Page 184 - Applied Buddhism

understood. Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda, being trained in English, institutions, they communicated in Mandarin among themselves.
had the immediate advantage of easy communication with the
masses, especially students at tertiary institutions.
In the 1960s, Buddhist societies in colleges, such as Technical
College, Teachers’ College, Language Institute, Technical Teachers
Training College, Agricultural College, etc. used English as the
medium of communication. These societies frequently invited Ven.
K. Sri Dhammananda to their premises to teach them the Dharma.
I came across a letter in the file of the Technical College Buddhist
Society. The letter was written by the secretary of the Technical
College Buddhist Society to the Penang Buddhist Association,
asking the Association to introduce a monk who could teach them
Dharma in English; the Association replied by introducing Ven. K.
Sri Dhammananda.
At that time, other well-known monks, such as Ven. Chuk
Mor and Ven. Paik Wan, were already in Malaya. However, their
inability to speak English means that they were less connected with
students at tertiary institutions. In fact, their missionary works
were not only hampered by their inability to speak English, they
were also less effective in public Dharma talks as their slang of
Mandarin was not easily understood by the masses. They have to
make up for this disadvantage with more writings, paintings, and
calligraphy.
In the 1980s, when government policy had resulted in the
elimination of English primary and secondary schools, about
85% of Chinese Malaysians chose to send their children to study
in Chinese primary schools, before proceeding to Malay medium
secondary schools. When they eventually ended up in the tertiary
172 Applied Buddhism
This means almost all Buddhist Societies in the tertiary institutions
conducted their activities in Mandarin (some arranged for a small
English-speaking sub-section to be set up within the societies). One
can easily observed that Ven. K. Sri. Dhammananda’s influence on
students had dwindled since then - with fewer invitations for him.
On the other hand, younger Mandarin speaking monks and lay men
became more popular among the students.
For the last few decades since the change of the language
medium amongst universities, the annual Inter-varsity-college
Buddhist camps which attracted more than 100 participants each
time, have been conducted in Mandarin. Chinese speaking monks/
nuns from abroad and locally were invited as speakers. Despite
Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda’s outstanding missionary skill he was
unable to overcome the challenge caused by this change of language
medium.
One may also observe that when YBAM was formed in 1970,
more than half of the 17 founder member-organisations were
English speaking, and they all had Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda
as their Spiritual Advisor. However, today the English speaking
groups make up only a small fraction of the 300 strong membership
of the YBAM. In other words, the shift of language medium had
slowed down the growth of the English speaking Buddhist groups.
This inevitably reduced the impact of Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda’s
missionary works, while the Chinese speaking monks continued to
make significant contribution at an accelerated pace.
Challenges from Evangelists
Under British colonial rule, Christian missionary schools were
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