Analysis of Thai Buddhism
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The rise of Buddhism in Thailand during the 18th and 19th centuries can be attributed to King Mongkut, whose exemplary practice of the Buddhist way of life strengthened and enhanced interest in Buddhism. Mongkut is best known in Western cultures for his relationship with the Victorian governess hired to teach his children, which was immortalized in the movie versions of The King and I, featuring "sensationalized accounts of Siamese court life" (Ross 70). Mongkut was not the "musical clown" or the "irrational despot" that the movies suggested, but "was in reality a distinguished and enlightened monarch, very much in the tradition of that preeminent Indian Buddhist ruler of the distant past, Emperor Ashoka" (Ross 71). The rightful heir to the Siamese throne upon his birth in 1804, Mongkut was nevertheless passed over by the State Council for a half-brother, yet he "calmly remained on in the peace and quiet of the meditative monastic life he had been living for some years" rather than "fight for his princely rights" (Ross 71). This gave him "an acute sense of reality and a knowledge of people he could not possibly have got amid the artificialities of palace life" (Ross 71). These personal qualities undoubtedly established respect and trust for Mongkut among the Thai people, thus paving the way for their equal acceptance of his religious beliefs in Buddhism. As Ross points out, citing from Griswold, "The monkhood is a startlingly democratic institution. Its m
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41). This group also recognized the need to "abandon the Buddhist conception of time as repeated cycles of decay" (Baker & Phongpaichit 41). Mongkut "embraced the idea that people were not bound by fate but were capable of improving the world, and thus history was possible," Thiphakorawong accordingly wrote "a new version of the royal chronicles which described kings making history rather than reacting to omens and fate" (Baker & Phongpaichit 41).
Mongkut's mid-19th-century Buddhist sect "had, by the early twentieth, a profound effect on Siamese Buddhism. It was more rigorously intellectual and scholarly, and less ritualistic, and it lay heavy stress upon the education not only of its monks but also of the lay population (Wyatt 216). After Mongkut, the sect was led by Prince Wachirayanwarorot to the end of the 19th century, the latter becoming the "supreme patriarch of all Siamese Buddhism" (Wyatt 216). During this time, Thammayutika monasteries became "disproportionately popular in the most impoverished regions of the kingdom," and then Prince Wachirayan "undertook a thoroughgoing reorganization and reform of Siamese Buddhism at the turn of the century, posting ecclesiastical commissioners to all regions of the c
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2536
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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