"Using direct observations of the surrounding landscape and the tangibel artifacts of the city, its topography, streets, temples and other stunning architectural monuments, Barry Bell carries out a progressive investigation into Bangkok's ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thomas Merton’s Bangkok Lecture of December 1968Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, OSBPreparations for the Meeting and its PurposeAfter being elected abbot primate of the Benedictine Confederation in September 1967, I was encouraged by discovering that the Benedictines and the two branches of the Cistercians (those of the Common Observance and those of the Strict Observance, or Trappists) worked together on missionary issues through an office in Paris called Aide (...) à l’Implantation Monastique (AIM).1 After World War II many new monastic foundations were made in the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and South America, commonly referred to as the Third World. These fledgling monasteries needed special care that frequently could not be provided by their founding monasteries in Europe or the United States. AIM sought to fill that gap. There existed an unwritten agreement among the three superiors of the two branches of the Cistercians and the abbot primate that the historical differences in the West among those following the Rule of Saint Benedict would not be emphasized in the new areas of expansion.One of the purposes for establishing AIM was to plan and organize meetings of monks and nuns in those vast areas of the world.2 Thus, AIM and its staff acted as the prime instrument for pulling together all the threads that went into the meeting in Bangkok in December 1968. They ultimately were responsible for selecting inculturation as the main theme to be treated.At that time, I noticed that this theme was frequently being discussed among us Superiors General in Rome, especially among those religious congregations with newer foundations in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and South America.3 Many came to realize that this theme was important, not only for newer houses, but also for older ones in the Third World, as they too were rethinking how they engaged the cultures in which they had been implanted. We superiors devoted many meetings to this theme, bringing in experts in theology and anthropology to reflect with us on current thinking and to animate our discussions. Because of the positive treatment at Vatican Council II of the other great religions of the world, this theme was “in the air” at that time. In the Far East the question of inculturation for Catholic missionaries was not a new one in itself, as Christians had been posing it since the time of the first missionary efforts in China and Japan centuries before. For monks, however, it was being asked for the first time and with some urgency. Monasticism [End Page 91] posed questions of adaptation and accommodation in cultures already possessing deeply rooted manifestations of a similar way of life that went under the same label. Thus, since there was already a concept of monasticism and the existence of monks in Asian cultures, the Bangkok meeting was an occasion for reexamining the question of inculturation.At that same time there was a heightened sensitivity to any sign of a residual colonialism in many parts of the Third World. When Western groups made no attempt at inculturation, it was interpreted as old European cultural colonialism, or, as some were beginning to say, new American economic imperialism.When some Benedictine and Cistercian superiors in Asia suggested inculturation as the theme for this meeting, they added the suggestion that superiors of the founding monasteries in Europe and the United States should attend the meeting and interact with the superiors of the local houses. These superiors felt it was important for the founding superiors to gain a better understanding of the issues involved in cultural adaptation and that they be willing to give to the local superiors a broader berth for future developments. For this to occur, the presence of experts at the meeting was also imperative. It was then that Merton’s name was suggested. It was rightly felt that he was well informed about both Eastern and Western forms of monasticism and would be a font of insights and a ready guide for the discussions. In addition, his views—everyone agreed—would be well accepted by the Western superiors. Since the two languages of the meeting were to be French and English, Merton could also... (shrink)

Collectively, Atkins examines their pursuit of sexual justice, the ideologies of manhood they challenged, the different types of gay spaces they created (geographic, architectural, online), and political obstacles they have encountered.

Drawing on extensive Thai literary and oral history sources this article sets out to explain the complex social, political, ethnic and religious framework within which the opening by ‘the Irish Buddhist’ U Dhammaloka of a free, bilingual and multi-ethnic Buddhist school at Wat Ban Thawai, Bangkok in May 1903 acquires a broader and deeper significance. The article documents the mutual relationships between the local Buddhisms of Tai, Burmese and Lao ethnic minorities and the politics of British-Siamese alliance in the (...) period before and during the First World War. It examines the British-Siamese support of these Buddhist communities in Bangkok and explores the British-Siamese use of their diplomatic relationship with the Tai, Burmese and Lao ethnic minorities in Ban Thawai and elsewhere (i.e. across the borders between Siam and Burma) in order to centralize power. It also discusses the anomalous effect of British and French influence in Ban Thawai which allowed local resistance to Siamese centralization and saṅgha reform. (shrink)

This study tests the Buddhist hypothesis that observance of Buddhist Five Precepts leads to subjective wealth, and happiness. Gotama Buddha defined happiness as the result of subjective wealth: having wealth, using wealth, not being in debt, and engaging in a harmless profession. Four hundred residents of Bangkok participated in the study by responding to scales assessing the extent of their observance of the Five Precepts, subjective wealth, and domain satisfactions and life satisfaction. Regression analyses were used to test the (...) hypothesis. The results confirm that subjective wealth mediates the relationship between observance of the Five Precepts and happiness. Happiness begins by not transgressing upon oneself and violating others, and may depend less on what one has than on what one has left after paying off the bills. (shrink)

