Word: buddhists
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...London, when the best seats in the house?those closest to the stage?were inexplicably given to peasants, the Khmer commoners enjoyed the most beautiful section of the cascades, where a majestic sunlit waterfall streams through dense jungle growth. Today, Khmer families pass leisurely afternoons here: children frolic, and Buddhist monks crouch along the river downstream to wash their orange robes...
...Buddhists co-opted Phnom Kulen as a holy site of their own after the Hindu heyday. A 10-minute car ride up the mountain brings tourists to Preah Ang Tho, a 16th century Buddhist monastery notable for the giant reclining Buddha carved into the top of a 20-m boulder. Climb the rickety wooden staircase to a landing that surrounds the 17-m-long Buddha, where monks and believers bow, burn incense and leave fruit...
...tamruat phra?literally, the monk police?are on the case. A force of about 160 clerics, they were formed 11 years ago to do battle against a rising tide of scandals engulfing the Buddhist clergy, known as the Sangha. Buddhist scholars say wayward monks make up only a tiny minority of the country's 300,000 clergymen. The damage they're doing to the faith, however, is so severe that Thailand's Supreme Patriarch, Somdech Phra Yanasangworn, appealed to the government last December for help to "save (Buddhism) from this serious crisis...
...crisis long in the making. According to Sulak Srivaraksa, a social critic and Buddhist activist, its roots lie in the rise of materialism and state control of the religion. Both began in earnest half a century ago when Thailand started fervently pursuing Western-style development. The military government employed slogans such as "work is money, money is happiness." Those messages were antithetical to Buddhism, which teaches that suffering is quelled by rejecting material desires. In its constitutional role as protector of the state religion, the government began co-opting the clergy into supporting its new consumer culture...
...with a handful of members and an annual budget of around $2,000 to something of a mini empire. At the height of its popularity and influence in the '70s, Zen Center's assets included a best-selling cookbook, a hugely popular vegetarian restaurant, and Tassajara, the first American Buddhist monastery, located amid rugged, gorgeous forestland 240 km south of San Francisco...