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Activist forest monks, adult learningand the Buddhist environmentalmovement in ThailandPierre Walter aa University of British Columbia , CanadaPublished online: 05 Jun 2007.

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INT. J. OF LIFELONG EDUCATION, VOL. 26, NO. 3 (MAY-JUNE 2007), 329–345

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DOI: 10.1080/02601370701362333

Activist forest monks, adult learning andthe Buddhist environmental movementin Thailand1

PIERRE WALTERUniversity of British Columbia, Canada

Taylor and Francis LtdTLED_A_236125.sgm10.1080/02601370701362333International Journal of Lifelong Education0260-1370 (print)/1464-519X (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis263000000May–June 2007Associate Professor PierreWalterpierre.walter@ubc.ca

In the tradition of grassroots environmental movements worldwide, activist Buddhist monksin rural Thailand have, since the late 1980s, led a popular movement to protect local forest,water and land resources while at the same time challenging dominant state and corporate‘economist’ development paradigms. Most famously, these ‘development monks’ (phra nakphathanaa) and ‘ecology monks’ (phra nak anuraksaa) have led local villagers and NGO activ-ists in the symbolic ordaining of large trees and forests (buat paa). They do this in the hopethat they will not only protect forests from logging, but also teach local people the value ofconserving forest resources. This paper charts the history, philosophy and practice of theactivist forest monk movement in Thailand, its contribution to our collective knowledge ofadult education in new social movements, and its value to environmental adult education.

New social movements, civil society and environmental adult education

In recent scholarship in the field, Environmental Adult Education has been posi-tioned as part of a global new social movement for human rights and social justice(Clover 2002, 2003, 2004, Hill 2003, Kapoor 2003, 2004, Hall 2004). In this regard,it can be seen in relation to more general scholarship on adult learning, New SocialMovements and the construction of civil society (Finger 1989, Welton 1993, 2001,2002, Spencer 1995, Holford 1995, Kilgore 1999, Hall 2000, Holst 2002, Palacios2004).

John Holst (2002), in his recent book, Social Movements, Civil Society and RadicalAdult Education, distinguishes two major approaches to the theorising of adult learn-ing in social movements: the socialist (Marxist-Leninist) perspective, and the radicalpluralist (post-Marxist) perspective. Briefly, Holst positions himself with the Marxistsocialist tradition, arguing that Gramsci’s work on hegemony, civil society and thehistorical bloc has been misappropriated by radical pluralists. As Holst sees it,radical pluralists in adult education fail to appreciate the material dialectic of classstruggle which underlies all social movements, both old (labour and trade union,the building of workers’ parties), and new (the environmental, peace, feminist andidentity movements). As such, they also underestimate the nature of state repression

Pierre Walter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of BritishColumbia, Canada. His recent research focuses on adult learning in the environmental movement in Asiaand North America. Correspondence: Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, 2125 MainMall, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z4, Canada. Email: pierre.walter@ubc.ca

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(domination) which follows. Holst (2002: 106) argues that Gramsci saw civil societyas part and parcel of the state repressive apparatus, and that civil society is thus alsoan ‘area in which the ruling class exerts its hegemony over society’. The primary siteof adult learning in social movements is therefore (still) the workers’ party, and itsprimary aim the building of a revolutionary proletarian consciousness—a ‘proletar-ian hegemony’ to overthrow the state and capitalist class, supported by both organicworking class intellectuals, and traditional intellectuals who renounce their middleclass roots (Holst 2002: 106–109). As Holst sees it,

…radical adult educators who privilege new social movements are taking atheoretical construct—Gramsci’s specific usage of civil society—from a social-ist political strategy and attempting to use it to explain what in essence is asocial democratic or radical pluralist strategy. (2002: 7)

..for Gramsci, adult education within political parties is central to his overallpolitical project. Adult education in the party—the process by which the work-ing class theoretically understands its practice, both economic and political(praxis)—links the masses and leaders in a co-educative relationship, createsnew leaders, forges proletarian hegemony, and overcomes the limits ofspontaneity. (2002: 114)

The radical pluralist position, while drawing (correctly or incorrectly) on Gramsci’snotions of hegemony, civil society and the historic bloc, centres its understanding ofthe role of new social movements in the creation of civil society outside of, and inopposition to, both state and economy (Welton 1993, 2001, 2002, Murphy 2001,Hall 2000, Palacios 2004, Mayo 2005). Drawing on Habermas’s notion of the lifew-orld, post-Marxist theorists of New Social Movements (NSM) see the informal andnonformal adult learning which takes place in NSM as a means of democratisingcivil society. For these radical pluralists, civil society is seen as ‘a sphere of socialinteraction between the economy and the state, composed above all of the intimatesphere (especially the family), the sphere of associations (especially voluntary asso-ciations), social movements, and forms of public communication’ (Cohen andArato 1992, quoted in Murphy 2001: 353). Within civil society, social learningprocesses promote deliberative democracy and counter the ‘colonization of the life-world’ by both the state and large corporations (Welton 1993). Following Haber-mas, adult education creates the infrastructure for creative, communicative actionin the public sphere; and such ‘political listening’ will help build solidarity acrossconflicting civil society actors (e.g. environmentalists and loggers, pro-abortion and‘pro-life’ advocates) (Welton 2001, 2002). Social movements are sites of collectivelearning (Kilgore 1999) and cognitive praxis (Holford 1995): they ‘open upcognitive space, new opportunities for thought and the transformation of socialconsciousness’ (Mayo 2005: 106). Adult learning in this ‘autonomous and exuber-ant civil society’ will thus buttress the ‘the lifeworld against system intrusion,’ andpromote democracy among citizens (Welton 1993: 153).

