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The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives 'THE BUDDHIST HOUR' RADIO BROADCAST
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KNOX FM 87.6 Sundays 11:00am to 12:00pm |
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Prepared by John D. Hughes, Vanessa Macleod, Evelin Halls, Nick Prescott.
KNOXFM RADIO PROGRAM for 20 AUGUST 2000.
Today’s program is called: Living in a world of common fallacies
Philip Ward produced a dictionary about them in 1978.
In his preface to his dictionary of common fallacies, he quotes Louis Pierre Francois Adolphe, Marquis de Chesnel de la Charboulais, who contributed 1360 closely-printed columns of popular fallacies to Migne’s Troisieme et deniere encyclopedie theologique in 1856.
In mock despair, the Marquis states:
“For a mind, let us not say exactly ignorant, but shall we say superficial, a work on popular errors might appear useless. Why, indeed, he might complain, give the slightest attention, the least emphasis to those daydreams which occupy the brain of common people, old wives, nurses, and children?”
Why indeed!
When we read today’s newspapers and magazines and see shelf after shelf of popular occult “literature” in otherwise reputable book shops, hear of fantastic religious sects making claims of miracle making, radio and TV announcers attempting clairvoyance to guess what football or cricket team will win, we must stop and question what they are telling us.
With ever increasing gusto, the prospect of most channels telling us of how wonderful our political system is or how contestant’s parents, grandparents, coaches, sponsors or clubs are enablers, because, contextually, each announcement in turn will be credited with giving the contestants the “FACTOR X” that enables a given player or team to win a grand final or a few gold medals at the coming Olympic games.
We feel we must try today to generate some light into areas that appear to us to have too much heat.
The most persistent of all fallacies is that which credits the average person with enough intelligence and knowledge to see through propaganda, lies, and things that may advertise commercial and noncommercial things.
We find sociological surveys are interesting when it comes to finding group beliefs.
From time to time, we meet clients who hold conspiracy theories of history or persons who do not know that Aristotle's Third law which states: “Nothing is both A and Not-A”, which was taken as axiomatic until the 19th century in European culture, is fallacious.
Paired numbers is an example which shows that Aristotle’s Third Law is fallacious. “It is ‘obvious’ that in the infinite sequence 1,2,3,4,5, etc. there are ‘more’ numbers than there are in the sequence 2, 4, 6, 8, etc., each being continued indefinitely; for the first contains all the evens 2, 4, 6, 8,... that broke up the second, and in addition all the odds 1, 3, 5, 7, etc., none of which occurs in the second.
But look at this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,... 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14,...
The numbers are paired off, one-to-one, no matter how far out we go. Therefore, if we keep on going, and never stop pairing numbers, each number in the bottom row will have a unique mate in the top, for the numbers in the bottom row are got by doubling three in the top. But these rows are the sequences with which we started. The argument about the paired rows shows that there are just as many numbers in the bottom infinite row as in the top. Therefore there are just as many even numbers as there are numbers altogether, odds and evens. But we saw how obvious it was that there are fewer evens than numbers altogether. So Aristotle’s Third Law is defied by the first sequences of numbers which we come across.”
It is interesting to note that this rule was never used in Buddhist logic. Peter Cochrane, Chief Technologist at British Telecommunications (1999), predicted that “by 2010 there will be more Barbie dolls online than Americans, and soon after, more machines online than people. Personalised tele-education and training will be a major enabler. A faster-paced society will emerge with the half-life of companies, and jobs reduced to a few years...A major economic indicator will be the number of new startup companies per week, and the number of new millionaires created per year”.
This is what we think will happen and we are planning to do the opposite, that is, to stay in business for a long time.
There are processes evolving that seem to indicate that somewhere like a 90-to 180-day process is now possible to turn an eCompany from a concept into a fully staffed company ready to do business on the web.
