by Ben Barber

            As I sip a cold drink at an outdoor table, an unusual arrangement on 
            a chair in front of the neighboring bar catches my attention. Amid 
            Bangkok's racket of amplified bar music and the clatter of passing 
            motorcycles and three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxis, someone has set a 
            makeshift altar filled with offerings on a folding chair on the 
            sidewalk. 
            On a battered aluminum tray is a glass of wine next to an empty cup 
            holding twin incense sticks, sending up spirals of pungent smoke. A 
            candle burns as well, and a small garland of jasmine blossoms lies 
            in its growing spillage of wax. Completing the offering is an open 
            Styrofoam take-out container of noodles and squid, such as any 
            ordinary Thai might eat for lunch or dinner. 
            I have returned to Thailand after a few years' absence to report on 
            the changes in its culture, economy, politics, and religion after 
            achieving the world's highest growth rates during the late 1980s and 
            early '90s. I had heard that the unique brand of Thai Buddhism was 
            in the midst of a huge change. Young men no longer were eager to 
            spend three months as a monk. Thai people no longer had the time or 
            the money to prepare rice and other foods for the monks who passed 
            each day in search of offerings. Sex and money scandals had 
            bedeviled the Sangha, or monastic brotherhood. And a new pressure 
            was driving the Thai away from their rice fields and buffalo, from 
            their lives of sanuk, or pleasure--the pressing need to earn money. 
            But John, a business writer and close friend who has lived over 
            twenty years in Thailand, tells me I am dead wrong if I think that 
            the rapid introduction of modern, Western lifestyles is weakening 
            the Thai people's belief in Buddhism. "People want to do the 
            Buddhist rituals, but they say they don't have the time anymore," 
            says John. "It doesn't mean they don't believe." 
            As I travel to the south and north, I discover that he is right. 
            Everywhere are signs that Thai Buddhism remains incredibly alive, 
            even if it has increasingly reverted to its magical, pre-Buddhist 
            roots. On the bus from Nakhon Pathom to Bangkok, the driver has hung 
            thick coils of flowers, amulets, and other magical items from his 
            mirror. A statue of Buddha sits on the dashboard. Ancient symbols 
            are scrawled on the roof above the driver's head. 
            At a major traffic crossing is a small spirit house, resembling 
            those that most Thai place at the corner of their property. In a 
            naked, public place adjacent to six lanes of busy highway--where in 
            America one would see a traffic sign or electric utility box--stands 
            this object of no apparent utility. Yet it holds fresh flowers and 
            two plastic bottles of drinking water. Someone tends that shrine. 
            Someone has paid ten baht for fresh flowers and clean water. 
            Floating away 
            In Thailand, Buddhism has been virtually a state religion for 
            centuries, with the king playing a ritual role. Public schools are 
            still located in temple compounds. There is a Muslim minority in the 
            south and animist hill tribes in the north, both accorded full 
            freedom, but 95 percent of Thai are Buddhist. Their faith is built 
            on veneration of the monks and a foundation of pre-Buddhist magic, 
            especially the belief in phi (spirits of the dead or of sacred trees 
            and animals). 
            An educated Thai woman I met in Khorat several years ago told me 
            that after she married a U.S. Air Force officer and moved to 
            America, she stopped believing in the phi. But when he retired and 
            they returned to Thailand, the phi came back to her. So she resumed 
            the tasks Thai perform to propitiate these spirits: maintaining a 
            spirit house with flowers and food; sprinkling holy water obtained 
            from the monks in and around the house; tying sacred thread around 
            objects in the home; or bringing the maw phi, or witch doctor, to do 
            a magic ceremony that traps the phi in ajar, which is covered and 
            then floated away down the river. 
            "For the tuk-tuk driver, Buddhism is magic, and he relates to it 
            just as his parents did," says Suwanna Satha-Anand, assistant 
            professor of philosophy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. 
            "Only he has less time. So instead of daily or weekly performances 
            of rituals, they are just semiannual or annual. But living in 
            Bangkok is dangerous, and we need all kinds of help and protection." 
            
            A Westerner who was ordained as a Thai Buddhist monk believes that 
            education and television are undermining the more traditional 
            ethical and moral teachings of Buddhism, even if the magical aspects 
            remain strong. "The old generation saw material progress as a chance 
            to make more merit," he says. Merit is built up by feeding monks, 
            building and maintaining temples, releasing birds and fish, helping 
            the needy, and similar acts. 
