Textual origins of the Ten Good Deeds

In the course of my investigations for the M.St. dissertation, I read from Richard Gombrich’s Precept and Practice, which provides much illumination into traditional Buddhist practices in Sri Lanka. He discusses in some detail Ten Good Deeds (Dasa kusala karma), which are still highly valued (see, for instance, the post on Contentment in the recluse life by Ven. Wellawatte Seelagawesi Thero and Rituals in the Theravada Tradition by Ven. Bhikkhu Praghyalok).

A list of the deeds is as follows (Pāli followed by English translation taken from Gombrich):

• dāna — giving (material)
• sīla — keeping morality (i.e. the precepts)
• bhāvanā — meditating
• patti[dāna] — giving (transferring) merit
• pattānumodanā — rejoicing in (another's) merit
• veyyāvacca — giving service
• apacāya — showing respect
• desanā — preaching
• suta — listening to preaching
• diṭṭhiju — right beliefs

[Note that these are distinct from the dasa kusala karma patha, Ten Good Paths of Action].

You may have noticed that there seems to be some variation and interchange: one sometimes sees dasa kusala karma and elsewhere dasa puñña karma - the former usually translated as ‘wholesome’ or ‘skilful’, whereas the latter are usually translated as ‘meritorious’. The use of ‘good’ seems to cover both cases reasonably well and one could argue that skilful implies meritorious and conversely. :-) However, whichever term you settle on, Prof. Gombrich indicated that the source of these good deeds had not been established in the academic literature.

It’s in such situations that the present crop of electronic tools is a real boon and since I’ve spent a lot of time composing phrases for search boxes, I thought I’d take a look. For searching the Pāli canon I used the Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana (Sixth Council) Tipitaka CD (version 4), a digitised presentation of the Burmese canon. One thing I find particularly interesting and useful about this edition is that it has some underlying TEI text encoding, which should help in determining meanings.

And, sure enough, I found a listing in commentary to Abhidhamma, namely the Abhidhammasaṅgaho of Anuruddhacariya: Abhidhammatthavibhāvinīṭīkā: Section 5. Vīthimuttaparicchedavaṇṇanā: Kammacatukkavaṇṇanā: Verse 65.

65. Dīyati etenāti dānaṃ, pariccāgacetanā. Evaṃ sesesupi. Sīlatīti sīlaṃ, kāyavacīkammāni samādahati, sammā ṭhapetītyattho, sīlayati vā upadhāretīti sīlaṃ, upadhāraṇaṃ panettha kusalānaṃ adhiṭṭhānabhāvo. Tathā hi vuttaṃ ‘‘sīle patiṭṭhāyā’’tyādi (saṃ. ni. 1.23, 192). Bhāveti kusale dhamme āsevati vaḍḍheti etāyāti bhāvanā. Apacāyati pūjāvasena sāmīciṃ karoti etenāti apacāyanaṃ. Taṃtaṃkiccakaraṇe byāvaṭassa bhāvo veyyāvaccaṃ. Attano santāne nibbattā patti dīyati etenāti pattidānaṃ. Pattiṃ anumodati etāyāti pattānumodanā. Dhammaṃ suṇanti etenāti dhammassavanaṃ. Dhammaṃ desenti etāyāti dhammadesanā. Diṭṭhiyā ujukaraṇaṃ diṭṭhijukammaṃ.

I have very little idea about dating, but I understand this is only Medieval commentary.

However, on searching phrases taken from that text, I subsequently came across a verse in the Itivuttaka Atthakatha, specifically the commentary on the Puññakiriyavatthu sutta (Tikanipāto. Dutiyavaggo Puññakiriyavatthu suttavaṇṇanā), which includes a list of ten good deeds, though the term used here is puññakiriyavatthu. Kiriya is a special word, being the actions of an Ariyan being, that is of one who is assured of nibbāna. Such actions have no karmic fruit.

