“Then you get this argument of whether some belief is “Buddhist” simply because some Buddhist believe it, or if the term only applies to things that originate from certain sources that can be tied somehow to Siddhartha Gotama or whatever branch of Buddhism.”
Evaluating whether some belief is “Buddhist” seemingly depends on whether one is an anthropologist or a practicing Buddhist (not that one can’t be both). Most observers can acknowledge the syncretism of popular Theravada (and other) Buddhism, but from a Buddhist point of view a particular practice or doctrine is only ‘Buddhist’, per se, if it leads towards nibbana. Or as the Kalama Sutta suggests, it is only when “These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness” that they should be practiced.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that folk beliefs and ‘un-orthodox’ practices can immediately be dismissed as un-Buddhist when measured against the Kalama Sutta. Winston King’s suggestion, when criticising the limited relevance of the “export Buddhism” which Westerners had largely taken as Buddhism proper, was to understand the diversity of belief and practice as fitting on a gradient leading towards nibbana. Nat worship and other popular practices are a Buddhist (i.e. nibbanic utilitarian) ‘good’ insofar as they allow Buddhism to embrace a wider audience without alienating those not interested in (or possibly, whose kamma is not ripe enough) scriptural study or vipassana. Nonetheless, such practices are only beneficial so long as they lead a person towards more refined dhammic practice (even if this happens over many lifetimes). If people get attached to nat worship or whatever and aren’t progressing towards nibbana, then there are legitimate Buddhist grounds for initiating reform.
On “bribery” or donations to the King, read Handley. He tries to explain the system at work. Actually, based on TV reports, it seems to be Prathep who is the face of the monarchy receiving most of these donations now.
If you were wondering whatever happened to Leo Mittelholzer, one of the former executives of Eternit found guilty of ‘intentional homicide’ (May 2005) then look no further!
The lives of up to 730 former Eternit employees were put at risk by exposure to hazardous levels of asbestos over an extended period of time; as a result many contracted asbestos-related diseases. Prison sentences of more than twenty-three years were passed on the accused which included a sentence of 2 years and 4 months for , head of the factory between 1984-86; Mittelholzer is now the Managing Director of Siam City Cement PLC,1 Thailand’s second largest cement company.
What? Don’t tell me you’d have rather had a history of monks stoning people to death for “blasphemy against the Dharma,” now, would you?
No, of course not. This isn’t a total dichotomy. I just mean it’s frustrating in the sense that Buddhism gets things attributed to it that technically weren’t really originally supposed to be a part of it. Then you get this argument of whether some belief is “Buddhist” simply because some Buddhist believe it, or if the term only applies to things that originate from certain sources that can be tied somehow to Siddhartha Gotama or whatever branch of Buddhism.
But I also mean a whole range of non-scriptural texts, such as manuals of instruction regarding teachings, practices, behavior etc. Something similar perhaps to “Dhamma for Dummies”, “Paritta chanting for Dummies”.
So you mean things like the Niyama Dipani (which is actually Burmese) and other Dipani on similar subjects. BTW, if you know of any of these that pertain to politics in some way (how laypeople should act, how kings should act, etc) I’d be interested in looking them up. I know Steven Collins has written about “Mode 1” interpretation of Dhamma which involves a sort of conventional socially-imposed idea of justice, though I doubt any commentaries or manuals on this have been translated into English due to their political incorrectness.
All one has to do is to have lived there for a while amongst so-called (in Pali speak) “lay people” or “householders” [Pali imaginaire: gahapati] to understand that **what is considered superstition in white middle class western America** is just accepted reality in Burma and other countries where Buddhism thrives.
I may be a bit naive with regard to this but I’m not totally unaware of it. It is kind of funny to see the beliefs the people in the US who study Buddhism and compare with actual people from Southeast Asia. Most of the beliefs considered superstitious by westerners (and it’s not limited to America, to be sure) that I have personally encountered tend to be “superstitious” interpretations of kamma.
What’s funny is that, just in wondering whether some of these interpretations of how kamma works are compatible with what’s stated in the Tipitaka, I’ve gotten blasted by other white westerners who’ve essentially told me I’m full of crap and don’t know anything about how kamma works.
Funny, but the beliefs that they’re claiming are crap seem to be basically what some Thai people I’ve known actually believe. I wonder if they’d go up to these Thai people and tell them they’re full of crap? Maybe I should arrange a conversation and see what happens.
So it’s quite true that westerners are out of touch with what actual people in say Southeast Asia believe, and I think part of it is that westerners inherit this Christian tradition of trying to figure out what a religion is really suppose to be about by reading scriptures and such. Not only does this tradition not exist in most places but most people are sort of lacking the research materials anyway….
re: Nicholas
Thanks for the heads up; I won’t be so link happy in the future! Quite a shame that spammers are ruining what I consider to be the fundamental purpose of hypertext, that is to provide for a non-linear textual discourse paradigm. [The phrase “non-linear textual discourse paradigm” is not too pretentious, is it? ^-^]
re: Srithanonchai, david w, et al.
Have you done any such research in the South, by the way?
Sorry for not answering this before, but the answer is a definitive yes and no. That is, I’ve interviewed Southerners, but in the environs of Bangkok. A former student of mine offered me the opportunity to observe, for 2 weeks, the pondok school in Narathiwat, where he was a student and then an English teacher; however, I couldn’t take him up on the offer as, at the time, my daughter’s illness (Thalassemia – please donate!) prevented me from being away from her that long. Quite a shame, I hope to be able to take him up on his offer in the future.
You should not keep your apparently superior knowledge about the problems in the South all to yourself. … You seem to know a lot about what these Patani Muslims think. What is this knowledge based on in terms of research or reading? Any chance of seeing a substantive article on this authored by you?
When I discuss Islamic teachings, I am referencing mainstream, orthodox sources from the major schools of Islamic jurisprudence. I don’t think I have written anything about Islam that the average Muslim who is educated in his or her faith would find objectionable. I admit that when discussing Patani, I am making the assumption that the average Patani Muslim follows the mainstream teachings of the Shafi’i madh’hab.
Now, what I consider to be my elementary knowledge of Islam is based on the research I did when working with my mentor when I was a graduate student doing my teaching intership in a high school ESL class. My hometown, Manchester, New Hampshire, for many years, has been involved in a program to resettle refugees. Currently, the countries most represented are: Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Afganistan, Sudan, and Chad. With the exception of the Iraqi Kurds, the vast majority of these refugees are Muslim. In order to properly provide ESL services, it is important to understand the socio-cultural context in which their previous learning took place. That is what my mentor and I worked on, and then employed in the classroom as “action research”; for example, one of the problems we worked on was to find a culturally sensitive solution to the hostility many of these students had toward female teachers.
