Lumbini
in the New Millenium:
The
Role of Youth and Community.
Teaching Young Persons the Truth through Buddhist Economics
A
paper by John D. Hughes Dip. App. Chem. T.T.T.C. GDAIE
Vice
President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists,
Founder
of the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd,
33
Brooking Street Upwey Victoria 3158 Australia.
1.0 How an artificial scarcity of knowledge came about in the Western economy.
Appearing in the world today are modern professions that are the legacy of the "great transformation" that changed the structure and character of European societies and their overseas offshoots.
This transformation was dominated by the reorganisation of economy and society around the knowledge market.
The characteristic occupational structure of industrial capitalism and its characteristic mode of distributing rewards was based on distorting the knowledge market.
The Western World knowledge markets have deep flaws that have been called knowledge marker pathologies: distortions that drastically inhibit the flow of knowledge.
These pathologies overlap to some extent but it is important that Buddhist followers do not enter into such pathologies because they are not conducive towards peace.
How is this?
Because the model of the profession passes from a predominantly economic function of organising the linkage between education and the marketplace to a predominantly ideological one that justifies inequality of status and closure of access in the occupational order.
The persistence of profession as a category of social practice suggests it has become an ideology to make knowledge expensive.
This ideology has serious drawbacks because one form of knowledge does not become available to interplay with another form of knowledge to generate new knowledge. This means third order knowledge or higher is withheld.
When we close off general access to the culture that holds third order knowledge then, before long, we have a shortage of those who wish to seek knowledge, to generate knowledge or to exchange knowledge within a given country.
Knowledge markets are unlike markets for goods in that every offering we make by giving away knowledge tends to produce by cause and effect others giving us new knowledge at no charge.
This is how Buddhist economics works with the distribution of knowledge. It depends on the Law of cause and effect to generate increasing knowledge.
We do not set out to create barriers towards knowledge but there is a limit to how much money we can afford in printing and publishing for free distribution.
We would like to give more good knowledge and have found we can do this by setting up seven affordable web sites.
Copyright exists in the English language books that are commercially available dealing with translations of Buddhist Texts and very few authors in the Western world or professors at universities who work in such fields have policies that their work may be copied freely or distributed freely.
We will not steal or take things that are not freely given or criticise others who wish to be paid for the specialised technical knowledge. Our web sites are loaded with information on our research papers and translations which we have obtained that can be freely reproduced without paying a fee to the translator.
This is an example of Buddhist economics and is not the normal type of thing one would expect within a Western materialist society. Our organisation over many years has spent much money on distributing free Buddha Dhamma through our journal Buddha Dhyana Dana Review.
From this Dhamma Dana action, persons throughout the world have donated Buddhists texts, commentaries and artefacts to our organisation.
There is no real financial or technical problem in establishing a web site to allow viewing of the collection of Buddha Dhamma.
2.0 What is wrong with the Western economic knowledge model?
Everyone who has worked for a Western organisation knows of an individual who has exclusive control of key corporate knowledge and uses that fact to establish a position of power.
Such a person may act as a consultant and rent his or her expertise to solve a problem rather than sell his or her knowledge since monopoly would cease to exist once the knowledge is shared.
The drawbacks for the organisation are obvious but the most serious drawback is that knowledge would not be available to interplay with other knowledge to generate new knowledge.
Because Australian universities have no intention of fitting Buddhist Monks and Nuns into their teaching system it appears they will never provide higher order knowledge about Buddha Dhamma.
Buddhist universities are the hope of the world.
The traditional medieval education system before knowledge was manipulated to create an artificial rarity was divided into seven: grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, astronomy and music.
These seven subjects were believed to embody the entire scope of human wisdom. We do not wish to see conservatism sweep into knowledge and these seven divisions of education come back into fashion.
3.0 What would we like to see?
We would like to see the following seven points made by Dr. Guruge as a worthy inspiration for creating world peace within a Buddhist economic realm. These seven points were taken from his paper; "Buddhist Philosophy and World Peace", given at the World Buddhist Summit, held from 30 November to 2 December 1998 in Nepal, which was sponsored by His Majesties Government of Nepal and the Lumbini Development Trust.
His modern interpretations are as follows:
1. Assemble repeatedly and in large numbers in harmony, do the business in harmony and disperse in harmony. (That is, participate fully in public life and affairs, observe the democratic principles of consultation, and preserve harmony in spite of differences);
2. Introduce no revolutionary laws, do not break up the establishment law, and abide by the old-time norm. (That is, to make balance between the tradition and the modern, and make changes slowly and cautiously and not drastically);
3. Honour, reverence, esteem and worship the elders and deem them worthy of listening to. (That is, recognise the value and relevance of generational wisdom);
4. Safeguard the women-folk from force, abduction and harassment. (That is, recognise the importance of women and their need for protection);
5. Honour, revere, esteem and worship both inner and outer shrines. (That is, protect the cultural and spiritual heritage);
6. Perform without neglecting the customary offerings. (That is, safeguard the practice of religion); and
7. So assure that saints have access to one's territory and having entered dwell there pleasantly. (That is, be open to all religions and spiritual influences in a spirit of tolerance).
It is the existence of Lumbini that can inspire a sense of community because it is a recommended place of pilgrimage.
The author wishes to thank all our Members and friends who have helped build our Centre to the point where we can operate in a global sense.
May you be well and happy and carry the inspiration of Lumbini forever.