Real barriers to temple reformListen to this articleAfter a year of temple scandals, Thailand's top monks have promised a great clean-up. The council of elders says it will stop using large construction projects as a yardstick for promoting abbots and senior monks. They answer upward to senior monks, not outward to communities. Such practices will not disappear with one order, especially when some senior monks benefit from them. Without change in the Sangha Law, enforcement, oversight, and institutional reform from within, these orders risk becoming another round of symbolic virtue.
