the city. Prayers and meditations have become simplified. At any rate, these were less understood and appreciated by ordinary people. The search for a new role is a search for an identity which can be understood and appreciated by an average person. For this reason, it is not a surprise to hear discussions about new prospects for monkhood and new Buddhist enterprises in welfare and education.18
Buddhist advances in welfare and education have been rapid and have paid off well in forging an identity which has gradually become recognisable. Buddhist success in this area is all the more remarkable when it is contrasted with the fact that hardly any of these social activities had any place in the traditional sangha. In the old days, any schooling given by a monastery was for the purpose of training monks and nuns. Nowadays, the Hong Kong Buddhist Association alone runs fifty educational institutions, ranging from primary to tertiary levels. While there was some caring for orphans in the old days, the running of hospitals, care and attention homes and homes for the aged on a large scale are a modern phenomenon. Buddhist involvement with youth work, another new venture, is in its initial stage of development.
One of the more curious developments of this out-going trend of the sangha is the creation of the Buddhist marriage ceremony. Buddhist monks have always been present at rituals for the dead. The Buddhist doctrines of the insubstantiality of the world and the suffering inherent in it are appropriately associated with death in the mind of the average individual. But for one who holds a doctrine which has nothing positive to say about marriage and family life to be present at a marriage ceremony would be rather odd. Still more so, for a monk to preside at the marriage ritual is almost beyond comprehension. Yet this kind of ritual is how proposed and practised by monks in Hong Kong. Somehow, Hong Kong monks want others to know that Buddhism is relevant for ordinary life. They want to wash away the reputation of being uninterested in ways of the world. This reputation is synonymous with being outcastes from society; strange, unwanted rejects. No, Buddhism has something