Get Involved
TBSC Group
The community that has grown around Theravāda Buddhist Studies in Chinese — students and graduates who go on practising, serving and supporting one another long after the six-year course ends.
Who it is for
Anyone who has studied, or is studying, on the Mandarin Buddhism course at Mangala Vihara. The course began on 8 January 2010 with 103 students, ranging in age from 20 to 75, and cohorts have followed every year since. The group is what those students become to one another once class is over.
You do not need to have finished the six years. Many members are still working through the syllabus.
What the group does
The habit the course sets is that learning does not stop at the classroom door, and the group is where that continues.
Keeping up the study
Graduates commonly enrol in another of the temple's classes — meditation, Pāli chanting, Abhidhamma — or join the ongoing Nikāya research group.
Serving at the temple
Members volunteer across the temple's calendar. At the 2025 National Day Piṇḍapāta the crowd-control team, keeping the alms queues orderly and guiding devotees through lunch, was led by Brother Kok Kum Khay of TBSC — one of several sub-groups that planned the day together with the Sunday Dhamma School, the Buddhist and Pāli College, MVDF and Myanmar Dhamma Studies.
Visiting and blessing
Members visit people in hospital or at home to offer blessings, and accompany the monks to funeral wakes.
Kalyāṇamittatā
Spiritual friendship is written into the course's own aims: a wholesome camaraderie meant to outlast the syllabus.
When and where it meets
[PLACEHOLDER, temple to supply: whether the group keeps its own regular meeting, and if so when and in which hall.]
The course itself · Fridays, 7pm – 9.30pm, January to November
Chew Quee Neo Hall (level 2) and the level 3 classrooms. That is the class, not the group. See Theravāda Buddhist Studies in Chinese.
How to join
If you are on the course, you are already part of it — speak to your teachers or to the group's facilitator.
If you are not yet a student and would like to be, the course opens each year on the second Friday of January. It is taught in Mandarin by volunteer lay teachers, offered on a donation basis, and no previous study is assumed.
[PLACEHOLDER, temple to supply: whether someone who reads Chinese but has never studied Buddhism can join the group directly, without taking the course first.]
Days and times above are the regular pattern. Please confirm the current term before coming — call the temple on +65 6744 4285, or visit the office on Sunday between 10am and 1pm.