Surrounded by verdant green rice fields at Wat Or Noi temple, Issara said he wants better oversight of temple finances and to shake up the fossilised structure of Thai Buddhism."The SSC governs but there is nobody that governs them," said Issara, who is calling for a boycott of the Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
Abbot Phra Dhammachayo rejected the fraud charges and the council said that as he returned most of the money there was no misconduct. The NRC, which has not released details of the alleged fraud, is pushing for a probe into why the council cleared Dhammachayo and the ties between it and the Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
The fraud allegation is just the latest in a series of scandals that have rocked Thailand's Buddhist clergy. Other examples include a monk caught with 120,000 methamphetamine pills and another who was dismissed from his temple for investing $1.2 million on the stock Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
"The money and power swirling around some Thai temples and monks makes them immune to criticism," said Sulak Sivaraksa, one of Thailand's pre-eminent Buddhist scholars.The Supreme Council, a coterie of 20 elderly monks, has traditionally evaded public scrutiny due to its opaque workings and the reverence of millions of Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
And for years, reports of misbehaving monks were often dismissed as standalone cases rather than a product of an ossified institution beyond the reach of the Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
Many Thai Buddhists feel those elders are incapable of supervising the behaviour of 300,000 monks in a rapidly modernising nation where worldly temptations are everywhere and temples are flush with Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
Issara, who played a prominent role in protests last year that helped to overthrow the government of former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, said Thais should no longer listen to decrees handed down by the Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
He wants the government to check the accounts of all temples and seize assets from those suspected of mishandling donations. He is also calling for the state to restructure the Sangha.The National Office of Buddhism, which is in charge of promoting Buddhism in Thailand, said civilians should not interfere in the religious Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
"There are Buddhist governors to check whether they [temples and monks] have violated conduct," Somchai Surachatri, the National Office of Buddhism's spokesman, told Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
Recently Buddhist monk Luang Pu Nenkham was stripped of his religious title. Nenkham gained notoriety in 2013 when a YouTube video showing him carrying a Louis Vuitton bag aboard a private jet went Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult.
He is now on the run after millions of dollars in assets were uncovered in his name and Thai authorities issued an arrest warrant for him for having sex with a minor. ($1 = 32.3500 baht) (Additional reporting by Pairat Temphairojana; Editing by Watch Pakistan Result On PkResult R.C. Marshall and Michael Perry)