Now, I would like to emphasize that this research was only auxiliary to my discipline. I am not a scholar of Islamic studies; I am an educationist and linguist. I educated myself about certain aspects of Islam in order to suppliment the work I was doing with a certain population of students. I would not count the Islamic doctrine as one of my academic specialities; therefore, I wouldn’t have the hubris to attempt a scholarly review of anyone’s work in that vein. This fact should highlight my previous point about McCargo’s work. If Srithanonchai judges my knowledge of Islamic doctrine, which I consider to be basic, to be superior to McCargo, then how should we judge McCargo’s attempts to analyze the southern Thai situation?
I would be kinder to Prof. McCargo if he wasn’t so hostile to terrorism analysis and related fields. As to david w’s comments, if McCargo is going to call out scholars of terrorism studies for their narrow conceptualization of Islam, then his knowledge of Islam should be rock-solid. He only embarrasses himself when he makes such simple errors as I have pointed out in my previous comment. Indeed, I find offense in his claim that the insurgency in the south doesn’t fall under the definition of jihad, when the collective thought of the Muslim world have suggested the opposite for 1400-plus years. Ironically, McCargo seems to possess the narrow understanding of jihad that he accuses terrorism studies as having, that is jihad as “a bad thing”. In reality, the term “jihad”, in most cases, has a positive connotation throughout most of the Muslim world. It is recognition of this fact that has led the U.S. Department of State to ban the term in all offical discourse when refering to acts of Islamically-inspired terrorism. To an outside Muslim observer viewing the southern situation, he or she would see a Muslim population fighting against an occupation by non-Muslims. By any and all definitions from Islamic sources, this is jihad.
It seems to me that McCargo, along with Connors, intelligently criticize the extreme and uncontextualized analyses of terrorism scholars who buy into a war on terror framing and seek to aggressively and concretly link violence in the south to Al-Qeada and other radical movements. But they also frequently tend to over assert a political science perspective that treats religious factors as simply ideological at best and irrelevant at worst in comparison with the ‘real’ social factors of (elite) politics, policy, political culture, etc.
I agree with McCargo and Connors that the “evil mastermind” theory of terrorism is absolute bunk. Currently, if Al-Qeada and company have any hand in the south of Thailand, it is only in the “marketplace of ideas,” as I have mentioned before in my comments about Robb’s theories. We cannot ignore that the theology that groups like Al-Qeada follow argues against the reality of the Westphalian nation-state and only recognizes dar al-Islam (i.e. Islam as the umma: a supernational entity encompassing the entire Muslim population) and dar al-Kufr. This has political ramifications, as such a theory implies the belief that it is the obligatory duty of all Muslims to assist in defensive jihad.
As for the political science mindset, of course, Zionism is not Judaism; Hindutva is not Hinduism; and Deobandism and Salafism are not Islam, but surely a political scientist can see that an understanding of the religious doctrines of each are essential to understanding the movements as a whole. Just as Judaism and Hinduism are merely the codification of the mores and folkways of certain ethnic groups, Islam, which claims universal dominion (see the Hadith of Sahih Muslim 1:31), is inherently geo-political as it seeks to define the mores and folkways of the entire world. A vast amount of religious text in Islam is devoted to how Muslims should interact with non-Muslims. An understanding of what these texts say is essential in understanding how Muslim societies formulate such “social factors” as “politics, policy, political culture, etc.”
In that vein, are you familiar with the work of Alexander Horstmann on the Tablighi Jamaat al-Dawa movement and Southern Thailand? And if so, what are your thoughts on his arguments?
From what I’ve read of Horstmann, I agree with his observations that dawa movements, like the Tablighi Jamaat, are causing a polarization of views in South and Southeast Asia. I would connect the actions of the Tablighi Jamaat with the greater “Arabization” that is occuring around the Muslim world (cf. Western Africa, Indonesia, and according to some, even Iran!). That is, Islam, especially Sunni Islam, has often acted as a conduit for Arabic cultural imperalism, where the mores and customs of Arabs are seen as normative; especially, when connected with the concept of the Arabic Muhammad, as “the perfect man” (al-insan al-kamil), who is to be emulated in every detail.
It is also interesting to note the close connection the Tablighi Jamaat has had with the Deobandi dawa movement. Both groups, along with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, arose in what was then known as the British Raj, as a reaction to colonalism. The Deobandi believed that the influence of British culture was corrupting Islam, as such they turned to dawa in hopes of rallying the Muslim population against the British. Again, we can see how closely intertwined religion and politics are in Islam. The Deobandi felt that by returning the population to a “purer” form of Islam, they would accomplish the political goal of ending the British occupation of greater India. Why? Because of the centrality of jihad to Islamic doctrine and its resonance amongst pious Muslims. Case in point, one entire book of Hadith is devoted to jihad, over 100 verses in the Qur’an (out of a total of 540) are concerned with jihad, over half of the Sira, the collected hagiographies of Muhammad, detail his thoughts on jihad. Again, I would like to stress that jihad is not only jihad bis sayf, but also the use of money (Sahih Bukhari 2:24:522 and Sahih Bukhari 4:52:96, apologetics, litigation, and demographic warfare. While it is clear that the Patani fighters, for the most part, are not wild-eyed Hashshashin zealots, it is rather cynical to assume that the “piety” displayed by the insurgents only “serves simply as a mobilizing resource”. Either way, it is clear that the presence of the Tablighi Jamaat only fules the dégringolade of the south.
This debate is also found beyond the work on Thailand, for instance in John Sidel’s work on Islamism and political violence in Indonesia, in which his stand is very similar in its broad contours and approach, I would argue, to that of McCargo’s on the south.
Just as an aside, while I realize that NM focuses on mainland Southeast Asia, I, for one, would like to see more articles concerning the Malay world (including Indonesia and Brunei). If we are going to discuss events in southern Thailand, it would be fruitful to examine them in context to the greater Malay world, as david w’s point illustrates.
In general, it would seem to me that ideally one needs both historians of religion and anthropologists working in conversation with each other on these topics and issues regarding the Islamic framing of politics, religion, violence and history to more fully understand recent developments. And that these two perspective also need to engage with other such as experts in politics, insurgencies, terrorism, etc.
