Moral Character « Daring to Change

Moral character is the only way for progressive change 2 May 31, 2011

Posted by @Karen_Fu in change, ethics, human quality, Singapore.
Tags: Mingyi Monk, Moral Character, Moral ethics, NKF, progressive change, Social Justice, TT Durai
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SINGAPORE – Four years after he was convicted of deceiving the organisation he headed, former National Kidney Foundation chief executive T T Durai has been stripped of his Public Service Star and Public Service Star (Bar) awards.Durai was found guilty in June 2007 of using a false invoice to deceive the NKF into paying S$20,000 to his interior designer friend David Tan.

The same fate goes for former Ren Ci Hospital chief Ming Yi, who had his Public Service Medal – awarded in 1996 – forfeited on Monday by President S R Nathan.

Notices of the forfeitures were published yesterday in the Government Gazette.

Ming Yi, 49, whose birth name is Goh Kah Heng, was convicted together with his former aide Raymond Yeung in October 2009 over an unauthorised loan of S$50,000 made in 2004 to the Mandala Buddhist Cultural Centre, a religious artefact shop formerly managed by Yeung.

They were also found guilty of giving false information to the Commissioner of Charities. Ming Yi was released from jail last August after serving four months and is now abbott of Foo Hai Chan monastery.

The awards are given to people who have rendered public service to the country in various fields, including sports, business and the labour movement.

National Day Award winners are announced every Aug 9 and are approved by the President. If a past winner is convicted of a criminal offence or sacked, the President may forfeit the award on advice of the Cabinet.

Durai, 63, was awarded the Public Service Star (Bar) in 1992 for his contribution to the NKF.

But in 2005, an unsuccessful defamation suit that he launched against The Straits Times led to a full-scale audit into the charity’s operations.

He appealed against his conviction and sentence unsuccessfully and began serving his three-month jail sentence in June 2008.

[Reposted the above news from Durai, Ming Yi stripped of public service awards by the Government from Today.com]

About 2 years ago, I posted my thoughts about Moral character is the only way for progressive change. I was not happy about how the sentence was done after what both TT Durai and Monk Mingyi had done. Just a few days ago, the Singapore Government had done what many people here would be consoled and justice done — stripping off their coveted titles from the Government.

A society cannot progress positively without any form of moral correctness. A society would eventually fall into pieces if ethics are not taken serious care. Looking at the world that we have today, we cannot deny that high crime rates, diseases, relationship failures et cetra have something to do with moral character and building up of a healthy mind set. Though any form of method would allow one to acheive ‘success’ so as long as the required work is put in and that the motivation is strong enough to push through barriers. However, I would like to emphasize that the evil way of achieving ‘success’ is often ‘rewarded’ with firebacks in the form of endless revenge, bad health and unhappy living. Some people have argued that many bad people whose deeds are evil and unscrupulous often get their way and achieve the fame and wealth, that most others with a much docile character would not be able to achieve. I often feel it is because that people have a high tendency to look at what others have and often blow it up disproportionately without looking further and deeper into the nature of that success. A successful person is one who lives happily without guilt; and able to prosper oneself and others. History has often told us that the very nature of success is via political means of obtaining power and might. But history has also told us that power and might done in the most cunning and sly ways do not lead to eternal satisfaction; if not leading to a tragic end.

Ironically, we often fail to remind ourselves what history has taught us. We often repeat the mistakes done because we do not genuinely repent and learn from various experiences in the luring presence of power, fame and wealth. Many whose minds are complex, because they need to exploit others to get what they want. And it is those, who negatively exploits, suffer from bad health & a poor quality of living that is filled with mostly evil thoughts.

