95% of the Thai population are Buddhist. For Thai people Buddhism is the national religion. Buddhism is a unique religion as it gives people the freedom to believe in other religions as well. But Buddhism is always in the centre of our mind. I was born a Buddhist and I still follow Buddhist practises. To be a Buddhist we have no baptism or any ceremony that grants admission into Buddhism and makes you promise to become a Buddhist. I was brought up by my grandparents and my grandmother took me to the temple since before I can remember. We have a very strong relationship with our temples. The temple is the place that Thai people respect, the place where our religious ceremonies take place. In the past it also used to be a school before we have a national school system.
As Buddhists we try to live in a way that allows us to leave our greed and selfishness behind and follow the ways that the Buddha taught. The way that the Buddha taught us to live is known as the Noble Eightfold Path, it says we should think, act and speak kindly, and also treat people well and with care. In order to help us to be a good person we make five promises call “ศีล 5 (Sein 5)”. They are the five precepts which we try to use and adapt within our everyday living. They are: not to harm or kill any living thing, not too steal, not to be greedy, not to lie and not to drink alcohol or use drugs. To make you understand more about our five precepts I have outlined a short explanation of each of them below:
Precept no 1: not to harm or kill any living thing. Buddhists believe in Karma; everything you do wrong you can hide from other people but not from yourself. This precept does not only mean not to harm people by physical means, but also not to harm people with words as well as anything that will hurt people’s feelings.
Precept no 2: not to steal. This precept is very important. The honesty and trustworthiness are more long lasting than money or possessions. By cheating and stealing you might become materially wealthier but that will not last forever. It will also not make you happy because you will know what you’ve done and you will be afraid that people will find out what you have done. Everybody loves honesty and people that they can trust, I’m sure you’re the same.
Precepts no 3: not to be greedy. This also includes coveting other people’s things including their spouses, partners, boyfriends or girlfriends. In modern times this precept is ignored a lot and people say that it is not as important. But greed can make you lose your job, friends, money, your family and the people that you love.
Precepts no 4: not to lie. If you stick to this precept, you will have no feeling of guilt with anyone and, more importantly, you will not feel guilty with yourself. The truth never dies no matter how hard you try to suffocate it. Being honest is the best way to live. In the modern world, however, some people have to lie as part of their job. The Buddhist view on this is that if the person really has to and they need the job to support themselves and their family then it is okay. But they must not tell lies that will harm other people or put them in danger.
Precept no 5: not to drink alcohol or use drugs. This precept also includes cigarette as well. The reasoning behind this precept is that alcohol and other drugs affect your body and mind. It is obvious that they damage your body but, more importantly, they can make you do something that wrong and do bad things that cause trouble for other people and yourself. Thai people love to have social get-togethers with alcohol, it is part of their lives so most people do drink, but we need to avoid doing it on Buddhist holy days. And most people will try to stop it from the first day of the Buddhist “Lent” until the end of the Buddhist “Lent”, which is a period of 3 months from around the middle of August to the middle of November.
We try to keep this five precepts in mind constantly in our everyday lives to help make us a good person and to make our life happy. If we are unhappy and have a problem it will make us be conscious and carefully try to solve the problem.
Another thing our Buddha taught us is that humans only need four important things in order to live. I think this makes us know that we don’t need a lot of material things to live and to be happy with what we have. The four essential things are known “Pat-Jai-See” (Pat-Jai means requisites and See means Four) which include: food, shelter, clothing and medicine.
Food: we need to eat food for give us energy and nutrition for our bodies to function.
Shelter: we need somewhere to protect us from rain, wind, cold or the animal that can harm us.
Clothing: humans need to wear clothes to protect us from cold weather, the sun, protect us from the touch or effect of harmful things.
Medicine: humans are living things that naturally have sickness, diseases and injuries and we needs medicine to help prevent sickness and to cure us or help to support and repair the part of our body that has been damaged.
And in modern Thailand we now say that we need to have a fifth requisite: facilities such as phones, cars, computers and all the other devices that make our world and lives work. But the true teachings of the Buddha tell us that we live without this technology.
What I believe
Buddhist do not believe in a God. We follow the teachings of Siddattha Gotam. He was a man who lived in India 2500 years ago. He became known as the Buddha. We try to follow the teachings of the Buddha. I also try to avoid doing harm to any living thing in everything I do (as explained in the five precepts above). We are taught to be kind to people, even if we are in a bad mood. This is the reason that Thai people smile a lot and we are known as the country of smiles. Buddhists believe that, when you die, you are born again into another life. We also believe in Karma and that what you are in this life is a result of what you did in your last life. So, what you do in this life will also affect your next life. This cycle keeps repeating again and again until you finally reach Nirvana.
留言