I find this article somewhat sad because this shows that the people of Malaysia, and the Buddhist council of Malaysia who consists of lay people think that they can criticize monks. No doubt that the he also happens to be the nephew of the former chief monk of Malaysia and thus have certain expectations to follow, but to make a big fuss out of this as if they have authority over sangha is extremely sad indeed for 1) they do not hold the monk vows, so they do not have the right to criticize a sangha member 2) they have not renounced anything in their lives to qualify to have the right to criticize a fully ordained monk. This shows how little Dharma does the lay people of malaysia know and how insecure they are about their own Dharma practice as only insecure people see the need to police others. Any practitioner that is strong, stable and sure of their own Dharma practice will not see a need to make such statements or actions against others. It is also very obvious that they do not study much Dharma but wishes to govern others anyway. if they did they would have learnt that criticizing sangha can bring about very heavy consequences as it is the same as criticizing the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. An ordained person represents the Buddha via the robes, embodies the Dharma and is the sangha support for the disciples, so to criticize an ordained person is to deny being Buddhist.
I am just a lay person and as such I have very little knowledge of the monk’s vinaya. Nevertheless, I wish to know that by not wearing his robes, did he break any of the monk’s rules of conduct?
I was also informed that even if there was minor breach of the rules, there need to be some sort of confession between the venerable and his brother monks. How is this being handled?
people who wish to criticize do not even know if an ordained person is allowed to wear lay clothes or not, and they end up feeling shocked or horrified or whatever. If you dont know about the vinaya rules, go find out. there are books about it that can be bought from Buddhist bookstores or ordered online. If I were you i'd shutup and keep my assumptions to myself instead of posting such a stupid article on the net and cause more misunderstandings to people. Yeah so, ratana acted against your expectation and thats his only 'mistake', but i dont think it warrants a lay person to make such comments against an ordained person. After all, the ordained person holds at all times more vows than your measly 5.
And since the venerable will place the honorific “Datuk” title in his name card, will he also put the photo of him receiving the award from the Malaysian King in his office or anywhere inside the compound of the temple where he currently resides?
My question is why would you expect a monk to act only in the way that you want? If a monk is recognized by the government of a certain country fro their achievements, why is it wrong for that monk to accept this award? Why are people so hung up on this? I dont see anything wrong. Apparently, Rev Ratana is operating and running an ophranage and old folks home as well as a shelter for single mothers and the head of the malaysian government is recognizing him for that. The tone of the comment represents the jealousy of the author of that article towards Rev Ratana who received the award. If he was not jealous, would he actually say something like this? Is there even a need to say this? Since when do monks carry name cards? My word!! what an insolent person this is! Shocking how people can bad mouth sangha like this in malaysia. What a nightmarish country for Buddhism to be in!
It is things like this that make my blood boil: lay people criticizing the sangha as if they know everything.
