25 July 2004: Making the merit and fueling our learning

Buddhist Hour
Radio Broadcast on Hillside 88.0 FM
Buddhist Hour Script 339 for Sunday 25 July 2004

Glossary:

bedding: a foundation, arrangements of rocks etc. in beds or layers.

dada[ism]: a painting and literary movement international in scope and nihilist in character – 1915 – 1922.

desideratum: something for which desire is felt; something wanting and required or desired.

nihilist: one who professes nihilism in philosophy or religion.

nihilism: negative doctrines in religion or morals; total rejection of current religious beliefs or moral principles; a form of skepticism or denial of all existence.

phylogenetic: pertaining to or characteristic or phylogeny, relating to the race history of an organism or organisms.

senescence: the process or condition of growing old.

This script is entitled: Making the merit and fueling our learning.

The process of learning used at our Centre is to make merit to fuel our learning.

It is only by making the causes to learn that you can learn.

Our organisations lemma is Lifetimes of Learning.

We work to create causes for our own learning by creating resources and opportunities for others to learn.

Making merit is the action of collecting vast virtues through performing good deeds.

Good deeds as recommended by the Buddha are actions of practising sila (morality) and dana or generosity.

Members apply our five styles of Friendliness, Practicality, Professionalism, Cultural Adaptability and Scholarship to all our merit making projects.

We have an ongoing program of merit making activities that Members engage in to fuel their learning. For example we run fundraising projects such as our weekly stall at the Camberwell market and our flower stalls on Mothers Day, Valentines Day, over the Easter break and Christmas day.

We train Members in writing and editing without lying through our Buddha Dhamma publishing such as the weekly Buddhist Hour broadcast, our flagship publication the Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, and our internal publication The Brooking Street Bugle. All of which are published online on our websites as learning resources for others.

Members are taught service to others: offering dana by keeping our centre clean and uncluttered, building the new kitchen for the serving of nutritious food; maintaining the Chan garden with flowers, providing talks on Buddha Dhamma for visiting scouting groups.

Our learning process involves Members in merit making activities such as cataloging books in the library, making it easy for others to find learning resources, and making merit for themselves to learn in the future.

By focusing on others you leverage your merit for learning.

On 9 September this year we celebrate Founders Day, the first since our Founder and Chan Master John D. Hughes passed away on 29 November 2003.

Last week we posted over 80 letters to Members of the Sangha and representatives of Buddha Dhamma Centres in Melbourne and Victoria to invite them to come to our Centre for Dana and join with us on 9 September to help celebrate Founders Day.

The late John D. Hughes founded the Chan Academy at Upwey, Victoria on 6 February 1986.

It was designed to become an international centre for Chan painting and calligraphy.

There is no royal path to learning.

In the last analysis our rising stars know, without doubt, that it is up to them to create the causes for their own learning.

Through learning the "Way of the Brush" through Chan, or the “Way of the Kitchen” through preparing offering it can become known that factors for sustained growth are complex and difficult.

Yesterday, 24 July 2004 visiting Master Andre Sollier taught Sumi-e at the Chan Academy as part of this years program. The theme for the class is painting sumi-e classic techniques and styles.

One sumi-e student noted that she learns because the brush stroke reflects the condition of mind on the paper. How does it do this?

The student learnt by experience that a shaky stroke indicates a weak mind, a lack of confidence in what one is doing. When a person gains confidence the strokes reflect this by appearing on the paper as bold and resolute.

Some years ago Master Andre Sollier taught a series of classes titled ‘The Buddha’, for which he painted nine different images of the Buddha.

One student noted that as his mind wavered so did the brush. Another saw the importance of having strength while using the brush, a third understood that to learn one must have the right concentration and enough energy.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines learning as any relatively permanent change in behaviour resulting from past experience.

Learning concerns any behavioural change, not merely those changes that are considered desirable or symptomatic of improvement; bad habits seem to be learned in the same general ways and for the same general reasons as good ones. Further the definition [of learning] does not restrict learning to occasions of self conscious practice with intent to learn; conditions conducive to learning often occur without prior arrangement.

The Encyclopedia Britannica notes: ‘ The product of learning is called habit. In spite of its familiar usage, this is a relatively theoretical notion.

Technically, a habit is the change itself which the learning process produces. A habit is invisible and exists principally as a tendency or a potentiality which does not reveal itself as behaviour until an appropriate occasion arises; eating habits, for example exist continuously, though we eat only intermittently.

