Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 106-minute session, teacher Rob Hattam introduces Thai Buddhist social activist and scholar Sulak Sivaraksa, whose work bridges engaged Buddhism and Western philosophy of justice. Hattam frames Sulak’s approach as a response to Thailand’s adoption of Western development models, which have displaced traditional village economies and replaced cultural values with consumer capitalism. Sulak rethinks the Buddhist five precepts as active ethical frameworks responding to systemic violence rather than mere personal abstinence: not killing extends to renouncing weapons and wasteful consumption; not stealing demands confronting economic exploitation; right sexuality addresses global structures of male domination and sex tourism; right speech critiques advertising’s distortion of indigenous culture; and abstaining from intoxicants addresses the economics of drug production and trafficking. Hattam emphasizes Sulak’s dialectical method—using Buddhist concepts to critique society while rethinking Buddhism through contemporary realities—and his insistence that inner spiritual transformation and outer social action must develop together. The session then widens into open discussion among practitioners about how Buddha House might support both personal practice and community-based social engagement informed by compassion rather than anger.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2008 09 12 CiA.mp3
UUID: 8eb230eb-c69a-4df2-91e0-e29a72d4c35d
Teacher: Rob Hattam
Collection: Compassion in Action (Rob Hattam)
Date: 2008-09-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~16,384
We’ll give you rights over. It’s for the tape. It is for the archives. It’s for the tape. You used against yourself, do you?
Yeah. We weren’t taping that previous conversation. You’ve missed the I’ve missed the We had a preamble before we moved in talking about being socially engaged and what we thought of Alexander Downer. Can do that in much more detail next week. So I think we start off with the prayer Just the refuge and bodhicitta prayer, we’ll say that three times I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and supreme assembly By my practice of listening to the teachings and other perfections May I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha of the Dharma and supreme assembly By my practice of listening to the teachings and other perfections May become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly By my practice of listening to the teachings and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings.
So this is the fourth I think the fourth night that we’ve been having series of talks comes about as a consequence of my own PhD thesis. So in my PhD I was attempting to have a well it actually was a proper doctor of philosophy so it was sort of a philosophical argument that I was trying to make and so there was no sort of empirical you know I wasn’t researching anybody I was engaging some sort of philosophical argument in which I was trying to establish a conversation between a particular type of Western philosophy and Buddhism. And the Western traditions that I’m interested in are sort of philosophies that are committed to some form of social justice. Philosophies and politics of justice so in the sort of Western tradition probably probably it’s inaugurated by Kant and then there’s Hegel and Marx and then after that there’s large large numbers of possible interlocutors. The Frankfurt School was the one that I got really interested in which was a German Jewish school in the 1920s and 30s 40s maybe into the 50s 60s but then there’s the there’s a lot of French philosophers that are incredibly significant through the 60s and 70s and Derrida and Foucault and a whole range of those.
People that are trying to think through the nature of subjectivity and how that can be ethical and just. Meantime, I’m coming to Buddha House, and I’m not so much interested in justice. I’m trying to get my act together existentially, which, of course, are two related topics. But so I had two conversations going on one Eastern and one Western and around that time I was starting a PhD and just seemed to be able to sort of work out you know how those two might talk to each other and so I get to do that on the page. The question that I brought the two the two traditions to bear on was a fairly sort of fundamental basic question really.
How do I live an ethical and political life in an unjust world? That’s the question. Know, that’s the question, isn’t it? So on that basis, the Western traditions seem to me to be grappling around for resources to understand the person personally transformative work they’re incredibly weak they’ve got very sophisticated views of the social but the personal’s quite confused where on the Buddhist side again you know my reading was the personal transformative work was incredibly well described but the social was weak but then again in the Buddhist side there’s what is now being referred to as socially engaged Buddhists so for part of my research I was trying to track down what that meant. So there’s a few quite significant socially engaged Buddhists, the Dalai Lama, we did him a couple of weeks ago last week I did Thich Nhat Hanh and this week we’re going to do a Thai Buddhist to a guy called Sulak Sivaraksa whom I don’t think anyone had heard of but I’m hoping that by the time I’ll finish speaking tonight you’ll realize that he’s very very significant.
Next week we’re going to do various Western socially engaged Buddhist was a few few versions of that and then final week it will just be what does all that what might all that mean for us all and my own sort of cogitations. I think in the end my I wrote I wrote one chapter on socially engaged Buddhism, which has been mostly what the series of talks have been about. I wrote a chapter about from the sort of Western tradition side, a few of the scholars got interested in Buddhism. One one in particular a guy called Erich Fromm so I wrote a chapter on him. Most people my age have got Eric Fromm in their library because they read him when they were hippies.
He wrote The Art of Love, Having and Being. To Have to Be. To Have or to Be. Yeah. There’s a whole range of of anyway, he was he was a central member of the the Frankfurt School as it turned out in the nineteen right from the beginning nineteen thirties.
He had serious arguments with Adorno and Marcuse and so was basically banished from the school. So I wrote this chapter trying to reclaim Erich Fromm basically he was one of the few the few Western philosophers who actually properly acknowledged you know meditation practice and what that might contribute. Forget which book it’s in, but anyway, and then my last chapter was sort of an attempt to bring my thesis to some sort of conclusion, which I’ll have a go at some of that logic in the last week. Anyway, Sulak, Sivaraxa. Just by way of, you know, beginning, I’ve got a few slides that I just wanted to show.
Nowhere near as many as last week. I haven’t been to Thailand, so we can’t do my my trip to Thailand like we did last week. We did my trip to Vietnam. Just brought a few of Sulak’s books along just so you can get a bit of a sense of you know just to sort of introduce the guy and here’s one called Global Healing Essays and Interviews on Structural Violence Social Development and Spiritual Transformation so you can see just in the title that he’s sort of bringing the two ideas that I’m interested in together. This is the one that he’s probably most famous for.
I think this one’s been around for a few I think it might have been this is ninety two. Yes, that’s been around for a while. Seeds of Peace, a Buddhist vision for renewing society and now we’ve got a forward by the Dalai Lama and a preface by Thich Nhat Hanh so you know he’s got good mates and then here’s his autobiography and you know autobiography autobiography of an engaged Buddhist is the subtitle loyalty demands dissent again a forward by his holiness the Dalai Lama so I think he’s been jailed many times in Thailand for his activism and you mean Thailand’s on the you know in the news again quite clear it’s quite corrupt politically so if you’re an activist inside of Thailand then you’re going to come up against the you know the corruption of the government and so probably parts of the Thai Buddhist tradition in on being corrupt as well must be sort of quite awkward I think with anyway it’s difficult to know whether he’s a Buddhist activist or an activist Buddhist I’m not quite sure in comparison to Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama he’s probably a Buddhist activist as I think they are probably activist Buddhists got a funny feeling His social activism drives it.
And because he’s Buddhist, then he uses the Buddhism, his his version of Buddhism. Anyway, I’ll just show a few a few slides. Very impressive man. Now like last week, I’ve got some things I’d like to read. So Sulak Sivaraksa is one of Thailand’s most prominent social critics and activists.
He’s renowned in the West for his work in the international network of engaged Buddhism. He’s a valued participant in the World Council of Churches, the Peace Brigade International in the Gandhi Peace Foundation, and was recently recognised for his work winning the Swedish government’s alternative to the Nobel Prize, the Right Livelihood Award. His work encapsulates both a critical and Buddhist sensibility, and his work is characterised by a Buddhist dialectical approach which he applies to all manner of binaries, including local, global, theory, practice, self society. A theme that marks his writing and his activism is his commitment to rethinking what it means to be Buddhist. His works ecumenical and Catholic, and he is especially committed to defending a socially engaged form of Buddhism.
So a key heading here is ‘Struggling for social justice in Thailand demands a global outlook’. The focus of much of his work has been in response to the process of development in Thailand, which he understands in terms of a crisis. Against those advocates of Western style economic globalisation, Sulak sees a degradation of the everyday life of the Thai people. His critique of contemporary Thai society is based on a view that Thailand is in the midst of identity crisis that began during the reign of Rama VI, King Vajiravudh, between nineteen nineteen and nineteen thirty two. Since that time, Thai political elites have engaged in wholesale appropriation of a Western lifestyle with the concomitant erosion of traditional cultural, religious and social values.
With a few exceptions, these elites have turned to a Western development model to transform Thailand. And this is a quote from him: Such framework presupposes the concepts of capital markets, nation state structures and the free individual and the linear and unlimited procession of growth. These are foundations of a world view for the vast majority of the West, large segments of Japan and increasing numbers of southern elites who study abroad. However, for the large percentage of the human race, these concepts are still alien. Unfortunately, whilst offering great promise, this top down model of development has meant that the existing feudal elites have been able to use the modern nation state to consolidate their power over their clients, I.
