Where to, BMSM?

The oft postponed AGM of the Buddhist Missionary Society Malaysia (BMSM) scheduled on Sunday, 2 August 2009 in Kuala Lumpur is expected to see at least two aspiring candidates to square it off for the presidency.

Ang Choo Hong

The current president Ang Choo Hong is expected to step down after serving as president since 2001. In the absence of other interested unseen hands, the vacancy will most probably see two old friends challenging each other to lead BMSM for the next two years.

Chee Peck kiat

Chee Peck Kiat who is currently the Secretary General will be one of the candidates while Goh Seng Chai, a central committee member will be the other candidate offering themselves for the seat expected to be vacated by Ang. Chee Peck Kiat was formerly the president of the society from 1996 - 2001 while Goh Seng Chai has served as the Secretary General of the society intermittenly from 1982 and 2002.

Goh Seng Chai

Both candidates who are in their sixties are not new to the Buddhist community and has been involved in Buddhist organisational activities since early 1960s. Co-incidentally both began to be linked to Buddhist activities during their youth days in Kuala Terengganu during the early days of Buddhist youth activism under the inspiration of the late Venerable Sumangalo (Robert S. Clifton) or more affectionately known as Father Sumangalo to those who were close to him.

Ven. Sumangalo

The Terengganu Buddhist Youth Circle (TBYC) was one of the active youth circles during that period. TBYC even hosted the Federation of Malaya Buddhist Youth Fellowship convention in 1964. While Buddhist youth conferences nowadays focus on discussion and planning, the said conference in 1964 focuses on sporting events, social visits and feasts, a reflection of the youth lifestyle during that time.

Ven Dhammananda

BMSM was form in 1962 by the late Ven Dr Kirinde Sri Dhammananda Nayaka Maha Thera or fondly known as "Chief" to his devotees and the Buddhist circles. One of the main objectives of the society is to encourage the study and propagation of Buddhism. Since its inception, to achieve its stated objectives, two of its main activities were conducting religious talks and publication of booklets and books in Buddhism for free distribution and sale.

Ven Dhammananda played the pivotal role in developing BMSM to a respectable and influential Buddhist organisation. He was a prolific writer and most if not all of the local titles in BMSM publication list were written by him. He gave Dhamma lectures practically in very nooks and corners of Malaysia.

No village is too rural or too far for him to travel, no crowd is too small or too young for him to address. He speaks the Dhamma to all. He speaks gently but firmly with compassion and wisdom. He carries the message of the Buddha and also BMSM's logo everywhere he goes since his publication is widely distributed. The late Chief is endeared by many and a Buddhist icon to many all over the world.

Ven Dhammananda gained his freedom from this world on 31 August 2006 and bequeated his wisdom and knowledge to the people through the millions of publications spread all over the world in multi languages. With his passing, BMSM also lost its Spiritual Director and General Advisor who always touch base with the developments and functions of the society.

After three years of his demised, it is time to review to gauge if BMSM still moving progressively based on the solid foundation laid by Ven Dhammananda or the society is now slowing down and began to live on past glories, surviving on the late Venerable's publication by repackaging its cover without releasing any new and comparable publication.

Within the BMSM circle, other than the limited number of lay persons who still vigorously contributes their time and efforts in delivering Dhamma talks especially in the English language in the name of BMSM, clearly there is no one in the robes that comes close to the late Venerable's stature in propagating Buddhism to the masses and plays the pivotal role in providing spiritual leadership to its members.

Most of the time we only realised our loss and began to grief when a person left and no more with us in this world. That is the reason we need to show our appreciation and gratitude when the person is still with us. It is due to this reason that in 2002 three individuals took the initiative to mobilised the Buddhist community all over Malaysia to confer the Lifetime Achievement Award to Ven. Dr K. Sri Dhammananda.

The three Buddhist workers Goh Seng Chai, Sarath W. Surendre and the author, has been closely associated with the venerable for many years. In less than two months they managed to collect more than 100,000 signature and messages from Buddhist devotees in Malaysia via postcards and a specially dedicated website. The Lifetime Achievement Award from the Malaysian Buddhist community was presented to the late Venerable on 9 December 2002 in front of about 600 Buddhist leaders from 20 countries.

