Wounds in the dharma
By ACHARA DEBOONME, |CHULARAT SAENGPASSA
THE NATION
Published on May 28, 2010
A Visakha Bucha Day visit to Wat Pathum Wanaram, a place of peace engulfed in conflict
Luang Phor, what's this?" the youngster asked. He was holding a little yellow ball wrapped in tape.
It was a ping-pong bomb.It was a bomb in a house of peace.
Luang Phor Thavorn Chittathavaro, the assistant abbot at Wat Prathum Wanaram, was stunned.
He asked the boy where he'd found it.
"Under a bush, " the lad said. He placed the explosive on the ground in front of the monk and
rushed off to search for more.
The deputy abbot had already had a far bigger shock. Authorities had uncovered dozens of weapons
in and around the temple,
a huge cache in all.There were
three grenades hidden beneath the dais from which he regularly addresses
meditation practitioners.
Was his temple doubling as a red-shirt stronghold?
Had this quiet oasis of contemplation become an arsenal for war?
"
Weapons were everywhere - I was quite frightened, " says the 57-year-old monk, also known
as Phra Pisanpatanatorn. "We didn't know how they'd got into the temple."
But he considered it at least fortunate that all that lethal power had been stashed at the wat instead
of being turned against people.
"The temple was safe, " he insists. "We were protected by an unseen power."
Luang Phor Thavorn runs the eight-rai Dharma Centre at the temple's heart that became the last refuge
for anti-government protesters after their Rajprasong encampment was violently broken up on May 19.
"They flooded in without any invitation, fleeing for life, " the monk says. They knew that peace advocates
led by
Gothom Arya had persuaded the abbot to declare the 15-rai temple a "no-killing zone" three days
earlier.
"They looked desperate. I had to spend some time cooling them down.
I told them to honour four things: promises, restraint, sacrifice and tolerance.
Eventually about 80 per cent of the people came to their senses."
Initially a sanctuary primarily for women and children from the red camp, the grounds abruptly filled with
"refugees" of all descriptions, nearly 4,000 people rushing in at the last minute while soldiers swarmed
outside and gunfire crackled sporadically. After nightfall they crammed together to sleep.
Luang Phor Thavorn went to bed about 9pm and woke again at 4am for the morning sermon.
Amid the crowding he preached non-stop for two and a half hours.
For all the kindness shown at Wat Prathum Wanaram, the temple was quickly condemned by some as a
hide-out for red criminals.
Senior monks have admitted that many of the 100 monks and novices there come from the Northeast,
including Luang Phor Thavorn, a native of Kalasin.
For his part, though, his faith is firm in "the power of nature".
"The temple will remain" no matter what happens, he says, "and in time they will know the truth.
A temple will forever remain a temple."
None of the monks at Wat Prathum Wanaram ever expected such dire circumstances.
Luang Phor Thavorn has been there for 37 years. He's seen the surrounding rice fields buried beneath concrete,
massive shopping centres reaching toward a secular heaven.
The temple survived, increasingly renowned for its meditation sessions, with hundreds of practitioners gathering
every day.
Throughout the nearly two months that the protesters were bivouacked a few hundred metres away, the temple
let them come in to wash.
As their numbers grew, Luang Phor Thavorn took greater care while accepting his morning alms in the centre's
garden - and most of the meditation practitioners stayed away.
After six people were found dead in the grounds after the military crackdown, no one came at all.
It was the first time in 37 years that the deputy abbot had seen no visitors.
There are bullet holes in the walls of the wat's outer buildings, and a sea of garbage, as a caretaker scrubs at
bloodstains on the ground.
Outside, the curious gawk at the wreckage of Rajprasong and take pictures of the gutted CentralWorld and
Siam Theatre.
There is debris everywhere - a woman's mudmee silk blouse, a pillow inscribed with the owner's name.
Luang Phor Thavorn is calculating repair costs.
About Bt400,000 will be needed just to fix the toilets at
Wat Prathum Wanaram.
The cost of clearing the temple's good name - of convincing cynics that the monks weren't knowingly harbouring
terrorists - is harder to reckon.
The temple did nothing wrong in opening its gates to the protesters, Luang Phor Thavorn affirms. It was a
question of morality.
"If we didn't, the death toll could have been far higher, " he says grimly.
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