164 CHAPTER SEVENinstability, it has no choice but to take the risk. Given the enormous forces for
change that have swept over Asia in the postcolonial period, it should come as
no surprise that forest movements have had a major voice in modern Thai
Buddhism. Three examples will provide some idea of the range of messages
this voice has conveyed.
The oldest of the three movements is the Forest or Kammatthana (medita-
tion) tradition founded by Phra Ajaan Sao Kantasilo (1861-1941) and Phra
Ajaan Mun Bhuridatto (1870-1949) in the forests of northeastern Thailand.
Members of this movement-mostly belonging to the Dhammayut sect, al-
though there is also a Mahanikaya offshoot-are renowned for their asceti-
cism, their strict adherence to the Vinaya, and their meditative powers. The
movement took its original inspiration from a handful of texts resulting from
missions to Sri Lanka sponsored by Rama IV, but aside from questions of
Vinaya, the movement has a strong antischolastic bent. Many of its members
insist that their prime teacher has been the forest itself. The movement kept
to the forests of north and northeastern Thailand during the early years of its
existence, to seek the solitude needed for serious meditation and also to avoid
the dragnet of the government's unifYing reforms at the turn of the twentieth
century. In the 1950s, however, it began to emerge from the forests and to at-
tract a sizable following in central Thailand. Soon it numbered among its sup-
porters members of the ruling elite, including the royal family.
Another forest movement was started by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906-93)
in the 1930s, shortly after the fall of the absolute monarchy. In 1932, Bud-
dhadasa quit his studies in Bangkok, acquired a complete edition of the Pali
Canon, and returned to an old abandoned monastery near his hometown in
southern Thailand. There he studied and meditated in seclusion; after a few
years he began publishir;:g books and giving public talks, eventually producing
a body of literature that has come to fill an entire room in the Thai National
Library. He also founded a meditation hermitage, Suan Mokh (the Garden of
Liberation). He is best known for his attacks on animist and Brahmanical ele-
ments in Thai Buddhist practice and his original teachings on the doctrine of
dependent co-arising. Karma, according to his view, bears fruit only instanta-
neously, and not over time; the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth applies only to
the arising of the sense of "me and mine" within the mind; and the question
of rebirth after death is irrelevant to the Buddha's teachings. Buddhadasa at-
tracted a following primarily among the nonruling, educated elite.
. A third forest movement is Khao Suan Luang (Royal Park Mountain), a
women's practice center founded in western Thailand in 1945 by Upasika Kee
Nanayon (1901-79). Upasika Kee was best known for her austere lifestyle and
for her teachings that recommended restraint of the senses, a strong concen-
tration based on the breath, and insight gained through direct contemplation
of the arising and passing away of mental states within the mind. She began
publishing transcripts of her talks for free distribution in 1954, and her books
have attracted a wide following.
All three of these movements agree that modern Thailand would benefit
from abandoning the astrology, the animist beliefs, and the ritualized approach