In celebrating the lifeworld and the construction of civil society through NSMs,however, radical pluralists appear to overlook the seriousness of the issue of staterepression raised by Holst (2002). Welton (2001: 27), for example, offers only thefaith that the experience of state repression will serve as ‘a symbol of the irrepress-ible spirit of resistance in the meanest of circumstances. The human spirit will

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triumph in the end’. Other NSM theorists see the issue as mainly a ‘battle of ideas’(Mayo 2005), in line with more general post-Marxist calls to develop (Gramscian)counter-hegemonic alternatives to neoliberal ideology (George 1997, 1999). WithinWestern liberal democracies like Welton’s Canada, the USA, in Europe orAustralia—and indeed globally, such a position is vitally important in challengingcommon sense notions of a natural and inevitable neoliberal state and corporate re-ordering of society. However, in countries of the global South, where ideologicalhegemony is more often accompanied by violent state repression of both new andold social movements—of the union, human rights, peace, anti-apartheid, democ-racy, landless and feminist movements—the struggle is more than just a ‘war ofideas;’ although this is important. As Holst (2002: 55), argues, ‘there is little or noevidence that the repressive apparatus (army, police, judicial system) is disappear-ing. These elements of the state have historically been used to crush socialmovements and therefore cannot be ignored’.

For the most part, recent work in Environmental Adult Education has embraceda radical pluralist perspective on adult learning and the construction of civil societyin new social movements (Clover 2002, 2003, 2004, Hill 2003; Kapoor 2003, 2004,Hall 2004). Broadly speaking, although theorists of environmental adult educationdo not adopt a Marxist class analysis, they do offer a critique of ‘capitalist globaliza-tion’ (as opposed to global capitalism), acknowledging its fundamental role, andthat of the state and corporations which support it, in the oppression of poor peopleand the working class, and in the ravenous degradation of the natural environmentwhich fuels the system. As Clover (2003: 8–10) tells us, ‘the most toxic environmen-tal problems result from the practice of capitalist globalization:’ capitalist modes ofproduction (the economic commodification of human and natural resources andrelations), consumerism (a ‘deeply ingrained ideological, political, and structuralproblem’), and corporatisation (with the ‘ability to control costs, prices, labour andmaterials’) are largely to blame for environmental degradation, war, poverty andsocial inequalities. Moreover, the situation is frustrated by interlocking oppressionsof race, class and gender; whereby women, indigenous peoples, poor people, peopleof colour and the working class have disproportionately born the brunt of theenvironmental costs of globalization. As such, environmental adult education works‘toward the democratization of power by challenging underlying racial, class andgender biases and other inequities’ (Clover 2003: 11). Clover (2002, 2003) alsoacknowledges that these movements face the potential of state repression: environ-mental adult education activists in Africa and Latin America have been the target ofbrutal beatings and imprisonment, executions and even massacres. As she tells us(Clover 2002: 321–322), ‘environmental problems are political…Althoughhundreds of people attempt to take action everyday, there are powerful and evenbrutal countervailing forces which can easily bring about defeat and instil fear,apathy and the sense that nothing can be done’.

The challenge for adult educators, then, is to promote Frierian-inspired concien-tización and ‘educative-activism’ to challenge the ‘interweaving ideologies and prac-tices of capitalism, globalisation, corporatisation and cultural imperialism’ whichhave caused the destruction of societies and the environment (Clover 2002: 320). AsHill (2003: 34) argues, ‘People can learn to recognize structures of social control, todevelop forms of action to exert and oppose power, to generate ideas not previouslyarticulated, to take up personal growth strategies, and to create new kinds of knowl-edge… Environmental adult education in popular movements is at the root of this

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change’. Echoing Welton (1993), Clover (2003) and Hill (2003) see much of thework of educative-activism as reclaiming and reinforcing the lifeworld against theintrusions of the state and market. In this effort at strengthening democratic civilsociety, the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other ‘spontane-ously emergent associations’ born of new social movements is particularly important(Habermas, quoted in Welton 2001: 25). In the environmental movement, theseNGOs and activists include ‘community-based Green political parties, labour andtrade unions, workers’ associations, farmers’ associations, community-supportedagriculture and food cooperatives, artisan and professional groups, guilds, commu-nity housing, health care workers, socially active religious and spiritual movementmembers, artists, writers, filmmakers, videographers, rappers and folk and rockmusicians’ (Hill 2003: 30).

Educative-activism within these NGOs is expressed in teach-ins, popular theatre,storytelling, dance, art and other collective learning processes which stimulate crit-ical thinking, creativity and social action, drawing on the techniques of popular andfeminist education (Clover et al. 2000). As one example of this sort of educative-activism, Kapoor (2003, 2004), in work with Kondh adivasi (‘scheduled tribes’) inOrissa, India, shows how educator-activists from a local NGO used Freirian-inspiredtechniques of dialogic problem-posing to lay the groundwork for a wider popularmovement opposing both capitalist and state-led development. In a broader look atsix environmental action campaigns around the world (constituting case studies inthe Transformative Learning Through Environmental Action Research Project,1992–94), Hall (2004: 170) examined how transformative learning ‘emerged, wasstimulated and supported in different environmental social movement contexts’Reviewing the results of project studies in Brazil, Canada, El Salvador, Germany,India, Sudan and Venezuela, Hall identifies key principles, practices, and ‘indicatorsof success’ in transformative environmental adult education. Principles distilledfrom the case studies were: the recovery of a rooted sense of place, the importanceof bio-diversity, reconnecting with the rest of nature, the awakening of ‘sleepyknowledge’ (i.e. older forms of devalued indigenous knowledge), acting and resist-ing, building alliances and relationships, learning new skills, valuing process inlearning and deconstructing relations of power. Processes and sites of learningincluded celebrations and rituals, ‘on-the-spot’ learning, learning from elders,community meetings, nature tours or study visits, gender analyses, medicinal plantcollections, kitchen composting, community markets and marches and protests.Finally, nine ‘indicators of success’ were identified (2004: 186–187):

● the development of new practices;● increased participation or mobilization;● changes in gendered roles or behaviours;● linking between local and global contexts;● production or recovery of knowledge;● new legislation or policies;● increases in self-sufficiency and bio-regionalism;● increases in cooperation; and● existence of new alliances and networks.