Anyway, there are certainly ten good deeds here – listed as three and then seven more:

Ekamekañcettha yathārahaṃ pubbabhāgato paṭṭhāya kāyena karontassa kāyakammaṃ hoti, tadatthaṃ vācaṃ nicchārentassa vacīkammaṃ, kāyaṅgaṃ vācaṅgañca acopetvā manasā cintentassa manokammaṃ. Annādīni dentassa cāpi ‘‘annadānādīni demī’’ti vā dānapāramiṃ āvajjetvā vā dānakāle dānamayaṃ puññakiriyavatthu hoti. Vattasīse ṭhatvā dadato sīlamayaṃ, khayato vayato kammato sammasanaṃ paṭṭhapetvā dadato bhāvanāmayaṃ puññakiriyavatthu hoti. Aparānipi satta puññakiriyavatthūni – apacitisahagataṃ puññakiriyavatthu veyyāvaccasahagataṃ pattianuppadānaṃ abbhanumodanaṃ desanāmayaṃ savanamayaṃ diṭṭhijugataṃ puññakiriyavatthūti. Saraṇagamanampi hi diṭṭhijugateneva saṅgayhati. Yaṃ panettha vattabbaṃ, taṃ parato āvi bhavissati.

Again, I don’t know about the date, but according to a Pali Text Society page (section on the Itivuttaka Commentary), this commentary is considered to have been authored by Dharma around the 6th century CE.

Note that a few of the words are slightly different, but the construct seems congruent with each pair having essentially the same meaning.

• dāna : dāna — giving (material)
• sīla : sīla — keeping morality (i.e. the precepts)
• bhāvanā : bhāvanā — meditating
• patti[dāna] : pattianuppadāna — giving (transferring) merit
• pattānumodanā : abbhanumodana — rejoicing in (another's) merit
• veyyāvacca : veyyāvacca — giving service
• apacāya : apaciti — showing respect
• desanā : desanā — preaching
• suta : savana — listening to preaching
• diṭṭhiju : diṭṭhiju — right beliefs

With an eye on electronic tools and exegesis, perhaps this is where semantic encoding would help – specifically marking up texts to show equivalence of meaning…? The assistance that could be provided is only at the very early stages!

Master's Dissertation on Buddhism: On the Fifth Precept as Avoiding Heedlessness

สวัสดี ปี ใหม่! Even if you don't read Thai, I think you can guess this annual greeting. :-)

The customary celebrations have been accompanied by the usual over-celebrations with adverse consequences reported in familiar headlines such as Rising alcohol addiction costs 'could cripple the NHS'. So it may be an appropriate time to share some research into the Fifth Precept in Buddhism, which I undertook as part of my Master's in the Study of Religion.

Observing this precept is an undertaking to avoid intoxicants. So what was the original meaning of this precept? How is it interpreted today, particularly in social contexts? Do practitioners from different traditions have the same attitudes or are there variations? I explored these and other issues in my Master's dissertation on Avoiding pamāda: An analysis of the Fifth Precept as Social Protection in Contemporary Contexts with reference to the early Buddhist teachings. The exploration is essentially concerned with just the one Pali word, pamāda, which can be translated as 'heedlessness.'

As with my essays in Christianity, I was being a bit ambitious, perhaps trying to bite off more than I could properly chew. It's commonly known that there are variations, but I'm not aware of research that has shown this empirically. So I've made a little step in this direction by carrying out a survey, looking at people's understanding of the precept in theory and how they put it into practice in particular social scenarios. I wrote this up as a separate piece of work as it was too big to fit into the dissertation (but since all Master's work was marked anonymously, I had to make cryptic references so that the author of the dissertation wasn't made explicit).

I was able to establish with reasonable confidence that there were indeed variations in attitudes among practitioners in different traditions, so how did the variations arise? In my background reading I made use of quite a few Mahāyāna texts, especially those relating to the Bodhisattva ideal. Along the way, Graeme MacQueen's fascinating study of Buddhavacana prompted some reflections. Again, owing to space limitations, I couldn't write much about this in the dissertation, but at least there are some notes that I could write up at a later date.

Just one other observation. Although pamāda is most commonly connected with alcohol and mind-altering drugs, the Buddha indicated a more general scope in his guidance to avoid the intoxicated mind. I found this in the early texts when I came across the compound, jūtappamādaṭṭhānānuyoga, which I've translated as 'gambling, a yoke that is the cause of heedlessness.' I think it's apt to point to this now as I think it is this mentality that has contributed in no small measure to the global financial crisis where trading on the financial markets has been - as far as I can tell - a kind of gambling. The more I explore the texts, the more I see how fundamental heedfulness is to developing one's practice.

