The Importance of ‘Buddhist Bank’ in the Buddhist World: With Special Reference to the Concept of Bhogavibhāga in the Dīghanikāya

5. Januar 2022

Asst Prof Dr Pathompong Bodhiprasiddhinand, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Mahidol University (Bangkok, Thailand)

05. Januar 2022, 17:15 - 18:45 Uhr 

The concept of ‘Buddhist Bank’ was mentioned in Thailand even before the Islamic Bank was launched and established in the country in 2002. However, the Buddhist bank has been still an idea up until the present time. Even though  some MPs of governments in the past were trying to draft the bill and submitted it to Parliaments, it got stuck and did not gain adequate support. The previous government feared that it will suffer a huge loss of money uselessly given that the Islamic Bank has already lost  for many successive years already.

The research methodology is both qualitative and quantitative. It starts by exploring the Buddhist ideas in the Pali Canonical texts as well as other later commentarial texts including later  relevant modern scholarship. Then it distributes a set of survey questionaires to Buddhists in the six directions of Thailand: central, northern, eastern, western, southern and northestern, plus an indept-interview of some twenty Buddhist scholars in Thailand to find out whether they support the establishment of a Buddhist bank or not.

The paper argues that 1) the saving of money is actually in line with the Buddha’s teaching in the Pali Canon 2) Buddhist banks are essential to Buddhist communities and should have been established in many Buddhist countries to support Buddhist activities around the world 3) the bank can be financially well off: it will not loose the profits or benefits as worried by the Thai government if it has a good model to follow. On the countrary, it has more benefits and profits than losses: it will strengthen Buddhist communities financially, culturally and socially even more.

Pathompong Bodhiprasiddhinand finished the 9th standards of the Thai Traditional Pali Studies while he was a noivce and thus received his higher ordination under the support Temple of King Bhumipol at the Emerald Buddha Temple. He did his BA (Hons) from Mahamakut Buddhist University, MA in Eastarn Languages at Chulalongkorn University, MA in Oriental Studies at SOAS and DPhil in Oriental Studies (Sanskrit with Pali) at Oxford University. He is currently a lecturer in Buddhist Studies at the Department of Humanities Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Mahidol University, Thailand.

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