Dhammakaya, an active, affluent and expanding Buddhist religious movement, became a focus of public attention and media scrutiny in the last quarter of 1998 due to its controversial practice of dogged solicitation for donations to build a grand Maha Dhammakayyaa Jedi Structure worth nearly one billion US$, in the face of severe economic recession. Some Buddhist monks and scholars, both orthodox and radical, attacked the movemen as a distortion and commercialization of Buddhism. If the Dhammakaya movement offers a novel religious package as alleged by some critics, it is worth examining why this consumer product has gained an upsurge of popularity among urban middle classes in modern Thai society. This paper argues that even though capitalistic as the Dhammakaya has been viewed, it is ironically one of the most successful resurgent Buddhist movements in contemporary Thailand. It offers the urban middle classes an alternative path to realize their novel cission of Buddhism and construct their new movement, in turn, manifests the failure of the Sangha in coming to terms with changing Thai society. The first section of this paper discusses how Buddhism has been transformed in the process of modernization. In the second section, I examine the case of Wat Phra Dhammakaya as a new religious movement in contemporary Thailand. The last section discusses the Dhammakaya controversy and its implications.
目次
Abstract 13 Introduction 13 The Reconciliation of Buddhism with Modernization 14 Quenching the Thirst of the Newly-Emerging Urban Middle Classes 16 The Quest for a Utopian Community 16 Superstition versus Rationality 19 Commodification of Merit 21 Dhammakaya Meditation: New Expression of Lay Religiosity 23 The Dhammakaya Controversy 24 Concluding Remarks 26 References 26
