Table Of ContentBUDDHADASA
THERAVADA BUDDHISM AND MODERNIST REFORM
INTHAIIAND
SILKWORM BOOKS
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0 1987, 2003 by Peter A. Jackso11
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form and by any
means, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 974-7551-91-8
This edition first published by Silkworm Books in 2003
Silkworm Books
104/5 Chiang Mai-Hot Road, M. 7, T. Suthep, Muang,
Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand
E-mail address: [email protected]
Website: http://www.silkwonnbooks.info
Typeset by Silk Type in Garamond 11 pt.
Cover photograph: Buddhadl.u at Suan Mokh C by Feature Magazine
Printed in Thailand by 0. S. Printing House, Bangkok
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CONTENTS
Foreword to the First Edition
• • • • • • • • • • •• V
Preface ••
Vll
• • • • • • • • • • •• ••• • •• • ••
Acknowl~ements •
X1
• • • ••• • •• • • • • ••
Note on Transliteration and Referencing ••
X11
• • • •••
Introduction 1
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •••
The Social and Theoretical Contexts of Buddhadasa' s Work 17
The Sources of Buddhadasa' s Innovative Views 33
•••
Phasa Khon-Phasa Tham: Buddhad~,s Method of Scriptural
Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Buddhadasa on Rcbinh and Paficcasamupp4da 101
•••
Chit Wang and the Abolition of the Monk-Lay Distinction 129
The Practice of Chit Wang 155
• • • • •• • • • • ••
Chit Wang and Zen 177
• • • • • • • • • • • • • ••
Buddhadasa on Modernization and Development 201
•••
Buddhadasa's Political Writings ... 235
• • • • • • •••
...
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Conclusion: Buddhadasa Bhikkhu-Theravada Buddhism's
Conservative Radical ... 259
• • • • • • • • • •••
Epilogue: Buddhadasa Bhikkhu-His Last Days and
His ug3.cy . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 275
•••
Appendix: The History and Teachings of Theravada
Buddhism . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 299
•••
Glossary of Thai and Pali Terms 311
• • • • • • •••
Notes 321
• • • ••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • ••
Bibliography of English Language Texts 353
• • • • ••
Bibliography of Thai Language Texts 359
••• • • • • ••
...
Index 371
• • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • •
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IV
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FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION
THE TEST ofg reatness for any philosophy or religious system is the
success with which it enunciates principles of such universality that
their validity persists through the change and flux of human life
across the ages. The comprehensive reinterpretation of the Thera
vada Buddhist doctrine to which the Venerable Buddhadlsa devoted
more than half a century reaffirms the rich vitality oft hat canon as a
source of guidance to humankind even two and a half millennia
after the Buddha promulgated his teachings.
Buddhadlsa,s life work was to demonstrate the compatibility of
Theravada tenets with modern scientific rationalism, the
accessibility to ordinary persons of the highest goals of Buddhist
teachings, and the integral relationship within a religious context
between ultimate human salvation and the development of a more
just and equitable socioeconomic order in the world of here and
now. Theravada Buddhism is shown to be the edifying refuge both
of mystics whose sight is fixed on the ultramundane and of
workaday people in the street or field striving for a better condition
of life.
Buddhadasa,s attainments won him high praise and a dedicated
following. Conversely, the originality of his perceptions and the
boldness of his insights have raised questions among those of
traditionalist inclination, while cenain of his methods of analysis
and the broad philosophical spectrum from which he bolsters his
arguments have stimulated a variety ofc omment. Peter Jackson, the
V
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FOREWORD TO TIIE FIRST EDffiON
author of this comprehensive and profound study of Buddhadlsa's
thought, thus approaches his task with what he felicitously describes
as "sympathetic engagement," giving full credit to the vigour,
humanitarianism, and depth ofBuddhadlsa's theses, while bringing
a scholar's constructive criticism to bear where he feels it warranted.
Dr. Jackson is a philosopher by intellectual bent and disciplined
training. He is also a lucid writer who, while making no facile
concessions to oversimplification, presents the substance of his
analysis with such clarity and logic that it is assimilable by the
interested layman while amply satisfying the demands of rigourous
scholarship. His work in making Buddhadlsa's distinguished
reinterpretive contributions more widely available to an
international readership is timely, commendable, and important. I
am most happy to take the opponunity to introduce it to the public
as the latest in the series of publications issued by the Siam Society
under Royal Patronage.
Professor Sanya Dharmasakdi
President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists
Bangkok, 10 May 2531 B.E. (1988)
.
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
THE FIRST edition of this book, published by the Siam Society in
Bangkok in 1988 under the title Bwldhad4sa: A Bwldhist Thinlter
for the Modern World, has been out of print for almost a decade.
However, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu's reinterpretations of Theravada
Buddhist teachings in Thailand remain as intellectually and socially
imponant at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they were
when the research for this book was begun almost two decades ago.
It is especially gratifying for an author when his first book can r~raio
a degree of current relevance even after such a number of years and
I wish to thank both the Siam Society and Silkworm Books for
giving me the opponunity to emend and expand upon the first
edition.
