Buddhism faces modernity in Thailand

·期刊原文
Merit and magic: Buddhism faces modernity in Thailand

by Ben Barber
World and I

Vol.13 No.4

Apring 1998

Pp.216-223

Copyright by News World Communications

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As I sip a cold drink at an outdoor table, an unusual arrangement on
a chair in front of the neighboring bar catches my attention. Amid
Bangkok's racket of amplified bar music and the clatter of passing
motorcycles and three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxis, someone has set a
makeshift altar filled with offerings on a folding chair on the
sidewalk.
On a battered aluminum tray is a glass of wine next to an empty cup
holding twin incense sticks, sending up spirals of pungent smoke. A
candle burns as well, and a small garland of jasmine blossoms lies
in its growing spillage of wax. Completing the offering is an open
Styrofoam take-out container of noodles and squid, such as any
ordinary Thai might eat for lunch or dinner.
I have returned to Thailand after a few years' absence to report on
the changes in its culture, economy, politics, and religion after
achieving the world's highest growth rates during the late 1980s and
early '90s. I had heard that the unique brand of Thai Buddhism was
in the midst of a huge change. Young men no longer were eager to
spend three months as a monk. Thai people no longer had the time or
the money to prepare rice and other foods for the monks who passed
each day in search of offerings. Sex and money scandals had
bedeviled the Sangha, or monastic brotherhood. And a new pressure
was driving the Thai away from their rice fields and buffalo, from
their lives of sanuk, or pleasure--the pressing need to earn money.
But John, a business writer and close friend who has lived over
twenty years in Thailand, tells me I am dead wrong if I think that
the rapid introduction of modern, Western lifestyles is weakening
the Thai people's belief in Buddhism. "People want to do the
Buddhist rituals, but they say they don't have the time anymore,"
says John. "It doesn't mean they don't believe."
As I travel to the south and north, I discover that he is right.
Everywhere are signs that Thai Buddhism remains incredibly alive,
even if it has increasingly reverted to its magical, pre-Buddhist
roots. On the bus from Nakhon Pathom to Bangkok, the driver has hung
thick coils of flowers, amulets, and other magical items from his
mirror. A statue of Buddha sits on the dashboard. Ancient symbols
are scrawled on the roof above the driver's head.
At a major traffic crossing is a small spirit house, resembling
those that most Thai place at the corner of their property. In a
naked, public place adjacent to six lanes of busy highway--where in
America one would see a traffic sign or electric utility box--stands
this object of no apparent utility. Yet it holds fresh flowers and
two plastic bottles of drinking water. Someone tends that shrine.
Someone has paid ten baht for fresh flowers and clean water.
Floating away
In Thailand, Buddhism has been virtually a state religion for
centuries, with the king playing a ritual role. Public schools are
still located in temple compounds. There is a Muslim minority in the
south and animist hill tribes in the north, both accorded full
freedom, but 95 percent of Thai are Buddhist. Their faith is built
on veneration of the monks and a foundation of pre-Buddhist magic,
especially the belief in phi (spirits of the dead or of sacred trees
and animals).
An educated Thai woman I met in Khorat several years ago told me
that after she married a U.S. Air Force officer and moved to
America, she stopped believing in the phi. But when he retired and
they returned to Thailand, the phi came back to her. So she resumed
the tasks Thai perform to propitiate these spirits: maintaining a
spirit house with flowers and food; sprinkling holy water obtained
from the monks in and around the house; tying sacred thread around
objects in the home; or bringing the maw phi, or witch doctor, to do
a magic ceremony that traps the phi in ajar, which is covered and
then floated away down the river.
"For the tuk-tuk driver, Buddhism is magic, and he relates to it
just as his parents did," says Suwanna Satha-Anand, assistant
professor of philosophy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
"Only he has less time. So instead of daily or weekly performances
of rituals, they are just semiannual or annual. But living in
Bangkok is dangerous, and we need all kinds of help and protection."