This study operationally defines Buddhist belief in merit , Buddhist religiousness and examines their relationships with life satisfaction. Four hundred Buddhist merit makers at a temple in Bangkok participated in the study. LISREL models show that Buddhist belief in merit predicts Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction, and Buddhist belief in merit mediates the relationship between Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction. The different conceptualizations of Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction and their difference with reference to the future and the present (...) are discussed. Buddhist religiousness-life satisfaction nexus is then examined against western religiousness-life satisfaction relationship. (shrink)

This study examines the relationships between violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts, money consciousness, and the tendency to pay bribes among organizational employees in Bangkok, Thailand. A total of 385 organizational employees in Bangkok participated in the study. Structural equation models were used to test the relationships. The fitted model shows a mediation effect of money consciousness on the relationship between violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts and the tendency to pay bribes. Results indicate that the extent of (...) violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts is associated with money consciousness to predict the tendency to pay bribes. Observing the Buddhist Five Precepts and not allowing money consciousness to influence behaviors may reduce ethical problems. (shrink)

This essay investigates the political economy of sexuality through an interpretation of sex shows for foreigners in Bangkok, Thailand. Reading these performances as both symptoms of, and analytical commentaries on, Western consumer desire, the essay suggests the ‘pussy shows’ parody the mass production that was a hallmark of Western masculine identity under Fordism. This reading makes a case for the erotic generativity of capitalism, illuminating how Western, post-Fordist political economy of the post-1970s generated demand for these erotic services in (...) Asia and how Western, heterosexual masculine desire is integrated into global capitalist circuits. (shrink)

Governmentality is a spatial formation negotiated within historically-constituted political landscapes. In Bangkok, this spatialization of power is manifested in the militarization of urban life and the protocols of security procedure, but also in anti-government protests and an increasingly politicized visual culture. The memory and meaning of the city’s streets exist as an overlooked legibility that challenges the visual strategies of government control. Monuments, travel routes, and other public sites of national recognition now compete in an extended urban arena of (...) images, such as literature and cinema, which re-stage governmentality and the material contours of Thailand’s contemporary political disagreements outside of its institutional norms. I read this intersection between governing and image circulation through the development of a visual economy in Bangkok and depict how different communities—including a bureaucratized military and a populist political party, but also writers and filmmakers—intervene in its circulation. Each group zooms in on key spaces of the city in the attempt to speak to changing forms of governmentality. (shrink)

Canonical texts -- Philosophy -- Literature and History.

The primary question this article deals with is one of ontology. In a dystopian world populated with genetically engineered windups and hybrids, what constitutes ‘the human’? This article looks at how the posthuman body in a dystopian novel like The Windup Girl, set in a world where geographical, political, social, economic and religious norms and boundaries are erased and reconfigured, can in no way simply remain a mere body, but transmutes into a highly complex political and social site from whence (...) multiple relations of power originate, travel and culminate in. The titular character in the novel, Emiko, is a genetically engineered windup created in a laboratory, with obedience and the need to please etched right into her DNA. This makes her a prized possession for a brothel owner in Bangkok, once her Japanese master abandons her. She is both desirable and revolting to her customers at the same time – her perfect body is too perfect, her genetic urge to please at any cost draws them in, but her involuntary shaking and robot-like jerking disgusts them. The windup can thus be seen as both the Lacanian object cause of desire and Kristeva’s abject body. (shrink)

In Southeast Asian countries (SEA), road transport accounts for the main energy consumption and CO2 emission. Air pollution is a major concern in densely populated cities such as Bangkok, Manila, and Kuala Lumpur. The main objective of this paper is to give insights on trends of transport development, car ownership, and CO2 emissions in Southeast Asia. This study also attempts to review the successful transportation policies around the globe and to introduce the possible instruments that can help reduce air (...) pollution in Southeast Asian countries. Economic instruments to estimate the benefits of a cleaner environment due to new policies are introduced as well. The results of this research could help policy makers consider approaches that could internalize external costs of transportation and maximize the societal welfare. (shrink)

This short conference paper serves as a distillation of a keynote address delivered at the the Second National Conference on Management and Higher Education Trends & Strategies for Management & Administration hosted by Bangkok-based Stamford International University (Thailand) on November 1, 2014. Innovation is discussed as the heart of entrepreneurial processes occurring in today's capitalist economic systems, including transition economies like China and Vietnam, which underscores economic competitiveness of firms and economies. But the innovation effort and process also face (...) dilemma of "entrepreneurial curse of innovation". Advantages and disadvantages are weighed for a more balanced view, especially in the context of outnumbering SMEs and given existence of pitfalls and traps along the innovation path of development. Toward the end, the value of the market is once again stressed amid the concern of subjective assumption and illusion about availability of market opportunities in the mind of innovators, which may contrast totally with the dismal outcome the actual market realities may show ex post. (shrink)

