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One European scholar estimated it will take Buddhist scholars four hundred years just to complete unfinished business in the Dhamma scholarship fields.

This is likely to be true if the old fashioned ways of mapping out thinking in 3rd order or 4th order knowledge are adopted. Traditionally this has been the learning genre of the European University scholars. In itself it is fine - but for us it means that there is never going to be enough funds available for Buddhist scholars to follow their paradigm of what they think or feel in thought to be done.

At the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd, we choose to network and train Buddhist Scholars who can operate in 5th or 6th order knowledges, which was the preferred mode of many of Buddha Dhamma's classic writers in ancient times.

We believe that this may be an effective form to achieve what must be achieved and do what should be done to benefit the few and bless the many.

From the outset when the WBU was first proposed, key Members at our Centre recognised that at long last here was a viable proposition for something that was extremely important that had been missing from the world.

In the same way that even the poorest Buddhist Temple provides what the French educational theorist Pierre Bourdieu would describe as "cultural capital" for those who attend them; so too does the WBU research add to cultural capital and, by publication, make for its effective utilisation in many places.

Throughout Buddhist history, international effort was concentrated on forming knowledge networks to amass this "cultural capital" into peak gateway terminals at created Centres of learning. Many great examples have existed, such as the revered Nalanda University.

At these Centres of Learning, from inception, at least four higher blessings (mangala) arose.

In these places could be found persons who, having networked with other places, could obtain the fruits of humility, contentment, gratitude and opportune hearing of Dhamma on a regular basis.

Perception of the Noble Truths was easy in such places because patience and pleasing speech, association with holy persons and religious discussions at due season were the hallmarks of such places.

These were in a suitable locality, where much wisdom and much science could be found, and the discipline of well-trained minds was evident over the four seasons.

Today, due to the difficulty of translation of the total concept of the Centres of Learning, we choose to refer to such places as a University. The Oxford Dictionary defines a University as "The whole body of teachers and scholars engaged at a particular place, in giving and receiving instruction in the higher branches of learning; such persons associated together as a society or corporate body..."

The English language word "University" is being applied to many places today and has moved beyond the traditional concepts of bricks and mortar.

The major question confronting scholars in the world today well might be: "How does a new university differ from a university that does new things?"

Even the oldest universities are supposed to be able to do new things, especially if they meet new frontiers of knowledge or develop new networks to expand their outreach in several directions at once.

Many of the world's universities are changing to where private and commercial funding capital is changing their paradigm in favour of those who think more in terms of corporate strength than what is thought of as basic research.

In an article from Japan Buddhist Federation 1999 titled "Possibilities for Applying the New Multimedia to the World of Buddhism", Professor Koji Okuri is currently conducting research on what kind of age we will be living in at the beginning of the 21st century.

He says that hardly anyone has the capacity to predict what the world will be like in 2101 C.E., one hundred years from now.

Instead, he focuses on the near future occurring between now and the year 2005 C.E., focusing on information.

What kind of age will we be living in in 2005 C.E.?

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 (humanlike), with a continuation of the trend toward increasing density and decreasing size.

From another angle, this means:

Greater Choice - in the past persons 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.

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.

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.

Simplicity, Ease of Use - all services will become simplified.

Reality - the world of communication is virtual, and therefore persons will come to seek that which has no limits, and is close to reality.

Improved Reliability - persons will come to demand higher reliability of information communication than they do, for example, for cars or trains.

Professor Okuri says we will see advances in:

Mobile communications- the volume of information transmitted by mobile communications, typified by mobile phones, will increase to around 30 times current levels. There will be huge leaps in the development of technology such as TV telephones that give minute detail and a sense of reality.

Wearable computers - in other words, persons 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.

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.

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 persons would usually see themselves as also belonging to that belief. This may change in the future.

Technology such as data mining computer simulation technology can be used that allows us to be able to see into places where we have never been able to see before, such as inside the human body.

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 persons 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.

Furthermore he posits that the world of Buddhism from a multimedia viewpoint becomes classified as an information industry.

Historically, Buddhism 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, he thinks it is significant, and only natural, that all monks 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, as well as the real world in which we live.

When you compare the two, we dwell more in the virtual world.

And 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' of the world of Buddhism.

Firstly, the example can be given of the increasing use of information in temple management. Computer software is used to record details of families that support temples.

Professor Okuri thinks 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.

Since inception, our organisation has been steady in its stance or belief that our corporate development ought to strive to be more internationalised, even if it generates short-term costs with no apparent return on investment.

We have quoted at length from our translation of this key Japanese paper because it embodies some of the most succinct thinking of great scope.