E, the Thai citizenry. Instead of the ideal of material prosperity, democratic government and individual social mobility, the reality of contemporary Thailand is distorted. Again, a quote from him: Material prosperity exists for a small group of patron elite in government and business circles. Feudal cronyism is disguised as representative democracy, and a mass of disempowered citizens are increasingly cut off from their historical and cultural identities. These identities are replaced with modern consumer identities which they have few personal or communal resources for coming to grips with.
The implementation of a paradigm of modern development is characterised by sulak as the degradation of a village lifestyle that was self sufficient and involved natural cooperative institutions to the emergence of urban slums that require government services to provide support. So this is one of the ways that he sort of sees the going from a life that was self sufficient to one that’s actually dependent upon government welfare. So the self sufficient lifestyle gets completely done in. Again, from him, farmlands are usurped by monoculture agribusiness and those formerly outside the money economy have no way to earn enough to eat. The young people go to the city to find work, and they end up working in sweatshops as prostitutes, as drug runners, or living on the streets not finding work at all.
I think just press it again, yeah. These non elites are not chosen choosing to be poor, homeless or violent. They’ve been placed in the situation by the development model.’ End of quote. ‘Meantime, feudalistic leaders embezzle large amounts of development aid for their business interests, which has had a cascading effect on all sectors of society, especially government officials who seek to get their own slice of the pie at the expense of public welfare. In traditional Thai society, people are taught that personal growth is related to social well-being.
People are taught to respect other living beings, and personal achievement at the expense of others is frowned upon. Exploitation, confrontation and competition are to be avoided, while unity, communality and harmony are encouraged. The breakdown of traditional cultural values and their replacement by an unbounded consumerism has resulted in intolerable environments from industrial waste and consumer pollution, and an explosion of HIVAIDS from the booming sex industries. The department stores have become our shrines, is a quote of his, and have replaced the Buddhist temples as centres of social life. Also, crime and religious fundamentalism have emerged as people attempt to respond to the ensuing alienation of development.
Being forced into the world market and global consumerism by the structural adjustment packages of the World Bank and the IMF are rationalised by the rhetoric of self determination, but in reality involve a process in which the indigenous cultural systems are overwhelmed by the power of foreign transnational corporations. The traditional values of Thai society have been unable to resist the pressures of consumerism. Sulak provides a unique Buddhist critique of this think big strategy for development in Thailand that has been called economic rationalism in the West. From his Buddhist perspective, this model is a materialist development theory that measures development in terms of physical results such as increased income, more factories, schools, hospitals or food, or larger larger labour force. But this theory assumes wrongly that development can be understood only in material terms.
What is missing is any sense of the development of human potentiality. Through quantifying development, the theory has ignored the quality of humanity. A materialist theory of development has no way of thinking about what it means to live fully and assumes these issues are metaphysical or religious. These issues are existential, not economic, and they are related to our needs for leisure, contemplation, love, community and self realisation. A development theory that is sensitive to the existential requires, again from Sulak, a multidisciplinary approach that involves ecologists, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, philosophers and others.
Under the ‘Think Big Strategy for Development’, people are perceived only as a labour force and as consumers. Whether they are exploited, their environment is degraded, or the quality of their lives deteriorates is irrelevant. Example, Sulak draws special attention to the construction of a modern factory in a developing country. A quote from him: The sole function of a factory like this is to accumulate money for foreign investors and for those few local investors who are willing to oppress their countrymen and women, and obstruct them from exercising economic and political power or at near their own level. The producer’s motive is to invest money in the way that will bring him the greatest financial return.
He cannot be concerned with the disappearance of natural resources. He may be producing luxury goods of little utility, while the majority of the people struggle for the basic necessities of life. This model of development is for Sulak an expression of the logic of capitalism which privileges catering to the physical pleasures of the wealthy rather than the welfare of the general public. Such logic has little resistance in Thailand. Unlike the reality of the developed countries, which have labour unions with some power, government officials that are fairly honest and consumers have their own organisations, the developing countries have to tolerate rampant dishonesty and exploitation.
Sulak argues that the adoption of this model of development places Thailand in a vicious cycle. The critique of this model is treaded with contempt and has little or no voice. The model is obviously unsustainable even in the short to medium term. The solution is not a matter of continuing with the idea of more production is better as long as there is a just distribution. Under the conditions of fast capitalism, new problems are appearing faster than can be solved.
The addiction to economic growth, along with little concern for the consequences, ultimately means an unsustainable exploitation of natural resources which cannot go on forever. Sulak traces this problem back to the lifestyle of those living in the richest nations. Unless the citizens of the richest nations seriously change their lifestyles and do it soon, there is little hope. This is a quote from him. For those of us living in the richer nations, sulax demand can only be realised if we can get beyond thinking of ourselves as separate and self existing.
We need think about how we are co responsible. If we reject the illusion of separateness, then we are implicated in everything that happens, the good and the evil. We cannot then blame another but must see ourselves as involved. We are all victims of violence, anger, misunderstanding and lack of respect for our dignity, but we’re also the perpetrators. Beyond the duality of our separateness, we can’t take sides with victims against the perpetrators.
Again, this is from him taking sides is too easy. But we can take sides with those who are suffering the most, and that will mean transforming our own lifestyle. Sulak’s Buddhist critiques are dialectical in nature. As such, it involves a double movement. He uses Buddhist concepts as a frame for his critique of contemporary society but he also rethinks Buddhist concepts through contemporary realities.
I think we saw this last week as well with Thich Nhat Hanh. Again he does something quite similar to Thich Nhat Hanh’s. He uses the five lay precepts as an ethical frame for his examination of the culture of consumerism that now distorts Thai society. Traditionally the precepts have been stated in terms of abstaining from killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct and intoxicants, but also takes a leave from Thich Nhat Hanh and pays special attention to the reworking of these ethical precepts. For the engaged Buddhists, these ethical precepts need to be responsive to contemporary social formations such as capitalism, the industrial military complex and the media industry, and hence to the systemic violence that now characterises postmodern life.
In his words: ‘In light of contemporary conditions, we find that the individual and social dimensions of these guidelines are inextricably linked.’ For Sulak, it is neither appropriate nor sensible to translate exactly early forms of Buddhism that were developed in the social context of pre feudal India. The changing nature of the social context needs to be taken into consideration. In the Buddhist times, there was no Bhopal or Chernobyl, or those black holes of social exclusion that now exist and are growing in and around all major cities of the world. In such a context then, mere abstention is not enough. Those things that are to be avoided are now built into the very systems that constitute everyday life.
To fulfil these precepts requires actually working to undo the structural conditions that sustain the cycle of killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct and intoxication. Dialectical fashion, Solak rethinks the five precepts as he engages in a Buddhist critique of society. And for the benefit of my argument, I’ll sketch out some of his dialectic here. First precept of not killing calls for the settling of internal and external conflict through non violent means. In the context of the possibility of a nuclear holocaust and the use of conventional weapons that can kill more people more quickly than ever before, such as the nineteen ninety one Gulf War and the recent bombing of Afghanistan, this precept would also entail the renunciation of the production and use of weapons, especially those that threaten all life on earth.
To fulfil a precept that is about respecting life must also mean renouncing luxurious living in wasteful consumption whilst others are dying of starvation. These are all quite challenging precepts when you start thinking about them this way. We’ll put this anyway. To fulfil the second precept of not stealing requires coming to terms with an economic system which involves exploitation and violence. Economic justice, the broad social application of not stealing, involves right livelihood or working in ways that don’t cause harm to others.
Given the extent of the exploitation and the violence of late capitalism, Sulak argues that to fulfil this precept involves working to overturn the structures that compel others to live poverty involuntarily. The third precept repudiates improper sexuality. In contemporary terms, sexual ethics must address the global structures that facilitate male domination and exploitation of women. As Sulak highlights, especially violence against women and the objectification of women’s bodies. In Thailand, he highlights the growth of sex tourism.
The fourth precept is speaking the truth, which in contemporary society involves being aware patterns of information that use falsehoods and distortions to capture people’s minds. He also points out the problem with advertising which promotes a consumer culture. In Thailand, where the price of a bottle of Coca Cola might be as much as one day’s earnings, the impact of advertising distorts the Indigenous culture. The fifth precept to abstain from intoxicants also has a significant social dimension. In the third world, many farmers grow heroin, coca, coffee or tobacco instead of rice or vegetables because of the way the economic system works.
Along with this trade invariably comes drug related crime in the crippled cultures of subcultures spawned by unemployment, unequal distribution of wealth and alienation from work. A simple way of summarising his rethinking of ethics is in terms of training in non exploitation. So Sulak has also important things to say about the pragmatics of a more dialectical approach to Dharma practice. As a preliminary to his advice, though, he affirms the faults of being preoccupied with changing the system without any commitment to personal transformation. To be preoccupied with the social is to ignore that negativity actually operates within us psychologically.
