[Buddha-l] Kassapa OBE

[Piya Tan]

Buddha-Lites,
Peter Harvey of Univ of Sunderland, UK, just mass-mailed me about a new
Buddhist think tank called TripleGem: http://triplegem.terapad.com.


One of the interesting pieces of news:

Venerable Kassapa
OBE<http://triplegem.terapad.com/index.cfm?fa=contentNews.newsDetails&newsID=46447&from=list&directoryId=16402>
 [image:
vic-volunteers.jpg]  Monday, 07 January 08 - 02:55 PM (GMT)
By TG Staff in General<http://triplegem.terapad.com/index.cfm?fa=contentNews.news&directoryId=16402>
  Triple
Gem staff congratulate the Venerable Dr. Witharandeniye Kassapa on his
recent OBE.

*'The chief incumbent of the Birmingham Buddhist Maha Vihara, the President
of the Midlands International Buddhist association in the U.K., and the
President of the International Buddhist Relief Organisation (I.B.R.O.)
attached to the United Nations, Ven.Dr.Witharandeniye Kassapa  is being
honourably felicitated with the  O.B.E. (ORDER OF BRITISH EMPIRE) by her Her
Majesty The Queen Elizabeth -ll'*

The full press release may be read at The Birmingham Buddhist Maha Vihara
web site: www.buddhist-mahavihara.com or www.ibro.co.uk

This news would be excitedly welcomed by the Buddhists members of the
Sinhala-run mission temples in Malaysia. There is a high
premium placed on titled monks (and nuns) there. In fact, when I was a monk
there, some of such lay members actually approached
to get some people to lobby for such a title for myself!

Geertz Hofstede, in one of his surveys, found that Malaysian *topped* the
list of 50 countries that places importance of social/power distance: see:

Hofstede, Geertz (1991) Culture and Organizations: Software of the
Mind , London McGraw Hill

My reply was that "Tan Sri Buddha" or even "Datuk Buddha" does not sound
right! The late chief high priest of the biggest vihara there
was a titled cloth and has a bit of a cult following including stories of
small miracles at his funeral a few years back.

Here a new line of thought:

I'm sometimes a bit of a futurist. With such a huge number of Buddhist chat
sites, etc, like this one, thinking and unthinking Buddhists
have a greater chance of informing one another of Buddhist goings on. It's
like mixing around with the crowd and knowing what the
people of Id (as in the Wizard) really think of their king(s) and their
kingdom.

Surely some good will come out of this and serious seekers will find
something helpful to them in Buddhism.

May I be well and happy no matter what the Buddhists are doing to me,
May you be happy despite what you are doing to yourself.
May all beings be happy, for they have created their own worlds.

Piya Tan





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