Taken together, these principles, processes and indicators can be filtered throughthe analysis of other global instances of environmental adult education in new social

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movements, including the Buddhist environmental movement in Thailand, towhich we now turn.

Activist forest monks and the Buddhist environmental movement in Thailand

Since the thirteenth century Thai kingdom of Sukhothai, Theravada Buddhism hasoccupied a central position in Thai society. Buddhism remains the state religiontoday, embodied in both the concept of Buddhist Kingship, and in the ranks of thecountry’s sangha or community of Buddhist monks. Some 90% of Thai people iden-tify themselves as Buddhists, and in rural areas, life still revolves in large part aroundthe local Buddhist temple and the annual rhythms of Buddhist rites and rituals. Thevillage abbot (luang phor) and resident monks (phra) serve as community spiritualleaders who help to make sense of the world for villagers, offering a secure identityin Buddhist cosmology.2 Buddhist monks also take on the more secular roles ofvillage advisors, teachers, doctors, architects and carpenters (Seri 1988), althoughthis is less true today than in the past. Many young men still enter the monkhoodduring the months of Buddhist Lent in the rainy season, and some remain monksfor life. While state schools, the mass media, industrial growth and numerousgovernment development agencies at the village level have gradually lessened theinfluence of local Buddhist institutions, Buddhism remains a primary source of Thaiidentity for rural people, and Buddhist monks a powerful force in the promotion oflocal alternatives to state and Western models of development. Moreover, manyvillage-based Buddhist monks have strong local loyalties, stand largely outside theauthority of the Thai state and official Buddhist hierarchy and have at times beenpersecuted because of this (Seri 1988, Mayer 1996, Taylor 1996).

Forest monks (phra paa), unlike village-based monks, have traditionally beenremote not only from the state-endorsed sangha, but also from local village temples(wat). These forest monks, as the name implies, retreat to the isolation of the forestand mountains to practice forms of meditation deep within nature, free fromworldly interference. They may reside in a hermitage (wat paa) or (more often inthe past) simply wander from place to place (phra thudong), living in rude sheltersand receiving alms from those who approach them. Some forest monks might attaina reputation for supernatural powers, as meditation teachers or possessing of specialhealing or fortune telling powers, and soon (ironically) attract followers to theirforest retreats, which at times then become centres of Buddhist learning and medi-tation (Taylor 1993a). However, as the area of forests in Thailand has been rapidlyreduced in size, forest monks have seen all but the green swathes of trees which theirforest monasteries occupy disappear, prompting concern, and at times activism, onthe part of resident monks. Likewise, forest monks who ‘wander’ over the country-side by foot have since the 1980s been faced with the destruction of their secludedforest meditation sites, and have by necessity become attached to established forestmonasteries. As Taylor (1993a: 250) tells us, ‘less than twenty years ago, the forestmonks’ dwellings were the only cleared part of the primal forest; however, paradox-ically, today the forest monastery is the only forest in the cleared surrounding coun-tryside’. Thus, traditions of ascetic monasticism have eroded as their material forestbase has dissolved, helping to pave the way for an emergent activism centred onforest conservation and Buddhist ecology.

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Since the 1930s, various socially engaged Buddhist monks of all sorts have workedin rural community development, both as servants of the nation-state and in oppo-sition to it. Phra Kruba Srivichai, for example, who in 1935 organized the localconstruction of a road to the Buddhist temple on Doi Suthep mountain in ChiangMai, is remembered as one of the first in a long tradition of development monks(Seri 1988). In a state appropriation of this activist tradition, by the 1950s and 1960s,‘modernization monks’ were being enlisted by the military governments of SaritThanarat and Thanom Kittikachorn to counter communist subversion throughcommunity development work and the teaching of official Buddhist doctrine torural and minority upland peoples (Mayer 1996). During the political turmoil of the1970s, with the radical student revolution of 1973, and the bloody right-wing militaryrepression of 1976, ‘political monks’ on both sides began to proliferate (Somboon1982, 1984, cited in Mayer 1996). On the right, the most notorious of these monkswas Phra Kittiwutho Bikkhu. In support of the Thai military dictatorship, Phra Kitti-wutho argued that under Buddhism, it was not a sin to kill a communist, or to killthose radicals who would destroy ‘nation, religion or monarchy’ (Girling 1981: 157).He did this in spite of universal Buddhist sanctions against the taking of life of allkinds. On the left, activist monks advocated a democratization of the state sangha,placed themselves as protection in the front ranks of leftist political demonstrations,and even ran for political office on the Socialist Party ticket (Mayer 1996). Theyjustified their political activism as appropriate if it ‘helped relieve the sufferings ofinjustice or promoted the welfare of people’ (Mayer 1996: 44).