Research funders, regulatory agencies, and journals are increasingly expecting that individual-level data from health research will be shared. Broad consent to such sharing is considered appropriate, feasible and acceptable in low- and middle-income settings, but to date limited empirical research has been conducted to inform the design of such processes. We examined stakeholder perspectives about how best to seek broad consent to sharing data from the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, which implemented a data sharing policy and broad consent (...) to data sharing in January 2016. Between February and August 2017 qualitative data were collected at two sites, Bangkok and the Thai-Myanmar border town of Mae Sot. We conducted eighteen semi-structured interviews. We also conducted four focus group discussions with a total of nineteen people. Descriptive and thematic coding informed analysis of aspects of data sharing that are considered most important to inform participants about, and the best ways to explain complex and abstract topics relating to data sharing. The findings demonstrated that clinical trial participants prioritise information about the potential benefits and harms of data sharing. Stakeholders made multiple suggestions for clarifying information provided about data sharing on such topics. There was significant variation amongst stakeholders’ perspectives about how much information should be provided about data sharing, and it was clear that effective information provision should be responsive to the study, the study population, the individual research participant and the research context. Effectively communicating about data sharing with research participants is challenging in practice, highlighting the importance of robust and effective data sharing governance in this context. Broad consent should incorporate effective and efficient explanations of data sharing to promote informed decision-making, without impeding research participants’ understandings of key aspects of the research from which data will be shared. Further work is required to refine both the development of core information about data sharing to be provided to all research participants, and appropriate solutions for context specific-challenges arising when explaining data sharing. (shrink)

This volume of Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics includes selected papers from the 24th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, held in Bangkok. The theoretical and empirical papers gathered here cover diverse areas of business and management from different geographic regions; yet the main focus is on the latest findings on evolving marketing methods, analytics, communication standards, and their effects on customer value and engagement. The volume also includes related studies that analyze sustainable consumer behavior, and business (...) strategy-related topics such as cross-border restructuring, quality management standards, and the internationalization of SMEs. (shrink)

This article explores how scholarship can be put to work by specialists penning evidence-based policies seeking peaceful resolutions to long-standing, complex, and so-far intractable conflict in the Malay-Muslim dominated provinces of South Thailand. I contend that more is required than mere empirical data, and that the existing analysis of this conflict often lacks theoretical ballast and overlooks the wider historical context in which Bangkok pursued policies impacting its ethnolinguistically, and ethnoreligiously diverse citizens. I demonstrate the utility of both interacting (...) with what social theorists have written about what “religion” and language do—and do not—have in common, and the relative importance of both in sub-national conflicts, and comparative historical analysis. The case studies that this article critically introduces compare chapters of ethnolinguistic and ethnoreligious chauvinism against a range of minorities, including Malay-Muslim citizens concentrated in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. These include Buddhist ethnolinguistic minorities in Thailand’s Northeast, and Catholic communities during the second world war widely referred to as the high tide of Thai ethno-nationalism. I argue that these revealing aspects of the southern Malay experience need to be contextualized—even de-exceptionalized. (shrink)

Deformation of ground during tunnelling projects is one of the complex issues that is required to be monitored carefully to avoid the unexpected damages and human losses. Accurate prediction of ground settlement is a crucial concern for tunnelling problems, and the adequate predictive model can be a vital tool for tunnel designers to simulate the ground settlement accurately. This study proposes relatively new hybrid artificial intelligence models to predict the ground settlement of earth pressure balance shield tunnelling in the (...) class='Hi'>Bangkok MRTA project. The predictive models were various nature-inspired frameworks, such as differential evolution, particle swarm optimization, genetic algorithm, and ant colony optimizer to tune the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system. To obtain the accurate and reliable results, the modeling procedure is established based on four different dataset scenarios including preprocessed and normalized, preprocessed and nonnormalized, non-preprocessed and normalized, and non-preprocessed and nonnormalized datasets. Results indicated that PPN dataset scenario significantly affected the prediction models in terms of their perdition accuracy. Among all the developed hybrid models, ANOFS-PSO model achieved the best predictability performance. In quantitative terms, PPN-ANFIS-PSO model attained the least root mean square error value of 7.98 and a correlation coefficient value of 0.83. Overall, the attained results confirmed the superiority of the explored hybrid AI models as robust predictive model for ground settlement of earth pressure balance shield tunnelling. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 181-183 [Access article in PDF] Keeping the Faith: Thai Buddhism at the Crossroads. By Sanitsuda Ekachai. Edited by Nick Wilgus. Bangkok: Post Books, 2001. 192 pp. Sanitsuda Ekachai, editorial columnist and features section editor of the Bangkok Post, writes this book in the Menckanian tradition of muckraking journalism. A collection of columns from the past decade, the book has an angry goal—the reform (...) of a corrupt Thai Buddhist sangha. Somehow, however, the author manages to accomplish the task without an angry or bitter tone. One suspects that this is because she has the goods. In thirty-six short features and twenty-one even shorter editorials, Ekachai paints a damning picture of a corrupt Theravada Buddhist sangha that has lost touch with both its religious tradition and its lay constituency.She presents overwhelming evidence of the corruption. She tells several well-publicized stories of sexual scandals involving bhikkhus and mentions a dozen more. She carefully tallies the possessions of rich bhikkhus and richer temples. She makes clear the unrepentant patriarchy of the authoritarian Buddhist hierarchy and reminds us of the un-Buddhist character of a sangha that will not allow the ordination of bhikkhunis. And she argues that the root cause of much of this drifting from Buddhist ideals is a buying into the consumerism that has gripped much of modern Thai culture.This last point—consumerism—is important. If the book has a theme—always a tall order for a collection of articles—it is the economic enslavement of Thai culture and the sangha to capitalistic values. Of course, the West is the culprit here. Since Thailand, strictly speaking, has never been colonialized, the West managed to corrupt Thailand (or Siam as some prefer) simply by being in the area. As one of Ekachai's key informants, Sulak Sivaraksha succinctly put it, "Siam is culturally and intellectually colonized because the country identifies itself closely with the West" (161). [End Page 181]A close second as a theme, however, is patriarchy. Patriarchy, not Buddhism, is the root of the gender imbalance in the sangha. The Buddha embraced (a bit reluctantly to be sure) the order of bhikkhunis and made it clear his reluctance was an upayic or strategic matter, not a question of the spiritual status of women. Women are as able as men when Enlightenment is the question. Patriarchy is also at the root of Thailand's shameful sex industry—one in thirty women in Thailand is a prostitute. The culture is at fault here, a culture that sees women as objects rather than persons.Sivaraksha ties consumerism and patriarchy together when he says, "In a consumer society, the seeking for endless sensory pleasures and possessions has become the ultimate quest while Buddhism teaches about letting go" (75). The combination of testosterone-blocking celibacy and baht- driven greed has been too much for the modern bhikkhus of Thailand.Not all bhikkhus, however. Ekachai's book rises above the level of pure muckraking through the simple expedient of offering hope. She tells a dozen or more stories of enlightened (small "e") bhikkhus who are taking steps at reform. By "ordaining" (and thereby protecting) endangered trees in a forest. By teaching the dhamma instead of occultism. By showing economic restraint in the face of runaway rapaciousness. These are inspiring stories of bhikkhus named Buddhadasa, Dhammapitika, Udompatanakorn, Kutajitto, Supajarawat,Visalo, and Kabilsingh. Hope is personalized in these reformers.Reading between the lines, one can imagine a response to Ekachai's overwhelming case: the traditional Thai sangha is organized to serve rural village folk. Although the traditional village still exists in Thailand, it is becoming an endangered species in the face of the urbanized juggernaut. The sangha simply hasn't discovered the keys to reaching a changed constituency. Reading between the lines, one suspects that the author would wholeheartedly agree with this defense. Only she wouldn't consider it a defense but a reason, and a well-known reason at that. Her rejoinder would be that the current leadership must know it is out of touch, but still refuses any move... (shrink)