The habit is to be distinguished from performance which is the symptom, which is directly observable as behaviour, that reveals the existence and strength of the previously acquired underlying habit.

The Britannica goes on to say: ‘Habits grow under certain conditions and decline under others and a grasp of these processes and their causes is central to any understanding of an organism’s total behaviour.

Learning occurs throughout the animal kingdom, accounting for increasing fractions of the total activity as we go up the phylogenetic scale. In human beings, from who unlearned instinctive behaviour seems to have vanished, there is almost no activity that has not been created by past experience. William James called habit “the enormous flywheel of society”.’

Different methods are dependent on what others have said and found out.

In Buddhist terms learning depends on the karma of the individual. For some persons it is linear, for others it is more complex. Our learning methods include chanting of Buddha Dhamma, writing and editing of Buddhist Hour scripts, building our new kitchen, maintaining the Chan garden and helping other Buddha Dhamma centres.

We plan to develop the e-learning capacity of our websites. We intend writing executive summaries for each text and reference in our library and loading these online with the full catalogue of the John D. Hughes Collection Multilingual reference library.

Presently we are developing our PHOTOLAN database application to enable fast and easy searching for photographs of meritorious events held at our Centre or other places over many years.

In a Chan class taught by Chan Master John D. Hughes in 1999 students painted the image of the Buddha in just four strokes. They learnt that it was not the Buddha that they were painting, but their own minds.

In the subsequent class the Teacher took the students into the Chan garden, where he showed the students how to paint the large rock which sits adjacent to the Australia Pond.

He then showed them how to paint a Buddha sitting upon the rock.

Once each student had practiced painting a rock which would not float up into the air, it was solid enough to paint a Buddha sitting upon it. Positioning a copy of the Buddha painting above their rock painting to provide a guide to dimensions and style.

The Students learnt how to paint a rock solidly to provide a seat for Buddha.

Through organising and documenting many Chan classes over the past five years one student found that with mindfulness one can move quickly and quietly, achieving much for the benefit of self and others.

A five day Meditation Course was taught at our Centre in 1986 by our Teacher John D. Hughes. He guided the Students in meditation and activities to a Mind taking the teachings to Heart by maximising the use of externally arising resources, instant by instant.

Tson-kha-pa showed in the Tibetan language text he completed in AD 1402, which translated into English means "Stages of the path to enlightenment, completely showing all the stages to be taken to heart by the three orders of persons." It is generally abbreviated to Lan rim chen cuo (The great book on stages of the path).

During the Meditation Course, the above words by Tson-kha-pa were investigated by the Students to arrive at a more refined comprehension of the fundamental statement about two types of mind which frequently arise in our practice and which by themselves are greatly limited in scope for learning and practice.

"'The Critical Path to the Development of an Operating Strategy on Resource Management" was used as a method by which Students could drop slow learning minds and slow practice minds and produce Minds which quickly learn and immediately put that learning into Dharma Practice. Such Minds know external resources arising in the present, and, immediately use them to maximise the benefits for other beings.

'To understand the need for change of current trends, Students examined their present methods of using external resources and found that, upon observation, one or the other of the two types of mind, described by 'Tson-kha-pa’s text, was arising:

The characteristic of the first type of mind described is that the Student's practice has little hearing (or learning). The Student adopts a trial-and-error approach, believing that activity alone is sufficient to progress along the Path.

By examining the trial-and-error approach it becomes evident that, whilst it is a method which can produce learning, it is not a method employing learning. Also, it will take a great amount of time to arrive at understanding; therefore, many present resources are wasted. Finally, there is no guarantee that any learning will be produced by such activity.

Ritualised Practice is a clear example of the first type of mind; where the Practitioner follows some learnt rule or repeats methods, the characteristic of the second type of mind, described by ‘Tson-kha-pa is that the Students hear or learn much but will not act if they have never heard any PUTTING-INTO-PRACTICE Teachings.

Due to the countless lives in which we did not put into practice the Dhamma, we now have a strong karmic predisposition to not put into practice the Dhamma in this present life. A further characteristic of the second type of mind is that it acts out of deep habitual conditioning generated from past non-practice.

We may hear the 'Teachings and understand the need to be practicing without gaps or breaks, but, on numerous occasions, we act without taking the Teachings to Heart.

Also, due to the inherent torpor of this second type of mind, it lacks the energy of urgency to dispel hindrances and obstacles instant by instant.

It is desirable to acquire new skills and perfect old skills. It was seen by students that although each being possesses skills they are not perfected. Rather than learning new skills, it can be seen that the learning process itself is a skill which must be perfected.

