• A volunteer English teacher from Canada spends six months teaching English to novices in a temple school in a quiet Northern town, in order to ‘give back’ and pursue an interest in Buddhism.
• A young American tourist wanders into a Monk Chat in the busy city temple of Wat Suan Dok, and learns that Buddhism is a religion of peace from one of the monk participants.
• A middle-aged German man fulfills a dream of being ordained as a novice Buddhist monk in a program for temporary ordination in the city of Fang.
• A group of British gap-year students works with Buddhist monks to build a new preaching hall and garden within temple grounds.
• Some one hundred English-speakers from all over the world join a meditation retreat each month at the International Dharma Hermitage in South Thailand.

All of these snapshots reveal an increasing market for missionizing and educating international travelers and residents in Thailand as well as opportunities for different levels of engagement with Buddhism. Thai Buddhists are responding to this surge in interest through a program of broad outreach.   
 
Many travelers to Thailand have an interest in Buddhism, even if little knowledge. Signs within temples popular with tourists often demonstrate how to behave with pictures of appropriate dress and behavior. But some travelers seek to experience Buddhism at a deeper level.

Opportunities include participating in a ten-day meditation retreat, volunteering to teach English in a Buddhist temple school, speaking with monks about meditation and the monastic life, and becoming a part of a Buddhist community. Participants are predominantly from English-speaking countries and Europe with a minority from East Asian countries.
 
In my research on the intersection of Buddhism and tourism, I have identified two different types of offerings for travelers: cultural exchange and Buddhist practice.

Cultural exchange programs offer foreign travelers opportunities for learning and experiencing life in a Buddhist temple but set aside little time for silent meditation practice.

In contrast, for Buddhist practice, foreign travelers go to meditation centers to attend retreats for varying lengths of time. These centers often downplay cultural experiences or education about Buddhism outside of meditation. Because of this, many international meditators report that they were not able to learn about the worldview of Thai Buddhism. A retreat with many hours of meditation leaves little chance to chant, attend rituals, or ask questions about the Buddhist tradition.
 
Thailand’s top-ranked monastics together with the Thai government’s Ministry of Culture sponsor and promote Buddhist mission trips abroad by Thai monks to serve diasporic populations, but cultural exchange programs and international meditation centers in Thailand are not regulated under this national system.
 
Since the early 1990s meditation centers in Thailand have served the international population and in the early 2000s, cultural programs formed in urban Buddhist monastic educational settings, offered by both international NGOs affiliated with Buddhist monastic community leaders and directly through local temples.
 
During conversations in the context of cultural exchange programs, and when teaching Buddhist practice in international meditation centers, Thai Buddhists not only get a chance to spread teachings but also have a chance to improve their English speaking skills.
 
In this way tourism, as it intersects with Buddhism in Thailand, is not a destructive force in terms of commoditization of religious culture or violation of sanctity of sacred spaces. Rather, it allows Buddhism to adapt and provides learning opportunities for both tourists and Thai Buddhists.

Suggested Reading:
 
Cook, Joanna. 2010. Meditation in Modern Buddhism: Renunciation and Change in Thai Monastic Life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
 
Fuengfusakul, Aphinya. 2012. “Urban logic and mass meditation in contemporary Thailand,” In Global and Local Televangelism, eds. Pradip N. Thomas & Philip Lee. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 219-233.
 
Hamilton-Merrit, Jane. 1986. A Meditator's Diary: A Western Woman's Unique Experiences in Thailand Monasteries. London: Unwin Paperbacks.
 
Jordt, Ingrid. 2007. Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction on Power. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
 
Learman, Linda. 2005. Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.

Schedneck, Brooke. Thailand’s International Meditation Centers: Tourism and the Commodification of Global Religious Practices. New York & London: Routledge, 2015.
 
Thailand Government, Meditation in Thailand (Kindle Edition). Printed in Thailand by Advertising Production Division, Tourism Authority of Thailand, 2011.

Image: Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok, Thailand. Credit: View Apart / Shutterstock.com.

Author, Brooke Schedneck, is Lecturer in Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs at Chiangmai University, Thailand. Her research interests include modernity, transnational mobilities, tourism, and contemporary Theravada Buddhism. The title of her monograph through Routledge’s series Contemporary Asian Religions is Thailand’s International Meditation Centers: Tourism and the Global Commodification of Religious Practices.


 

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