Craving Buddhism
Re: "Save true Thai Buddhism", (PostBag, May 2).
I appreciated Felix Qui's letter, and especially his endorsement of the Kalama Sutta. If Thai Buddhism is to be reformed, it will have to be by practising Thai Buddhists, not by outside foreign interlopers like Felix Qui and me.
The experience of the late, great Thai reformer-monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906-1993) is instructive. Buddhadasa wanted to get back to the original Buddhism, before it got junked up with fortune-telling, temple fairs, amulets, merit-making, and similar accretions. He identified the central insight of the Buddha as a Pali verse that translates as "Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to." No clinging to what you have, no grasping for what you don't have -- that was Buddhadasa's ideal. No craving, in short.
Unfortunately, craving, otherwise known as wanting things, seems to be hard-wired into the human psyche. Telling people to stop wanting things is like telling them to stop breathing.
The late MR Kukrit Pramoj realised this, and engaged Buddhadasa in an exchange of views. If nobody wanted anything, Kukrit maintained, nobody would ever do anything or buy anything. All social and commercial activity would grind to a halt.
Not so, contended Buddhadasa Bikkhu. People would continue to act, but in a spirit of detachment, without wanting anything. Left unanswered was the question of why people would bother to act if they didn't want something.
The conundrum seems insoluble, except by an unpalatable compromise. An interpretation of Buddhism that would promote Buddhist principles but still ensure a functioning society might encourage believers to reduce their wants to the greatest extent possible, but still want enough to keep society going.
This is a craven retreat from anything resembling pure Buddhism, and I would welcome alternative solutions from concerned readers.