            "But younger kids don't have the old mind-set anymore," says the 
            Western monk. `That's where you'll see the divide. My first year 
            that I was a monk, some kids came to the monastery to watch. They 
            were willing to pitch in and help with monastic work and thought of 
            getting merit. In later years, the kids who came were more 
            interested that they could stop by the resorts at Pattaya on the way 
            back to have a good time. The idea of investing in future happiness 
            by making merit was not an exchange they were interested in. They 
            wanted to invest in gratification." 
            He notes that unlike their counterparts in the United States, where 
            religious beliefs are cultivated in Sunday schools and Hebrew 
            schools, "kids don't learn much about Buddhism in Thailand. When a 
            young man is ordained as a monk, he is told about Buddhist doctrine. 
            During a period when I had to teach new monks, I was amazed that 
            they had no understanding. But they loved exorcists, and the belief 
            in superstition and magic was still there." 
            "Buddhism is weakening. The older people say there is no time. The 
            younger say they are just not interested anymore. Partly it's the 
            appeal of the fast life. Television reinforces little kids' greed 
            and impatience. Those traditionally were things you tried to stamp 
            out in a kid. But advertising teaches you to want this thing and get 
            it now." 
            More people, less time 
            If the past fifteen years of explosive economic growth--somewhat 
            punctuated by an economic crisis since July 1997--have undercut 
            Buddhist beliefs and practices, nearly two thousand years of 
            Buddhism have left a deep and permanent mark on this country of 
            sixty million. There are over 275,000 monks and thirty thousand 
            temples. Sacred pointed pagodas dot the countryside. Glittering 
            temples adorn Bangkok and every city and town. 
            I head downtown near the king's Chitralada Palace to the important 
            temple called Wat Benchamabophit. I am to meet one of the nation's 
            senior monks and ask him about what modern life is doing to 
            Buddhism. I wander with my Thai interpreter around the green lawns 
            and peaceful walkways as the afternoon heat gives way to a cool 
            dusk. The monks lean down from their two-story dormitory balconies 
            and point us in the right direction. Young men with shaven heads and 
            saffron robes, they look at the visitors with bright, intelligent 
            eyes. Through open doors and windows I see rooms not unlike those at 
            a college, strewn with books and their few simple possessions. Only 
            their clothing is all of the same, orange hue. 
            Prathep Gee-tee Moonee, 78, welcomes us into his apartment, a long 
            room with an easy chair, television, hanging naked light bulb, 
            stacks of books and pamphlets, and, at the end, a wall of huge, 
            golden Buddha statues. He begins by telling us that more and more 
            people are interested in Buddhism and now have the means and 
            education to study. 
            I ask him why he, a Buddhist monk, has a spirit house adorned with 
            fresh fruit and flowers outside his door. "To pay respect," he says, 
            citing one of the key cultural values in Thailand. "Before the 
            Buddhists, the people believed in ghosts and spirits. I believe 
            there are spirits." 
            I ask about a recent attempt to pass a law officially declaring 
            Buddhism the state religion--a law that was defeated by an assembly 
            drawing up a new constitution last July. He replies, "It is all 
            right if it did not pass because most of the Thai people are 
            Buddhists. Just naturally, we have a majority." 
            But the aged monk admits that modern life has taken its toll on 
            religious values. "In the old days there was a lot of sharing," he 
            says as the sound of frogs croaking in a ditch comes in through the 
            screen door. "Now people don't know each other even if their houses 
            are next door. 
            "There were fewer people in the old days, so each could have a lot 
            of land. But then the parents divided and divided the land among the 
            children. Since each has less, they are greedier now. A lot more 
            people don't own any land. People live along the canals, in slums. 
            There are too many people to be generous." 
            Asked what Buddhism can do to help, he says, "It is up to the 
            individual. We can give [teach] morality but if they don't accept, 
            it cannot help. Some people, even if they have a lot of money, want 
            more money. 
            "I like America. If you make a lot of money, the government takes 
            tax and gives to charity. But investors in Thailand just own things 
            and keep profits." 
            Our conversation occurs just weeks after the Thai baht began its 
            spectacular fall from twenty-five to the U.S. dollar--which had been 
            the rate since about 1982--to fifty per dollar by New Year's Day. 