In 1999, Médecins Sans Frontières set out to explore and demonstrate the feasibility of preventing and treating HIV/AIDS in a so-called resource-poor, economically and socially disadvantaged setting. The first MSF mission to incorporate antiretroviral treatment into its HIV-AIDS-oriented medical program was undertaken in Bangkok. The second project was launched in Khayelitsha where MSF has been providing ARV treatment for persons with HIV/AIDS since May 2001. Khayelitsha is an enclave of some 500,000 inhabitants, most of whom live in corrugated-iron shacks, (...) without running water or electricity. Unemployment is extremely high; crime and violence are rampant. The general prevalence of HIV/AIDS is 26%, measured among pregnant women. The tuberculosis incidence rate is one of the world's highest for open-space sites. Unsurprisingly, TB/HIV coinfection is very high too: 63% of those with TB are also infected with HIV. (shrink)

Moore’s paradox is the fact that assertions or beliefs such asBangkok is the capital of Thailand but I do not believe that Bangkok is the capital of Thailand or Bangkok is the capital of Thailand but I believe that Bangkok is not the capital of Thailand are ‘absurd’ yet possibly true. The current orthodoxy is that an explanation of the absurdity should first start with belief, on the assumption that once the absurdity in belief has been explained (...) then this will translate into an explanation of the absurdity in assertion. This assumption gives explanatory priority to belief over assertion. I show that the translation involved is much trickier than might at first appear. It is simplistic to think that Moorean absurdity in assertion is always a subsidiary product of the absurdity in belief, even when the absurdity is conceived as irrationality. Instead we should aim for explanations of Moorean absurdity in assertion and in belief that are independent even if related, while bearing in mind that some forms of irrationality may be forms of absurdity even if not conversely. (shrink)

In March 1993, in preparation for the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights, representatives from the states of Asia gathered in Bangkok to formulate their position on this emotive issue. The result of their discussions was the Bangkok declaration. They accepted the concept of universal standards in human rights, but declared that these standards could not overridet he unique Asian regional and cultural differences, the requirements of economic development, nor the privileges of sovereignty. : The difficult and (...) powerful dichotomies raised in Bangkok, and their particular relevance to China, are explored in the ten essays contained in this book. The underlying political, cultural, philosophical, legal and economic issues which cut across the human rights spectrum are also considered. The writiers themselves are Chinese and Hong Kong scholars, or leading political figures who are involved in the current human rights debate. The ultimate goal of the book is not to resolve the issues raised in Bangkok, but to expose some contours of discussion in a way that is fresh and accessible. (shrink)