It no longer seems odd that there is a whiteboard and a conference table in a kitchen. In a world where time really is money and persons try for a 25 hour day, an 8 day week and a 366 day year, this 25 dash 8 dash 366 world of instant startups has no idea of a completely uninterrupted coffee break.
Business incubators were designed to help new companies to get off to a strong start, and they traditionally offered services such as free or inexpensive office space, managerial advice, administrative and technical support, financial assistance, and legal services. There were fewer than 10 business incubators in the United States in 1980, according to Jana Matthews.
Five years later, that number had grown to approximately 70. Today, there are almost 600 incubators operating in North America, according to the National Business Incubation Association.
They want ideas that can be IPOed into billion-dollar market cap businesses in less than a year.
According to Levy, who is in charge of eHatchery, Atlanta is the best place in the world to build an Internet business. He claims the burn rate is probably 30% of the typical burn rate on the West Coast or in New York.
We are not prepared to run this type of enterprise because the risk of failure over a medium term is too high in our view. We are not interested in making a lot of money in a hurry and selling our organisation to other persons. This is not in accordance with Buddha’s Teaching in our view.
What we are prepared to do is to work at a steady pace towards convergence of our many IT systems at an affordable cost.
To do this, we must find a suitable vehicle. It is common knowledge that in this mundane world, the owner of some form of transport is able to reach the required destination by using it. However, just having the knowledge of the mechanism of the transport without actually possessing it will not get anyone anywhere.
The Buddha taught that starting from the right view concerning jhana sammaditthi, the owner of this type of view can come to vipassana sammaditthi. It is through repeated practice of vipassana that more and more insights arise concerning the nature of things.
While engaged in vipassana meditation, certain knowledges (vipassana nana) leads the way for the development of other paths (maggas). At the moment of attainment of ariya magga (noble path), magga nana gives the lead to other paths. For this reason, the Buddha has called the vipassana sammaditthi and ariya magga sammaditthi, the drivers of the carriage.
Things are never driven from a single cause (eka).
It must definitely be noted that only by coming into possession of the vipassana magga vehicle through contemplation of the actual arising and dissolution of nama (name) and rupa (body or form) and riding on the carriage of the Eightfold Path, one can reach Nibbana.
In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, The Great Discourse on the Wheel of Dhamma translated from the Pali by Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw Agga Maha Pandita, and into English by U Ko Lay, some verses are explained as follows: 1. The straight path is magga, the destination is Nibbana, free from danger. 2. Fitted with the two wheels of energetic efforts, the magga carriage is silent. 3. Hiri and ottapa (a sense of moral shame) serve as the leaning board while mindfulness forms the drapery and awnings of the carriage. 4. Magga nana preceded by vipassana nana is the driver of the carriage. 5. Owners of such a carriage may be either man or woman. 6. One may ride comfortably in it to reach Nibbana.
Possessors of these sort of things are free from major shocks and alarms that persons who do not practice experience minute by minute, day by day, week by week, year by year.
If a man is attached to his wife, this can be the cause of rebirth as a snake, a dog or as cattle.
In a village in Sri Lanka, there lived a man who was misbehaving with the wife of his elder brother. The woman was more passionately attached to her lover than her husband. She therefore, tried to get her lover to get rid of his elder brother. At first, the lover resisted such talk but after three times he asked her, “How would I go about that?”. She replied, “Get an axe and meet me by the river side”. The man went there and waited for his brother. When the husband came back from work in the forest, the wife said, “Your hair needs cleaning, it is dirty, why not go and shampoo it by the river side by that big tree”. Happy with the thought that his wife was tender towards him, he bent down to wash his hair and the younger brother came out of hiding and chopped his head off with an ax.
Because of the clinging attachment to his wife, he was reborn as a green snake (rat snake according to Sri Lankan scholars). Still attached to his wife, he dropped himself down from the roof of the house onto the woman (his former wife). Realising the snake must have been her former husband whom she had killed, she got the snake killed.
