“This is glutinous rice” — is a description. “Eat it! you will gain strength!” — is a call to commitment. The latter cannot be intelligible without the former and yet the former would be lifeless unless it is given meaning by the latter. Accumulation of descriptions will not give us strength. Commitment, a total and concentrated response to the call, lies in the deeper stratum of religious life. The Committed person has his own language to describe the truth to which he is committed.

Our understanding of the Thai Pali Buddhism is often paralyzed because of our failure to take the dimension of religious commitment seriously. We congratulate ourselves prematurely with our “thorough understanding of the descriptions” of Buddhism assuming that that is the whole of the Buddhist existence. Innocently we still speak of “comparative religions.” All attempts, however, in the line of comparative religions is unsatisfactory or even distorting (I am speaking from Theravada Thailand!) unless they reach the depth of “comparative religious commitments.” But this enterprise lies next to impossibility since religious commitment is a fire that urns any objective scale by which we propose to pursue our comparison. Yet do we have any other alternative than to try to reach this level of discussion if we want to see and feel the living essence of religion?

This year the community of Chiengmai is greatly privileged to hear in person the famed Buddhist scholar and author, Venerable Monk, Buddhadāsa (meaning, ser­vant of the Buddha) Indapañño as he delivers the Fifth Series of the Sinclaire Thompson Memorial Lectures. Rev. Thompson was aware of the serious spiritual encounter between the Buddhists and the Christians in Thailand. He was not just toying with the “description” of religions called Buddhism and Christianity. He wanted to explore the quality of life and strength of a man who has eaten either Christian or Buddhist glutinous rice. We are about to listen to a committed Buddhist. Only this kind of occasion can truly help us to grasp the unfrozen living Buddhism in Thailand today.

(Preface)

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