The man is no more physically with us but we can cherish the good memories and follow the wisdom of the great man by continuing his good work started and consolidated by him. It is in this sense that the new leadership of BMSM need to continue the great work by Ven Dhammananda. BMSM as an national organisation with good links to the government and other local and international bodies need to live up to its name as a missionary society and focus on the core duties and obligations to the Buddhist community in Malaysia.

As members of the society, it is not too much to ask the next leadership to be more focus on the study and propagation of the Buddha-Dhamma. As usual there will be different opinions but if we keep to the main life-line of the society which is missionary work, the society should be able to do well to strengthen and protect the Buddhist presence, interest and influence in this country. - Loka

Changing color of your blood

It is normal to hear of people changing their religious beliefs, political stand or even switching support to another football team. When to comes to race or ethnic origins, is it possible to change that?

Can a person who is born to true blue ethnic Japanese parents in Japan but now lives and works in Saudi Arabia, speaks fluent Arabic, converted to Islam after her high school and married a true blue Arab man after her graduation, morphed into an Arabic lady?

One shall not confused citizentry with the cultural lineage of her ancestors. No matter how hard she changes her appearance, improves her Arabic linguistic skills or even trying too hard to aped the locals in their way of life, the blood that flows throughout her body is still very much ethnic Japanese. No matter how hard she tries she will not be able to change that, even to the extend of behaving more than the Arabs themselves. Or even to the extend of putting in every possible effort to run down or suppress her own ethnic Japanese ancestry so that she could gain the acceptance of the Arabs.

Incidences like the fictitious Japanese lady above are not alien to many of us. During World war Two, there were many who had forsaken their own ethnic ancestry by aping the Japanese or their masters to gain favours or brownie points. These people may have a good time during the three and a half years of Japanese occupation by betraying their own community which caused deaths, undue harm and unnecessary sufferings to their friends and villagers. In the eyes of the people that they betrayed, these double faced agents are traitors and shall be destined to the 18 levels of Hell, literally.

Are these sort of people stil exists nowadays? Open our eyes and we shall see them in the guise of different shapes and colours, professions and organizations. They may be just lurking around the corner or may have studied or work in the same place as any one of us. We just need to be vigilant and cautious with their existence and not to fall into any of their manipulation. We cannot do anything to help them.

It it their own choice of trying to hard to change their ethnicity even after knowing they can't change the colour of the blood that flows within them. The harm that they might possibly cause to the community and themselves, we will leave it to karma to take its own course. - Loka

Tee Keat VS Evil Forces

MCA president Ong Tee Keat

Ong Tee Keat declares that he is a follower of the Buddhist faith. He religiously wears a prayer beads on his left hand wherever he goes to protect himself from negative forces. The rosary was given to him by his spiritual master some years ago. It seems to work so far. He had gone through the Team A and Team B political wars. When he was MCA's Youth chairman he went through unscathed during the 803 Incident. The incident during the Youth AGM held on Aug 3, 2001 at the Flamingo Hotel in Ampang saw the youth supporters of the rival teams throwing chairs at each other. Ong Tee Keat just sat firmly on the stage during the fracas and later took control of the situation.

The blogger with Ong Tee Keat during a function when he was still the Deputy Youth Minister. The rosary is on his left wrist.

Tee Keat is known as a politician that strike things on his own disregarding whose tail he steps on. He openly demands explaination from the MCA leadership when Ling Liong Sik was the then president regarding the Chang Min Thien Foundation issue. He even criticized his own party leaders in 2002 for acquiring the Nanyang Press Holdings Bhd. At one time he even claims there are hidden black hands involved within MCA. He was elected as MCA's vice president in 2005 and subsequently as the president in 2008, standing on his own platform without openly alligning himself with any factions in the party.

Winning the MCA presidency

His recent claims that there are negative forces which are trying to bring harm and dethrone him from the MCA presidency cause alarm at least within MCA and the Chinese community if not the nation. The message he is trying to convey to the public is that he is besieged from all corners, from internal and also external forces. The situation must be so serious that it entails all MCA ministers and deputy ministers to issue a joint statement to support his leadership, of course minus his estranged deputy president who is not a minister.

Other then providing a united stand for their besieged president, the supporting statement also implies that Ong Tee Keat is not getting the necessary open supports from his non-MCA cabinet ministers. Umno ministers has been eerily silent on Tee Keat's handling of the PKFZ issue which creates an impression something is brewing within Umno's inner circle. Even Prime Minister Najib Razak had announced all matter related to PKFZ will be handled by Tee Keat. Wow! how statesman-like.

