Our dear Venerable Chuan Guan has a Special!

Haha but the special is by some Mass Comm students.. too bad... hehehe... Credits to Shixiong and Co.

Weird and farnie

So disappointed...

This was going round and round in my head for a whole night and day, so I had to get it off my chest... And only in here will perhaps the readers understand...

Yesterday I was chatting with Venerable Bodhi, and she shared with me something very shocking. Apparently the 29th had been looking for a meditation teacher for the basic meditation course for the 30th. Angita had asked me for advice: which teacher to approach and so on. I suggested Venerable Chuan Guan, and it so happened that they did approach him.

Venerable Chuan Guan was the one that shared with Venerable Bodhi what happened. Venerable obviously does not have a car, so he said so. Angita checked with Tiong Han and they decided that they could not provide transport. So Angita emailed Venerable saying that they could not provide transport, so if Venerable really needed it, then they would have to find another teacher instead.

This sounded very terrible to Venerable Bodhi, and also to me. It sounded as if our sincerity in asking for a teacher to teach us depended on whether the Venerable had his own transport. We did not even have the sincerity for providing for a monk's requisites. Furthermore, because the communication was via email, it must have sounded terribly cold and unfriendly to Venerable Chuan Guan.

When I clarified this with Angita on MSN last night, she said they have approached alumni to see if who was free to fetch Venerable. This is not acceptable to me. The practice in the past was to find someone to bus down to the temple, and then cab to and fro with the Venerable. Yes, it was our fault as seniors that we did not pass this protocol down well. But Angita even said to me last night that Venerable should understand that we are students and are very busy! I was so shocked and disappointed by this statement... She said that she had gotten so used to Venerable Chun Nian's mobile nature... But surely it's ridiculous to take that for granted!

Venerable Bodhi gave me the second half of this horrible story: apparently no one confirmed with Venerable Chuan Guan that he would not be the teacher. Angita had told him that she was stepping down and the new Dharma Director would take over this matter. But Eddy and Kyaw had overlooked this in their hurry to look for another teacher, and forgot about him. Venerable waited until recently, when he decided to google for NUSBS to find a contact to get hold of. That's when he found out through the website that Ajahn Kheng from Palelai Temple was the confirmed teacher.

Venerable Bodhi said that she was upset on Venerable Chuan Guan's behalf. I was so embarassed and disgusted also.

Eddy and Jacinta have decided to go down to PKS to apologise personally to Venerable Chuan Guan, also I am sure that he bears no hard feelings at all. But sadly Angita just does not understand what we did wrong. She said that there are some Venerables that we can "clique" with and some that we can't, and that if it was some other Venerable, we would not have had that issue. I was almost angry, and almost in tears to hear such a statement!! The point was not about "clicking" or not!! The point was not which Venerables minded which didn't!! The point was the the decision of the 29th not to provide transport was so disgustingly lacking in sincerity! The point was that we take our teachers for granted!! It should be a baseline that we offer ALL Venerables transport, warm water and towel! Oh my gosh...

The last words I told to her were: that's not the point/ sigh/ i don't think you understand/

And she replied me: yes i dun understand/ and i'm perfectly fine with it/ nite

And this morning I saw the personal message on her MSN nick:
w......r

Whatever.

I am so so disappointed. It totally ruined my day. She was one of the juniors that I felt had so much potential. Even when she burnt out I tried to understand, and lend her a ear for her problems. I had invested my hopes and cares on someone who turned out to be so callous.

Training to talk cock: DF 1 year programme

Albert and I met over dinner on Wednesday to talk about the details of the Dharma Friends Workshop that the 30th MC would like to have on 21 Sep Sunday Morning at the end of their MC retreat at Cheng Beng. We also hammered out a rough program to train the DFs holistically.
(How many times have we said that we wanted to do that?? For once, it looks like this time it's going to happen!)

There will be at least 3 DF Worshops, maybe 4 if the 30th MC would like to squeeze in one in Sem 2 mid term break. These will be the outline of the DF Workshops:

DF Workshop 1 - Intro to Facilitating
- Facilitation as a Professional Skill
- What is Facilitation?
- Difference between facilitating and presenting
- Benefits of being able to facilitate
- Changing your mindset about being a facilitator
- Stages in a group discussion
- What are the stages from beginning to rounding up
- What to do at each stage to move on to the next
- Dealing with different Characters
- Eight most commonly seen personality types at DCs
- How to deal with them
Trial DCs
- 3 runs, 2-3 trial faciliators, 6-7 group members, 20 min
- Topic each run will be non-Dharma, close to personal experience
e.g. "Childhood experiences", "Amazing Friendships", "How do I spend my weekends?", etc.
- Non-participants will sit outside the circle, observe, make notes
- 10 min feedback from all, how to improve, learning points
Takeway: "(1) Be confident, (2) go in with a plan!"
Alumni: Hidayat, Albert, Kwek

DF Workshop 2 - Sharpening facilitation skills
- Recap on objectives of facilitations
- Styles of engagement: Different ways of facilitating
- Troubleshooting: what to do with those people and their responses
Trial DCs
Takeaway: Hone basic skills to be an even more effective facilitator
Alumni: Cindy et al.

DF Workshop 3A - Public speaking
Takeaway: Applying facilitation skills to presentations to be an engaging speaker to a small audience
Trial presentations
- Discussive-nature topics
Alumni: Albert et al.

