Phra Ram

Wir hatten die Gelegenheit Phra Ram im Jahr 2019 in Chiang Mai, Nordthailand zu treffen. Als buddhistischer Wandermönch stand er erstmals so nah vor einer Kamera. Das Interview fand im buddhistischen Tempel (Wat) Suandok unter dem Buddha-Baum statt.

Sein Leben als Mönch ist geprägt von Meditation, das Studium heiliger Schriften und regen philosophischen Austausch mit anderen Mönchen und ausländischen Gelehrten. Die Tugenden Nächstenliebe, Güte und Barmherzigkeit im Alltag zu implementeiren führt zu einem spirituellen und glücklicherem Dasein. Darin spiegelt sich auch sein persönlicher Glaube und Lebensweg.

Interviewzitate:

“In Buddhism we strongly believe in Karma, which means that there are three ways of making karma. We have mental karma, moral karma and physical karma right? When you think that you are going to harm someone, your mental karma is already that your bad thinking leads to that kind of thing. Simply how you can explain that is – what goes around comes around. When you do that you’ll get that, right.”

“Buddhism refers more to self practicing and self belief. In Hinduism there are spiritual Deities, who can be summoned to do bad things to someone else. There are people who feed spiritually ghosts and spirits. The reason for that could be that they don’t like someone or want to take revenge on him.”

“Its more the cultural influence from Cambodia. They have some kind of magic that say, it protects you from different evil things. In Thailand we don’t really have that kind of belief. But of course there are people, who believe in the power of an amulet. Which means that they think and believe that your amulets, or your tattoos can support or help you. It depends on their cultural background. I don’t have any kind of amulets, because I don’t believe in it.”