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In this episode I wanted to talk about the importance of community when it comes to both finding the Path of Practice, but also in terms of having the support to stick with it and to grow with it. I’ve been practicing Buddhism for thirty years and I have a lot of contacts in Western Buddhist groups. And whilst these groups and these individuals are doing amazing work to establish the Buddha Sasana in the West, no group that I’ve seen has really got the amount of social coordination and support as groups in traditional Buddhist communities in the East.
So for this episode I’ve invited NeeWern Khoo who has been involved with the Buddhist Gem Fellowship in Malaysia for many years, and more recently with the Centre for Research and Dhamma Leadership Enhancement.
NeeWern first encountered Buddhism in his early teens whilst reading about the Life of the Buddha in a bookstore. His interest led him to join the Subang Jaya Buddhist Association, and subsequently played a pioneering role in the setting up of the Youth Section of the SJBA. He has participated in and taken the lead in various Buddhist youth programmes and is a past Chairman of the Inter-College and Varsity Camp by the Buddhist Gem Fellowship (BGF). He was also a committee member of the BGF in charge of the Learning & Development portfolio.
NeeWern is currently Head of Dhamma Leadership Development under the Centre for Research and Dhamma Leadership Enhancement (CRADLE for short) which aims to bring transformation to the Buddhist community through developing and enhancing Buddhist leadership. As you can see NeeWern has decades of experience in terms of being involved in and supporting Buddhist communities in Malaysia. So join us as we learn about creating and sustaining strong, supportive Buddhist communities.
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NeeWern Khoo
Interview
2023-07-13
Robot Generated Transcription
Sol
0:01
Welcome to Treasure Mountain, the podcast that inspires and guides us to find the treasure within human experience. I’m your host. Sol hannah in this episode, I wanted to talk about the importance of community when it comes to both finding the path of practice, but also in terms of having the support to stick with it and to grow with it. I’ve been practicing Buddhism for 30 years, and I have had a lot of contacts in Western Buddhist groups. And whilst these groups and these individuals are doing amazing work to establish the Buddhist Asana in the west, no group that I’ve seen has really got the amount of social coordination and support as groups in traditional Buddhist communities in the east. So for this episode, I’ve invited NeeWern Khoo, who has been involved with the Buddhist Gem Fellowship in Malaysia for many years, and more recently with the center for Research and Dhamma Leadership Enhancement. NeeWern first encountered Buddhism in his early teens whilst reading about the life of the Buddha in a bookstore. His interest led him to join the Subangjaya Buddhist Association and subsequently played a pioneering role in setting up the youth section of the SGBA. He has participated in and taken the lead in various Buddhist youth programs and is a past chairman of the Inter College and Varsity Camp of the Buddhist Gem Fellowship, the BGF. He was also a committee member of the BGF in charge of the Learning and Development Portfolio, and we’ll be learning more about the BGF in this interview. NeeWern is currently the head of Dhamma Leadership Development under the center for Research and Dhamma Leadership Enhancement, or Cradle for Short, and this aims to bring transformation to Buddhist community through developing and enhancing Buddhist leadership. And as you can see, NeeWern has decades of experience in terms of being involved in and supporting Buddhist communities in Malaysia. So join us as we learn about creating and sustaining strong, supportive Buddhist communities.
Sol
2:05
You. Welcome to Treasure Mountain Podcast. N
ee
w
ern, how are you today?
NeeWern
2:11
I’m good, Saul. Thank you for having me. It’s privilege and honor to be on your show here. We’re
Sol
2:19
so pleased that you’ve taken the time to join us, and I’m really looking forward to finding out what you know about building strong Buddhist communities. Look, I’m glad that you’ve joined us today because I think the Buddhist communities in Malaysia, in my experience, are a great example of how a thriving community can support people at different stages of life and to support people to engage more deeply with the practice of the Eightfold Path. You’ve been a member of the Buddhist Gem Fellowship in Malaysia for many years now. Could you give us an overview of the kinds of services, activities, and resources that the BGF offers its community?
