Battle between the Old and the New in Thai Buddhism

[gavesako]

BATTLE - Between Old and New

Thai Short film - BATTLE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwEe9z4LRgg




In Thailand Today, Teen Monks Express the Spirit to a Rock Beat
Elders Worry Buddhism Is Being Dissed; Modernism, Fewer Births Threaten Faith

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087 ... 74874.html
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php ... 40,0,0,1,0

Monks in the Modern World
Thailand's Buddhists are a bit annoyed with today's young monks. As mobile phones and other devices grow more popular, it's becoming harder for religious leaders to control the images of Buddhism in the media and marketplace. WSJ's James Hookway reports.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087 ... bs%3Dvideo

[Ytrog]

Too bad I don't know any Thai and the automatic translate captions aren't making sense.

[gavesako]

Basically it shows the old and the new style of communicating Dhamma to Thai people. Then the old and the young monk have a kind of 'rap battle' discussing the issue of wearing shoes by monks. In the end, they both say the same thing: The goal of Buddhism is freedom of mind.

[Ytrog]

Thank you for explaining it

[gavesako]

Compare this interesting article about "childish and immature behaviour" in the early Sangha:

http://huayanzang.blogspot.com/2012/08/ ... rules.html

Some of their actions are rather amusing to read about, but it does reveal that rather immature behavior did happen in the early sangha, which was clearly not made up entirely of mature and dedicated practitioners as it is often believed. There is value in recognizing this because although we might be inclined to think the sangha in the Buddha's time was quite advanced, stoic and harmonious (and a lot of popular media tries to literally paint this image), in reality it had many of the same problems as any other human organization past or present. This is especially evident after reading the Vinaya, which is an all too often ignored area of the canon. ...

The spirit of many of these rules seems to be just general house rules that had to be laid down because of immature behaviour. Do they entail some kind of sacredness? Is there anything holy about them? The Vinaya can be painted as a kind of program for spiritual development, but taking a step back much of it from the scholarly point of view just appears as mere house rules for young men and women who were prone to cause trouble.