Young men who have sex with men younger than 18 years are often excluded from HIV prevention research in Thailand due to cultural attitudes toward youth sexuality, social stigma, and difficulties obtaining guardian permission. Culturally sensitive focus group discussions conducted with parents and YMSM in Bangkok, Thailand, identified barriers and facilitators related to minors’ participation in HIV prevention research. Although gender and class differences emerged, mothers and fathers were generally accepting of research to reduce HIV risk but not in (...) favor of waiver. Youth’s positive attitude toward parental permission was tempered by concerns about harms posed by disclosing same-sex attraction through permission forms. (shrink)

This volume of Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics includes selected papers from the 24th Eurasia Business and Economics Society Conference, held in Bangkok. The theoretical and empirical papers gathered here cover diverse areas of business and management from different geographic regions; yet the main focus is on the latest findings on evolving marketing methods, analytics, communication standards, and their effects on customer value and engagement. The volume also includes related studies that analyze sustainable consumer behavior, and business strategy-related (...) topics such as cross-border restructuring, quality management standards, and the internationalization of SMEs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 109-111 [Access article in PDF] Seventh International Buddhist-Christian Conference David W.Chappell Soka University of America Pack your bags! The annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies in Nashville decided that the next international conference will be held August 5-12, 2003, in Chiang Mai, Thailand.An invitation was extended to the society by Dr. John Butt, director of the Institute for the Study of Religion and (...) Culture (ISRC), and by the president of Payap University, Dr. Boonthong Poocharoen. As a Presbyterian faculty member of the McGilvary Faculty of Theology, John has extensive interreligious experience in Thailand and participated in the society's last international conference held in Tacoma, Washington, in August 2000.The institute's associate director, Professor Saeng Chandrangam, is a former Buddhist monk and is one of Thailand's most highly respected Buddhist laymen. He was Chair of the Department of Oriental Studies and the Department of Modern Languages and was Dean of Humanities of the government's Chiang Mai University, where he taught philosophy and theology. Currently he teaches at a Buddhist university in Chiang Mai as well as serving as the associate director ofISRC. Also, Donald Swearer, who has been active with the society since the first international conference in 1980, will be in residence in Chiang Mai in the springs of 2002 and 2003 and can help plan the conference.Payap University was founded in 1974 by the Church of Christ in Thailand, a consortium ofThai Christian congregations begun by Presbyterian, American Baptist, and Disciples missionaries. However, about 95 percent of Payap University's nine thousand students are Buddhist since Chiang Mai is centrally located in the Burmese-Thai axis with the heaviest concentration of Buddhists in the world. As a result, the conference will be set in a context of Protestant missions within a Theravadin Buddhist culture. This setting will increase the presence of conservative and evangelical Christians, as well as Theravadin Buddhists, to serve as an important balance to the already strong Mahayana and Catholic dialogue leaders in our international conferences. John wrote that "Holding the next conference here would demonstrate that there are other forms of Christian faith quite different from that represented by the evangelical missionaries" and that there are other ways of understanding and approaching other different religious communities. Accordingly, a possible theme [End Page 109] might be "Rethinking Mission Motivation and Practice (both Buddhist and Christian) for the Twenty-first Century."Chiang Mai is a city of a population of about three hundred thousand that preserves much of the charm of traditional Thai culture, while also having modern conveniences like Western fast foods and ATMs, but has not yet succumbed to the congestion of Bangkok. Its weather should be in the eighties or nineties and its hotels are inexpensive (about twenty-five dollars per day for two). The meetings at Payap University will be in air-conditioned rooms in a picturesque setting. Payap has three campuses and is affiliated with the McCormick Hospital. It offers twenty-four undergraduate degrees, as well as master's degrees in divinity, linguistics, business administration, international business, Teaching English as a Foreign Language, philosophy, and Christianity.Payap University can draw on considerable experience for hosting foreign programs. The vice president for external affairs, Martha Butt (wife of John), heads a committee that has planned, developed, and operated the in-country segments of all the Thai Elderhostel programs involving over three thousand participants. Also, they will be joined by faculty members from Mahidol, Chulalongkorn, and Thammasat Universities, including Dr. Parichart Suwanbubbha of Mahidol University, a Thai Buddhist (with a degree from Chicago comparing the concepts of karma and grace), who attended the Tacoma conference in 2000.ISRC is located on the Crystal Spring campus of Payap University and was founded in 1996 to serve as a research and study center for scholars and others interested in the comparative study of religion and culture. The institute's primary goal is to provide and nurture a broad ecumenical religious vision for the people ofThailand and Southeast Asia and for others visiting or working... (shrink)

This article investigates three distinct lineages of the transmission of the ancient Theravada meditation, boran kammatthan, in Siam from the late Ayutthaya to the Thonburi and Rattanakosin periods, as well as the survival of two of them as living practices. It traces the Ayutthaya lineage of the Supreme Patriarch Suk Kaitheun back from Wat Ratchasittharam in the present to Wat Pa Kaew in the sixteenth century. It also looks at the transmission of boran kammatthan from Wat Choengtha and other temples (...) in Ayutthaya via Wat Hongrattanaram to Wat Intharam by King Taksin and the Supreme Patriarchs of Thonburi under his support in the eighteenth century. It finally looks at the continuing transmission at Wat Pradusongtham from the 1750s to the present. Key meditation teachers, covered in this article, include the Supreme Patriarchs of Thonburi and early Bangkok periods, as well as King Taksin. Overall, by documenting more than one transmission from a historical point of view, I argue in this article that there could be various meditation lineages that transmitted diverse practices within the broad framework of boran kammatthan. (shrink)

