Eat for A Good Reason

This post was written some time back. But I wanted to introduce this place and let you know, in case you didn’t, that you can eat for a good reason!
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We had a late night yesterday, woke up late and decided to go for a light yet satisfying brunch. You know what the Chinese say. If you have had a late night, your body’s heaty so you should not worsen the accumulated heat by having meat or fried stuff.
So we decided to head for vegetarian food. At the Than Hsiang Temple, Bayan Lepas.

This is a lovely place for lunch as it’s breezy, the parking is easy and you feel good after a simple, delicious all-vegetable meal.

I say this because the RM4 we pay for our self-service lunch goes towards the Wan Ching Yuen Old Folks Home, located on the upper floor of the Than Hsiang complex. This Old Folks Home is funded by the food sold at the vegetarian canteen on the ground floor. So that’s what it means to eat and to do “dana” at the same time. (Dana is a Buddhist term for generosity.)

They’ve fixed the price at RM4 but it’s well worth every sen because you do get a choice of either white rice or brown rice, and good selection of vegetarian dishes. When we were there today, we counted some 8 or 9 varieties of dishes. Have your pick. You get a free flow of soup of the day (it was watercress soup) and drinking water. Dessert was agar-agar in cups at 50 sen each.

This is at the canteen section. If you’d like to dine with a bit of style, like in a restaurant, Than Hsiang has its own Chinese-style restaurant too, complete with aircond and red table cloths. Here, you can order ala-carte. The cooking is of course fully vegetarian but it is as every bit as tasty as the food looks! They do a good pseudo-sharks’ fin soup!

Then, out of curiosity, we asked one of the aunties why there was a separate counter with about 4 trays of vegetables and rice.
“Oh, that’s for those who wish to eat here but find the RM4 too expensive. They can take their pick of the rice and vegetables from that counter and pay as they wish.”
Is RM4 too expensive? I mean, I get rice with an assortment of vegetables. I can take as many varieties of vegetables as I want and get a free flow of soup. And I get to do some dana while I eat. That’s not too much is it? Especially when Starbucks charges RM9 for a cup of tazo tea! Of course, I understand that Starbucks has the ambience, the stylishness, the charm.
I was thinking that if I had the choice between choosing one eatery over another, I’d try to be as socially responsible as much as I can. I don’t discount that I do like fine dining once in a while (particularly if I am in Langkawi and Sunsutra beckons!) and I do enjoy long, leisurely lunches.
But I would also like to do my good deed for the day and know that my money is going to fund an old folks’ home. That’s just like why I buy Bodyshop products – they’re making money AND contributing to some good somewhere, through community trade with some village folks in Ghana or Venezuela. I think in today’s world, we mustn’t only think of consumerism as a greed-infested habit; it is possible to combine consumerism with social responsibility.
That appeals to me. Eat and donate at the same time.
Drop by Than Hsiang for a vegetarian lunch and do a good deed today!
Note: I’ve always admired Than Hsiang for their systematic, organised ways of thinking and doing charity. They’re self-sufficient because they find ways to generate money for themselves (you can drop off your recyclables at the temple too) and even for other causes.

During Wesak Day celebrations recently, they donated half a million ringgit to the Phor Tay School Building Fund! According to Reverend Wei Wu, unlike charitable bodies, one cannot see the immediate effect of donating to a school/educational institution BUT one can see the effects in time to come. Very true! And you can listen to the good reverend’s Dhamma talks in windows media format at their website too.
Anyway, Than Hsiang runs a free clinic too for those in need of medical attention. They run a kindergarten and an old folks’ home within the same complex. They also run a Buddhist college in Hadyai, if I am not mistaken. Plus they’re now in the midst of a plant-a-tree campaign via donation.
Which reminds me of another equally progressive non profit organisation, Buddhist Tzu-Chi Merit Society which began in Taiwan years ago. Tzu-Chi does charitable work quietly but what’s more amazing is that they do not beg or solicit donations for their work. They are as self-sufficient and independent as they can be, with branches all over the world.
Anyway, learn more (and be suitably impressed, as I always am when I visit Than Hsiang) at www.thanhsiang.org