NeeWern
2:59
Yeah, thanks for that recognition. I think you’re right to say in Malaysia, we organize, or rather Buddhist groups are organized in a very community kind of approach. We tend to be very social in the way we organize our activities, not just one organization, but I think most organizations in our country, in my country at least, organize it in a very community based approach. I’m not sure about the west. I’ve not been direct contact with the Western Buddhist that much. But here we do a lot of community activities. So, for example, we tend to focus a lot more on, say, coming together on a Sunday for what we call a puja service. And everybody do will come and participate, and we’ll be very happy to participate in a very elaborate, perhaps chanting of the various chantings. And then we will probably have some Dharma talks, and we’ll probably end with some good Dhana or offering food, offering to the monks, and then we will eat, and then we’ll disperse, and we’ll keep repeating those things. So my little involvement in the Buddhist Gem Fellowship and other societies in general has been a lot more focused on reaching out to the community to make sure that we bring them in, and then we give them the Dharma, and then they will then go back, and hopefully there’s some takeaway for them in their daily practice. So, yes, that’s in general how we organize ourselves.
Sol
4:33
Now, I know that Buddhist organizations in the west are usually fairly basic because often they’re quite new. They may or may not support resident sangha. They offer a place where people can hear teachings and learn about meditation, which, of course, is fantastic. But the Buddhist Gem Fellowship offers groups that cater to community members at different stages of life. And I note that you’ve been involved, particularly in youth groups in the past. Could you explain a bit more about that approach which targets different stages of life or different stages in society?
NeeWern
5:06
Yeah, sure. I think in Malaysia, one of the things that we well, to give you a bit of context, the Malaysian Buddhists are largely Chinese, or Malaysian Chinese. Because of our heritage, we brought with our forefathers, brought with them the whole Chinese culture, which includes Buddhism, is one of them. And so when we bring ourself and also our families to, say, a Buddhist temple, we tend to bring the entire family. So normally, most centers would try to cater for different age groups. Like, for example, if you’re a parent, then you will have activities for those parents. If you are working adult, your activities for the working adults. If you are children, then we have the Dharma schools, which is quite a big thing here, because we do have parents who actually send their children to the center for Dharma education. And then you do have activities cater for retirees. So you can see that most societies, or Buddhist societies, are organized to cater for different levels of the community, and that includes also catering for visiting monks or monastics. So you would find that most Buddhist centers here, the way we built them, is that if we have the space, we will normally in most cases, you reserve at least one or two rooms for monastics. So any visiting monks, that will be for them, and nobody’s allowed to go in there to use their things. So that’s how we organize ourselves. It’s a very traditional kind of spirit, but in a very Malaysian way as well, because one of the things that we have in Malaysia, very unique is we somehow are very comfortable with all different Buddhist traditions from the various lineages. We have the Burmese tradition, we have the Sri Lankan tradition. We have the Thai tradition. We also have the Chinese traditions that are very much ingrained in our society itself. So you can see that that’s the kind of variety we have in our country already. We are already a multiracial, multireligious country. And even among the Buddhists, we also have this multi traditions and different kinds of so we do cater for different communities in general. Yes, I
Sol
7:19
think just a bit of a side point. But I do think that’s an important point to mention is that Malaysia is such a crossroads geographically and culturally and I really feel that the BGF in particular was able to take on board teachings from Burma and Thailand and Sri Lanka and and to have different visiting teachers and then also even to the. Influences from Mahayana and so forth. There’s much more openness there. And that really has come across, I feel, in some of the work you’ve done in free distribution books and those kinds of things. Did you want to elaborate upon that a little bit more?
NeeWern
7:58
Yeah, sure. Well, the Buddhist Gem Fellowship was one of the early societies that were quite focused on dharma out each, and they took a very early position to be non sectarian, meaning that it didn’t have to be bound to any traditions. Like, if you were to have a very traditional temple, per se, it could be a Thai temple, Burmese temple, or Sri Lankan temple. Usually there is a lot of traditions attached to those. There’s a traditional identity attached to it. But I think when we organized the Buddhist Gem Fellowship or other my predecessors, I mean, the seniors who organized themselves, they decided upfront that it was non sectarian. So, yes, they welcomed teachers from Mahayana. I think I did remember one of those years, the Plum Village monastics came, and we organized a retreat, and they would hear, and we did that. We also had monastics from Tibet, the Llamas, and then the Zen tradition, the Koreans as well as the Chinese, and then we had also the various Terravada groups as well. So from the very beginning, we took a very non sectarian position. So that actually helped to have a wide reach, especially for people who didn’t want to be too bound by a certain tradition. So, by and large, we actually catered a lot more for those who are professionals who wanted maybe Buddhism to be more accessible rather than the usual following the traditional approach. So that was a fortunate thing for us, I would say.