Because the snake was still attached to his former wife, he was reborn as a dog in his old house. The woman asked her lover to kill the dog. Because his attachment was still intense and persisting, the dog was reborn a calf in the same house. Again the woman asked her lover to kill the young calf but the calf’s tenacious attachment to his former wife caused rebirth again. This time in the womb of his former wife.
In the human world, which he regained, he was born endowed with jatissara nana (faculty of recalling previous existences). Using this skill, he went over the past four existences and was greatly distressed when he came to know they were all terminated at the insistence of his former wife. Whenever his mother tried to touch him, he cried vociferously. The grandfather had to take over the task of bringing up the child.
The child recounted to his grandfather the story of his previous lives. They both went away and stayed in a monastery where both of them received ordination and in time, were able to attain the arahatta path and fruition and gained Arahantship.
The moral from this episode is that attachment gives rise to repeated new existence AT THE VERY LOCATION OF THAT ATTACHMENT.
Therefore, we must be very careful about how we go about making our Internet sites of which we have many and more planned.
These sites are in different countries.
Therefore, if we are not careful we will take birth to read what is on our sites in other countries. We may even pine and be sad and be unhappy and cry when we find out that a site we set up is no more.
Consider how sad we would be if we set up a company that made, say, 200 million dollars for us? With the collapse of the original company or its takeover, there may be a tendency to try and recreate its former glory. But alas, because of changing futures, this will not be possible and the person(s) trying will end up bankrupt.
Accordingly, we teach the two levels of meditation practice mentioned earlier to our Members and friends before we let them play to extreme on our alluring, glistening, shining apparently beautiful websites.
All our websites are designed to be free from too much colour, too much what is commonly called hype, too much claim to be more than it really is and endeavor to express our messages of hope to persons in a sober manner.
WE ALWAYS WARN OF THE DANGERS OF EXCESSIVE ENTHUSIASM THAT BORDERS ON ATTACHMENT OF A HIGH ORDER BECAUSE WE REALISE IT WILL LEAD TO SOME UNDESIRABLE REBIRTH.
We respect expert opinion when it is cross checked from many viewpoints. Without being to dogmatic or falling for a dangerous type of generalisation, we might say there is a higher level of optimism in the U.S.A. about the money that can be made from the “new” order of business based around the Internet, than there is in Australia.
Although it appears that Australians are early adopters of the Internet, there does not seem to be prolonged and sustainable wealth from a wide range of Internet initiatives.
Thousands of web usability studies overseas seem to indicate one thing about Internet users. They want to go straight to the product information and find out what a provider can do for them right now. Many websites still do their best to slow down users and make them feel they do not control their own experience according to Jakob Nielsen (1999).
From our viewpoint old information is often good information and can be useful to readers and listeners. Even when new information is more valuable than old information, there is almost always some value in the old stuff, and it costs almost nothing. Nielsen studies show that having archives may add about ten percent to the cost of running a site but increase its usefulness by approximately fifty percent.
Archives are also necessary as the only way to eliminate “linkrot” and thus encourage other sites to link to us. Our library index at www.bdcu.org.au is linked to Australian Libraries Gateway, www.nla.gov.au (forward slash) /libraries. We would not consider closing our first website for this reason.
Every time a page moves, any incoming links from other sites are broken. Therefore we do not switch URLs.
Another thing we know is that users want to know persons behind information on the Web. In particular, biographies and photographs of the authors help make the Web more personal and increase trust.
We have a photograph of our Broadcast Team of 16 July 2000 at www.bdcublessings.one.net.au. The names of the persons in the photograph are from left to right back row standing, Jocelyn Hughes, Vince Cavuoto, Julian Bamford, David Igraki, Penny White, and seated left to right, Evelin Halls, Lisa Nelson and Clara Iaquinto.
We intend to enter these names onto our website under the photograph.
