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This chapter examines the symbolic power of southern Buddhist monks and its connection to the violence. By its tactical use of Buddhism as a state religion, the Thai government politicizes Buddhist monks through state rhetoric and official programs, thereby transforming monks into embodiments of Thai nationalism and Thai Buddhism. As political entities, monks physically become military targets in the conflict. Because of his significance, an attack on a Buddhist monk is a defacement of the sacred. The combination of a politicized representation, a defacement, and a conflict over space becomes a catalyst for religious violence. This equation of Buddhist violence is tested in different conflicts such as in Vietnam, Myanmar, and Arizona.

This chapter presents Buddhist teachings and visions to help people make conscientious decisions regarding family planning, contraception, and abortion in Thailand. It elaborates the position that Buddhist teachings support the nonviolent methods of birth control and family planning both in individual and national policy. It also explores some important Buddhist teachings in order to define the situation clearly, to give faithful interpretations of Buddhist teaching, and to present some illustrations to support the right to family planning and to express toleration in Buddhism for abortion. The popular merit making and the law of kamma are important in Thai Buddhism and play a vital role in shaping the attitudes of Buddhism toward abortion.

This introductory chapter narrates the story of “Mae Nak Phrakhanong” (Mother Nak of Phrakhanong District), and discusses its influence in Thai Buddhism. In the story, a female ghost terrified a small village in Bangkok. With her long fingernails she gutted any person who attempted to tell her husband that she was merely the specter of his wife. All the while her husband, Mak, lived unaware that his beautiful and caring wife was indeed a ghost. When he realized her true nature, he was torn between the love for his departed and the fear of her ghost. In the end, a Buddhist monk Somdet To used Pali incantations to release the ghost, thus freeing Mak and his village. The story can be considered one of the central concerns of Thai Buddhism with its numerous images, stories, rituals, and amulets associated with Somdet To and Mae Nak.

This chapter critiques one of the many standardizations of Thai Buddhism—Theravada Buddhism. Many studies posit that starting in the late eighteenth century and continuing until today, Buddhist practice, texts, and administration have been much standardized. Many have argued that there has been a concomitant homogenization of Buddhist belief and practice since the introduction of printing presses, a growth in “canonical fundamentalism,” greater administrative capabilities, and social control methods assisted by improved roads, communication, tax collection, as well as the ossifycation of national languages, borders, symbols, and shared histories. However, there is neither a national, standardized Buddhist ritual calendar nor a standard national Buddhist liturgy. These rituals and liturgies have no prescriptive cultural repertoires. Moreover, these repertoires have a way of self-corralling and pacifying diversity. Thus, organizers of rituals and liturgies at various monasteries do not need to follow state-sanctioned regiments, even though there are cultural and religious expectations.

This chapter discusses the significance of art in Thai Buddhism. Thai Buddhism is lauded for its age and precious objects, which are honored for their connection to certain powerful monks, their relics, their power to heal, or their power to protect. Many of these highly revered and powerful images are reproduced on resin or wood, crudely and mass-produced bronze, plastic, copper, resin, or clay. Moreover, these images demand a response and reaction. Patrons do not merely look at or prostrate before images; they affix gold, insert relics, draw holy water, as well as comfort images with robes, pillows, food, and flowers.

The conclusion provides an alternative to the Buddhist-Muslim polemics and tensions in southern Thailand. Over the last several centuries, Buddhists and Muslims have coexisted peacefully, and this model of religious pluralism is still present within the conflict zone. While the Thai government's policies and actions politicize the role of Thai Buddhism, which further exacerbates the violence, a minority of monks work to retain Thai Buddhism's communal and interfaith characteristics in the southern provinces. By reducing their political roles and increasing their community ties, these monks offer hope to the region and, more importantly, a platform of action that can be emulated throughout the southernmost provinces.

This introductory chapter reveals the contours of a Buddhist political history in which Southeast Asia's national borders are transcended by connections and perceptions formed among Buddhists of different nationalities, as well as other international protagonists. The monkhood's relations with Washington were based on a mutual keeping up of complementary appearances: that one side was avoiding religion while the other was staying out of politics. Despite appearances, the Buddhist clergy in fact grew more politically internationalized under the U.S. embrace. So, too, was Thai Buddhism growing more religiously internationalized through institutions such as the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB). It was through involvement in this group, seen by some as a “miniature Asian U.N.,” that Thailand's lay Buddhist leadership contended with the major international Buddhist issues of the day.