The Buddhist Paradigm to Pay the Reverence for the Guardian Spirit House of the Popular Religion in the Thai Buddhist Society

Abstract

This academic paper was to find the popular religious doubt out how the Buddhist paradigm should, in the identity of religious worship related with the unity in diversity of the Thai Buddhists, be paid the reverence for the guardian spirit house harmoniously. The study findings showed that the guardian spirit is, in the Buddhist perspective, one of six categories of deities called the Four Guardian Deities who are most closely the human beings. The Guardian spirits are the creatures having spontaneous births who were born by their own merits having done a previous birth, without being born from the parents’ womb unlike the man, having the fairy-palace, having heavenly foods, accessories and age depended upon each the categories of deities. The objectives of paying the guardian spirits are to modify the quality of being a grateful person for deities who have relied our land, reminding their own apperception of the four assemblies of Buddhists to heal regarding heedfulness with achieving confidence and wisdom to reasonably live a life based on the Law of Kamma, and then enhancing oneself to cultivate the good deed to become the deities.