Sol
9:36
It’s an interesting mismatch of things insofar as you’ve got that openness and that kind of in terms of how open the world is. I mean, Malaysia is right there at the forefront of that, of globalization. And of course, as I say, because it’s a largely English speaking community, you’ve done all this translation work and put all these teachings, which are available now in other English speaking countries, which has been fantastic. But at the same time, you’ve still got those traditions. When I go to Malaysia, I’ve really felt like there’s a very strong Buddhist traditions there at the same time. And I did want to step back a little bit because I wanted to talk about those groups. What do you know of in terms of could you give us a little idea of what would happen at a Dharmer school for children that’s different for a youth group, which is like, I guess, just out of high school? Into the university years. What kind of ways would you cater for those different groups, those different age groups,
NeeWern
10:39
for example? Yeah, well, I think there are two things here. On one hand, we have the various traditions. That means in general, most Malaysians I would say in general there are exceptions, but in general, most Malaysians are quite comfortable with the different traditions. I don’t think we have much problems assimilating ourselves quite flexible in that sense. There is a preference for a southern tradition, though. So somehow it happened that somehow, rather, the English speaking Chinese communities in Malaysia tend towards the Terravada, the Pali traditions, whereas the Chinese speaking have a tendency to be on the Mahayana. That seems to be a very peculiar kind of, I would say evolution. So I can only say that my involvement a lot more from the English speaking side. And therefore, when they organize, let’s say, Dharma school and children come on a Sunday, just like going to a Sunday school, and they will learn and they will have probably a syllabus or rather kind of a session guide, I would say that they were probably taken from some tradition somewhere. So usually our references are largely Terravada, mainly. And then, of course, they will learn the basic things such as the seala and then do some Dhana and all the various values. And they learn that when the children graduate, after they finish maybe completed the high school, they will probably go to college universities. And then you need to establish them differently. And that’s the challenge because for youths, they want to have their own identity and therefore youth sections or youth groups are organized quite differently. They don’t necessarily learn Dharma the same way as the children will learn. And so we do have to cater very differently. Very interesting is that for the youth sections, they like to organize it themselves, so they like to have more independence. They want to do with things their way. And therefore many of the activities have to be catered to whatever they want to do. Yeah.
Sol
12:49
Mmhmm. And you mentioned also that there is some support for retirees. Do you know anything about the work that’s being done there? Because often that’s a big issue in the west is people get to retirement age and they become quite lonely. It’s really good that you’ve actually got something to activities to support people of
NeeWern
13:07
that age. Yeah, some centers do cater for that age group retirees, especially when they have large population there. So my center that I live nearby, Subanjaya Buddhist Association, they do classes like Chicong, they have ping pong, very social activities. They do have, say, calligraphy classes and line dancing. And some of them even volunteer to do traditional Thai Chinese medicine. So some centers do function like a community center catered for the retirees that are maybe members of that Buddhist society. Normally they offer this for free so that people can come and be part of that community. So it’s not unusual to find that even a lot of these places do cater for such things. If the population is quite they have a large retiree population there, although at the same time, they do try to offer some dharma talks and some dharma sharing. But by and large, the retirees do come because you do offer those services for them.
Sol
14:14
Right now it seems to me that there’s an emphasis on engaging people. Does this kind of translate into also, like, for instance, getting people to practice more assiduously, like going on a meditation retreat or something and or does it lead them to doing volunteer work we mentioned, like doing translations and getting pre publication books or other types of giving? Does that lead to that?
