Buddhist Education
Sermons by Most Ven. Phrabhavanaviriyakhum
July 30, 2013
31/07/2013 10:10 (GMT+7)
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No one can deny the fact that the world we are living in today is encountering various problem socially, economically, politically, etc. Every country knows that educating it’s the best solution to all problem. Hence, every country has developed their educational system for that their youth will be capable human resources and social capital for the development of their countries.

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Nonetheless, the more developed the education is, the more problems tend to occur. None of the countries in this world succeeded in trying to solve their problems. Not only that , their educational system could not solve only of these problems as they expected, but it adds more problems in society. Wars and violence still arise in many parts of the world. Conflict among human being arise every corner of society and the family.

The environment is being endangered. The world’s economy is facing major collapse. Social problems are on the rise like it has never been in the history of humankind.

As Buddhist monks and Buddhists, It is our duty to use the Lord Buddha’s teaching to solve the problems of the world.

Solutions can starts by developing the educational system. We will discover that the failure of educational systems was caused by the lack moral standard Educational system in every country only has academic standard because they want their students to be intelligent; as a results the educational system was focused only to train intelligent people in every field such as economy, science, medicine, etc. There is no exiting standard of morality in any of the educational systems. Institutes cannot guaranty that their students will graduate to become good members of society. The Dhamma should be use to guide human being and environment. There are standards in every age to indicate what kind of knowledge people should have at certain time. None of these standard exists for morality.

In fact, the higher the education is, the more moral one needs to be. Otherwise. nobody can guarantee students who are well trained will not use their knowledge in the wrong way. They will graduate and turn to become a so called ” Faulty friend”.

Due to the present educational system, students are trained to be faulty friend. Humans look at each other as competitors or enemies. They have all the knowledge but they care only for their physical gain. They are all wise but they can never keep their words. They are all intelligent but they live their lives without moral principles. They are all smart but they are never able differentiate between what is good and bad, right and wrong. Everyone in the world pursues only their personal gain without caring about people around them.

Every country is competing in training their human resources to be intelligent and capable while on the other hand good people become more scarce in society. The Lord Buddha warned us that if a person with bad behavior and habits is trained with knowledge, that person will use

their knowledge in the wrong way. On the contrary, if the knowledge is instilled in a person with morality, that knowledge will be used to benefit everyone in the society and the world.

The Lord Buddha also gave us the basic moral standard for every human being. These are the basic responsibilities that everyone must have. They are divided into four categories.

The first category is responsibility for one’s own personal moral development. A person can be responsible by abstaining from the act of killings, stealing, sexual misconduct, and the use of bad speech.

The second category is responsibility for other’s moral development by abstaining from being biased or prejudiced towards others. It is important not to be biased because of our love, hatred, fear nor ignorance. This is to ensure good people will receive the fruits of their labors. Otherwise bad people will be supported to continue their bad actions even further.

The third category is responsibility for the social economy. This can be achieved by not committing the six ways of squandering wealth which consist of night life, frivolous entertainment, consumption of intoxicants, gambling, malevolent companionship and habitual idleness. Any person who engages in these activities will never be able to sustain their life financially. They would seek pleasure even to troubling others. these activities will cause society to worship money and praise anyone who has money regardless of how virtuous they are. If one can be happy while others are trouble, one will definitely not care about nature and the environment.

The fourth category is responsibility for the creation of good members for society. Every member of society and the world must keep their duties in accordance with their position in the six directions. Good people will never disappear from society if people are responsible for their duties. The world will be filled with not only wise but also moral and decent people. This moral standard of human being was given by the Lord Buddha in Singalowada sutta which is in the Digha Nikaya part of Tipitaka.

This precious knowledge was not invented by any person but was given by our farther Lord Buddha as a heritage for humankind. It is our duty as his sons and daughters to spread his words and find the way to apply it in every corner of the world. These is no need to seek other knowledge while we have the most complete teaching on earth -the Dhamma – which continue to be is still valid even after more than 2600 years. We only need to apply it with present technology and customize to local culture so that our propagation will be effective and efficient.

It is a rare opportunity for all of us to come across the globe to meet here. I urge this congregation to seek the way to train our youth to be responsible for the basic morality of

humankind. All of us hope and try to make the world better place. We have done it separately in our experiences and expertise from what we have done and achieved. Together we can change the world.

I humbly ask for the power of the Lord Buddha to bless this congregation. May we reach the answers that the world is waiting for. May our mind be pure and filled with the Lord Buddha’s Dhamma. May we be able to apply the Dhamma to humankind. May all of succeed in our task of propagating the Dhamma just like the Bodhisattava.

Most Ven. Phrabhavanaviriyakhum
Vice Abbot of Watphra Dhammakaya Temple
Deputy Chief of Board Directors of Dhammakaya Foundation

This Article was taken from (“www.wbsysl.org”)

http://www.thebuddhism.net/

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