Sankhara's (self images) which our minds produce and grab, tend to define and limit the areas of which we are prepared to learn.

We restrict our capacity to learn new skills by allowing habitual karmic boundaries to arise. 'This narrow view of our own capacity could manifest in the minds of boredom, aversion or restlessness.

We can identify the building of these minds by recollecting our past experience of resisting learning at school or work. This practice requires care not to permit a guilt feeling to arise, sin or guilt is a negative.

If the learning process is made error free; there are no obstacles to the development of the Mind or the rapid acquisition of new skills. Something that is heard once can be learned and recalled without confusion and without the fear of failure or fear of success associated with delusions of incapacity. Remember, human birth is associated with types of mind capable of great learning, provided the correct minds are cultivated.

As a result of the process of grasping habitual karmic boundaries that arise in some minds; our skills of learning are limited and restricted. We superimpose narrow mindedness to block a clear view.

'To develop a broad view of needs, it is necessary to produce wholesome Minds (which do not resist learning by incorrect categorisation of the subject matter). By dropping and cutting our attachment to arising Sankharas (self images); we produce Minds free of artificial limitations to learning. 'This putting-into-practice produces Minds reduced in 'ego 'bias' and therefore can learn much.

Vast learning is one of the highest blessings.

One further method of producing a broad open view of needs is to examine long term needs and growth strategies first. In this way, the mind can arrive at great vision, without being suffocated by a view that present facilities are inadequate (they may be under- utilised).

If present resources are not exploited to their fullest use, then myopic strategies for growth appear.

The non-myopic process of discovering and identifying present resources is crucial to the Practitioner who wishes to benefit self and others.

Several exercises were used by Students to come to a clear view of the meaning of the above statement.

Firstly, Students observed to discover the presently available external resources, such as, for example, flowers, other beings, Buddha Images, food, warmth and a suitable location.

Secondly, they listed the presently available resources and next to each listed resource, estimated its probable duration in time. Quickly, through this practice, their presently arising resources were recognised.

In addition, they cognated that it is only a short time until each of them will cease. 'These two Knowledges makes us happier. A further knowledge now arises. It was our own great efforts in the past that caused each present resource to arise. The result of this realisation is a sense of urgency not to waste or not to take for granted our present precious resources for immediate practice.

'Thirdly, Students listed how each of the newly identified present resources could be used for putting-into-practice.

Without using each resource for practice, now, the resources which have arisen pass away; their non-use means no further causes for our own or others future benefit are produced. For example, if opportunities now to make others comfortable are wasted; how are we going to be comfortable in the future? If opportunities now to offer light to Buddha are wasted; how can we experience sustained 'bright' Mind in the future?

Since our futures are always uncertain, and our conditions change, one would be wise to make for one's future happiness causes now; by using our presently identified resources.

The second type of mind described is aware of presently arising resources but does not act to put these resources into practice.
Neither type of mind is capable of maximising the benefits to our-self or others; neither type of mind is capable of placing learning and practice together, like the two wings of a bird.

'The knowledge of the inadequacies of slow learning and slow practising minds combined with the knowledges described above, leads the Student to the Heart-Wish to drop, forever, any minds exhibiting the characteristics of practice-without-learning, or learning-without-practice.

Due to this renunciation, a Wisdom Mind arises which has the nature to cognate a presently arising resource and, immediately, use this resource as practice. Wisdom Minds do not hesitate or stop to analyse what to do; rather, there is knowing (learning), immediately, producing wholehearted action of putting-into-practice. Having completed a practice action, a new practice action is generated in the next instant. This Mind starts again, and again and again, afresh in the present; recognises arising resources and uses them by an appropriate practice action.

Andragogy, as a professional perspective of adult educators, must be defined as an organised and sustained effort to assist adults to learn in a way that enhances their capability to function as self-directed learners having a path to scholarship.

We extend this to lifetimes of learning.

Self-direction can be defined as: " ...a learner characteristic or readiness to direct his [or her] own learning in the framework allowed by the situation. Only readiness for self-direction can make a self-directed learning process possible. Readiness for self-direction is not a permanent state but one which develops constantly. Therefore, all can develop their readiness for self- direction." (M. Knowles, 1999)

Characteristics typically connected with the self-directed learner include:
internal motivation (not requiring control or rewards) and the intention to use it;
systems (setting and reaching of goals) and the intention to implement them;
positive ideas of his or her own self as a learner and the ability to implement them;
initiative and intention to use it;
flexibility and intention to use it;
responsibility for one's own learning and intention to do it; and
ability and intention to cooperate.
It is almost universally recognised, at least in theory, that central to the adult educator's function is a goal and method of self-directed learning (J. Mezirow, 1981).

