 21st Century libraries and information centres.

Busha and Harter (1980) suggests that circumstances that account for the growth of libraries include:

1. General recognition within societies of the value and necessity for collecting, preserving, and distributing knowledge.

2. Attainment of periods of peace and political stability within a society.

3. Availability of periods of leisure and the facility of people to enjoy them.

4. Accumulation of vast, private fortunes which can lead to philanthropic gifts to educational and cultural institutions.

5. Widespread recognition of the value of self-improvement and the placing of emphasis on a well-informed citizenry.

6. Revival of learning which emphasises the accumulation and utilisation of collections of graphical materials.

7. An atmosphere of permanence and stability for social institutions.

8.Rise of creative literary activities that promote more writing and reading.

9. Production of abundant supplies of paper, printing equipment, and other implements of communication.

10. Interaction among different societies and cultures by means of commerce and travel.

11. Desire of rulers and political leaders to compete with others in developing large depositories of recorded information.

12. Development of educational institutions such as universities and public schools which depend upon repositories of knowledge.

13. Rise of a nucleus of educated and civic-minded citizens.

14. Accumulation of vast collections of public records and literary materials in a single language.

19.0 Facing the usual Challenges

The fundamental conditions of human birth will continue to prevail.

The usual challenges ahead of Buddhism deal with the types of minds persons use in response to these changes.

The Abbot Zenkei Shibaayama of Nanzenji Monastery Kyoto, Japan lectured in the United States and is cognisant of Western Ways.

In 1970, he stated that at the bottom of modern persons, who are tired and afraid of the pressure of modern culture, nostalgia for missing humanity seems to be gradually awakened.

This nostalgia may not be satisfied by political reformation, improvement of economic systems, or diplomatic negotiations alone; it seems to be more deeply rooted than that.

Now is the time to use the best of critical thinking about what ought to be targeted as gains for the next century - the 21st.

20.0 Light on the Path - back to merit making basics.

Rarely does comparison with others help us.

However, it is worth noting that the Leader of the Roman Christians, Pope John Paul II, suggested the new apostolic letter, Dies Domini, the day of the Lord.

This new policy appeals for a renewal of Sunday as a day of rest.

The apostolic letter is not just to bishops and priests, but to the whole church.

He rejects a day of inactivity, but encourages a day of unique activity: worship, contemplation, fellowship and good deeds.
At present, (as at July 1998) 16-18% of Australian Catholics attend church on Sundays according to figures supplied by the Archbishop's research office in Melbourne, Australia.

The Vatican is to be praised for its courage in confronting the indifference of persons, perhaps motivated purely by materialistic and financial gain, who cut themselves off from regular teachings.

With this example in mind, we might be able to teach our Dhamma followers to observe practice either by real stays at Viharas or when this is not possible a virtual Internet visit on our holy days. (These are the quarter, half, three quarter and full moon days in the Buddhist calendar).

In the 21st century, it may become more common in person's thought patterns to practice in a real Church for one day a week as do the Christians.

In Australia, it will be interesting to note how many of the 80% of persons calling themselves Roman Christians who do not attend church regularly heed the call.

No actual Australian survey is available for Buddha Dhamma practitioners attendance at Viharas. The author's impression is a higher percentage of Buddha Dhamma practitioners than 16 to 18% attend a vihara regularly (meaning at least monthly).

To date, recorded visits from Australian addresses to our Internet site are about equal to actual visits to our Vihara.

If our Australian Internet site continues to enjoy current increases, we will anticipate we may soon reach a thousand or more site visits per day in 1999.

The isolation from good information for persons which might be expected due to the vast size of Australia is minimised to some extent by the excellent communication infrastructure developments nationwide and reaching out to remote regions.

Hence, our information on our organisation's web site has the potential to bring Buddha Dhamma to persons living anywhere in Australia.

Further research is needed to get the local pattern of relative attendance at Buddhist religious Centres.

One theory which needs testing is to test if radio listening or television viewing of a church service gives a "proxy" satisfaction of real attendance.

In post industrial society, it is self evident that a form of "proxy satisfaction " is obtained from viewing sporting events, where the main reason for non attendance is finance, distance or work pressures.

Our organisation commenced to provide a regular (one hour per week) limited reception FM radio broadcast. Next year, we intend to survey the outcome of this experiment.

In Australia, where Monks alternate between many Centres, it is likely the absence of a particular popular Monk or Nun at the Temple affects attendance of lay persons.

The long term cultural effect of the Christian attendance proposal seems to imply that a scaling down of work and frivolities on the Sabbath day and getting on with prayer may become a popular worldwide culture next century.

At the conceptual level, the notion is easy to follow for lay persons and, in general, easy to follow traditions have great vigour when they are introduced because of their novelty value.

