Subang jaya is Theravada too. They do invite monks to give dhamma talks / meditation talks from time to time. Mostly English.

Reason is the countries that practice Theravada are Thailand, Sri Lanka and Burma - which don't use chinese. So the chinese materials in Theravada is very limited. The works of this tradition is translated mostly from the native language of those countries into English in the past few decades.

The monks from Burma speaks English to teach. But there are some theravada chinese speaking monks.

In some centers, they have real-time translater to translate the sermons of the monks into chinese language for the benefit of those who are not so well versed in English.

All communities have their needs. The Buddha's teaching is open to all. We should be grateful to the efforts of the people to translate more of the Lord's teaching into our local languages. Lately I have come across more theravada materials in chinese.

Have you ever attended any dhamma talks?

This post has been edited by soul2soul: Jan 18 2012, 04:54 PM

never attended before any talks. guess u clarify some of my observation so it has to do with language community that operates differently, subang jaya folks were mostly english and the one in kota kemuning has kuan yin deity, i believe this one is chinese buddhism and not theravada ?

I have never been to kota kemuning, so don't know about it.

If you visit theravada temples, they will have some statue of the Buddha, usually flanked by his chief disciples Ven Sariputta and Ven Mahamoganalla.

I guess language has a role to play. The Buddhism material in Chinese is brought over from China/ Taiwan so they are "chinese buddhism". Naturally when you read the books in chinese , you would be exposed more to that tradition.

The Theravada tradition in Southeast asia is mostly in the local languages of Thai, burma and Sinhalese. Only after the contact by the British Empire , this tradition was being translated into English language and hence people with English background education have more exposure to it. However, the Theravada material in chinese is growing and I have come across some books written in Chinese to elaborate about this tradition.

In some ways, English is important to propagation of the Theravada. And not sure if this is a coincidence or not, Burma being colonized by Britain also contributed to the learning of English by the Burmese - hence the translation of the Theravada into English. And we are hearing more of the Thai buddhism in english, thanks to the effort of some westerners who ordained to be monks under great monks in thailand. they really helped a lot to translate Theravada into the English language , and with that made available to the world.

You may want to drop by to hear some dhamma lectures. Bricksfield does have some good speakers who come to give talks from time to time. That can really give you an idea of what the monks / lay buddhists do at the temple. And find out for yourself whether they sing hymns or not.

This post has been edited by soul2soul: Jan 18 2012, 07:16 PM

Tao is tao. buddhism is buddhism. The actual meaning of joss sticks in buddhism is actually a metaphor. In the olden olden days, the joss sticks that were used are fragrant one. So the smoke that they produce is also fragrant. This sweet smell represents the teachings of the dhamma lor. Nowadays all use ciplak joss sticks and most people use it for the sake of using it without knowing the actual meaning.

Buddhism very flexible one..that's why it is easily infused in other cultures...

Hackwire, tao has nothing to do with deities, gods, karma, morality, definitely not joss sticks.

It is the book of the universe and how we should cultivate our lives according to the "law" of the universe. More of a hardcore theory for qi gong practitioners.

the reason i try to understand this is because chinese temples always have buddha statue, kuan yin statue, monkey god statue, ji kong statue , kuan kong statue etc...

and the buddhist temple in kota kemuning has kuan yin statue but their main hall is buddha. but during wesak day, they invited some burmese monk for giving blessing to the public... so i kinda confuse here to see some theravada monk also. Kuan yin is also consider a buddha also right?

so u c when we write our religion as buddhist in our Identification, the govt of malaysia actually recognized the person as buddhist. I wonder what other religion beside buddhist for chinese ? what other religion do u guys heard of beside buddhist?

seem clear to me.. how do u describe chinese temples? what religion is that? burning papers, burn joss stick to heavenly god , giving out amulet as blessing, has medium that do blessing and able to read the person destiny?

This post has been edited by hackwire: Jan 18 2012, 11:04 PM

Kuan yin is a Bodhisattva and is considered one of Buddha's disciple... there are many other religions but for the chinese part the government only recognises buddhism/christianity/tao.. i think..


chinese temples are mostly tao origins and infused with buddhism... you seem to be slightly mistaken.. in buddhism we do not believe in a single God (with a capital G).. or the creator of this world... but we do believe that there are thousands of gods in the heavenly realms with great powers and has done good deeds for the human realms...and till this day people still pay respect to these deities.. however whether you want to believe the existence of the deities is entirely up to you...

and by the way..burning papers is a chinese tradition and nothing to do with religion...

Kuan yin is a buddha disciple? correct me if im wrong. ... kuan yin is in another part of the world call china if not mistaken. my guess is that this person have received the teaching from one of the buddha disciples right? he attain enlightenment after that which u call bodhisattva right? ok these mortal being such as siddartha gautama, kuan yin, chi kong (monk that eat meat), etc had became deity which still exist in an unparalleled dimension . by the way, jesus is now one of them my guess is because he was a human being too before that and many others in the western world as well. All these normal being were like granted by the people and it's not their choice to become a deity. It's not for me or anyone to cast any doubt on them because they also never ask to become god or probably they don't even realize what they going to become after life. So one cannot deny that deity is not around us anymore, so now i just pay my respect mostly for these deity.

i thought u're malay?

that's the reason y i had said before that Taoism and Buddhism has been infuse long time ago by some cults in china , some of the myth or lifetime events or experience the people over that time encounter had made some difference base on religion and traditional culture. And burning paper, joss stick, bells, lotus candle etc had became part of the ritual symbolizing a religion .