By ‘plural sets of normative references’ I mean, in part, para-canonical scriptures and texts like the Mahavamsa (with the recognition that these literatures were themselves diverse and regionalized in character across the Theravada world, as Jon indicates in his post). But I also mean a whole range of non-scriptural texts, such as manuals of instruction regarding teachings, practices, behavior etc. Something similar perhaps to “Dhamma for Dummies”, “Paritta chanting for Dummies”. So rather than read the Pali or vernacular canonical scriptures, one could read summations, compilations, etc. Much actual training of monastics actually begins with such texts actually, at least today and presumably in the past, before moving on to the scriptures proper. And many monastics presumably never did and still never do move on to study the scriptures per se, or at least to any significant degree. In addition to these two textual (but non canonical forms) of knowledge and instruction, however, one must also add traditions of practice and belief passed on via oral and performative instruction but which are never formally textualized per se – i.e. local oral customs, etc.
Again, I don’t disagree that not only do certain parts of the Pali canon seek to prohibit monks from practicing ‘beastly arts’ but unvirtuous karmic consequences are also predicted for those who do engage in them, whether they are monastics or laity. My central point is that 1) in reading the Pali canon, it is useful to keep in mind that the presumed audience for the vast majority of its scripture are monastics. Laity would presumably have little interest in the general content, much less the details, of the Vinaya or Abhidhamma collections, for instance. Much the same is probably true for the Sutta collection as well. And 2) the Pali canon spends a lot of time discussing the proper behavior of monastics and very little in comparison discussing, at least in any detail, the proper behavior for the laity.
What you find frustrating about Buddhism – its syncretic propensities – is undoubtedly what anthropologists find most interesting! It is perhaps worth pointing out, however, that Buddhism is probably not any more frustrating in this sense than the other world historical religions. The monotheistic traditions, however, put a lot more energy into policing and regulating the boundary between a ‘pure’ scriptural orthodoxy and messy tradition and popular practice. They also seem to deploy more zeal in sometimes trying to eradicate those adaptations and syncretisms. Not that reformists – both modern and pre-modern – in Theravada Buddhism haven’t tried to do the same as well at various moments in history. While monks don’t stone people to death for blasphemy, they haven’t been above burning down spirit shrines, seeking to outlaw astrology, and condemning spirit mediums when the reformist / purifying impulse grabs them.
The frustrating thing about Buddhism is that it so readily syncretizes with various things people already believe, and it’s arguable if you can include whatever those various things are in Buddhism or if they’d just be doing those things whether Buddhism came along or not…..
What? Don’t tell me you’d have rather had a history of monks stoning people to death for “blasphemy against the Dharma,” now, would you?
“Historically speaking, employing astrology is NOT non-traditional, non-mainstream mysticism and superstition, even if modernist Buddhists would like to imagine that to be the case. ”
I completely agree. All one has to do is to have lived there for a while amongst so-called (in Pali speak) “lay people” or “householders” [Pali imaginaire: gahapati] to understand that **what is considered superstition in white middle class western America** is just accepted reality in Burma and other countries where Buddhism thrives. Although even here there are degrees. Talk with the monk about your dreams, ok, but hire an “aut-lan hsaya” (black magician, sorcerer) to put a hex on your philandering father’s girl friend? But I have seen people who considered themselves religious do this.
That life and thought even in the Sangha has perhaps never really conformed to the expectations of “protestant Buddhism” (in the sense of Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere) is certainly readily apparent from recent research by scholars such Peter Skilling (Pali scholar and current head of the Pali Text Society), Michael Charney (SOAS, author of Powerful Learning, 2006), and Gregory Schopen at UCLA.
Take Upagupta’s fight with Mara in which he uses a trick to hang a dog head around his neck and then engage in a knock down drag out fight in which they are continually changing form and shape (bull, garuda, you name it…), followed by Asoka’s so-called “auto-cremation” (lighting himself on fire as a form of worship). This is all going to offend nice bourgeousie sentiments, along with Asoka trying to run Upagupta over with an elephant when he first meets him (not polite), and little tidbits like a monk who vomits his food to feed a dog….etc.etc….in U Kala’s Mahayazawingyi this more raunchy folk part (from the Loka Pannyati cosmological work, in Pali but with Sanskrit origins) was all spliced together with the more rectifying and normative depiction of the Third Buddhist Council from the Sri Lankan Mahavamsa, but then the Upagupta part was completely cut out and censored when the Hmannan [Glass Palace] Chronicle chronicle was written in the modern era, 19th century. Some similar modernist editing of poor old Upagupta also took place in the Thai Traiphumi cosmology, I believe. In fact, it doesn’t make sense to think of a unified Tipitaka or Theravadan religion, historically, better just think localised monastic and textual lineages. In short, think local and you’re doing justice to the truth.
When good ol’ Samak came back from Burma came and gleefully told the media that **the Burmese generals meditate**, what an uproar. Because Samak is a “good old boy” type, he can probably understand the Buddhism that people actually practice a little bit better. He’s not one of these preaching protestant Buddhists like Chamlong Sri Muang who is going to change everyone in his own image.
My wife used to donate and prepare and cook in a big cauldron, Mohinka for the Dhammayangyis [lay female buddhist devotees] attending a meditation retreat at (former dictator) Khin Nyunt’s monastery (Nei Pyi-daw Kyaung) next to our apartment in Tamweilei township. Would I said to my wife, hey why are you making noodles for that killer-dictator-hsaut-kaung-gyi Khin Nyunt? Even though it was army interrogator who cracked her father’s skull against the wall 10 years before? Life is a little a lot more complex than many arrogant “educated” people assume.
“The gist of my argument is this: when I think about mainstream tradition I don’t think of a limited scriptural canon that modern Western philologists have elevated into THE standard for proper Buddhism. I look to the more complicated, plural sets of normative references that actual historical Buddhists (in Burma, Thailand or wherever) have looked to themselves.”
If I understand you correctly by “plural sets of normative references” you mean people looking to things like the Mahavimsa (for Sinhalese for example) vs. the actual Pali Canon?
I know traditions don’t exactly follow the canon, I suppose I was just objecting to the suggestion that the anti-divination/mysticism stuff was somehow of modern invention. There just doesn’t seem to be anything in the canon encouraging divination, though some performing of “protective” chants and stuff is permitted if I remember correctly. Anyway, the person in the article is right I think if you define “mainstream” as “canonical”, but as you’re saying if you define it as what the average Theravada Buddhist in SE Asia thinks then you may be right. “Mainstream” was probably the wrong word to use there, but then again I tend to get the canonical view of things and am not enough of an anthropologist to know what is really “mainstream.”
I don’t think the anti-superstition ideas are limited to monastics though. In the Samyutta Nikaya in one set of suttas, the conditions of hell rebirths for people in various harmful professions (including fortune tellers) are described, suggesting that anyone practicing these things as a living is bound for a bad destination. I don’t remember the exact collection of suttas, but they all follow the formula: [Monk sees vision of corpse, etc, pierced by needles, etc.] [The Buddha says:] “That was a [fortune teller, etc] in this very Rajagaha.” Some of the other professions listed are things like “horse trainer” so it’s fairly obvious that he’s not talking about ascetics or something.
