Apr 2nd
2016 | PATHUM
THANI | The
Economist
JUST north of Bangkok, the Thai capital, stands an enormous golden
stupa designed to last 1,000 years. Its gleaming exterior is made
not from smooth tiles but from 300,000 tightly-packed statues of
the Buddha; 700,000 more are hidden inside. Just as staggering is
the vast apron surrounding the stupa, able to hold 1m worshippers.
Worakate, a guide dressed in white, explains that followers of the
Theravada school of Buddhism—dominant in Thailand and elsewhere in
South-East Asia—have never had a gathering place as large as Mecca
or the Vatican. She thinks the monument can be a meeting point for
adherents from around the world.
The stupa is the centrepiece of a sprawling
religious complex, not all of it quite so bling, inhabited by the
Dhammakaya movement. An influential if controversial Buddhist sect,
it was founded by a handful of monks in the 1970s and now claims
more than 3m followers in some 30 countries. As many as 10,000
mainly middle-class Thais flock to its Sunday ceremonies. One of
the temple’s senior monks, Phra Somchai Thannavuddho, says that
slick modern management has helped. But a big draw, he says, is the
purity and clarity of its practices, qualities which many other
temples have left behind.
The movement’s opponents are numerous and vocal, and
tell a different tale. Conservative worrywarts have long warned
that the sect is more like a cult, beholden to its septuagenarian
abbot, Phra Dhammachayo (who is almost always seen in signature
shades). They say that the conventional Buddhist teachings it
issues to newcomers conceal wacky theologies unveiled to adherents
once they rise in the temple’s ranks. And they allege that the
temple has grown wealthy by intimating that religious merit may be
bought with fistfuls of cash.
The controversy over the Dhammayaka temple is one of
several tearing at Thailand’s Buddhist establishment. At heart is a
battle over who should be the next Supreme Patriarch, the country’s
chief monk and the leader of its two Theravada Buddhist orders,
Maha Nikaya and Dhammayuttika Nikaya. The previous incumbent was
100 years old when he died in 2013; he was cremated in December.
Following tradition, the Sangha council—in effect, Thai Buddhism’s
governing body—announced that the next-most-senior clergyman,
Somdet Chuang, should succeed him. But under pressure from
dissenters, the junta that has ruled Thailand since a coup in 2014
has declined to submit the nomination to the royal palace for
approval—thereby putting the process on hold.
In part, the monks and lay people who oppose the
nomination see an opportunity to push through an overhaul of Thai
Buddhism’s stuffy governance that they say is long overdue. They
accuse the Sangha council, hierarchical and gerontocratic, of
failing to tackle rising materialism among the clergy, which has
lately led to a string of embarrassing revelations involving
wayward monks. Somdet Chuang is himself under investigation: police
say he accepted as a gift a vintage Mercedes Benz that had been
imported without paying the proper dues (his lawyer says he has
done nothing wrong). Critics also accuse the council of being
unhelpfully silent on contentious modern issues such as
homosexuality and female ordination.
But their opposition also has much to do with the
Dhammakaya temple, which they say the council has sheltered from
investigations into its finances and beliefs. Critics also foster
the perception that the temple’s top brass are sympathetic to the
cause of Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist former prime minister,
detested by Thailand’s elites, whose parties have won every general
election since 2001 but who now lives in self-imposed exile. The
insinuation is that the Sangha council and Thai Buddhism more
broadly have been captured by Thaksinite forces and must now be
liberated.
The temple says this is all nonsense, and that among
its visitors and donors are politicians of every hue. The Sangha
council is defending itself too. But the brawl is dangerous for the
junta, whatever the truth. Lacking a democratic mandate, it would
gain a huge boost from the monks’ blessing. Instead it finds itself
caught between two embittered factions, neither of which it can
ignore. The council’s opponents include Buddha Issara, a former
soldier who is now a firebrand monk. He was influential in the
royalist protests that helped to bring the junta to power and is
now one of its most outspoken supporters.
In the long run…
Meanwhile, Somdet Chuang’s backers include members
of an ultranationalist group, the Buddhist Protection Centre of
Thailand. In February it helped organise a rally at which monks
were filmed scuffling with soldiers (the same day troops also
loitered outside Dhammakaya temple, lest any of its clergy were
tempted to join the fray). Some clergy warn that the furore over
the nomination actually conceals an attempt by monks from the
smaller Dhammayuttika Nikiya, traditionally patronised by the
elites, to keep down clergy from the larger Maha Nikaya.
The spat is uncomfortable for the junta, but perhaps
it can be managed. Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, a scholar of law
and Buddhism at Bristol University, reckons that Thailand’s
government may try to spin out the present stalemate for as long as
possible. It might, in other words, be years before a new Supreme
Patriarch is appointed. Whether the present nominee, who is now 90
years old, will be available for the job is another
matter.