The Monarchy and Thai Buddhism

Prince Siddhartha hailed from the ruling class of the warring kings, the kshatriya, of Indian society. When he chose not to take his father's throne and, instead, to become the compassionate savior that had been foretold by wise men at his birth, some might say he abdicated his responsibilities to society by removing himself from the ability to make direct political change. If he had wished to live fully in the world and alleviate its suffering, what better way to do so than to take on the throne of the king. Thus, some would say that Buddhism set itself up, from the beginning, as a religious path that was not concerned with worldly power. It may then appear to be somewhat ironic that within a few centuries after the Buddha's death, monarchs were situating themselves in a space that placed them on par with the Buddha.

Such was the tactic taken by King Asoka. King Asoka was the first Buddhist monarch. After vanquishing his enemies, horrified by what his wars had wrought, he converted to Buddhism. He called a Buddhist council to purify the Sangha of 60,000 heretics and ordered rock edicts to be placed throughout the countryside, indicating the populace was to adhere to the nonviolent principles of Buddhism. Some might say that this was quite a convenient tactic: to convert the nation to non-violence after conquering the people. Many Buddhist rulers followed this pattern in subsequent centuries: converting, purifying, building stupas to contain the venerated relics of the Buddha.

The Buddha and the King are thought to be mirror images of one another. While the king represents the mundane, the princely, and the powerful, the Buddha represents the transmundane, the ascetic, and the compassionate. (Swearer, 1995) Together they form a unified cosmos as the Buddhist king is the only earthly person with the power to actualize the compassion of the Buddha in the mundane world.

Buddhism is replete with cosmologies and mythologies that vaolirze the king as a propagator of Buddhist religion (sasana) and as a key to peaceful harmony and well being in the universe. According to Heinz Beckert, there are several primary ways in which religious authority legitimizes political power in Southeast Asia and the Thai monarch embodies all of them to some degree:

1) By identifying the ruler with a mythological world monarch
2) By ascribing to the ruler moral and spiritual perfections of the Bodhisattva ideal
3) By describing the ideal king as protector and preserver of Buddhism
4) By giving the ruler the authority of one who governs by dhamma
5) By seeing the ruler as the devaraja, the apotheosis or appearance of the divine
6) By affording him rule of both Buddhist and non-Buddhist religions.

Modern day Thailand has had a series of monarchs who ruled over several different dynasties. The current dynasty is called the Chakri dynasty and the period of Thai history it covers is referred to as Ratnakosin. This dynasty has had its capitol in Bangkok and has been ruled over by a series of nine kings who take on the name of Rama. The current King, Rama IX, is King Bhumipol, the longest reigning monarch in world history, having taken the throne in 1945 at the sudden, still unexplained death of his young brother, Ananda. Since 1932, with the coming of the constitution, the kings have been constitutional rather than absolute monarchs. Despite this change, the current king still wields a great deal of practical power in addition to his more symbolic status.

Since 1902 the kings of Thailand have had the power to create and support unified Sangha (community of Buddhist monks) with the power to invest authority to a Supreme Patriarch who rules over the Sangha as the king rules over the nation. With the creation of a more unified monastic system, these recent kings have been able to extend the authority of the government, via the monastic order into the educational system. Thus, according to Charles Keyes, the creation of a state-controlled Buddhism and a Buddhist nationalism laid the foundation for state-controlled system of education in which all children study a common language and a common national history that emphasizes the role of the king and deemphasizes the role of local lords and rulers that predominated the earlier feudal system.

It was King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) who emphasized earlier notions of the king as a godlike being who rules the nation as the center of the universe and initiated changes that lead to seeig the monarch as the embodiment of the Tahi nation. But he also abolished the requirement that people prostrate before the king and he began to appear at a greater variety of public functions. (Keyes, 1987). It was his son, Vajravudh, who took it upon himself to reshape the monarchy for more nationalist purposes. He fashioned himself as a kind of "citizen king" as he created a paramilitary group the Wild Tiger Corps and gave himself the same uniform as that worn by the people. His actions became the prototype for later Thai kings, such as the current King Bhumipol, who became seen as the kings of the people.

