Temples
At various times through our guided tour, our guide told us proudly that there are about 60,000 Buddhist temples in Thailand. But don’t worry; we’ll visit less than half of them. The internet puts the number at a bit less, something like 43,500 temples. That’s a lot of temples!
We did see them everywhere as we drove and rode trains from Bangkok up north to Chiang Rai. In the south, around Phuket and Krabi, along with the Buddhist temples, there are many mosques.
You’ll see quite a few in many of our other posts about our Thai travels.
Here’s a modest example, perhaps typical of little villages. We visited a village north of Chiang Mai called Mae Taeng. As far as we know, it is a typical northern Thailand village. A young local guide showed us around the center of the village. Even in a little place like this, there is a collection of temples and related buildings.
It seems that prosperous people have arranged for shrines and statues to be built — to demonstrate their faith and enhance their good fortune.
The sign in front of this regal collection of elephant, important elephant rider, and traditional guards reads, approximately:
Women: Go through the left-hand loop.
Pray for a blessing by crawling under the belly of the auspicious royal elephant 3, 5, 4 times. Then pray and hit the royal elephant 4 times to defeat the enemy, defeeat all misfortunes, diseases, accidents, and obstacles. May you have luck, fortune, money, gold, be rich, rich, lucky, lucky and may all your wishes come true.
Spirit Houses
We saw a lot of what looked like mini-temples on pedestals near houses and businesses, usually in pairs. These are spirit houses, and they are very common.
Part of the idea of spirit houses is this: Spirits live everywhere in the land. If you build your house on that land, you disturb the spirits. You construct a little house outside your own house so that the spirits have their own place. You provide them offerings of flowers, water and fruit so that they will stay friendly to you. Additionally, these fancy little houses serve other spirits; the smaller one is for your grandparents and ancestors; the larger one is for spirits from heaven. You want all the spirits to be welcome, to be acknowledged, and to be happy. That way, everyone has good fortune.
It’s up to each home owner or business owner to choose their spirit houses and decorate them as they see fit.
We wondered how these spirit houses fit with Thai Buddhism. We’ll see in a moment.
Blessings in everyday life
Adjacent to the shrines and temples we visited in the village of Mae Taeng is the real work-a-day social space for the community. This is where ceremonies are performed, along with all sorts of community gatherings. Folks who want consultation or blessing from the monks come here.
Our guide arranged for the head monk here, the abbot, to bless us all. Just like at the bridge at Wat Traphang Thong, we gave the abbot a platter of donations for the monks and the community.
If we were Thai people, we’d easily sit cross-legged or on our knees on the floor before the abbot. The monks had thoughtfully (and thankfully) prepared for us stiff foreigners plastic chairs instead.
Each of us was given a long-necked vessel filled with water, and an accompanying bowl. During the blessing, we poured the water into the bowl. The blessing had in some sense given us merit; pouring it out again symbolizes sharing this good merit with others, including deceased relatives and spirits.
After the blessing, we were instructed to pour the water from the bowl onto the roots of nearby trees. The meaning here is to nourish the earth and provide water for animals, demonstrating compassion for all living beings.
Donations at dawn
In Sukhothai, our tour arranged for us to participate in a donation ritual to local monks. The location was the bridge leading to the Wat Traphang Thong, or the “Temple of the Golden Lake.” This temple was first built around the 14th century, during the Sukhothai Kingdom. It is an active temple complex to this day.
The stupa we see today is in a bell-shaped Sri Lankan form. The white building to the left houses a bronze Buddha footprint dating from 1359. Obviously, this isn’t an actual footprint from the historical Buddha (he lived in the fifth century BCE). There’s a long tradition of creating symbolic footprints. They serve as focal points for worship and meditation, and vehicles for spreading Buddhist practices.
Before dawn, we sat down along one side of the bridge along with many other donors. Our guide had arranged for us each to have a tray of items to donate, such as bottles of water, packaged snacks, even household supplies.
A queue of orange-clad monks appeared at the temple-end of the bridge. The stopped in front of each donor and rather efficiently took what was given to them. When we weren’t handing over the donations, we sat with our palms together in the prayer posture — or “wai” in Thai.
The monks smoothly handed what we gave to helpers behind them. The helpers gathered the donations on big trays and took them away.
After only a few minutes, the monks had passed and the donations had all been given.
We were told that the monks use a little of what we give for themselves. However, most goes to help people in the community.
Thai Buddhism
What is the everyday practice of Buddhism like for most Thai people, we wondered as we visited temples, passed spirit houses, and were blessed by monks?
People don’t come to the temples on a set day of the week to attend a service in the Judeo-Christian and Muslim manner. There are, however, Buddhist holidays and festivals during which people visit temples to make merit and wishes for themselves and their loved ones. In addition, the key days of the lunar calendar are times when people gather at the temples: new and full moons, and days 8 and 15 of each lunar month.
Our guide, who is obviously a practicing Buddhist, said that people come to temples to confer with monks about issues they have in their lives. They also come seeking blessings for special occasions like weddings, births, and funerals.
Temples are also general gathering places for the community, for all sorts of activities. They are social as well as spiritual hubs for communities.
An interesting tidbit that demonstrates the centrality of Buddhism in Thai life: In Thailand, the year part of any date is based on the year the Buddha passed away in nirvana, which was 543 years before the birth of Christianity. When you search on the internet in Thailand, the results come up with the Buddhist-calendar year. Gregorian 2025 is 2568 in the Buddhist calendar.
We came to Thailand with preconceptions that Buddhism is about the teachings of the Buddha, the purposes of which include showing people how to end suffering. And that the Buddha — or the Lord Buddha, as our guide always said — is revered as a great teacher and example, but not worshipped as a deity.
And yet, we saw many people bowing to statues of the Buddha, seemingly praying, asking the Buddha for blessing and good fortune. The blessings that we participated in included much attention on sharing good fortune and merit with our families, both alive and passed, and keeping lots of spirits happy.
The spirit houses are all about what feels like animism, since they recognize the presence of spirits everywhere.
And we saw lots of Hindu iconography woven into temple decoration.
What we learned was that Thai Buddhism is a belief system that does in fact welcome elements from Buddhism, Hinduism and indigenous animism. Everything is folded in together to create a uniquely Thai spiritual ecosystem.
One comment we find about this fusion, or syncretism, is that it allows Thai Buddhism to be flexible and inclusive, incorporating various beliefs and practices while maintaining core Buddhist principles. It’s a rich multifaceted religious tradition that comes out of Thailand’s complex cultural history. Since Thailand’s history is a procession of political and cultural and religious influences, Thai people know how to accept, adapt, adjust, all the while maintaining something that keeps them uniquely Thai. This isn’t a trait of the past; they continue to evolve today.
Here comes the editorial comment: What a nice contrast to some other dogmatic, my-way-or-the-highway world views. Stay true to yourself while also being as open and tolerant as you can.
We think you can actually feel this Thai spirit even as travelers and visitors. Lovely.
January-February 2025