Chapter 10 Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia 403good rains from a third spirit who resides in the swamps. This spirit, Chao
Phau Tong Khyang, gets angry if he doesn’t hear the rockets and withdraws his
protection, allowing all kinds of misfortune to afflict the villagers.
It should be clear from the above descriptions that the actual needs of ordi-
nary villagers cannot be met solely by Buddhism. Buddhism does not offer rain,
good harvests, prosperity, fertility, good health, or protection from misfortune.
Buddhism’s gifts are important but limited. Buddhism offers a tranquility in the
face of whatever good or ill life does bring; it offers a theory of rebirth and a
means of achieving a good one through a system of accumulating merit; it
allows for filial piety through the possibility of transferring merit to one’s ances-
tors; and it allows an alternative life course of ascetic withdrawal from society to
focus on meditation and achievement of nirvana (nibbana). Buddhism attends to
death, but not life; it takes care of one’s funeral but not one’s marriage. It
involves itself with cessation of life and desire, not with fertility and procreation.
The Soul and Other Spirit Entities
Despite the classical Buddhist doctrine of anatma (anatta), Thai Buddhists
have a less canonical and rather complicated view of the soul. Like other East
and Southeast Asians, and unlike Indian and Western views, the soul is multi-
plex and not well fixed inside the body. There is first of all the khwan, com-
posed of 32 separate essences associated with different parts of the body, such
as the sense organs. The khwan is associated with the full vigor of one’s life
force; it can get frightened and slip out of the body, leaving the owner in a peril-
ous state of decline leading to death if it is not recovered and tied firmly to the
body with strings at the wrist.
Though the khwan comes and goes, there is another spirit-essence that is
fixed until true and final death—the winjan. The winjan is the essence that goes
on to a new existence after death. All winjans become phii but will go on to one
or another heaven or to new lives unless death comes unexpectedly or violently
and appropriate death rituals are not conducted. In that case, they become dan-
gerous to people or enter them as evil spirits that have to be cast out by the vil-
lage exorcist.
The fate of one’s soul after death motivates ordinary laypeople to under-
take merit-making actions that ensure a good rebirth. The merit (bun) that
ensures a good next life is accumulated by good deeds, by participation in tem-
ple rites, and by giving gifts to monks. It is necessary to counteract baab,
demerit or sin, which also accumulates according to the laws of karma
(kamma). At death, bun and baab are weighed, and the soul’s destiny is deter-
mined. Life cycles through a complex hierarchy of other worlds, any one of
which is a possible destiny of the soul in the next life. Mostly one desires a
good rebirth in another human existence, but rebirth in one of the six Heavens
would also be delightful, if a somewhat more remote possibility. Above all, one
wishes to avoid returning as an animal, a ghost, a demon, or languishing in one
of the increasingly dreadful hells.