I hope the dissertation is interesting and helpful. Any feedback - comments, suggestions, critiques - would be welcome, either by email or as comments to this blog. I think there's a lot more research that could be pursued in this area, especially in relation to physical and mental health.

Avoiding 'Invisible Idiots' in the translation of Vatican documents

The dust is just settling as this course comes to a conclusion. I have some time now to cast my mind back on some particular episodes as a student on this M.St. course.

One of the challenges I faced was finding tantalising references in footnotes, especially those which promised to provide some special insights or even definitive analysis by which to anchor an argument. To what lengths should one go to follow such references...?

Such was the case when I worked on my essay, The Catholic Church and Inter-religious Marriages: Reflections on Pastoral Theology and Practice after Vatican II. I was focusing mainly on those marriages where the non-Catholic party was not a Christian, for which there is a rather unfriendly formal term in Latin, disparitas cultus, though it is rendered more softly in English translation as "disparity of worship." The analysis depends on canon law and Bishop John McAreavey gives a good overview of the this and what it can mean in the parishes where there is an ecumenical union (i.e. marriage with another [baptised] Christian: Mixed Marriages: Conversations in Theology, Ecumenism, Canon Law and Pastoral Practice. In one of the footnotes he refers the reader for a comparative analysis of this case with that of disparity of worship: a paper by Urbano Navarrete, an expert in canon law, who, we are informed, has described this as "a symbiotic relationship."

That sounded intriguing! But the reference in question was an official Vatican publication: L'impedimento di "disparitas cultus" (Can 1086), a chapter in I Matrimonii Misti, a volume in juridicial studies from the Vatican Library. Dated 1998, it seemed fairly recent, but it was also in Italian. I've never learnt Italian...

Libraries at your service

Undaunted, I opened up a Web browser tab and pointed Firefox at Oxford's online library catalogue system. However, no trace of this chapter or volume in the Bodleian. I did find it on sale from a couple of Italian online book sellers, but it seemed an expensive route. So I trundled over to the Enquiries Desk at the Bod and asked about inter-library loans. According to COPAC, there was no copy available in the UK, so it would require an international inter-library loan. I was encouraged to get in touch directly with the Vatican. So I duly wandered over to the Vatican Web site, found its library, which is currently closed to members of the public. In any case, I filled in an online registration and found a way to submit a query. I received a prompt reply indicating that actually the the Vatican Library generally holds works of antiquity, at least the volume I requested was considered too recent.

Back I went to the Bod and steeled myself to request an international interlibrary loan. According to Worldcat, which can list libraries in order of proximity, there were several European libraries that had the title in stock. I cast my eye down the list and singled out a German library, the Bavarian State Library (positive discrimination - Germans are efficient!) And a few weeks later it arrived.

The Bodleian is a reference-only library, so any items acquired through inter-library loans are subject to these constraints. Furthermore, although I could take notes, I wasn't allowed to photocopy anything myself - that had to be done by the library staff and according to copyright law they could only do this for one chapter. Accordingly I requested the copying of Cardinal Navarrete's chapter, but I became interested in another chapter on pastoral issues - Matrimoni misti e problemi pastorali by Agostino Montan. This meant I had to take notes - in Italian - from a chapter of 30 pages! This is where I was confronted with not having learnt Italian. What to do? Fortunately, my situation wasn't desperate (timewise or linguistically). I had studied French, Spanish and Latin at secondary school and could gain the gist of a paragraph. From this I could see several sections that seemed particularly useful, including some stats about the religious make-up of marriages carried out in Rome, and some interesting pastoral initiatives in some Northern Italian towns and cities involving groups of couples getting together in marriage preparation. It was these that I copied - sloowly, word for word, like a boy in primary school!

In possession of one nicely produced scan of one chapter plus some notes from another, I now needed more accurate translation of the most relevant bits. I pinned up notices in College - Sai leggere l'italiano? and received a resounding zero responses. :-( I started asking any friends who had even dabbled in the language and was offered translations of selected passages at the rate of 1 word a minute! More promising was a kind offer of assistance from one of my father's polyglot friends from church, Tim O'Sullivan, who is competent in most European languages, who knowing my technological leanings offered a particular word of caution...

We may have the technology, but watch out for 'invisible idiots'!