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, a movement of ‘development monks’ (phra nakpattana) had began to emerge in conjunction with a flourishing rural NGO move-ment. Both movements, at times intertwined, questioned the government’s top-down development policies, and proposed alternatives based on villagers’ localknowledge and Buddhist values (Baker and Pasuk 2005). By 1991, there were some250 to 300 development monks, comprising an important network in the grassrootscommunity development movement (Mayer 1996). This network was premised onthe desire to introduce a ‘Buddhist way of development’ by promoting not only‘right living,’ the making of merit and Buddhist meditation, but also economic self-reliance in the form of communal rice and buffalo banks, irrigation projects andother development projects, as well as basic medical and child welfare programsamong villagers (Seri 1988, Mayer 1996). In 1974, Phra Dhammadilok, for example,founded FEDRA, a rural development and education NGO in Chiang Mai Provincewhich now operates Buddhist-inspired development projects in some 35 villages inNorthern Thailand (Darlington 2003). By the late 1980s, the protection ofcommunity forests as a development priority had taken on increased importance, asdeforestation accelerated alongside the country’s booming economy. Feeding intoa wider environmental movement, activist village and forest monks known as ‘ecol-ogy monks’ (phra nak anuraksaa) began to take a central role in the effort to preserveboth forest and local culture, at times drawing the wrath of local and nationalauthorities. Among the first of such ecology monks was Phra Photirangsi, who in1985 led the fight against the building of an environmentally destructive cable carline up the side of Doi Suthep mountain in Chiang Mai, citing the threat to a sacredBuddhist mountain site (Darlington 2003). Other activist monks in both the Northand Northeast in the 1980s and 1990s led villagers to protest the construction ofdams, the promotion of eucalyptus plantations, industrial pollution of rivers, forcedresettlement schemes and illegal and commercial logging of local forests.

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In the last two decades, the practice of Buddhist tree ordination (buat tonmaay) as a means of protecting forests and educating local people on forestconservation has spread rapidly through the Buddhist environmental movement,constituting a ‘green theology’ among active Buddhists (Taylor 1996). In part, thespread of the movement has come through the efforts of regional NGOs such asthe Northern Farmers’ Network, which set out to ordain 50 million trees in 1996to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the King’s accession to the throne(Isager and Ivarsson 2002). In this arrangement, community forests were symboli-cally offered to the King as gifts from poor people, reinforcing the sanctity offorests even in non-Buddhist communities which wanted to express their loyalty tothe King. Since these ordinations came with the King’s blessings, and took partialshape in the Royal Project for Tree Ordinations and Village Forests (Tannen-baum 2000), they nominally brought into the royal fold a movement subject toviolent repression by the military only a decade before (Taylor 1993). Morerecently, however, with the re-emergence of a dictatorial government under ThaiPrime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (Baker and Pasuk 2005), activists in the move-ment have again been subject to harassment, violence and even assassination(Asian Human Rights Commission 2005), challenging the faith of even the mostardent of the movement’s supporters.

Philosophy and practice of Buddhist environmentalism

In their interpretation of Buddhist dhamma, activist ecology monks have helped leada grassroots environmental movement to temper the destructive effects of defores-tation, export-oriented cash cropping, agribusiness and the toxic contamination oflocal land and waters. For many socially engaged ecology monks, community devel-opment has meant a disengagement from an economy they see predicated onconsumerism and greed, and a move towards more sustainable forms of livelihoodbased in the traditions of Thai Buddhism and local knowledge. In doing so, theyfollow in a strong Thai Buddhist tradition equating dhamma with nature (dhammaj[amacr

] ti in Pali, thammach[amacr ] t in Thai), popularized in the writings of two of Thailand’smost highly regarded theologian-monk scholars, Bhuddh[amacr ] sa Bhikku and PhraPrayudh Payutto (Swearer 1996, 1997). For Bhuddh[amacr ] sa Bhikku, caring for nature(anurak thammach[amacr ] t) in the dhammic sense is understood as:

the active expression of our empathetic identification with all life-forms:sentient and nonsentient, human beings and nature… Caring in this deepersense of the meaning of anurak goes well beyond the well-publicized strategiesto protect and conserve the forest, such as ordaining trees, implemented bythe conservation monks, as important as these strategies have become in Thai-land… To conserve (anurak) nature (thamach[amacr ] t)… translates as having at thecore of one’s very being the quality of empathetic caring for all things in theworld in their natural conditions; that is to say, to care for them as they reallyare rather than as I might like them to be…our care for nature derives froman ingrained selfless, empathetic response. It is not motivated by a need tosatisfy our own pleasures as, say, in the maintenance of a beautiful garden oreven by the admirable goal of conserving nature for our own physical andspiritual well-being or the benefit of future generations…it stems from a

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realization that I do not and cannot exist independently of my total environ-ment (Swearer 1997: 27–29).

Inspired by Bhuddh[amacr ] sa’s ‘eco-dhammic’ ethics and his further notions of a grassrootsBuddhist socialism (sangkhom niyom), activist ecology monks such as Phra PrajakKutajitto (an early leader in the tree ordination movement) have relied on threeBuddhist principles to inform their teachings (Taylor 1993b, 1996): (1) the interde-pendence of society, culture and nature; (2) restraint (from greed), social equityand generosity; and (3) loving-kindness and respect for the community. As a secondfamous activist monk, Phra Khamkian, has put it: ‘Nature is our greatest teacher.Apart from the forest’s mind-soothing peace, you can get answers to life’s problemsby carefully observing nature, the inter-relatedness of all things, harmony andbalance. Nature teaches us the value of simplicity as well as the essence of life’(quoted in Sanitsuda, 1991: 69). However, as Phra Khamkian also understands,villagers preoccupied with immediate concerns of poverty, indebtedness andhunger are little able to appreciate Buddhist ecology, free themselves from desire,make merit or practice Buddhist meditation. Thus he, like many other such monks,has devoted himself to developing local self-sufficiency in agriculture, moving villag-ers in thought and practice away from a ‘greed-based’ cash-cropping economydestructive of local land and forest. To this end, Phra Khamkian, like many othersuch monks, has created a model organic farm in his local community, and hashelped organize cooperative rice and buffalo banks, while at the same time teachingthe spiritual and moral value of forests and ecology within Buddhist thought.