The frustrating thing about Buddhism is that it so readily syncretizes with various things people already believe, and it’s arguable if you can include whatever those various things are in Buddhism or if they’d just be doing those things whether Buddhism came along or not…..
Thanks for passing on that ‘news’ about the Htidaw. I myself wondered about this point after reading a short account describing damage to the Shwedagon complex. However, given the propensity for newspapers to print regime propaganda and the fact that this account fits perfectly what we would expect the regime to claim, I would be interested if anyone has obtained reliable, third-party confirmation of the Htidaw’s status. After all, the newspapers also tell us that no one is dying of illness in the devastated delta, right?
I don’t deny that the Pali canon has certain passages regarding right livelihood that prohibit monastics from practicing astrology along with other ritual-cum-esoteric arts. But:
1) These passages are directed at monastics, and are not presumed to be moral instruction / prohibitions for lay people. It is a classic modernist presumption to imagine that lay people are supposed to model their behavior on the rules of practice for monastics. History indicates that this presumption was not shared by most historical (Theravadin) Buddhists.
2) There are other passages, narratives and stories within the Pali canon that indicate that clearly monastics did do such activities and that their performance was not so unusual or atypical.
3) The relevance of the Pali canon to the behavior, practices and education of even monastics is unclear in the living traditions of Theravada Buddhism. Few monks before the modern era read the Pali canon, much less in its entirety. (It is not even clear how widely available the Pali canon was to most living Buddhist communities.) Most of a monastics religious education was obtained through reading the vernacular canon that included much scripture, teachings and manuals that not infrequently diverged from specific teachings of the Pali canon (which was itself, ambiguous and contradictory on many points anyway, per #2).
4) The actual mainstream tradition of living Theravada Buddhism (in contrast to scriptural (Pali) orthodoxy) was formed out of a complicated interaction between the Pali canon, the Pali para-canonical tradition, the vernacular canon, and the localized oral customs, practices and beliefs of particular and/or regional Buddhisms. And in that actual, living ‘mainstream’ tradition, astrology, palm-reading, etc. were accepted, valued and pervasive.
5) The gist of my argument is this: when I think about mainstream tradition I don’t think of a limited scriptural canon that modern Western philologists have elevated into THE standard for proper Buddhism. I look to the more complicated, plural sets of normative references that actual historical Buddhists (in Burma, Thailand or wherever) have looked to themselves.
Refer to the webpage where Sondhi L. published his response in English.
There are many who chose to insult Nattakorn along the lines of “you’re not the only one who can speak English, don’t be arrogant” and yes, people calling him a “cunt”.
This is not the radio show, this is their website, and yes, it actually happened in the comments section.
Thai observer may be too busy to follow the news. Manager’s biggest point is: if the government wants to change the constitution, then people must vote on it.
Ask the millions of people who APPROVED of the constitution to likewise approve of its change by the Palang Prachachon party.
What is the constitutional process for amending the constitution? Parliament or a referendum? It is parliament. Which people approved this process? Those who voted in the referendum. So isn’t amending the constitution through parliament following the people’s wishes?
Since when did The Manager care about voting? The causes they support always lose. They have never deemed any TRT or PPP victory as legitimate.
The Manager’s apology is 10% apology and 90% rant.
agree,
Clapp repeats the typical protestant Western or is it orientalist approach to Buddhism. This view of Buddhism feads a rather simplistic view of the situation in Burma.
Regime = evil, violent and un-Buddhist,
People = simple, democratatic, compassionate non-violent Buddhists
In one sense the regime could be seen as an extreme form of a Thervaradan Buddhist state. In the eyes of its leaders, the people are simple and easily influenced by dangerous outside forces, therefore they need a wise elite to lead them. If the wise mind has to forcefully keep its untamed body in check by extreme ascetic discipline, then so be it. To have outsiders come in to care for its members is not only a loss of face but a potential cancerous infiltation of the mandala.
To the best of my understanding, the process of citizens filing criminal charges in Thailand goes like this (I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong):
A citizen with a complaint can go to any police station to try file a charge because the Royal Thai Police are a unified national entity, regardless of physical location. Police will generally refer such a citizen to the station nearest the location where the alleged crime was committed–in a case concerning a newspaper article or internet message board, the case could be filed anywhere. Police generally also only accept cases from injured parties.
If police accept the complaint (i.e. let the citizen file the charge), police will then investigate the matter, summoning the accused to answer charges and consulting with police experts from other areas if need be. This process can take anywhere from days to months or more, depending on complexity of the case and other aspects of the situation. At this stage, for minor offenses, police may try to get the accuser and the accused to reconcile. Police will then decide whether to refer the case to the public prosecutor, who then considers the case and decides whether to persue it in court. If the prosecuter decides to prosecute, the case usually begins in the court where the complaint was filed (in this case Khon Kaen Provincial Court).
So for this Fah Diew Kan/Prachatai case, from the reports it would seem that Royal Thai Police in Khon Kaen have accepted the incitement accusation (thank you Bangkok Pundit) and are probably now in the course of investigating.
My mistake earlier for skipping directly to the courts–I jumped the gun and caused confusion. Sorry.
[…] a few debates about whether what is happening in PDR Lao is good for the farmers but interestingly, rubber could be an economically viable alternative to the opium, the main cash crop which used to be grown in these […]
“Historically speaking, employing astrology is NOT non-traditional, non-mainstream mysticism and superstition, even if modernist Buddhists would like to imagine that to be the case.“
Well, it may have happened frequently anyway but, DN 2 says:
“Whereas some brahmans and contemplatives, living off food given in faith, maintain themselves by wrong livelihood, by such “animal” arts as:
reading marks on the limbs (e.g., palmistry);
reading omens and signs;
interpreting celestial events (falling stars, comets);
interpreting dreams;
reading features of the body (e.g., phrenology);
reading marks on cloth gnawed by mice;
offering fire oblations, oblations from a ladle, oblations of husks, rice powder, rice grains, ghee, and oil;
offering oblations from the mouth;
offering blood-sacrifices;
making predictions based on the fingertips;
geomancy;
making predictions for state officials;
laying demons in a cemetery;
placing spells on spirits;
earth-skills (divining water and gems?);
snake-skills, poison-skills, scorpion-skills, rat-skills, bird-skills, crow-skills;
predicting life spans;
giving protective charms;
casting horoscopes –
he abstains from wrong livelihood, from “animal” arts such as these.”