Whilst trying to find a person who could help I was also exploring an automated technological solution. I first had to generate an electronic version of the texts that had been copied and transcribed and I was given a boost as the library-generated photo-copies were nicely done, clear and uniform, enabling very accurate optical character recognition (OCR) translations - even the footnotes were generally accurate, when all I needed really was the body text. Once in possession of an electronic copy I then proceeded to try machine translation, initially through Babelfish. Although I had used Babelfish quite often before for words or short phrases, I had not really tried far more substantial passages of text. Alas, in this case I found it seriously deficient and discounted this tool as an aid.

However, no online search is complete without Google ... and Google's offering impressed me immediately in being so accommodating, happy to consume large chunks of text and produce translations for the whole lot. More importantly, it was a world apart in quality. Why? I think there's a combination of reasons that make it a good match. It uses statistical methods, trained on large corpora of texts. The core texts in question (see e.g. Wikipedia for discussion) were UN documents - they are formal, rambling, extensive and translated into many languages. And Vatican documents are ... likewise! There are few colloquial idioms used. Even so, word combinations can be parsed and interpreted in so many different ways that it's easy to get the wrong end of the stick, as we might say.

Mr. O'Sullivan was keen to relate to me a story that he had heard in the 1960s concerning English-to-Russian translation (when we met it was topical coming shortly after Hillary Clinton 'pushed the wrong button' on a state visit, but at least both sides saw the funny side!). The story, which was probably very popular at the time of the Cold War, ran along the following lines: boffins produced a computer program into which you could input one or more words. Enter a single word and out popped the correct Russian equivalent and vice versa. However, they next tried "out of sight out of mind" and after a slight pause there emerged the Russian equivalent of "invisible idiot"! I gather that it is actually apocryphal, traceable to an earlier period in which scientists were speculating about possible issues - anyway John Hutchins debunks the myth and offers to explain what was actually going on. Even so, you can still catch out many tools by entering a phrase and translating it back again. This is where, I guess, statistical methods are very useful. In any case, where a translation looked odd in a particular context, I would break it up into smaller chunks and translate those separately, repeating the process until it became clearer or made sense.

At the end of the day I read closely perhaps a dozen pages and quoted from just a few paragraphs. That must seem a very poor rate of return on such efforts, but in this instance I'm going to claim it was how I got there that was more informative and entertaining!

Waltzing around the libraries

It's Week 0, bringing very quickly the prospect of another term. I realize I've hardly posted anything at all about my course, so before I feel deluged with reading and essays, I'll offer a glimpse of what a day is like on my course (the M.St. in the Study of Religion). The main theme will be libraries.

This is a taught course, so I have tutorials, especially on the Nature of Religion. We've already received in advance a reading list for all the tutorial sessions this term, arranged week by week. Typically they consist of books and conference papers and the first port of call is the online library catalogue - the entrance is through SOLO, which is a kind of portal offering a number of services. The two that I use most are OLIS and Oxford e-Journals. OLIS has a remarkably high proportion of the millions of (physical) items catalogued; and with the e-Journals service, the University has subscriptions to many electronic editions of journals, all of which are now conveniently available through single sign-on.

So you can plan beforehand where you need to go to find X, Y and Z. (I think it would make a nice project in operational research / mobile learning to develop a tool where you could feed in a reading list, your travel preferences (foot, bike etc) and then out pops your itinerary... actually just these kinds of ideas have been bounced around in the Erewhon project ...)

There are some grand and elegant library spaces, but for myself, I prefer to borrow books to read in the comfort of my home, with a cup of tea. So on Monday, equipped with a reading list, scribbled with libraries and shelf numbers, I descended on the town, arriving first in the Social and Cultural Anthropology library (aka Tylor Library). It's a departmental library that sprawls across several rooms and a couple of floors - fairly typical arrangement. Like many (most?) departmental libraries, it opens its doors to graduate students from around the University. It has a photocopier, but its own card system - the Bodleian photocopy card doesn't work here.

After some copying and a book loan (concerning Hindu diaspora), I jogged down the Banbury Road to OUCS to join the meditation group there just before they got started. I'm very happy that they keep this going and allow me to join after I left the department. :-)

Then lunch in college (St. Cross), a bit of e-mail in the common room, and on into town. I tried to collect lecture lists for this term from OUP, but they were closed: a sign indicated "stock taking." Hmmm.. Subsequently I popped into Blackwells, made my way upstairs to the 2nd hand department and bought a copy of 'Teresa of Avila' ('Outstanding Christian Thinkers' series) by Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury. Now I can find out a bit more about the way he thinks.