NeeWern
14:45
I it’s interesting that you mentioned that because whilst we yes, we engage the community, the people do come and then they do have things they can do, but it depends on the interest level. So I can only say from my own observations that many of them are interested in providing some service of sort. So if you’re a retiree or if you’re belonging to certain interest levels, they like to go into cooking. They like to cook and offer some lunch for devotees, people who come for upusata practice. And then they will just and every Sunday, for example, they will be the one that do the Dhana, do the offering to monks and sing, things like that. And then there will be some people who are very interested in just helping out to clean the center and so on and so forth. I would say there’ll be lesser interest, say, in things like doing I don’t think we do lot of translations that maybe certain groups of people we do have our venerable Agachita, one of our Malaysian local monks who does good talks and then somebody will record and they do some editing as well as transcribing those talks. So there are groups that do that today. So we do cater for people who want to do some voluntary work as well. And I just want to mention the other one is maybe they do Dharma talks. So some of us who have that capacity, they would offer and do some Dharma talks and they get Dhamma learning sessions organized so that you can bring people together. So I think the whole idea is we want people to come we always like to build people to come to the center, to be part of us. And then we want to engage them, we want to get to know them. And then after that we follow up with them and then we engage them in many other activities as well. So that seems to be our pattern. We don’t necessarily want to look at the individuals, but just also as a community. Even if we do long meditation retreats, we have a tendency to organize it for a large
Sol
16:48
group. How many would often go on a retreat?
NeeWern
16:53
That depends on the teacher. Popular, popular teachers like Ajam Brahm, you got to be on the waiting list all the time. You don’t have a space. So you normally have to book Buddhist monastery that it has that space so that people can be there. But there are also some retreats that are maybe lesser. You have lesser crowd, but also well attended by some of the people who want to go for those retreats. So, yes, when we organize retreats, we tend to like to have more people to come on board and be part of those
Sol
17:25
retreats. Well, we’ve mentioned that the Buddhist TEM Fellowship is located in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, and it’s principally an English speaking community. Now, I want to bring up this question because a lot of the people who are listening, many would have a local temple or a local monk. But there are many people out there online. They don’t have a local temple or a local monastery or a monk or a nun that they can go to. Now, it’s quite interesting that the BGF does tend to invite teachers from across the region. Could you explain how that’s worked, inviting lots of different teachers and what impact having a range of visiting teachers has had on the recent development of Buddhism in Malaysia?
NeeWern
18:16
MMM. I think Malaysian Buddhist community also has evolved over the years. I must give credit to our late Dr. K Sri Dhamananda, venerable K Sri Dhamananda who was we fondly remember him as Chief Reverend or the late chief now we call him, and he was a Sri Lankan. He came to Malaysia, Malaya, actually, before independence, before our country’s independence, he was already here. And he was instrumental in bringing the interests of Buddhism to Malaysians in general because I think before him and before some other venerables from the Chinese speaking groups in the early or rather mid 19 hundreds, they didn’t have or rather a lot of Malaysians Buddhists didn’t have that Buddhist literacy, I would call it. We don’t have a lot of knowledge about Buddhism. But along came people like him who brought the Dharma learning to interest to the community. And today, thanks to him, we do have a thriving, at least a knowledgeable and practicing Buddhist community. So if not because of his effort to bring Dhammad to the people in a very practical way, I would say we’ll still be doing the usual rituals go to the temple, put, adjustics bow three times and then we leave the temple. That seems to be what our parents and our grandparents have been teaching us to do all these years. But then we had this resurgence in Buddhist learning interests. So today what we are trying to do is to keep that interest alive. Now, back to your question about the BGF or how they were organizing. They wanted to keep this kind of dharma learning alive. The late chief is no more around, but we now can get different teachers from all over to be giving sessions, teachings and all that and a lot more, I would say. They don’t stay long, but they do give a teaser of what the Dharma is here and there. And then people do pick it up and then they will go back to their respective centers. They will probably practice on their own.
Sol
20:28
I wanted to ask about in terms of the mechanics of that. So you have a teacher that you’re interested in. It could be in, I don’t know, Sri Lanka or it could be Thailand or it could be. I don’t know, Australia. And then you invite them. Do you have a place where they can stay? And a program of teaching during when they’re there? How does that just work? Just the mechanics of
NeeWern
20:51
it? Yeah. So if a monk comes to visit, normally they will have a program. And that program would include either they will organize a retreat or they’ll organize series of Dharma talks, or they will do, say, short engagement sessions. That depends on the monastics preference and also their competency. So if I have, say, Ajam Brahmali, who comes from Perth, and every year, the BGF would organize this Suta retreat, which is very well attended, and then we’ll learn, and then he’ll go and then we will engage other teachers along the way. We don’t have that continuation of, say, dhamma learning in the long term by one teacher. We do have a continuation of Dharma learning by different teachers. So they offer these things, and then it depends on the individuals, practitioners.