The folklore of the underclass as a "non-religious" segment of the society whose labour might be needed to serve the "religious" segment of society on their Sabbath day does not appear to be too dangerous to society over a longer term.

Folklore is a form of nostalgia for the ancient days when the present citizens of a nation hold that their ancestors achieved greatness in terms of conquest or in completion in trade.

21.0 Learning from global history.

The last time the European world was fairly global in outlook was under the ancient Roman Empire.
In European history, we find persons like Annaeus Seneca who paid little attention to the logic and physics of the older schools. For Seneca, virtue was the one great end of philosophic effort.
Seneca was the wealthy minister of Nero.

The historian, Samual Dill, noted that great generals and leaders of the last age of the republic often carried philosophers in their train.

The serious aim of philosophy commended itself to the intensely practical and strenuous spirit of the Romans and although there were plenty of showy lecturers or preachers in the first century who could draw fashionable audiences, the private philosophic director was a far more real power.

But some did not take their roles very seriously.

Both Nero and Hadrian used to amuse themselves with the quarrels and vanities of their philosophers.

That a courtier like Seneca, who lived during the reigns of Caligula and Claudius, and was the tutor and minister of Nero, could have composed such letters seems improbable. Yet he was an analyst of a corrupt society and a guide to moral reform who lived through "the gloomiest years of imperial tyranny".

Seneca was the ideal director for the upper class of such an age. He had risen to the highest office in a world-wide monarchy and spent years in hourly fear of death.

He had no illusions about the actual condition of human nature.

In his preface, Dill (1904) stresses that the scope of his book Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelus is strictly limited and he concentrated on the inner moral life of the time.

He reasons that philosophy in its highest and best sense is not the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, nor the disinterested play of intellect, regardless of intellectual consequences, as in a Platonic dialogue.

It is pre-eminently the science or art of right living, that is, a life conformed to right reason.

22.0 Achieving a global "unbiased mind"

Graham Little (1998) states he asked Alan Davies "Just what does psychoanalysis do for you?" (17)
He replied, "It allows you to think the thoughts you're already thinking".

Little believes this is really about communication - about dethroning the unconscious political correctness "that stifles the many voices bouncing around in our heads".

Perhaps the 21st century will be the time where it becomes fashionable to flower rather than dismiss the promise of Western psychoanalysis which somehow may suggest there is tangible evidence of a mind (citta) operating within human beings and animals.

There is some recent evidence appearing, using fast response measurement in terms of millisecond, that "snap" decision-making used by most persons has unconscious, built-in race or gender bias.

This is recognised as the kammic nature of person's minds.

A better script for human beings is likely to say that this potent line of research may bring some effort to make the reduction of this bias trend the intent of education in the 21st century.

Perhaps this bias may be described in terms of mind.

It may well be that someone will find a rigorous repeatable scientific demonstration of the biased notion of mind itself being able to form considered thoughts and having secondary results in feelings, pleasant or unpleasant.

If this is so, once one "discovered" biased mind is found, the way opens to show the prospect of the biased types of "mind" known in the Buddhist canon.

If it became the fashion to search on how one would "unbias" the mind, then history shows that it is exactly what Buddha Dhamma can achieve with yathabhutum mind (a mind free of personality bias).

23.0 Discovering Citta

With modern communication means such as the internet, news of the critical demonstration of mind to the satisfaction of many persons who enter and follow the rigour and discipline of mathematic modelling could pass from one knowledge institution to another within a short time and blend into the Western scientific materialistic paradigm.

The promise of speed of electronic publication means experimental results demonstrated at one institution can be available overnight unless the information is withheld for trade reasons.

Just as the superego with its harmful effects was a fundamental discovery of psychoanalytic science this century, so the rigorous experiment that uncovers the odourless, colourless, shapeless mind base (citta) could be expected to be found and accepted in the 21st century.

What is to be shown is that the mind (citta) is something other than the mere chatter of molecules of matter (rupa) jumping around between different energy states.

At present, there is no real need to invoke the notion of mind to explain the twists and turns of the mental pictures that arise from chemical experiments with minute amounts of transmitter chemicals in brain chemistry.

In conventional science, it has been noted that certain organic substances can help us feel fine provided their concentrations are within certain ranges. We talk about normal brain chemistry.

The great success of the materiality approach to conventional scientific medicine, such as doubling the life expectancy of Australians in the last century, is not based on evidence of a mind because medical treatment is based on ideas of substances being given for treatment of most diseases.

Because the direct insight coming from correct meditation gives knowledge that mind exists can only be found each for himself or herself, many persons doubt the existence of mind.

Because of the materialistic science assisting the denial of the labelling processes of consciousness so respected by Freud, this can give persons, the Maras of the human race, a medium for dismissing the very notion of mind induced morality.