As an example of our preferred terms in Pali, we use Pali terms to acknowledge three distinct stages of learning subject matter.

These stages are:
Learning (pariyatta);
Putting into practice (patipatti); and
Realisation of the many truths of the problem in all respects (pativedha).

Our Centre has created a suitable Living Knowledge Heritage in Australia for:

Learning Buddha Dhamma.
Encouraging true generosity and morality.
Training the minds.
Practice and training for scholarship.
Teaching and practice in the ancient tradition of Chan.
Meeting with like-minded persons.
Training in practicality and life skills.

We have a library policy that we remain a learning organisation.

Through concerted library action, we created a learning organisation having as its lemma "lifetimes of learning".

To establish a learning organisation, we created a class of committed learners and over time made them capable by providing more and more resources to aid improved learning.

Our library is called the John D. Hughes Collection.

The Buddha recommended mutual confidence (saddha), morality (sila), self denial (caga) and prudence (panna) as virtues when persons are close together. These four properties are virtues that ensure happiness and success.

In other words, mutual confidence means dependability, morality implies strength of character, self-denial or the joy of selfless service to others denotes emotional maturity, and prudence shows intellectual maturity.

As an Australian cultural institution, our World Fellowship of Buddhists Regional Centre must strive to act as an effective catalyst to assist scholars in the international community to access our research efforts, particularly our papers on bhavana (meditation) matters.

Our Centre is attractive to the Sangha, scholars and devotees born in countries other than Australia because, in a tactical way, we preserve and practice many oral traditions and make use of the written Tipitika Dhamma in a series of faithful translations.

We write well. The language skills of our Members do much to assist our cultural adaptability. We have graduate editors. To sum up this cultural position, we design our version of best practice learning methodologies by avoiding racist, ageist, sexist, nihilist or eternalist literature from entering our resources.

Our organisation needs to develop awareness among present Members that Lifetimes of Learning creates the correct base for the Centre to become a Learning Organisation. To meet our strategic mandate, a Dharma Centre is by definition a Learning Organisation (at least it should be).

Practicing Chan persons will improve their life chances to learn.

Under our late Teacher's guidance through his recorded teachings and writing about Chan tutelage, our organisation is committed to help the living preservation of Chan in the world for future generations.

One of the prime difficulties is that the learning benefits of Chan Buddhist studies in higher education cannot be reached without access to a considerable number of rare source materials.

Viewing the treasures of the study section of our peak library materials requires persons to make use of the better types of mindsets that welcome multidisciplinary studies.

For 40 years, our Teacher, John D. Hughes, has had a policy of building good will to get access to suitable research materials for Chan painting and calligraphy in Australia.

Our plan is that we continue to recruit more Members interested in learning the Buddha Dhamma.

May this script be a cause for our Buddha Dhamma library to last for 500 years.

May you create causes for your own learning.

May you
Generate the intention to learn.
Make the effort learn.
Arouse the energy to learn.
Apply the mind to learn.
Put ardor on top to learn.

May you create the causes to learn Buddha Dhamma.
May you practice lifetimes of learning.

May all beings be well and happy.

Today's Buddhist Hour Broadcast script was written and edited by Anita M. Hughes, Julian Bamford, Frank Carter, Leanne Eames, Evelin Halls, Leila Igracki, Amber Svensson, Paul Tyrell.

References:

Little, W., Fowler, H.W., Coulson, J. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press 1992.

Encyclopedia Britannica. Vol 6. & Vol 13. William Benton. Chicago USA 1963.

Hughes, John D. The Chan Academy Three Year Plan. www.bdcublessings.net.au/radio/archive.html 1998.

Canvassing the Four Seasons Exhibition. Preview Catalogue of Paintings of an Auction of Chan Paintings by John D. Hughes held on 9 September 2002 at 2.00pm at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey Victoria. 3158.

Editorial, Buddha Dhyana Dana Review. LAN1 i:km\bddr\v9n2\editorial.doc

The Ch’an Academy 1999 Painting Classes taught by John D. Hughes. i:km\bddr\v9n1\ch’an.doc

LAN1. Buddha Dhyana Dana Review Vol 9, No.1, 2,3.

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