A pagoda in the air: Thailand's moralistic mega-project

In it, a visitor would have no hint to remind her that at Ratchaprasong intersection just a stone throw away dozens were killed in the government’s crackdown exactly two years earlier and thousands were commemorating their deaths that very day. 

The fair attendants may be forgiven for conveniently blocking out the memory of the bloodshed altogether, as they have been convinced time and again by “moral leaders” that the deaths were unavoidable collaterals and Thai society will be fine again if all of us strive to be “moral”. 

However, hyper-moralization is not the answer to Thailand’s political problems. Such Manichean perspective actually fuelled them, as a great number of Thais came to see red-shirt protesters as an evil force to be vanquished. Therefore, they not only did not bat an eye lid at the Ratchaprasong crackdown but even cheered it on. 

This zeal has been on the rise since the beginning of our current political turmoil. In 2008, yellow shirt leader Sondhi Limthongkul said in an interview, “I think that new politics must start with thammaphiban [good governance] on the basis of thammathipattai [the sovereignty of the Buddhist teachings]. Thammaphiban and thammathipattai together are true democracy.”  Before last year’s general election, Army Commander-in-Chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha urged voters to not to elect “bad people”, with a not-so-subtle aim at Pheu Thai candidates. 

More recently, Wasan Soipisut, Chairman of the Constitutional Court, said in relation to the draconian Article 112 or ‘lese majeste’ law that, “Laws can be written in any way. More importantly, if the people are moral, there will be no problems. Therefore, I would like to suggest that it’s better to change people’s behaviors than the law.”  This moral zeal will soon be epitomized by the planned new parliament building modeled on the 700-years-old idea of a Buddhist heaven. This is no place for multiculturalism and secularism.

The problem with all this, even if we pretend for the sake of argument that Thailand is a Buddhist theocracy, is that the Buddha never touted his teachings to be a panacea for all problems. On the contrary, his Noble Truths require us to identify and address the root causes of problems like a doctor who prescribes different medicines for distinct diseases.

Rather than seeing Dhamma as a one-size-fits-all answer, the Buddha astutely understood social problems in social terms. In Kuttadanta Sutta,  he cited economic and administrative solutions to a social problem. In Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta , he provided a cautionary tale of how moral solutions can have disastrous consequences when blindly applied to social problems. 

In the story, as poverty and thefts became rife due to maldistribution of wealth, the king first tried to solve it by giving property to help the offenders. When this gave rise to even more thefts as everyone wanted to be rewarded, he ordered their heads to be cut off. The thieves then armed themselves and acted more violently to avoid arrest and punishment. This goes to show that, without addressing its cause, the two moral stances – unthinking compassion and morality policing – did not solve the problem but made it worse. 

The distinction between statecraft and morality is recognized in the Tipitaka. In Temiya Jataka, the future-Buddha deliberately feigned to be dumb and mute to avoid inheriting his father’s throne, because ruling a state would involve immersing himself in the political gray areas where moral black-and-white would not do. Even with his wise and compassionate guidance, the enlightened Buddha couldn’t turn any of his royal patrons into a peace-lover. 

 

Founded on rules

Buddhism itself, like all aspects of human civilizations, is also founded on rules and other worldly conventions – as distinct from the Dhamma. (Those who disagree with the importance of conventions should, for example, burn their clothes and money.)

Far from shunning worldly solutions, the Buddha approved of and applied them to the society of monks he founded. Borrowing best practices from the Vajjian confederation’s political system, he established rule-based Sangha governance with relevant rules for real-life situations, rather than leaving it all to the monks’ moral discretions. In fact, he once told chief disciple Sariputta that the longevity of his religion would depend on appropriate promulgation of rules for the conduct of monks who transmit the Dhamma.  

In Nitisart Naew Phut (“Buddhist approach to laws”), venerable Phra Brahmagunabhorn PA Payutto explained, “Human society is built on mutual agreements. This is why it’s called sammati (“mutually agreed”). These mutual agreements are critical because civilizations prosper based on them… That’s why the Buddha taught both ultimate truth and sammati truth… For example, when it’s communally agreed, a particular monk is then bestowed with the authority to keep or to distribute robes.”   

 It’s not difficult to see why “holier than the Buddha” fanatics became louder in contemporary Thai politics. Moral zeal serves as a smoke screen to distract society from seeing things hidden under the magician’s cloak: a broken system and corrupt individuals with vested interest in the status quo. 

The simple truth, however, is: a broken system needs structural fixes, not morality. When a law is found to be outdated, it should be amended. Telling people to be ‘moral’ is deceitful. When governments fail, it’s imperative to improve the political process, not praying for “good people” to save the day. No longer acceptable is a government of ‘good people’ to take power by tearing down mutually agreed rules like the Constitution. 

In the Buddha’s time, people had little control over the tyrannical systems under which they lived. Today, democracy – if we live in one  – allows us the hope to create a better society for all. Its process is an open-ended evolution which is  –  to quote John F Kennedy –  based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions. This is how progresses are made in other parts of the world, but it seems to have eluded the ‘more moral’ Thailand with our cycles of coups and state-sanctioned violence.

In Payasi Sutta , the Buddha told a parable of two friends who went on a search for something valuable. Although both started with a pile of hemp, one continued to discard what’s he’s carrying for better things along the way while the other refused to cast it off because he had been carrying it for too long. 

Thai society must ask itself which man it takes after, whether we want our institutions to be hemp or gold in the end. Oligarchy or democracy? The Law of the Three Seals or democratic constitutionalism? At the very least, don’t we deserve a government which wouldn’t turn guns on its own people or a legal system which presumes innocence rather than prejudges guilt?

Moral evangelism serves to hide evil done by ‘good people’, who often only pay lip service to it without practicing it. In stead of blind faith, true Buddhists should regard “good people” with healthy skepticism. If a “moral” leader is sincerely concerned about corruption, the best thing he can do is to lead by example and transparently declare his assets – rather than blowing his own horns or point fingers at others. Otherwise, he would be no more trustworthy than the crane in Baka Jataka  who volunteers to transport fish to a bigger pond only to eat them all.

It’s true that how a country is run should, to an extent, reflect its spiritual ideals, but it cannot be based entirely on them. Just as a pagoda’s base must keep in harmony with the aesthetic ideals of its pinnacles, but it cannot be built in the same lofty manner because it must bear the weight of the whole structure under the laws of physics – not aesthetics. 

Thailand, therefore, must first re-strengthen its democratic base with solid foundation of transparency, accountability, equality, justice and human rights, upon which spirituality can prosper and help it rise higher. Without such a base grounded in social and political realism, however, its moralistic mega-project will always remain a vain pagoda in the air conjured up by illusionists to hide ugly reality.