            Corruption and weak financial management were blamed for the loss of 
            confidence and the subsequent need for a $17 billion bailout led by 
            the International Monetary Fund. The Nation newspaper would report 
            that the financial crisis, which led to closure of factories, 
            thousands of lost jobs, and closure of over fifty finance companies, 
            would also affect the monks. People would offer less food each day 
            and pay less to have monks attend first birthday celebrations and 
            other home rituals. 
            As we leave the temple, I recall the last thing the monk said to me. 
            I had apologized for all my questions, many of which were direct and 
            personal. He answered, standing atop the stairs beside the spirit 
            house, that "asking questions is the way to wisdom." 
            Written on the sidewalk 
            Outside the wat, several young men kick a soccer ball on the 
            deserted street. Aunulak Cotsharin, 20, says he is spending three 
            months as a monk "for his mother." He says he wants to continue his 
            education afterward. "People with more education believe less 
            strongly in religion. Probably they are all spoiled." 
            The majority of Thai monks appear as sincere as the elderly man 
            waving us good-bye, or the young man honoring his mother with a 
            three-month stint as a monk. But heavy scandals have hit the Sangha 
            in recent years. 
            Yodchart Suaphoo, a 21-year-old Buddhist monk, was found guilty of 
            murdering 23-year-old British tourist Johanne Masheder at the Tham 
            Kaopoon temple outside Bangkok. He pushed her into a ravine, smashed 
            her skull and stole about twenty dollars to buy drugs. Before 
            becoming a monk, he had been a criminal and spent two years in jail 
            for rape. 
            In 1994 Thailand's most popular monk made headlines when he was 
            accused of breaking his vow of celibacy with several women. Phra 
            Yantra Amaro Bhikku, a superstar among Thailand's populist 
            evangelical monks, commanded a following of millions, mostly women. 
            A nun accused him of having sex with her on the deck of a ship off 
            Scandinavia. Another woman, a Danish harpist, said that she and the 
            monk had made love in the back of her van on a trip to Europe, while 
            a third, a German psychology graduate, claimed that he had fathered 
            her daughter, now 7. 
            The Thai religious affairs department has been investigating 
            allegations that in one temple monks were involved in drug taking 
            and that women were procured for sex. A monk in northeast Thailand 
            put stillborn babies and aborted fetuses in an oven for love 
            potions. There was a series of rapes of young girls by monks. Then, 
            two monks killed another monk in a feud over money. These scandals 
            have caused some Thai to lose a portion of their unqualified 
            veneration for monks. But many Thai simply accept the scandals as 
            the work of a few bad apples. Their abhorrant behavior does not 
            vitiate the intrinsic value of Buddhism. 
            Indeed, Thailand is widely known for its liberal attitudes toward 
            the pleasures of life, especially sex. Yet even in the bars and the 
            seediest corners of Thailand one finds bar girls, en route to an 
            assignation, putting their fingertips together under their chin and 
            bowing as their tuk-tuk passes Bangkok's Erawan shrine, one of the 
            seven hundred temples in the city. Every restaurant and shop has its 
            shrine, with statues of Buddha but also a ceramic woman beckoning to 
            attract money. Above every doorway are the ancient religious 
            symbols. Certain large trees are decked with floral arrays, amulets, 
            shrines, and other signs of veneration. Along a road one finds a 
            group of old spirit houses, clustered as if at a cemetery for 
            ghosts. 
            I learn from Professor Suwanna of Chulalongkorn University that 
            there are new trends emerging in Buddhism--some consumerist, some 
            ascetic. They are challenging the traditional Sangha, which may 
            respond by trying to suppress them or perhaps moving to adopt some 
            modern reforms. 
            But the real story is written on the sidewalk next to the Erawan 
            shrine in central Bangkok. Each hour, hundreds of people stop by to 
            light a candle or incense sticks and pass a moment in humble prayer 
            or meditation. They are not just the poor and the uneducated. They 
            include students and office workers. And for each who comes in, a 
            dozen more pause outside--at the wheel of a taxi or a Mercedes, or 
            carrying a leather briefcase or a load of fake Levi's shirts. 
            Pressing their hands together in a wai of respect and bowing their 
            heads for a moment, they demonstrate that Buddhism is still alive in 
            modern Thailand. 
            Ben Barber is State Department correspondent at the foreign desk of 
            the Washington Times. This article was researched on assignment.