Baan Khao Baisri School Principal Kesara
Puaknang talks to Pattaya Mail about her allegedly unauthorized drive to
ordain young women as nuns.
Patcharapol Panrak
Plutaluang residents boycotted Baan Khao Baisri School’s
drive to ordain young women as nuns after the school’s director allegedly
caused local monks to lose face and gossiping residents spread rumors about
the school principal’s behavior.
Principal Kesara Puaknang had planned to oversee the
ordination up to 350 area girls as Buddhist nuns in a ceremony beginning
Dec. 16. Despite the service being offered free to residents, no one turned
up.
Puzzled by the snub, Kesara discovered that local village
chiefs, community leaders and parents had forbid women to attend, claiming
the school director was recruiting for a religious cult.
Plutaluang District headsman Sumethee Siripan said Kesara
had launched her nun drive without knowledge or support from the community,
including the Khao Baisri Temple itself. Even worse, he said, she recruited
monks from outside the area to ordain the girls, causing local monks to lose
face.
He further questioned whether nuns ordained in the
school-based ceremony would be taught correct principles or would be
misguided into believing that the more money one contributes to a temple,
the greater the moral value of the deed. Too many people, he said, have been
taken down that path before by untrained clerics.
Kesara maintained that the ordination project was
completely legitimate and that she held a master’s and doctoral degree in
such fields. However, she admitted that her academic pursuits had been
attacked in the past and that’s why she turned to religious teaching, hoping
to encourage the learning of Dharma and Buddhist lessons.
Kesara’s zeal for teaching Dharma, however, has drawn
criticism from parents and community leaders. Sumethee accused the principal
of taking students on unauthorized temple pilgrimages without parents’
permission. He also alleged her interest in religious studies was
distracting students from working on college-preparation courses.
The principal insisted that her curriculum followed
Chonburi government and education department policies.
Kesara said the entire incident has left her depressed
and that she was saddened that her own faculty members had given “erroneous”
information to community leaders, leading parents to forbid their girls in
participating.
