Six years ago at the age of twenty-one, Jaed Muncharoen Coffin, a half-Thai American man, left New England's privileged Middlebury College to be ordained as a Buddhist monk in his mother's native village of Panomsarakram--thus fulfilling a familial obligation. While addressing the notions of displacement, ethnic identity, and cultural belonging, A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants chronicles his time at the temple that rain season--receiving alms in the streets in saffron robes; bathing in the canals; learning to meditate in a mountaintop hut; and falling in love with Lek, a beautiful Thai woman who comes to represent the life he can have if he stays. Part armchair travel, part coming-of-age story, this debut work transcends the memoir genre and ushers in a brave new voice in American nonfiction.
Author: Jaed Coffin
Paperback:
224 pages
Company: Da Capo Press
(2008-01-07)
ISBN: 0306815265 List Price: $16.00 Amazon Price: $7.70 Used Price: $5.15
Three decades ago in a cordoned-off corner of the developing world an angry Catholic priest armed only with pencil, paper, and crayons, declared a revolution. From a shanty school shared with Buddhists and Muslims in Bangkok's squatter slums, Father Joe Maier began his advance on abject poverty. Today, his Human Development Foundation and Mercy Centre charity is responsible for thirty-two preschools that have taught more than twenty thousand children how to read and write. Despite the crippling neglect found in impoverishment, he is raising international scholars and injecting a sense of purpose into shantytowns and squatter camps that used to have neither.
Author: Greg Barrett
Hardcover:
336 pages
Company: Jossey-Bass
(2008-03-28)
ISBN: 0470258632 List Price: $25.95 Amazon Price: $11.95 Used Price: $10.28
A uniquely relaxing yet energizing way to achieve balance and healing.
Traditional Thai massage is a dynamic yet comparatively little-known form of bodywork that combines elements of acupressure, stretching, reflexology, the application of herbal compresses, prayer, and meditation. This therapy has benefits for anyone-young or old, active or inactive, healthy or not. Sometimes called "lazy man's yoga," it stretches the muscles, increases the joints' range of motion, and balances the flow of energy throughout the body to promote healing and well-being.
Thai Massage provides fully illustrated, step-by-step instructions that enable the reader to use this integrative and interactive therapy (with a partner) at home. It also explains the history and philosophy behind the techniques and discusses their connections with Buddhist thought and practice, yoga, Ayurveda, the body's energy lines, and acupressure. It is a complete guide to an ancient practice that benefits body, mind, and spirit.
Drawing from Thai history, cultural studies, Buddhist religion, and yogic practices, as well as a modern understanding of anatomy and physiology, this book finally bridges the gap between the theory and practice of Thai massage.
Author: C. Pierce Salguero
Paperback:
250 pages
Company: Findhorn Press
(2004-10-01)
ISBN: 1844090299 List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $15.35 Used Price: $15.55
For twenty-five years, Father Joe Maier, a Catholic priest, has lived and worked in Bangkok's bleakest slums, establishing more than thirty schools, five shelters for street kids, and several projects for women and children with AIDS, working with and against authority, earning enmity and praise in equal measure. In this book, he tells the heartbreaking and heartwarming stories of the poorest of Thailand's poor, each a gem guaranteed to bring anger, tears, and joy. 100% of all proceeds will be donated to the Human Development Fund in Bangkok, Thailand
Author: Joe Maier
Paperback:
160 pages
Company: Periplus Editions
(2005-03-15)
ISBN: 0794602932 List Price: $14.95 Amazon Price: $8.76 Used Price: $6.35
It is 1992, and the Burmese government's current war on its indigenous people runs into its fourth year. In neighboring Thailand, a small band of Buddhist monks harbors refugees from Burma inside their modest temple in the slums of Bangkok. The monks and refugees are all natives of the Burmese Mon State. All have the same residential status in Thailand: illegal. Under surveillance, and overwhelmed by the needs of their charges, the monks reach out to international aid agencies in Bangkok for help in ministering to the tortured, the wounded, the diseased, and the orphaned.
Singing to the Dead recalls a Catholic lay missioner's work alongside the Mon Buddhist monks of Bangkok. For more than two years, Victoria Armour-Hileman was a go-between for the monks, interceding with the world outside their temple walls for everything from a cornea transplant for a land mine victim to money to buy shoes for barefoot orphans. At the same time, Singing to the Dead details an aid worker's ongoing education: how to weave through an embassy bureaucracy, how to stave off burnout, how to pull money out of thin air at the eleventh hour, when to trust and when to be cautious, when to kowtow, when to pray.
As the centuries-old conflict between Burma and its Mon people worsens, police raids on the temple in Bangkok increase. Refugees have never been safe, but now even the monks' unofficial immunity seems tenuous. When one of the monks is threatened with repatriation to Burma and possible imprisonment and torture, Armour-Hileman begins the desperate race to secure a new home country for him. She knows that these final efforts are as selfish as they are humanitarian, for what kind of God, and what kind of universe, will she believe in if she fails?
Author: Victoria Armour-Hileman
Hardcover:
257 pages
Company: University of Georgia Press
(2002-06-12)
ISBN: 0820323586 List Price: $27.95 Amazon Price: $16.40 Used Price: $9.89
A wry account of the road from Harvard scholarship student to ordination as northern Thailand's first black Buddhist nun.
Reluctantly leaving behind Pop Tarts and pop culture to battle flying rats, hissing cobras, forest fires, and decomposing corpses, Faith Adiele shows readers in this personal narrative, with accompanying journal entries, that the path to faith is full of conflicts for even the most devout. Residing in a forest temple, she endured nineteen-hour daily meditations, living on a single daily meal, and days without speaking. Internally Adiele battled against loneliness, fear, hunger, sexual desire, resistance to the Buddhist worldview, and her own rebellious Western ego.
Adiele demystifies Eastern philosophy and demonstrates the value of developing any practice—Buddhist or not. This "unlikely, bedraggled nun" moves grudgingly into faith, learning to meditate for seventy-two hours at a stretch. Her witty, defiant twist on the standard coming-of-age tale suggests that we each hold the key to overcoming anger, fear, and addiction; accepting family; redefining success; and re-creating community and quality of life in today's world.
Author: Faith Adiele
Hardcover:
288 pages
Company: W. W. Norton & Company
(2004-04)
ISBN: 0393057844 List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $11.25 Used Price: $0.02
In The Buddha in the Jungle, real-life stories about 19th and early 20th century Buddhist monks in Thailand are ingeniously intermingled with experiences recorded by their Western contemporaries. Stories tell of giant snakes, bandits, boatmen, midwives, and guardian spirits and collectively portray a Buddhist culture in all its imaginative and geographical concreteness. By juxtaposing these eyewitness accounts, Kimala Tiyavanich presents a new and vivid picture of Buddhism as it was lived and of the natural environments in which the Buddha's teachings were practiced.
