Bangkok catholic views on the buddhist concepts of karma and rebirth

Abstract

This paper addresses one particular aspect of the general issue of how Thailand’s miniscule Christian minority have assimilated their faith lives to an overwhelmingly Buddhist environment. It focuses on the Buddhist concepts of karma and rebirth, which are taken for granted and spoken of in a matter-of-fact way in the general Thai population. However, since Christianity does not have these concepts, how do Thai Christians integrate these into their religious belief system? The paper limits its research to a sampling of Catholic Christians in Bangkok. It first looks into the meaning of karma and its related conception –rebirth – and their meanings in Buddhism. Next, it looks into theattitudes of Thai Catholics toward karma and rebirth. The researchmethod is the qualitative interview with a sample of over twentyBangkok Catholics. Findings are then analyzed in terms of how far atiny religious minority willing to assimilate religious concepts of themajority. It turns out that Bangkok Catholics have mostly assimilatedthe Buddhist concept of “karma,” as it has an equivalent in Christianteaching, but not the concept of “rebirth,” though one might argue,this too is not absolutely against Christianity.