Sol
21:46
That’s just very interesting. I think some people out there, if they’re thinking, like, where can I get a muck? Maybe that’s the first option is to invite them for a weekend or something like that and see if you can support them for that weekend. And that’s always a very good start. Rather than thinking you’ve got to establish a monastery, which is a pretty daunting prospect. Absolutely. Now, the BTF, we’ve mentioned that they have very good social programs. We’ve also mentioned that I guess there’s that traditional sense of respecting the rituals and so forth, forth. Now, in many religious communities, not just Buddhist communities, that’s where things stop. That’s all they focus on, is rituals and socializing. But the BCF has really actively sought to engage people in the practice of Buddhism. How has it done, then, in recent decades?
NeeWern
22:38
Yeah. Yes. Again, it’s generalizing. It but I think I do agree that we do have this tendency to lean towards the rituals, the ceremonies and also the festivals and yeah, Dharma practice probably will take a secondary thing. But I think the BGF, because most of the early leaders were students of the late venerable Caseri Dhamananda. And I think the impact he had on the people was that the focus was back to Dharma learning. So when the lay community who now organized the BGF and also other centers today has taken on this kind of direction to say let’s focus a lot more on helping people to learn tama so when we shifted that focus, there’s a little less emphasis on the rituals per se. So the rituals will still be there because we do respect our rituals, we do respect the traditions and the cultural aspect of it. So before any sessions, we always have a pooja. We will never start even a simple meeting before we start a meeting, we will do the usual chanting and then we will end with the traditional pali chanting just to do the aspirations and dedications. But the session itself is a lot more focused on Dharma learning. So there are groups that are today, in fact, thanks to those influences, have today tried to make Dharma learning a lot more the focus rather than the ceremonies by itself. I would say Malaysians in general when it comes to Dharma learning. Maybe it’s not as well attended as you compare to, let’s say you organize those big events. So, for example, if it’s Katina. Katina is a very big event here today. It’s huge. Right. You have people who sponsor the robes and they offer the robes and it’s a massive event every year. So we do love these things at the same time. So we do have a mix of these kinds of very traditional approaches. But at the same time, there are groups, including BGF and many others who will also focus a lot more on deepening our understanding of the Dharma. Yeah,
Sol
25:05
right. Including could
NeeWern
25:07
you a mix of it’s kind of a mixed bag of all these at the same time? It is a
Sol
25:10
mixed bag, but at the same time, those things are not necessarily. Antagonistic. They can be supportive of one another. And also, I know that you really do emphasize doing meditation a lot as well. That would be a common feature of many of your sessions, would be doing meditation as well, is that right? Yes, there are groups that are quite meditation focused. I wouldn’t say that we’ll do meditation every single session. I think that doesn’t seem to come across. We’ll definitely do a puja, we’ll do a talk, we’ll answer some questions, and we’ll go back. But there are groups that are quite meditation focused, and they do have regular meditation practices as well as maybe meditation retreats. And usually these are the people that are a little bit more focused on doing meditation retreats. So you do have a contrast. There are very much intellectual learners on one hand. On the other hand, you have the meditators. It’s very seldom you find both at the same time.
NeeWern
26:16
But if you do it, it’s a blessing.
Sol
26:18
Yeah. Okay. Now, at the moment, you have become head of Dharma Leadership Development for a new organization that was founded in 2019 that’s called Cradle, the center for Research and Dharma Leadership Enhancement. What is the main aim of Cradle in Malaysia?
