Page 6 - A Study of Traditional Chinese Religions in Malaysia: The Decline and the Path Towards Revitalization

The Buddhist community must now seriously consider how to make Buddhist funerals more
solemn, fresh, peaceful, and more acceptable to modern people.

In addition to funerals, we should also consider how to promote Buddhist wedding ceremonies.

Every religion has rituals, and rituals are developed based on factors such as culture, history, and
other social environment considerations. How to reshape traditional rituals according to the time
and place to make them more palatable to modern people's tastes and more attractive to modern
people’s mind is one of the key tasks.

4. Life care

There are many large-scale, well- organised social welfare activities carried out by the Buddhist
community. However, there are still many traditional Chinese religious believers who do not
receive care from Buddhists when they are facing suffering or dying. Instead, they receive care
from non-Chinese traditional religious believers and change their religious beliefs. What's the
problem?

I think that too many Buddhist leaders and workers invest too much time and resources in
organised welfare and charitable activities, but neglect the direct care and love between people,
and lack mutual fellowship. For example, a Buddhist leader can organise a group of people to visit a
nursing home, but when a family member of one of the members is sick or passes away, they do
not even pay a visit.

How to promote fellowship and train more Buddhists to care for life at a one-to-one, rather than
group-organised level, has become a key task.

5. Organisational leadership

From this research report, we come to realise that a major issue in Chinese traditional religious
beliefs is the issue of leadership quality. For example, when asked about the loss of followers of
traditional Chinese religions, some people didn't know that this problem existed. Some admit that
they are losing followers, but do not take any action because they have no money and no other
options. Isn’t this an expression of ignorance and incompetence?

Therefore, the Buddhist community needs to step up efforts to develop talents and train quality
leaders. At present, the work of cultivating talents in the Buddhist community focuses on the inner
study of Buddhism, and rarely directly teaches leadership, let alone the interactive relationship
between Buddhism and the country and society. As a result, many Buddhist leaders are well-versed
in inner studies but are not interested in current social issues. With little knowledge, one cannot
truly play an effective leadership role.

To make up for the lack of leadership training, the Yayasan Belia Buddhist Malaysia has published a
book "Dhamma-based Leadership" as a manual for training leaders.

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