From a socially engaged Buddhist perspective, radical transformation of society requires personal and spiritual change first or at least simultaneously. If we’re attempting to combine both practices of awakening and struggle that’s the way I’m putting it, then there are some dangers. There is a great danger that those who are socially engaged lack spiritual depth, inner calm and peace, to quote from him. If social activists do not have adequate time meditate, and he recommends retreat for several weeks a year, then there is a possibility that they will either burn out or else will be without the joy, the sort of joy and peace we need to sustain skillful means. So, in terms of Buddhism for contemporary world, a parallel theme for Sulak’s critique has been his interest in the relationship between the Buddhist community and the state.
For Sulak, this relationship needs to be always in tension, and the religious traditions need to nurture a prophetic aspect that calls for a more just and peaceful society on earth here and now, and stop postponing justice for some future existence. Unfortunately, in Thailand, segments of the sangha become dependent upon state patronage. The growth of monastic wealth was accompanied by the integration of the sangha into society. Often, the priestly class became another sector of the elite, with its own social power, cultural influence and selfish interests. The institutionalisation of the sangha was typically linked to state control, so that instead of holding the state to an ethic of non-violence, the Sangha were increasingly called upon to rationalise violence and injustice.
This is a quote from him: Rather than being the spiritual advisors of the nation’s leaders, the Sangha now perform ceremonies which have little or no relevance to the society. The new spiritual advisors are from Harvard Business School, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the London School of Economics. Again, from him. In this context, a perverted form of Buddhism has emerged. Sulak attempts to rethink what it means to be a Buddhist practitioner.
He’s very clear that traditional Buddhist approaches need to be rethought in order to make sense of life in contemporary societies but without compromising the essentials. He’s especially sensitive to avoid thinking about Buddhism as a form of escapism and rebukes Buddhist thinking that considers Dharma only in terms of the personal. In a clear exposition of his position in the context of thinking about world peace, he says that a Buddhist approach demands self awareness and social awareness in equal measure. This requires not just a counter psychology but also a counter culture, a counter economy and a counter politics. Again to quote from His Buddhist perspective is not about shunning of material aspects of life such as food, clothing, shelter and medicine.
Instead, these are understood as the means to building a mental spiritual ecology and not as the ends to be accumulated. His writing is replete with examples of projects in which communities are mobilised as both a political force and protest movement and also as a creative new venture of self reliance and sustainability. Both streams being committed to incorporating spiritual practice and a goal of contentment rather than material wealth. There’s a Buddhist alternative to the think big version of development. Development must aim at the reduction of fostering greed and hatred and increasing power.
Again, quote from him: It’s the reduction of desires that constitutes development. This is the opposite of the materialist notion that dominates our conventional thinking. So for Sulak, this process of reducing selfishness involves two an inner realisation concerning greed, hatred and delusion, and an outer realisation concerning the impact these tendencies have on society and the planet. So that’s Sul project. Which does sound quite familiar if you the week before and so on.
Just the again he’s articulating it inside of a, you know, the Thai context which is, you know, third world country struggling with Western development. We’re a Western country struggling with Western development. I think the problems are the same. Did you say that he was advising the Thai government? Tell me to Well, I think what no.
What he’s saying is that London School of Economics. Did he train at the What he’s saying no. What he’s saying is that, historically, the Sangha became implicated in the state’s project. Yeah. Instead of the Sangha advising the nation on what it should be doing ethically, now it’s being advised by the neo, you know, the neoliberal project from the Harvard School of Economics and the London School of Economics, which are the I don’t know.
I think it’s actually the Chicago School Economics actually is the is the place that neoliberal ideas have started from. I think he’s got yeah. That’s where the the western views of development start. So he’s got real concerns with those. I mean, one of the one of his provocations in the middle of all of there and, you know, when you’re writing these theses, you go off in a million lines of flight.
You know, there’s there’s one section in there where he’s basically saying there’s sort of a longer version of this. I think Western has become incredibly interested in third world development and want to go to the third world to help them out. What he’s saying is you’ve got to get your own house in order. And that’d be really helpful for us if you could get your own house in order. That’d be the most helpful thing you could do.
Get your own life in order. I went to America and do some stuff there. I went to a conference, and I’d seen I’ve just seen Real Poverty in Dallas. In Dallas. Yeah.
And at this conference, there was a group of people. It was Peter Senge. Senge. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. And it was a conference of two thousand people and all from the big end of town. Yeah. Not all. No.
Just from the big end of town. And so it was a group of people who met saying they wanted to do something as people who were socially concerned. And so they had a a special meeting, and I went along as part of that. There was about forty people, I suppose, out of the two thousand and And they went around talking about what they wanted to do, and nearly every one of them talked about wanting to take American know how to the third world, Use the singing approaches and those sorts of things in the third world. And it got to me and I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
And I said, look, this is really strange. I come from outside America. What we America going to the third world is actually and I was in the Philippines with and saw Peace Corps people there. Yeah. And the Peace Corps people confirmed what I saw at uni or read at uni about Peace Corps being part of the CIA in in doing social surveys and gathering information to use against the locals.
Yeah. And I talked to locals who were in squatters and in local areas saying, you know, we don’t want the Peace Corps. They just so I sort of said some of this and and said, I think maybe America ought to be focusing on looking at what’s happening with its own poor and its own developed rather than elsewhere. Well, there’s a you know, if you read globalization theory or you’re interested in that, which I am, there’s a know, one of the writers in that area that I really, really like is a guy called Manuel Castells, and a really, really important paper that he wrote a few years ago where where he was he was he was he was bringing our attention to what he was calling the fourth world. Mhmm.
And the fourth world consists of sub Saharan Africa. So it’s, you know, it’s basically basically completely outside of the, you know, the the global economy. But but then it also lives on the on the edge of every major capital city. So, you know, the favelas in in the Chilean cities and in in whole blocks in San Francisco and three blocks from the White House in Washington and on and on. You know you know what I mean?
So you’ve got you’ve got increasing numbers of people that are completely excluded from the from the world’s economy. But what he he hasn’t actually you haven’t reported there on his solution to that. It’s a commentary so far. Well, mean, you know These projects Yeah. His projects.
He’s got a proactive project. And he’s trying to make contact with intellectuals and thinkers as well Yeah. By the sound Well, I mean, he’s got that international network and, you know, he’s in conversation with yeah. No. I wasn’t so interested in the empirical side, but I’m just interested in the in, you know The frame.
The the logic that he was getting at. So Yeah. I mean, yeah, the the project itself’s another side. You know? You can check all of that out.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you go up to his website, then there was I think he had a there’s a project, you know, with aid to to Burma Mhmm. Because they’ve just had that huge, you know, hurricane there and so on and so on. Very interested in this project about, you know, the first one about the consumerism and and because, I mean, this is I mean, I thought I’d done some original thinking saying we need to shift mainstream culture from consumerism to care concern and connectedness’.
That’s what came to me from coming to Jampa’s teachings. Was just like, ‘If we can get operating from that level then that’s attacking the root and that’s changing the way systems are living in this society. And then I went to the Federal Candidates Forum in Mayo which I organised and some of the candidates stood up and spoke and they pretty much mirrored what I thought was original thinking. And there they are speaking to a public, you know, a public poll field with one hundred and fifty people saying that we really need to shift if climate change is going to be solved, then we need to shift away from consumerism to these things. And so here are these budding politicians who want to be politicians that are thinking this and they’re talking to the public and the public are coming up with those ideas.
I think that in our society there is a want for that and so I’d be interested as to how we can work with Sulak and how Buddha House here could be a part of, I don’t know, up with ideas and sharing that with the public. Because I think that there is a want. I think that systems are beginning to fail enough. Yeah. Oh yeah, I mean the logics, Brian, know, the neoliberal logics, totally exhausted as far as I can see, but it still dominates the, you know, the political space.
But I You try and try and get up as a candidate or, you know, be treated seriously if you do put these ideas up. I mean, it’s very difficult. But Brown puts it up all the time. Yeah. But you how he gets treated though in the public But I think as more environmental things are failing and the hurricanes are picking up and the people in the South Pacific with the water rising and really people are having loss of home already, you know, as those things increase then people are going to laugh at this.
No. No, of course not. Just you’ve logic like, you know, one of the key bits of logic that I think is just, you know, anyone who’s probably got grade five arithmetic could work this out. This is this is this is a problem. That’s the whole the whole you know, the center of our economic logic is based on economic growth.
And anyone who makes an argument for for a political a political project that’s not based on economic growth is just totally laughed at. It’s long history that I just Yeah. You know, it’s been right through I know it’s a bit of a burden, but, know, right through colonialism and so forth. I mean, it was all just feeding economic growth back to Europe and so forth. You know?
So that model’s been there for a long time. It’s been there for a long time. You’re quite right. I mean It’s nonsense, isn’t it? It’s not sustainable.
Starting break down. I mean, Garnaut just did a meeting meeting to the press, you know, sure enough, the journalists were actually asking him, you know, is GDP an okay thing for us to be measuring the impact of whether to act on climate change or not? And sure enough he said actually no, if you see in Chapter four I’ve listed that it’s not, it’s not actually enough, there are other things we need to measure it by. And so the people are asking is should we be living our life, should our things be measured just by GDP? And sure enough, even the people who are influencing politicians are beginning to answer no.
