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DECORATING YOUR GARDEN
WITH A BUDDHA

When I was in Honolulu, I met a professor who was deeply fascinated by Thai culture. I was invited for lunch with him at his place, a very nice Hawaiian style house with a lot of plants and birds in the garden. One thing common to Thai and Hawaiian culture is a love of nature. But one thing that struck me was that he had three Buddha images in different postures sitting on the ground in the corners of his fantastic garden. He proudly presented them to me as if they were his greatest lifetime achievement. I thus assumed that they were an object of affection to him.

What do I feel about this as a Thai person? Wasn’t he afraid of the spirit or ghost in the sculpture? Didn’t he know that taking religious objects into a house can bring ill fortune (“sa-nead” in Thai central language or “kud” in northern dialect)?

This needs to be explained. From the Ayutthaya period, Thai religious belief clearly drew a line about spirits. It was believed that bringing a sculpture from a temple, like a sculpture of the Buddha which possesses a holy spirit (especially an incomplete part such as the head or hand) can bring disaster to a house. The place for “holy things” was limited to the palace and temple, both held to be “sacred territories.” The house was not the place for such things because many inappropriate activities occur there. It was also believed that the rivalry between the house spirit and Buddha image spirit might bring “an event of unhappiness” to the residents.

Since the Rattanakosin era things have changed. The palace-houses built by the elite show off this construction, locating a Buddha image in it, but confining it to a holy space such as a special room, not the garden, toilet, or the stairs. Cultural confusion has been taking place at a significant level recently. It involves a “complete surrender to capitalism,” witnessed by a Sukothai-style pagoda in a five-star hotel. This might be some hing for the kids to climb on, or there could be a theatre curtain with the painting of the Buddha battling against evil.

Time flies, so a lot changes. What was holy has been turned and distorted into cheap spirits like “Nang Nak,” a pathetic female ghost who longs to live with her husband, or a house spirit that only exists for wealthy people to decorate their homes with. The function of spirits to help people live in peace has now disappeared. Public or profane properties, such as Buddha images, used to be for everyone, but have now become ghosts with silly and laughable myths attached to them.

The condemning and insulting of holy things and spirits by scientific believers, mostly persons with a farang perspective, believing that everything can be proved by science, indicates a misunderstanding of the concept of Thai sanctity. Ordinarily, Thai culture and religion see one’s first duty as mental development while social control belongs to spirits.

These days everything can be bought, from a local Buddha head to a prime ministerial position. The sense of good and evil are disappearing because of a money hungry society. “Buddha in the toilet” or a “phallic statue in the living room” are for shallow fashion devotees. Moreover, the problem of art or culture theft is increasing since demand is rising. Greed will make us lose our priceless knowledge, history, and culture to strangers who do not appreciate “Thai culture.” The party who has to consider this situation is the buyer. Since there are no spirits available at this time, other ways of punishing “the seller” will also have to be found.

I have a feeling that a person who owns public cultural properties is very proud because of appreciation from those who applaud them as high-class collectors. However, I do not understand how a “Buddha image in the garden” can fulfill a sense of “self.” Do we enjoy a sense of exotic to the point of abusing other people’s cultures? After visiting that professor I thought to myself that education cannot provide a sense of social responsibility and manners. It has to develop from individual thinking by “putting yourself into other people’s shoes” and appreciating others by knowing their “self.”

Chatwut Wangwon
The writer is a lecturer in mass communications at Maejo University