Too Many Temples
Posted by Stuart at 10:44 AM on May 09, 2003Thailand has too many temples.
At least that is the gist of the article I read on CNN.com yesterday.
The point is a good one, I think. Thai people believe that building a temple or donating to the construction of one will gain them religious merit (basically bonus points in Buddha's eyes). So this means that there is always a lot of money around to build new temples. Unfortunately, the old ones don't get taken care of. Many times in my travels I have seen abandoned temples that were once beautiful and ornate but have now fallen into disrepair. A sad sight for sure.
So hopefully someone in power (for example, the head of the Thai Monks) will say that it is just as important to restore old temples as it is to build new ones. It seems that the Thai people respect those in power, and so a change in behavior like this one may be easy to impliment. We'll see...
Good idea ---- there is as much religious merit in restoring the older temples as building new ones ....
Love you!!