And so maybe we could move to the Tibetan thing of gross national happiness after all. That’s right. That’s right. That’s good. Is it Bhutan, isn’t it?
Yeah. Bhutan, the king of Bhutan. Yeah. Yeah. So and I I think that, you know, there’s an inkling.
Oh, yeah. I mean, the yeah. Can I suggest a project? Yes. Apart from a conference?
Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Well, I started in the Philippines in the seventies, and it it stayed with me all my life. And and I still have contacts and people there.
And I a person came here twelve months ago from Kiguyin and the Kiguyin Valley, right right up north. And they were reporting the same things that I saw in nineteen seventy seven happening with Australian industries destroying local environment and local social and economic life. And that that in the seventies, there was not just Australian, but Americans were very strong. And so there there’s a company that operated down south, and they grew fruit and canned it and took it home. And they started from local missionaries coming, seeing the the benefit of of, you know, growing there and set up this canning company and send all this stuff to back to America.
And the locals say they came here to do good, and they’ve done very well. Thank you. And that’s exactly what’s happening now in in the north with with Oceana, Australian company. And they are using mining techniques to take gold and other heavy metals out of the local area. And in the meantime, totally destroying the agricultural area.
And the the person who came was wanting to get Australian support for making the Australian public aware of what is doing. And I didn’t promise, but I said, alright. It’s one of those things that I’d be interested in looking at and seeing if we can make the public more aware of what’s going on. So, you know, I’ve been busy and haven’t found a group of people willing to do it. But it’s one of those things that I think it’s about information, it’s about knowledge, it’s about possibly some people buying shares in Oxiana in order to be able to go to their meetings and present Counter arguments, yeah.
Because I see their reports and their reports completely deny that they’re doing any harm there at all. The public stuff here is all about the wonderful profits they’re making, the industry that they’re creating and the wealth that they’re giving to the local people. It’s It’s not true. Well, of course, it’s one of the things that gets played out in the Southeast Asian countries is that the way that transnational corporations just go there because of the cheap labor. And then it’s a, you know, race to the bottom really and how little they can pay them.
Yeah. So, you know, having been in Vietnam last year, spending some time with the trade unions there, you know, they’re on the sort of front line on the race to the bottom. Yeah. Because without them, then your your economy’s in strife. And then you’re you know, how you negotiate so that you can ensure labor conditions and environmental standards and so on.
This is very, very awkward. But then again, you know, there’s a whole move towards, you know, investing green and Well, well, yeah, there’s there’s a whole lot of problems like that, and obviously, within Indonesia and, you know Papua they’re being paid to clear forests to plant palm oil plantations. For Australian superannuation funds. And they’re not even actually planting them. Now they’re just clearing them because they’re getting paid to clear them.
Some of them are being planted but then you’ve got the evaporation of the peat bogs underneath which is becoming the second biggest carbon dioxide emitted just from the drying of the peat bogs and then that land becomes so there’s so many issues. Oh, there’s plenty of plant issues. Then you take a leaf from your own book and think you’ve got to look in our own backyard and go, well, what about Tasmania and what are they doing to the forest here? And I’m just concerned because you’re raising that project and then we can look at thousands of those projects and by focusing on each of those projects you can’t Can’t do them all. I I feel that we need somehow to get to the root rather than prune the branches and literally help an education of our society that we have.
So it’s more of the public education but not necessarily one project at a time, but of the whole It sort of comes back to what Sulak was saying there about the inner and the outer, not focusing just on the outer and ignoring the inner. Because a lot of these things to me seem to be coming back, unless to the point that if you don’t change that sort of consumer mentality, which has really thrust at us through advertising and business and so forth, hang on, we’ve got this product now, we’ll go out and create a market so that you guys will buy it so we’ll make more money. If you can’t sort of break that mentality of, you know, consumerism being all there is to life, which is pretty much the modern western way, I think. I mean, mean, cap that that economic system just arises out of our mind, which is what’s which is what’s wrong with Western social theory that doesn’t understand that clearly enough in German. So, you know, it arises out of out of out of greed that, you know, our sense of lack that Buddha diagnoses two and a half thousand years ago.
So it’s if if you don’t do the internal work, the external thing’s just gonna That’s why the double move is really important. That’s why I like the way Sulak talks about it. I just find it very funny sometimes. This is again a perfume. My wife’s always had this fantasy to a bit of an interest in building homes and stuff and there’s this programme.
Don’t Great. Whatever it is. Design. People building their own. Yeah.
And just what strikes me, though, I mean, I’m just thinking of last week where these people built this house. And really wanted this environmentally friendly place, and they’ve got this house built in kit form in Germany. And there was all this insulation in it that was offcuts from the factory, and it got packed in just, you know, properly to insulate and all this sort of stuff. And I’m just sitting there thinking they’re going on and on about, you know, environmentally friendly, how little it’s gonna cost to run this house, and they’ll build this whopping. House.
I’m just thinking, oh, this is How about it was forty something a bit smaller? You know? I mean, it was like wanna be I can still have my McMansion. I wanna be environmentally friendly, but I still want this huge consumerism idea, this huge house. You know?
It’s so hard. Because I mean, describe us as bowerbirds. I think humans are bowerbirds, and no matter what no matter what they know, just just want I mean, here I am living an eco friendly life for years now and I only op shop and go to garage sales and that’s how I clothe myself and everything but still I just love it! New I’m not creating new demand. But still, even though I’m aware of it, I still love it.
And so what is that? How do you switch that off? And yet if we’re on a path and we’re conscious and I’m aware, and yet still there’s that drive. I mean, how can we expect to come across and help, you know, create some kind of tidal change? Well, I mean, that’s it’s only step by step, isn’t it?
I know. We just gotta look at my next step. But that’s all we can tell. Yeah. Because each of those things I mean, each of those projects and, you know, the dilemmas of the orangutans losing their land and going to be wiped out and and they’ve never each of those, you know, points of degradation are coming back down to the breed.
Yeah. Absolutely. And the me. Well, me collectively. Yeah.
That’s right. Yeah. I guess that’s where, you know, again, when you’ve got you’ve got Sulak’s provocation really, you know, a Buddhist vision for renewing society. So, I mean, how do you how do you think about the you know, there’s a, you know, socially transformative project? Going back to last week What would you do?
Got one of Peck’s books on Sunday and read it and it was on creating joyous community, harmony in community. And it’s very, very good in attacking these issues about the purpose of community and how we actually can create community and the processes that you can do to actually That’s a very good book for the director of Buddha House to be reading. It’s about but it’s not just about Buddhist community. What they they he defines the as being any group of people to gather together for any for any shared purpose. And so what when we start talking about the the methods which the Sangha, the Buddha’s own Sangha were told to put into place, he then brings it into the into modern times and looks at the processes, meeting processes, and when there’s disharmony and how you make decisions so on about consensus, but not consensus based on people being unaware, consensus based on people being very aware and no decision being made until people are all aware of what the issues are.
And so that eats away at this impatience. Yeah. It just nibbles away at it and and says, look. But for us to go together, see our salvation in our collectiveness, not in our our individuality and so on. It’s it’s it’s a really it’s simple.
Yeah. But it’s beautiful. Yeah. It’s really good. So I I actually thought I’m gonna get a hundred copies here and yeah.
Think of everybody because It was great. Now this fits in just so well, again, it’s going be eating away of that consumerist approach. And I really like that idea starting in our own backyard. I wonder if we can help educate the people to develop a more joyous sense of community. Not just in Buddha House but Adelaide and help educate all the reasons why a consumeristic way of life isn’t not sustainable for starters.
But Yeah. But it it’s not gonna bring anyone happiness either. Wasn’t it wasn’t it after nine eleven Bush or Cheney said, well, just go out in shock or something? Yeah. Yeah.
That was gonna show those terrorists that we our lifestyle wasn’t defeated. Yeah. I see. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Was. No. Yeah. Yeah.
It was so it was very telling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But every every sitcom says that too.
You know, they have a bad day, and they all go to the world. You know? So it really is a major source of therapy for them. Literally, they talk about the therapy. You know?
Yeah. Chewing therapy. Yeah. It’s going it’s tough. Tough to go shopping.
Yeah. That’s it. You’ve been raining ballooning, have you? Have you ever worked here? I mean, that thing shopping.
But Lunig understands it pretty well. He sure does. The search for truth and love and beer. He’s got another one that I like very much where this guy is lying in bed. It’s two AM.
He wakes up and says, I need to buy something. I need to buy something new. He pops in the car, and he’s roaring around the suburbs looking for a shock. And he finds a supermarket, you know, three am red light special. He rushes in and here it is.
It’s the holy grail, the one and only. He says, oh, I knew I’d find it. And the sales assistant says, will that be cash or credits? But, yeah, it’s just lovely. I need to shop.
