Event

The dominant religion of the Thais has many unique characteristics. Baas Terwiel will first draw attention to the way the Thais depict the Buddha and the unusual shape of certain monastery buildings. This will lead him to outline three  intriguing features of Thai Buddhism: temporary male ordination, the resistance to the ordination of women and the attempts to control and manipulate magical power through rituals, sacralized objects and tattoos.

Baas Terwiel is a retired professor living in Berlin. In the late 1960s he conducted fieldwork on Buddhism in rural Thailand, one rainy season he was a fully-fledged Buddhist monk. The book he wrote about his experiences as a monk and that describes religious life in a rural Thai community (MONKS AND MAGIC) was recently reprinted for the fourth time

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