Hardliner tries to reform Thailand’s Buddhist monks behaving badly

[Disir]

Think Buddhist monk, and bodyguards and bomb threats probably don’t spring to mind. But that’s exactly what Phra Buddha Issara is dealing with as he mounts a campaign to overhaul Thailand’s religious institutions. The activist monk has earned plenty of enemies since he launched a campaign to clean up Buddhism in Thailand, urging the country’s 300,000 monks to be more transparent in their financial dealings and the religion’s governing body, the Supreme Sangha Council, to crack down on wrongdoing.

There have been monks with girlfriends (and boyfriends), drunk monks crashing cars, monks pocketing wads of cash meant for funerals and monks playing the stock market. And that’s not even mentioning the monks-on-meth or the selfie-snapping, Louis Vuitton bag-wielding, private jet-taking monk scandals of 2013.

Buddha Issara has been leading the charge against financial misconduct and says that, far from rocking another core pillar of Thai society, this is the perfect time to be overhauling religious institutions, too.

For the past year, Thailand has been governed by a military-led junta that has used ever more dictatorial powers to crack down on opposition politicians, human rights activists and the press.

“Since we are cleaning our house we should leave no dirt anywhere, we should clean every corner,” Buddha Issara said in an interview in an open-air pavilion at Wat Ornoi, his temple on the outskirts of Nakhon Pathom, a city vaunted as the place where Buddhism first flourished in Thailand.
Hardliner tries to reform Thailand s Buddhist monks behaving badly World news The Guardian

And Issara supported the overthrow of a democratically elected government. I have been watching Thailand for a bit. I don't think this is going to turn out well.

 

[Mr. H.]

Sounds like Christianity in the U.S.

 

[Disir]

It sure does.