I need something new. But I mean, that’s the whole thing. I mean, we’re all under the influence of that, of course. You’ve come clean. You know, the rest of us have got our own stories about needing to buy something.
I mean, we’re all familiar with it. That’s the suction in the whole consumerist thing, you know, in the sense that it can’t satisfy us. You know, you get that thrill. I get it too. Mhmm.
But it doesn’t last. So the consumer answer that is, oh, well, go out and try one. Go and buy something else. Try that again and see if it’ll work again. See if it’ll work better next time.
Doesn’t work. A drug. When you think after fifty years, some of us would have worked it out. It’s a satisfaction of the mind. It’s actually it’s exploring.
It’s a hunting room gatherer. That’s what we are. We’re hunters and And we feel that we’re providing either for ourselves or our family or, you know, so Yeah. I get for my my feeling in that one is at least I’ve got control over this. I can make a decision and do it.
Yeah. And they can buy it or not. But they’re they’re I guess that’s where the I mean, one of the things that’s that I find extraordinary about the Tibetans is their their contentment at having nothing. You would have experienced that better than me because you would have hum around them in India and There’s a saying, contentment doesn’t come from fulfilling your desire and wanting. Contentment doesn’t come from getting what you want, but wanting what you have.
Mhmm. So it was almost like that. That was one of the first things I was impressed with when I originally went to Dharamsala. Mhmm. Yeah.
Was that these people had lost everything. Yeah. Many members of their family and so forth, refugees, but they were happy. Yeah. I mean Content they were contented.
Yeah. Yeah. They weren’t they they weren’t suffering lack like we do. Because that’s the Unless we can’t talk about this in our local communities, another new devastating project or investment or something that takes advantage of the community is going to start up. I guess it’s again back to know, the Tibetans don’t just talk about it.
They manifest contentment. I think that That’s the that’s the that’s where there’s the personal works required. Because then, you know, that’s how other people learn what’s possible as well, I think. But we can tap into the Australian culture and the contentment that we all feel as Aussies, if I can say well we go camping and we take a Esky, can I use that language here talking about the Aussie Ochre experience and we feel contented with our families, without Eski, without tent? You know, there for a week, even better if there’s nowhere to have a bath.
We did it! And so I don’t think that we necessarily all need to be enlightened and wait to be socially engaged until we can all stand up for Because when it comes down to something as simple as this, it’s about being selfish or kind or caring. And we can learn that when we’re toddlers. Sure. Just that we’re living a social context in which, you know, the citizen now is described as aspirational.
That’s its key characteristic. But but rather, I I I think the citizen is described? Well, our citizenship is the first characteristic of being a citizen is being aspirational. Yeah. Entrepreneurial.
I think the problem with our society You know what I mean? Yeah. So so our children are being brought up in where where where to be normal actually is to be aspirational. Yeah. That’s what’s normal.
You’re you know, we’re not normal. But I think that It’s very difficult to put a not normal position. Not just you know? Do you think that there is a clear definition of what they’re aspirational for? Because that’s what I think is missing in our society.
Yeah. Is that, yes, we’ve all got this drive and we’ve all got this we are all aspirational. We are all aspirational. Yeah. It’s an open category.
I think we could have some power in dictating the goals. Yeah. But isn’t what the prime minister previous wanted? Yeah. Yeah.
He wanted to have a definition of Australian culture so we could all aspire to it. And his definition was historical and mateship and Cricket. Cricket. Yeah. Well, maybe it’s a time for a new one for community, care, concern.
Yeah. Just that if you go up and have a look at what Howard’s mob did for the, you know, the key values for education, they’re the ones. They’re up there. But, I mean, this was at the time of the tamper and so on and so on. You lined up the values, and you lined up what they did.
Yeah. Yeah. So now we hold them to it. Yeah. Well, well, we didn’t, did we?
Because there you know, Alexander Danner was a nice man. Sixteen guidelines. Lama Yeshe’s Essential Education. The sixteen guidelines of the king of Udan. What?
Wasn’t it? King of king of no. What was his name? Jampel. Kill me.
Anyway, he was a king in in, what, twelve hundred years ago? Yeah. Something like that. And he sent out the sixteen things which he believed would make a happy kingdom. And and they are I can’t remember them all, but he included them things like Where’s Lama Yeshe written this?
Well, I don’t know if he the essential guidelines, he called them. Where are they? I’ve never seen those. I went to a workshop in Sydney a couple of years ago at the Happiness Causes Conference. Oh, okay.
And Alison Murdoch, who’s in London working on this project, is now propagating these. Oh, okay. And they’re Do you know these, Jampa? Yeah. Yeah.
And Jampa has just been to a week or two weeks in Italy where they’re looking at how using these. Yeah. I I I used them with a a mental health group in a workshop staff, a mental health group one time, and they just grabbed them. They they were great. You know?
So there’s some frameworks there. We don’t have to do all the work, but the frameworks are there. And the idea is that you actually use these in school settings or in work settings or in wherever you can, but they provide a framework for saying this is the sort of society that we like. So we’re gonna hear more about them. I’ve got some written stuff on them.
There’ll be more coming out. There’s a book that is is being written at the moment, which will talk about the ways that we can use these. What an airport book? An airport book? No.
No. A workbook. Oh. A workbook for people to actually No. I’m I’m just saying you buy it in the airport library on the way out.
Yeah. Know. That’s where you get and all those. Yeah. You know?
Yeah. Could. We could go. How to become a millionaire and all those. They’re all there in the airport.
Yep. That’s where you get your wisdom from the airport. As long as you upset your flight. That’s why the we can know the Dalai Lama in the airport. It’s inspirational.
Yeah. So, yeah, it’d be good. We will have some of these workshops here. There’s no doubt about it. And look at how people can use it in their own workplaces.
Or maybe we could do a community education program and go into schools and media releases. Yeah. That’s very much what the the attention. Right. This is a secular approach.
Yeah. And also attempting to make it multi faith as well. And to dictate I’m not saying dictate, but actually feed the media, feed the dialogue in the conversation. Yeah. You know, the journalism was up.
Because I think, you know, politically, Australia searching at the moment just Well, like, the happiness conference turned out to be incredibly successful. It is. Keeps going and going and going, and then people pay nine hundred and fifty dollars for Europe. Three days. Is it?
Mhmm. Europe, San Francisco. I know some friends of mine that, you know, they’re not oh, my friend is not, you know, not Buddhist at all, and she she’s sort of interested in spiritual things, but she managed to she’s managed to go to the happy the first happiness conference and came back incredibly happy, actually, and then went to the second one. She’s a school counselor. Mhmm.
So that’s the she gets her school to pay. Yeah. Mhmm. Well, this is what’s happening. You go most of the people there are professionals who have been paid by the workplace to be Yeah.
Yeah. It’s interesting. These small spaces that open up that you would have thought were you know, wouldn’t be possible, but there they are. Oh, maybe we could do local Adelaide not for professionals, but for somebody else’s conference. Yeah.
Well, I think we we can. I mean, you know, that’s the sort thing that we can do. The time when this when the materials come out, we’ll have the tools that will make it a lot more easy. Sonia, for a. She’s doing the media?
Yes. Oh, yeah. This is subjects like loyalty. Well, respect for elders is one. Drag them out.
This was, you know, be be given that I’ve been sort of a, you know, an educator from my whole life, I have had a more recent fantasy in the last decade that they got Catholic schools and Anglican schools. Where’s the Buddhist school? In a cave. With the Buddhist curriculum. Yeah.
Respect for elders. Yeah. Be interesting. Sorry. I can’t.
But I’ll I’ll get the stuff out. This is all the pre stuff that So is it up on the FMT website? Yeah. Have their own website. Yeah.
It was called Essential Wisdom Essential Essential well, it was Essential Education, but it’s not now. That that was Lama Yeshe. That was the Lama Yeshe Yeah. But it I think it’s it’s called sixteen guidelines. Isn’t it?
Yeah. It started off as universal education and then Universal education. That’s your I think it’s it’s called essential wisdom dot com. Yeah. Essential wisdom dot com.
Yeah. Yeah. If you if you go to Alison Murdoch. Alison Murdoch. Yeah.
That’s right. She she’s the director. She’s so now they’re they’ve actually they they published a book with just setting setting up very briefly each of these sixteen guidelines, and now they’re gonna have they’re gonna have essays written on each of them, and they’re working on a method of of actual training. So they’re giving trainings and they gave the training for children in in Italy, and then she’s going to give a training in a course in Canada, maybe next year in Australia. So, you know, how to actually run a a seminar on the sixteen guidelines, or you could do it or space it out over sixteen weeks.
Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Or yeah. The way I just choose got the people when I was doing it to to look at them, to choose the ones they wanted to do, go into into groups and talk about them so that you had them grouped with people looking at the particular things and what it would do in their work if even in their workplace if they adopted these principles.
And they just got. So it’s I’m sure it’ll get great take up when it’s. We talked other night at the Buddha Cafe Oh, yeah. Which is kinda interesting. I mean, these are young people.