As the industrial period came to Thailand, railroads and roads made it possible for the kings to travel to remote places that had not been previously visited and to begin crafting a more unified Thai national identity. In the 1930's the middle class staged a successful revolution in Siam, that resulted in a constitutional monarchy, the change of name from Siam to Thailand, and the rise of a constitutional monarchy instead of an absolute one. Not long after this, Field Marshall Phibun staged a military coup that resulted in the exile of the king and the rise to power of a young grandson of Chulalongkorn, Ananda. Ananda, soon thereafter was found dead in the palace. His brother, Bhumipol, who was studying law in the United States was called to rule Thailand in 1946 and has been doing so ever since. In that 57 year period, King Bhumipol has watched the rise and fall of several military dictatorship, the implementation of democracy, and successful democratic elections.

During the period of military dictatorships that ruled until 1982, the power of the Sangha was further curtailed with, for instance, a 1962 law that brought it under even closer government control, co-opting it into promoting national goals, particularly the resistance of the communism that was spreading in places like Vietnam. Prime Ministers like Sarit, who staged a coup in 1957 with the support of the King turned back the clock to 1932 and renogiated the relationship between the monarchy and the government. (Keyes, 1987) In 1973, Thai university students, mobilized in part by Ajaan Sulak and his Social Science Review, in publication since 1963, (click here for information about Sulak) called for a return to constitutional rule. In 1973, the students marched on Thammasat in a pro-democracy movement and were accused of a communist plot to overthrow the government. The government brought tanks into the public square at Thammasat University and on October 14, 1973 government buildings were burned and 100's of Thai stuents were killed. It was King Bhumipol who brought this crisis to an end and he returned, in the minds of the people, to place of authority in his own right. A new constitution was written and implemented in 1974. Another coup occurred in 1976, killing 46 students and martial law and the constitution were temporarily set aside. In 1985, yet another coup occurred, even more bloody, including the death of two western journalists. Finally, the last revolution occurred in 1992, the cell phone revolution, a bloodless coup that finally brought democracy to Thailand.

King Bhumipol Adulyadej, otherwise known as Lord of Life, Master of the Octagonal Throne, Possessor of the Twenty-four Golden Umbrellas, and Ninth King of the Chakri Dynasty is the longest reigning monarch in world history. He has been seen by some as a dilettante as he plays his saxophone with Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong, marries his childhood sweetheart, known as one of the ten most beautiful women in the world, and sails boats. Yet, every day of his ordination, he is sprinkled with holy waters and blessed by four Buddhist monks. He is to embody the ten virtues of a ruler: generosity, morality, liberality, uprightness, gentleness, self-restraint, non-anger, non-harmfulness, forebearance, non-opposition. Every morning and every evening the television plays the national anthem and shows photos of the life of the king. People in movie theatres stand up before the show starts and put their hands over their hearts while the anthem plays and the king's life flashes before them on screen. He is the first king in over 90 years to visit all 73 provinces in Thailand. He is the first king in that same period to be a Buddhist monk for a period of time, at age 28 after 10 years on the throne, seen carrying his alms bowl, shoeless, a monk from Wat Borvornnives in Bangkok, on the streets just like any other monk. He personally hands out diplomas to the graduates of the state universities. ON his 60th birthday, there was a movement among the people to have the word "The Great" added to the end of his name. 40 million signatures of every adult male were gathered. On that day no animals were killed, no meat or fish eaten, no sex was practiced, 20,000 amnesties were issued, filling the streets with former convicts and drug dealers, many of whom were HIV infected, and over 1000 vasectomies were performed, all in honor of the beloved King. (Kalick and Wilson, 1992)

King Bhumipol, as an heir to the founder of the first Thai bank and one of the biggest corporations in Thailand, the Siam Cement Company, has the financial means and the social clout to live out some of his passions through his kingship: i.e. economic development projects in the countryside, including dams, irrigation canals, roads, fish onds, and bridges. He is known as the Rainmaker King. His first love was science. It was his family that encouraged him to pursue law instead. When he became king, he invested a good deal of time and money in projects designed to calculate the chemical formulae needed for the seeding of clouds. As a result, he has brought rain to the south and southeast of Thailand in the early parts of the year, on fruit orchards, rubber trees, sugarcane and tapioca plantations and then to the dry rice paddies of the central plains, later in the year. Through his Royal Hill Tribe Development Project, begun in 1969, he has helped indigenous peoples of the infamous Golden Triangle region develop alternative crops to opium, such as apples, peaces, strawberries, roses, lillies, brussels sprouts, turnips, cabbage, etc. He has six Royal Development Study centers, where people who need services can gather with those who know how to give them. While I was in the rural village of the Lawa peoples in northern Thailand, some of his representatives of his development projects spent the afternoon outlining their program to the men of our village.