Thus on August 22, barely two weeks after the referendum, Prayuth Chan-ocha issued an order under section 44 of the interim charter—which gives him absolute power for the good of national security—trying to correct the effects of section 67 of the draft charter. Their argument is based on several grounds.
The first is cultural. Buddhist nationalists justify their call by the fact that Buddhism has for many centuries played a dominant role in shaping Thai culture and the Thai ethos or Thainess. For them, Buddhism is being weakened by the aggressiveness of Thai Muslims—illustrated by the killing of monks and lay Buddhists in the south—as well as by the rise of criticisms against Buddhism as shown in the Somdet Chuang case, and finally by the lack of discipline and misbehavior of some monks.
What is your view on the evolution of Thai Buddhism at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century?
Louis Gabaude: I think we have not analyzed enough the role of King Chulalongkorn in the destruction of local cultures. I am not sure if it was intended, but when he standardized the Thai writing system across the country—what we call today the modern Thai writing—the effect was to put out of fashion all the regional scripts. The Thai script was not used in the Buddhist texts of central Thailand, where khorm, a form of Khmer script, was used for these texts.
Not only the local religious culture of central Thailand, but also the cultures of the northeast and the north were progressively erased. Little by little, people became unable to read in the regional alphabets, and, thus, unable to benefit from what was transmitted by these local texts.
The cultural and religious past of large parts of Thailand became inaccessible, except for a few individuals. And since that time, has there been really no change to the administrative organization of the monastic community? When the monks were organized at a national level, the honorific titles took precedence over everything else.
Monks study Pali language, not with the intention of having a deeper understanding of the texts, but to obtain their Pali graduations: Pali 4, Pali 5, until Pali 9. Because they know that with these titles, they can climb up the Bangkok hierarchy, as all the local titles—like khruba and so on—have been destroyed. This transferred the prestige of religious authority to a realm that was not spiritual. That is why, in parallel to the Bangkok hierarchy, there is a spiritual hierarchy that has emerged, based on miraculous powers or on the concentration or meditation powers attributed to some monks.
This second hierarchy is built on the reputation of these monks, a little bit like the reputation of the Saints was built up in Christianity. Would the campaign to make Buddhism the national religion somehow be a logical consequence of the fact that Buddhism has been used by the central state as a tool of legitimation? When the new leaders of Siam wrote the constitution in , they played on the ambiguity of the word satsana.
It would be a time bomb. For them, the linkage made since the nineteenth century between Buddhism and the nation is at the root of many of the problems in the religion: Buddhism was made a tool of the Thai state, which created a gap between the sangha and the people.
This would even be an admission of failure as it would be an acknowledgement that Buddhism has weakened so much that it is not able to positively influence Thai society. Thus, they think that the priority should be to better explain and promote the essence of Buddhist values, and more widely, of religious values in Thai society, rather than to adopt legal protection of Buddhism. The most recent constitution, drafted in , was enacted in April Check if your institution has already acquired this book: authentification to OpenEdition Freemium for Books.
You can suggest to your institution to acquire one or more ebooks published on OpenEdition Books. The eightfold path consists of right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right mode of livelihood, right effort working towards universal love , right awareness introspection , and right concentration. Three concepts are important to understand in orthodox Buddhism: karma, anicca, and nirvana.
Karma is the totality of actions in life. Good and bad deeds result in good and bad karma. This karma has to be lived out in the next life. Orthodox Buddhism emphasizes that it is the karma that is lived out in the next life. The soul is not reincarnated, because Buddhism does not believe in the existence of a permanent soul. This leads to the second concept: anicca, which means impermanence. According to Buddhism, there are only fleeting phenomena, but no objective reality.
Misery only doth exist; none miserable. No doer is there; naught but the deed is found. Nirvana is, but not the man that seeks it. The path exists, but not the traveler on it. The third important concept is nirvana. The eightfold path is said to lead to the cessation of suffering, the end of the cycle of incarnations, which leads is to nirvana.
Gautama took pains to explain nirvana as a state that is neither existence nor non-existence. While the teaching about nirvana forms the heart of the teaching of the Buddha, it does not play a major role in Thai Buddhism. It is widely believed that nirvana is unobtainable in this era for even the most revered of monks. With nirvana out of the picture as a practical concern, Thai Buddhists have placed other concerns in the heart of their religion.
Kammic Buddhism Because reaching nirvana is seen as impossible, a more attainable goal is to build up good karma to ensure rebirth in a better life. Building up good karma is mainly done through merit-making. The most certain way to do that is through taking care of the monks, both through giving food and through taking part in the main temple ceremonies. These and other rituals to make merit are the most important aspects of kammic Buddhism for almost all Thai.
