A. Buddhist Contributions to the Australian Society

By "social action" we mean many different kinds of action intended to benefit mankind. These range from simple individual acts of charity, teaching and training, organized kinds of service, "Right Livelihood" in and outside the helping professions, and through various kinds of community development as well as to political activity in working for a better society.

The contribution of Buddhist organizations to social welfare in Australia can demonstrate socially engage concern of Buddhism. Socially engaged Buddhism as Buddhists practise involves a conscious contribution to relieve the suffering of sentient beings including oneself, but beyond oneself. This position is eloquently expounded by the Thai reformer Sulak Sivaraksa when he speaks of the essence of Buddhism, noting that "it means deep commitment and personal transformation. To be of help we must become more selfless and less selfish. To do this, we have to take more and more moral responsibility in society. This is the essence of Buddhism, from ancient time’s right up to the present.^[1]

Many of the Buddhist friends of different organization around Australia have conducted a very comprehensive education and teaching programs. They provide many public Dharma talks to teach the cause and alleviation of suffering and they also involved in programs of mental health to teach the public skills in meditation and stress management. In some place they also provide a public Kung Fu program to promote education for physical health. For maintain their cultures they also developed cultural education programs include flower arranging, calligraphy and vegetarian cooking classes. Moreover, they had conducted a series of public talks and discussion groups on Buddhist ethics, which involved in exploring difficult ethical issues such as suicide, divorce, abortion, depression and drug addiction ect^[2] .

The aim of all such kinds of contribution is to develop what the Buddha terms “skillful” ways that help sentient beings are easy to deal with life so they are able to have a maximize human happiness and minimize human suffering in the light of the essential tenets of the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha’s first sermon.

Hence here, there are nine categories had searching out by Patricia Sherwood completed in the year 2003 that the Buddhist welfare contribution in Australia could be divided into nine different areas as below:

1. Education of the adult public
2. Education of children;
3. Working with the sick in hospitals and hospices;
4. Working with the sick and dying in the community and in palliative care;
5. Visiting prisons;
6. Working with drug addicts;
7. Fundraising for the poor and needy (both in Australia and overseas);
8. Speaking up for human rights and against oppression;
9. Compassionate activities on behalf of non-human sentient beings.^[3]

Buddhism with its two pillars of wisdom and compassion necessarily engages human well-being both individually and socially. Modern forms of Buddhism are essentially contiguous with traditional forms despite different social arenas and cultural contexts. It is the position of the traditionalists that is strongly supported by the Buddhist practitioners in Buddhist organizations in Australia. Their view is strongly emic and very supportive of the view that social welfare activities have always been integral to Buddhism, although the cultural forms may vary.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Patricia Sherwood, Journal of Buddhist Ethics 8 (2001, 63), Edith Cowan University.

[2]:

Patricia Sherwood, Journal of Buddhist Ethics 8 (2001, 61-74), Edith Cowan University.

[3]:

Patricia Sherwood, Journal of Buddhist Ethics 8 (2001, 63-64), Edith Cowan University.