Author: Kamala Tiyavanich
Paperback:
404 pages
Company: University of Washington Press
(2004-02)
ISBN: 0295983728 List Price: $22.50 Amazon Price: $17.36 Used Price: $14.54
The Funeral Casino is a heretical ethnography of the global age. Setting his book within Thailand's pro-democracy movement and the street massacres that accompanied it, Alan Klima offers a strikingly original interpretation of mass-mediated violence through a study of funeral gambling and Buddhist meditation on death.
The fieldwork for the book began in 1992, when a freewheeling market of illegal "massacre-imagery" videos blossomed in Bangkok on the very site where, days earlier, for the third time in two decades, a military-controlled government had killed scores of unarmed pro-democracy protesters. Such killings and their subsequent representation have lent force to Thailand's transition from military control to a "media-financial complex." Probing the ways in which death is marketed, visualized, and remembered through practices both local and global, Klima inverts conventional relationships between ethnography and theory through a compelling narrative that reveals a surprising new direction available to anthropology and critical theory.
Ethnography here engages with the philosophy of activism and the politics of memory, media representation of violence, and globalization. In focusing on the particular array of tactics in Thai Buddhism and protest politics for connecting death and life, past and present, this book unveils a vivid and haunting picture of community, responsibility, and accountability in the new world order.
Author: Alan Klima
Paperback:
336 pages
Company: Princeton University Press
(2002-02-11)
ISBN: 0691074607 List Price: $27.95 Amazon Price: $27.95 Used Price: $14.59
Phra Farangtells the story of Peter Robinson, a successful businessman, who at forty five, gave up his comfortable life in London to ordain as a Buddhist monk in Bangkok. But the new path he had chosen was not always as easy or as straightforward as he hoped it would be.
Author: Phra Peter Pannapadipo
Paperback:
384 pages
Import
Company: ARROW (RAND)
(2005-06-02)
ISBN: 0099484471 List Price: Amazon Price: $8.61 Used Price: $13.24
Thailand is usually closely associated with Buddhism, but since 1998 the country has been one of the observer members of the Islamic Conference Organization, and senior figures in the present and previous governments have been Muslim. Some 8 percent of the population is Muslim, and in the three southernmost provinces of the country they constitute a majority. Islam is ever more visible in Bangkok, where the demographic increase of Muslims is marked.
Michel Gilquin, a sociologist specializing in the study of Muslim societies and a resident of Morocco, examines the origins of Islam in the kingdom of Siam, Muslim integration into the Thai nation, and the effects of globalization and modernity on a mostly traditional and rural community. In particular he considers the weight of history of the old sultanate of Patani on the present-day Yawi-speaking majority in Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani, and the circumstances leading to "the troubles" which erupted in 2004 and which, alas, continue.
Without proposing any solutions, the book explains the background to the present impasse, and considers how far integration of the minority has been, and can be, successful.
Author: Michel Gilquin
Paperback:
164 pages
Company: Silkworm Books
(2005-10-30)
ISBN: 9749575857 List Price: $16.95 Amazon Price: $14.46 Used Price: $10.17
Author: Kamala Tiyavanich
Paperback:
432 pages
Company: University of Hawaii Press
(1997-03)
ISBN: 0824817818 List Price: $30.00 Amazon Price: $21.00 Used Price: $19.95
The lighthearted tale of a little barefoot boy who struggles to live with five quarreling sisters and learns a valuable lesson in contentment from his grandfather. Captivating stories and verses for children ages 4 to 8.
Author: Beverly Lewis
Hardcover:
32 pages
Company: Bethany House
(1998-10-01)
(1998-10-01)
ISBN: 0764220969 List Price: $14.99 Amazon Price: $4.88 Used Price: $0.01
In the Place of Origins tells the tale of modernity in Northern Thailand, discerning its oblique signs in the performances of contemporary spirit mediums. In a world driven by the twin fantasies of pastness and newness, Rosalind C. Morris reveals that spirit mediumship is not simply a theater of atavistic tendency but an arena in which it is possible to read the relationships between new forms of representation and subjectivity, as well as new modes of magic and political power. Through her careful examination of the transformations of spirit mediumship wrought by the mass media, Morris takes readers into the world of the northern Thai past to discover the anticipations of future histories. In this process, she finds new objects for anthropological inquiry, including romantic love and epistolary poetry. She then turns her eye toward the relationships between commodification and prosaic form and photography and the discourses of gendered and national identity. Attending to these issues as they manifest themselves in the practices of mediums, Morris describes both the mundane activities of spirit mediums and the grand ambitions to political authority that are embodied in the increasingly spectacular forms of possession that are becoming so popular with both tourists and local culture brokers. In the Place of Origins traverses this ground with accounts of right-wing militarism and ritual revival during the 70s, and of the democracy movement of 1992, when a global mass media was galvanized by images of military repression and the spectacle of traditional ritual power in cursing. Finally, considering the claims that mediums make to magical power in the face of both AIDS and the Asian economic crisis, Morris reveals the potency of extrajudicial forms of power and violence in the late modern era. This provocative study will interest anthropologists, historians, Asianists, and those involved in gender, performance, media, and literary studies.
Author: Rosalind C. Morris, Rosalind C. Morris
Paperback:
380 pages
Company: Duke University Press
(2000-12)
ISBN: 0822325179 List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $22.95 Used Price: $12.50
Illustrated throughout with attractive photography and diagrams, this book provides an overview of the spiritual practices of Thailand, with particular emphasis on healing rituals and meditations that can be practiced in the modern West.
Author: C. Pierce Salguero
Paperback:
144 pages
Company: Findhorn Press
(2006-04-01)
ISBN: 1844090728 List Price: $19.95 Amazon Price: $12.25 Used Price: $13.08
This book brings together essays by anthropologists, scholars of religion, and art historians on the subject of sacred place and sacred biography in Asia. The chapters span a broad geographical area that includes India, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, and China, and explore issues from the classical and medieval period to the present. They show how sacred places have a plurality of meanings for all religious communities and how in their construction, secular politics, private religious experience, and sectarian rivalry can all intersect.
The contributors explore some of the most fundamental challenges that religious groups face as they expand from their homeland or confront the demands of modernity. In every case the biography of a saint or founding figure proves to be central to the formation of religious identity. Sacred place becomes a means of concretizing the ever-expanding sphere of the saint's influence. While some chapters deal with well- known religious movements and sites, others discuss little known groups and help to enrich our understanding of the diversity of religious belief in Asia.
The book will be of interest not only to scholars of Asian religion and hagiography, but to others who seek to understand the ways in which religious groups accommodate to the challenges of new environments and new times.
