The Power and Authority of Monks in the Contemporary Thai Sangha

ABSTRACT

Politics is a frequent subject in scholarship on Theravada Buddhism in Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. However, considering politics, scholars are most likely to talk about the way that states and/or kings interact with sanghas. They rarely consider how monks engage in powerful activities within their sanghas and with lay actors. Using ethnographic interactions with powerful monks from 2014 as a starting point, this paper considers the foundations of power that Thai monks rely on, as well as tools that they can deploy to achieve their goals.

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was supported by the Institute for International Education through a Fulbright hosted by Mahidol University, and the University of Vermont. An earlier version of this was given as a Glorisun Lecture at Oxford. My thanks to Kate Crosby and Pyi Phyo Kyaw for their comments. Erik Davis and Alicia Turner read another version of this and provided valuable feedback. All mistakes remain of course my own.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The ways in which the Thai state is entangled with religion are complicated and beyond the scope of this paper to discuss. Formally, the state guarantees freedom of religion, but the head of state, the king, must be a Buddhist according to all the many constitutions since the first in 1932. On some of these complexities, see Larsson (2020), and on Buddhism and Thai constitutionalism see Khemthong (2023) and Mérieau (2023).

2. There are exceptions. Vandergeest (1993), 851 speaks of premodern monks as participating in the same notions of power as nobles, i.e. bāramī (on which see below), but it is important that he is concerned with premodern underpinnings of Thai societies.

3. See as well a similarly titled chapter by Craig Reynolds (Reynolds 2005) on Buddhism and power in Thailand which also focuses primarily on the ways that non-monastic political actors use Buddhism to attain or maintain power.

4. On Kitthivuddho, see Ford (2017). The reluctance that I am referring to may be more specific to the study of the Thai Sangha than other parts of the Theravāda world, where monks engage in politics more overtly than they do in Thailand, in ways that are both liberal and illiberal, though see Dubus (2017a). For a recent comparative discussion of illiberal monastic politics in Sri Lanka and Myanmar see Schonthal and Walton (2016). For a consideration of the effort to constrain monastic participation in Thailand and its effect on enfranchisement, see Larsson (2015) and Larsson (2016).

5. I find welcome in this context the special focus of a recent issue of the Journal of Global Buddhism on ‘Bad Buddhism’ (Gould and McKay 2020). Even here though, with the exception of Casas’ article discussing monastics in Sipsongpanna, there is a focus on Buddhist discourse and lay Buddhists more than monastics. The point is not that these are not worth attending to (quite the contrary), it is the reluctance to discuss how monks or nuns engage in illiberal or unseemly behaviour.

6. This article focuses on male monastics in Thailand of the majority Theravāda sects, the Mahānikāya and the Thammayut Nikāya. As most readers of this journal will know, there is a small community of fully ordained female monastics in Thailand who are not recognised by the Supreme Sangha Council and led by Bhikkhunī Dhammanada, and a larger group of women renunciates who wear white and take eight precepts, the Mae Chi. The latter in particular has received recent, effective attention in English language scholarship. There are also two relatively small groups of Mahāyāna monastics within the recognised Thai Sangha, the Jin (Chinese) Nikāya and the Annam (Vietnamese) Nikāya, about which there is very little scholarship. While male Theravāda monks are the most visible, obviously Buddhist people in Thailand, and scholars have long treated them as if they were the centre of the religion, my perspective is that we need to analyse monks in Thailand as if they are a specific group of actors. This is not because they are at the centre of Buddhism, but because by both custom, religious law and state law, Theravāda monks are distinct from the rest of the population. Their separation is not complete – indeed quite the contrary – or necessarily permanent. Moreover, male monastic bodies are shaped by gendered discourses and practices that have been insufficiently studied (though see Chladek 2021; Schedneck 2021; and somewhat differently Borchert 2022a).

7. This article is based on ethnographic research within monastic communities in Bangkok focusing on how monks perceive themselves as religious and political actors. The majority of the data was collected through semi-structured interviews between January and June 2014, with follow up visits in June 2017 and July 2018. This research was supported by a Fulbright fellowship and the University of Vermont’s College of Arts and Sciences.

8. The 1941 version of the Sangha Act, article 5, states, ‘The King installs Somdech Phra Sangharāja (the Patriarch)’ (Mahāmakut 1989, 21). There have been three major versions of the Sangha Act, 1902, 1941, and 1962, discussed widely by scholars in English such as Tambiah (1976), Ishii (1986), and Jackson (1989). There was a substantial revision in 1992 and minor revisions in 2016 and 2018. There was also a proposed overhaul of the Act in 2002 that did not move forward (see Kusa 2007).

9. By ‘official’ Thai Sangha, I am referring to the formal institutional structure that is created through the Sangha Acts. Larsson has noted, rightly, that the official Thai Sangha is the product of the Thai state, but also that this official Thai Sangha does not exhaust the forms of Buddhism (or even monastic institutions) that exist in Thailand (Larsson 2018, 4). To complicate matters, however, the official form of the sangha may overlap with other monastic Buddhist identities.

10. ‘ … the sangha’s leaders … are often little known to the people’ (Dubus 2017a, 8).

11. Others, notably Suraphot Thaweesak, have argued that the SSC is a mechanism of state governance.

12. Ford’s 2017 (88–103) account, which relies in part on Jackson, does a much better job of highlighting monastic action, entangled with but analytically separate from that of non-monastic actors.

13. Suraphot Thaweesak quotes a number of monks on why they chose one side or another of the post-2006 Thai political situation, even as he highlights the Thai Sangha as a mechanism of the state. See especially Suraphot ([2011] 2554), 88–91.