This book is an edited version my doctoral dissertation,
"Buddhadasa and Doctrinal Modernisation in Contemporary Thai
Buddhism,,, completed in the Australian National University, s
Department of Philosophy at the beginning of 1986. It is based on
two years off idd research conducted in Thailand. The first research
period was from 1982 to 1983, when I was attached to Silpak.om
University at Nakhon Pathom. My second period of research was
undertaken from 1984 to 1985, when as a recipient ofa Royal Thai
Government UNESCO Fellowship I was attached to the
Philosophy Department of Chulalongkom University in Bangkok.
..
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDmON
The studies detailed here to a large extent reflect the political,
economic, and social situation in Thailand in the first half of the
1980s, when my fieldwork was conducted. While the Cold War
was soon to end and Thailand was about to embark upon its decade
long economic boom, internationally and in Southeast Asia the first
half of the 1980s was still dominated by the titanic clash between
capitalism and communism, liberal democracy and socialist
autocracy. Debates over globalization, the economic crisis of the
late 1990s, and the security issues posed since 11 September 2001
were challenges of the even more remote future. While a few errors
in the first edition have been corrected and some minor stylistic
matters have been addressed, I have not altered the main body of
the text or attempted to reflect on Buddhadisa's position and
relevance in the rapidly changing situation of the new millennium.
This text presents a historical snapshot ofBuddhadasa's ideas and
his intellectual, social, and political influence in the final decade of
his life. It reflects on Buddhadasa's lifetime of thought, writing,
and teaching at a point in time when he was still a living presence in
the religious, intellectual, and political life of Thailand. Sadly,
Buddhadasa left this world in 1993, some ten years after I met him
at his forest monastery of Suan Mokh in southern Thailand's
Suratthani Province. However, I have decided to keep the references
to Buddhadasa in the present tense and have not revised the text to
write of him in the past tense. This is because to large numbers of
Buddhadasa' s followers in Thailand indeed he remains a living
presence. BuddhadAsa' s ideas continue to resonate through the
discourses that surround new social trends such as the NGO
movement and the rise of Thailand's civil society, the on-going
struggles against bureaucratic and political corruption, money
politics and autocratic tendencies, and the intense debates about the
challenges to national autonomy and cultural integrity posed by
globalization.
A new epilogue summarizing the contentious issues surrounding
Buddhadasa's death in 1993 and reflecting on his relevance to
Thailand in the era of globalization is also included here. This
epilogue was written in 1994 at the suggestion of several members
of the Publications Committee of the Siam Society, and it first
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appeared in the society's Journal. I wish to thank the Siam Society
for permission to include this anicle here. However, even this "new"
chapter is now something of an historical document, given that it
was written at the height of the economic boom before the
disastrous crash and the years of national soul-searching that
enveloped Thailand after July 1997. Despite the fact that rapidly
changing socioeconomic and political events have outpaced some of
the issues raised in the epilogue, I hope that readers may nevenhelcss
find it an interesting and useful document.
It is arguably better for an author to revisit his older texts by way
ofa ppending a new commentary rather than by attempting to revise
the entirety of those texts in a vain attempt to reflect all the nuances
of changed conditions and new understandings. There is value in
remaining true to the historical moment in which an idea was first
expressed and when a study was initially undertaken in order to
record the way the world once was and the ways we once thought.
Buddhadasa' s greatness emerges from the fact that his ideas were
relevant in his own lifetime and have remained just as relevant after
his passing. I hope that contemporary and future students of
Buddhad~'s thought may find this l 980s text and its 1990s
epilogue useful in developing their own critical understandings of
"Than Achan's" continuing contribution to Thailand's intellectual
life and to Buddhism's place in the lives of people across the world.
I would also like to take the opportunity provided by this second
edition to thank Dr. Tony Diller for his tremendous encouragement
and suppon during my time as a doctoral student at the Australian
National University. I did not thank Tony sufficiently in the
acknowledgements included in the first edition. Without Tony's
tuition and professional suppon this book would never have been
written. I learnt Thai from Tony, who generously provided daily
one-on-one language tuition over my first summer at ANU. And it
was Tony who first brought Buddhadasa's books to my attention
when he pointed out the unusual ways that the monk used the Thai
language to communicate his ideas on Buddhist doctrine. It was
. also Tony's sage advice that I relied upon in organizing my first
tentative fieldwork visit to Thailand. Indeed, generations of
Australian students have Tony to thank for opening their eyes and
.
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDffiON
minds to "Amazing Thailand" and with his retirement from the
ANU's Thai Language Department he will be a much-missed
teacher and colleague.
Since the first edition of this book was published I have come to
know many more wonderful scholars of Thai religion and Thai
history whose ideas, comments, and wisdom I have drawn upon in
my subsequent research. Those who have been especially helpful in
the writing of the epilogue are Craig Reynolds, Grant Olson, Phra
Santikaro Bhikkhu, Louis Gabaude, and Jim Taylor. My debt of
gratitude to these scholars for their collegial support in the never
finished academic enterprise can be summed up in the following
words of the French thinker, Georges Bataille.
The foundation of one's thought is the thought of another;
thought is like a brick cemented into a wall. It is a simulacrum of
thought if, in his looking back on himself, the being who thinks
secs a free brick and not the price this semblance of freedom costs
him: he doesn't sec the waste ground and the heaps of detritus to
which a sensitive vanity consigns him with his brick.
The work of the mason, who assembles, is the work that matters
.... A philosophy is never a house; it is a construction site.
-Georges Bataille, "Introduction" to Theory ofR eligion
Peter Jackson
Canberra
November 2001
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