In a related note, given Ingrid Jordt’s comment in Burma’s Mass Lay Mediation Movement that the SPDC’s recrowning of the Shwedagon Pagoda’s Htidaw (finial) in 2002 and the country’s lack (at the time) of any large-scale natural disaster was seen as an indication of the regime’s overwhelming parami and thus karmic legitimacy, the New Light of Myanmar carried an article on May 13th in which they assured all concerned that an assessment team had “conducted a survey to find out whether the Htidaw (Umbrella) of Shwedagon Pagoda was tilted at an angle due to the storm” and that despite the cyclone, the “Shwedagon Pagoda’s Htidaw remains intact“.
Now there are news reports about the Minister to the Prime Minister’s Office Jakrapop Penkae having made speeches abroad referring to things unpleasant about the monarchy. Can anyone get hold of these texts and make them available? Many thanks.
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Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
Evaluating whether some belief is “Buddhist” seemingly depends on whether one is an anthropologist or a practicing Buddhist (not that one can’t be both). Most observers can acknowledge the syncretism of popular Theravada (and other) Buddhism, but from a Buddhist point of view a particular practice or doctrine is only ‘Buddhist’, per se, if it leads towards nibbana. Or as the Kalama Sutta suggests, it is only when “These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness” that they should be practiced.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that folk beliefs and ‘un-orthodox’ practices can immediately be dismissed as un-Buddhist when measured against the Kalama Sutta. Winston King’s suggestion, when criticising the limited relevance of the “export Buddhism” which Westerners had largely taken as Buddhism proper, was to understand the diversity of belief and practice as fitting on a gradient leading towards nibbana. Nat worship and other popular practices are a Buddhist (i.e. nibbanic utilitarian) ‘good’ insofar as they allow Buddhism to embrace a wider audience without alienating those not interested in (or possibly, whose kamma is not ripe enough) scriptural study or vipassana. Nonetheless, such practices are only beneficial so long as they lead a person towards more refined dhammic practice (even if this happens over many lifetimes). If people get attached to nat worship or whatever and aren’t progressing towards nibbana, then there are legitimate Buddhist grounds for initiating reform.
Royalist propaganda and policy nonsense
On “bribery” or donations to the King, read Handley. He tries to explain the system at work. Actually, based on TV reports, it seems to be Prathep who is the face of the monarchy receiving most of these donations now.
Asbestos in Thailand
If you were wondering whatever happened to Leo Mittelholzer, one of the former executives of Eternit found guilty of ‘intentional homicide’ (May 2005) then look no further!
The lives of up to 730 former Eternit employees were put at risk by exposure to hazardous levels of asbestos over an extended period of time; as a result many contracted asbestos-related diseases. Prison sentences of more than twenty-three years were passed on the accused which included a sentence of 2 years and 4 months for , head of the factory between 1984-86; Mittelholzer is now the Managing Director of Siam City Cement PLC,1 Thailand’s second largest cement company.
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
No, of course not. This isn’t a total dichotomy. I just mean it’s frustrating in the sense that Buddhism gets things attributed to it that technically weren’t really originally supposed to be a part of it. Then you get this argument of whether some belief is “Buddhist” simply because some Buddhist believe it, or if the term only applies to things that originate from certain sources that can be tied somehow to Siddhartha Gotama or whatever branch of Buddhism.
So you mean things like the Niyama Dipani (which is actually Burmese) and other Dipani on similar subjects. BTW, if you know of any of these that pertain to politics in some way (how laypeople should act, how kings should act, etc) I’d be interested in looking them up. I know Steven Collins has written about “Mode 1” interpretation of Dhamma which involves a sort of conventional socially-imposed idea of justice, though I doubt any commentaries or manuals on this have been translated into English due to their political incorrectness.
I may be a bit naive with regard to this but I’m not totally unaware of it. It is kind of funny to see the beliefs the people in the US who study Buddhism and compare with actual people from Southeast Asia. Most of the beliefs considered superstitious by westerners (and it’s not limited to America, to be sure) that I have personally encountered tend to be “superstitious” interpretations of kamma.
What’s funny is that, just in wondering whether some of these interpretations of how kamma works are compatible with what’s stated in the Tipitaka, I’ve gotten blasted by other white westerners who’ve essentially told me I’m full of crap and don’t know anything about how kamma works.
Funny, but the beliefs that they’re claiming are crap seem to be basically what some Thai people I’ve known actually believe. I wonder if they’d go up to these Thai people and tell them they’re full of crap? Maybe I should arrange a conversation and see what happens.
So it’s quite true that westerners are out of touch with what actual people in say Southeast Asia believe, and I think part of it is that westerners inherit this Christian tradition of trying to figure out what a religion is really suppose to be about by reading scriptures and such. Not only does this tradition not exist in most places but most people are sort of lacking the research materials anyway….
An unwinnable war?
re: Nicholas
Thanks for the heads up; I won’t be so link happy in the future! Quite a shame that spammers are ruining what I consider to be the fundamental purpose of hypertext, that is to provide for a non-linear textual discourse paradigm. [The phrase “non-linear textual discourse paradigm” is not too pretentious, is it? ^-^]
re: Srithanonchai, david w, et al.
Sorry for not answering this before, but the answer is a definitive yes and no. That is, I’ve interviewed Southerners, but in the environs of Bangkok. A former student of mine offered me the opportunity to observe, for 2 weeks, the pondok school in Narathiwat, where he was a student and then an English teacher; however, I couldn’t take him up on the offer as, at the time, my daughter’s illness (Thalassemia – please donate!) prevented me from being away from her that long. Quite a shame, I hope to be able to take him up on his offer in the future.
When I discuss Islamic teachings, I am referencing mainstream, orthodox sources from the major schools of Islamic jurisprudence. I don’t think I have written anything about Islam that the average Muslim who is educated in his or her faith would find objectionable. I admit that when discussing Patani, I am making the assumption that the average Patani Muslim follows the mainstream teachings of the Shafi’i madh’hab.
Now, what I consider to be my elementary knowledge of Islam is based on the research I did when working with my mentor when I was a graduate student doing my teaching intership in a high school ESL class. My hometown, Manchester, New Hampshire, for many years, has been involved in a program to resettle refugees. Currently, the countries most represented are: Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Afganistan, Sudan, and Chad. With the exception of the Iraqi Kurds, the vast majority of these refugees are Muslim. In order to properly provide ESL services, it is important to understand the socio-cultural context in which their previous learning took place. That is what my mentor and I worked on, and then employed in the classroom as “action research”; for example, one of the problems we worked on was to find a culturally sensitive solution to the hostility many of these students had toward female teachers.