Then on to the Social Sciences Library, which is in a modern building, with large rectangular floor areas. I found their photocopiers do accept Bodleian photocopy cards and so I copied an article from a journal on diaspora, this one focusing on Muslims in Ethiopia and Canada. Afterwards, coming across the science area, I made my final call at the Radcliffe Science Library and bumped into a neighbour from the Close, who has been doing research there for many years. We exchanged a few words about aspects of healing - I'm hoping to write an essay that will focus on this in the Medieval period in relation to the translation of St. Frideswide's purported relics. More large rectangular floor spaces. I had a reference to 'BP..' (Dewey Classifications system) but initially all I could find were letters near the end of the alphabet - plenty of familiar QAs (Mathematics). Eventually found 'Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe' right towards one corner.

Curious to see the spread of libraries, I've looked at the loans record for last term and come up with the following figures (apologies for the poor formatting, but I don't find it easy to control the styling in blogger):

Library
	Theology	Social and Cultural Anthro.	Oriental Institute	Social Sciences	Radcliffe Science	Balfour (Pitt Rivers)	Harris Manc. College
Subject Area
Nature of Religion	2	13		7	2		1
Buddhism	3	1	5			1	2
Total	5	14	5	7	2	1	3

Maybe a little surprising... Anyway, I hope to repeat this exercise at the end of this term.

Stepping into student life

This morning I tasted student life proper as I attended some lectures in Oxford's Examination Schools (simply 'Schools' for short). Compared with lecture theatres and classrooms I've sat in at other places, this Victorian complex of rooms is distinctly grand - my first lecture was held in Room 1, up the stairs and in an imposing room with a high ceiling. The topic seemed fitting: A Christian Vision of Moral Life: its Elements and Architecture delivered by Prof. Nigel Biggar. This was followed by lectures in the Development of Christian Life and Thought and Introduction to Christian Doctrine.

I had subsequently had lunch with veteran interfaith friends, Sandy and David, in Vaults & Garden, sitting outside (somewhat cool now summer has gone!) I gazed towards the Radcliffe Camera and had a new feeling of connection, which surprised me. It seems I had finally made contact with the University in a way I never had previously whilst serving many academics and students in IT services. Indeed, in the last 2-3 weeks like thousands of other students, I have been engrossed in various inductions and many other activities that really are new experiences, though some experiences are echoes of earlier days - especially conversations at dining room tables!

It feels a great privilege.

[archive] A Mature Student's View on Applying to do Graduate Studies at Oxford

Update January 2016

How quickly things have changed! Since I wrote this piece, access to the Internet has increased considerably and Oxford University has decided to adopt Tribal SITS:Vision. It means that my technical guidance notes are out of date (hence the related links, as originally given for the Embark system, are now broken). Instead, please refer to the present detailed information on applying to Oxford and note the new entry point for the application form. (How long will these arrangements last, I wonder... ?). Also please note that funding mechanisms may also have changed, particularly for AHRC.

However, the general principles for applications probably still hold.

<><><>

I thought it might be helpful to prospective students who are returning to full time study to share my experiences of the application process I went through to undertake a Master's degree at Oxford. In March I submitted an application to do a 1 year Master of Studies in the Study of Religion - for which I've already jotted down some motivating reasons.

The first thing that struck me is how the process is geared up for having everything done online, through the Web, with backup support by e-mail - it's the online option that it listed at the top of the application forms gateway page. Even so I expect submitting a hard copy will remain an option for the foreseeable future because if you are an overseas student with very limited Internet access the online submission would present an additional, perhaps discriminatory, barrier.

The second major aspect is the level of detail - this is not something you can complete in a couple of hours. Fortunately, the online system does allow you to chip away and fill it the form section by section and it can carry out some basic checks on completeness. Some items require time set aside and/or planning ahead:

• Transcripts - nowadays these expect many details
• References - the application form asks for three
• Sample essays and a statement of purpose - this is where you really make your case

I won't say much about general concerns when applying as the considerations are many, but I think it's worth working methodically through the various steps described in the application process. The deadlines and gathered fields are crucial - you have typically more than one slot (maximum 6) in which to submit your application, the selection of slots varying according to the degree programme. In my case, by the time I had made up my mind to submit an application I was left with the last slot with a March deadline.

