Word: tamruat
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...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...
...Many monks know it. That's why Phra Sawoey Chanasapo, the 45-year-old assistant abbot of Bangkok's Temple of the Dawn, and Phra Adul Atulapanyo, 32, the assistant abbot of Wat Sangkrajai Voraviharn, enlisted in the tamruat phra at its inception. "We wanted to do something for our brothers," says Sawoey. But not all their brothers like what they do. Even when just paying a friendly visit, they're as welcome in some temples as internal-affairs investigators in a police station. Adul, who is an avid fan of detective flicks, says the life of a tamruat phra...
...bogus monks for ceremonies, she says, because, as many real monks gravitate to larger temples in big cities, there is a shortage of genuine holy men. Fake monks do the same, says Sawoey, with gangs of them descending on Bangkok to beg. In fact, most of what the tamruat phra do is catch such impostors. The number of real monks misbehaving is actually decreasing, says Sawoey, though "when a monk is caught going bad, it's always big news...
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