Paperback:
392 pages
Company: Univ of British Columbia Pr
(2004-01)
ISBN: 0774810394 List Price: $29.95 Amazon Price: $29.90 Used Price: $26.96
Recounts the struggles of a young Thai woman to become a Buddhist nun and the challenges and rewards of that life.
Author: Sid Brown
Paperback:
180 pages
Company: State University of New York Press
(2001-10)
ISBN: 0791450961 List Price: $21.95 Amazon Price: $18.56 Used Price: $6.95
This comprehensive and attractive reference is divided into four parts: the historical and cultural background; the analysis of Northern Buddha images, including iconography, style, techniques, and dating; the types of Northern Buddha images; and associated Buddhist sculpture, such as footprints and mythical creatures. The Buddha images are classified by style and date, using those images with inscribed dates as the armature around which to cluster the undated statues. The images are analyzed in detail and placed in their historical, cultural, and religious context. Richly illustrated with photographs and line drawings, this volume is an indispensable reference and guide to Buddha images and other Buddhist sculpture of Northern Thailand.
Author: Carol Stratton
Hardcover:
472 pages
Company: Serindia Pubns
(2003-06)
ISBN: 1932476091 List Price: $60.00 Amazon Price: $49.50 Used Price: $49.50
There is a place in the jungles of northeastern Thailand where Westerners can live according to the monastic rules laid down over 2,500 years ago by the Buddha. Author and journalist Tim Ward sought enlightenment and spent a season in this unique Buddhist monastery-one of the strictest in Southeast Asia. His affectionate "behind the robes" book about the rigors and foibles of monastic life at Wat Pah Nanchat has become a modern Buddhist classic.
How does a monk handle coming face to face with a cobra coiled behind a toilet door? Can Mr. Chicago - a former real estate tycoon - really find liberation in a 10" X 10" wooden hut? How does a would-be-monk manage to meditate with the incessant clouds of mosquitoes hovering overhead, when the precepts prohibit killing all sentient beings? And how do Tim and the others react when Thai villagers put a Mars Bar in their begging bowls?
By turns humorous, iconoclastic and inspiring, What the Buddha Never Taught was a best seller in Canada, a Book of the month selection in the US, and has been translated into five languages, and used as a university text for classes in Asian and Religious studies.
Author: Tim Ward
Paperback:
242 pages
Company: Celestial Arts
(1993-02)
ISBN: 0890876878 List Price: $14.95 Amazon Price: $9.63 Used Price: $1.93
Years before he became a mythology expert and household name, Joseph Campbell journeyed to India. He was nearly 50, at a career crossroads, and after 10 years studying Indian art and philosophy he was finally going to India seeking the transcendent (Brahman), the mysteries of India. Instead he found the stark realities of baksheesh culture. His journal of those six months is the closest Campbell ever came to an autobiography. It's a diary of his adventures, insights, and ponderings; it's a window into the India of 1954 and the Joseph Campbell of 1954--both are intriguing places to visit.
Author: Joseph Campbell, Stephen Larsen, Robin Larsen, Antony Van Couvering
Hardcover:
314 pages
Company: HarperCollins Publishers
(1995-06)
ISBN: 0060168897 List Price: $25.00 Amazon Price: $4.75 Used Price: $2.52
Religion plays a central role in Thai society with Buddhism intertwined in the daily lives of the people. Religion also plays an important role in establishing gender boundaries. The growth in recent decades of self-governing nunneries and the increasing interest of Thai women in a Buddhist monastic life are notable changes in the religion/gender dynamic. This anthropological study considers religion and gender relations through the lens of the lives, actions, and roles in Thai society of Buddhist nuns (mae chii).
Making Fields of Merit presents a unique ethnography of Thai Buddhist nuns, examines what it implies to be a female ascetic in contemporary Thailand, and analyzes how the ordained state for women fits into the wider gender patterns found in Thai society. The study also deals with the nuns' agency in creating religious space and authority for women. It raises questions about how the position of Thai Buddhist nuns outside the Buddhist sangha affects their religious legitimacy and describes recent moves to restore a Theravada order of female monks.
Author: Monica Lindberg Falk
Paperback:
283 pages
Company: University of Washington Press
(2008-03-31)
ISBN: 029598726X List Price: $30.00 Amazon Price: $27.30 Used Price: $24.00
The Adventure of a Lifetime Becomes an Unimaginable Nightmare. A thrilling new novel from the Every Man series! John Majors and three friends–Mike, Hollis, and Dave–go to Thailand for the eco-adventure of a lifetime rafting on the Pai River. But they find more than they bargained for. From the fleshpot temptations of Bangkok to the beautiful and terrifying environs of Northern Thailand’s vast wilderness areas, they find themselves tested at every turn. When separatist terrorists attempt to kidnap them in the wilderness, the four men are stranded deep in the jungle, pursued by gunmen toting AK-47s, and finally trapped in a cave with nowhere left to turn. If they hope to escape, they must face their deepest fears and put their lives–and their souls–on the line. Their struggle to survive, escape, and experience God’s grace through it all forms a thrilling tale of courage and endurance. Fred Stoeker–one of the men behind the phenomenal Every Man series–and best-selling novelist D. S. Smith join forces to bring you a compelling novel that combines the action and suspense of a thriller with real-life faith and insight for God’s men.
Author: Fred Stoeker, D.W. Smith
Paperback:
352 pages
Company: WaterBrook Press
(2006-04-18)
(2006-04-18)
ISBN: 1400070384 List Price: $13.99 Amazon Price: $0.04 Used Price: $0.01
Thailand's cultural heritage is rich with holidays and festivals. Religious, royal, and agricultural holidays and cultural festivals all contribute to a kaleidoscope of colorful activities that have long captured the hearts of the local people as well as the interest of visitors. This beautifully illustrated book discusses the reasons for observing the various festivals, their origins and legends, and the location and time of year at which each takes place. Gerson shows throughout how, in Thailand, religion and culture are intertwined.
Author: Ruth Gerson
Hardcover:
108 pages
Company: Oxford University Press, USA
(1996-07-22)
ISBN: 9676531111 List Price: $29.95 Amazon Price: $165.84 Used Price: $17.50
The fate of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel has fascinated Jews and Christians throughout the ages. Hillel Halkin, a distinguished writer and translator, has long been intrigued by the old legend that the tribes still exist in distant corners of the earth -- a legend that, like nearly all contemporary investigators of the subject, he considered to lack all factual basis. In 1998, he accompanied a Jerusalem rabbi and dedicated Lost Tribes hunter to China, Thailand, and northeast India in search of traces of the biblical Israelites who disappeared in the eighth century B.C.E. The journey ended among a little-known ethnic group living along the India-Burma border who had themselves been swept in recent years by Lost Tribe fever. Halkin returned twice more to the Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur for a deeper look. Gradually, despite his initial skepticism, he became convinced that this remote group is -- incredible as it may seem -- historically linked to the ancient biblical tribe of Manasseh. Across the Sabbath River is the compulsively readable account of Halkin's experiences in arriving at this conviction. A superb writer, he effortlessly interweaves the biblical and historical backgrounds of this centuries-old quest with a captivating account, both funny and poignant, of his own adventures. In vivid, engaging portraits, he introduces us to a wide and memorable range of characters at once alien and familiar, while transporting us to an exotic society obsessed with the enigma of its own identity. Piece by piece, as in a tantalizing detective story, he amasses the evidence that finally persuades him, and will persuade many of his readers, that, for the first time in history, a living remnant of a lost biblical tribe has been found.
Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words examines modern and premodern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand. Through five centuries of adaptation and reinterpretation of sacred texts and commentaries, Justin McDaniel traces curricular variations in Buddhist oral and written education that reflect a wide array of community goals and values. He depicts Buddhism as a series of overlapping processes, bringing fresh attention to the continuities of Theravada monastic communities that have endured despite regional and linguistic variations. Incorporating both primary and secondary sources from Thailand and Laos, he examines premodern inscriptional, codicological, anthropological, art historical, ecclesiastical, royal, and French colonial records. He traces how pedagogical techniques found in premodern palm-leaf manuscripts are pervasive in modern education by looking at modern sermons, and even television programs and web sites.
McDaniel explores curriculum as an interpretive category for the history of religions, Buddhist studies, and Asian Studies. He builds on the work of anthropologists and historians who have studied the competing influences and changing concerns that over time create libraries, notions of textuality, and teaching methods. McDaniel describes the differences between religious canons of scripture in vernacular and classical languages amid premodern and modern educational developments. He illustrates how these rhetorical styles, methods, literary cultures, and interpretive communities are the "proximate mechanisms" of history, which are often ignored by historians for the study of institutional evidence, or "structural mechanisms."
As the first comprehensive study of monastic education in Thailand and Laos, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words will appeal to a wide audience of scholars and students interested in religious studies, anthropology, social and intellectual history, and pedagogy.
Author: Justin Thomas Mcdaniel
Paperback:
384 pages
Company: University of Washington Press
(2008-09)
ISBN: 0295988495 List Price: $30.00 Amazon Price: $30.00
A preacher must have common sense, knowing how to turn everyday life experience into Dharma lessons, and assess an audience to maximize communications with them. Sons of the Buddha shows how three boys evolved into remarkable exponents of this ideal. Filled with lively anecdotes and illustrations, and brimming with local color, the book shows how each worked successfully to change moral attitudes and Dharma practices, restore Buddhism’s social dimension, bridge the divide between laypeople and monastics, and champion tolerance toward other religions.
Sulak Sivaraksa, founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists and winner of the 1995 Right Livelihood Award, takes on such issues as the "religion of consumerism," indicating solutions to a wide range of political, economic, and social problems. Seeds of Peace offers his most passionate writings.
Imagining the Course of Life offers a rich portrait of rural life in contemporary Southeast Asia and an accessible introduction to the complexities of Theravada Buddhism as it is actually lived and experienced. It is both an ethnography of indigenous views of human development and a theoretical consideration of how any ethnopsychology is embedded in society and culture. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in a Shan village in northern Thailand, Nancy Eberhardt illustrates how indigenous theories of the life course are connected to local constructions of self and personhood. In the process, she draws our attention to contrasting models in the Euro-American tradition and invites us to reconsider how we think about the trajectory of a human life.
Moving beyond the entrenched categories that can hamper our understanding of other views, Imagining the Course of Life demonstrates the real-life connections between the "religious" and the "psychological." Eberhardt shows how such beliefs and practices are used, sometimes strategically, in people's constructions of themselves, in their interpretations of others' behavior, and in their attempts at social positioning. Individual chapters explore Shan ideas about the overall course of human development, from infancy to old age and beyond, and show how these ideas inform people's understanding of personhood and maturity, gender and social inequality, illness and well-being, emotions and mental health.
Bringing together work from the fields of psychological anthropology, cultural history, and Southeast Asian studies, Imagining the Course of Life speaks to a wide range of readers and will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, religious studies, human development, and moral philosophy.
Author: Nancy Eberhardt
Paperback:
208 pages
Company: University of Hawaii Press
(2006-03)
ISBN: 0824830172 List Price: $24.00 Amazon Price: $21.90 Used Price: $21.90
The Legend of Queen Cama (Camadevivamsa), an early fifteenth-century Pali chronicle written by Mahathera Bodhiramsi, recounts the story of the founding of the kingdom of Haripunjaya in the Chiang Mai valley of Northern Thailand in the seventh century C.E. Similar to other Theravada Pali chronicles, the legend integrates religious and political stories, namely, Queen Cama's founding of a dynastic lineage and the fortunes of Buddhism within it. The Legend of Queen Cama offers revealing insights into the nature of Buddhism as a living tradition during one of the greatest periods in the history of Thai Buddhism. These insights include the symbolic structure of Buddhist cosmology, the close association of Buddhism and the founding of city states, the interrelationship of popular Buddhist ethical teachings and devotional religion, and the inherently syncretic nature of Buddhism as presented in a text indebted to the folkloric traditions of Northern Thailand.
One of the most striking features of the book is the parallelism between the text's dominant narratives--the Buddha's journey to Northern Thailand and his prediction of the discovery of a Buddha relic by King Adittaraja (eleventh century C.E.), and the founding by Queen Cama of a lineage destined to govern Haripunjaya for five hundred years. The Buddha and Queen Cama are equal partners in this creative, cosmically significant act. Both plant the seeds that mature into a Mon Buddhist politico-cultural center that predates the advent of Thai suzerainty in Northern Thailand by five hundred years.
Author: Bodhiransi, Sommai Premchit, Donald K. Swearer
Paperback:
195 pages
Company: State University of New York Press
(1998-06)
ISBN: 0791437760 List Price: $20.95 Amazon Price: $0.25 Used Price: $0.03
Becoming the Buddha is the first book-length study of a key ritual of Buddhist practice in Asia: the consecration of a Buddha image or "new Buddha," a ceremony by which the Buddha becomes present or alive. Through a richly detailed, accessible exploration of this ritual in northern Thailand, an exploration that stands apart from standard text-based or anthropological approaches, Donald Swearer makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Buddha image, its role in Buddhist devotional life, and its relationship to the veneration of Buddha relics. Blending ethnography, analysis, and Buddhist texts related to this mimetic reenactment of the night of the Buddha's enlightenment, he demonstrates that the image becomes the Buddha's surrogate by being invested with the Buddha's story and charged with the extraordinary power of Buddhahood. The process by which this transformation occurs through chant, sermon, meditation, and the presence of charismatic monks is at the heart of this book.
