Patients lost in temple scandal

For the patients at Wat Phra Bat Namphu, the scandal around its former abbot has revived an old fear: being abandoned all over again.

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When Phra Alongkot Tikkapanyo opened the temple’s gates in the 1990s to people dying of Aids, he was hailed as a saviour. That made him and the temple famous. But it is also what makes the downfall so devastating.

The former monk’s empire was built on faith and destroyed by fraud. He used the suffering of Aids patients to raise funds and enrich himself.

Now under arrest for embezzlement and money laundering, his disgrace has cast doubt not just on Wat Phra Bat Namphu but on the role of monks in social care.

Some critics ask: is it really monks’ duty to care for Aids patients? Shouldn’t temples focus on meditation and the pursuit of nirvana?

That narrow view misses the point. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism. Relieving suffering, spiritual or physical, is not outside the monk-hood’s role — it is its essence.

When monks protect forests, speak for the poor or provide refuge to the abandoned, they keep Buddhism alive.

The problem is not compassion, but corruption. Alongkot's failure was not that he took in the unwanted, but that he abused trust and turned suffering into a personal fortune.