A Westerner who was ordained as a Thai Buddhist monk believes that
education and television are undermining the more traditional
ethical and moral teachings of Buddhism, even if the magical aspects
remain strong. "The old generation saw material progress as a chance
to make more merit," he says. Merit is built up by feeding monks,
building and maintaining temples, releasing birds and fish, helping
the needy, and similar acts.
"But younger kids don't have the old mind-set anymore," says the
Western monk. `That's where you'll see the divide. My first year
that I was a monk, some kids came to the monastery to watch. They
were willing to pitch in and help with monastic work and thought of
getting merit. In later years, the kids who came were more
interested that they could stop by the resorts at Pattaya on the way
back to have a good time. The idea of investing in future happiness
by making merit was not an exchange they were interested in. They
wanted to invest in gratification."
He notes that unlike their counterparts in the United States, where
religious beliefs are cultivated in Sunday schools and Hebrew
schools, "kids don't learn much about Buddhism in Thailand. When a
young man is ordained as a monk, he is told about Buddhist doctrine.
During a period when I had to teach new monks, I was amazed that
they had no understanding. But they loved exorcists, and the belief
in superstition and magic was still there."
"Buddhism is weakening. The older people say there is no time. The
younger say they are just not interested anymore. Partly it's the
appeal of the fast life. Television reinforces little kids' greed
and impatience. Those traditionally were things you tried to stamp
out in a kid. But advertising teaches you to want this thing and get
it now."
More people, less time
If the past fifteen years of explosive economic growth--somewhat
punctuated by an economic crisis since July 1997--have undercut
Buddhist beliefs and practices, nearly two thousand years of
Buddhism have left a deep and permanent mark on this country of
sixty million. There are over 275,000 monks and thirty thousand
temples. Sacred pointed pagodas dot the countryside. Glittering
temples adorn Bangkok and every city and town.
I head downtown near the king's Chitralada Palace to the important
temple called Wat Benchamabophit. I am to meet one of the nation's
senior monks and ask him about what modern life is doing to
Buddhism. I wander with my Thai interpreter around the green lawns
and peaceful walkways as the afternoon heat gives way to a cool
dusk. The monks lean down from their two-story dormitory balconies
and point us in the right direction. Young men with shaven heads and
saffron robes, they look at the visitors with bright, intelligent
eyes. Through open doors and windows I see rooms not unlike those at
a college, strewn with books and their few simple possessions. Only
their clothing is all of the same, orange hue.
Prathep Gee-tee Moonee, 78, welcomes us into his apartment, a long
room with an easy chair, television, hanging naked light bulb,
stacks of books and pamphlets, and, at the end, a wall of huge,
golden Buddha statues. He begins by telling us that more and more
people are interested in Buddhism and now have the means and
education to study.
I ask him why he, a Buddhist monk, has a spirit house adorned with
fresh fruit and flowers outside his door. "To pay respect," he says,
citing one of the key cultural values in Thailand. "Before the
Buddhists, the people believed in ghosts and spirits. I believe
there are spirits."
I ask about a recent attempt to pass a law officially declaring
Buddhism the state religion--a law that was defeated by an assembly
drawing up a new constitution last July. He replies, "It is all
right if it did not pass because most of the Thai people are
Buddhists. Just naturally, we have a majority."
But the aged monk admits that modern life has taken its toll on
religious values. "In the old days there was a lot of sharing," he
says as the sound of frogs croaking in a ditch comes in through the
screen door. "Now people don't know each other even if their houses
are next door.
"There were fewer people in the old days, so each could have a lot
of land. But then the parents divided and divided the land among the
children. Since each has less, they are greedier now. A lot more
people don't own any land. People live along the canals, in slums.
There are too many people to be generous."
Asked what Buddhism can do to help, he says, "It is up to the
individual. We can give [teach] morality but if they don't accept,
it cannot help. Some people, even if they have a lot of money, want
more money.
"I like America. If you make a lot of money, the government takes
tax and gives to charity. But investors in Thailand just own things
