relaxed Thai Buddhism: it's all good, yo

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The monastic life ain't what it used to be, folks

If you encountered someone with aspirations to be a monk, and you asked him why he was choosing that life path, you'd stand a chance of getting a variety of different answers. But "smoking meth" would probably not be among them.

A Buddhist temple in central Thailand has been left without monks after all of its holy men failed drug tests and were defrocked, a local official said Tuesday.

Four monks, including an abbot, at a temple in Phetchabun province's Bung Sam Phan district tested positive for methamphetamine on Monday, district official Boonlert Thintapthai told AFP.

The monks have been sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation, the official said.

Well. Read the rest.

The type of Buddhism practiced in Thailand is called Theravada (Way of the Elders) or Hinayana  (Smaller/Lesser Vehicle) Buddhism. Some Theravadins mistakenly find the term Hinayana offensive since it sits in contrast to Mahayana (Bigger/Greater Vehicle) Buddhism. I say "mistakenly" because the terms "greater/lesser" weren't meant to convey superiority or inferiority. You can think of Mahayana as a big boat of salvation that carries a mass of people across the river of existence to the far shore, nirvana. Think of Hinayana as being more about individual effort to attain salvation: a bunch of little, one-person boats crossing that same river, each powered by a single rower. In either system, people are carried across the river to the far shore, so there's no question of better or worse, more or less effective.

Aside from that, Theravada Buddhism is the older form, closer to the original. Theravadins are more likely to view the Buddha as an exalted teacher, quite human, and not a salvific, fractalized cosmic entity or principle as in Mahayana (rough analogy: historical Jesus versus cosmic Christ). Theravadins also rely more explicitly on the earlier Pali canon of Buddhist literature. Theravada/Hinayana Buddhism is found mostly in Southeast and South Asia, with the notable exception of Vietnam, which is mostly Mahayana (cf. famous Vietnamese Zen/Thien monk Thich Nhat Hanh). Mahayana dominates in East Asia: China, Korea, and Japan. Texts like the Lotus Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, the Heart Sutra, and the Flower Garland Sutra are all Mahayana. Texts such as the Tripitaka and the Dhammapada are more Theravadin in nature. Both Mahayana and Theravada are aware of each other's scriptures and will even study them. The Korean temple Haein-sa famously has an 84,000-wood block collection called the Tripitaka Koreana.

There is no Crystal Meth Sutra.