The way I practice Buddhism is to follow its teaching of morality.

Though sometime I think my dad would be a little disappointed that I'm not into rituals and not fully believing in deities but I do respect him enough to practice our family's traditions.

I can't say that I fully dismissed the existence of supernatural beings but I just don't put any importance into it.

This is my belief and idea of Buddhism.

Believe it or not... during the Buddha times those well trained people have their own special abilities and distance is really not a problem... there are records of the Buddha travelling to heaven and hell to preach on his teachings as well...

And the Buddha himself eat meat...its just a misconception that monks can't eat meat... in those days the monks eat whatever that is given to them.. of course if its meat then there are certain rules to it... for example.. the meat that is served cannot be purposely killed to serve the monks... if let's say the people buy chicken meat from pasar.. and then coincidentally the monk came to their house to ask for food and they give him the meat..then its ok...

There is a difference being enlightened and a deity la.. a deity is someone who is borned in the heavenly realms... for example the jade king...as so forth...anybody can be enlightened... and yes we believe jesus is one of the Bodhisattva as well but christianity as taken so many twists and turns then we wouldn't know which is the real 'truth' anymore..

Others thing so too.

I haven't the foggiest idea why.

This post has been edited by joe_mamak: Jan 18 2012, 11:46 PM

actually i also looking for some answer about deity one but until lately something spark me . i just got the answer. they never ask u to believe in them and it's not their choice to be become what they are now. just like if one day , i become an overnight celebrity because i did something different, i will have a lot of fan and also a lot of hate group. the question is what should i or how do i deal with the hate group? i can't? i don't even want to try to change their believe if they are not made to believe.

Chinese are horrible with religion. They lack consistency and basically "anything goes". The concepts and terminologies are mainly made up due ignorance.

Most chinese do not practice "Buddhism". Buddhism is deeper than all of that.


That is not "tao". Most people have misconceptions about taoism. Taoism has always been only Lao Zi's teachings in his Dao De Jing he wrote and left before he disappeared forever. Taoism has nothing religious in it. When you read Dao De Jing, it reads like science.

Again this is not Taoism. Refer to my reply above. It was never infused with Buddhism.

Buddhism in China is not really infused with "ghost god BS" either. There are IIRC, six different sects of Buddhism in China. The one I'm slightly familiar with is Zen Buddhism. All these sects are heavily influenced by martial arts and Qi Gong Theory. Zen Buddhism is the most influenced of them all. They barely have anything impractical. Most of the teachings are based on cultivation of yourself. They offer little to no "ghost god bs". IIRC, they were also the first sect that started the idea of "if you do not work, you do not eat". Pretty admirable IMO.

oh ok! u mean deity are borned in the heavenly realm meaning ...? deity such as chi kong (mortal), monkey god (divine being), kuan kong(mortal), , emperor of jade (divine being)etc...but they were all from China right?

Unless I interpret things wrongly, I can never fathom why Buddhists ITT believes in deities. I personally think the original texts are not to be taken "seriously" and they serve as a literal meaning of the state of mind.

This is why taoism is often misunderstood. I can't be too sure with buddhism, can someone familiar with buddhism correct me if i'm wrong?

hi, i hope you all don't mind i get in here.

i come to know that there are south stream of buddhism and also the north stream of buddhism, the south stream from india can eat meat as you mentioned, the north stream since the china dynasty one of the emperor thinks that it is not suitable for monk to do killing of animals in the temple, hence the rule that they are forbidden to eat meat. not really sure if this is the true history.

however in the ten rules, 'shi jie', it is mention don't kill/harm lives isn't it? 不杀生。

long time ago i had seen the discussion which is like this: if we are not to kill/harm, and hence become a vegetarian, if we are killing mosquitoes, ants etc isn't it life also? and also the bacteria, fungi, parasites etc, when we boil water millions of them died, how can we fulfill the teaching?

i understand it is impossible to not kill microbes, otherwise the contaminated food and drinks will kill us. i'm just curious if one is advising people to eat vege, how will you justify it?




for the second parts, just like islam claims jesus is one of the prophets, well indeed we won't know if it is the truth. probably the identity is actually the same, just that different place/ethnic/language/local culture produces the different types of interpretations/names/status. can we put it like this?





For the above, i think there are the 6 paths of the reincarnation cycle, where the jade emperor etc are the Deva. however human are not deva, they might get to reincarnated as a deva if the good karma is enough, but not enough to become buddha. if their bad karma is strong then they can get to the animal path, or the ghost path. Shidarta gautama is a human who is able to leave the 6 paths, when his understanding of the 'laws' is complete and no longer in the reincarnation cycle. and he become a buddha. but kuan yin and other bodisatva actually might have reach the state like buddha, but they have different intentions/wish before they become a buddha, like the di zhang wang wish that he will only become a buddha when the hell is empty. they are also not in the reincarnation cycle anymore, i suppose. but even buddha is still bound by karma.

not sure if these are correct, pls correct if i written wrongly. as i do not really understand the whole thing, just from the things that i read before.

This post has been edited by pandah: Jan 19 2012, 12:25 AM

You raise an interesting point.

The thing is, buddhism is very pragmatic. At the end of the day, it is how you train yourself to reach the state of enlightenment. The main reason I believe that monks do not kill is part of the training to reduce the intention of violence. A still water is incredibly hard to achieve. It is a necessary step to reach enlightenment