If our humble translation does not do the notions in the paper justice, we apologise to all concerned.

What drivers did we use to evolve from local to national to global sharing information?

The cool wish to help others share our insights.

What drivers have changed our information from analogue to digital to multimedia?

The inspiration that the Japanese Professor is correct in his insight.

Our history of networking others has never wavered.

Since inception, we have given out information and stored information.

By 1990, we passed one milestone when the Founder's 60th Birthday Accolade was published carrying international scholar's contributions.

In the same year, another milestone in our globalisation was the appointment of our Centre as a Regional Centre of the World Fellowship of Buddhists at their meeting in Seoul, South Korea, in 1990. Our Charter was dated 22 October 1990.

We were determined to increase our cover and accessibility of our printed research and training techniques.

To mark this policy imperative, we altered the name of our "Newsletter" to Buddha Dhyana Dana Review.

In March 1991, Volume 1, No, 1 of Buddha Dhyana Dana Review was launched.

The name change was suggested by Professor D.K. Barua M.A., P.R.S., Dip.Lib. D. Phil. and supported by members of the international community. What did this change mean in cost terms?

Our 30 June 1990 balance sheet showed Newsletter publication and postage costs of $2, 482.
The following year (1991) the figure for our journal and postage costs was $ 4,051.
At that time, our Review had four issues per year, each issue being about 30 pages.
At present, our Review is issued three times a year, each having about 84 pages.

Our 30 June 1999 balance sheet shows preparation and postage costs of $13, 004.

We have been aware that our costs per page in paper form will become prohibitive and our Internet costs per page becomes very attractive because the user pays the distribution printing costs. We need new approaches to networking other than the circulation of BDDR.

We want to keep both streams. Why? We do not wish to limit its increase but find we must work smarter at fundraising if we keep relying on our printed journal as one of our prime networking enablers.

After three years of experience since we launched our website www.bdcu.org.au, we know what cost containment is feasible.

We wish to thank Elysian Internet Services who run www. elysian.com.au for hosting our site at no charge.

Since our website launch in Australia, we have been busy educating our Members to buy computers, connect them to the Internet for home use and train our Members to seek modern work experiences that use Internet services as the norm.

One of our vital training processes is to provide e-mail.

Gradually, our internal e-mail on our Local Area Network (LAN) has been forced upon Members to some extent to change their culture. They now use it with ease.

It has proved so valuable and useful for Members because they arrive at the Centre at different times of day or night. By writing things down on e-mail they know what is to be done next after next. This is superior communication.

All Members find by this learning experience that networking and reporting to all Members on e-mail is cost superior to the paper-based model of reporting in this regard.

To practice regular writing is vital. Each active member is expected to report at least twice a week. Their mails must deal with practical or useful information of what they have been doing.

We estimate present costs of about $20 per week per person to provide about 35 active Members with e-mail. Because we planned scalability, we could provide for up to 300 users without altering our LAN. Members are trained to write clear and precise mails. Up to 280 mails per week are circulated to different combinations of members.

Since we can connect a new Member in 6 minutes to our LAN system, our growing list of active Members has the same level of information service as our older Members.

The most significant change brought about by e-revolution we have observed is we find we can induct new Members who are graduates into our culture within four weeks.

After four weeks they are then useful and can work at our Centre and learn and look up on mails what they need from our new e-systems.

A few years ago, we estimate it took us about two years to get new members to the same level of performance when we were relying on paper-based training to induct them into the way we do things around here.

To improve the popular appeal of our networking, we have launched (June 2000) a second enabler website using multimedia.

This new site gives video blessings with Pali chanting and can be found at www.bdcu.blessings.one.net.au. This is hotlinked to our text-based Web site.

We now feel confident our Centre can afford to continue applying what we have learnt this decade of how we can afford to publish our traditional and modern academic research in various forms. Part of our training is by way of the brush

Training in the Triple Gem cannot be done by any e-machine chanting the refuges.

Our members must do many things to obtain refuge on a regular basis if they wish to join and be accepted by the international community.

Our Members find over time, each for himself or herself, that their live Pali chanting over a local FM broadcast station is strong in merit making. They experience more wholesome minds in their everyday life because of this practice. Over the last two years those who read the scripts are being trained to write the scripts.

They vow where they can not to substitute live chanting on air with recorded chanting.

We teach new Members to chant, and when the time is right we encourage them to speak Dhamma on air. We support the notion of propagation of learning with good information. The Broadcast Team funds the costs of buying air space. The training is varied.

But the merit to write must be made elsewhere.