They’re about twenty. Yeah. They’re, think, eight between the ages eighteen to twenty five. Yeah. Was really taken by that his his interpretation of the first precept where, you know, what was it?
Don’t harm or kill others do not steal. Because I think that our living in luxury and our great, you know, while others are suffering in the world, know, not a lot of us here come to put a house and yet we’re still by consuming the way we do or choosing the products we choose or, you know, banking with whoever we bank, you know, in a way we are, you know, contributing to the death of other mechanisms or It’s all connected. The Yeah. The the the the why the you know, we live we you know, we’re living in a in a culture in which the the it’s been hundreds of years of inculcation as well that that, you know, it’s it’s it’s completely convinced of our individual status and and our economies based on the where where where individuals and the sort of interconnectedness of of of us all that of that side of us all, you know, you know, withered. Mhmm.
So so we so we live in we live in this time in which the, you know, the the the dominant idea is the fact that we’re individual and the inter interrelationship side of things is is while whilst it’s it’s just completely self evident, but the logic of our our political system and our economic systems all to do with the individual. And and we can neatly, you know I mean, I just yeah. We just it just enables us to just laminate over our connectedness to others. We don’t have to worry about it. And it’s just, you know, be easy to live your whole life and not not think not think one one other thing in the culture that we’re in.
So If you’re just in on the cultural dominant, you know. You can watch the news and so on, but that’s somewhere else. I guess that’s where globalization is interesting, isn’t it? Because the, you know, it’s quite clear to everyone empirically that we are very, very interrelated. It it And so the, you know, the the the the ideology of individualism becomes no.
It just it runs out. Out. It just doesn’t stack up. I guess I mean, I I thought nihilism was gonna fall over ten years ago, but it sort of reinvented itself and, you know, it keeps on going. Okay.
And individualism is the same, isn’t it? You just think that it’s gonna fall over, but I guess it’s because it’s so institutionalized. Well, I think And so it’s not, you know, it’s whilst tomorrow the half the world might might, you know, it might come become clear to them that it’s that it’s and probably half the world already knows. But the way the institutions work means that logic keeps going because it’s in the institutions. I think a lot of people, you know, are so wrapped up in that, but, you know, because of because of thought that’s why societies and their culture and the way they’re that they actually don’t have time to remove themselves from it to see an alternative.
They’re so wrapped up in it with everything, with the weight. And a lot of people today aren’t aware of the spans of time, they’re only aware of the way things are now. Yeah. And they think that’s why It’s a sort of a it’s a sort of a it’s a perverse form of be here now, isn’t it? It’s the sort of uncosmic version of it.
And so, I mean, he’s complaining. Still, What he was talking about, what was happening to Thailand seems to be that he was, you know, is upset with the condition of his country now, is that a lot of it is unjust and a lot of it is unsustainable. And I think that that was an issue with the project we were talking about in Philippines. It’s unjust and it’s unsustainable and it’s the problem here and it’s the problem with climate change. It’s unjust and it’s unsustainable.
So maybe one of the major things we can do is help publicise our connectedness and our want for a just and sustainable culture. Because it’s those decisions that I mean, I’m just looking at how can we package this so that we don’t just have to walk around the guidelines but can actually have a phrase can A bumper sticker. A bumper sticker. The teacher. And then we can do the guidelines.
That’s capitalist talk. But some people offers people an alternative. You know that? Yeah. The conference.
Connectedness, you know, just sustainability. And I think that, you know, really Well, it’s it’s it’s you know, it’s it’s I I know whether I told it last week. I’ve told this story sometime in the last fortnight, but this this friend of mine who’s I think he claims being Persian, which means he’s probably, know, Iranian. Mhmm. Got some Iranian lineage.
Lineage. He’s very secular, secular philosopher of education. And a few years ago, I ran this symposium at the Australian Association for Research and Education around Buddhism. We had this symposium around Buddhism, and I got some of my friends that I knew that were using Buddhist ideas in their practice. So we thought we were just gonna be talking amongst ourselves, but thirty five people turned up, and he was one of them.
He got really, really disturbed with me at lunch and afternoon tea and was working on me for a few days because I was trying to make an argument that there were quite positive resources inside the religious traditions. Except for him in America, the problem was trying to maintain the secular project against the Christian fundamentalists. So my idea was one that he just didn’t want to take on board because it just made his politics too complicated. Try to shore up the secular against the religious. That that was the way that he was doing it.
I’m saying, yeah, but the religious have got positive resources. That’s that’s not that’s no good. Meantime, you know, anyway, whenever I’ve heard him talk since, all of his all of his arguments rest on the sort of empirical the empirical fact of our our interdependence. Interdependence. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So he’s a he’s a he makes his arguments for ethics and and all the arguments he wants to make about education all track back to Interdependence except for the religious. Well, he’s got that in a bracket off to one side. He’s got a he’s got a he can see there’s a sort of a secular version of it.
Anyway, I think interdependence is a is a, you know, a really big emerging idea that even secular scholars can understand. No. Think that’s right. I think that’s that’s very true. And you don’t need religion to under to to to get that idea.
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, you get a better version of it from Buddhism, but you don’t need you don’t need it. I think that’s the Dalai Lama’s main theme is there. Yeah.
We’re all the same. And and and we’re connected. Yeah. Yeah. Because he knows people were unbroken.
Yeah. But most people are unbroken. Yeah. I think that globalization, people are already attuned to the idea, you know, that you can just draw that out, you know, that we’re interconnected. You know?
Where do you know? Where’s the shirt come from? China. Where’s this come from? China.
Where where are interconnected? Yeah. Germany. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, buying men’s clothes, there’s two unethical options. You buy it from China, or if you buy Australian clothing, it’s made in a by by a sweatshop go to Nathan and get arrested. In in in Ethelton. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s right. By an Asian outworker. Buying secondhand, I guess that’s one way out. I think, because at least it’s not generating more consumption. It’s just using stuff that’s already made.
Well, of course, you know, some of my friends are involved in the fairway campaign. You know, that’s another you know, there are there’s a politics around that. We can still get the satisfaction of a good quality buy too. Exactly. Exactly.
I love it so much. You can you can save the world. There’s actually an idea of Thich Nhat Hanh’s, which is related to reducing violence that I can be adapted to consumerism. I thought he expressed it very well because often when people first come to Buddhism they get terribly uptight about not wanting to harm harm anything and very worried about how they can make their life virtually harmless to anything else. And he just uses the idea that it’s like if you have somebody who’s navigating by using the North Star, that sets your direction.
It doesn’t matter how far you sail, you’re never actually going to reach that. And it’s like having a goal out there which is unobtainable. Very inspiring, but in practical terms unobtainable. But as long as you’re heading for it, you’re heading in the right direction. And through more and more practice you can keep heading further in that direction.
So a bit like that with consumerism. If you say, Okay, if I want to cut down on things, if I wanted to be a non consumer, that’s actually unobtainable because we need to consume something just to stay alive. But for the passage of time and practice and experience, we can probably keep heading further in that direction, having that sort of goal out out there, which is literally unobtainable. But nevertheless, at our own peace, we can head in that direction. I just think Set the Yeah, set the compass.
So it doesn’t have to be suddenly switching off. And also, of course, as you would know, Graham, in our practice of ethics, it becomes more refined as you do more experiments, don’t you? You get a deeper insight into what that means. I don’t know where Any one of the five you get to. But as an idea for people, it’s suddenly like, heck, here’s an idea.
Now, how am I going to do with this? It’s pretty frightening. Do I have to completely change my way of life? But as a goal, just keep heading in that direction. It’s something that’s workable, know, and you can do it at a peace that’s comfortable.
It’s such a good thing to try and communicate that shifting away from consumerism because then it opens up people’s focus for things like connecting and healthy joyous communities and maybe being on a path. Because I think that unfortunately consumerism becomes an all encompassing focus. And that we you know, what if we can you know, you start by educating away from that, and it can open up time and focus for See, Buddhist cafe is doing that really, isn’t it? With, you know, providing an alternative Saturday night Sure. Yeah.
Menu for for people. Isn’t it? And sounds like people are really I think it was fantastic. It’s young people talking about these ideas quite enthusiastically and openly, and it was quite a it was quite a meaningful gathering like that. And they probably had this very it’s a very rare opportunity for this before.
Mhmm. I would think a very rare opportunity for adults, I think, way they were going. Yeah. Well, all that That’s an energy. That’s an that’s almost a naivety, a little bit of naivety.
Sure. Yeah. But it’s because it is nice to see. All of that, you know, joyous and healthy community is very important just here and in our own backyard because apparently research has come out that the average Australian family’s conversation from adult to child in an Australian household apparently is three conversations per week. At what length?
Very long! You can understand why we have this aspiration to acquire really. Think that’s what our aspiration, our national aspiration really is an aspiration to acquire. If we can shift that away then maybe you will improve simple things like conversation because that probably is a very unique opportunity for those kids. Well, that was again back to, you know, Eric Fromm’s, you know, name of that book, which of course he just gets from Buddha.