Known as "opening the eyes of the Buddha," image consecration traditions throughout Buddhist Asia share much in common. Within the cultural context of northern Thailand, Becoming the Buddha illuminates scriptural accounts of the making of the first Buddha image; looks at debates over the ritual's historical origin, at Buddhological insights achieved, and at the hermeneutics of absence and presence; and provides a thematic comparison of several Buddhist traditions.
Author: Donald K. Swearer
Hardcover:
336 pages
Company: Princeton University Press
(2004-01-26)
ISBN: 0691114358 List Price: $45.00 Amazon Price: $32.00 Used Price: $27.99
Dr Tambiah describes the religious practices and beliefs of the people of a remote village in north-east Thailand, relating them to the wider context of the civilization in which they are embedded, and examining the relationship of the religious practices of the villagers to the classical Buddhist tradition. Because they have based their studies on the Sanskrit and Pali literature, Western observers have tended to dismiss much of the popular manifestation of Buddhism as debased. Dr Tambiah demonstrates that this judgement is misleading, and emphasizes that the contemporary village religion that he describes manifests continuities as well as transformations with respect to the classical literary tradition. The village religion is described primarily through ritual.
Author: S. J. Tambiah
Paperback:
404 pages
Company: Cambridge University Press
(1975-09-26)
ISBN: 0521099587 List Price: $48.00 Amazon Price: $47.41 Used Price: $29.98
Hard Travel to Sacred Places is the record of a personal odyssey through Southeast Asia, an external and internal journey through grief and the painful realities of a decadent age. Wurlitzer?novelist, screenwriter, and Buddhist practitioner?travels with his wife, photographer Lynn Davis, on a photo assignment to the sacred sites of Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia. Heavy Westernization, sex clubs, aging hippies and expatriates, and political dissidents provide a vivid contrast to the peace that Wurlitzer and Davis seek, still reeling from the death of their son in a car accident. As Davis with her camera searches for a thread of meaning among the artifacts and relics of a more enlightened age, Wurlitzer grasps at the wisdom of the Buddhist teachings in an effort to assuage his grief. His journal chronicles the survival of age-old truths in a world gone mad.
Between 1880 and 1930 Thai law was modernised. Using the French civil code as their model, the kings of Siam recast traditional Thai law into western form. This book describes Thai law as it was before 1880. For at least five-hundred years-- perhaps nearer a thousand years the Thai have used written lawbooks. During the last twenty years Thai scholars have systematically searched for these lawbooks through the book chests of monasteries. As a result there is now a very large number of legal manuscripts available for study. In this book six experts describe the new discoveries and assess how far our view of traditional Thai law has to change. The essays have a regional focus, dealing with the Northern Thai traditions of Lanna, the provincial cities of central Thailand, the Southern Kingdom based on Nakhon Si Thammarat, the law texts of Laos, the new discoveries in Burma and finally with Bangkok and its famous Three Seals Code
Author: Andrew Huxley
Paperback:
211 pages
Company: Orchid Press
(2006-09-25)
ISBN: 9748299864 List Price: $18.00 Amazon Price: $11.42 Used Price: $11.42
The mountains of northern Thailand constitute part of northern Thai identity. They inspire fear and awe, respect and love, curiosity and creative imagination. They define both the physical and mental landscape of northern Thailand.
Drawing on the legendary histories of three mountains in the region—Doi Ang Salung Chiang Dao, Doi Suthep, and Doi Kham—coauthor Donald Swearer explores the various ways that mountains in northern Thailand are seen as sacred space, and therefore as an environment to be respected rather than exploited.
The volume presents, in English translation, the stories associated with these sacred sites as recorded in the legendary chronicles, or tamnan, of the story of the Chiang Dao mountain and cave, the account of the enshrining of the Buddha relic on Doi Suthep, and the interwoven legends of the hermit Wasuthep, the demons Pu Sae and Ya Sae, the chief Wilangkha, and the queen Chamathewi.
In preserving the fascinating folklore of these sacred mountains, the authors contribute to the preservation of the mountains themselves.
Author: Donald K. Swearer, Sommai Premchit, Phaithoon Dokbuakaew
Paperback:
104 pages
Company: Silkworm Books
(2005-01-31)
ISBN: 9749575482 List Price: $13.95 Amazon Price: $13.41 Used Price: $13.40
Right Development examines the Santi Asoke Buddhist Reform Movement of Thailand as a culturally and environmentally appropriate alternative to western development programs. The Asoke group's aim is not a Western ideal, to accumulate high levels of material comfort, but a Buddhist ideal to release attachment to the material world and attain spiritual freedom.
A journey to the early kingdom of Sukothai and explores the remains and cultural heritage of this sacred site.
Author: Dawn F. Rooney
Paperback:
220 pages
Company: River Books Press
(2008-04-25)
ISBN: 9749863429 List Price: $30.00 Amazon Price: $19.97 Used Price: $19.97
Sounding the Center is an in-depth look at the power behind classical music and dance in Bangkok, the capital and sacred center of Buddhist Thailand. Focusing on the ritual honoring teachers of music and dance, Deborah Wong reveals a complex network of connections among kings, teachers, knowledge, and performance that underlies the classical court arts.
Drawing on her extensive fieldwork, Wong lays out the ritual in detail: the way it is enacted, the foods and objects involved, and the people who perform it, emphasizing the way the performers themselves discuss and construct aspects of the ceremony.
Author: Deborah Wong
Paperback:
336 pages
Company: University Of Chicago Press
(2001-08-15)
ISBN: 0226905861 List Price: $35.00 Amazon Price: $21.00 Used Price: $9.79
The central actors in this book are some reclusive forest-dwelling ascetic meditation masters who have been acclaimed as 'saints' in contemporary Thailand. These saints originally pursued their salvation quest among the isolated villages of the country's periphery, but once recognized as holy men endowed with charisma, they became the radiating centres of a country-wide cult of amulets. The amulets, blessed by the saints, are avidly sought by royalty, ruling generals, intelligentsia and common folk alike for their alleged powers to influence the success of worldly transactions, whether political, economic, martial or romantic.
