The monastery and the village, Thailand2000-2009,Thailand 2000-2003,sunthai group 2003,thailand2003

The Buddha

Buddhism

Buddha images

Thai monasteries abroade

Monastery and the village

The monastery and the villagee

The monastery and the village

The majority of Thailand's 27,000 Buddhist monasteries are in the countryside.

Usually located on the village outskirts, a monastery is composed of a treeshaded, walled compound enclosing a cluster of simple, steeply sloping, multiroofed buildings. Although the monastery's prime function is to aid aspirants in their search for Nirvana, it has traditionally served as the village hotel, a village news, employment and information agency, a school, hospital, dispensary or community center and a recreation center, place of safe deposit and refuge for the mentally disturbed and the aged.

In large towns, the monastery offers hostel accommodation for students from the outlying villages. In others, orphans and children from poor families are admitted for free board, lodging and basic education and, occasionally, juvenile delinquents are sent to live in monasteries to be reformed under the benevolent influence of elderly monks.

Devout Buddhists in Thailand regularly uisit the monastery to listen to the teachings of the Buddha, as taught by the monks.

As in medieval Europe, most early Thai scholars were clerics whose major monastic activity was to teach the unlettered. Behind the quiet facade of monastic life, many village boys learned the rudiments of reading and writing Thai and Pali, simple arithmetic and the Buddhist precepts. Education was primarily concerned with ethical and religious instruction. Because most early Thai literature concerned religion, literacy allowed greater participation in religious life.

Although the Department (later Ministry) of Education was founded in 1887, monasteries remained centers of basic education until nationwide primary education became compulsory in 1921. In some remote areas today, monks conduct daily classes for village children.

A vital village 'monastic service' is counseling. Abbots and senior monks are often requested to arbitrate local disputes. Their monastic prestige is considered sufficient guarantee that equitable resolutions will be forwarded and accepted. Before ordination, many senior monks have led active secular lives raising their own families and farming. Thus, familiar with temporal problems and able to empathize, they are uniquely qualified to fashion and maintain social harmony, employing their considerable moral authority, if necessary, to gently admonish miscreants before minor disputes escalate.

Thailand into the 2000's, the National Identity Board Office of the Prime Minister, 2000, page 49-50

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