Vesak:
Buddha’s Unfinished Business in Thailand
By Craig Warren Smith
On May 9 the moon over Bangkok will be bright and the streets empty. Why? Because in 1950 the World Fellowship of Buddhists arbitrarily decided that the moon’s fullest day in May would each year mark Buddha Day, what Thais call Visak.
So what does Visak mean for Thais this year? It is tempting to answer: time to go shopping.
Hmmm. Filling up one’s shopping cart at Siam Paragon may not be a good way to celebrate the legacy of the Sakya prince who for over 2500 years has inspired the civilized world to look beyond material pleasures to find the deeper meaning of their lives.
Instead, Beyond that Thais – particularly the country’s leaders — should consider three compelling factors that make Buddha Day relevant to Thailand today.
- EDUCATION: Shedding its status as a religion, Buddhism is being reborn as a secular learning process called “mindfulness.” Mindfulness is an essential skill for every Thai, not just monks. It could bring new life to Thailand’s antiquated educational system.
At a time when Asians get their values from the West, that are surprised to learn that Westerners increasingly get their values from Asia. America is Buddhism’s new Mecca. It started about 40 years ago, when Buddhist adepts from Southeast Asia, Korea, China and Tibet found San Francisco as their new watering hole. As these separate Asian cultural influences canceled out each other, Buddhism spread through US universities and emerged as a secular philosophy called “mindfulness,” a sophisticated way of training the mind which has replaced the West’s idiotic fixation on Freudian psychology as a way to cope with stress. At least 1,000 peer-reviewed journals explain how health care systems can achieve their aims more quickly, less expensively and more ethically if they incorporate mindfulness into their therapies.
But stress-reduction is not all that mindfulness can do. Some of America’s most prestigious neuroscience labs have produced functional magnetic resonance images that prove how mindfulness can make the brain more pliable (they call it by the fancy word “neuroplasticity,”) and therefore a basis for interactive learning. “Learning how to learn” is a 21st century art, says the Dalai Lama. One of his students, the best selling author Dan Goleman explained that mindfulness is the key to “emotional intelligence,” suggesting the more than cognitive skills are involved in learning. Like Goldman, MIT Professor (and AmericanBuddhist) Peter Senge has sold millions of books proposing that educational systems be remade into mindfulness-inspired “learning organizations.” He says mindfulness presents a shield against addictions. Thais could use mindfulness to tackle alcohol, sex and smoking addictions.
- THE ECONOMY: A Buddhist philosophy called “sufficiency economy” is not just an ethical plaything of the monarchy. It could be the key to a distinctly Thai approval to economic stimulus: mindfulness help revive GDP while at the same time halting mindless consumerism and lessen global warming.
It may be a good thing that that ASEAN Summit in Pattaya didn’t happen. Thailand did not offer its own home-grown model of economic stimulus to offer to their ASEAN partners. “Buddhist economics,” a term introduced by EF Schumacher in 1973 refers to the notion that, after meeting basic needs, economies need not be geared to endless consumerism but to the cultivation of fundamental human values. His Majesty the King embraced this notion, renaming it Sufficiency Economy. Thanks to the Crown Property Bureau, Sufficiency Economy is becoming part of the national education curriculum, but it could go further to become the basis of economic transformation. The Thai National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) should take notice.
- DEMOCRACY: Mindfulness is a key to strengthening citizen participation in Thailand and, by so doing, solving the tug-of-war between red and yellow shirts. Democracy could grow from the bottom-up.
Democracy isn’t just about “one man, one vote,” a notion that can be corrupted through vote buying and debased through crass populism. Democracy works when citizens participate, rather than wait for government to fix things. As noted by the Dalai Lama, Buddhism is ultimately democratic in that it focuses on helping each citizen make his own free choice about how to find happiness.
Thai democracy has been high-jacked as a political slogans by red shirts and yellow shirts. oriented and Yellow-shirted coalitions. The Thai government should take a cue from Paiboon xx, the former deputy prime minister, by
Again, the question of how to bring interactive learning to the village level through mindfulness practices should be a serious topic for the NESDB, who could formulate an economy based on technology-assisted interactive learning in which mindfulness becomes a driving force.
WHERE TO START?
The Prime Minister should ask the Education Ministry’s Commission on Basic Education to bring mindfulness into the school curriculum. He should ask the Science & Technology Ministry’s NECTEC into a design center for software based on mindfulness principles. He should ask the National Telecommunications Commission for regulations that cause Thailand’s mobile operators to bring mindfulness learning applications to cell phone users in Thailand.
To fulfill the meaning of Visak, leaders of Thailand must offer an alternative to the vapid “lifestyle” concepts promoted to consumers. The life choices of the Buddha lead not to consumerism but to happiness. Thus, Visak offer the course-correction that Thai society needs. To be stewards of the Buddha’s own vision, they must bring this lifestyle into the 21st century using all the tools at our command.
Craig Warren Smith, is the Director of the Meaningful Broadband Working Group at Chulalongkorn University. This month he is the resident meditation teacher in Amanjiwo, a resort located near the ancient Buddhist temple Borobodur, Indonesia. www.amanjiwo.com.
Center for Science, Technology, and Society 