Author: Tambiah
Paperback:
428 pages
Company: Cambridge University Press
(1984-06-29)
ISBN: 0521277876 List Price: $48.00 Amazon Price: $47.99 Used Price: $39.95
Author: Samuel Hideo Yamashita
Hardcover:
144 pages
Company: University of Hawaii Press
(1994-11)
ISBN: 082481570X List Price: $17.00 Amazon Price: $17.00 Used Price: $6.00
Author: Phra Dhammapitaka
Paperback:
238 pages
Company: Council of Thai Bhikkhus in the U.S.A
(2000)
ISBN: 9748356752 List Price: Amazon Price: $24.95 Used Price: $16.99
To appreciate Thailand is to appreciate the meaning of its complex religious fabric. Spiritual Abodes of Thailand reveals the significance behind the distinctive structures and rituals that are so evident throughout Thailand today. Thai worship practices, religious beliefs and the influence that these beliefs have on the lifestyle, society and landscape of Thailand are all explored through a series of beautifully illustrated full-colour pictures. Along country roads and in royal palaces, ordinary homes and government offices, one sees the importance of guardian spirits, supernatural forces, shrines, and temples to the Thais. Though the country is itself overwhelmingly Buddhist, the religion is intricately weaved with alternative beliefs, such as spiritualism, animism and deism. Further impact by Indian and Chinese cultures throughout history has given Thais the unique and colourful customs they so evidently cherish today.
Author: William Warren
Hardcover:
128 pages
Company: Times Editions - Marshall Cavendish
(2005-05)
ISBN: 9812329269 List Price: Amazon Price: Used Price: $28.45
Buddhist temple murals have been a vital form of religious expression in Thailand for centuries. In this lively, slim volume, historian David Wyatt takes a peek behind the scenes to investigate the wider meanings hidden within the beautiful, elaborately painted images that adorn Thai temples. Wyatt shows how a sensitive reading of these "texts" from the past can reveal fascinating new insights into the psyche and history of Thai communities.
Author: David K. Wyatt
Paperback:
80 pages
Company: Silkworm Books
(2004-07)
ISBN: 9749575474 List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $24.94
Asking first, "Who was the Buddha?" this concise yet complete study explores Buddhas's evolution from a historical teacher to a supernatural universal emperor. Fickle examines the features shared by all images of the Buddha, especially the images found in Thailand, and carefully delineates the historical influences on each style. A generous sampling of superb black-and-white and color illustrations further illuminate the beauty and variety of Thailand's Buddha images.
Author: Dorothy H. Fickle
Hardcover:
112 pages
Company: Oxford University Press, USA
(1989-11-30)
ISBN: 0195889207 List Price: $22.00 Amazon Price: Used Price: $18.70
Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906-1993) is widely regarded as modern Thailand's most influential Buddhist philosopher. His thought had a profound intellectual impact in Thailand in the second half of the twentieth century. His life mission was to undertake a complete reexamination of Theravada Buddhist teachings. By returning to the Buddha's original teachings in the Suttapitaka and by drawing on aspects of Zen Buddhism, Buddhadasa crafted a vision of Thai Buddhism as a socially, politically, and intellectually progressive force. This vision of a modern Theravada Buddhism fit for a modern, democratic, and socially just Thailand continues to inspire large numbers of Thai people in the twenty-first century.
In this book Peter Jackson examines Buddhadasa's life work and thought, placing them in the context of the political, economic, and intellectual changes that transformed Thailand in the twentieth century. Combining biographical studies with critical philosophical and sociological analyses of Buddhadasa's reforms of Thai Buddhist teachings, Peter Jackson emphasizes the path-breaking and often radical ideas of one of the greatest Buddhist thinkers of the last century. This book is a revised and expanded edition of Peter Jackson's Buddhadasa: A Buddhist Thinker for the Modern World, published in 1988. It contains a new epilogue tracing the controversy surrounding Buddhadasa's death in 1993 and reflecting on the philosopher-monk's lasting legacy in Thailand.
Author: Peter A. Jackson
Paperback:
392 pages
Company: Silkworm Books
(2003-06)
ISBN: 9747551918 List Price: $22.50 Amazon Price: $22.27 Used Price: $15.00
The legend of the compassionate monk, Phra Malai, and his visits to heaven and hell is one of the most pervasive themes in Thai Buddhism. While the tale is known throughout Southeast Asia, it has been especially popular in Thailand, where its teachings have for centuries influenced the content of sermons and the practice of different rituals. Although Western scholars sometimes refer to the Phra Malai legend as if it were a standard text, the tale actually exists in numerous versions. In the course of Brereton's research, she collected and examined more than a dozen different versions of the story. Her analysis suggests that the message conveyed through these variant forms of the legend is not always the same. In other words, the meaning of the text derives not only from its content, but also from its function. With this in mind, Brereton explores the Phra Malai theme in light of the relationship between text, context and meaning by comparing three versions of Phra Malai. Her book provides a thorough overview of the Phra Malai tale, and offers an explanation for its longevity and continued significance in Thailand.
Author: Bonnie Pacala Brereton
Paperback:
252 pages
Company: Arizona State University Program for Southeas
(1995-06)
ISBN: 1881044076 List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $24.95 Used Price: $17.84
Little Angelsis the real-life stories of the novice monks and reflects the lives of many youths in Thailand who are trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, broken homes, illiteracy and drug abuse. When all else fails, Buddhism becomes their last resort: providing them with physical shelter and spiritual refuge. It heals their childhood traumas and gives them a moral framework for living and a better outlook on life.
Author: Phra Peter Pannapadipo
Paperback:
320 pages
Import
Company: ARROW (RAND)
(2005-06-02)
ISBN: 009948448X List Price: Amazon Price: $31.48 Used Price: $5.11
Written by a member of the Thai Royal Family, this is the first book to present a complete history of votive tablets in Thailand, covering their production from the sixth century AD to their present day manifestation in the popular practice of wearing amulets.
Author: Pattaratorn Chirapravati
Hardcover:
112 pages
Company: Oxford University Press, USA
(1998-03-31)
ISBN: 9835600252 List Price: $27.41 Amazon Price: $22.53 Used Price: $27.99
Author: World Council of Churches
Paperback:
49 pages
Company: World Council of Churches
(1977)
ISBN: 2825405523 List Price: Amazon Price: Used Price: $0.41
This volume deals with a unique group of stone sculptures, representations of the Buddha's Wheel of the Law, found in present-day Thailand that date from about the seventh-eighth centuries CE. The book places these sculptures in their historical, religious, and art historical contexts to determine what they meant to the culture (called Dvaravati) that produced them. Thus, other art historical material associated with the Wheels, including stone deer, Buddha images, and stupas, are discussed. Of greatest importance is how these sculptu
Shopping Guide 
Three decades ago in a cordoned-off corner of the developing world an angry Catholic priest armed only with pencil, paper, and crayons, declared a revolution. From a shanty school shared with Buddhists and Muslims in Bangkok's squatter slums, Father Joe Maier began his advance on abject poverty. Today, his Human Development Foundation and Mercy Centre charity is responsible for thirty-two preschools that have taught more than twenty thousand children how to read and write. Despite the crippling neglect found in impoverishment, he is raising international scholars and injecting a sense of purpose into shantytowns and squatter camps that used to have neither. 
A uniquely relaxing yet energizing way to achieve balance and healing. 
