Karma confusion and the theology of Thai exceptionalism

By Paisarn Likhitpreechakul Special to The Nation Published on July 16, 2011

All "properly educated" Thais know that Thailand is exceptional.

There's peace and harmony everywhere because we are all one big happy family. Everyone knows their place and role in society. And as long as we remain "good Thais", the country will continue its prosperity, happiness and peace. Blessed by gods and goddesses, ours is a culture unique in being the custodian of "true" Buddhism for the benefit of the world. Such exceptionalism is so ingrained in the collective consciousness that it has become second nature. Anyone who dares to challenge this feel-good religion is a traitor, and non-Thai. And if they're foreigners, it's a matter of course that the complexity of "Thainess" is beyond their intelligence to begin with. This religion is underpinned and its social order buttressed by a sort of karma theology, turning Buddhism on its head. According to this doctrine, we were born into the station we deserve, as a farmer, a salary worker or a hi-so, following acts in our past lives. The disabled, the poor and women are said to earn their predicaments and "lower" statuses because they made insufficient meritorious deeds or, worse, committed sins in their past lives. (The list of second-class humans has been extended to include homosexuals, transgenders, people with chronic diseases, crime victims, and even disaster victims.) Therefore, we all must behave according to our station, gender and age as prescribed by the dharma (morality) so that we can all have better next lives and to prevent chaos and the collapse of Thai society.

The Buddha would immediately recognise Thailand, with the compartmentalisation of people and prescribed roles, as a modern variation of the Brahmanistic caste society which he rigorously criticised throughout his life. He wouldn't imagine it to be anything inspired by his proclamation of humanity's oneness in Vasettha Sutta, - the first religious teacher to do so in an age when castes, sexism and racism strongly prevailed. But why let the Buddha get in the way of Thai exceptionalism? Our karma-schmarma theology is so much better because it has also given us a perfect theocracy for social control, since "Trai Phoom Phra Ruang" - with its promise of heaven and threat of hell - was written some 700 years ago. Buddhist scholar David R Loy wrote in his book Money, Sex, War, Karma, "Taken literally, karma justifies the authority of political elites, who therefore must deserve their wealth and power, and the subordination of those who have neither. It provides the perfect theodicy: If there is an infallible cause-and-effect relationship between one's action and one's fate, there is no need to work toward social justice, because it's already built into the moral fabric of the universe." With our karma-schmarma Law (with a capital "L"), other laws don't matter. "Western" ideas are welcomed but must be "upgraded" to suit our Panglossian society. Because the Law doesn't see people as equals, the idea of a democratic government "of the people, by the people and for the people" isn't good enough. We demand to be ruled only by "good people". And if the man-made constitution can't guarantee that, it's okay to tear it up again and again. Since our society is already perfect under the Law, there's no need whatsoever to discuss what kind of society we want to be. No need for social justice or human rights, because those who are underprivileged in our society are so because they are karmically inferior and lazy nothing to do with our economic and social system.

This social stratification came into sharp focus under the red-shirt discourse of Ammart (elites) vs Prai (commoners/proles/lower class). The elites and the middle class who are elitewannabes at heart, on the other hand, prefer to see the rural and urban poor as buffaloes allegedly so stupid that they allow themselves to be led anywhere. After the recent election, there was an outpouring of anger, grief, and even a sense of doom, upon the realisation that the "buffaloes" have wrested control from them and decided the country's direction against their sense of moral righteousness. Although the theology is not particularly kind to the Prai or buffaloes, it's even harsher to red shirts, who were branded "arsonists" and "terrorists". It provides instant "explanation" and justification for their deaths and injuries during last May's crackdown. The rationale goes like this: "Because they died, they must have done something to deserve it. Bad people are just sub-humans whose deaths can only make our country better." This kind of backward - in more ways than one - unthinking justifies everything and leaves nothing unexplained. There's perhaps no better time to debunk this "theory of everything" than today's beginning of the Buddhist rains retreat, which the Buddha initiated after hearing public complaints that his disciples were trampling on growing crops and small animals during the rainy season. Since the monks weren't intentionally killing that life, it's obvious the Buddha didn't established the rains retreat out of karmic concern but rather because he was sensitive to society and public criticism. In Sivaka Sutta, the Buddha also gave examples of physical, biological and social factors as additional causes for human experiences, concluding that the "karmic theory of everything" believers actually "go beyond what they know by themselves and what is accepted as true by the world". From this, it's clear that, regardless of how one understands the Buddha's law of karma, it is far from being the only one that matters. The bottom line is that a theory that can "explain" everything ends up explaining nothing.

Therefore, it's paradoxical that, two millennia later, many self-proclaimed "Buddhists" came to be so subservient to the karma-schmarma doctrine as to blind themselves to its inherent flaws. Far from being a theory of justice providing answers, it is the very root cause of injustice, which remains to be answered for. Unless Thailand upholds universal principles like human rights, equality, non-discrimination, accountability, fairness and justice, it can claim to be exceptional all it wants, but it will remain anything but unique from - let alone superior to - other undemocratic and illiberal societies found in many parts of the world.