Now, I would like to emphasize that this research was only auxiliary to my discipline. I am not a scholar of Islamic studies; I am an educationist and linguist. I educated myself about certain aspects of Islam in order to suppliment the work I was doing with a certain population of students. I would not count the Islamic doctrine as one of my academic specialities; therefore, I wouldn’t have the hubris to attempt a scholarly review of anyone’s work in that vein. This fact should highlight my previous point about McCargo’s work. If Srithanonchai judges my knowledge of Islamic doctrine, which I consider to be basic, to be superior to McCargo, then how should we judge McCargo’s attempts to analyze the southern Thai situation?
I would be kinder to Prof. McCargo if he wasn’t so hostile to terrorism analysis and related fields. As to david w’s comments, if McCargo is going to call out scholars of terrorism studies for their narrow conceptualization of Islam, then his knowledge of Islam should be rock-solid. He only embarrasses himself when he makes such simple errors as I have pointed out in my previous comment. Indeed, I find offense in his claim that the insurgency in the south doesn’t fall under the definition of jihad, when the collective thought of the Muslim world have suggested the opposite for 1400-plus years. Ironically, McCargo seems to possess the narrow understanding of jihad that he accuses terrorism studies as having, that is jihad as “a bad thing”. In reality, the term “jihad”, in most cases, has a positive connotation throughout most of the Muslim world. It is recognition of this fact that has led the U.S. Department of State to ban the term in all offical discourse when refering to acts of Islamically-inspired terrorism. To an outside Muslim observer viewing the southern situation, he or she would see a Muslim population fighting against an occupation by non-Muslims. By any and all definitions from Islamic sources, this is jihad.
I agree with McCargo and Connors that the “evil mastermind” theory of terrorism is absolute bunk. Currently, if Al-Qeada and company have any hand in the south of Thailand, it is only in the “marketplace of ideas,” as I have mentioned before in my comments about Robb’s theories. We cannot ignore that the theology that groups like Al-Qeada follow argues against the reality of the Westphalian nation-state and only recognizes dar al-Islam (i.e. Islam as the umma: a supernational entity encompassing the entire Muslim population) and dar al-Kufr. This has political ramifications, as such a theory implies the belief that it is the obligatory duty of all Muslims to assist in defensive jihad.
As for the political science mindset, of course, Zionism is not Judaism; Hindutva is not Hinduism; and Deobandism and Salafism are not Islam, but surely a political scientist can see that an understanding of the religious doctrines of each are essential to understanding the movements as a whole. Just as Judaism and Hinduism are merely the codification of the mores and folkways of certain ethnic groups, Islam, which claims universal dominion (see the Hadith of Sahih Muslim 1:31), is inherently geo-political as it seeks to define the mores and folkways of the entire world. A vast amount of religious text in Islam is devoted to how Muslims should interact with non-Muslims. An understanding of what these texts say is essential in understanding how Muslim societies formulate such “social factors” as “politics, policy, political culture, etc.”
From what I’ve read of Horstmann, I agree with his observations that dawa movements, like the Tablighi Jamaat, are causing a polarization of views in South and Southeast Asia. I would connect the actions of the Tablighi Jamaat with the greater “Arabization” that is occuring around the Muslim world (cf. Western Africa, Indonesia, and according to some, even Iran!). That is, Islam, especially Sunni Islam, has often acted as a conduit for Arabic cultural imperalism, where the mores and customs of Arabs are seen as normative; especially, when connected with the concept of the Arabic Muhammad, as “the perfect man” (al-insan al-kamil), who is to be emulated in every detail.
It is also interesting to note the close connection the Tablighi Jamaat has had with the Deobandi dawa movement. Both groups, along with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, arose in what was then known as the British Raj, as a reaction to colonalism. The Deobandi believed that the influence of British culture was corrupting Islam, as such they turned to dawa in hopes of rallying the Muslim population against the British. Again, we can see how closely intertwined religion and politics are in Islam. The Deobandi felt that by returning the population to a “purer” form of Islam, they would accomplish the political goal of ending the British occupation of greater India. Why? Because of the centrality of jihad to Islamic doctrine and its resonance amongst pious Muslims. Case in point, one entire book of Hadith is devoted to jihad, over 100 verses in the Qur’an (out of a total of 540) are concerned with jihad, over half of the Sira, the collected hagiographies of Muhammad, detail his thoughts on jihad. Again, I would like to stress that jihad is not only jihad bis sayf, but also the use of money (Sahih Bukhari 2:24:522 and Sahih Bukhari 4:52:96, apologetics, litigation, and demographic warfare. While it is clear that the Patani fighters, for the most part, are not wild-eyed Hashshashin zealots, it is rather cynical to assume that the “piety” displayed by the insurgents only “serves simply as a mobilizing resource”. Either way, it is clear that the presence of the Tablighi Jamaat only fules the dégringolade of the south.
Just as an aside, while I realize that NM focuses on mainland Southeast Asia, I, for one, would like to see more articles concerning the Malay world (including Indonesia and Brunei). If we are going to discuss events in southern Thailand, it would be fruitful to examine them in context to the greater Malay world, as david w’s point illustrates.
Exactly.
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
Robert:
By ‘plural sets of normative references’ I mean, in part, para-canonical scriptures and texts like the Mahavamsa (with the recognition that these literatures were themselves diverse and regionalized in character across the Theravada world, as Jon indicates in his post). But I also mean a whole range of non-scriptural texts, such as manuals of instruction regarding teachings, practices, behavior etc. Something similar perhaps to “Dhamma for Dummies”, “Paritta chanting for Dummies”. So rather than read the Pali or vernacular canonical scriptures, one could read summations, compilations, etc. Much actual training of monastics actually begins with such texts actually, at least today and presumably in the past, before moving on to the scriptures proper. And many monastics presumably never did and still never do move on to study the scriptures per se, or at least to any significant degree. In addition to these two textual (but non canonical forms) of knowledge and instruction, however, one must also add traditions of practice and belief passed on via oral and performative instruction but which are never formally textualized per se – i.e. local oral customs, etc.
Again, I don’t disagree that not only do certain parts of the Pali canon seek to prohibit monks from practicing ‘beastly arts’ but unvirtuous karmic consequences are also predicted for those who do engage in them, whether they are monastics or laity. My central point is that 1) in reading the Pali canon, it is useful to keep in mind that the presumed audience for the vast majority of its scripture are monastics. Laity would presumably have little interest in the general content, much less the details, of the Vinaya or Abhidhamma collections, for instance. Much the same is probably true for the Sutta collection as well. And 2) the Pali canon spends a lot of time discussing the proper behavior of monastics and very little in comparison discussing, at least in any detail, the proper behavior for the laity.