It’s, you know, having or being. You’re either in the mode of having or you’re in the mode of being. What’s the doing? Well, that you can do in both those modes. This is the this is the quandary for us.
Yes. That bumper sticker, I think. What happened to the what happened to the, you know, the camel through the eye of the needle? Yeah. Go on.
I’m too young for that. No. It’s in the bible. Okay. The rich man has got as much chance of getting to heaven as a camel has of getting through the eye of a needle.
Contemporary metaphor. So it’s not impossible. They just had it. They just had it shed. Yeah.
Yeah. That’s right. And probably carried connoteachings of unloading surplus. Yeah. You know?
Alright. Whatever it is, beliefs, goods. Well, guess that was I guess that was one of the again, you know, from my own side, the, coming along to Buddha House when I was writing my thesis and taking on Buddhist ideas. I watched it in my practice developed. But then I watched it with other people as well.
The you got the teachings and you got some opportunities to meditate with others, but then there was no space for talking about what all this meant for your life. I just found that really, really difficult. Yeah. And and some of those conversations were going on in Jampa’s Kitchen and, you know, some of my other dharma brothers and sisters, but I just found that I just found that quite sort of problematic as well, and and I know I know there were I think there were a lot of people that got to a certain point with their practice in Buddha House and then sort of basically ran screaming from the center because there was no there was no, you know, particularly if you were I saw I saw it really I saw it really significantly with one woman in the in the basic program that I was running. Because what we’re talking about and have been for last half an hour or so is renunciation in the dharmic sense.
So if you open yourself up to the first principal aspect of the path and do those meditations with even a small amount of openness and becoming, then things happen to you. All of a sudden things that you hold onto, you don’t hold on to any longer and, you know, you’ve got you’ve got you’ve got I mean, when I was younger, some of my relationships were on the basis of drugs we’d take. You know what I mean? And then if you don’t take those drugs any longer, then you don’t have those relationships. So you you have relationships around your materialism as well and some of them can be intimate relationships and all of a sudden you’re opening up to letting go of having and all of a sudden this is very very awkward for people and particularly when you know it’s almost like you needed the needed the you needed a space off to the side of Buddha House where you could you know be working some of this out.
Anyway was it was do you know what I mean, Graham? I do. Because there there was a so I was going back a few years now. There was a thing, I think it was Tuesday night or something, which was titled living the path Mhmm. Which was meant to be some of the people who had been around Buddha House for a few years running the session but trying to It was like a series of topics but trying to aim more to living in the hearer and there, you know, in a personal life.
But it wasn’t it wasn’t what you were talking about where you’re actually exchanging ideas because you had all these newcomers coming along who wanted to pick up the ideas. Yeah. It didn’t work in that sense. It was still you know, it was one zero one Lam Rim. Yeah.
It wasn’t really the next. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess the you know, it’s it’s sort of a difficulty for Dharma centers really about how how, know, how you can how you can provide provide for that. It’s quite it’s quite difficult. It is I mean, this Let let alone let alone have the conversation that we’re trying to have now, which are not just how we might, you know, get our own lives together in a you know, but what’s the next big social project as well?
You know what I mean? There are people at the moment talking about their desire for groups to talk about things like bringing up our children or dealing with our children as they become adults want help from us but when do we let go? What does the Buddhist do about that? Talking around and think it might be just some people who say they’ll say, look. Come to my place.
We’re gonna talk about this stuff. Who wants to come? You know, that sort of sort of thing as a as a starting point. Because in some ways, you know, the the dharma center in the end does lead you to, you know, living a different life. Mhmm.
Yeah. And and So sustainable and just Well, yeah. Well, think so. Yeah. That’s how I would understand it.
Maybe we could have a Buddha house sustainable and just communities. People who get together who are wanting to live a sustainable and just way, or there might be better words for it, actually can get together on a fortnightly or once monthly and have a have a coffee. I guess one of the reasons why the Buddha House works though, you’re seeing, you again, just sort of my own analysis of it. And, you know, Buddha House Buddha House for me anyway for quite a number of years was a little bit like Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m Rob and I’m a Buddhist, and I and I and I suffer.
You know what I mean? If you ever been to an AA meeting, you know exactly what I mean, and then people clap. So there’s not there’s no there’s no commitment in terms of you know, no one’s putting you in a position where you’ve gotta give an account of yourself, really, apart from just coming clean on, you know, your basic angst. Well, here here we you know, it’s possible that we’d be talking about, you know Vegetable gardens. Yeah.
All these things we should be doing, and all of a sudden, we’d be we’d be in a we’d be in a in a mob that’s we should be doing things as opposed to, Buddha House never and I never felt like I I had to do things really within Buddha House apart from it’d be good if I could keep my lay vows and so on and so on. But I was it wasn’t it wasn’t sort of a it was that conversation we had last week about the it wasn’t moralizing to me. That’s all. So it’s it’s difficult how you maintain that. We talked about because people run from that, don’t they?
They don’t wanna be moral. They do. They don’t wanna be coming in and told that they’ve they’ve gotta be here. About how they should bring up their children and you know what I mean? We talked about there was there was a couple of states.
There was have, be, and do and I haven’t experienced a very strong do here. I’m just wondering maybe we yeah, maybe we could just open up the do and only invite those who are keen and eager to do. Rob, you’d said this in your first week though, didn’t you? Talking about the practice, the reflection and the what was the third? It’s know, it was Rinpoche’s, it always very clear about the three Dharma practices.
Reading listening is one, understanding is two and meditating three. You’ve got a well yeah, coming to some understanding about what you’re reading and writing, getting clear about it. So where does the doing fit in that? They’re all doing practices. Because yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. They’re all forms of doing. Because the the Just that’s I mean, the is the doing informed by a having mentality or a being one? That’s the there’s a we’re all we’re all doing.
When we’re being when we’re being, we’re learning how to be and that’s what this is what that’s what this house is teaching us, then I mean, I have found an overwhelming urge to do. Yes. I have Sure. And I feel absolutely We heard that when I first met you. I feel absolutely You need to stay home tomorrow and just watch the footy and relax.
And but but, you know, and and I have been quite surprised. I mean, I’ve been coming here on and off for four years that apart from Buddha’s bowl Yeah. That there haven’t been opportunities for me to engage with the community here and do. And I think that there is great potential because I have discussions with other people when I come to the process here and people you know are definitely I think it’s one of the things that the centre’s been really struggling with for the whole period is struggling to congeal a community that sort of acts as a community. These have been going on for a long time too, you know that.
Yeah, know, always always there, but we actually haven’t cracked it. No, haven’t cracked it. And I think that the community is really important, Building the community is really important so people do know each other to the point where they can talk about the things which are really concerning them and get support from other people in in taking action to deal with those things. And that’s not, you know, just about the home life, but about community stuff. I guess it, you know, it depends what the Dharma Centre’s about, though, you see.
So the times when I’ve really, really experienced a sense of community here, there were it came out of the the one of the year when we did the basic program the first year, I reckon. There were twenty five people that were really serious about their doing their practice together. Mhmm. And that meant on precepts days, we’d all be doing precepts together. There’d be twenty five people at five thirty in the morning at Buddha House taking the twenty four hour vows.
Now that was extraordinary for for about a year. That’s amazing. Doing the retreats and you know, you’re in you were in on that. And I was five thirty in the morning. Oh, well, you you must have been the you’re you’re the one who didn’t turn up.
Yeah. I was. But, you know, they were were and coming along on Saturdays, they were, you know, meditation and so A level of energy. Yeah. Yeah.
With around practice. Yeah. Yeah. Doing the practice together. But but there’s there’s a dilemma in this as well in in the doing side of it.
Primary role is to give people the teachings in order to be able to change their own thinking, their own lives. The problem comes when people see that as being only a reflective practice and not a doing practice. And this is where Thich Nhat Hanh and people like this come in so well, where they actually talk about creating not only harmony in the sangha, but harmony in the world and peace in the world and so on. So, you know, for me, who who spent a lot of time involved in social action stuff, it’s finding that the balance between the two because there’s so many social activists that I know who are driven by anger and you get that, the sharp edge of it the whole time. It’s terrible isn’t it?
Well it’s destructive in lots of ways and for me, it’s to be able to I’ll send you the paper that I’ve written with a Cypriot friend called What’s Anger Got to Do With It? Which is an attempt to speak back about the anger that sort of drives social movements. The anger in social movements is completely naturalized. Yeah. There’s not there’s not there’s not they don’t even they don’t even they don’t even ponder the question about what’s this anger about and is this appropriate?
Yeah. What it means in here, if we do stuff here which is about social action, then it’s got to be based also in the practice. That’s it. And that’s the you know, and creating that that is, you know, working on ourselves in order to be able to be more effective than the other and to demonstrate another model. We keep going back to learning, but learning’s got that poem Love and Fear.