The author was a Bengali officer of India's Foreign Service. On his first foreign assignment during 1948 - 1954, he came across rare manuscripts at the National Library in Bangkok covering Rabindranath Tagore's visit to Thailand in October 1927. Having learnt the Thai language and being a Tagore aficionado, this discovery was fortuitous. "As the Poet travelled mostly without a stenographer, a great many of his speeches would have been lost to posterity. Reports about the Siam visit available in (...) India then were extremely sketchy..... Besides the material on the Poets visit to Thailand, this book contains some other important documents not readily available. The main treatise is split into four chapters: Time to Awake: A Poets Warning, Tagores Conception of History, Message to Asia And Africa and The Toiler for Peace. These chapters show what Tagore considered to be the biggest problem of human history, how he warned humanity for more than half a century against the problems and perils into which the world has been thrown today, what remedies he suggested to counter them. The author also condensed the Poet's ideas about civilisation and culture, freedom, power, diplomacy, colonialism, military alliances, racial prejudice and nationalism." This book, when first published during the Poet's centenary celebrations in 1961, provided for the first time a full account of that visit. It has since been a reference source for many Indian and international scholars on Tagore, with citations in their publications. With increased attention in recent years to Tagore's views on Nationalism, a republication for wider availability would benefit both readers and scholars on Tagore's view of global events during the inter-War period. This is the only republication of the book after sixty years. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Life and Writings of Edmond Pezet (1923–2008)Pierre Gillet and Jonathan A. SeitzIn the context of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in Thailand, the life and writings of Fr. Edmond Pezet (1923–2008) are remarkable. He lived among the poor and in a Buddhist monastery, and he also experienced the eremitic life in the forest. According to the Indian Zen master Ama Samy, “Pezet gained an intimate experience and knowledge of Buddhism by (...) living with Thai monks.” Here I introduce a recent Society of the Auxiliaries of the Mission (SAM)1 work that offers a biography and some writings of Edmond Pezet, Edmond Pezet, a Priest among Buddhist Monks in Thailand.2This publication is a collection of various writings of Edmond Pezet: correspondence and nine articles published in various magazines in French, Thai, and English. It has been edited by Henri Huysegoms, a Zen practitioner in Japan for the last forty-five years, and Pierre Liesse, an activist who worked for a couple of years in Thailand. These authors have been impressed by two characteristics of Pezet. First, because he was born in a very poor family in rural France, Pezet identified himself with poor people working hard to earn their living. Second, he was a very committed scholar who successfully learned to speak English, Thai, Lao, Sanskrit, and Pali.Edmond Pezet did his military service in Vietnam, where he was the helpless wit was the helpless witness of torture committed by his regiment fellows on Vietminh suspects. This led him to return there in the future as a missionary, to compensate for the harm he saw caused to the Vietnamese people. Back in France, he completed his study of theology. In 1947, his father was crushed by a truck in front of his eyes. He managed to combine his study and work on the land to provide for his family’s needs. He served as a priest in the diocese of Cahors (France) for a few years. Afterwards, he joined SAM in Belgium.At the end of 1956, he was sent in the northeastern part of Thailand. Faithful to the objectives of SAM, he wanted to serve the local bishop unconditionally, but he quickly noticed a painful reality. Christians and clergy alike followed “a religion, with a dreamlike heaven, rose-water-scented, as its goal, and, in order to get there without fail, certain ‘tricks,’ recipes, ceremonies and representations accompanied by a goodly number of rags and trimmings, where one cannot very easily see the connection between the two things.”3 He wrote that he was stunned to see the way religion was taught to catechumens. They were asked to assimilate, by memorizing [End Page 195] questions and answers, dogmatic assertions expressed with words borrowed from Sanskrit that nobody understood. This inadequate education went hand in hand with a lack of knowledge of Buddhism, sometimes accompanied by scorn. “The Christians were deliberately uprooted from the spiritual richness and religious experience of their race … especially the clergy! (kept apart from their people from the age of 10 to 27). They were taught to administer on the model of the French parish priest of last century.”4His Thai bishop, to whom he opened his heart, did not see any problem in that situation and advised him to get used to it, but for Pezet it soon became unbearable. In 1970, Pezet’s life took a decisive turn. He went to Bangkok. There, he learned Sanskrit and Buddhism at the university level, and for three years lived in the house of a Buddhist monk, helping him to write introductions to Buddhism for foreigners. It made him discover a world of spiritual wealth he had not suspected.What he learned was not a new doctrine presented as absolute truth, because Buddhism does not present its core teaching that way, but a “doctrine” that is expressed exclusively in existential values, something not to be taught, but experienced. Buddhism, he discovered, does not deal with transcendence, because it does not engage in speculative discussion. In Buddhism, this transcendence can only be perceived in the depth of immanence.In a letter of that time, he noted that his bishop had warned him not... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Formless SelfNewman Robert GlassThe Formless Self. By Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 174 pp.For the past seven years I have been deeply involved in a worldwide experiment in global education. Students in the Comparative Religion and Culture (CRC) Program study the world's great religions for ten-week terms in each of East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, totaling one academic year (...) in all. Recent programming has taken place in Taiwan, Thailand, India, Nepal, and Turkey, with stops in Rome and Athens. Students have met with Buddhist and Christian teachers in Kyoto, Sojiji, Eiheiji, Taiwan, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Bylakuppe, Dharmsala, Jerusalem, Rome, Athens, Ankara, and Istanbul. As part of their academic work, students write responses to each encounter and engage in term-end and year-end reflections on their own work. The program brings to light, in a very powerful way, some of the fundamental questions in cross-cultural study and interreligious dialogue. How do we come to understand a religion or culture other than our own? In analyzing their own work, students find themselves using terms from a Jain teacher's talk in Sravanabelagola to frame their response to the Dalai Lama's talk in New Delhi, and terms from the Dalai Lama's talk to understand and respond to the audience with the Pope in Rome. As the students become more sophisticated in understanding issues in interpretation, new questions are posed: How many people (other than ourselves) do we unknowingly bring to understanding an encounter with an other? When we use the Dalai Lama's talk in interpreting the Pope, does this enlarge our understanding of Catholicism, diminish or distort the Pope's message, or create something new altogether? What do we gain and what do we lose?Joan Stambaugh's The Formless Self is "an attempt to present Eastern ideas, or at least oneWestern interpretation of Eastern ideas, toWestern readers in a meaningful way" (p. x). The most referenced names in the index are Heidegger, Nietzsche, Plato, Keirkegaard, Descartes, and Meister Eckhart. These, then, are the key figures Stambaugh brings with her as she enters into conversation with the three Buddhist thinkers Dogen, Hisamatsu, and Nishitani. The latter two figures are themselves well known for their conversations withWestern thinkers. Stambaugh's book is best located within the larger body of work within and about the Kyoto School, that school of Japanese philosophy identified primarily with Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji, and more recently with Abe Masao. In the United States, this school of philosophy reached its zenith of popularity in the late 1980s, culminating in an American Academy of Religion (AAR) award to Abe Masao's Zen and Western Thought and a series of annual AAR dialogues between Abe and John Cobb. Abe's presence hovers over Stambaugh's book as well, from an acknowledgment in the preface (p. x) to a reference in the index that seems to encompass the whole book. The Formless Self is a good short introduction to key beginning texts [End Page 300] in this larger field: Dogen's Genjokoan, the Hisamatsu-Tillich dialogues, and Nishitani's Religion and Nothingness.Stambaugh has in print translations of a substantial number of Heidegger's texts, including a recent translation of Being and Time. As might be expected, she seems to have a special affinity for Dogen's Uji (Being-Time; see especially pp. 31-40), and makes a creative contribution to the different understandings of these difficult concepts. Stambaugh also makes a brave attempt to work with Dogen's discussions of fire turning to ashes, fish in water, and mountains walking/ranging (pp. 39-48) in a productive way. Stambaugh's middle section on Hisamatsu may be the best place to begin, centering as it does on the dialogues with the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich. In 1957, the Zen Buddhist teacher and scholar Shin'inchi Hisamatsu was a visiting professor at Harvard lecturing on his recently published book Zen and the Fine Arts. Though Tillich's aesthetic approach to "ultimacy" made for a fine series of dialogues with Hisamatsu, the numerous difficulties in the dialogue serve as a warning... (shrink)