and keep profits."
Our conversation occurs just weeks after the Thai baht began its
spectacular fall from twenty-five to the U.S. dollar--which had been
the rate since about 1982--to fifty per dollar by New Year's Day.
Corruption and weak financial management were blamed for the loss of
confidence and the subsequent need for a $17 billion bailout led by
the International Monetary Fund. The Nation newspaper would report
that the financial crisis, which led to closure of factories,
thousands of lost jobs, and closure of over fifty finance companies,
would also affect the monks. People would offer less food each day
and pay less to have monks attend first birthday celebrations and
other home rituals.
As we leave the temple, I recall the last thing the monk said to me.
I had apologized for all my questions, many of which were direct and
personal. He answered, standing atop the stairs beside the spirit
house, that "asking questions is the way to wisdom."
Written on the sidewalk
Outside the wat, several young men kick a soccer ball on the
deserted street. Aunulak Cotsharin, 20, says he is spending three
months as a monk "for his mother." He says he wants to continue his
education afterward. "People with more education believe less
strongly in religion. Probably they are all spoiled."
The majority of Thai monks appear as sincere as the elderly man
waving us good-bye, or the young man honoring his mother with a
three-month stint as a monk. But heavy scandals have hit the Sangha
in recent years.
Yodchart Suaphoo, a 21-year-old Buddhist monk, was found guilty of
murdering 23-year-old British tourist Johanne Masheder at the Tham
Kaopoon temple outside Bangkok. He pushed her into a ravine, smashed
her skull and stole about twenty dollars to buy drugs. Before
becoming a monk, he had been a criminal and spent two years in jail
for rape.
In 1994 Thailand's most popular monk made headlines when he was
accused of breaking his vow of celibacy with several women. Phra
Yantra Amaro Bhikku, a superstar among Thailand's populist
evangelical monks, commanded a following of millions, mostly women.
A nun accused him of having sex with her on the deck of a ship off
Scandinavia. Another woman, a Danish harpist, said that she and the
monk had made love in the back of her van on a trip to Europe, while
a third, a German psychology graduate, claimed that he had fathered
her daughter, now 7.
The Thai religious affairs department has been investigating
allegations that in one temple monks were involved in drug taking
and that women were procured for sex. A monk in northeast Thailand
put stillborn babies and aborted fetuses in an oven for love
potions. There was a series of rapes of young girls by monks. Then,
two monks killed another monk in a feud over money. These scandals
have caused some Thai to lose a portion of their unqualified
veneration for monks. But many Thai simply accept the scandals as
the work of a few bad apples. Their abhorrant behavior does not
vitiate the intrinsic value of Buddhism.
Indeed, Thailand is widely known for its liberal attitudes toward
the pleasures of life, especially sex. Yet even in the bars and the
seediest corners of Thailand one finds bar girls, en route to an
assignation, putting their fingertips together under their chin and
bowing as their tuk-tuk passes Bangkok's Erawan shrine, one of the
seven hundred temples in the city. Every restaurant and shop has its
shrine, with statues of Buddha but also a ceramic woman beckoning to
attract money. Above every doorway are the ancient religious
symbols. Certain large trees are decked with floral arrays, amulets,
shrines, and other signs of veneration. Along a road one finds a
group of old spirit houses, clustered as if at a cemetery for
ghosts.
I learn from Professor Suwanna of Chulalongkorn University that
there are new trends emerging in Buddhism--some consumerist, some
ascetic. They are challenging the traditional Sangha, which may
respond by trying to suppress them or perhaps moving to adopt some
modern reforms.
But the real story is written on the sidewalk next to the Erawan
shrine in central Bangkok. Each hour, hundreds of people stop by to
light a candle or incense sticks and pass a moment in humble prayer
or meditation. They are not just the poor and the uneducated. They
include students and office workers. And for each who comes in, a
dozen more pause outside--at the wheel of a taxi or a Mercedes, or
carrying a leather briefcase or a load of fake Levi's shirts.
Pressing their hands together in a wai of respect and bowing their
heads for a moment, they demonstrate that Buddhism is still alive in
modern Thailand.
Ben Barber is State Department correspondent at the foreign desk of
the Washington Times. This article was researched on assignment.