When we build a stone and brick stupa for three Buddha hair relics, we do it ourselves and do not complain even though it is wet and cold at our Centre in winter time. We had to develop faster methods of reference locations.

We research the content of our Dhamma radio talks from our data warehouse with our latest search engines for our radio broadcasts and edit critically. We respect the long tradition of Buddhist scholarship and strive to network more and more information in digital form. Whatever we need to do, we do.

If we are given a suitable reference in Japanese, we translate it to English within one week and share the insights of the 'learned' Japanese Professors of great scope. Within our hybrid model of a traditional Temple we work and develop our IT research to lead members to new IT work. Our members increase our outreach to our local and target audiences by producing as many as 30 edited A4 pages of Dhamma writing per week that matches our public relations image and style.

Also, we provide Members with adequate on-line look-up facilities that are akin to the equivalent of the speed of celestial eye.

By stressing by example to the Members of our worldwide networks the need to give us Dhamma dana, Masters in the small Temples write things down and the living memory of their practice is gathered free of any political ideology.

Major writings on kasina practice, commentaries on the Noble eight stages of access and fruit culminating the fruit of fruits (araharto magga) become available to us. Our network scholars provide us with expedient means, detailing dimensions and use of such effective devices as mandalas, yantrams, and Buddhist images. This information is preserved and copied within the scriptorium of the institution.

The history of activities of Mahavihara places, modelled along the lines of a well-equipped grove and park given by a rich lay follower Anathapindika in Lord Buddha's time or Nalanda became our inspiration. Specialised traditions of small Temples in various countries today are documented with care.

This practice follows the method used in 1977 by the author who documented the practices of the few small Buddhist Temples in Australia. This project was designed to reduce racial conflict and promote tolerance in Australia.

This 1977-1979 project was funded by the Australian Schools Commission. At that time the author had to build a system of networks quickly and gain acceptance by the foreign Monks in Australia.

Apart from the high energy (viriya) and general Buddhist scholastic character of the author, as well as his thought and goodwill, it was evident that he was doing something that was very rare in the Australian academic field of that time.

Firstly, he meet with the convenors advisors to the WFB in Thailand; persons of good heart who were modest about their scholastic achievements to date and, secondly, these persons had the vision to see that there was a performance gap opening in the semantics between what the Western universities thought they had discovered about higher orders of thought and what was known as higher orders of thought by Buddha Dhamma practitioners who had mastered the tools for mental creator power in the practical methods given by Lord Buddha.

Although Monks were prohibited from giving overt displays of what they could do it was permissible to show the skilful way to teachable persons as was demonstrated many centuries ago at the great Buddhist Training Centres.

Today, in a few remote places in the jungles of Laos and Vietnam the ancient training method is still taking place and even today in Nepal and Mongolia, texts written at Nalanda and Taxila are still used and well known.

But in the Western world, the academic study of "Buddhistic" things as documented for many years by Dr. Richard Gard in his enclopaedic Institute for Advanced Study of World Religions at Stoney Brooke publications showed different patterns of Buddhistic research were fashionable.

Today, it is an open secret that much Government funding was given to scholars who wandered around places and wrote secondary reports likely to be of interest to Europeans and Americans on cold war politics.

With the closing of that cold war episode in history, funds to continue such research have ceased. The opportunistic "Buddhist" scholars have switched fields of study to fields where funding is available for the sociology needed in the new politics of the information age.

As the saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune. The author does not intend to disparage the motive or intellect of such scholars.

However, our conceptual solution is that we wish to be seen as building up a different type of network where our scholars are driven by love of Buddha Dhamma and a clear understanding that there are other values in life worthwhile apart from choosing a covert role to obtain mere funding of some general interest.

For many years, our Centre has networked by selecting Members to be our sub-editors. They study at post-graduate level at local universities and are training themselves to blend the flavour of their research methodology in the European tradition with our style. We have trained 3 sub-editors in this manner.

Another lengthy training program operating has been set up to demonstrate to Members how we edit the BDDR and radio scripts, and what we mean when we say we tend to write in a style that avoids nihilistic and eternalistic words and yet guards sila (morality).

Our Teacher has the editing and research styles needed to referee key papers before we print them on our flagship journal the BUDDHA DHYANA DANA REVIEW. The censorship needs we impose on Members and our global audience ensures we have something written that can stand the test of time and be useful to others.

The Ten qualities were chosen to govern our first level of censorship are as follows:

Ten Qualities in rank order that might characterise any piece of writing according to research carried out in Thailand among educated classes.

The writing should be:

clear and precise;
persuasive;
practical or useful;
true;
aesthetically attractive;
entertaining;
stimulating or provocative;
critical;
original;
profound.

