What is Venerable Master Hsing Yun’s aspirations to young adults?
To encourage the participants to reflect and share, Abbess Manshin led a workshop in 2021 ANZBYC with an article title The Path to Establishing Buddhist Youth Success, by Venerable Master Hsing Yun. The 6 discussion points are valuable and crucial to all the participants to develop self-mastery and potential within oneself.
The participants have engaged in the discussion and come out with meaningful presentation and reflection. We hope that everyone has learned from Venerable Master’s reading, gaining inspiration and motivation from the workshop, most importantly, has the strength to implement practices of faith and legacy in our daily life.
The Path to Establishing Buddhist Youth Success
1. Obtaining Joy from Giving
2. Spend Time with Diligence
3. Cultivate Moral Values from Forbearance
4. Enrich Oneself through Hardship
5. Living by Following the Conditions Given
6. Enhance Aspiration through Faith & Vow
Sharing from New Zealand YAD:
1. Edwin Teoh, President of Fo Guang Club
Feel intrigued to see panel members disagreeing with each other! That reminds me of Abbess Manshin’s words, the truth can only arises once enough arguments and careful analysis have been performed.
This reminds me on the importance of shaping good oral presentation skills, backed up by in-depth cultural and religious background.
2. Sean Chua, YAD Committee
2021 ANZBYC begin with Venerable Master Hsing Yun’s Spiritual Journey shared by both Ven Miao Guang & Ven Ru Chang. One quote struck me the most from the session is by Ven Master I don’t dream, I make it a reality”. Which is in line with the Ven Master’s article that was assigned to Auckland YAD, Enhance Aspiration Through Faith & Vow. It highlighted the fact to us that vow is not just having hope or having a goal, it is an action. We can strengthen our aspiration by following the right faith and making great vows.
3. Yao Chang, Vice President of Senior YAD
In accordance with Master Hsing Yun’s“Enhance aspiration through faith and vow” and also as an aspiring young Buddhist, Buddhism is my faith, and the Buddha is my teacher. After the classes, I reviewed my faith and reset my vow. I vow to gain wisdom, enlighten myself and also help other people to be enlightened. I vow to take action by following the right Buddhist teachings, and also the guidance from Abbess’s and Venerable’s teachings. I will read the right books, like “Buddha-Dharma: Pure and Simple”to gain the Right View. Also, I vow to come back to the temple every weekend, do dining service and attend the Dharma classes. Enriching myself through hardship and all the sufferings will help me improve my abilities.
One important thing I learnt from Abbess Manshin, Abbess Manko and all the speakers is learning by doing. Young Buddhist needs to practice more giving, serving, and offering. I am very grateful to Abbess Manshin, and the Venerables for giving us the opportunities to practice giving and serving at the temple. By keep practicing and participating more in team cooperation with the YAD and BLIA members, we cherish the supportive affinities, enhanced aspirations, and the improvement of ourselves.
4. Sin Jun Chong, YAD Committee
Firstly, cultivation is about taking on the hardships, so that we can learn a lot and grow up faster. When we find ourselves in challenging situations, we shouldn’t compound the suffering but instead find a way to be beneficial and understand what we can learn from these challenging situations. When we overcome these situations, then we will gain the nutrients.
Secondly, it is good to strive to be perfect, but we shouldn’t pursue perfectionism. But self-reflection is always important.
Thirdly, the experience each of us have and have gained is very valuable. For example, at first, I was worried about giving our sharing for the articles. But through Abbess’s and our team’s guidance and teamwork, we were able to present our sharing in a special and appealing way.
5. Eden Lee, YAD Committee
Day 2 of ANZBYC has been great. I really enjoyed listening to YADs presentation from Abbess Manshin’s class. It was great to hear how the YADS from Australia and New Zealand spread and plant the seed of Humanistic Buddhism.
It is amazing to see how much we learn from being a YAD. Not many people have the opportunity to spend time and learn from experienced individuals such as our Venerables. As we are so blessed to have such an opportunity we should learn and absorb as much as we can so that we not only better ourselves as individuals but also share our learnings with friends and family.
Additionally, i also really enjoyed the discussion with Natasha Tang, Arthur Liu and Dr Eric Chan. The facilitator, Diana Chan from Queensland YAD was really great and kept the discussion going. During the discussion, the topic of how to attract youth to the temple came out. This is relevant to us as YADs because not many young people are willing to spend their time volunteering these days. Dr Eric Chan said we should have quality and not quantity which I strongly agree with. There is no point in recruiting any random young individual just for the sake of having quantity as at the end of the day, even if we managed to recruit 100 YADs, they are not able to help out. Rather, we should focus more on an individual with quality. Hence, when it comes attracting young individuals to join the YAD, we should definitely focus on individuals with great quality as they are the future and will continue to spread Humanistic Buddhism to the future generations.
Overall, this year’s ANZBYC has been great. I’ve learnt many things which I will continue to use in my daily life.
6. Roger Huang, YAD Committee
Day Two of ANZBYC has been an incredible day with a lot of insight into how people incorporate Humanistic Buddhism into their daily lives. We kicked the day off as the hosts for the first event delegating 6 questions for the different states across Oceania, with the lucky opportunity to be lead by Venerable Abbess Manshin. With the hard work we put in beforehand in the preparation, everything ran smoothly and according to plan and the class was a tremendous success with positive feedback.
The rest of the day was also filled with insightful wisdom into how we can regain our passion for Buddhism under difficult circumstances, with “Stay True to your Initial Aspirations” as a recurring theme across many talented speakers, understanding what motivated and touched you in the first place to remind ourselves of why we started in the first place. Overall I feel grateful that we can end the event on such an insightful and positive note for 2021 ANZBYC. I feel grateful to be a part of this opportunity, proud to be a Buddhist and hopeful for the future to come.
7. Carol Lai, YAD
From the Abbess Manshin’s talk, Abbess said that Hardship build up the foundation，then we can have future. I think that is the same thing why the Buddha wanted to do asceitic practices for 6 years，Abbess mentioned before, it is because the Buddha want to understand the concepts from there. It is proved that we need to do more, but not just saying, because it is impossible to know the essential of Buddhism and the principle if we do not practice it, and our heart cannot get cultivate. Also, I inspire by Abbess Manshin with the mind of giving. The matter we need to think is how much I can give, even I have not much things can give out, but how can I still give out something to others. Actually, I can give out my energy and joy to others, it is not necessary I need to give a thing. I think this is the habit I need to learn because I should always offering people around me because they are the partner in my daily life, without them I cannot practice 3g4g, and this lead me to understand the wisdom inside more deeper.
So, I felt really appreciate to what I have now, and I can improve myself well in order to be the successful owner for my life, and start everything on right path.
8. Howard Wang, YAD
I learned a lot of things today and the most important thing is that you have to learn from your everyday life, and you have to learn to be happy during taking hardship and try to be yourself, not to care about others thinking from your everyday life.
9. Ben Lu, YAD
I learnt a lot from all the Venerables and the speakers from sharing their thoughts, wisdom and their experiences. The part that I found really helpful in understanding true faith is when Abbess Manko talked about how faith is transcendent, unbounded, fearless, worriless and unbounded from greed and fame. This is what true faith in the Buddhism should be, and I will make a vow to stay true to it. I also gained valuable insight from listening to the speaker Natasha Tang, it made me realise how important Humanistic Buddhism is because it is in essence Buddhism but applied skilfully in our community. It is about connecting with people and applying Buddhist principles in our connected world, rather than only focusing on the individual. In gratitude to this conference, I gained valuable insights from people sharing their hearts and I hope there would be another opportunity in the future.