In 1965, a lecture by the Thai forest monk and scholar Buddhadasa (1906–1993) caused an uproar in the Buddhist Association of Thailand. He suggested that a abhidhamma– the canonical curriculum that played a central role in the school training of the monks present – was not the Buddha’s own teaching, but a later creation. The statement was heretical to many in the room. It was also characteristic: Buddhadasa challenged institutional Buddhism throughout his life, in such a way that he became one of the most polarizing figures in 20th-century Thailand.
He was born as Ngueam Phanit in 1906 in southern Thailand. Buddhadasa moved to Bangkok to join the Maha Nikaya, the largest in Thailand. Theravada order – at the age of 20. However, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the hierarchical and ritual-oriented monastic culture. In 1932 he returned to the South to establish Suan MokkhThe Garden of Liberation, a forest monastery dedicated to meditation practices.
The following year, Buddhadasa started Buddhisma quarterly magazine that made its reformist interpretations available to a wide readership. For example, instead of treatment nibbana (Pali; Skt.: nirvana) as a distant goal reserved for advanced monks, he claimed to be immediately accessible to anyone, naturally present in the cooling of reactive emotions. He questioned traditional accounts of cosmology and rebirth on similar grounds: If a teaching cannot deal with suffering in the here and now, then its value is limited.
In Thailand, Theravada and Mahayana were generally seen as separate and unequal. However, Buddhadasa taught doctrines drawn from both traditions. Emphasis on the shut up wangor “empty mind”, proved particularly controversial due to its association with East Asians meditation schools. (The debate was so heated that one of his students eventually mapped the competing positions in a notebook What is correct? what’s wrong) For Buddhadasa, such debates missed the point: ultimately, spiritual insight trumps all. religious categories.
Buddhadasa observed coups, economic crises, military nationalism, and the mounting pressure of the Cold War. He applied these conditions directly, meeting with intellectuals from all over the political spectrum. He promoted it from the 1960s Dhammic Socialism– instead of ideological competition, a vision of a society organized around moral restraint and common ethical principles.
In his late life, Buddhadasa turned his attention to supporting women’s Buddhist practice. Bhikkhuni the consecration has officially taken place prohibited in Thailand since the Sangha Act of 1928. Instead of challenging this law directly, Buddhadasa proposed it Dhammamataor Dhamma Mothers, a new form of dedicated religious life for women that resonated with Thai cultural respect for motherhood.
In 1990, on Buddhadasa’s 84th birthday, scholars and practitioners from around the world contributed Radical conservatisma memoir whose title reflects the central paradox of his career: a highly disciplined monk who rooted his teachings in the dharma but took positions that seemed radical to the Thai Buddhist establishment.
Buddhadasa died 1993 and his death was mourned in Thailand. His writings are still widely accessible today, and his legacy at Suan Mokkh continues. The following three teachings (translated from Thai)—on nibbana, the liberated mind, and birth—illustrate the interpretations that defined his career and troubled many of his contemporaries.
Teaching 1: Nibbana
In Thailand, nibbana meant liberation experienced at death, away from everyday life. In the pamphlet Nibbana for all, Buddhadasa teaches that nibbana is more understandable indifference: natural, temporary alleviation of reactive emotions is available to anyone, at any moment.
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“Nibbana has nothing to do with death in the least. ‘Nibbana’ means coolness. It meant coolness back then, when it was just an ordinary word that people used in their homes, and when it was used as a dhamma language, it still means coolness in a religious context. In dhamma language, it refers to cooling off or withdrawing from the fire of defilement (‘who is,’ reactive emotions), while in ordinary people’s parlance it means the cooling of physical fires.
Any reactive emotion that arises will cease when its causes and conditions end. Although it may be a temporary extinction, only a temporary coolness, it is still nibbana, even if only momentarily. Thus there is a temporary nibbana for those who cannot yet avoid defilements. This temporary nibbana sustains the lives of beings who continue to hang on to the defilement. Anyone can see that if the egoistic emotions existed day and night without break or rest, no life could bear them. If such a life did not die, it would go mad and eventually die. You must consider carefully the fact that life can only survive because there are periods when impurities are not roasted. There are more of these periods than the flaming of impurities.
