ABSTRACT
Phra Phothirak’s checkered career involved him and his followers in controversies with other monks over such issues as vegetarianism, and in 1973 he set up his own religious center at Nakhon Pathom. Women could become full members, and meditation practices based on some of the Buddha’s most gruesome techniques were taught: a rotting corpse was installed on the roof of one of their buildings for this purpose. The International Network of Engaged Buddhists began in 1989 as a conference of 36 concerned monks and laypersons from eleven countries. Its goals included the facilitation and carrying out of solutions to the many problems facing communities, societies and the world and the appropriate training of Buddhist activists. The key to appreciating Phutthathat’s approach is to understand that he was reinterpreting earlier Madhyamika philosophical thinking from which Mahayana Buddhism developed. The Madhyamika believed that only emptiness or the void truly exists, everything else having a qualified reality.