Clara is about to visit her Uncle in America who is about to die, to comfort him on his death bed and guide him to a good rebirth.
In the case of links to our other sites we intend to put a little summary of what is at the other end of the link, so no guess work is required.
We have just found a method of loading photographs to present on the screen faster, so we will be working through our sites incorporating this new technology.
We are quite committed to the notion that we can improve our sites by thinking about how we can help persons read the sites in less time.
We intend to continue improvement so that all our sites offer good service.
Our Teacher has a new site www.skybusiness.com/(forward slash)j.d.hughes.
On this site is a photograph of the Dragon King Altar that we have in the Sariputta Room at our Centre.
Some details of the what our Teacher proposes to do with his Geological Museum @ Upwey is on the site.
How do worthwhile things appear in the world? Here we present the ontogeny of the conceptual solution for the Geology Museum @ Upwey, which we consider a worthwhile and valuable pursuit. We do this for the benefit of those who have interest in such matters and for those that wish to do likewise in-order to increase learning, enrich culture, systematise that which benefits from being systematised and undertake harmless occupations.
The Conceptual Solution details the sequences of events that have lead to the appearance of a Museum.
The funding of building activity has come from John D. Hughes – its hobby owner. He intends that it will be used to promote and display his collection to his friends. The GEOLOGY MUSEUM is a private hobby of John D. Hughes. Its purpose is strictly as a “not for profit” commercial enterprise.
By September 2000, he proposes that part of the Geology Museum’s illustrated Catalogue will have its own website.
This website will be developed to display a catalogue of specimens including photographs and technical details.
To catalogue the specimens they will be photographed as digital images. This is cost efficient and can lead to product derivatives for distribution from a website.
The major geology collection is housed at the Centre in a private space not open to the public.
Highlights of JDH’s geology collection will be on display in a new room in the Eastern Wing for his own satisfaction and to inspire friends of the museum.
Invited interstate or overseas guests of JDH can stay in his private dwelling to view his collection. It will include two beds which will be placed against the Northern Wall of the new building. One bed folds up into the wall when not in use. The other bed can double as seating for guests.
Seldom would guests stay longer than one night.
Computer equipment including a LAN server will be installed within the storeroom and be connected to 4 screens in the Sariputta Room.
It is probably true to say there can never be too much display space available for the Museum for public relations purposes.
A display case will hold noteworthy specimens from the Museum’s Collection. It will seek to inform about conservation of specimens and how it functions as an enterprise.
A second display case will show off recently acquired specimens with acknowledgements to donors.
When catalogued and photographed, specimens will be placed in the Museum and on the Internet site.
Because Museum computer equipment is sensitive to air pollution, the air in all parts of the new wing must be kept clean, free of aerosols (meaning no hair sprays, nail polish or use of any window cleaner sprays) bleach chemicals or solvents.
These chemicals have the potential to damage some of the museum exhibits.
The air must be dry at all times (Relative Humidity less than 60%) to prevent condensation on artefacts or computer equipment. Smoking is prohibited.
Room temperature will be automatically set to 18 degrees Celsius and is not to be altered. Provision of indoor plants and flowers is also limited.
According to Peter Cochrane, Chief Technologist, British Telecommunications by 2010, personalised tele-education and training will be a major enabler.
A faster-paced society will emerge with the half-life of companies, and jobs reduced to a few years.
A major economic indicator will be the number of new start-up companies per week, and the number of new millionaires created per year. The persons of the Museum who will lead the training charge to arise interest in science in general and geology in particular must be tested for.
The Museum can stage secure private promotion of on-line and off-line events in the new room in accordance with its mission statement.
On-line “secure” means the Museum IT systems are safeguarded against hackers.
Selected friends of the Museum will be given passwords when cleared to use the IT systems owned by JDH.
These will have security passes for the Suite 4 Museum IT Office.
Any incidental expenses arising from promoting private exhibitions are treated as gifts for tax purposes.