It is 1992, and the Burmese government's current war on its indigenous people runs into its fourth year. In neighboring Thailand, a small band of Buddhist monks harbors refugees from Burma inside their modest temple in the slums of Bangkok. The monks and refugees are all natives of the Burmese Mon State. All have the same residential status in Thailand: illegal. Under surveillance, and overwhelmed by the needs of their charges, the monks reach out to international aid agencies in Bangkok for help in ministering to the tortured, the wounded, the diseased, and the orphaned. 
Author: Santi Leksukhum, Sankti Leksukhum
A wry account of the road from Harvard scholarship student to ordination as northern Thailand's first black Buddhist nun. 
In The Buddha in the Jungle, real-life stories about 19th and early 20th century Buddhist monks in Thailand are ingeniously intermingled with experiences recorded by their Western contemporaries. Stories tell of giant snakes, bandits, boatmen, midwives, and guardian spirits and collectively portray a Buddhist culture in all its imaginative and geographical concreteness. By juxtaposing these eyewitness accounts, Kimala Tiyavanich presents a new and vivid picture of Buddhism as it was lived and of the natural environments in which the Buddha's teachings were practiced.
Phra Farang tells the story of Peter Robinson, a successful businessman, who at forty five, gave up his comfortable life in London to ordain as a Buddhist monk in Bangkok. But the new path he had chosen was not always as easy or as straightforward as he hoped it would be.
Thailand is usually closely associated with Buddhism, but since 1998 the country has been one of the observer members of the Islamic Conference Organization, and senior figures in the present and previous governments have been Muslim. Some 8 percent of the population is Muslim, and in the three southernmost provinces of the country they constitute a majority. Islam is ever more visible in Bangkok, where the demographic increase of Muslims is marked. 
Author: Kamala Tiyavanich
The lighthearted tale of a little barefoot boy who struggles to live with five quarreling sisters and learns a valuable lesson in contentment from his grandfather. Captivating stories and verses for children ages 4 to 8.
In the Place of Origins tells the tale of modernity in Northern Thailand, discerning its oblique signs in the performances of contemporary spirit mediums. In a world driven by the twin fantasies of pastness and newness, Rosalind C. Morris reveals that spirit mediumship is not simply a theater of atavistic tendency but an arena in which it is possible to read the relationships between new forms of representation and subjectivity, as well as new modes of magic and political power.
Author: Chamsai Jotisalikorn, Luca Invernizzi Tettoni, Chami Jotisalikorn
This book brings together essays by anthropologists, scholars of religion, and art historians on the subject of sacred place and sacred biography in Asia. The chapters span a broad geographical area that includes India, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, and China, and explore issues from the classical and medieval period to the present. They show how sacred places have a plurality of meanings for all religious communities and how in their construction, secular politics, private religious experience, and sectarian rivalry can all intersect. 
Recounts the struggles of a young Thai woman to become a Buddhist nun and the challenges and rewards of that life.
This comprehensive and attractive reference is divided into four parts: the historical and cultural background; the analysis of Northern Buddha images, including iconography, style, techniques, and dating; the types of Northern Buddha images; and associated Buddhist sculpture, such as footprints and mythical creatures. The Buddha images are classified by style and date, using those images with inscribed dates as the armature around which to cluster the undated statues. The images are analyzed in detail and placed in their historical, cultural, and religious context. Richly illustrated with photographs and line drawings, this volume is an indispensable reference and guide to Buddha images and other Buddhist sculpture of Northern Thailand.
Religion plays a central role in Thai society with Buddhism intertwined in the daily lives of the people. Religion also plays an important role in establishing gender boundaries. The growth in recent decades of self-governing nunneries and the increasing interest of Thai women in a Buddhist monastic life are notable changes in the religion/gender dynamic. This anthropological study considers religion and gender relations through the lens of the lives, actions, and roles in Thai society of Buddhist nuns (mae chii). 
Author: Philip Cornwel-Smith
The Adventure of a Lifetime
Thailand's cultural heritage is rich with holidays and festivals. Religious, royal, and agricultural holidays and cultural festivals all contribute to a kaleidoscope of colorful activities that have long captured the hearts of the local people as well as the interest of visitors. This
The fate of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel has fascinated Jews and Christians throughout the ages. Hillel Halkin, a distinguished writer and translator, has long been intrigued by the old legend that the tribes still exist in distant corners of the earth -- a legend that, like nearly all contemporary investigators of the subject, he considered to lack all factual basis. In 1998, he accompanied a Jerusalem rabbi and dedicated Lost Tribes hunter to China, Thailand, and northeast India in search of traces of the biblical Israelites who disappeared in the eighth century B.C.E. The journey ended among a little-known ethnic group living along the India-Burma border who had themselves been swept in recent years by Lost Tribe fever. Halkin returned twice more to the Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur for a deeper look. Gradually, despite his initial skepticism, he became convinced that this remote group is -- incredible as it may seem -- historically linked to the ancient biblical tribe of Manasseh. Across the Sabbath River is the compulsively readable account of Halkin's experiences in arriving at this conviction. A superb writer, he effortlessly interweaves the biblical and historical backgrounds of this centuries-old quest with a captivating account, both funny and poignant, of his own adventures. In vivid, engaging portraits, he introduces us to a wide and memorable range of characters at once alien and familiar, while transporting us to an exotic society obsessed with the enigma of its own identity. Piece by piece, as in a tantalizing detective story, he amasses the evidence that finally persuades him, and will persuade many of his readers, that, for the first time in history, a living remnant of a lost biblical tribe has been found.
Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words examines modern and premodern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand. Through five centuries of adaptation and reinterpretation of sacred texts and commentaries, Justin McDaniel traces curricular variations in Buddhist oral and written education that reflect a wide array of community goals and values. He depicts Buddhism as a series of overlapping processes, bringing fresh attention to the continuities of Theravada monastic communities that have endured despite regional and linguistic variations. Incorporating both primary and secondary sources from Thailand and Laos, he examines premodern inscriptional, codicological, anthropological, art historical, ecclesiastical, royal, and French colonial records. He traces how pedagogical techniques found in premodern palm-leaf manuscripts are pervasive in modern education by looking at modern sermons, and even television programs and web sites. 
Sulak Sivaraksa, founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists and winner of the 1995 Right Livelihood Award, takes on such issues as the "religion of consumerism," indicating solutions to a wide range of political, economic, and social problems. Seeds of Peace offers his most passionate writings.
Imagining the Course of Life offers a rich portrait of rural life in contemporary Southeast Asia and an accessible introduction to the complexities of Theravada Buddhism as it is actually lived and experienced. It is both an ethnography of indigenous views of human development and a theoretical consideration of how any ethnopsychology is embedded in society and culture. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in a Shan village in northern Thailand, Nancy Eberhardt illustrates how indigenous theories of the life course are connected to local constructions of self and personhood. In the process, she draws our attention to contrasting models in the Euro-American tradition and invites us to reconsider how we think about the trajectory of a human life.
