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Buddhism in Thailand
The three greatest religions in the world is Buddhism,
Christianity and Mohammedanism. Buddhism, however, is the oldest of the three.
It was founded 2,500 years ago by Lord Buddha. Buddha was a son of an Indian
king. Buddha was the name he called himself after his Enlightenment, meaning “
The Enlightened”. His real name was Price Siddhattha. His father was King
Suddhodana of Kapilavasdu, and his mother Queen Siri Mahamaaya, formerly a
daughter of the King of Devadaha.
Buddhism of the
Theravada confession is the principal religion of the
country. 94% of the country’s
population adheres to it. Schools teach Buddhist tenets and morals as part of
the curriculum except in Muslim areas in the South.
All Buddhist
religious ceremonies centre at the Wat, a combination of monastery and temple.
There are about 32,000 Wats in the country.
It is socially
expected that every Thai male will become a monk at least once in his life for a
period of about 3 months in order to study Buddhism and live the Buddhist way in
the monastery. The present King Bhumiphol Adulyadej became a monk in 1956 and
took residence at Wat Bovornivet. Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, the only son of
the King was ordained a monk in 1978.
Buddhism is
probably the most tolerant religion of the world, and it can coexist with any
other religion (though most other religions aim to be exclusive and cannot
accommodate Buddhism at the same time). Accordingly, Thailand has a long history
of religious tolerance. Though traditionally he has to be a Buddhist, the King
besides being the head of state is the upholder of all religions professed by
his people.
As obtaining
anything through power or force is completely against the logic's of Buddha’s
teachings, Buddhism is not only considerably more tolerant than most religions
but also less institutionalized. There is nothing like a Buddhist Vatican.
Therefore, much of the more earthly matters, from land ownership to the
preservation of Buddhist architectural monuments, are handled by the Thai
government through the Department of Religious Affairs in the Ministry of
Education.
It’s also rather
the Thai government that defines religious offences and prosecutes offenders, as
Buddhism itself is too gentle to concern itself with such matters. The
voluminous "Traveller’s Guide to Thailand", published by the Tourism Authority
of Thailand, explains:
"Thai law has a
number of special sections concerning religious offences, and these cover not
only Buddhism, the religion of the majority of the people, but also any other
faiths represented in the Kingdom. It is, for instance unlawful to commit any
act, by any means whatever, to an object of a place of religious worship of any
community in a manner likely to insult the religion. Similarly, ‘whoever causes
any disturbance at an assembly lawfully engaged in the performance of religious
worship or religious ceremonies’ is subject to punishment, as well as ‘whoever
dresses or uses a symbol showing that he is a priest or novice, holyman or
clergyman of any religion unlawfully in order to make another person believe he
is such person.’ In less legal language, here are a few tips on what to do and
what not to do on a visit to a religious place:
Dress neatly. Don’t
go shirtless, or in shorts, hot pants, or other unsuitable attire. If you look
at the Thais around you, you’ll see the way they would prefer you to be dressed
- which, in fact, is probably not very different from the way you’d dress in a
similar place back home.
It’s all right to
wear shoes while walking around the compound of a Buddhist temple, but not
inside the chapel where the principal Buddha image is kept. Don’t worry about
dirt when you have to take them off; the floors of such places are usually very
clean.
Buddhist priests
are forbidden to touch or to be touched by a woman or to accept anything from
the hand of one. If a woman has to give anything to a monk or novice, she first
hands it to a man, who then presents it. Or in case of a woman who wants to
present it with her hand, the monk or novice will spread out a piece of saffron
robe or handkerchief in front of him, and the woman will lay down the material
on the robe which is being held at one end by the monk or novice.
All Buddha images,
large or small, ruined or not, are regarded as sacred objects. Hence, don’t
climb up on one to take a photograph or, generally speaking, do anything that
might show a lack of respect."
It’s beyond the
scope of this handbook to evaluate Buddhism as a religion or a philosophy. As it
deserves it, numerous thick tomes have been written on the topic. Short reviews
of the religion and its history naturally tend to be simplistic, and when they
appear in guide books written by Westerners, they are often lacking in respect
as well. However, as most visitors to Thailand will not find the time to read
thick volumes on the country’s religion there certainly is a need for some
abbreviated information on Buddhism. Therefore we quote here verbatim an
explanation on Buddhism given in the above cited "Traveller’s Guide to
Thailand", published by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
While some of the
sentences may not sound particularly elegant, they nevertheless transport more
than just the factual information on the Kingdom’s religion. As the quoted part
was obviously written by a devout Buddhist, it also gives a glimpse on how Thais
believe and shows the respect they have for anything related to their religion.
The quoted text is not neutral in its language. The language used makes clear
that the author is convinced that Theravada Buddhism is the one correct
religion, and many statements that would be regarded as a matter of religious
opinion in Western culture are made in a matter of fact voice. The Western
reader may qualify them according to his or her religious inclinations.
The quoted text not
only presumes that the Buddhist teachings are correct beyond doubt but also
that, furthermore, Theravada (Hinayana) Buddhism is the orthodox and correct
denomination, as distinguished from Mahayana Buddhism. This additionally gives
the quoted text a degree of authenticity that could not be achieved by any
summary written by a Western, non-Buddhist author (highlighting added by the
author of this handbook, otherwise no changes made):
"Buddhism is a
natural religion, for it does not violate either mind or body. Its ethics
closely approximates the Natural Law. Buddhism is also classified as an
atheistic religion, for it does not consist in God and Soul theories which can
neither be proved by self-experiment nor by intuition. It concerns only
self-evident facts of suffering and can be experienced by every man in himself
and the surrounding world.