If the playful stirring of the collective super ego is treated as a property of matter rather than mind, the temptation to treat a Buddha Dhamma statement that mind precedes all things is discounted as some chemical ghost within the human machine that should be dismissed.

For the material driven moralists, "communication" as a property of mind smacks of compromise with their need to hold what they call the modern scientific chemical version of human beings.

Yet they hold notions of "customer confidence" in economic terms, and can agree that the mindset that is held in mind, say, for a prolonged trade war may damage the wellbeing and lifestyle of a group of persons in a nation for a longer time and more in dollar terms than a small conventional war.

What is "customer confidence" if not mind?

What is the will to hurt a group of persons if not mind?

Australia has a surprising zest for making folklore about fighting in another nation's trade or of carving out trade markets in some other nation's sphere of influence.

What are these things if not mind?

24.0 Aspects of the Doctrine (SADDHAMA)

The three aspects of the Doctrine are those of learning, practice, and resultant fruits, that is, the map, the exploration following the map, and the milestone of success achieved by following the signs and symbols.

To practise without learning is like venturing forth without a guide-book. One is likely to get lost or perish before achieving anything worthwhile. Hence the importance of the Canon, the Commentary and later texts.

Common sense alone is not enough although common sense itself is indispensable.

However there are more books than we have time left on this planet. To read and preach without exploring is to waste precious opportunity.
Reading alone is not enough although reading itself is indispensable. (19)

25.0 The Path You are Looking For

The Buddha taught that no beings arise in a happy, heavenly state after death because of gain of relatives, wealth or health but beings are reborn in such states because of morality and right view.

What ought you do to establish that you in fact have a mind that determines what you do or do not do?

Buddha Dhamma shows you the method of how this fundamental knowing about mind is to be done.

If you are interested in this line of reasoning of the index project contact our Centre at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey VIC 3158, Australia.

Our Centre is fortunate in that it is rich enough in library resources to select the foremost methods from a variety of multicultural activities arising from the past.

May all beings be well and happy.

This ends the third and final installment of 'Buddha Dhamma and Challenges in the 21st Century.'

The Buddhist Hour began in the same year as 'Buddha Dhamma and Challenges in the 21st Century', was written, in 1998.

Since the publishing of this paper, we have developed from operating one website to 12. Since metering these 12 websites we have registered that over 21,000 persons from Australia and overseas have made a virtual visit to our temple by visiting one or more of our websites.

You can find the scripts for nearly all of these at www.bdcublessings.net.au.

In one section of the paper, John D. Hughes writes 'Light on the Path – Back to merit making basics.'
One of our current projects is the digitisation and preservation of oral teachings by John D. Hughes and other teachers.

When developing the perfection of Dana (Generosity) students are told that 'The gift of Dhamma excels all other gifts.'

From this statement we can deduce that making the Dhamma available to others is an act of great merit.

Our Vice-President, Frank Carter, is preparing a manual of how to preserve recorded Buddha Dhamma, as to make it available for the sake of many beings. Here is a brief summary of that project.

For many years Buddhist Temples, Libraries and Centres around the world have built up audio tape collections of Buddha Dhamma Talks or Teachings given by Buddhist Teachers.

In many cases the life of these audio taped recordings will have now reached their maximum life limits.

Audio tape recordings are subject to deterioration and have a predicted reliable life span of between 15 and 25 years only depending on the conditions of storage and other factors.

These recordings gradually deteriorate over time to a point where it becomes impossible to understand the contents and in the case of possibly unique Dhamma Teachings, those teachings would be lost and probably unrecoverable.

There are many methods of preservation available which are suitable for recordings which have not deteriorated too much.

We offer in this report a relatively low cost solution to Buddhist organisations to preserve your audio tape Dhamma collections. The method we suggest is by no means the only option however it is designed to give a very satisfactory outcome without being too expensive or too complex.

The aim of providing the summary is that other Buddhist Centres who recognise the need to preserve the Dhamma recordings in their collections which are on audio tapes can use the information we are offering to set up their own digitisation project and convert all their tapes to digital storage on CD's and computers.

In addition to the preservation of the Teachings this will also enable them to reproduce their Dhamma recordings very cheaply for distribution on CD's or even to be placed on the Internet for persons around the world to have free access.

We hope that listeners will be inspired to take action as per the advice of the late Master John D. Hughes.

May you be well and happy.
May the Buddha Dhamma flourish on this planet.
May the Buddha Dhamma be preserved and made available to every living being.


The paper ‘Buddha Dhamma and Challenges in the 21st Century’ was written by John D. Hughes. The script for the program was prepared and edited by Alec Sloman, Julian Bamford and Frank Carter.

Document Statistics
Word count: 3613

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 print outs 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.

Back to Top