14. For example, Claudio Sopranzetti nicely reveals the power of motorcycle drivers, and talks about Buddhism as a social force, but does not recognise or refer to the monks who are at the protests that are at the heart of his ethnography. See, e.g. Sopranzetti (2018, 27).

15. Not all scholars have ignored this, of course. Harris (2007, 3) has noted that ‘The monastic order (sangha) was itself perfectly capable of challenging the state when it seemed significantly out of line with Theravāda virtues. Quite apart from any other consideration, the impact of large numbers of able-bodied monastics in a state of withdrawal from economic activity has done much to shape the societies and cultures of Theravāda lands for centuries, and monastic law (vinaya) has provided the basis on which many larger political structures rest’. True enough but even here, Harris is suggesting that monks doing things are primarily if not solely motivated by maintaining Theravāda virtues. I am assuming that Thai monks, are motivated by a number of different matters, only one of which is virtue.

16. Or, as M.K. Long put it in a paper about thilashin in Myanmar engaged in construction projects: ‘How do nuns get stuff done?’ M.K. Long, ‘Making Merit, Making Kin: Debts of Gratitude in the Biography of a Buddhist Nun’, paper presented at the University of Vermont 4/11/2023.

17. Peter Jackson 2022, 88–91 has used the concept of kānthet in a somewhat different way (and different than van Esterick), to suggest that it provides Thais with a capacity for code-switching when working with European and North American actors in determining whether they are ‘really’ Buddhist, or ‘really’ Animist. I also find useful Bruce Lincoln’s discussion about ‘authorized and authorizing objects, times, and places’ (Lincoln 1994, 7).

18. In conversations, some monks have suggested a fourth legal regime: custom. This latter varies from the others because of its informal nature. For more on legal pluralism and Thai monks, see Borchert (2022b), and more broadly, Schonthal 2017–2018.

19. Thai monks are not supposed to smoke tobacco, but there is nothing in the vinaya that says that cannot or should not. However, many Thais feel it is unseemly for monks to smoke because it points to addiction, and addiction is entangled with one of the three afflictions (greed, hatred, delusion) that produce karma. This is an issue that escapes scholarly attention, but see Borchert (2022a).

20. I asked a monk about this who was working at the wat but not actively participating in the ritual, and he told me that he too could not understand what was being chanted.

21. On the issue of cooling or calming one’s emotions as an appropriate way of being in Thai society, see Cassaniti (2015).

22. For a translation of the 1962 version of the Sangha Act, see Mahāmakuta Educational Council (1989); for the responsibilities of the SSC, see mahathera.org, the section titled: อำนาจหน้าที่ของมหาเถรสมาคม (amnāt nathi khong mahātherasamākhom; accessed 2/4/2024).

23. See for example bbc.com/news/world-asia-37650466, accessed 11/5/2023.

24. Fieldnotes, May 1, 2014.

25. For extensive discussion of Buddha Isara’s roles in Thai politics after 2013, see Prakirati (2019).

26. See for example Nation Weekend (2014).

27. For comparison, these are some of the terms that a standard Thai-English dictionary uses to gloss these terms. Bāramī บารมี: moral authority, majesty, charisma, greatness, stature; power, influence; the Ten Perfections; liberality, morality; renunciation of the world, wisdom, persevereance, forbearance, truth, determination. Domnern and Wannapok (2009): 309.

28. Amnāt อำนาจ: power, authority, control, virtue; jurisdiction. Domnern and Wannapok (2009): 631.

29. Saksit ศักดิ์สิทธิ์: sacred, hallowed, holy, revered, numinous; to be law. Domnern and Wannapok (2009): 520.

30. Reynolds (1994); Borchert and Darlington (2017–2018). Monks can enter into prison to preach to those who are incarcerated. If a monk is forcibly disrobed and found to be innocent, and he has only worn white, then he is allowed to put the saffron robes back on without having lost his seniority.

31. See essays in Cohen (2017), in particular Irwin, ‘Partners in Power and Perfection’, and Amphorn, ‘Khruba Bunchum’.

32. This law is reprinted in Khachaphan et al. ([2011] 2554, 225–226); for more on the regulations promulgated by the SSC, see Borchert (2022b).

33. Soppranzetti notes that ‘Power does not reside in charisma or moral virtue but in the ability to mobilise people, to control and direct popular support according to a complex game of alliances, negotiations, compromises and switching sides’ (Sopranzetti 2018, 249).

34. Two points: First, People sometimes told me that Buddha Isara was able to do what he did because he was backed by Somthi Lingkathul, an important politician who was described sometimes as a luksit (disciple) of Buddha Isara. This is important, but there are other monks that had powerful politicians as supporters. Having a powerful luksit is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a monk to act in the way that Buddha Isara did. Second, while abbots are the least important Sangha administrative officers, they are in fact quite powerful in that they have the capacity to control who stays in their wat. As abbot, therefore, Buddha Isara did not have to worry about not having a temple to stay in if he got into trouble. This was not an absolute prophylactic against his enemies (he was after all arrested and disrobed in 2018), but it was a tool that gave him the capacity to avoid critics.

35. Why do I feel like I’m talking about staff at a university or a certain number of chairs?

36. We need a discussion about what kinds of things monks might want to ‘get done’. What are the projects that are allowed and feasible for monks in 2010s and 2020s Thailand? What are the limits to those projects? I would start with buildings (Irwin in Cohen (2017) points to construction as the epitome of bāramī deployment), but then what kind becomes important. Beyond construction, what other forms of conspicuous consumption is available to monastic actors?

37. These claims were from conversations I had throughout the first half of 2014 in Bangkok. Ironically, some of the same monks who told me about this also told me that they did not need to have the right to vote because as monks they had other ways of deploying influence in society.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Borchert

Thomas Borchert is a Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont.