Growing up as a Buddhist in Thailand

Disclaimer: this is not a strictly accurate view of Buddhism. Buddhism, just like any other religions, has much variety. This article offers only a tiny part and mainly from personal experiences of what it’s like to grow up as a Buddhist in Thailand. I hope and pray that this article will give some insights to those who want to share the gospel with Thai people. I don't think it's necessary to understand everything about Buddhism before talking to Thai people about their beliefs because it's also very likely that they know about Buddhism as much as you do.

Revised: December 30, 2018

What is Buddhism?

Buddhism is essentially a form of legalism. Good people go to heaven, and wicked people go to hell. Whether or not God or gods exist, they are distant and out of the picture in this game of judgment. Some people believe that if you do enough good, it will cancel out the bad deeds, like in a bank statement. You can live whichever way you like, as long as in the end, everything adds up positive.

Another popular belief is that anyone who has sinned goes to hell to get punished for the sins he has committed. After the period of punishment has passed, he goes to heaven and spends time there according to how much good deeds he has done. There are levels in both heaven and hell, and they are all corresponding to the degree of the goodness or wickedness of the acts conducted. Motives are also important. If a "good" action is done with an "evil" motive, then the action is evil.

However, Buddhism also teaches incarnation of living beings — the cycle of life. This life is not the only life we have, and morality is not unique to human beings. You’re human now, but the life before, you might have been born as a dog. The virtues and karma of the past life could also be rolled over (sounds like college flex money, right?) to the next life. That’s why you might have heard people complaining, “what have I done in my past life to deserve this?”. Karma doesn't have to play out in the afterlife or next life but also in this life. In a nutshell, Thai people are taught to live "in fear" of karma. If you want a good life, then do good. It's all up to you — you are the one who determines your own destiny.

As many people might be familiar with this, the chief end of life (or cycles of life) is Nirvana — a state in which you are released from the effects of karma and the cycle of life and essentially cease to exist. But believe me, a very few culturally/nominally Buddhist wants to achieve that end. Throughout my entire life, I have never heard of anyone, including those once ordained as monks, expressing an excitement or desire to achieve Nirvana. Life is not viewed as a gift but more like a burden, and most would hope for heaven or next life that is better than now.

Living righteously. Buddhism teaches Five moral precepts in which people are ought to follow

• you shall not harm any living things

• you shall not steal

• you shall not commit sexual immorality or adultery

• you shall not lie

• you shall not take any intoxicating substances

Monks and other religious leading figures have more than five precepts, but these are the ones for common people.

Another teaching is that love, greed, anger, and lust are roots of sins and suffering. The best way of life to cut off feelings and any attachments. Emotions and feelings to Buddhists are viewed as unpleasant and causes of disaster and reasons that humans are still stuck in the never-ending cycle of life. This is why many people with Buddhist background deal with suffering and problems by saying, “I just have to let it go” and “I just have to not care”. Buddhists are to tread “The Middle Way” — if you love, don’t love too little or too much because that will bring temptations.

There are rules and laws for billion other things, but the core is you are the source of your righteousness.

Is it just Buddhism in Thailand?

Buddhism reached the Southeast Asian region sometime in the first millenium and has been tightly integrated into Thai culture since. To most Thai people, at least to the older generations, being Buddhist is part of being Thai. However, Buddhism in Thailand is not a pure one but a mixture of Hinduism, traditions and folk religion, involving worship of different gods, idols and supernatural beings. There is also a lot of influence from the Confucianism since many Thais are descendants of Chinese immigrants. Essentially, Thai people are worshippers of images and idols.

Most Thais believe in the supernatural. If you walk into a restaurant in Thailand, you might notice a figurine of a woman crowned with a golden crown sitting in a kneeling position with one of her hands up. The figurine is known as Nang Kwak (นางกวัก), a household divinity believed to bring good fortune, prosperity, and customers. People normally offer her a red soda drink (I have no idea why, and I’m sure no one knows why). Similar to Nang Kwak, many houses would have two small shrines in the front yard. The shrines are for the house divinity to reside in and protect the house. People also give them offerings such as food, drinks, and flowers.

If you see a big old tree or even a banana tree, very likely, there will be some colorful strips tied around the trunk. Thai people believe that there are spirits living in these trees, and they offer drinks and flowers to keep them in a peaceful mood. Most of the times, there will be marks on the tree because people would go there and scratch the bark to get some “numbers” so they could use the numbers to buy lotteries.

Also, most Thai people are afraid of ghosts. There is no sense of protection. They don’t know what to do. If you have some Thai friends, most of them are afraid to walk by themselves in the dark not because they’re scared of being robbed, but they’re afraid to see unpleasant natural beings. People also believe that wearing a necklace with a pendant carved with some well-known monk figure will protect the wearer from physical and spiritual harms.

These are just a few examples of Thai belief in supernatural beings.

Impersonal god(s)

There are minor differences depending on how much a person's belief has been influenced by Hinduism, Chinese and folk religions, but there is one thing in common: god(s) are not personal. People believe that higher beings exist, but they don’t interfere with the human world unless they are upset by human activities or satisfied by some offerings and then bless the offerer in return.

Thai people mostly go to temples, statues or shrines to ask for something. And in order to get their wish granted, they offer something unique to that god or divine spirit and pledge to do something in return once the wish is granted.

To simply put it, divine beings to Thai people are merely vending machines who are not obligated to grant any wishes. There are no relationships, no care and no love between the divine and human beings. The divine beings are not viewed as the Judge of righteousness but more like those who reside in the supernatural realm who could do whatever they like.

Intimacy? What is that?

Since relationships come with feelings, they bring both happiness and sorrow. However, since love is also a cause of suffering, and Karma is also true, sorrow is a result of your wrongdoings either of this life or the past. You have to options: suck it up or leave.

I want to focus here on how Buddhist teachings affect Thai people's perspectives on interpersonal relationships.

Family. Children are to hold their parents in high honor and with great obedience and to take care of them. For parents have given much care and kindness to their child, the child is to repay his or her parents. To disobey or to mistreat one's parent is a great sin and will result in a difficult life and/or disobedient children. This effect is very prominent when it comes to career and marriage. A child is to choose what brings honor and wealth to parents and family. Any Korean drama or the movie Crazy Rich Asians is a great example of how a parent owes his or her child's obedience. Filial relationships are centered around honor and obedience. It's not very common for parents to express their love with words.

Friendships. Even though I came to America in college, my vocabulary for feelings and hardships is wider and more descriptive in English than in Thai which is my mother tongue. Why? Because when I was in Thailand, we don't talk about our struggles and feelings. If we mention conflicts, we talk in terms of their faults and what actions that have gone wrong. To the Thais, friends are people you hang out with without feeling uncomfortable and having conflicts. Even if we bring up struggles, there is no means of comfort. How could we comfort each other anyway?

Marriage. A wedding ceremony is a celebration of the two families becoming one. This might be crude, but it's pretty much an official declaration that two people could now live and have kids together and no one could gossip about them doing so. There is a hot debate among young adults in Thailand right now about the necessity of holding a wedding ceremony. Divorce is a stigma that brings shame to both families. Once love disappears, you stay together to avoid gossips and to save your children from disgrace. Even though polygamy has been abolished, it is not uncommon in Thailand. It is more common, however, for husbands to seek sexual pleasure outside of marriage from prostitutes instead of mistresses.

Relationships are usually shallow. Intimacy and commitment are neither commanded nor seen as a good thing. Once broken, there is no decree for reconciliation. These messy concepts could easily obscure Thai people from viewing God as our Loving Father, Jesus as a Friend of Sinners, and the Church as the Bride of Christ.

So what was it like?

Growing up, I was always taught to suppress my feelings because they are evil and will bring forth suffering to me and those around me. If you cry, it’s a sign of weakness. If there are conflicts, you just have to let it go — it is not common for Thai people to have conflict resolution or confrontations. We are taught to maintain peace which means if there is a conflict, we let it go because bringing it up would stir peace.

Because Buddhism is the main religion in Thailand, anyone who believes in something else is discriminated and looked down upon, not outwardly of course. Buddhism is a religion of peace; as long as you don’t interfere with the beliefs of others, you’re good. In the morning before school started, all students would say some prayer together, and one of my classmates who was Christian would never participate in it. We always gossiped about how ridiculous and arrogant it was for her to not be part of it. Buddhists view themselves as open-minded and accepting. Anything that disrupts peace is evil.

Growing up, I always participated in alms-giving (offering food to monks in the morning) with my grandma who is a devout Buddhist, went to the temple in our neighborhood with her to listen to prayers in Bali (or Pāli), the language that I never understood, and offered some money to bring good fortunes to myself and my family and build my good deed record. People often give alms to the dead too. If they are in hell or suffering in the afterlife, the alms will alleviate judgment. This is very similar to the 16th century Roman Catholicism without God in the picture.

Before going to bed, I would pray a prayer of forgiveness and kindness to fellow human beings and other animals, repenting of their sins on their behalf. I prayed to the nothingness, hoping that it is true. A few years ago, I got to read about the life of Martin Luther, and I feel like my childhood self would resonate really well to what he said after climbing up The Holy Stairs on his knees: “Who knows whether this is true?”. The weight of my sins bothered me. I knew that I would be spending some time in hell, but what else could I do besides trying to do more good, hoping that it would pay off in the end. I just had to try harder.

When I went to a boarding school, my friends and I recited a super long prayer together every night before going to bed. We would wake up in the morning to offer alms during the final exam time to bring peace to our minds. After receiving the offering, the monk would give us some prayer of blessing. I remember us complaining when the blessing was too short, and how that made it feel less like a blessing. Honestly, regardless of the length, we would not understand the prayer anyway because it was all in Bali.