Just take some time to sit down and observe. It’s not that hard to see why being bad doesn’t pay. — Karen Fu

Moral character is the only way for progressive change July 22, 2009

Posted by @Karen_Fu in change, ethics, faith, human quality.
Tags: change, human progression, humanity, life, Moral Character, Shi Mingyi
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Venerable Monk Shi Ming YI

Recently, there has been a new slew of dishonesty cases, not just stemming out from commercial areas, but ironically from religious establishments. That often makes me often wonder how all these could happen and why they have happened. It is actually no new news about people being hypocritical about deals and ideals. But what I am really dismayed is that my observations have proven true of a monk here who is now currently undergoing trial for embezzlement of funds. Basically he abused his power by actually appearing to serve the disadvantaged community at large, while committing a number of hideous crimes that a highly professional criminal would do. It was a stab in the heart for many who had a lot of respect for him as an humanist. Before Mingyi monk, T.T Durai had committed similar crimes at NKF (National Kidney Foundation) before. If you start to ponder about the cases in depth, you would wonder what actually happen behind the scenes.

These are high profile crimes which involved highly educated people who appear to be ‘good’. We may expect terrorists and former criminals to do such acts but crimes from these people appear to be even more hideous & upsetting. My first suspicion came a few years ago when I saw his unusually posh office in the papers, which no one appeared to question then. My next suspicion came when I attended some of the NKF activities and I asked why they had a string of repeated donations that often, when they have already gathered millions of dollars. Since then, I’ve stopped donations despite people kept telling me that I was too suspicious about the entire scenario. Years later, my observations proved I was right. (And I am not proud of it.) Singaporeans have always been known to donate generously when asked to. After these incidents, it will somewhat dent donations in the future. And if I’m right again, we need to clean up the way we continue our culture of materialism and capitalism before we get ourselves to a point where nothing/nobody can be really trusted; and that the entire society would risk rolling into huge abominable moral decay.

Mingyi Monk committed more than stealing money from the patients who needed them more. Kidney dialysis is by no means a simple and painless procedure. Most of these patients usually wait in vain for a kidney transplant. The agony of waiting and living on the dialysis is not a small matter. While he had done good deeds in accepting some of the most unaccepted patients (dying and very difficult to care for) in the past, I would question if these kind acts were to cover the planned crimes he had done. Should he be whipped for all that ? He has a list of luxuries that he has been enjoying –from keeping a thoroughbred in Australia, owning posh cars, to suspected womanizing.And the list goes on as the trial continues to reveal his greed and crimes. To add to the list, even his Doctorate degree was a fake.

Thinking about his case, I cannot help but to appreciate people like Mother Teresa and Teresa XuZhe for their pure desire to help the disadvantaged and the needy. These great people fortunately live long enough to have us acknowledging their deeds, which they have dutifully done at the expense of their lifetime without any kind of material compensation they deserve. XuZhe has fortunately live well over 100 to be finally noticed. Whenever I see or read her in the papers, I cannot help but to pity that she did not marry and have children, whom she could pass her genes along. We need people like her and we need her teachings to pass along too. We have way too many parents who instill the wrong teachings/ideas to children to get ahead in their studies for the wrong reasons. We have children these days who think that material success as the most important. It is dangerous to think in that way to get ahead in life, when being a good world citizen is way more important to ensure a peaceful world.

Moral character is by far, IMHO, the most critical aspect in human progression. Without it, we cannot aspect positive change to the surroundings that we are living in. Can you imagine a world with people who have all the skills and knowledge, bearing a mask to hide all their sinister deeds, doing all the important tasks of the world ? Personally I can’t and it would be a perfect nightmare if I could. Some people have forseen doomsday within the next 50 years, but is it all that we could do ?

Ironically and scarily true is that many people have multi-faceted personalities. They could do one thing, and act differently in the other. Unless we rectify this very hideous human flaw, we cannot expect to save the world and the human race from extinction. Call this a natural retribution. We surely do not need to be this stupid to drool on materialism to the point to permanent self destruction.

Reference:

Ming Yi Monk’s crime:

http://blog.simplyjean.com/2007/11/19/ren-ci-probe-venerable-ming-yis-doctorate/
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_366848.html