When the work of Buddhist ecology and development monks is seen through thelens of environmental adult education, it is clear that many of the transformativeeducation practices embodied in the movement are similar to those present in otherglobal environmental movements (Hill 2003, Hall 2004). Activist ecology monkshave in many ways helped to create a spiritual locus of resistance and a material baseof biodiversity in opposition to tremendous market and government pressures forthe conversion of forest lands to eucalyptus plantations and cassava cash-cropping.In common with the six environmental action campaigns reviewed by Hall (2004),transformative learning in the Thai movement is rooted in a sense of place; aboveall in the defence of community lands and forests under threat. It is likewise built onan awakening of the ‘sleepy knowledge’ of local Buddhism and indigenous forestrypractices. In a reforestation project by Phra Khamkian at Wat Paa Sukhato in Chaiya-phum, for example, formerly deforested land has been allowed to regenerate theoriginal richness of its flora and fauna over the course of 15 years, speeded up by theplanting of indigenous tree species (Sanitsuda 1994). The forest now serves as acool, shaded area for quiet meditation, and also acts as a rich storehouse of indige-nous herb and medicinal species, food, fodder and other non-timber forest prod-ucts traditionally collected by local villagers. In Plak Mai Lai Temple, anothersimilarly ‘reforested’ temple just outside of Bangkok, Phra Ajarn Somneuk Nathohas invited local villagers to conduct workshops on their indigenous herbal knowl-edge for visitors, in the process reinforcing the traditional value of non-timber forestresources for both.

Supported by familiar traditions of indigenous Buddhism, the teaching of ‘green’Buddhist meditation to local people is also a key educational practice in the peda-gogy of environmentalism promoted by activist monks. Most such monks agree thatteaching meditation is the first step in attempting to steer local people away from

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cash-crop farming, charcoal production and other practices destructive of forest,and in reviving villagers’ traditional respect for forest resources. As Taylor (1996)puts it, ecologist monks teach meditation to ‘green the mind’ first before ‘greening’the countryside. In general, they work to foster environmental awareness anddialogue, revive local traditions and promote leadership among villagers in wayswhich respond to local realities. In the community initiatives they undertake, themonks usually lead by personal example, and their ‘teaching mode is to relate theBuddha’s teaching as praxis to the everyday life experience of villagers’ (Taylor1996: 48). As Phra Nan Sutasilo, the abbot of Wat Samakkii in Surin Province seesit, ‘Each locality has a different history, social background, and set of beliefs. Thereare no ready-made answers and monks must study each locality’s problems andneeds, and work accordingly’ (quoted in Sanitsuda 1994: 207).

Above all, the defining educational practice of the Buddhist environmentalmovement is the ritual ordination of trees and local forests (Taylor 1993, Sanitsuda1994, 1991, Darlington 1998, Tannenbaum 2000, Isager and Ivarsson 2002). Thisceremony borrows its inspiration from Buddhist rites of ordination for men enter-ing the monkhood; in this case, however, it is the trees which symbolically becomesacred beings robed in saffron, and thus more likely to be protected from harm. Thetree and forest ordination ceremonies (buat ton maay, buat paa) conducted by PhraPrajak, Phra Khamkian and other ecology monks also resonate with Thai villagers’beliefs about the sanctity of certain trees; notably, the Bodhi tree under which theBuddha attained enlightenment and other exceptionally large trees in which localspirit lords are said to reside (Swearer 1997, Isager and Ivarsson 2002). Beyond theordination of individual trees, ecology monks have also ritually extended a kind ofsymbolic fence around entire community forests to protect them from logging byoutsiders, and have led ‘sanctified’ tree planting ceremonies as well, thus protectingthem from being cut in the future. In addition, in some communities, activist ecol-ogy monks have recruited and sent out teams of allied forest monks to create forestmonasteries (wat paa) in areas under threat, calling on long traditions of forestmeditation (Sanitsuda 1991). Isager and Ivarsson (2002: 405–406) describe what isa fairly typical forest ordination ceremony:

During the first part of the ceremony the monks are chanting while seated ina pavilion. The monks are connected with each other by a white thread (saajsiin) they hold in their hands. From the hands of the monks the thread islinked to a small Buddha statue placed on an altar next to the monks. Fromthe small Buddha statue the thread passes on to a bigger Buddha statue, whichstands in a newly erected pavilion on a small hill. This part of the ritual corre-sponds to a general practice of sanctifying things through the ‘force’ producedby the chanting done by monks…Here the big Buddha statue represents theguardian of the forest and through this statue the power of the holy chantingis dispersed to the forest as a whole. After the chanting, lay people participat-ing in the ceremony take an oath whereby they promise to refrain from cuttingdown trees in the forest. A monk presents the oath and the laypeople repeatthe wording. As part of the oath a call is made to the ‘gods’ who regulate theweather (aakaad theewadaa), Mae Thorani (Goddess of the Earth), MaePhosop (Goddess of Rice), and the spirits in the forest and mountains (cawpaa caw khaw) to assist people in preserving the forest and punishing wrong-doers. Finally, it is noted that all the merit accomplished through efforts to

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preserve the forest is dedicated to the royal family in Thailand. After the oathhas been taken, the forest is ‘ordained’ as both monks and laypeople tiesaffron cloth around trees in the vicinity of the Buddha statue.

In addition to trees and forests, ecology monks have also taken it upon themselvesto provide symbolic spiritual protection to resources of land and water. Monks in thevillage of Wang Pa Du in north-eastern Thailand, for instance, faced with the immi-nent blasting and mining of their local mountain by a quarry company, ordained anentire mountain by wrapping a three-kilometre strip of saffron cloth around its base,thus protecting it from destruction (Horn 2000). In another instance in the Southof Thailand, monks periodically lead ‘dhamma walks’ around Songkhla Lake (alarge regional lake) to draw attention to the rapid destruction of the lake’s ecosys-tem, and educate local people about environmentalism (Mayer 1996, NFA 1999).Likewise, in the North, important rivers in Nan Province have been protected bymonks using the syyb chataa ceremony, a ritual used by Northern Thais to prolonglife and assure good fortune (Isager and Ivarsson 2002). In fact, by 1999, some 100fish sanctuaries along the Nan River in the North had been established by ecologymonk Phra Pitak and his NGO the ‘Love Nan Province Foundation’ alone (Darling-ton 2003: 105). Similarly, the Korat Initiative, based in Nakorn Rachasima Provincein the Northeast, led by Buddhist monk Luangta Share, has organized a network ofmonks with expertise in forest conservation, water resource management, identifi-cation and collection of seeds and cultivation of medicinal plants (ARC 2006). TheKorat Network now embraces four regional zones, 90 Buddhist monasteries, 109villages and 43 forests. A monastic training and administrative centre provides treeseedlings, training in composting, organic gardening, forest management and legaladvice on forest law and protection campaigns. Youth conservation workshops,nonformal community trainings and study and training tours for visiting monks(160 at last count) are also regularly offered by the Network.

