ไม่มีข้อมูลให้ประมวลผล : หน้า 120/163

technology. You might as well call it ‘Mara’. It brings vices right into our bedrooms, even when monk’s sermons have no chance of penetrating that far — limited by time, place and opportunity. Mara has overtaken us (monks) and gotten ahead — we’ve been defeated — we’ve been beaten to the bedroom. In times gone by theatre, opera and musicals were confined to the theatre or at least the fairgrounds. Monks had some say and could at least keep up with the broadcast of sense-pleasures. But now! Now, monks are confined to the temples while sense-pleasure has gotten into the bedroom, inside the mosquito net and onto the bed. We have been defeated by Mara again!” Luang Phaw continued by explaining that: “All these things are interfering with the support of the Buddhist religion. Even in the wealthy households the residents have no time to offer alms to the monks because they watch television until late and in the morning they can’t get up in time to offer food. Anyone who is wealthy these days has a television. The poor have no chance of owning a television because they’re so expensive. In fact that’s no surprise because the rich households have always been the least supportive of the monastic community. If people are poor then they don’t have much chance to give alms either. Middle class people are the strongest supporters of Buddhism. The rich give alms only on the full-moon days or else have their servants give alms on their behalf — it ends up being the person with the least understanding of Buddhism in the household who gets the merit. As television gets