Dr. Pattana Kitiarsa is an anthropologist who spent some
time as a Buddhist monk in Thailand. Before I go any further, I’d better let
you know that this is not some hippy story, where the westerner goes looking
for “spiritual enlightenment.” Kitiarsa was no stranger to Thailand, and life
in a monastery is not a vacation; on the contrary, it’s very austere and
disciplined. You get one meal a day (which is why the monks are so thin) and
every morning, the monks march in a line at the village to beg for food. The “earnings”
from the begging are shared communally. If there are no donations, and nobody
comes to the temple to donate food, then nobody eats.
Dr. Kitiarsa makes it very clear at the beginning that
religion, especially Thai Buddhism, can be an opportunity for fraud. Magic is
frowned upon in the monasteries, but the monks have to resort to doing tricks
to attract donations, without which they can’t recruit new members. In India
and Thailand a lot of the gurus are just after the westerners’ money (or
looking to have sex with gullible white women) and while the “apt pupils” find
enlightenment, the guru is driving a Mercedes (bought with their money.)
He does give one positive example of a magician-monk named
Achan Somsak. He’d trained as a teacher, worked as a grocer, and after being
ordained as a monk, chose to live by himself in the forest. Fortune-telling is
part of his philosophy, but it doesn’t involve magic tricks or any of the stuff
that the Indian Fakirs are famous for (like sticking pins through their faces)
or cooking tea on peoples’ heads.
The monks and gurus often clash with the government, for
multiple reasons. First, there are many who engage in fraud, bilking naïve tourists
of their money while suckering them with fortune-telling and silly trinkets
that allegedly have magic power. Secondly,
I recommend this book for anyone studying Buddhism, or how
it pertains to life in Thailand.
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