THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST
THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST
THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST
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impressing on the people that the king is not dead, but has migrated to a higher plane, where he<br />
will work out his destiny as a Bodhisattva for the good of all beings. The mixture of Brahmanism<br />
and Buddhism is fortunate: the former lends itself more to the exaltation of the kingship, while<br />
the latter emphasises the royal protection of the people's religion and enables them to enter into<br />
the spirit of the ceremonies...<br />
Bhumibol’s coronation ceremony was similarly infused with ancient symbolism common to the ancient<br />
kingdoms of Ayutthaya and Angkor, and lost Southeast Asian empires even more distant in history.<br />
In the cosmologies of monarchy adopted adopted by their rulers, the king is at the centre of concentric<br />
circles of power that radiate outwards from the palace, through the capital city and the wider realm.<br />
The king is a microcosm of the country, and a monarch who is attuned to the natural order through<br />
his virtue will naturally bring order and prosperity to the realm, And in turn, that brings order to the<br />
wider macrocosmos: the turning of the seasons, the orbit of the planets and the stars, the harmony of the<br />
universe. In the words of Robert Heine-Geldern in Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia in<br />
The Far Eastern Quarterly in 1942:<br />
According to this belief humanity is constantly under the pressure of forces emanating from the<br />
directions of the compass and from stars and planets. These forces may produce welfare and<br />
prosperity or work havoc, according to whether or not individuals and social groups, above all<br />
the state, succeed in bringing their lives and activities in harmony with the universe... Harmony<br />
between the empire and the universe is achieved by organizing the former as an image of the<br />
latter, as a universe on a smaller scale.<br />
In such cosmologies. Heine-Geldern writes: "The king is identified with the axis of the universe. The<br />
same idea seems to be expressed by the title Paku Buwono, 'Nail of the World', of the Susuhunan of<br />
Solo in Java." Literally at the political and geographical centre of the realm, and just as importantly at<br />
the spiritual centre of the cosmos, the king brings harmony by good governance. Bhumibol's coronation<br />
emphasized his position at the centre of the universe.<br />
In Southeast Asia, even more than in Europe, the capital stood for the whole country. It was<br />
more than the nation's political and cultural center: it was the magic center of the empire. The<br />
circumnambulation of the capital formed, and in Siam and Cambodia still forms, one of the most<br />
essential parts of the coronation ritual. By this circumnambulation the king takes possession<br />
not only of the capital city but of the whole empire. [Heine-Geldern, Conceptions of State and<br />
Kingship in Southeast Asia]<br />
- - - - -<br />
In The Revolutionary King, William Stevenson recounts stories likely to have been told to him directly by<br />
Bhumibol and those in the king’s inner circle. In the grim weeks and months after the death of Ananda,<br />
Stevenson says, with the future of the monarchy in doubt and his movements monitored by agents of the<br />
generals who wanted to usurp the primacy of the palace, the 18-year-old King Rama IX would often slip<br />
secretly out of the Grand Palace wearing a singlet, shorts and sandals. Sometimes he sneaked out on foot,<br />
to listen to the talk of ordinary people while eating Thailand's incomparable street food. And sometimes