Beyond the local, the building of wider alliances among activist monks, and withlike-minded Buddhist and secular environmental and development NGOs has alsobeen crucial in sustaining and spreading the movement over the last 20 years. Chiefamong monk-led NGOs is Sekiyatham, a network of activist monks, which by themid-90s was holding annual meetings and circulating a bi-monthly journal to 600such monks around the country (Mayer 1996: 61). Other secular NGOs like theNorthern Farmers’ Network, a coalition of primarily upland forest dwellers in north-ern Thailand, have actively embraced the Buddhist environmental movement, evenwhen many of their members are not practicing Buddhists (Isager and Ivarsson2002). Coordination with larger urban and international networks of engagedBuddhists, such as the International Network of Engaged Buddhists founded byBuddhist scholar and activist Ajarn Sulak Sivaraksa is also becoming more common(Mayer 1996). Ecology monks such as Phra Khamkian are likewise much in demandas speakers at events organized by academic institutions, forest conservation anddevelopment NGOs (Taylor 1996). Others like Phra Somkit, who manages a modelintegrated organic farm and reforestation project in Nan Province, now play hostannually to hundreds of domestic and international visitors (Darlington 2003).Internationally, Thai ecology monks have travelled to neighbouring Cambodia andLaos to support the Buddhist forest conservation movement in those countries, andas far as New Zealand to work with rainforest activists trying to protect old growthforest there (NFA 1999, ARC 2006).

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It is important to note, however, that Thai Buddhist ecology monks, with theirpowerful ceremonies protecting forest and water resources, model integrated farms,indigenous reforestation projects and nonformal education projects, are not alwayssuccessful. In some instances, villagers are not convinced that foregoing the incomefrom logging, charcoal-making and clearance of forest for cash-cropping is in theirbest immediate interests. Although villagers are by no means the primary cause ofdeforestation (Wannitikul 2005), in many cases they do little to prevent it, optinginstead for what they see as a choice of livelihood or even subsistence over conserva-tion. In other instances, land development companies (export food-processing andelectronics industries, resorts, golf courses, real estate speculation), commercialforestry and mining concerns (large scale eucalyptus farms, pulp and paper mills,logging concessions and quarrying concessions), market pressure to expand cash-cropping (cassava, sugar, rice, rubber, maize, fruit, sorghum), and the developmentof infrastructure by government (dam construction, road building, designation ofnational parks) are too much for villagers to bear. Sale of land for debt, unclearproperty title and simple ‘land grabs,’ leading to increasing rates of tenancy andlandlessness have only frustrated this situation (Sanitsuda 1991, Bello et al. 1998).Moreover, just as the Thai state rallied right-wing ‘political monks’ to help suppresscommunism and other dissent in the 1970s, so today have state and business inter-ests at times recruited their own corps of monks to counter the grassroots conserva-tion work of ecology monks. When, for example, in the mid-1990s, a group of activistecology monks ordained forest trees to try to stop the construction of the YadanaPipeline (a mega-project to pipe gas from Burma to Thailand), authorities thensimply countered by recruiting their own group of monks to disrobe the trees, andthe project went forward (Horn 2000). In short, the Buddhist environmental move-ment is by no means universally successful at protecting forests: it faces a host ofpowerful forces and interests allied against it, including the Thai state itself.

Resistance from the Thai state

Historically, Buddhist forest monks wandered largely out of the purview of the Thaistate and established sangha, and for this reason their loyalty was at times suspect(Keyes 1989). Forest monks who founded forest monasteries outside the state-sanc-tioned sangha, such as Ajarn Man Phurithat in the Northeast, commonly offeredBuddhist critiques of ‘all action predicated on the desire for power, wealth, oresteem’ (Keyes 1989: 141). In the 1950s and 1960s, such monks were deemed suspi-cious and counted among communist sympathizers by the Thai state even when theywere not activists. This pattern has repeated itself more recently as well. In promot-ing a socially engaged interpretation of Buddhism and community development,contemporary forest monks have met resistance from the state Buddhist hierarchy(the sangha), from developers and the government, and have been chastised fortheir ‘political’ work by those who believe their role should be strictly confined tothe spiritual realm (Taylor 1996, Darlington 1998). At times, powerful business andgovernment interests feeling threatened by activist monks have cracked down onthem, sometimes violently. In 1991, for example, Phra Prajak was thrown into jail forhis environmental activism, marking the first time a robed Buddhist monk had beenimprisoned in Thailand (Tavivat 1998). Initially, he led villagers to oppose aneviction and relocation plan in which a monoculture eucalyptus plantation was to

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be established on village lands for pulp and paper production. He was then accusedof being a ‘Russian monk’ and a ‘communist monk’ and faced intimidation andharassment by local thugs (nakleng) and the military (Taylor 1993b). Today, a totalof 18 environmentalist ‘human rights defenders,’ including ecology monks, havebeen killed under the Thai Rak Thai regime of Thai Prime Minister ThaksinShinawatra (Haberkorn 2005), bringing into question the Thai state’s ability toprotect its citizens from extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings.