From the beginning, Buddhism has been a religion centered on the Sangha, the order of monks. Until today the over , monks in over 31, temples are the centre of Buddhist life in Thailand. Every village has a temple. Every morning the monks walk around, and many women line up to offer food to them. Four times in every lunar month there is a holy day wan phra during which more people, again especially women, go to the temple to offer flowers, incense, and gifts to the monks.
There is a service with Pali chanting, and a Thai sermon. Some very religious people will promise to keep the eight precepts during that day. Except the five general ones that every Buddhist should keep refraining from taking life, stealing, unchastity, lying, and drinking alcohol these include as extra ones refraining from eating after noon, from entertainment, and from sitting or lying on a mattress. There is a perceptible difference between rural and urban religious life.
In the villages the temple still is the core of the community, and most people in one way or another take part in the various festivals and ceremonies in the temple. In the cities many people do not go to the temple anymore, and even if they do the temple is not nearly as important a social function as it is in the rural areas. During the year there are five major Buddhist festivals. The first one is Visakha Puja, which is in remembrance of the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha, all said to have taken place at full moon in the same month of the year.
Sermons on this day will focus on the life of the Buddha. The second major festival is Magha Puja, in remembrance of the day when disciples of Buddha, all enlightened, are said to have congregated, without prior invitation or knowledge, 3 months before the Buddha died. The third festival is Khaw Pansa, or the beginning of the Buddhist lent. This is the start of a three-month period in the rainy season during which the monks are not allowed to sleep outside the temple.
In many villages they do not even go out to beg for food. Instead, the local population takes the food to the temple.
It is a period of more intense religious study for the monks, and of more religious activities, including giving presents to the monks, for the lay people. This period ends with the fourth festival, Ohk Pansa, or the end of the Buddhist lent. The last major festival is Phra Kathin, during which robes are given to the monks.
These are all temple-centered ceremonies. Many temples have annual fairs. For example, in the Northeast of Thailand every village temple has an annual festival where a mohlam singer of traditional songs with his troupe will perform till daybreak. The widespread drunkenness and fighting during these occasions seem to have little to do with Buddhism, but because the proceeds go to the temple, the whole festival is still considered as merit making.
Outside the temple there is an important role for the monks in several house ceremonies. Gautama did not prescribe any ceremony for the rites of passage.
Inevitably this was seen as a need, and in Thailand the Buddhist monks filled that void, even though there is no sanction for this in the Buddhist scriptures. The main occasions where monks are invited for a house ceremony are for weddings though they have no part in the actual wedding ceremony , dedication of a new house, and funerals. The funeral rites are the most elaborate and often last up to seven days. In , there 24, monasteries, , monks and nuns, , novices.
Numbers fluctuate because many become monks and nuns only in the rainy season July-October. The details of the history of Buddhism in Thailand from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century are obscure, in part because few historical records or religious texts survived the Burmese destruction of Ayutthaya, the capital city of the kingdom, in The anthropologist-historian S.
Tambiah, however, has suggested a general pattern for that era, at least with respect to the relations between Buddhism and the sangha on the one hand and the king on the other hand. In Thailand, as in other Theravada Buddhist kingdoms, the king was in principle thought of as patron and protector of the religion sasana and the sangha, while sasana and the sangha were considered in turn the treasures of the polity and the signs of its legitimacy.
Religion and polity, however, remained separate domains, and in ordinary times the organizational links between the sangha and the king were not close. Among the chief characteristics of Thai kingdoms and principalities in the centuries before were the tendency to expand and contract, problems of succession, and the changing scope of the king's authority.
In effect, some Thai kings had greater power over larger territories, others less, and almost invariably a king who sought successfully to expand his power also exercised greater control over the sangha. That control was coupled with greater support and patronage of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. When a king was weak, however, protection and supervision of the sangha also weakened, and the sangha declined.
This fluctuating pattern appears to have continued until the emergence of the Chakkri Dynasty in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, and especially with the coming to power in of King Mongkut, who had been a monk himself for twenty-seven years, the sangha, like the kingdom, became steadily more centralized and hierarchical in nature and its links to the state more institutionalized.
As a monk, Mongkut was a distinguished scholar of Pali Buddhist scripture. Moreover, at that time the immigration of numbers of Mon from Burma was introducing the more rigorous discipline characteristic of the Mon sangha. Influenced by the Mon and guided by his own understanding of the Tipitaka, Mongkut began a reform movement that later became the basis for the Dhammayuttika order of monks. Under the reform, all practices having no authority other than custom were to be abandoned, canonical regulations were to be followed not mechanically but in spirit, and acts intended to improve an individual's standing on the road to nirvana but having no social value were rejected.