Maybe non-MCA ministers or deputy ministers are washing their hands off from the PKFZ issue because they are in the position to know it involves many big guns within the BN family. These politicians are just playing it safe i.e. do not throw stones if you are staying in glass houses. It seems Tee Keat will have to do it alone in facing the PKFZ debacle. Even if his comrades openly gave their open support it will not means anything if his other cabinet colleagues are just watching from the sidelines. Furthermore the open support from his comrades can be suspected knowing that his downfall will provide an opportunity for his comrades to move up the party hierarchy. That's the reality in poltical parties.

It looks like Tee Keat is fighting the war alone and need to watch his back more seriously. Maybe his prayer beads will protects him from the evil forces, just as it has been all this while. - Loka

Leadership in plagiarism

Nowadays it is so easy to search and retrieve information from the internet. Any primary school children can submit pages of assignment within a day or two. If the little kid can do wonders with the click of the mouse, imagine what the adults can do. Just googled or wikipaediaed, wallah, all the information will be there - to be cut and paste!

Plagiarism is a non-entity and respect for intellectual property seems only exist in the past. Even if the information is easily available, it will be a courtesy to at least acknowledge the source or author of the article or references used.

Recently I received a forwarded email from a friend with an attached short article. The original writer of the article was actually me but in the email, the writer's name of the article has been changed to another person. It seems this plagiarist has been doing this sort notorious act of article hijacking for sometime already.

I told my friend this is not the first time my writings has been plagiarised. Sometimes copycat is the highest level of flattery. Frankly, I am getting used to it. But then sometimes plagiarism can be very notorious and makes us dumbfounded when we found out the background of the person who did it. There was one case which was actually very shocking and sad for me at the same time.

Some years ago I wrote and presented a paper for an international leadership training program for youth leaders. The paper was distributed to all participants and soft copies were available freely to all who wants to download it. I was not sure how many people downloaded the file but certainly there are people who did it.

Fast forward to a couple of years later where I was sitting attentively in a convention room in downtown Tokyo. I was attending an international seminar for Buddhist leaders. As one speaker after another presented their paper, I was enjoying the sharing of intellectual discourse from different continents. Then it's the turn of a speaker from the same country of origin as me to present his paper. As he presented eloquently line by line, it comes to a point where I felt very familiar with the text projected on the screen. Those points were written by me! Word by word. Line by line.

I was flabagasted!

I should be proud of myself since someone who is the president of a national level organisation was unashamedly presenting his "view" using exactly the text which I presented earlier.

At the end of his presentation there were applauses throughout the hall and the speaker basked in the atmosphere. But one thing was clearly missing. Throughout his presentation, he never once mentioned that he uses somebody else's points as his!

Usually I would have taken this lightly and forgets about it. But the problem lies in that was a conference for Buddhists and I think all speakers are Buddhists who should know plagiarism is also one type of stealing which is tantamount to breaking one of the Buddhist precepts. Or maybe the plagiarist concerned knows it was plagiarism but do not think he was breaking the precept by stealing intellectual property of others.

I dread to think what will be the direction and future of the organisation the plagiarist leads. I only can wish all the best to the organisation members. - Loka

A brother's call

Last weekend I attended a dinner organised by the Young Malaysians Movement (YMM) in conjunction with their 37th AGM. No doubt one of the hottest topic discussed around the dinner table is the tragic death of DAP's Teoh Beng Hock at the MACC Selangor headquarters.

Amongst the guest was Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai (3rd right) and many YMM former leaders and advisors. Even though Liow Tiong Lai did not comment on the tragic incident in his speech, the link between Teoh Beng Hock with some of us present at the event is always there. Liow, YMM president Ng Chin Long (2nd right), former president Lim Joo Kiat (3rd left) and myself were educated at UKM, just like the deceased.

The YMM during their AGM supported the called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the shocking death of Teoh Beng Hock. Many groups has been calling the government to establish the Royal Commission of Inquiry. Liow Tiong Lai being a Cabinet Minister and also a university senior of Beng Hock should use his good office to press for the commission and to uphold justice for his fallen junior, disregards of political affiliation. - Loka