It was tiring, burdensome and hopeless

In high school during the college application time, I offered yogurt drinks to our school’s flagpole, known to be powerful in granting wishes and pledged to run around the soccer field a few hundred times if I get into MIT. I made offerings to other different gods too. If I didn’t do all these things, what else I could hang onto? What else could I believe in? Doing these things was my only hope besides my own strength. I only hoped that it was true and that the spirits would listen to my prayers and give me what I wanted.

At most schools, students are required to take Buddhism class as part of Social Studies. We were taught to meditate — i.e. sit still and concentrate on inhaling and exhaling until you think about nothing. The goal of meditation is to achieve peace, but I never achieved anything other than feeling like I was wasting my time. However, I could only lie to myself saying that I haven’t achieved that stage yet.

Death was scary. Would I go to hell? If I do, that’s scary. Would I cease to exist? The nothingness scared me too. Being reborn and forgetting all the memories I have in this life discourage me. It made me sad not being able to remember my parents and friends anymore, so I tried not to think about it too much. That's how we deal with problems in Thailand, we sweep them under the carpet and move on.

One day, I heard of Kony 2012, a short commentary about child soldiers in Uganda that went really viral. Watching the documentary, I was in pain, burdened and despaired. I didn’t understand how such a thing could happen. I was always taught to find the good in the people that I don’t like, and I believed that people were intrinsically good, but this just... didn’t make sense...

That night, I cried feeling so hopeless. Here I was, having such a comfortable life, crying because I couldn’t do anything with this evil that was happening to many children on the other side of the world. No prayers, no alms-giving would help those children.

If we all have to submit to the cycle of karma and life, why would our hearts be troubled by evil and oppression? Why should we care about social injustice at all if everything just follows the flow of cause and effect? That was how hopeless and irrational Buddhism was to me, but I didn’t want to admit it because that was my only hope.

But Hope found me

Coming to college, (I didn’t get into MIT by the way, praise the Lord for sparing me a couple hundred rounds of running around the soccer field in Thailand’s hot and disgustingly humid weather), I struggled with depression. I lost motivations to move on in this life, and my back was burdened by the heaviness of my sins. “What’s the point if I’m going to be so useless to the society, and on top of that, not even a good person?”, this question appeared in my head throughout the day almost every day during the first semester of my freshman year if I wasn’t drunk. I found alcohol and parties to be remedies of my burdens and to provide me some escapes from the deep pit of my thoughts.

Isn’t one of the reasons many Thai people are addicted to alcohol and love getting drunk? Because we are taught that having feelings, emotions, and pains are evil, we try to escape and hide all feelings behind the redness of our cheeks and laughter that arise from anything because we’re intoxicated.

God’s grace rescued me from this pit. He brought me out to a Christian fellowship to reveal me the hope of the eternal life. Many evangelists say that hope is the main key to evangelizing to Muslims. That is also true to Buddhists. Hope and atonement are both very unique to Christianity. No other religions proclaims this kind of grace.

When I heard the Bible verse, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” (Heb 8:12), I was surprised. I just couldn’t believe it. How could this be true? How could a lowly sinner such as I be forgiven?

To me, Christianity never made sense. How can someone be forgiven after committing a sin and simply by repenting? But that is not the entire gospel. My sins are forgiven because Jesus died for me.

A hopeless sinner like me has been justified by His grace, and not only that! I have been adopted as heirs with the hope of eternal life! (Titus 3:7). All the gods and supernatural beings I worshiped and gave offerings to couldn’t care more about me even when I offered their favorite food and flowers. But this God who created heaven and earth loves me so much that he sent his son to die for me, a sinner who deserves nothing but hell.

I was taught that weakness is bad, and only the strong survives. I felt so hopeless because I had no strength and I couldn’t see how I could live this life for others, but then I heard this: “but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:9-11).

The eternal Hope found me in the most hopeless stage of my life and I was ready to end it. He told me that Jesus died for my sins and resurrected from the dead. This life I live for Christ, but to die is also gain (Phil 1:21). I fear death no more, and I look forward to the end of this life because then, I will be in perfect fellowship with Him, seeing Jesus as who he is. Any vine grafted unto Him will bear much fruit (John 15:1-11). This God is known for using a crooked stick to draw a straight line. Emotions and feelings are evil things no more. To love is to reflect Christ’s love for us (1 John 4:19). Isn’t this so beautiful? My life was changed by the gospel, entirely. Many people including my parents think I have gone crazy, but how could I not be so amazed and in awe by God’s love and grace for me? This news is so good and so worthy of sacrificing everything to share it with others.

Buddhism may sound attractive and exotic to the Westerners, but if you look into it carefully, its messages are full of emptiness. It proclaims no hope and no purpose. No dignities are given to mankind. Suffering and emotions are invalidated. Buddhism proclaims the message that heals the wound of people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace (Jer 6:14).

Our Lord, Jesus came down to proclaim an entirely different message. He, the beginning and the end, who entered into our sufferings and understood our pain more than anyone, has broken the chain of sins by dying for us on the cross and resurrecting from the dead, so that we may live in victory. Anything apart from Him leads to death. Jesus alone is the living water and the bread of life — the hope of eternal life.