What you find frustrating about Buddhism – its syncretic propensities – is undoubtedly what anthropologists find most interesting! It is perhaps worth pointing out, however, that Buddhism is probably not any more frustrating in this sense than the other world historical religions. The monotheistic traditions, however, put a lot more energy into policing and regulating the boundary between a ‘pure’ scriptural orthodoxy and messy tradition and popular practice. They also seem to deploy more zeal in sometimes trying to eradicate those adaptations and syncretisms. Not that reformists – both modern and pre-modern – in Theravada Buddhism haven’t tried to do the same as well at various moments in history. While monks don’t stone people to death for blasphemy, they haven’t been above burning down spirit shrines, seeking to outlaw astrology, and condemning spirit mediums when the reformist / purifying impulse grabs them.
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
re: Robert
What? Don’t tell me you’d have rather had a history of monks stoning people to death for “blasphemy against the Dharma,” now, would you?
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
“Historically speaking, employing astrology is NOT non-traditional, non-mainstream mysticism and superstition, even if modernist Buddhists would like to imagine that to be the case. ”
I completely agree. All one has to do is to have lived there for a while amongst so-called (in Pali speak) “lay people” or “householders” [Pali imaginaire: gahapati] to understand that **what is considered superstition in white middle class western America** is just accepted reality in Burma and other countries where Buddhism thrives. Although even here there are degrees. Talk with the monk about your dreams, ok, but hire an “aut-lan hsaya” (black magician, sorcerer) to put a hex on your philandering father’s girl friend? But I have seen people who considered themselves religious do this.
That life and thought even in the Sangha has perhaps never really conformed to the expectations of “protestant Buddhism” (in the sense of Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere) is certainly readily apparent from recent research by scholars such Peter Skilling (Pali scholar and current head of the Pali Text Society), Michael Charney (SOAS, author of Powerful Learning, 2006), and Gregory Schopen at UCLA.
Take Upagupta’s fight with Mara in which he uses a trick to hang a dog head around his neck and then engage in a knock down drag out fight in which they are continually changing form and shape (bull, garuda, you name it…), followed by Asoka’s so-called “auto-cremation” (lighting himself on fire as a form of worship). This is all going to offend nice bourgeousie sentiments, along with Asoka trying to run Upagupta over with an elephant when he first meets him (not polite), and little tidbits like a monk who vomits his food to feed a dog….etc.etc….in U Kala’s Mahayazawingyi this more raunchy folk part (from the Loka Pannyati cosmological work, in Pali but with Sanskrit origins) was all spliced together with the more rectifying and normative depiction of the Third Buddhist Council from the Sri Lankan Mahavamsa, but then the Upagupta part was completely cut out and censored when the Hmannan [Glass Palace] Chronicle chronicle was written in the modern era, 19th century. Some similar modernist editing of poor old Upagupta also took place in the Thai Traiphumi cosmology, I believe. In fact, it doesn’t make sense to think of a unified Tipitaka or Theravadan religion, historically, better just think localised monastic and textual lineages. In short, think local and you’re doing justice to the truth.
When good ol’ Samak came back from Burma came and gleefully told the media that **the Burmese generals meditate**, what an uproar. Because Samak is a “good old boy” type, he can probably understand the Buddhism that people actually practice a little bit better. He’s not one of these preaching protestant Buddhists like Chamlong Sri Muang who is going to change everyone in his own image.
My wife used to donate and prepare and cook in a big cauldron, Mohinka for the Dhammayangyis [lay female buddhist devotees] attending a meditation retreat at (former dictator) Khin Nyunt’s monastery (Nei Pyi-daw Kyaung) next to our apartment in Tamweilei township. Would I said to my wife, hey why are you making noodles for that killer-dictator-hsaut-kaung-gyi Khin Nyunt? Even though it was army interrogator who cracked her father’s skull against the wall 10 years before? Life is a little a lot more complex than many arrogant “educated” people assume.
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
david w:
“The gist of my argument is this: when I think about mainstream tradition I don’t think of a limited scriptural canon that modern Western philologists have elevated into THE standard for proper Buddhism. I look to the more complicated, plural sets of normative references that actual historical Buddhists (in Burma, Thailand or wherever) have looked to themselves.”
If I understand you correctly by “plural sets of normative references” you mean people looking to things like the Mahavimsa (for Sinhalese for example) vs. the actual Pali Canon?
I know traditions don’t exactly follow the canon, I suppose I was just objecting to the suggestion that the anti-divination/mysticism stuff was somehow of modern invention. There just doesn’t seem to be anything in the canon encouraging divination, though some performing of “protective” chants and stuff is permitted if I remember correctly. Anyway, the person in the article is right I think if you define “mainstream” as “canonical”, but as you’re saying if you define it as what the average Theravada Buddhist in SE Asia thinks then you may be right. “Mainstream” was probably the wrong word to use there, but then again I tend to get the canonical view of things and am not enough of an anthropologist to know what is really “mainstream.”
I don’t think the anti-superstition ideas are limited to monastics though. In the Samyutta Nikaya in one set of suttas, the conditions of hell rebirths for people in various harmful professions (including fortune tellers) are described, suggesting that anyone practicing these things as a living is bound for a bad destination. I don’t remember the exact collection of suttas, but they all follow the formula: [Monk sees vision of corpse, etc, pierced by needles, etc.] [The Buddha says:] “That was a [fortune teller, etc] in this very Rajagaha.” Some of the other professions listed are things like “horse trainer” so it’s fairly obvious that he’s not talking about ascetics or something.
The frustrating thing about Buddhism is that it so readily syncretizes with various things people already believe, and it’s arguable if you can include whatever those various things are in Buddhism or if they’d just be doing those things whether Buddhism came along or not…..
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
Stephen,
Thanks for passing on that ‘news’ about the Htidaw. I myself wondered about this point after reading a short account describing damage to the Shwedagon complex. However, given the propensity for newspapers to print regime propaganda and the fact that this account fits perfectly what we would expect the regime to claim, I would be interested if anyone has obtained reliable, third-party confirmation of the Htidaw’s status. After all, the newspapers also tell us that no one is dying of illness in the devastated delta, right?
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
Robert,
I don’t deny that the Pali canon has certain passages regarding right livelihood that prohibit monastics from practicing astrology along with other ritual-cum-esoteric arts. But:
1) These passages are directed at monastics, and are not presumed to be moral instruction / prohibitions for lay people. It is a classic modernist presumption to imagine that lay people are supposed to model their behavior on the rules of practice for monastics. History indicates that this presumption was not shared by most historical (Theravadin) Buddhists.
