Objective
1. To commemorate the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015.
2. To strengthen the co-operation among Buddhist scholars in AEC and neighbouring countries and provide a platform for the sharing of academic ideas.
3. To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Than Hsiang Buddhist Welfare Association, Malaysia.

Venerable Wei Wu and members of Than Hsiang send their deepest condoleneces to the family members of the late YB Karpal Singh. His demise is a great loss to the nation. We highly appreciates him as a politician with principle who serves the nation and its people. He held a very clear and firm stand on Malaysia being a secular state and resisted strongly any attempt by others to use religion to claim political milage. He is a exemplarily politician and we hope that current and future politicians in Malaysia will follow his fine example.

The Than Hsiang Mitra Welfare Association, in collaboration with International Buddhist College conducted a 6-day course on Buddhist Psychotherapy from 14 Dec to 29 Dec 2013.

Mitra had the honor to invite Dr Wasantha to be our teacher for this course.

My personal impressions after attending the course are as follows:

News of the bombing of the Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya on July 7, 2013 came as a great shock to Buddhists far and near. Bodhgaya is the holy site where the Buddha gained Enlightenment and has become a holy pilgrimage centre for Buddhist from all over the world. It is also of international importance as it is declared a World Heritage Site by United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation. Till today we still do not know why and who targeted the Mahabodhi temple for this violent act.

Bangkok (19 May, 2013) -- The Mahamakut Buddhist University (MBU) awarded Venerable Wei Wu, the founder and council chairman of IBC, the Honourary Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Buddhist Studies.

Venerable Pannyavaro , the founder of Buddhanet devotes his life to the meditational aspects of the Buddha's teachings. We were indeed fortunate and blessed to have him conduct a 1-day workshop on Satipatthana-Vipassana and Loving-Kindness meditation techniques during his short stay at Than Hsiang Temple on his visit to Malaysia recently.

To start at the beginning-

9.00 – 9.30am: Arrival of Venerable Pannyavaro and 14 participants.

It all started back in April 2011 when Than Hsiang Temple (THT) and the Penang Municipal Council were planning for a river clean-up campaign and they needed an activity for warming-up before the clean-up began.

Ven. Zhen Ti Shifu then suggested to Master Tang Chin Yong to start a Taijiquan class under the THT banner so that by the time the campaign started, the class would be ready to lead the performance.

As a part of Than Hsiang Temple Social Responsibilities program, a blood donation campaign was

organized by Than Hsiang Mitra Welfare Association Penang on 23rd March 2013. Our co-organizer,

the Penang General Hospital sent 14 members of the staff to Than Hsiang Temple at 9am to set up

counters and beds for the blood donation drive in the Great Compassion Hall at the ground floor.