The nature of the Thai state and its relation to the Buddhist environmental move-ment is complex. On the one hand, the state is comprised of the institutions of king-ship expressed in a constitutional monarchy tied to Buddhism as the state religion.The patrons of the official Buddhist sangha, the royal family, also patronize forestmonasteries, and have endorsed tree ordinations in honour of the King’s fiftiethyear of ascension to the throne. This royal patronage gives both forest monasteriesand the Buddhist environmental movement nominal legitimacy and symbolicprotection. Thus, a state-sanctioned space for environmental action and socialjustice is opened up for activist monks, local villagers and the NGOs who supportthem. On the other hand, the secular Thai state under the rule of business tycoonThaksin Shinawatra (who identifies himself as the ‘CEO premier’) has becomeincreasingly authoritarian and reliant on the military for social control (Baker andPasuk 2005). A key component of this strong masculine state is a compliantpopulace which does not stand in the way of economic growth, allowing, amongother things, a new ‘business-political elite’ to prosper and military generals to freely‘exploit natural resources and favour business friends’ (Baker and Pasuk 2005: 264).In a situation reminiscent of earlier eras of military ascendance, public intellectuals,local activists and NGOs calling for a more equitable democracy are accused ofbeing ‘anarchists’ and ‘enemies of the nation,’ and increasingly subject to stateviolence and harassment (Baker and Pasuk 2005, Haberkorn 2005).

As activist intellectual Sanitsuda Ekachai (2005) tell us, the remaining forests ofThailand are now under a renewed position of ‘state plundering:’ illegal loggingand exploitation by commercial interests is on the rise along with evictions of localforest dwellers and extrajudicial killings of community forest activists. A legal briefsubmitted in March of 2005 to the UN Human Rights Committee by the ThaiWorking Group on Human Rights Defenders bears this out: ‘the collusion betweenstate and private interests in the murders of human rights defenders appears tohave increased under Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai government’(Haberkorn 2005: 1). In the case of the 2004 murder of community activist SupolSirijat, who defended local forests against illegal logging in Lamphun Province; forexample, ‘influential figures are alleged to have protected the poachers’(Haberkorn 2005: 2). Likewise, in a forest-related killing in 2005, SomyongOongaew of Petchabun was allegedly ‘gunned down because [he] stood in the wayof those with money and power’ (Ekachai 2005: 1). The traditional reverenceaccorded to Buddhist monks no longer appears to be enough to protect them fromviolence. The murder of ‘development monk’ Phra Sopoj Suwagano on 17 June2005, after he exposed a local land-poaching scheme, has been cited as the mostrecent example of a growing and deadly backlash against environmental andhuman rights activists as a whole (Asian Human Rights Commission 2005). Thedetails of his case, as described by the Asian Human Rights Commission, demon-strate the reality of state repression of the movement (Asian Human RightsCommission 2005: 1–2):

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On 17 June 2005, Buddhist monk Phra Supoj Suwagano was brutally stabbedto death by unknown persons. Phra Supoj had been a member of the Sekhiy-adhamma Group of development monks and involved in the conservation ofmore than 280 acres of forest land. This land has been desired by a group oflocal influential businessmen who have previously intimidated monks livingthere with threats of violence and murder. These same businessmen are alsoalleged to have connections with local and national political figures in theruling Thai Rak Thai party.

The Northern Development Monks Network believes that Phra Supoj’smurder may be directly linked to the local businessmen and the land disputebetween these persons and the religious centre where Phra Supoj was stabbed.Phra Supoj and two other monks at the centre had allegedly been previouslyintimidated by men hired by local businessmen in a bid to get them to vacatethe land the centre occupies. A complaint was filed by the three monks withthe local police against the businessmen, but the police refused to acceptit…On June 20 Justice Minister Suwat Liptapanlop ordered the Department ofSpecial Investigation (DSI) to investigate the murder of Phra Supoj. While thisis welcomed news, the DSI has proven its ineffectiveness in similar past casesand concerned persons fear that their investigation into Phra Supoj’s deathwill be no different.3

Discussion

In brief, the Buddhist environmental movement in Thailand can be seen as a village-based popular movement led by socially engaged Buddhist monks who teach andlive out a local alternative to both corporate and state paradigms of developmentand livelihood. In this sense, it is a counter-hegemonic movement which supportsthe development of civil society, but is not a revolutionary workers’ movement in thesense proposed by Holst (2002). However, Holst is correct when he argues thatWelton (1997, 2001, 2002) and other radical pluralists are underestimating theforce of state-sponsored violence in repressing popular movements. In an arenawhere extrajudicial killings are becoming commonplace and where the state itself isimplicated in violence against its own citizens, Welton’s (2002) call for communica-tive action and wilful ‘political listening’ among opposing actors in the debate isextremely important, but not sufficient. Political listening does not address the realand apparent crisis of state violence (direct physical coercion) in social movements,however resilient the human spirit may be in bearing this violence. On the otherhand, where Holst’s Marxist-Leninist argument allows little space for social move-ments outside of revolutionary class struggle, Welton’s theorizing embraces thepotential power of post-communist ‘morality and spirituality,’ which are of utmostimportance in the Thai Buddhist environmental movement.

Neither the Thai state nor the community of Buddhist monks is, however, mono-lithic in character or action. The state is a shifting amalgamation of political alliancesand loyalties underlain by the sanctity of the King and the institutionalization ofBuddhism as the state religion. Most important to the Buddhist environmental move-ment, as noted above, is the royal family’s traditional patronage of forest monaster-ies, and more recently of the ecology monks’ conservation and development work.