Individuals who wish to become friends of the Museum are encouraged to cover their own expenses by donating gifts of goods or chattels that are useful to the operation of the Museum.
Please contact us if you are interested. The current necessity is for friends to develop position statements in the form of internal and external educational programs for Friends and clients.
Such programs must be compatible with the existing Museum Computer systems and publish good information to deliver information to the private websites owned by JDH.
Those intended to help JDH with his Museum in Customer Relationship Management driven by the planned convergence please contact him at 9754 3334.
Security restrictions apply to the Museum. It must be remembered that the Museum is in a private space. The new room is a designated private dwelling area having a bedroom.
For insurance purposes, a register of all visitors to the Museum is to be made. Under no circumstances can an uninvited Member or the general public enter or use the private bedroom area as this room’s personal liability cover and insurance cover are on JDH private household policy.
Where possible, all building materials have been obtained by or paid for by the owner.
Where possible, the owner will pay for fit-out costs of the Museum.
All principles of Buddhist Pure Land practice apply to the Museum operation. Upwey is a suitable location for the Museum. Its distance from any CBD is a pure condition that encourages our work for museum activities.
The main objective of the Museum space is never to be “too busy with commerce”.
The bustle of a CBD has a tempo of life that is not conducive to precepts because greed drives the location to a more competitive economy.
In addition, the wall space will provide a display space for JDH’s painting works.
Financial stability and growth will occur naturally. Operating costs are low.
Some notations for mangers of the Museum are:
Waste management of air filters that may have mineral residues, is a vital O H & S issue in the Museum spaces.
There is to be no alcohol stored or consumed on the premises.
Invited guests may visit once a fortnight on Thursday & Sunday evenings.
Auctions of artwork will be held every three months.
60% of these auctions can be bid from our website.
Private art exhibitions of John D Hughes work might be held twice a year.
The devata of the Sariputta Room advises John D Hughes to leave the floor space empty from time.
In general, planning will cover a two-year time span.
As a general rule, the cost of acquiring the hardware and software is less than 20 per cent of the total cost Technical IT solutions that give the quality and scalability needed have been resolved for the museum operating systems.
The conceptual plan has examined the feasibility of providing a photographic agenda feature. The conceptual solution takes the view that to provide this feature the time and cost of ordinary cameras and film is too high.
This is because conventional cameras output takes considerable time to develop to a state where it can be scanned into the system. Firstly, the time taken for the film to be processed off-site and even after the developed film is on hand, it takes more time because of the scanning time needed to get the information on screen.
The screen quality of the image arising from the scan of a conventional photograph is inferior to the image from a digital camera.
The reason for this that all transformations needed in the first case, introduce “noise” so it is certain that some loss must occur in accordance with Shannon’s information theory.
A drum scanner can deliver high-end resolution (effective 30 000 dpi) for photographs using a small file size compared with a flat bed scanner.
However, drum scanners are relatively expensive ($20 000) at present.
Delays in waiting for other photographs to be taken on a roll of film before processing, the time taken in transporting film to be processed, film processing costs and time taken to scan, combine to make high operating costs.
In Total Cost of Ownership terms, a digital camera (with short focus) is a better conceptual solution to record each rock or mineral specimen into the database.
Samples photographed and entered to the data base as high resolution PDF files ought give the RESOLUTION needed. A digital camera could show the scene where the specimen was found.
The dust from some minerals is toxic.
To prevent such specimens from being carelessly handled researchers will wear gloves. Samples are to be housed in metal shelving with plate glass covering the front to prevent visitors from making accidental contact.
Fume cupboards will also be installed.
The library will hold the three museum catalogues, research records & specimen photographs and reference works.
Where possible, photographs of specimens will be taken with a digital camera and placed on our LAN.
A short Curriculum Vitae about the owner may be of interest.
John D. Hughes has a background of teaching geology as science in Victorian Technical Schools.