The Legend of Queen Cama (Camadevivamsa), an early fifteenth-century Pali chronicle written by Mahathera Bodhiramsi, recounts the story of the founding of the kingdom of Haripunjaya in the Chiang Mai valley of Northern Thailand in the seventh century C.E. Similar to other Theravada Pali chronicles, the legend integrates religious and political stories, namely, Queen Cama's founding of a dynastic lineage and the fortunes of Buddhism within it. The Legend of Queen Cama offers revealing insights into the nature of Buddhism as a living tradition during one of the greatest periods in the history of Thai Buddhism. These insights include the symbolic structure of Buddhist cosmology, the close association of Buddhism and the founding of city states, the interrelationship of popular Buddhist ethical teachings and devotional religion, and the inherently syncretic nature of Buddhism as presented in a text indebted to the folkloric traditions of Northern Thailand. 
This book explores the intergration of mindfulness with social activism.
Author: Mackenzie
Dr Tambiah describes the religious practices and beliefs of the people of a remote village in north-east Thailand, relating them to the wider context of the civilization in which they are embedded, and examining the relationship of the religious practices of the villagers to the classical Buddhist tradition. Because they have based their studies on the Sanskrit and Pali literature, Western observers have tended to dismiss much of the popular manifestation of Buddhism as debased. Dr Tambiah demonstrates that this judgement is misleading, and emphasizes that the contemporary village religion that he describes manifests continuities as well as transformations with respect to the classical literary tradition. The village religion is described primarily through ritual.
Between 1880 and 1930 Thai law was modernised. Using the French civil code as their model, the kings of Siam recast traditional Thai law into western form. This book describes Thai law as it was before 1880. For at least five-hundred years-- perhaps nearer a thousand years the Thai have used written lawbooks. During the last twenty years Thai scholars have systematically searched for these lawbooks through the book chests of monasteries. As a result there is now a very large number of legal manuscripts available for study. In this book six experts describe the new discoveries and assess how far our view of traditional Thai law has to change. The essays have a regional focus, dealing with the Northern Thai traditions of Lanna, the provincial cities of central Thailand, the Southern Kingdom based on Nakhon Si Thammarat, the law texts of Laos, the new discoveries in Burma and finally with Bangkok and its famous Three Seals Code
The mountains of northern Thailand constitute part of northern Thai identity. They inspire fear and awe, respect and love, curiosity and creative imagination. They define both the physical and mental landscape of northern Thailand. 
Right Development examines the Santi Asoke Buddhist Reform Movement of Thailand as a culturally and environmentally appropriate alternative to western development programs. The Asoke group's aim is not a Western ideal, to accumulate high levels of material comfort, but a Buddhist ideal to release attachment to the material world and attain spiritual freedom.
A journey to the early kingdom of Sukothai and explores the remains and cultural heritage of this sacred site.
Thai Women in Buddhism chronicles the history of these women and suggests broader possibilities for women's involvement.
The central actors in this book are some reclusive forest-dwelling ascetic meditation masters who have been acclaimed as 'saints' in contemporary Thailand. These saints originally pursued their salvation quest among the isolated villages of the country's periphery, but once recognized as holy men endowed with charisma, they became the radiating centres of a country-wide cult of amulets. The amulets, blessed by the saints, are avidly sought by royalty, ruling generals, intelligentsia and common folk alike for their alleged powers to influence the success of worldly transactions, whether political, economic, martial or romantic.
A fascinating exploration of the complex mythologies and legends of China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
AN Authoratative a-z guide to the mythologies and legends of China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia
Author: Hayashi Yukio
To appreciate Thailand is to appreciate the meaning of its complex religious fabric. Spiritual Abodes of Thailand reveals the significance behind the distinctive structures and rituals that are so evident throughout Thailand today. Thai worship practices, religious beliefs and the influence that these beliefs have on the lifestyle, society and landscape of Thailand are all explored through a series of beautifully illustrated full-colour pictures. Along country roads and in royal palaces, ordinary homes and government offices, one sees the importance of guardian spirits, supernatural forces, shrines, and temples to the Thais. Though the country is itself overwhelmingly Buddhist, the religion is intricately weaved with alternative beliefs, such as spiritualism, animism and deism. Further impact by Indian and Chinese cultures throughout history has given Thais the unique and colourful customs they so evidently cherish today.
Buddhist temple murals have been a vital form of religious expression in Thailand for centuries. In this lively, slim volume, historian David Wyatt takes a peek behind the scenes to investigate the wider meanings hidden within the beautiful, elaborately painted images that adorn Thai temples. Wyatt shows how a sensitive reading of these "texts" from the past can reveal fascinating new insights into the psyche and history of Thai communities.
Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906-1993) is widely regarded as modern Thailand's most influential Buddhist philosopher. His thought had a profound intellectual impact in Thailand in the second half of the twentieth century. His life mission was to undertake a complete reexamination of Theravada Buddhist teachings. By returning to the Buddha's original teachings in the Suttapitaka and by drawing on aspects of Zen Buddhism, Buddhadasa crafted a vision of Thai Buddhism as a socially, politically, and intellectually progressive force. This vision of a modern Theravada Buddhism fit for a modern, democratic, and socially just Thailand continues to inspire large numbers of Thai people in the twenty-first century. 
The legend of the compassionate monk, Phra Malai, and his visits to heaven and hell is one of the most pervasive themes in Thai Buddhism. While the tale is known throughout Southeast Asia, it has been especially popular in Thailand, where its teachings have for centuries influenced the content of sermons and the practice of different rituals. Although Western scholars sometimes refer to the Phra Malai legend as if it were a standard text, the tale actually exists in numerous versions. In the course of Brereton's research, she collected and examined more than a dozen different versions of the story. Her analysis suggests that the message conveyed through these variant forms of the legend is not always the same. In other words, the meaning of the text derives not only from its content, but also from its function. With this in mind, Brereton explores the Phra Malai theme in light of the relationship between text, context and meaning by comparing three versions of Phra Malai. Her book provides a thorough overview of the Phra Malai tale, and offers an explanation for its longevity and continued significance in Thailand.
Author: Nadirsyah Hosen
Little Angels is the real-life stories of the novice monks and reflects the lives of many youths in Thailand who are trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, broken homes, illiteracy and drug abuse. When all else fails, Buddhism becomes their last resort: providing them with physical shelter and spiritual refuge. It heals their childhood traumas and gives them a moral framework for living and a better outlook on life.
Written by a member of the Thai Royal Family, this is the first book to present a complete history of votive tablets in Thailand, covering their production from the sixth century AD to their present day manifestation in the popular practice of wearing amulets.