2) There are other passages, narratives and stories within the Pali canon that indicate that clearly monastics did do such activities and that their performance was not so unusual or atypical.
3) The relevance of the Pali canon to the behavior, practices and education of even monastics is unclear in the living traditions of Theravada Buddhism. Few monks before the modern era read the Pali canon, much less in its entirety. (It is not even clear how widely available the Pali canon was to most living Buddhist communities.) Most of a monastics religious education was obtained through reading the vernacular canon that included much scripture, teachings and manuals that not infrequently diverged from specific teachings of the Pali canon (which was itself, ambiguous and contradictory on many points anyway, per #2).
4) The actual mainstream tradition of living Theravada Buddhism (in contrast to scriptural (Pali) orthodoxy) was formed out of a complicated interaction between the Pali canon, the Pali para-canonical tradition, the vernacular canon, and the localized oral customs, practices and beliefs of particular and/or regional Buddhisms. And in that actual, living ‘mainstream’ tradition, astrology, palm-reading, etc. were accepted, valued and pervasive.
5) The gist of my argument is this: when I think about mainstream tradition I don’t think of a limited scriptural canon that modern Western philologists have elevated into THE standard for proper Buddhism. I look to the more complicated, plural sets of normative references that actual historical Buddhists (in Burma, Thailand or wherever) have looked to themselves.
The Manager media group condemned
Khun Stillwater,
Refer to the webpage where Sondhi L. published his response in English.
There are many who chose to insult Nattakorn along the lines of “you’re not the only one who can speak English, don’t be arrogant” and yes, people calling him a “cunt”.
This is not the radio show, this is their website, and yes, it actually happened in the comments section.
The Manager media group condemned
Thai observer may be too busy to follow the news. Manager’s biggest point is: if the government wants to change the constitution, then people must vote on it.
Ask the millions of people who APPROVED of the constitution to likewise approve of its change by the Palang Prachachon party.
What is the constitutional process for amending the constitution? Parliament or a referendum? It is parliament. Which people approved this process? Those who voted in the referendum. So isn’t amending the constitution through parliament following the people’s wishes?
Since when did The Manager care about voting? The causes they support always lose. They have never deemed any TRT or PPP victory as legitimate.
The Manager’s apology is 10% apology and 90% rant.
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
agree,
Clapp repeats the typical protestant Western or is it orientalist approach to Buddhism. This view of Buddhism feads a rather simplistic view of the situation in Burma.
Regime = evil, violent and un-Buddhist,
People = simple, democratatic, compassionate non-violent Buddhists
In one sense the regime could be seen as an extreme form of a Thervaradan Buddhist state. In the eyes of its leaders, the people are simple and easily influenced by dangerous outside forces, therefore they need a wise elite to lead them. If the wise mind has to forcefully keep its untamed body in check by extreme ascetic discipline, then so be it. To have outsiders come in to care for its members is not only a loss of face but a potential cancerous infiltation of the mandala.
Prominent Thai websites in the firing line
To the best of my understanding, the process of citizens filing criminal charges in Thailand goes like this (I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong):
A citizen with a complaint can go to any police station to try file a charge because the Royal Thai Police are a unified national entity, regardless of physical location. Police will generally refer such a citizen to the station nearest the location where the alleged crime was committed–in a case concerning a newspaper article or internet message board, the case could be filed anywhere. Police generally also only accept cases from injured parties.
If police accept the complaint (i.e. let the citizen file the charge), police will then investigate the matter, summoning the accused to answer charges and consulting with police experts from other areas if need be. This process can take anywhere from days to months or more, depending on complexity of the case and other aspects of the situation. At this stage, for minor offenses, police may try to get the accuser and the accused to reconcile. Police will then decide whether to refer the case to the public prosecutor, who then considers the case and decides whether to persue it in court. If the prosecuter decides to prosecute, the case usually begins in the court where the complaint was filed (in this case Khon Kaen Provincial Court).
So for this Fah Diew Kan/Prachatai case, from the reports it would seem that Royal Thai Police in Khon Kaen have accepted the incitement accusation (thank you Bangkok Pundit) and are probably now in the course of investigating.
My mistake earlier for skipping directly to the courts–I jumped the gun and caused confusion. Sorry.
Borders of rubber
[…] a few debates about whether what is happening in PDR Lao is good for the farmers but interestingly, rubber could be an economically viable alternative to the opium, the main cash crop which used to be grown in these […]
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
“Historically speaking, employing astrology is NOT non-traditional, non-mainstream mysticism and superstition, even if modernist Buddhists would like to imagine that to be the case.“
Well, it may have happened frequently anyway but, DN 2 says:
“Whereas some brahmans and contemplatives, living off food given in faith, maintain themselves by wrong livelihood, by such “animal” arts as:
reading marks on the limbs (e.g., palmistry);
reading omens and signs;
interpreting celestial events (falling stars, comets);
interpreting dreams;
reading features of the body (e.g., phrenology);
reading marks on cloth gnawed by mice;
offering fire oblations, oblations from a ladle, oblations of husks, rice powder, rice grains, ghee, and oil;
offering oblations from the mouth;
offering blood-sacrifices;
making predictions based on the fingertips;
geomancy;
making predictions for state officials;
laying demons in a cemetery;
placing spells on spirits;
earth-skills (divining water and gems?);
snake-skills, poison-skills, scorpion-skills, rat-skills, bird-skills, crow-skills;
predicting life spans;
giving protective charms;
casting horoscopes –
he abstains from wrong livelihood, from “animal” arts such as these.”
Scholarly comments on religion and the cyclone
In a related note, given Ingrid Jordt’s comment in Burma’s Mass Lay Mediation Movement that the SPDC’s recrowning of the Shwedagon Pagoda’s Htidaw (finial) in 2002 and the country’s lack (at the time) of any large-scale natural disaster was seen as an indication of the regime’s overwhelming parami and thus karmic legitimacy, the New Light of Myanmar carried an article on May 13th in which they assured all concerned that an assessment team had “conducted a survey to find out whether the Htidaw (Umbrella) of Shwedagon Pagoda was tilted at an angle due to the storm” and that despite the cyclone, the “Shwedagon Pagoda’s Htidaw remains intact“.
The dictator proclaimed: The vote must go on
[…] Mandala is shocked to discover that a state-run newspaper in Myanmar reports the impact of the Cyclone Nargis only on […]
Royalist propaganda and policy nonsense
Now there are news reports about the Minister to the Prime Minister’s Office Jakrapop Penkae having made speeches abroad referring to things unpleasant about the monarchy. Can anyone get hold of these texts and make them available? Many thanks.