NeeWern
26:36
Okay. The cradle. The acronym is Cradle. C-R-A-D-L-E-N-S. There’s a d apostrophe in the beginning. So we call D Cradle. The D is just our tribute back to Dhamananda, actually, Venerable Damananda, we pay tribute to him because he is one of the founding fathers of Malaysian missionaries work, malaysian Buddhist missionary work. So we want to dedicate this center to him. The cradle was founded by our DD Dan Hua Chai. Hua Chai is our founding today’s founding director. And the main focus was really one of the gaps. Just to give you the context again, the gaps we notice in the Buddhist community is that we do have a lot of people organizing activities. Various Buddhist centers today are quite active organizing lots of activities. But we do notice that every year the activities just keep repeating themselves. So at the right time, you do the WESA, you do the Katina, you probably do a few other kind of big things, and then you probably do a few other Sanghi Kadana along the way. And that seems to be their main focus. But what we notice is that many Buddhist societies don’t have necessarily a kind of a sense of direction and mission in a way that brings the transformation to the individuals in the community. So we felt that this gap need to be addressed from a leadership perspective. And so the center is set up to enhance the leadership of the Buddhist leaders. So people who come to the programs will be kind of trained and developed in terms of their leadership of the community so that when they go back and lead those communities, maybe with a different sense of focus and mindset, that could be one of the things that we intend to do. So really, it’s all about transforming and taking the Buddhist community to another level. That’s in a nutshell, what we are trying to do.
Sol
28:43
Right. You’ve got a special program that you mentioned when we were talking prior to the interview to help people in various leadership roles. I mean, they’re already in these roles. And you called this glad. What is glad. Could you tell us about
NeeWern
28:57
that? Glad is a program. We call it another acronym. It’s called great leadership. Awakening with Dharma. So it’s a four day leadership program, but this is not a type of leadership program where we talk about how do you delegate, how do you lead, and things like that. This is a very Buddhist one. We try to go back to the Buddha as a source of inspiration, and we try to remind the people who come to this program that the Buddha was a great leader. And so he led this, a multinational national corporation called the Sangha. And he had structures, he had systems, he had direction, he had focus. And so if we take on the Buddha as a great leader, then perhaps we can do what we need to do in the community with that sense of leadership. And therefore, that, in essence, is what glad program is about. And we like the word glad, because glad means gladness of the heart. And a dharma leader, in our opinion, needs to have gladness because often we find that some people who have served in a Buddhist center of Buddhist society for a good number of years, they will have a tendency to have burnout. So they say, okay, I do not want to be the president anymore. Next person, can you please be the president? And then good luck to you, and I wish you all the best. But that’s a sign that maybe they didn’t really know that. What’s their purpose? I’m not just a president, but I have a role to play in the community. And that playing a role. Whether you’re a president, you’re a teacher, you are a volunteer. That role is a leadership role. So what we’re trying to do really is to impress on everyone that that role needs to be played so that the community will have that benefit.
Sol
30:58
MMM. Right. That’s amazing. Actually, a four day program for leaders. My experience is that people who end up in the leadership roles are the ones who can’t get away from doing it because no one else wants
NeeWern
31:15
you end up having to do most of the work yourself and you don’t get support. And that’s the ho problem we find in the community in general. So we are trying to address that by saying, look, you need to have a purpose. And that purpose is a higher purpose than just being the committee member. That purpose is a leadership role that you need to play. And we are trying to give a sense of mission. And again, taking on the Buddha as an example, he was on a mission. He wasn’t just here just to do some teachings here and there, but he was really on a mission to transform the community, to change the community. But I must say, what we are trying to do here is quite ahead of its time, because I don’t think many Buddhist organizations do have this focus. Not sure about the west, but here, we don’t have such things here.
Sol
32:06
No, I do think it’s ahead of its time, and I do think it’s meeting a need. I mean, when I was on the president of the Buddhist society at WA, I had no idea what I was doing, and I did burn out. And you had to keep yourself going. But I think that emphasis also on connecting not just with the nuts and bolts of organization, but also the purpose and that need to people do see you as a leader, and you do need to act in a way a which is a good example, and a support. But of course, sometimes leaders need support as well. So I think what you’re doing is fantastic in that regard. Um, look, you’ve been engaged, actively engaged in the Buddhist community for many years now. What do you see as maybe some weaknesses or what are you hoping to develop further in the years ahead?