DF Workshop 3B - Public speaking 2
Takeaway: ?Being an engaging speaker in various scenarios, e.g. impromptu, forum panels, etc.?

Another sector that Albert and I thought of exploring is encouraging "Dinner Dharma" among the Dharma Friends and sub-comm with their DDs.

e.g. This week's DC topic is "Calmness amidst the Storm". The actual topic is about concentration and relaxation meditation. In the week(s) before this DC, DFs and sub-comm will have a dinner with DDs and share info that they have read on the net, heard from talks or read from books about Samatha meditation and Anapanasati. or They can combine 2 weeks' worth of DC topics into one dinner topic.

Along the way it would be good to have comments and changes from you guys, and one year later we'll review this again, and try again for another year. Then we should have a steady DF program fit to sell!

Will be meeting Jacinta and Eddy this Friday 5pm to hammer out the year's DC topics and speakers, updates will be up after...

30 second Survey

Hi all,

This is a 4 question survey by the new marketing director Yin Hwa. He wants to collect general information on attitudes of youth towards religion and religious activities.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=YipC8FSQP488HR6PKHwk9w_3d_3d

Please also send it to your friends, especially non-Buddhist friends, so that we can have some good results.

AGM 2008

The Annual General Meeting went well on 29th August. Here are some updates.

As usual we did not achieve the quorum, so we had to wait. Furthermore, the logistics screwed up because the 29th Resource Director was in lecture and lost his handphone. None of them knew that he had a lecture at that time. As a result, the booths were set up last minute, the voting slips were clipped together last minute, the candidate's forms were put up last minute. Only the slides and the AV equipment were on time, which is a vast improvement from BS night and BAW forum.

As usual, the eventual quorum was still small - 50+ people in the beginning, dwindling to 30+ people at the end of the elections.

The following have been elected:

President - Jacinta Seah / FASS4 / Singaporean
Vice President - Kho Kaelin / BIZ2 / Malaysian
Dharma Director - Eddy Suwandi / FASS2 / Indonesian
Dy Dharma Director - Kyaw San Wai / SCI3 / Myanmarese
Hon. Gen. Sec. - Yeap Ruiqi / SCI2 / Singaporean
Dy Hon. Gen. Sec. - Tu Ngoc Ly Lan / SCI2 / Vietnamese
Hon. Treasurer - Melissa Ng / FASS3 / Singaporean
Projects Director - Lin Zhang Han / ENG2 / Singaporean
Dy Projects Director - Jean Lee / ? / Malaysian
Fellowship Director - Lee Tong Shien / SCI2 / Malaysian
Welfare Director - Jing Kuan / ? / Malaysian
Marketing Director - Seah Yin Hwa / ENG2 / Singaporean
Publications Director - Carmen / SCI1 / Singaporean
Resource Director - Loh Kok Weng / SDE2 / Malaysian

This team has a strong marketing, projects and publicity focus and direction. They only lack in maturity and experience, but make up for it in terms of vibrancy and energy. More than half of them have worked together during CEP2008 and thanks to Jacinta are very bonded and fun-loving.

Some people to watch out for are Yin Hwa, Carmen and Zhang Han, all who show promise of being able to achieve greater stuff in a second year in MC if they can be spiritually inspired.

Do keep a look out for these people if you were to drop by NUSBS or DC ya, they would need all your help and advice!

Suggestions on the coming DC topics

Hihi, some suggestions on the coming DC:

1) Transitions in Life
Instead of having 1 speaker (Cindy), perhaps we can have more than 1? For example 3 speakers or seniors : Cindy, Kwek and Robby. As these 3 speakers are close friends and have gone through a long BS pathway together, they can share their experiences in BS activities + friends, and how they help each other; at the same time, the audience will have the chance to listen to more ppl’s sharing, and most importantly is that they can feel a sense of informal and more interactive atmosphere. Also, this can show an example to the freshies on how BS has bonded the past ppl together, through changing or sharing their mindsets and some other fellowship activities.

2) What is Buddhism?
May be we can start the topic by showing a very short acting. An example of the acting is as such: I happen to meet Kwek in YIH canteen (or whatever place), and Kwek is holding a Buddhist book titled: What a Buddhist believe. Then I started to be very curious, and ask Kwek a bundle of questions related to Buddhism. After such small acting, then we can start the talk lead by Kwek, and Kwek will clarify those questions. We can make the acting as fun as we can la, if we can think of it……Perhaps this way the Freshies will not feel Buddhist talk is boring lo...

3) Fact or Fiction: Tales of the Buddha
For this one, may be a workshop can best suit it. For example, the DC session has 4 groups. 4 different pieces of paper with 50% or less description of different phases of Buddha’s life, or 4 different snapshots of various scenes from traditional stories of the Buddha, can each be distributed to these 4 groups. Each of the groups will have some time to discuss on what was happened after the half part of the story. Each of the group facilitators will have their role to play by asking the seniors' questions and ask them to continue sharing the story. By doing so, those who don't know anything about the story will benefit from it. In case non of them know, they can create the story. After discussion, every group will take their turn to perform in front of all (can ask those who don't know anything to perform?), and then Shiong Wei will correct any mistakes or misinterpretations or misconceptions.

4) Calmness amidst the Stress
As the title is about calmness, then let it be just a talk lo…Perhaps can incorporate a small meditation, or Yoga.

All these are just suggestions ya!