Buddhism chief sacked over temple
LACK OF ACTION COSTS OFFICIAL HIS JOB
>> The senior official in the national Buddhism administration has been sidelined for inaction over the Wat Phra Dhammakaya scandal as authorities trace a mystery phone call from deep within the temple.
Phanom Sornsilp, director of the National Office of Buddhism (NOB), was removed under Section 44 after a barrage of criticism that he was slow to act against the controversial temple.
The order was signed by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and published in the Royal Gazette yesterday.
Mr Phanom will work as a special inspector at the Prime Minister’s Office. He is replaced by Pol Lt Col Pongporn Pramsaneh, director of the Bureau of Taxation Crime under the Department of Special Investigation.
The NOB’s latest step in the controversy has been to ask monks and novice monks not to go to Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Pathum Thani and join resistance to the search of the temple.
Meanwhile, the DSI is checking a signal picked up earlier of a mobile phone believed to belong to Phra Dhammajayo from within Wat Phra Dhammakaya.
DSI director-general Paisit Wongmuang yesterday confirmed officials had detected the signal but could not verify who had made the call.
The phone is thought to be connected to Phra Dhammajayo, Wat Phra Dhammakaya’s former abbot, but the caller could have been a disciple or a close aide.
“For the sake of being clear here, we must check and mount a search of the spot where the signal came from,” Pol Col Paisit said.
A source in the DSI said the authorities were keeping watch on the movements of people close to Phra Dhammajayo, including his physician, dentist, a monk who performs physical therapy for the former abbot and a few disciples.
The record shows the signal came from a mobile phone using what authorities believed to be a personal number of Phra Dhammajayo. The call was made in Zone A of Wat Phra Dhammakaya to someone at a hospital in the Rama IX area at 4am on Feb 18.
The call was recorded days before the authorities cut off the mobile phone signals and WiFi connections to the temple last week.
Phra Sanitwong Wutthiwaso, the temple’s communications head, said Phra Dhammajayo does not have and never uses a mobile phone. The former abbot also was never treated at any Rama IX area hospital.
Photos released in the past of the former abbot show him being confined to bed and being treated for a swollen leg. The monk was reported to have a history of treatment at a hospital in Ratchaburi. However, the hospital later denied Phra Dhammajayo had ever visited its facility.
The DSI source said officials inspected the room where Phra Dhammajayo stayed during his treatment in the monk’s Daowadueng living quarters in the temple. They confiscated medical equipment and sealed off the building.
The source added the authorities were convinced the former abbot’s team of physicians is still in the temple as the last phone calls they made were recent and from the premises.
Phra Dhammajayo needs doctors close to him, reinforcing the authorities’ belief the former abbot has not fled Wat Phra Dhammakaya, contrary to a claim by one temple monk.
The former abbot faces arrest warrants for allegedly laundering money and receiving stolen property worth 1.2 billion baht in connection with the 12-billion-baht Klongchan Credit Union Cooperative embezzlement case.
DSI deputy spokesman Woranan Srilam said the phone signal issue needs a detailed analysis. He said it seemed unlikely either Phra Dhammajayo or his disciples would use a mobile phone allowing the authorities to trace the former abbot.
After the authorities cut off phone signals and WiFi links, monks and supporters in the temple switched to the “fire chat” programme. However, the programme operates via Bluetooth, which limits their communication to a short distance.
He noted the landline phones and radio transmitters remain available for use in the temple.
Pol Maj Woranan said the temple search in the past nine days, jointly conducted by the DSI and the police with back-up from the military, has not covered the vast grounds of Wat Phra Dhammakaya.
Officials require more time to thoroughly scour every area of the temple despite the temple staff declaring certain zones to be off limits to them.
Provincial Police Region 1 commissioner Charnthep Sesavej said the police have not been formally informed about the phone signal, although he admitted the temple search operation must be adjusted due to attempts by the monks and disciples to obstruct the operation.
They also demanded the order under Section 44 of the interim charter declaring the temple a restricted zone be lifted.
Stephen B Young, an American professor who discovered the Ban Chiang archaeological site in Udon Thani province’s Nong Han district over 50 years ago, was in the news again this week when he revealed to Thai authorities his impression of Wat Phra Dhammakaya when he met its leaders in 2011.
“I thought it was unusual,” Prof Young said, referring to Wat Phra Dhammakaya’s teachings as told by the leaders of Wat Phra Dhammakaya whom he met during the two meetings in Thailand six years ago.
In 2015, Prof Young testified about what he had heard from the temple at the Department of Special Investigation, which has since been investigating allegations of fraud cases against the controversial temple.
“My first impression was that their teachings were very strange. These teachings were not like the teachings of Thai Buddhism. They were very different from everything else I have studied about Thai Buddhism,” he told Bangkok Post Sunday during a Skype interview last week.
He said he was under the impression the temple had underlying political motives.
“I was told by the wat’s leaders that their mission is to show people how to reject the dark power, and bring light and justice into their lives and the world.”
