Like most Thais, I was born Buddhist. My parents took me to the temple on Buddhist religious holidays to give alms to monks and free birds in cages for a price (the sellers always round up these birds afterwards anyway to ‘sell’ this fake act of ‘performing merit’ to other temple goers). We invite monks to bless us on special occasions (e.g. moving into a new house) and dutifully perform all the Buddhist rituals. And my Mom gave me a tiny Buddha figure to wear around my neck before I went off to high school in the U.S. I never take it off since.
But as I grew older and began to ask why I should believe in this religion, I became less and less impressed. I hear constant news of greedy or lusty monks who scam or rape unsuspecting Buddhists. Millions of Thais go to temples each year not to hear sermons, but to ask famous monks to divine winning numbers in the next lottery, or to consecrate Buddha figures or other superstitious claptrap that they believe will make the wearers invincible.
Worst of all, much of the poor and underprivileged believe it is their karma to suffer because they must have done some bad deeds in past lives. This belief made them submissive and unwilling to loudly protest or make demands to the government, even when their basic human and property rights are being exploited or trampled upon. Most people in Thailand are ‘politically silent’ because of this kind of belief, combined with the prevailing political ideology that teaches people to ‘follow the leader’ rather than ‘supervise the leader’ as a democracy ought to do (some day I plan to write more on the mainstream concept of “Thainess” and how it affects the practice of Buddhism here).
Like most Thais, I was born Buddhist. My parents took me to the temple on Buddhist religious holidays to give alms to monks and free birds in cages for a price (the sellers always round up these birds afterwards anyway to ‘sell’ this fake act of ‘performing merit’ to other temple goers). We invite monks to bless us on special occasions (e.g. moving into a new house) and dutifully perform all the Buddhist rituals. And my Mom gave me a tiny Buddha figure to wear around my neck before I went off to high school in the U.S. I never take it off since.
But as I grew older and began to ask why I should believe in this religion, I became less and less impressed. I hear constant news of greedy or lusty monks who scam or rape unsuspecting Buddhists. Millions of Thais go to temples each year not to hear sermons, but to ask famous monks to divine winning numbers in the next lottery, or to consecrate Buddha figures or other superstitious claptrap that they believe will make the wearers invincible.
Worst of all, much of the poor and underprivileged believe it is their karma to suffer because they must have done some bad deeds in past lives. This belief made them submissive and unwilling to loudly protest or make demands to the government, even when their basic human and property rights are being exploited or trampled upon. Most people in Thailand are ‘politically silent’ because of this kind of belief, combined with the prevailing political ideology that teaches people to ‘follow the leader’ rather than ‘supervise the leader’ as a democracy ought to do (some day I plan to write more on the mainstream concept of “Thainess” and how it affects the practice of Buddhism here).
Also, I do not believe in the afterlife. More precisely, I just don’t see what the afterlife has to do with Buddhism’s main goal of extinguishing all suffering, i.e. achieving nirvana. If there is a way to reach liberation of spirit, does one have to go through multiple lives to do so? Can’t we accumulate enough ‘good karma’ in our present life to reach enlightenment?
So I’m ‘agnostic’ about the idea of reincarnation, while the vast majority of Buddhists in Thailand strongly believes in it. The older I grew, the more skeptical I got.
All this changed when I came across teachings of the late Buddhadasa Bhikku, who in my humble opinion is more successful than any other monk in showing that nirvana (or nibbana, the Pali term that Thais are more familiar with) is for everyone. Venerable Buddhadasa taught that the belief in the afterlife is not the prerequisite to reaching nibbana, because our mind already experiences rebirth every time we act. In his words (emphases mine):
Rebirth occurs every time one does a deed, and that rebirth occurs spontaneously at the moment of action. We need not wait for rebirth to come after death, as is generally understand in the worldly sense. When one thinks and acts, the mind is spontaneously changed through the power of desire and clinging, which lead immediately to becoming and birth in accordance with the law of Dependent Co-origination (paticca-samuppada). There is no need to wait for physical death in order for rebirth to occur. This truth should be realized as the true teaching of Buddhism, as a core principle of the original, pristine Buddhism that states there is no self (atta) to be reborn. How the concept of rebirth after death crept into Buddhism is difficult to explain, and we need not concern ourselves with it. Simply preventing rebirth within the stream of Dependent Co-origination is enough for us to be free.
You can read the rest of the article here. This excellent English translation of Buddhadasa’s “Nibbana for Everyone” article is also a good companion piece.
Dhamma (“universal truths”) that Buddha discovered and taught about can be divided roughly into two groups: lokiya dhamma (“worldly universal truths”) and lokuttara dhamma (“spiritual universal truths”). The former encompasses worldly virtues that we should uphold to ensure a harmonious society, such as ethics or code of conduct, while the latter are ‘higher’ forms of dhamma that we need to understand to reach nibbana. One problem in Thailand now is that there is far too much emphasis on worldly dhamma (leading many people astray into superstition) and almost none at all on spiritual dhamma. Buddhadasa’s teachings (which reflect his interest in Zen Buddhism) try to address this imbalance, and I am fortunate to have discovered his words.
I am taking only baby steps now as a Buddhist, and I don’t know how long the path is or where it leads, but at least with Buddhadasa as my guide, I am less likely to stray from the path.
Dhamma, being universal, is everywhere around us. While it is multi-faceted, I think you can say that on one level, it is the “richness of life.” You don’t have to go to Buddhist temples or listen to Buddhist monks to appreciate this; you don’t even have to be a Buddhist. I think the wisdom of seeing that “less is more” is what all religions have in common. Below are a few snippets from the Web that I hope can help illustrate this:
From a Christian sermon preached by The Rev. Bruce Sanguin, Canadian Memorial Church, July 24, 2005:
When Jesus said, in the beatitudes, “blessed are the destitute”, he was not romanticizing poverty, as we sometimes do. The source of their blessing was that their enforced exclusion from the dominant systems, meant that their lack of attachment to Caesar’s rule predisposed them to live by another rule, the Kingdom of God, an egalitarian community, organized around the spiritual principle of compassion, not the worldly principle of wealth. This is why the first followers of Jesus were typically, but not exclusively, the poor and disenfranchised.
From musings on Africa at the end of someone’s journey:
I miss the countries of Africa that we visited from Malawi northwards. I miss the children on the schoolgrounds of Uganda with their bright-colored uniforms against their brown skins, waving at us, with smiles so white and confident. I miss all of the broken-English conversations that we have had with both adults and children along the way. I miss the constant reaffirmation that it is not necessarily a good economy that makes a happy child, it is the feeling of being a functioning part of a family unit.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not romanticizing poverty, just reiterating the fact that the less “extras” one has in life, the easier it is to see the things that are really important… and that ability is a form of richness. In that sense, the parts of Africa that I miss are extremely wealthy.