He organised a gemstone prospecting society from Ferntree Gully Technical School.
Before his 70th birthday, he proposes to put more effort into his geology collection project for five main reasons.
The Dragon King is attracted to and relates to the collection. Suitable and affordable workstations to compile details of the museum treasures are available. John D Hughes makes provision to write notes of his interests. With some space now available for private display, he deems that it may be fun to help others see highlights of the collection. It is the right time to order the specimens that came from 40 years of prospecting by John D. Hughes.
John D Hughes intends to write a short book on a website to inspire others to embrace the study of Geology. John D. Hughes will consult with Monash University for this project.
To expedite John D Hughes doing this, eight of his friends will be involved.
One Member has just completed a course on problem-solving via the Internet. She will help. It is one of many training programs provided online by her employer. In this problem-solving course, there is a hypothetical company with a hypothetical problem to be solved. It is up to you and the ‘Review Team’, a group of created characters, to solve this problem. The course provides you with a tactical approach, otherwise known as the PDCA model. This model explains, in a series of steps, how a problem is defined and eventually, in the final step, how a solution can be standardised. Other tools are also explained and used during the process of solving the problem, including Gantt Charts and the Ishikawa model.
These are the levels of skills John needs to plan his private museum. A wide viewpoint is needed to avoid common fallacies about museums when they are discovered.
Indeed, dispelling the fallacies and discerning the real is a key practice in Buddha Dhamma. Understanding what drives progress along the path clearly increases the ability of the student to practice effectively and efficiently according to his or her dispositions. For example, having (or for that matter “not having”) an aspiration to practice Buddha Dhamma is different to actually practicing Buddha Dhamma. The former may or may not be associated with path fruit while the latter practiced diligently will in time certainly come to path fruit.
Similarly concepts of practice such as small, medium or big practice are tricky and care needs to be taken to see them not the same as actually practicing Buddha Dhamma. The propensity for the mind to cling excessively to such categories, borne out of excessive enthusiasm or aversion is a common fallacy. Better to just practice Buddha Dhamma.
So like a small lake reflecting the sun, it warms the enveloping mist and thins it out. It then diffuses the obscuring mist and then reveals the surroundings equally.
However, if the sun sets and the warmth diminishes, the mist will reform and darkness returns.
Is there no end to this diurnal cycle? Can we ever hope to find the surroundings free of mist? Is it a fallacy to think that no being can escape this horror? Well hope alone is hopeless. Better to just practice than hope.
Let us examine this further.
In the logic packet we prefer to use are the mental elements (sankara) 1) presence of hope (as the sankara of hope), 2) absence of hope (as the sankara of absence of hope), 3) no hope (the true absence of the sankara of hope 4) the false absence of the sankara of hope (the erroneous belief that the sankara of hope is absent whereas it is weakly present) and 5) none of the above. Which of these five do you have today? yesterday? tomorrow?
Next, what is the mind that knows this? The true mind does not rely on these. It has gone beyond this narrow penta-taxonomy.
It dwells in acceptance that it may experience any of these five things today or tomorrow without flurry and worry - it accepts the flux of the conditioned mind. So we can say it has a position of being unconditioned, this is Nibbana mind.
From the fruit of this access position, the past living in a world of common fallacies is seen as a mere dream of an unawakened being. The problem of how to live outside the common fallacies is no more.
May your practice fruit, so that you may know for yourself. May you be well and happy.
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
1. Ward, Philip, A Dictionary of Common Fallacies, 1978, The Oleander Press, England, ISBN 0 900891 14 9.
2. Beato, G., ‘Dream Factory’ in Business 2.0, December 1999, Imagine Media, Inc., USA.
3. Mahasi Sayadaw, Venerable (translator), The Great Discourse on the Wheel of Dhamma, 1999, translated into English by U Ko Lay, Unyo Maung, Burma.
For more information, contact the Centre or better still, come and visit us. |
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