Buddhism is a
teaching of the Buddha who was born a prince of Kapilavathu, at the part of the
Himalaya Mountains near the border of Nepal in 623 B.C. He married and had a
son. Although surrounded by all the Court’s glamour and luxuries, the sight of a
decrepit old man, sick man, dead man and mendicant monk, these "four signs" left
such a deep impression upon His mind that, at the age of 29, He decided to leave
His palace and enter "the homeless life" of a monk to seek the truth and find a
way to salvation for all sentient beings. In His search for salvation among the
teachers, He surpassed them and found that their doctrines were insufficient,
not leading to Awakening, to Extinction and to Enlightenment and Insight. He
departed those teachers and turned to practice self-mortification for six years
with great zeal and effort. He met five ascetics or Panca Vaggiya who offered
their services to Him. Finally, the Buddha realised that the ascetic exercises
were not the right way to attain salvation. He had practised self-mortification
to the limit of His endurance and felt very weakened without achieving anything.
So, He partook of food, regained strength and began to practice meditation which
finally led to His enlightenment under the Holy Bodhi tree near the town of
Uruvela, the present Buddha-Gaya when he was only 35 years old.
Through His deep
contemplation upon His ownself, the Buddha became cognigant of how men are born
and die according to their good and evil will actions, according to their
self-created Karma (or the consequence of meritorious and demeritorious deeds.)
By the same intuition, He became cognigant of the "Five Aggregates of Existence"
or the Panca Khandha that are Rupa (Body), Vedana (Feeling), Sanna (Cognition),
Sankhara (Impression) and Vinnana (Consciousness), that man is only an
embodiment of these five aggregates, or in other words man is made up of
Khandha, none of which belongs to anyone, and the clinging to each or to the
whole, will only result in the conception of the new life and the round of
existence (Samsara.) This creates the "Delusion of Self", and He discovered the
"Four Noble Truths" which lead to the cessation of all sufferings and of
rebirth.
Finally, the Lord
Buddha out of compassion to all beings was determined to reveal His Teachings.
He proclaimed for the first time the Dhamma in a discourse to the five ascetics.
This discourse is universally known as the "Four Noble Truths" and contains the
essence of the Buddha’s Doctrines. The Lord Buddha taught His Doctrines for
nearly 45 years, walking up and down from town to town and from village to
village, in Northern India. At the age of 80, He fell ill and died in Kusinara
in the country of the Malas on the Visaka, on the full moon day of the sixth
lunar month in the year 543 B.C.
There are lots of
historical proof of the Buddha’s real existence, such as the Asoka-Pillar
erected in Lumbini park at Kapilavatthu (near Nepal) in remembrance of the Birth
of the Lord, by King Asoka (262 - 222 B.C.) and discovered in 1890, contemporary
Indian literature, the Pali-Canon Tripitaka, that is the collection of
Discipline (Vinaya), of Discourses (Suttanta) and of Philosophical (Abhidhamma),
the Sanskrit Canon, the records of two Chinese travellers to India, Fahian (394
- 441 A.D.) and Yuan Thsang (630 - 644 A.D.) and lastly the Buddha’s Doctrine
itself, which is based on true facts of actuality, the truth of which can be
experienced by Insight by anyone himself with sufficient intelligence and
patience.
Himself did not
write down the Teaching of the Buddha. Immediately after his death, the first
Council of his disciples took place in 477 B.C. and all his Discourses were
fixed and the ground plan was laid for the Pall-Canon. There was a second
Council and third Council (377 and 343 B.C.) and the discourses were sorted into
different collections called Pitakas, namely the Sutta Pitaka which contains the
discourses of the Buddha, the Vinaya Pitaka which contains the rules and
regulations of the Holy Brotherhood, and many centuries later the Abhidhamma
Pitaka was added which contains expositions of a scholastic nature of the two
first Pitakas.
From the "Asoka
Pillars" we learn that King Asoka of India sent forth his missionaries to all
provinces of the Empire and then to the neighbouring Kingdom of Ceylon, Kashmir
and Tibet in the North, to Persia, Antioch and Egypt and Greece in the West.
King Asoka called a council, which was the Third Council, and the Pali-Canon was
revised and confined. After his death, Buddhism split into two different
schools, namely Hinayana or the Lesser Vehicles and the Mahayana or the Greater
Vehicles. Hinayana is the orthodox, based upon the Pali scripture. This school
tries to preserve the original doctrines, and nowadays is practised in Ceylon,
Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. While, Mahayana is an enlargement and
further development of the original doctrine and based on the Sanskrit scripture
translated from the Pali Text and modifies some doctrinal principles in order to
adapt its teaching to local environment and to interpret Buddhism by laying a
stress on some philosophical points of view. This is believed in Tibet, Korea,
Japan, Sikhim, Bhutan, Mongolia, and Vietnam.
Buddhism was first
introduced into Thailand as Hinayana Buddhism in about 329 B.C., later in about
700 A.D., Mahayana Buddhism came. However, in 1000 A.D. Hinnayana was again
re-introduced from Burma. In 1253 A.D., Thai Buddhist Monks went to Ceylon and
brought back with them the Pali scripts. They also invited the Ceylonese Monks
to Thailand. Ever since then all Kings of Thailand embraced Hinayana Buddhism
which then became the National Religion.
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