The media reported that Pastor Rony Tan from Lighthouse Evangelism church apologised to Venerable Kwang Sheng, the Secretary-General of the Singapore Buddhist Federation at Phor Kar See Kong Meng San Temple on 9 February 2010 morning. Pastor Rony Tan had personally made the trip to say sorry over the insensitive remarks he made about Buddhism. Pastor Rony Tan also made the promise to Venerable Kwang Sheng that such incidents will be prevented from happening again.
It was reported that Venerable Kwang Sheng graciously accepted Pastor Rony Tan’s apology, who had also said that the Buddhist Federation do not wish to see the matter further aggravating relations.
Mr Lee Bock Guan, Chairman of Singapore Buddhist Lodge asked that Buddhists in Singapore be more tolerant to minimise the tensions. He added that everybody makes mistakes, but Buddhism teaches people to forgive.
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- Full Speech: Pastor Rony Tan Says Sorry to Church
- Tracy Tan of Mediacorp is Pastor Rony Tan’s Daughter
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The Rise Of Buddhism In New Zealand
Voxy News Engine, 18 January, 2010
Auckland, New Zealand — What happens when two religions and two world views collide?
That was the question Victoria University graduate Hugh Kemp sought to answer via research that focused on how and why New Zealanders convert to Buddhism.
“Buddhism is gaining traction in New Zealand, so my interest was in what makes a New Zealander become a Buddhist and the variety of pathways they take as they journey towards, and embrace, Buddhism,” says Mr Kemp.
As part of his PhD research, he also focused on the identity that convert Buddhists construct for themselves as New Zealanders.
Mr Kemp interviewed around 70 new Buddhists from all over New Zealand and attended 27 Buddhist events and gatherings. His interviews explored four factors of inter-relationships: practice and ritual, selfhood, belief and involvement.
“It was essentially a qualitative sociology project that tracked why New Zealanders take up the practice of Buddhism and how they continue to find meaning, chiefly in regular practice, ritual and involvement.”
Although Mr Kemp says he was surprised that numbers of New Zealand converts hadn’t increased as much as he’d expected, or as much as overseas trends indicated, Buddhism remained a popular religion here.
“It’s down to a number of factors – the increasing profile of the Dalai Lama, New Zealand’s closer ties with Asia and the fact that we’re quite open to new religions and have a history in New Zealand of people experimenting with new religions.”
Mr Kemp, who also has a Masters of Theology degree, says interviewees’ stories were placed in a social-historical narrative of Arcadia.
“If New Zealand is Arcadia – clean, green, 100% pure and the ideal place to live – then it can be conceived of as a Buddhist Pure Land. Arcadia and the Pure Land come together in notions of ‘home’, offering a new imaginative order for Buddhist practitioners.” Overall, he says his research indicates that new converts overwhelmingly believe New Zealand is a good place to practice Buddhism.
“Buddhists in New Zealand say they will continue to create their own identity and find a turangawaewae or place of identity in which to stand.”
One of Mr Kemp’s supervisors Professor Paul Morris says, “Dr Kemp’s pioneering work, which is the first systematic study of New Zealanders who become Buddhist, tells us both about religion and spirituality in our country and the specific manifestations of Buddhism here.” Mr Kemp graduates with a PhD in Religious Studies and is hoping to teach Religious or Asian Studies. His supervisors were Dr Rick Weiss and Professor Paul Morris.
May be they think, the other Buddhist already all died, leave only them(Ex- and pastor) because they are not afraid the other Buddhists, this kind of people brain are very low.
May be they think, they are right. For example, they can comment Buddhst karma, Suttras, Nibbina and etc. May be 2000 years of Buddhist never any humans comment.
Why they are silly and dark brain, now whole world people heard of that attacked in Buddha Dhamma, some people are very angry.
How this people to stay in the world, Singapore is very small country, at last they life, they must suffer until missing from this world