These qualities were adopted in part and followed as guidelines for what we write. For a long time we have chosen to describe our writing as being within the five styles of Friendliness, Practicality, Cultural Adaptability, Scholarship and Professionalism.

Friendliness maps into 5, 6
Practicality maps into 3, 4
Cultural Adaptability maps into 2
Scholarship maps into 8, 9, 10
Professionalism maps into 1
Our style does not seek to be (stimulating or provocative (7) ) because we deliberately avoid generating conditions that could well lead to blinding raga (sensuality) or views creating divisiveness in our platform audience because polarity can lead to dosa (hate). Our networks persons approve of the five styles.

The relevance of these constraints on intellectual freedom is that the major criterion of the legitimacy of an idea is not what is intrinsic to the idea itself, but rather audience response, utility, and the favour of significant others.

For some time, the major factor we had in mind to operationalize what we wrote was in Article 3 of the old constitution of The WFB.

3.5 To work for securing peace and harmony amongst men and happiness for all beings and to collaborate with other organizations working for the same ends.1

We rely on Members and friends past and present to help us meet the rising publication and distribution costs.

Other written publications include management reports, newsletters for Members and weekly radio scripts because we have a one-hour broadcast every Sunday at the local FM radio station. We have not limited our networks to WFB Centres.

Because we have built up worldwide networks of many scholar Monks over the years, our Centre has copyright in considerable legacy files from many papers they have written over two decades.

Many of these papers are legally stored in electronic form on our Local Area Network (LAN). The older ones will be scanned into the LAN as soon as possible.

Under Australian law, it is illegal to electronically copy copyright material.

Very large fines of up to Aust. $250,000 apply if a Company has an infringing copy in its possession.

We have the precept of no stealing, so extreme caution is taken about scanning information.

One outstanding gift of copyright on our LAN is 100 suttas translated by a Buddhist Nun.

Our networking across the world opens pathways to obtain permission to copy texts electronically.

Our present conceptual solution is that we will include with our request a further request that the copyright permission is extended to the WBU in Thailand.

We can expect in the 21st Century will see our electronic Buddha Dhamma firmly entrenched as an information age product. Both men and women can develop the databases we need to abstract the vast information accumulated in our paper-based library.

Some International Centres could well be virtual communities. Creating competition between themselves will not give living Dhamma.

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

In this sense, the next generation of 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 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.

Our networking must be applied to unify elitists. It is now obviously clear that spurious e-sites will grow seeking wealth for bad information. They tell persons 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 practice what Westerners like to call 'Buddhist meditation'.

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. Therefore, if we are to be neighbourly with our networks in the new International era we had better not choose role models along these lines. We are going to be accepted if we help rather than hinder the development of what were third world countries not so long ago. We will not waste our resources opposing such sites.

When we come to places where our most important network occur 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 are different to their neighbours because they have never been colonised by foreign power. We must nurture our WFB networks as our own. Their policies are sound beyond dispute.

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 consensus with the WFB or WBU programs. We must help such countries.

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.

Countries forming strong elites which are biased one way or the other means efforts by foreign elites to encourage another process are unlikely to be successful. We see this to some extent in some writings coming from these countries.

We have reservations about some Teachers who have little experience of the validity of the Teachings and who transmit to their students as an inspiration to act in politics. We keep our networks clear of political factions.

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 national texts and encourage students to work from authentic support of the national texts in a suitable location because these translated 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.

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

When censored to our satisfaction, we will supply our databases to various web sites we plan to run.

At present, we have two sites running and plan to extend these to 28 specialised sites over time. Specialised sites are more functional and attract the persons we are looking for.

Specialised sites are easier to navigate than one site which functions, as it were, as a general store.

To sum up our vast networking experiences in a short paper well researched at the time of writing omits many citations that our library search engines find in the paper counterparts of our history.

In the present topic of networking, we can get up to 600 references in two seconds retrieval time from just one keyword search. The hours of Librarian's time we would have to use to find the same material on paper based references can be guessed at hundreds of hours.

So, in some ways we lead in networking of information.

To have come this far in the last two decades from the will to do something is satisfying.

We hope this brief outline of our conceptual solution might be seen as a model that the 21st century offers the possibility of the golden age of scholarship for the Buddhist World. We incline to the view that it is likely the supposed 400 year backlog of Buddhist studies will be completed within the next decade with the help of the WBU increasing Buddha Dhamma cultural capital.

May all scholars be well and happy and achieve much with ease.

The author and editor of this script is John D. Hughes DipAppChem TTTC GDAIE, Vice President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists.



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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.)

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