These periodic “nibbanas” sustain life for all of us, not even animals, which also have a level of nibbana. We are able to survive because this kind of nibbana nourishes us until it becomes the most ordinary habit of life and soul. Whenever it is free from contamination, there is the value and meaning of nibbana. This has to happen often enough for organisms to survive. Having some time for physical and mental relaxation gives us the freshness and vitality we need for life.”
Teaching 2: Liberated mind
THE detail belowBuddhadasa addresses a common misinterpretation of chit wang—the assumption that a blank or empty mind is empty of all thoughts and feelings, like a stone. The enlightened mind, he claims, is not empty; it thinks and feels, but without the concept of “I” and “mine”.
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“We must understand that the ‘normal’ mind – the mind when nothing disturbs it, when it is free from the nivaranas (obstacles), the kilesas (defilements) – is ‘clear’. In such cases, it could be called the “original mind”, as it was in the womb.
The brilliant, original mind still thinks and feels, but without impurities. Of course, he is pure and flawless, and can think and feel as is natural to him.
So the free or empty mind can arise in several ways: empty because samadhivoid through vipassana, or void because it has returned to its original state quite naturally. However, we must say that the mind in samadhi—the empty mind fixed on the object of samadhi—still feels, so it is not that there is no thought. Then there will still be feeling, so thinking will also have some form. The mind, which is empty by the power of vipassana, examines, examines, penetrates and feels the reality of things, so it is not “empty” in the way, for example, a stone would be. The brilliant, original mind still thinks and feels, but without impurities. Of course, he is pure and flawless, and can think and feel as is natural to him. The Pali word “mind” means “to think,” so if the mind cannot think, then it is not really a mind. Thus, “emptiness” here does not mean the absence of thought or feeling. It means emptiness, or being free from the feelings and thoughts that cause trouble and upset. After all, who likes trouble and strife? A troubled mind can be compared to fire because it is tense and unbalanced. Well, who likes this? Who likes stress and tension, trouble and strife, unhappiness and depression? No one at all! Stress, troubles and depression are all about ‘I’ and ‘mine’, and when ‘I’ and ‘mine’ disappear, then there is a ‘normal’ mind, without stress, without depression. This mind is called ’empty’, but it is not empty as a stone would be. A normal mind is a contented, cool, useful mind, and what is better, is able to understand everything deeply.”
Teaching 3: Birth
The Pauline scriptures describe four births, the last of which isnot availablespontaneous birth without conception or gestation—generally understood as the ascension between lives of gods, hungry spirits, and infernal beings. Buddhadasa sets aside the cosmological meaning. The pharmacist will prescribe it for him something is happening here and now: The mind is reborn every moment, taking on new identities that reflect the way it perceives the world.
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“The Fourth Kind of Birth”not available”, which is a kind of “hidden birth” that does not require the help of a father or mother, and refers to someone who was born in a mature, mature state without having to grow up from childhood. This is the so-called not available (spontaneously generated). This word has two explanations. It most often means the birth of a supernatural being, such as an angel, a god, or one peta (hungry ghost), a hell creature, or whatever. Leaving this world, one is born as a god or whatever, without having to dwell in the womb before, without having to be born and go through the maturation process.
However, this is not how we explain it here. We mean birth in the spiritual sense, that is, there is thinking, devising in any way that results in “mental birth”.
In this understanding there is no need for death to intervene, no need for anyone to die and then be born. Also, if the thinking is base, low-minded, for example, one thinks like a bandit, one is mentally “born” as a bandit there and then, while still in the same human body. Think therefore like a robber, and be born one; think like a god and be born as a god while still in a human body. To achieve birth as a Brahma god, develop the mind of a Brahma i.e. concentrate it into samadhi and be born as a Brahma immediately god, and all without having to deal with death. If the mind is in samadhi, one is already born as Brahma.
Which of the following understandings would be helpful? Think of it: the one in which one has to die first and then be born as a god, or hell, or Brahma, or something or other in another very distant world, or the instantaneous, mental kind of birth where one thinks in a certain way and whatever one thinks is born accordingly, there and then.
The second option is scary because it happens easily and often, yet it is the better choice because it is controllable. We can restrain the mind, that is, we cannot let it think that a low-born is a bad person, a robber, or something like that. Rather think high and be born a good man, a wise man or a noble man. This is the kind birth is important.”
