Today, after a week of temperatures just below 40C, I have chosen to arise early and and write at the small, informal coffee hut attached to the Morning Baan guest house in Kanchanaburi. I have been staying in a small cottage at the side of the guest house for the past few weeks. It is a tad expensive at £60 ($90) a month, plus bills. The bills in question normally come to about £3 a month but I manage to get by anyways. The coffee hut itself offers Nescafe instant, a local brand of decaffeinated coffee and yellow label tea, if one is so inclined, in a completely self-service format. They also supply marmalade and toast, both of which are as much appreciated by the ubiquitous ants as by the customers.
One of the reasons for choosing this particular location, apart from the obvious pecuniary advantages, is its all pervading quietness. The only disturbance experienced is the singing of the birds and the odd scattering of dried up leaves as a lizard runs full-pelt through the detritus, often on its hind legs.
It is a good place to sit and think, and a good place to write. Since publishing last week's effort, events concerning the Dhammakaya temple have become ever more dramatic with claims and counter-claims being bounced back and forth by those involved in the dispute. A former aid to Phra Dammachayo, Mano Laohavanich, has come forward and made scathing criticisms of some of the financial misdoings of the organisations and, in particular, of the leaders themselves. Having made such accusations, he says that he now fears for his life and has asked for appropriate protection. He may well have a point. The connections of Wat Dhammakaya are far-reaching within Thai society, including some high ranking civil and military figures.
Oddly, images from Dhammakaya services somehow remind me of the Neuremberg rallies of Germany in the 1930s, not sure why...
All such shenanigans seem a very long way indeed from anything Gautama Buddha propounded two and a half thousand or so years ago. Dhammakaya seems to be a very status and rank conscious organisation within which, at least according to its critics, position and status is more related by the ability of the devotee to pay for appropriate merit than it is by deeds, character or spiritual attainment. There is also much criticism of the type of 'Buddhism' being taught at Dhammakaya. Mostly, this concerns such things as the ignoring of even such basic Buddhist concepts as non-self (anatta), and the somewhat obsessively materialistic nature of Dhammakaya preachings (to say nothing of the lifestyles of some of those running the organisation).
Perhaps at this point it should be stated that the Thai Buddhists, even those of the Dhammakaya sect, are by no means unusual in this. It seems to be the fate of all human organisations to change, dilute and essentially corrupt whatever system of belief they were originally intending to promote. A couple of examples might suffice to clarify the point. There are many possible of course, this process seeming to be almost ubiquitous in human affairs.
Firstly, in the religious area, we could take the Christian church and the early influence of the Emperor Constantine. Due to political pressures at the time (around CE 325) it became necessary for the Roman empire to try to create a unified church rather than the endless disputes that fractured early Christianity. To this end, the conference of Nicea was called which established the notion of the divinity of Christ, stated which gospels were to be included in the Canon (and perhaps more importantly, which were to be left out), and imbued the nascent Roman church with much power.
Over the centuries since, many schisms have occurred within the church, usually as a result of devotees within perceiving the all too apparent corruption of the status quo and, as a reaction, choosing to establish another Christian order. Within an all too short a period of time though, the same process occurs, and the inevitable corruption sets in. Organisation, in and of itself, and perhaps by its very nature, seems to invariably lead to the misinterpretation, distortion and corruption of whatever message was originally intended to be communicated.
Essentially, if one looks at the history of Buddhism, Islam or any number of other religions, one will find much the same kind of process occurring. As we progress further and further from the source, it seems to be more or less inevitable that the underlying and pure message will become more and more contaminated. As stated last week, if one is interested in a given spiritual view then it seems wiser to go to the source rather than rely on any subsequent interpretations through churches, temples or any other body that involve self-interested men. I would recommend to anyone who is inclined towards such spiritual matters to go to the source, go to the writings or speeches of the originators of these spiritual systems, rather than rely on later interpretations by those within the system who may have had other things on their minds (power, money, influence, etc) than the spiritual advancement of people.
In politics, much the same sort of process occurs with a truly alarming regularity. For a very obvious example, I could cite my own recent visit to China, when it was all too readily apparent that whatever was going on there in the name of communism, it was about as far removed from anything that Marx or Engels would have advocated as one could get.
In the US and the UK in recent years, those inclined towards capitalism and idealistically recommending that 'market forces' be allowed to dictate circumstances suddenly found themselves asking for massive state intervention (policies much closer to socialism or even communism) when they themselves were threatened by a sudden deterioration in the financial situation.
One could go on citing examples almost indefinitely. The process of corruption and misinterpretation are very much the norm once an organisation such as a church, a movement or a party are formed; so much so in fact that I am hard put to think of an exception...
When such widespread and ubiquitous corruption is seen from religions to government, from the so-called forces of law and order to scientific bodies (supposedly ruled by logic but all too often dominated by the usual urges to power or to have influence) it seems small wonder that some give up hope that any such human organisation can ever be free of such urges.
Many people have been struck by such thoughts as these in the past, from the early days of the cynicism of Diogenes of Sinope (famous for barrel living...) and Crates of Thebes, to such relatively modern-day luminaries as Henry David Thoreau and Mikail Bakunin. Often, the response they have recommended comes under the general term of anarchism, a term often misused to imply a state of chaos, but which actually is more concerned with returning the power in organisations, particularly governments, back to the individuals and away from the centre.
Perhaps Thoreau put it most succinctly when he said: "That government is best which governs least". He added, as an afterthought, the clarification: "That government is best which governs not at all!"
Naturally, this attitude can (and maybe should) be applied to many other forms of human organisations, not just government.
Back outside the simple coffee house in the garden of the Morning Baan guesthouse, the sun is reaching its zenith and it is time to seek some kind of escape in a slightly more modern, and hopefully air-conditioned, establishment. Fortunately today, there is a slight breeze coming off the river, rendering the environment just about bearable. Tis a beautiful place, despite the presence of a few timber huts dotted here and there, one is very conscious of being in natural surroundings. It seems that wherever one goes in Kanchanaburi, wherever nature has been allowed to predominate it is invariably rather beautiful. The ugliness only comes when the humans start to interfere...
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