To capitalize on the epiphany i think this thread is having. ill share some of my own thoughts about dhammakaya. From what ive seen. Wat Phra Dhammakaya is big on propagating. This is fairly unique, even among the Dhammakaya tradition. the other major temples of our tradition, Wat Paknam and Wat LP Sodh Dhammakayaram do not emphasize propogation
as much. For many Buddhists the practice is seen as the most important. Many westerners have this idea of buddhist "ultimatism" where they eschew making merit in favor of the deeper teachings of ending suffering and whatnot. I think this is one reason the forest tradition is quite popular in the west and where a lot of the criticisms of dhammakaya come from.
What Wat Phra Dhammakaya does do differently from what ive seen is they focus heavily on quantity. Many people will say the path of detaching oneself from world and ending suffering is better, i agree with this and so do many people at Wat Phra dhammakaya. However, this does not appeal to many people (or most Buddhist people from what ive seen). They just want to improve thier lives (or future lives). Yes it is better to focus on the deep teachings so they can end dukkha once and for all etc. but that doesnt appeal to many people and the position WPD seems to take is that they target people who would otherwise not be practicing Buddhists. The goal is not to help people who would get the most benefit from Buddhism or to simply provide a place of practice, it is to use Buddhism to benefit the
most people that they can. thus why we do stuff on much larger scales. There are already many people who would already be interested in Buddhism and many of them criticize our methods, but they have other temples to go to including other temples of the Dhammakaya tradition (wat paknam and wat lp sodh dhammakayaram).
This is why even though the Dhammakaya tradition itself tries to get rid of some of the cultural folk stuff in Buddhism, WPD has kept the concept of making merit and whatnot. it appeals to many people, and of course you can have more impact if you have money.
This goal is why Dhammakaya does some of the things it does. Heres a good example. one of the anti-dhammakaya ppl criticized us for our Hell videos earlier on this thread. heres one here.
All this does is take things the Buddha described and put it into video form. Yes it is "scary" and yes it would be better if ppl kept precepts out of personal choice rather than out of fear. But this is the
real world. Many people dont do that, and many wont sit there and read the Buddha's descriptions of hell. the point is it is better for someone to keep precepts out of fear, than to not keep precepts at all and that is what the video is aimed at. I have met many people (Dhammakaya and non-dhammakaya ppl) who saw our "literalistic" videos and started keeping precepts and quit taking intoxicants. it works. If you believe in the Buddhas teachings regarding kamma, scaring some1 into keeping precepts can save them a lot of suffering compared to doing nothing at all or something that doesnt even work on them.
In short, WPD focuses on Buddhism for the masses, and to use Buddhism to benefit the most people that it can, this is of course, at the cost of emphasis on the super deep enlightening stuff, in favor of stuff that simply focuses on improving ppls lives (or future lives) such as merit and kamma. its a typical local community temple packaged into a large organization with more modern methods. from what ive seen that seems to be the key difference between WPD and the forest tradition temples (as seen thru my visits to forest temples and what ive read online and on this forum).
Also, keep in mind we wouldnt have Buddhism today unless there were people actively propogating it. and the folk religion stuff in Buddhism now was one way to make it more accessible to more ppl back then. Better Buddhism make changes to adapt to a new country than to disappear from the world completely.