Despite the stereotypical, outsider view of Thailand as a thriving hub of international sex tourism, traditional and local constructions of Thainess instead privilege the position of the ‘good’ Thai woman—a model of sexual propriety, demure physicality and aesthetic perfection. This is the image of femininity that is heralded by Thailand's Tourist Authority and by government agencies alike as a marketable symbol of cultural refinement and national pride. But this disturbing ‘utopian’ construction of femininity might for some be considered a dystopia (...) shaped by forms of power centred on elite urban rule. In mainstream definitions of Thainess, the monstrous and grotesque inverses of ‘good’ womanhood are located in the ‘dystopian’ visions of rural-based folk traditions that abound with malevolent female spirits and demons, and in the contemporary Thai horror films that draw on these tropes. Adopted by Thai feminists and by street protestors in Bangkok at times of recent political unrest, portrayals of a ‘monstrous-feminine’ have been adopted as central to a carnivalesque strategy of response and resistance to elite discourses of control. Such forces serve to symbolically disturb and destabilise middle-class constructions of a Utopian vision of Thainess with Bangkok as its cultural core. This paper examines instances of how and why the counter-strategy of primitivism and monstrosity has developed, and the extent to which it translates ‘dystopian’ expressions of female sexuality in new imaginaries of ‘dystopia’ as a space of liberation from stultifying cultural and political norms. (shrink)