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Historically, the King has worked to curb the excesses of military authorities,intervening, for example, in the brutal suppression of pro-democracy demonstratorsin May 1992 to order a stop to military violence after numerous protesters werekilled. Buddhist monks, for their part, are also diverse in their interpretations ofBuddhism, the role of activism within it, and their relationship to the official sangha.Multiple branches and sects of Thai Buddhism exist, each with competing interpre-tations of Buddhist dhamma and the proper role of monks (Mayer 1996). Non-governmental organizations are likewise varied in their politics, foci of concern,membership and local loyalties: some are primarily networks of socially engagedBuddhists, some mainly environmentalists, others emphasize holistic communitydevelopment integrating both Buddhism and secular environmentalism. Finally,government agencies are diverse in their outlooks and alliances. The Royal ForestryDepartment (RFD), for example, is, on the one hand, responsible for promotingunpopular eucalyptus plantations which have been subject to numerous popularprotests, including those led by ecology monks. On the other hand, the RFD has alsosanctioned the Royal Tree Ordination Project, and works in conjunction with forestconservation projects such as the Korat Initiative mentioned above.

If the Buddhist environmental movement is examined through the lens of trans-formative learning and the ‘indicators of success’ identified by Hall (2004), it is clearthat it is a successful, life-, people- and earth-affirming movement and an importantexample of adult learning in new social movements. In ordaining trees and forests,blessing rivers, creating model sustainable farms and community forests, the move-ment has developed new practices based on the production and recovery of localknowledge, and increased self-sufficiency and bio-regionalism in the process. It hasmobilized people to cooperate both in opposition to destructive forestry practicesand in support of reforestation and community livelihood. The movement hasrelied on new alliances and networks of monks, environmentalists, NGOs and localpeople, and has extended itself into global contexts. Activist ecology monks havealso contributed a powerful voice to ongoing debates on government forestry legis-lation; in particular, around a recent controversial community forest bill (Sanitsuda2005).

On only one of Hall’s (2004) indicators of success does the forest monk move-ment fall short: it offers few changes in oppressive gendered behaviours. In otherwords, Thai Buddhism, environmentalist or otherwise, like most world religions,embodies both the philosophy and practice of patriarchy. As Van Esterick (2000:74–75) tells us: ‘there is ample evidence in the Thai tradition that women are deniedaccess to the most valued Buddhist resources in the country, and face an androcen-tric monastic order (Sangha) unsympathetic to their concerns whether they beimproving the condition of nuns, pressing for ordination for women, or pursuingcharges against sexually active monks’. Buddhist texts, rituals and institutionsascribe a subordinate status to women (who must be reborn as men before attainingNirvana); only men can be ordained as monks; and women nuns (mae chii) performmuch of the material work of Buddhism, but this ‘women’s work’ is undervaluedand unrecognized (Van Esterick 2000). At the same time, rural Thai women are theprincipal users of forest, land and water resources: they collect firewood, haul waterand harvest medicinal, food and other non-timber forest products as part of theirproductive and reproductive labour (Supachit 1997). When forests are cut andwater sources polluted, this creates an additional burden to women’s work. Inaccounts of the Thai Buddhist environmental movement and the work of ecology

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monks to date, there is no analysis of the structures, processes and effects ofpatriarchy, the male-dominance of movement leadership, nor the gendered impactsof deforestation, and how these interact with each other. These are clearly areas inneed of further study. Critical feminist scholarship in environmental adulteducation by Clover (1995, 2004), and the larger ecofeminist theoretical frames ofMaria Mies and Vandana Shiva (1993, Shiva 1993), and other feminist scholars showthe clear potential and importance of such analysis.

Conclusion

In many ways, activist Buddhist monks embody a ‘revolutionary Buddhist conscious-ness’. Forest conservation and community development practice is based on sharedBuddhist beliefs about the sanctity of the natural world, and material concerns overthe destruction of forest, livelihood and indigenous culture. The Buddhist environ-mental movement embodies a critical questioning of dominant ideologies of export-oriented economic growth, corporate consumerism and state forestry policy. Inmany ways it embraces Clover’s (2002) call for educative-activism in environmentaladult education. With the glaring exception of changes in gender relations, themovement emulates the success of transformative environmental adult education inother social movements (Hall 2004). As an environmental justice movement (Hill2003), the Thai movement serves to counter state and corporate ‘colonization of thelifeworld’ and ‘brutalization of nature,’ and clearly strives to create a more demo-cratic civil society, as Welton (1993) proposes. Although it is not a workers’ revolu-tionary movement in the sense that Holst (2002) envisions, the Thai movement doesface a level of state repression unacknowledged by radical pluralist theorists of adultlearning in new social movements. As Kapoor (2004) argues, in countering thisrepression, the support of outside activists is crucial. In this effort, the building ofglobal civil society coalitions across nations is imperative (Hall 2000): what Walters(2000) calls the construction of ‘cooperative globalization,’ and others ‘globaliza-tion from below’ (Kellner 2000). In short, the work of activist forest monks and theBuddhist environmental movement in Thailand is a movement rich in experience,adult learning and collective knowledge. It is a territory well worth understandingand defending by socially engaged adult educators, intellectuals and activistsworldwide, Buddhist or otherwise.

Notes

1.1. An abridged version of this paper will be presented at the 2006 Adult Education Research Confer-ence, 19–21 May, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

2.2. ‘phra’ is a noun which means ‘monk’ in Thai, and is used with accompanying adjectives (placedafter the noun, not before) to identify different kinds of monks. For example, forest monks arephra (monk) paa (forest); development monks are phra (monk) nakpattana (developmentexpert), and so on. However, ‘phra’ is also used as an honorific title for all monks (capitalized withno italics in the text); so that ‘Phra Prajak,’ for instance, translates as ‘Honourable Monk Prajak,’much in the same way as ‘Brother Prajak’ or ‘Father Prajak’ might be used in Catholic monastictraditions.

3.3. For current information on the status of human rights violations in Thailand, please see the websiteof the Asian Human Rights Commission on http://www.ahrck.net. The site also contains an urgentaction appeal with detailed instructions on how to respond to the recent murders of Thai humanrights defenders and environmentalists, including the murder of Phra Supoj Suwagano.

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