In 2011, Harvard-graduated Prof Young was interested in building an academic network with Thailand to promote Buddhism studies in the US. “I had little knowledge about Wat Phra Dhammakaya,” said Prof Young, who is now the global executive director of Caux Round Table.
Prof Young visited Wat Phra Dhammakaya after an invitation from a Thai temple-goer whom he knew.
“They wanted me to introduce Wat Phra Dhammakaya to the dean of Harvard Divinity School, who is a friend of mine,” he said.
“They want people at Harvard to learn about the wat and their teachings and their beliefs. So they were telling me about their beliefs and their teachings so that I could introduce them to Harvard Divinity School.”
There, he met one of the highest-ranking monks in the temple, whom he refused to name. “Given the current situation, I prefer to mention him only as the leader,” he said.
While waiting at the entrance, he saw an exhibition set up about the temple. Here he saw a golden Buddha statue that looked like a different model than he had seen before — quite unlike the Ayutthaya or Sukhothai periods, he noted.
“The legs of the Buddha were very long. The skin was so smooth. The face looked more like a farang’s. The torso was also elongated. It was completely different. I asked the senior monk: ‘Why do you have such a different image of the Buddha?’”
The monk accompanying him smiled and said the image was drawn by the wat’s abbot following his meeting with the Buddha. Artists shaped the sculpture based on the abbot’s description of the encounter.
“The senior monk told me that for the first time ever this was the image of the real Buddha, taken from life thanks to the abbot’s powers of meditation and ability to meet with him. All previous images had not shown us the Buddha as he really is,” Prof Young said.
“That is unusual, I had never heard anybody in Asia or America say they have gone to see the Buddha, not even the Dalai Lama.”
He told the monk that he had never heard of any Thai Buddhist monks talking about their mission to overthrow the opposition or the so-called “dark power”.
Thai monks generally focus on asking themselves how to help individuals be better people, not strategise on how to beat out opponents.
Prof Young was told that the abbot, Phra Dhammajayo, could go back in time to alter a person’s karma. “What I was hearing was very different from anything else I’d studied about Thai Buddhism,” he said.
Bangkok Post Sunday contacted Wat Phra Dhammakaya about the meetings with Prof Young but the temple responded in writing: “We have no comment.”
According to Prof Young, the senior monk he met in 2011 said Phra Dhammajayo could go to heaven and return. He could go back in time to see his past lives. After seeing how much boon (merit) and how much bab (sin) he had, he could go back and change it to give himself more boon.”
The monk handed Prof Young an English-language copy of a book published by the temple.
“I read it,” Prof Young recounts. “In it, Dhammajayo calls for a political movement under the government to unite all Thai people for justice against evil and the dark. The ideas were very much like Fa Lun Gong in China,” said Prof Young, adding the founder of Fa Lun Gong also writes about the light and the dark.
After Prof Young’s visit, he was escorted by monks to meet a financial supporter, a layman, of the temple. Prof Young refused to identify who the person was. But he recalls one thing the person told him: “When we can mobilise 5 million, no one can stop us.”
The son of a former US ambassador to Thailand, Prof Young was no stranger to Thailand before his visit to the temple. He discovered remnants from Ban Chiang in 1966 by accident when he was a Harvard College student. He was doing research in northeastern Thailand at the time.
Prof Young recalled that he was walking with a Thai friend in a village and looked down. “Underneath my face was a round circle of a cup,” he recalled. Local people told him they were old pots. “The interesting point was how old,” he said.
Prof Young brought some pieces of pottery to Thai archaeologists in Bangkok, leading to the evacuation and discovery of the Ban Chiang civilisation, he said.
In 2015, when the DSI began investigating fraudulent complaints against Phra Dhammajayo, Prof Young volunteered to give testimony about his two meetings with the temple.
Nirandorn Chaisri was the DSI officer who met Prof Young and received the latter’s written statement.
Now retired, the former director of the DSI special national security case said he, at that time, was investigating the fraudulent allegations against Phra Dhammajayo filed by another complainant.
“What he told me was interesting. He compared Wat Phra Dhammakaya to Chinese cults, even though it was not directly linked to the fraud allegations under my purview. At any rate, I included his testimony in the document submitted to DSI chief and leave it up to my boss to decide,” Mr Nirandorn, who retired in September 2015, told Bangkok Post Sunday last week.
Asked how Wat Phra Dhammakaya would be detrimental to national security, Prof Young said: “It depends on what you do with your beliefs. If you try to overthrow the dark power that leads to the overthrow of your opponents, it becomes political. It is not a religious mission,” he said.
“I have never heard any Thai Buddhism monks talk about the dark power and the light power. I was told that the dark power is bad for Thailand and so the wat needs to help Thai people abolish the dark power and bring about the light, and that was the political mission of the Thai people.
“Usually monks in Thevarada Buddhism do not talk about justice in the world. They talk about how to help individuals achieve a noble path.”
According to Prof Young, Wat Dhammakaya resembles the White Lotus movement in China in the 1330s.
“And as a professor, [I can say that] the concept of dark power and light power is similar to the White Lotus movement,” he said.