Forest Reflections: Wandering Monks in 20th Century Thailand
Glow
Veteran
... by Kamala Tiyanavich.
Has anyone read this wonderful book? I found it in the university library and have been slowly working my way through it. I will post a summary of it when I finish (will probably take me at least a month), but it has opened my eyes about the history of Buddhism in Thailand, and the emergence of the Thai Forest tradition. Tiyanavich (a native Thai, and professor at Cornell University) mostly deals with Buddhism pre-dating the time of Ajahn Chah, whom we all have mostly heard of, and focuses on his predecessors. It's a fascinating read.
It has also challenged many of my assumptions about the role of Western influence on Thai Buddhism. It turns out, Buddhism in Thailand parallels in many ways the progression that occurred in Sri Lanka in which it was through contact with Westerners that a resurgence of more "fundamentalist" (back to the Pali canon) Buddhism occurred. Prince Mongkut and his son Wacharayan, after seeing Buddhism criticized by Christian missionaries as too superstitious, essentially made the form of Buddhism practiced in the urban capital (Bangkok) the official state Buddhism. They made sure that this form of Buddhism would adhere more strictly to the Pali canon, that great emphasis would be placed on study of the canon over the Jataka stories popular in rural Buddhisms of Siam, and even introduced their own pronunciation of the Pali (which is now what you will hear all throughout Thailand and Thai-descended places like Amaravati in the UK).
However, although I've heard many Westerners (some of them on this and other forums) decry the Buddhist equivalent of "tree and bunny" Buddhism, whether nationalization was a good or bad thing is ambiguous. It essentially wiped out the many varied local iterations of Buddhism and, most strikingly, severed the intimate relationship the rural monks had with their local laity. The monks were very much involved in lay life -- tilling fields, farming, building, preparing for festivals, and giving dharma talks that engaged the local people. In fact, if the monks failed to be self-sufficient -- catching or growing their own food, building and repairing their own monasteries, helping out the villagers, serving as schoolteachers, etc. -- the laity would resent them as lazy escapists. The monks also engaged in merrymaking on holidays -- participating in picnics, boat-racing, and flirtatious water fights (in which monks and laity would attack each other with buckets of water, lol -- sounds like a heck of a good time).
When Bangkok authorities discovered these rural monks engaged in such unseemly activities (at least, according to the Pali Vinaya), they made them agree to cease. This occurred gradually (because it was difficult to enforce authority in a land covered in deep forest and scattered with mountains and malaria), but eventually the local monastic orders were incorporated into the Bangkok Thammayut order. The Bangkok order is closer to what most of us would consider "authentic" Buddhism (in that is is more consistent with the Pali canon and other Theravada traditions), but there was quite a bit lost in the process, IMO. Even if these local Siamese Buddhisms were not consistent with what most of us would consider Buddhism, they were integrated into the subsistence structure of the community and maintained close stewardship of the environment (many monasteries served as wildlife sanctuaries). It wasn't "Buddhism" per se, but it wasn't bad, either.
Comments
And you know who Mongkut is? Right?
I admit, before this book, I knew him only as the guy from The King and I, lol.
Exactly!
He's my second favorite Thai king!
Hah! He definitely spearheaded a lot of modernization in Thailand. I've only read his Wikipedia entry, and he seems to be well-regarded.
Who is your first favorite?
His son, Chulalongkorn. He brought the country into the 20th century. In the film, where Mongkut dies, it is of malaria, which he and Chulalongkorn both contracted on a trip upcountry (actually "downcountry" to a place to observe an eclipse. Mongkut was, among other things, quite an astronomer.
Very interesting. The true lives of these men are far more interesting than the movie.
Very much so.