Corruption in sangha offers lesson for all Buddhists

Having always felt a great admiration for Buddhism, I am dismayed by the problems currently plaguing the Thai sangha. It is particularly disheartening to learn that devout Thai Buddhists such as those cited in your excellent article should find it necessary, if they are monks, to disrobe, and, if they are laypeople, to stop visiting temples and even to consider themselves non-believers.

This is like throwing out the baby with the bath water. It also reveals what looks like a very un-Buddhist attachment to external phenomena. If one’s belief in a religion depends on the good behaviour of its clergy and the integrity of its organised body, that belief rests on very shaky ground indeed. If the principles enunciated by the Buddha are true, no amount of misbehaviour by their adherents, no defects in the organisation designed to uphold them, can make them untrue.

Buddhism has traditionally stood on three legs: The Buddha, the dharma and the sangha. If one of those legs has become wobbly, you don’t abandon the other two. You try to fix the wobbly leg. If it can’t be fixed, you soldier on with the remaining two.

If I understand things correctly, Buddhism, like most other religions, is all about personal transformation. Religious organisations are created to support that process. But the process can be carried on even if the organisations are flawed.

In fact, religious organisations sometimes become inimical to the very principles they were created to support. Readers are probably familiar with the truism, “Organised religion is a contradiction in terms”. There’s also an old joke about the devil. Informed that he and all his cohorts were in big trouble because the humans had just discovered religion, the devil laughs and says, “That’s no problem – I’ll just organise it.”

Some years ago, a British monk named Peter Pannapadipo was troubled by some of the less orthodox features of popular Thai Buddhism: the sacred strings and holy water, the charms and amulets, the rites and rituals, the fortune-telling, the blessing of houses, cars, aeroplanes, even bars and nightclubs, not to mention the misbehaviour of fellow monks. After some struggle, he finally decided to “let go” – to stop fretting about all this external excrescence, none of which he could control, and just focus on his own inner practice. He recorded his experiences in the book “Phra Farang: An English Monk in Thailand”.

Disillusioned Thai Buddhists might want to consider the path Phra Peter adopted. They may not be able to control the outer conditions of their religion, but they can certainly control the inner ones. That means turning their attention within and strengthening and deepening their own practice. 

William Page