This more rigorous discipline was adopted in its entirety by only a small minority of monasteries and monks. In any case, Mongkut was in a position to regularize and tighten the relations between monarchy and sangha at a time when the monarchy was expanding its control over the country in general and developing the kind of bureaucracy necessary to such control. The administrative and sangha reforms that Mongkut started were continued by his successor. In King Chulalongkorn Rama V, made the new sangha hierarchy formal and permanent through the Sangha Law of , which remained the foundation of sangha administration in modern Thailand.
Buddhism makes its way into everyday life in Thailand in various ways. One Thai man told National Geographic that while stranded in traffic jams, 'we meditate. It is the Buddhist way. On newsstands you can see piles of books with Buddha on the cover and more than a dozen Buddhist weekly and monthly magazines, Hotel rooms often have a copy of The Teachings of Buddha rather than Gideon's Bible.
Once, as a tribute to the king, 99 policeman were ordained as Buddhist monks. Most Thais uphold Buddhist principles as a guide to daily life. Senior monks are highly revered. It is not uncommon to see their images adorning walls of businesses or homes or upon ornaments inside of taxi cabs. Buddhist holidays occur regularly throughout the year particularly on days with full moons and many Thai people go to the wat on these and other important days to pay homage to the Buddha and give alms to monks in order to make merit for themselves.
Meditation, one of the primary practices of Buddhism, is a means of self reflection in order to identify the causes of individual desire and ultimately alleviate ones suffering. Visitors can learn the fundamentals of this practice at a number of wats across the kingdom. Some temples, particularly in Chiang Mai, allow visitors to chat with monks in order to gain general knowledge about Buddhism or to study Buddhism more seriously.
Thai dishes have traditionally been served in bite-size pieces in accordance with a Buddhist custom that no whole animal be cooked and served. Thais eat meat—mostly pork, chicken, fish and seafood—in many of their dishes even though Buddhism discourages the taking of life. The organizational links between the sangha monk establishment and the government are an indication of their interdependence, although the fine points of that relationship may have changed over time.
The traditional interdependence was between religion and the monarchy. The king was, in theory, a righteous ruler, a bodhisattva an enlightened being who, out of compassion, foregoes nirvana in order to aid others , and the protector of the religion. Because succession to the throne was problematic and the position of any king in many respects unstable, each ruler sought legitimation from the sangha. In return, he offered the religion his support.
After the king became a constitutional monarch in , actual power lay in the hands of the elites, primarily the military but also the higher levels of the bureaucracy. Regardless of the political complexion of the specific persons in power who, more often than not, had rightist views , the significance of Buddhism to the nation was never attacked.
In the late s, the king remained an important symbol, and public ideology insisted that religion, king, and nation were inextricably intertwined. Opposition groups have rarely attacked this set of related symbols. Some observers have argued that the acceptance of religion, king, and nation as ultimate symbols of Thai political values was misleading in that the great bulk of the population--the Thai villagers--although attached to Buddhism and respectful of the king, often resented the particular manifestations of government in local communities and situations.
It seemed, however, that whatever discontent there was with the political, social, and economic orders, most Thai remained at least passively committed to a national identity symbolized by the king and Buddhism.
Puey Ungphakorn, a former rector of Thammasat University and human rights advocate, viewed the ethical precepts of Buddhism as insurance against oppressive national development. Although the fundamental role of development was to improve the welfare of the villagers, in a number of nations without the protection of religion the rights of the villager were often abused.
In Thailand, according to Puey, the peasant, like the urban dweller, has an individual identity protected by the shared belief in Buddhism. The support given the king and whatever political regime was in power by the sangha was coupled with a prohibition on the direct intervention of monks in politics, particularly in party, political, and ideological conflicts.
It was taken for granted that members of the sangha would oppose a communist regime, and available evidence suggested that virtually all Thai monks found Marxist thought alien, although monks elsewhere in Southeast Asia have been influenced by socialist, if not explicitly communist, ideas. Historically, monks occasionally have been involved in politics, but this involvement was not the norm.
In the second half of the twentieth century, however, monks became aware of the political and ideological ferment in Southeast Asia and in a few cases engaged in political propaganda, if not in direct action.
A few were accused of doing so from a position on the left, but the most explicit instance of political propaganda in the s was that of a highly influential monk, Kittivuddha Bikkhu, who preached that it was meritorious to kill communists. Although not supported by the religious and political establishments, he provided right-wing militants with a Buddhist ideological justification for their extremist activities.
The temples were once the heart of village life, serving as meeting places, guesthouses and community centers. But many have become little more than ornaments of the past, marginalized by a shortage of monks and an increasingly secular society. Now, they go to shopping malls.
In a relatively short time, the local Buddhist monk has gone from being a moral authority, teacher and community leader fulfilling important spiritual and secular roles to someone whose job is often limited to presiding over periodic ceremonies. For the sake of presentation, we have to change the way we teach Buddhism and make it easy and digestible like instant noodles. The teaching of Buddhism, or dharma, does not need to be tethered to the temple, he said.
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