I don’t know if you’ve heard it, there are two actions love and fear, there are two results love and fear, there are two frameworks love and fear, there are two philosophies love and fear, love and fear, love and fear, love and fear. And that’s what I just feel is that somewhere like Buddha House, practice based in compassion, there is an opportunity to have social action based motivated through love. Yeah. Agree. And compassion.
And, yeah, and I think that yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it takes an invitation from some people who are interested to actually have that happen. I’m interested. Yeah.
Good. We have to find some more and then do something. You know, we can do something. But if if it becomes just part of a program and not being motivated by people to actually do it, well then it it gets lost. It just, you know, becomes another thing to go to.
And we’re not trying to create that. There’s enough things to go to as it is. So you can draw in together those people who who see this as an energizing and motivating false form. And, I mean, those people are here. I know from well, some of them are anyway.
You hear them talking about the things that they’d like to see happen. Happen. Some of the Sunday morning people, think, would really love to be engaged in something like that. So what I I would do at the moment is I’ll I’ll store the thought for us to work at how we actually make this available to people in some way and, you know, ask you, you know, to what what would you like to do? But I think the sixteen guidelines are a very good way to to create a framework around that because they give a vision of society and community which has a completeness about it.
Mhmm. So maybe we could start some of those things fairly soon. Yeah. But but, I mean, there is obviously so much room for for a change for a healthier community. Talking about that unshedding and unfolding the camel, dropping it slowly and feeling unburdened, I mean that can be the invitation.
Yourself. We’ve got a bumper sticker industry we could use to book here. Oh, absolutely. I’m bringing out teachers. Coming back to some minutes ago, I think there was you said, Rob, about some discussion where people can just talk about their practice and that sort of thing.
I think they’re probably well And that was one of the things that we tried in the basic program. And I found I thought that was very successful. We had space for people to talk about their meditation. And up to that point, you know, there hadn’t really been that space in Buddha House. Because I had I remember a couple of people on the Sunday morning saying, really, they came on the Sunday morning, not so much for the meditation, but for the discussion afterwards because they found that really beneficial.
And I think a lot of people come to the Buddha house. And I mean, it takes you a while to pick up the jargon, the language, the ideas. Took me a while. You toss those around. You start looking, do I work with this?
What do I want to change in my life? You go outside, bought a house and you’re back into the normal culture, consumerism, which is totally the opposite. It’s very lonely out there. I think the discussion probably provides a forum for people to actually just feel like, heck, I’m not alone in this. Other people are struggling.
That’s what keeps people going. Think that that recognition of other people having difficulty with it and you pick up ideas and encouragement and all that sort of stuff. And then if that helps people develop their practice and of bed it in and all that sort of stuff which is a bit it’s a later stage when people first start coming here then that maybe helps to build on people then wanting to do something because you’ve got to feel sort of very comfortable with it having sorted out some of these issues in your own mind to a point where it feels like you’ve got a solid foundation in there from which to work from. You know, you can go off if you go off half cocked, of course, you know, things can fall apart fairly quickly. You know?
Good intentions and all that sort of stuff are great. But without a solid foundation, I think. I was just, you know, a bit a bit unconvinced about what sort of solid foundations were possible in the Sunday class. That’s all. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I was on that class for, you know, on that roster for about eight years, and half the time I’d go away from there going, know, those discussions were they needed they needed, you know, they needed a mental health adviser there half the time, not not a not a Dharma teacher. You know, Some of those people that came around there, they were just really out of their tree. I found some of those really, really some of the most difficult interactions I had during the week.
Well, do need it, but whether or not you’re up it. And also the only Buddhist ideas they’re getting is the very small renditions that they’re getting from us leading the Oh, talk about Dharma confusions in those conversations. I think it needs to be perfectly real to be able to recognize that a lot of people that come through a place like this are really seeking something. Oh, yeah. And they may be needing psychological help far more than dharma help to get some sort of stability or whatever.
Think it’s a very difficult area. Absolutely. We’re we’re in the process of organizing mental health first aid for all our people who work around here. Oh, yeah. Well, that’s probably yeah.
That’s probably good. Because there’s always people who come in who are disturbed. And Yeah. And Well, when we’re when we’re over close to Glenside When Butterhouse was over there. Gee.
You lived in that house for all those years. You know, that’s some stories. Just literally down the road from Glenside. On Sundays, some people were just really out of their tree. Drugs weren’t working.
Yeah. I mean, they were some of them were good. No. I mean, the I mean, you’re right. Of course.
But then, you know Oh. Yeah. Some of them are terrible too. But as you say, they were the one of the few spots where there was a place to talk about the ideas. I was really just putting that out as a a sense that I picked up that people felt there was a need where they just wanted not something that was structured or something.
They didn’t want to sit and just listen to something. Wanted to discuss. They needed to clarify their idea. Yeah. I think that we need more of it.
But I think what we’ve got to watch out for is we don’t just think that I mean, are people in Sunday morning discussion group who’ve been there for as long as I’ve been around and don’t appear to go anywhere else. The teaching is really just from the meditation. They must have been through it five times now and the discussion can be just a rehearsing of old knowledge and prejudice. Usually. It’s got to be a process of then taking and saying okay if you want to know about that this is the way you do it’.
Jampa’s got sessions on, Geshe-la’s got sessions on, whatever, so that we actually help them get past that point and that means that people who run the groups have to be supported in the resources to let people know what’s going on. I mean one of the things that Sunday roster, people who got invited onto that roster had had done, you know, serious Lamrim study, and that was the that’s the requirement. Yeah. Yeah. I can remember having all sorts of bizarre conversations.
It was a on on the on the day when you’re when you’re doing the meditation you can’t teach a cat Dharma. That one? Got one of those guys who’d been coming along every Sunday, oh he was so offended at me. He could teach his cat Dharma and he was telling me what for in the discussion. Okay.
Fine. The Buddha said, you can’t teach a cat Dharma. Sorry. I I wasn’t at all cosmic enough that Sunday. Oh, dear.
You should’ve said x a lot. I don’t think that would’ve worked either. Don’t think that would have worked. No. I think he could have taught a rock dharma, that guy.
The whole world was cosmic. I guess that’s the there’s people coming in with various levels of knowledge and how the center manages to provide, you know, spaces for all of them. And, you know, one of the problems it’s had is keeping its senior students still studying in the center. I reckon the center basically worked out how to do, you know, one zero one, two zero one, and three zero one. Think it probably still has got that under control.
The community. Yeah. Yes. The community building thing. That’s right.
But I guess we’re again together doing together Doing things together. Doing projects together actually allows that time for conversation and community building and relating and familiarising, actually being really a part of rich Sangha. Everyone’s really busy, you know, we’ve got the seventh suffering, that’s the other problem. You remember that teaching? You would.
You I’m sure you were here when Rinpoche gave the the seven sufferings. Being too busy. Being too busy was the seventh suffering. Yeah. It’s a classic.
You know? How are you? I’m busy. I mean, I say it every day. It’s appalling.
Westerners reality. That was more and more to shop for. There’s also What I’m saying is a contradiction really because I think at the moment we’ve got so many things in our programme that we have groups often we’ve got small groups instead of a large times when people all come together. So if you’re choosing what you do and you have to choose out a programme. Out of a huge programme.
Huge programme. You find that you’re splitting where people are going. So there’s no chance for that community to really build. Even when I was really active five years ago here, I wasn’t coming to all of it, but I was coming to some of it. Some people had been coming to other parts of the program for years and years and years that I never met, and I was, you know You’ve come to something else like That’s accidentally.
Come to something I didn’t normally go to, and it was like a completely different place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Spudderhaus, you know, there’s a lot of different people coming that don’t that don’t that’s even the really active ones don’t catch up with.
You might you might now because you’re the chief honcho. I don’t. No chance that I can catch up. Because firstly, people who are here this week might not be there next week, they might be the week after. I can’t catch up with everybody and I think we need to have some times when we get a concerted set of times when we get people together.
So we were talking about having some more retreats that bring people together as well for a decent amount of time so they can get to know each other on Yeah. On retreats even. So we’re looking at some of those things. Well, as I was I was saying that to jump, know, earlier on when we’re having dinner, the center used to run a if on on every long weekend, there was a retreat Yeah. And there’s five days over Christmas.
They they did that for ten years. Yeah. Well, we’re we’re going back They were very significant to me. Yeah. Yeah.
We’re doing them five, again, not five days. Think four days or three days after between Christmas and New Year. Yeah. That was the one. There used to be a five day Chenrezig retreat Yeah.
Or something. Mhmm. That one won’t be a living one this year, but we’re looking at putting three or four others will be living in order to give people that opportunity to, you know, do some concerted Yeah. Practice and connection. So a few things like that.
This isn’t this isn’t all plotted out yet. It’s just the the different thinking that we’re doing in reflection on how we wanna make things a bit better as a as a community rather than just a program. It’s nine thirty. We might stop there. Right?
Thanks very much. Got me in that.