Dhammakaya Temple and the Challenge of Abandoned Temples in Thailand : หน้า 184/207

Of course, people closely followed the news about the Temple. After two years, the outcome was the reverse. Unbelievably, the Temple has survived to this day. Many said that in the same period of time, if the Thai government’s situation paralleled that of Dhammakaya, it would have collapsed in just a few months. The parliament would certainly have been dissolved, and a new election would have been organized. However, in the midst of the vicious media attack, people still received leaflets (invitations) from the Dhammakaya Temple to join its Buddhist ceremonies on Buddhist holidays. After the events, the Temple reported that a great number of people, nearly 100,000, attended each of the ceremonies. Although the Temple was rumored, by the media, to have bribed people to join its events, I disagree. With due consideration, I cannot see any possible way that the Temple could have given away such a sum of money to the nearly 100,000 participants for each Buddhist ceremony. If the bribes had been paid, it would have immediately bankrupted the Temple. And significantly, some Temple members are at the top tier of successful business men and women in Thailand. It would be impossible to hire these people to come to the temple. Therefore, we can conclude that the media created their own version of the truth. While following the news of the Dhammakaya Temple, I also tracked the news concerning the increased number of abandoned temples in Thailand. During those years, a survey found around 8,000 abandoned temples, nearly one-third of the total number of temples (estimated 30,000) throughout the country. If all these land lands were combined, they would cover approximately 50,000 acres. This raises an obvious question: “What caused their abandonment?” The temples can be grouped into the old and the new temples. The approximately 30,000 old temples were established by our country’s ancestors in an era when the Thai population numbered approximately ten million people. Logically, how many new temples were established in the past 30 years? The fact is that old temples are being abandoned while new temples have not increased at all. In reality, the situation of abandoned temples has not reached its end. There have been growing reports of temple lands being converted into for-profit enterprises. Such transgressions severely contravene Buddhist principles and practices. Instead of maintaining the old temples of our country’s ancestors, some people take advantage of the situation by increasing the numbers of abandoned temples. More importantly, our ancestors constructed them with faith and