I think I went through each of the steps, partly just to convince myself that I really did want to go through with this! Having absorbed as much as I thought necessary, I summoned up some enthusiasm and energy (you do need to get some up and running to fill out the forms), and proceeded to dive into the application process.

The online application process uses software called Embark, a third party system developed in the United States. This has a mild effect on the system in that e.g. the country of origin defaults its first choice to the U.S., but generally the system doesn't show any major idiosyncracies.

So now I'll recap on the major components of my application - as a prospective mature student, who hadn't been studying full time for about 10 years there was a lot of work to do!

• Transcripts: The University naturally needs to know about your academic qualifications and there was space to enter basic details for all three of my previous institutions and degrees. However, in recent years greater details have been required and these are usually issued in transcripts; the form indicates that title of award and classification are usually not adequate - so just degree certificates don't suffice. The first degree is usually a Bachelor's, the one with the most details, but also the one furthest back in time - in my case I had to get in touch with admin staff in the Southampton University Maths Department and they were very helpful and able to furnish me with all details - every unit and mark from quite some time ago! For the M.Sc. (by research) at Glasgow, I obtained a copy of a surprisingly detailed transcript from Central Admin, though it cost me a few pounds; but for Kingston University I was only able to obtain a degree certificate plus a covering letter from the head of research in computing. It was a bit of a chore, but it did provide a nice opportunity to re-establish contact with a few people.
• References: You are expected to submit academic references from three people who taught you. One reference from each of my degrees seemed sensible, but it was problematic because two people who would have been good choices had passed away! Fortunately, I was able to provide references from my main Ph.D. supervisor, an Oxford academic who had taught me quite recently and one of my lecturers at Southampton who actually remembered me (and hadn't yet retired).
  When I enquired about the problems obtaining references (and transcripts), the Graduate Admissions staff acknowledged this as a common situation and indicated that this would be taken into account, but the application form itself doesn't indicate much leeway.

• Statement of Purpose: You can write a couple of pages on this, so there is a lot of scope for expression. I guess that many undergraduates can point to lectures and tutorials they've particularly enjoyed, projects they've worked on and so on, but having spent the last 10 years working in I.T. I had to draw inspiration from elsewhere. I wasn't really sure how to angle this. This is a taught degree, but is also preparation for further research, so I felt I had to speak to these possibilities. I emphasized my mixed faith background and went for an inter-disciplinary focus, able to point to various content that I've made available online, floating some research ideas, and acknowledging work already taking place in Oxford. A problem is that there are so many different directions in which this could be taken!
• Sample essays: I expected these would be scrutinised carefully - Oxford degrees involve a lot of writing and the M.St. is no exception. Two are required and I thought about composing new ones, but I didn't have all that much time and realised that I could at least submit the one journal article that's in this field (a review of What Buddhists Believe by Elizabeth Harris) plus an essay that I had submitted previously to an Oxford academic.
• C.V.: This is again an important aspect for mature students to demonstrate relevant prior knowledge and experience. Not having a degree in a literary subject, I tried to highlight my interfaith activities and projects for both the Theology and Oriental Studies Faculties.
• College choice: You can put down a first and second choice. Not having had a college affiliation before, but really had missed as a University staff member, I spent some time mulling over which would be suitable. The selection of Colleges available varies depending upon the course - I didn't register this at first as initially I thought of Merton, which I have found a peaceful retreat from Saturday shopping crowds. With its interdisciplinary study groups it looked promising, but it was not available according to the list of programmes of study by college. So I had to find somewhere else and browsed a number of college Web sites. After a while, I reflected that a graduate college would be suitable (bit quieter, more people with similar backgrounds) and I looked for one that was centrally located. Quick quickly I settled on St. Cross, drawn by its good location in St. Giles, the descriptions of friendliness, its international composition, the ease of exchange with the Fellows and the general inter-disciplinary nature, plus the advertisement of good food! Further, my previous exchanges with members of the college were positive and proved to be a deciding factor.
• Funding. Study is a major financial commitment - tuition fees alone for myself as a home student (covering University and college) amount to more than £5,000. I was unable to find anything suitable from the various funds available, so I expect to fund myself from savings. The AHRC has an award called the Research Preparation Master's Scheme but I was ineligible as I already held a doctorate. :-( Yet they are interested in inter-disciplinary approaches - e.g. they have funded inter-disciplinary research in Buddhist studies. Even so I think my situation is quite mild as I know one Asian student who sold her flat and car just to be able to come across to study.