NeeWern
33:01
Yeah, I think our very strength here in Malaysia is also our very weakness at the same time and also our blind spot. I must be very candid to say that whilst we are a very community based kind of approach, we do bring people closer in the community. But I think in contrast with maybe where you’re coming from, we have maybe less emphasizing on the deepening, the tamale learning aspect. We tend to be quite good in supporting the monastics and the community in general. So there is a risk that we may tend to be too focused on the traditions and running of our activities and getting to the routines, rather than being critical. So perhaps one characteristic you’ll find in a lot of us in our community is that we tend to be less critical. We are quite accepting of things. So if we hear something from certain teachers, we are quick to accept. We may ask a few questions to clarify, but we don’t necessarily cast a critical eye on things. That’s the same with methodology. So we are not necessarily quite very good in critically evaluating methodologies. So we tend to follow whatever has been done in the past. I think this is something we can probably learn from our Western counterparts, where for you, perhaps, the education system has led you to be quite critical of methodologies, of methods, and quite structured in the way you present your views and ideas. And that’s something we can learn from, because I find sometimes the very strength of being very accepting alone can be a very weakness when it comes to casting that critical eye on methodology, on structure, on process. So that’s the thing that I find we should pick up as a community.
Sol
35:01
I think the very fact that you’re thinking about it and aware of those issues is a very good sign. And, I mean, I think we could all do that. I mean, can only improve if we’ve kind of investigated and try to work out, well, how can we improve? What are our weaknesses? And very often, I think, in general, religious communities aren’t necessarily very good at that. So the fact you’re even thinking about it and talking about it is a good sign. 5s
I think that’s probably where we want to leave it. Is there any final words that you think you could offer our listeners in terms of think of the person who’s out there. Maybe they don’t have much of a community around them. What it’s something that you think that they could do to get started?
NeeWern
35:46
Yeah, I think drawing from the Buddhas himself in the Mahaparinibana Sut, the Buddha does mention what are the principles of building harmonious or social community. And one of those guidelines was about if the community were to meet frequently, coming together as a community frequently, and I think he of course, that becomes one of the key things. And then also in other places, the Buddha does mention that the whole of the Holy Life is about being with good friends. So taking the cue from there, it’s about hanging out with the right people. And personally, I find if you do not have a community out there, it’s a little harder, I suppose, to maintain the kind of interest and practice of the Dhamma. And so what keeps us going, really, is to have a group of friends to sort of sustain this kind of interest in the practice. Because even for us, we can get very complacent to say, oh, I know the Dharma already, so leave me alone, let me do my own practice. But then we slip back into our daily routines, and that’s about it. We don’t normally go further. And then after that, we get into trouble. Then we find, okay, let’s go back and find the Dharma again. So maybe one of the things I can point out is that on my own, I also organize a very small group that meets at my house once a month. I call it the cell group or whatever. So the group will come together and we’ll do some Dharma learning, Dharma practice, and I’ll lead them through, and it’s a regular meeting. And keeping that kind of group going will be very essential. So if you have a community, even a small one, few individuals who show similar interests, I suppose, getting them together, getting them to come together on a regular basis, whether it’s monthly or weekly, it doesn’t matter to discuss, to share, and also to experience and to reflect. And that, I think, keeps the interest and the momentum going. For Dhamma practice, which I find is very useful for me, we can learn Dhamma on our own, that’s not a problem. But the one that sustains us in the practice, really, is to have that group of friends that we hang out with. And that becomes very crucial because if we don’t have that, then we always run a risk of going back to our usual routines, which may not sustain our Dharma interests in the long term. So, yeah, building a community, I think very essential. Whether it’s a small community or a large community, I think community becomes an important word. And I think we are not too far from the Buddha when we try to do this. That’s just my little reflection that I can have.
Sol
38:39
Thank you. That’s and very wise advice and an excellent place to end the interview. Thank you. Thank you so much. Neo and. For joining us on the Treasure Mountain podcast.
NeeWern
38:48
You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
Sol
38:51
And thank you to all our listeners for joining us for this inspiring episode of Treasure Mountain, and we learnt about creating strong, supportive Buddhist communities with NeeWern Khoo. There will be more links in the show notes to this episode, and if you enjoy this podcast, I’d appreciate if you could share this episode with your friends and other the people who could benefit from its Sage advice. Treasure Mountain podcast is part of the Everyday Dharma Network. You can find out more about Treasure Mountain podcast by going to the links in the show notes to this episode. You can also find out on the Treasure Mountain website information about all previous episodes and guests, as well as transcriptions of our interviews. If you go back to the Everydaydharma Net homepage, you can discover more about the three other podcasts on the network and links to subscribe to any and all of them. I hope you’ll join us again for our next episode of Treasure Mound Podcast as we seek for the treasure within.
