Presentation: Sanga Metta Project for HIV/AIDS
Ajaan Laurie Maunde, Director of the Sangha Metta, located at Wat Si Supoi, Chiangmai

January 2003

In January, 2002, I met with Ajaan Laurie Maunde, an Australian who directs a UNICEF funded project on HIV/AIDS education in Southeast Asia, but mostly in Thailand. His offices were located then at the Wat Chedi Luang. In January, 2003, our students had the opportunity to meet him and receive a slide presentation concerning his work. He had recently moved his office to Wat Si Supoi and he now has a relationship with another influential temple in Thailand, Wat Suan Doi, home to a Lanna campus for the other Buddhist order's university in the Mahanikai order. Here are the notes from both of those experiences with Ajaan Laurie, a gentleman with an apparently ceaseless amount of energy and commitment to this work.

January 2002:
Ajaan Laurie has been at this work for thirty years. There are 2 million HIV positive people in Thailand. In 1984 a Gay man who contracted it in USA brought it to Thailand. At first it was confined to the gay male population then to IV drug users with the spread of heroine in the mid 1980's. In the 1980's for the King's 60th Birthday, he gave a general amnesty to prisoners which allowed numerous HIV positive drug users free. Pimps and commercial sex as well as intravenous users are affected. 60% of commercial sex workers are HIV positive.

The virus spread quickly to wives and newborn babies. The common practice for young males to visit a prostitute for the first sex meant that, when the men married, they were already infected and transmitted the virus to their heterosexual wives and to their babies. Women would tend to discover their problem within 1 year of contracting, ie. through birthing, but men would usually be 5 years removed from their contraction, thus women tend to live longer because they get help earlier.

94% of the 2 million people who are currently have AIDS are heterosexual. 2% of the cases are transmitted from the mom to child. 2-3% are transmitted through intravenous drug use'.

In Thailand it's a heterosexual problem with a great socio-economic impact. There are 1.5 million positive couples with children. The children probably die by the age of three years old. There will be 500,000-600,000 orphans in the next 3-4 years. At present there are 200,000.

Young married couples age 25-35 are hardest hit. The labor force of the nation is dying. There are young orphans with elderly grand-parents who would normally be looked after by their children, but their children are dead and their orphan grand-children are in no position to help them as the children are left without care. Grand-parents cannot afford to education these children. This means that a next generation of Thais will grow up without education. There is also a serious narcotics problem today. There is a group called the Red Wa. They are a Burmese ethnic group who are vicious fighters and head hunters. The Burmese government is afraid of them. They have an autonomous territory and they manufacture drugs to support their own state. They bring them into Thailand. Moreover, HIV/AIDS among young people spreads rapidly. Unprotected sex under the influence of drugs is common. The rate of new infections among teenagers is on the increase, particularly among young girls.

January 2003 Notes:
The Sangha Metta project is now almost six years old. Its funding comes primarily from UNICEF with a yearly total budget equivalent to $40,000 US dollars. 4-5 years old . Monks are used to manage the crisis. Ajaan Laurie teaches Buddhist philosophy at Wat Suan Doc's university. He himself was a monk for two years. His program uses the four noble truths to provide HIV/AIDS education for monks and nuns.

The project is not limited to Thailand but also works in Bhutan, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, South China, etc. (seven countries in all).

When the first identified case was found in Thailand the government repressed the information and then finally called on temples to be places of hospice. The role of the monk needed to be identified in the problem: alleviate suffering through study and meditation; disseminate knowledge; and alleviate suffering through support. AIDS is not just a health problem. It is physical, mental, social, economic, personal and social.

Using the first and second of the four noble truths they examined the cause of the suffering of AIDS, which is ignorance. There is ignorance about how it is transmitted, about how to look after oneself, and there is ignorance within the community. There is also a way to the elimination of the suffering of AIDS. This way must address all the complex levels of the disease: i.e. personal, mental, economic, etc.

The monks, particularly the young novices, are quite effective in getting information out into the community, particularly among the youth where there has been a 6% increase in the rise of HIV/AIDS. There is currently a decrease in the number of babies who are born with HIV to infected mothers because of the drugs that can be administered in utero to the pregnant mother. Monks are also aware now of the dangers of sharing razors in the monthly ritual of shaving their heads and eyebrows or of sharing needles in the common practices of tattooing among the monks. Monks are being taught about condom use so they can be more effective educators in the society.

The project conducts informational seminars, many of them in nature. Doctors are invited to speak as are people who are living with HIV/AIDS. By way of analogy, there are four kinds of lotuses. There are lotuses who are stuck in the water and mud that will not bloom no matter what. There are lotuses that are rising toward the surface and with time an dnourishment they will grown. There are lotuses that are above the water and will soon be in full bloom. There are lotuses that are in full bloom. These are the ones who are first or second in their class and accomplish so much. In their education they try to help people to work with their gifts.

During seminars they use participatory methods to help the people brainstorm about the suffering caused by aids. They operate a kind of life school where people can communicate, develop empathy and partnerships in a process of learning that includes games and exercise. They will, for instance, take kids and break them up into groups where they explore the advantages and disadvantages of observing the five precepts of Buddhism (no harm, no stealing, no lying, no intoxication, o sexual unchastity. They take turns arguing pro and con and so learn some lessons about how to avoid peer pressure. They go into the schools to give seminars. They have housewife groups. There are two million infected people yet there are only 80,000 hospital beds. There are 300,000 orphaned children. They offer pre-death counseling for it is believed that one's state just prior to death has a large part in determining one's rebirth. They encourage the monks to take the yellow buckets of basic household goods that are typically donated to the temples by the laity and give those buckets to people who are struggling and their families. There are meditation camps, scholarship funds, and senior citizens groups among others. For the boy orphans, they can come to the temples and become novices or serve as temple boys and thus received training and sustenance.

For the young monks there is a lot of emphasis on education and prevention. For the older monks there is a lot of emphasis on caring. There are five aggregates that go into making up the human "self" or person. Only one of them is the body. There is so much that can be accomplished through the power of the mind.

The project helps to explore ways that traditional medicines can be used to treat opportunistic diseases, such as thrush on the tongue and lips, or loss of moral. If consciousness is 80% of your being than a boost to the moral is a big deal.

More and more monks, even those who were initially resistant, are looking to the project for help. Ajaan Laurie shared with us a letter he had just received that day from the Kuphai AIDS project, asking the project to help the monk to raise $1500 for a house for HIV positive people, including blankets and medicine. The monk included in his letter, four graphic photos of men and women who had recently committed suicide because of the combination of factors that come into play with HIV/AIDS in Thailand.