Other sections required some standard personal details, accommodation needs (Oxford is expensive, even in College), interview dates (but I didn't actually have an interview and I'm not sure how much they are used for graduate programmes), language skills - you could roughly indicate your proficiency for up to 4 languages. There is a section for other admission tests and in fact I once sat the GRE, but the marking scales have changed since then so after initially attempting to fill in details I deleted what I had entered.

After paying the application fee, that was basically that. There was no news or requests for further information until about 2 months later when I was informed that my application was successful. :-)

I found the Embark system generally works well - it takes all your input and uploaded files and generates a single PDF document that probably gets passed from person to person as your application gets assessed stage by stage. However, some familiarity with I.T. is implicitly expected. It's not just a matter of being able to use Web forms and fill in boxes: a lot of supplementary materials need to be supplied, including transcripts. Some of this may not be available in electronic form, so will need to be scanned, and furthermore, there are limits on the file size uploads (2MB, I think), so the image files may need to be compressed, but in such a way that the text is still clear. Further, there are constraints on file formats - Word DOCS or PDFs preferred. It's quite a lot to assume and perhaps it would be useful to have a section on IT requirements on use (technical, in terms of system and skills typicall needed). In practice, there's usually a friend or relative who can lend a hand!

A New Chapter

I'm going to be a full time student again!

In October I shall start a Master of Studies (M.St.) in the Study of Religions at Oxford University. If you take a look at the few paragraphs describing the course (or the Course Regulations pamphlet) you will see that it's very broad in its scope, treating the subject from many different subject disciplines. I intend over the coming months to use this space to blog ideas, thoughts, impressions, experiences, etc. In fact it's going to be a good opportunity to see if I can investigate further various queries I had in one of my first official blog postings in which I was wondering how IT could support the processes of going from a simple idea to formal publication - such as a book (or see archived copy).

It's a significant change for me. As I type I am still working full time in the Learning Technologies Group at the University Computing Services. I've been there a little over 8 years developing and supporting e-learning systems. So why the change?

There are several reasons that together have convinced me that it's a natural choice and the right one:

• First, I enjoy research and although I have tried very hard to sustain an element of this in my present job (most notably in the RAMBLE project and various thoughts on the Educause blog), in practice my day-to-day responsibilities have not allowed me much scope for this.
• I have long had a keen interest in spirituality and religion, having been brought up in two traditions (Buddhist and Christian).
• By working at the University for a long time and running a central system, I have come to support large numbers of academic staff and students, yet I never felt fully part of the 'collegiate University' because I never had a College association.
• Furthermore, since leaving school I've had a lingering yearning to study at Oxbridge, feeling there was a bit missing (in the Sixth Form I applied instead to 'red brick' universities for my undergraduates studies and subsequently undertook research at non-Oxbridge institutions).
• The M.St. course is particularly interesting to me because of its emphasis on world religions, especially on those from the East. It also has an interdisciplinary feel, which suits me.
• I know one or two academics involved on the teaching side and students who have taken the course. Hearing about the course from them confirms my positive impressions.
• I should be able to acquire new knowledge and skills that will enable me to help religious communities.
• Most of my work at OUCS has concerned VLEs ever since my job interview! However, my enthusiasm has gradually dwindled and I felt it was time to move on. I have tried pursuing other avenues, most notably in mobile computing, but it's not been/developed enough to persuade me to stay put, though I shall still be retaining an interest in m-learning as a student. :-)

I shall be based at St. Cross college, which I chose largely because of the reasons on their Web site - I like the fact that it is friendly (which certainly seems to be the case from my dealings with some members during my time at OUCS :-), graduate-only, international in composition and interdisciplinary in nature, plus the fact that it is located quite centrally.

I don't know how it will go and where it will lead (though I have a few ideas), but as it is just a one year course, I probably have the option to return to the kind of work I've been doing. For those contemplating a similar transition, I should say that it's not something that has come about instantly, but rather it has been a gradual process. I've been particularly glad that colleagues have been supportive on hearing about my plans - whilst still hoping that I can keep in touch in case of the occasional technical VLE query, mobile consultancy etc!

I have a lot of reading and writing ahead...