When one visits Thailand, one is struck by the enormous number of temples in the urban Bangkok area, many of which are conspicuously absent from the more cherished art historical works on the art and architecture of south-east Asia. The Wat Po complex and Wat Reitmit, one discovers, whatever their virtues for the Western tourist, are not among the temples and archaeological sites mentioned in the text of such an authority as Benjamin Rowland. Nor are these temples—when cited at (...) all—discussed in the same vein as, for example, the Konarak temples of Orissa , where at least some veneration is paid to the plasticity of the carving in its depiction of sexual variety, even if the depictions themselves were at one time held to possess little or no intrinsic merit as pieces of sculpture. (shrink)

The meaning of the word shaman (of Tungus origin) has become obscured by numerous, increasingly different interpretations. The term has also been applied to practitioners who live outside Siberia, and are actually called by different names in their respective countries: bomoh in Malaysia, ma khi in Thailand, and tany-di in Singapore.Because I did not want to rely on secondary sources, I went to Southeast Asia to find contemporary shamans. Having started my research in 1960 I was able to witness, over (...) a thirty-one year period (during visits lasting from several months to a year), the continuation of shamanic traditions among different groups living in multiethnic and multi-religious societies. What struck me most was the emergence of new shamans in urban centers like Singapore and Bangkok. (shrink)

Ten Jataka Stories. I. B. Horner. Mahamakut Raja-vidyalaya Press, Bangkok. 93pp. 50p.

Between 1987 and 1997, Thailand experienced a bubble economy. When the bubble economy exploded in 1997, the country suddenly experienced an economic crisis: it was in heavy debt and became financially controlled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The problem was caused by the country’s desire to rapidly change itself from an agricultural country to an industrial one, without considering its own comparative advantage in that its climate and resources are more suitable for agriculture. Thailand also wanted to become a (...) newly industrialized country and a inancial hub of Southeast Asia without considering its readiness. These ideas came to a halt after the bubble economy explosion. However, just after Thailand managed to solve its debt problem with the IMF, thegovernment once again declared its desire to turn the country into the ‘Detroit of Asia’, to develop the capital, Bangkok, into the region’s fashion hub and to launch a substantial number of mega-projects, albeit with the existence of a widening economic gap between the rural and urban areas. This economic trend became known as “Thaksinomics” with reference to the name of the Prime Minister at that time, Thaksin Shinawatra. On the other hand, there has been a great deal of criticism of such a trend, which has been seen as a capitalist move promoting the consumerist behaviour of Thai people. There is, therefore, a call for Thai society to review itself, especially in its social and economic development aspects, and a change to a new kind of development with an emphasis on self-reliance andmoderation. This call is based on a Buddhist belief which is reflected in the old Thai way of life. This kind of economy is called “Self-Sufficiency Economy” as opposed to a capitalist-consumerist economy. It is believed that this new direction will help lay a strong foundation for the Thai economy and provide it with a high level of immunity for progress towards a more stable and sustainable economy. (shrink)

The article discusses the first attempt to establish an independent bhikkhu-saṅgha in England in 1956 and the reasons that this initial attempt failed. The account draws on testimony from George Blake, one of the monks ordained under this initiative. After a short contextualization of the situation in which Blake met with Buddhism in London, there follows a further discussion of two issues on which his evidence sheds fresh light: the falling out of the British monk Kapilavaḍḍho with Luang Por Sodh (...) (Phra Mongkolthepmuni), the abbot of Wat Paknam in Bangkok; and the move away from the teaching of the soḷasakāya meditation at the English Sangha Trust in London. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of selected papers presented at the Second Asia-Pacific Computing and Philsosophy Conference, which was held in Bangkok, Thailand in January 2005. The conference was organized by the Center for Ethics of Science and Technology, Chulalongkorn University on behalf of the International Association of Computing and Philosophy (www.ia-cap.org). Computing have had a long relationship with philosophy, starting from the problem of how symbols being manipulated in computing bear a relation to the outside world, to those (...) of artificial intelligence, robotics, computer simulation, and so on. Moreover, as computer technologies have become thoroughly pervasive in today's environment, there are also issues concerning social and ethical impacts brought about by them. The papers in the volume represent a wide variety of concerns and various dimensions within which computing and philosophy are related. Furthermore, it also represents some of the first attempts to highlight cultural dimensions of computing and philosophy, which became prominent when the conference was held for the first time within the milieu of an Asian culture. (The First Asia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy was held in Canberra, Australia.) Hence, many of the papers in the volume address this added dimension. Apart form the usual problems of how computers and human lives are interconnected, the papers here also discuss how computers are related to human lives as lived in a specific culture. Thus the book breaks a new ground and should be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students who are interested, not only on computing and philosophy generally construed, but also on this exciting new dimension of how the cultures of Asia, the West, and others bear upon the traditional issues in computing and philosophy, and on how this dimension raises some new concerns and agenda. Among the topics discussed in this volume are: political online forums in Saudi Arabia, e-democracy and structural transformation of public sphere, the Buddhist informational person, a glance into the lives of computerized generation in Thailand, technology and journalism in the market, local approaches and global potential (?) of information ethics, computer-enhanced good life, computer teaching ethics, and many others. (shrink)

Jinamahanidana. The National Library - Fine Arts Dept, Bangkok B.E. 2530. 2 vols: 1 - Pali text, 2 - Thai translation.

Cakkavaladipani. The National Library - Fine Arts Dept, Bangkok B.E. 2523.