Stephen B Young, an American professor who discovered the Ban Chiang archaeological site in Udon Thani province's Nong Han district over 50 years ago, was in the news again this week when he revealed to Thai authorities his impression of Wat Phra Dhammakaya when he met its leaders in 2011.
"I thought it was unusual," Prof Young said, referring to Wat Phra Dhammakaya's teachings as told by the leaders of Wat Phra Dhammakaya whom he met during the two meetings in Thailand six years ago.
In 2015, Prof Young testified about what he had heard from the temple at the Department of Special Investigation, which has since been investigating allegations of fraud cases against the controversial temple.
"My first impression was that their teachings were very strange. These teachings were not like the teachings of Thai Buddhism. They were very different from everything else I have studied about Thai Buddhism," he told Bangkok Post Sunday during a Skype interview last week.
He said he was under the impression the temple had underlying political motives.
"I was told by the wat's leaders that their mission is to show people how to reject the dark power, and bring light and justice into their lives and the world."
In 2011, Harvard-graduated Prof Young was interested in building an academic network with Thailand to promote Buddhism studies in the US. "I had little knowledge about Wat Phra Dhammakaya," said Prof Young, who is now the global executive director of Caux Round Table.
Prof Young visited Wat Phra Dhammakaya after an invitation from a Thai temple-goer whom he knew.
"They wanted me to introduce Wat Phra Dhammakaya to the dean of Harvard Divinity School, who is a friend of mine," he said.
"They want people at Harvard to learn about the wat and their teachings and their beliefs. So they were telling me about their beliefs and their teachings so that I could introduce them to Harvard Divinity School."
There, he met one of the highest-ranking monks in the temple, whom he refused to name. "Given the current situation, I prefer to mention him only as the leader," he said.
While waiting at the entrance, he saw an exhibition set up about the temple. Here he saw a golden Buddha statue that looked like a different model than he had seen before -- quite unlike the Ayutthaya or Sukhothai periods, he noted.
"The legs of the Buddha were very long. The skin was so smooth. The face looked more like a farang's. The torso was also elongated. It was completely different. I asked the senior monk: 'Why do you have such a different image of the Buddha?'"
The monk accompanying him smiled and said the image was drawn by the wat's abbot following his meeting with the Buddha. Artists shaped the sculpture based on the abbot's description of the encounter.
"The senior monk told me that for the first time ever this was the image of the real Buddha, taken from life thanks to the abbot's powers of meditation and ability to meet with him. All previous images had not shown us the Buddha as he really is," Prof Young said.
"That is unusual, I had never heard anybody in Asia or America say they have gone to see the Buddha, not even the Dalai Lama."
He told the monk that he had never heard of any Thai Buddhist monks talking about their mission to overthrow the opposition or the so-called "dark power".
Thai monks generally focus on asking themselves how to help individuals be better people, not strategise on how to beat out opponents.
Prof Young was told that the abbot, Phra Dhammajayo, could go back in time to alter a person's karma. "What I was hearing was very different from anything else I'd studied about Thai Buddhism," he said.
Bangkok Post Sunday contacted Wat Phra Dhammakaya about the meetings with Prof Young but the temple responded in writing: "We have no comment."
According to Prof Young, the senior monk he met in 2011 said Phra Dhammajayo could go to heaven and return. He could go back in time to see his past lives. After seeing how much boon (merit) and how much bab (sin) he had, he could go back and change it to give himself more boon."
The monk handed Prof Young an English-language copy of a book published by the temple.
"I read it," Prof Young recounts. "In it, Dhammajayo calls for a political movement under the government to unite all Thai people for justice against evil and the dark. The ideas were very much like Fa Lun Gong in China," said Prof Young, adding the founder of Fa Lun Gong also writes about the light and the dark.
After Prof Young's visit, he was escorted by monks to meet a financial supporter, a layman, of the temple. Prof Young refused to identify who the person was. But he recalls one thing the person told him: "When we can mobilise 5 million, no one can stop us."
The son of a former US ambassador to Thailand, Prof Young was no stranger to Thailand before his visit to the temple. He discovered remnants from Ban Chiang in 1966 by accident when he was a Harvard College student. He was doing research in northeastern Thailand at the time.
Prof Young recalled that he was walking with a Thai friend in a village and looked down. "Underneath my face was a round circle of a cup," he recalled. Local people told him they were old pots. "The interesting point was how old," he said.
Prof Young brought some pieces of pottery to Thai archaeologists in Bangkok, leading to the evacuation and discovery of the Ban Chiang civilisation, he said.
In 2015, when the DSI began investigating fraudulent complaints against Phra Dhammajayo, Prof Young volunteered to give testimony about his two meetings with the temple.
Nirandorn Chaisri was the DSI officer who met Prof Young and received the latter's written statement.
Now retired, the former director of the DSI special national security case said he, at that time, was investigating the fraudulent allegations against Phra Dhammajayo filed by another complainant.
"What he told me was interesting. He compared Wat Phra Dhammakaya to Chinese cults, even though it was not directly linked to the fraud allegations under my purview. At any rate, I included his testimony in the document submitted to DSI chief and leave it up to my boss to decide," Mr Nirandorn, who retired in September 2015, told Bangkok Post Sunday last week.
Asked how Wat Phra Dhammakaya would be detrimental to national security, Prof Young said: "It depends on what you do with your beliefs. If you try to overthrow the dark power that leads to the overthrow of your opponents, it becomes political. It is not a religious mission," he said.
"I have never heard any Thai Buddhism monks talk about the dark power and the light power. I was told that the dark power is bad for Thailand and so the wat needs to help Thai people abolish the dark power and bring about the light, and that was the political mission of the Thai people.
"Usually monks in Thevarada Buddhism do not talk about justice in the world. They talk about how to help individuals achieve a noble path."
According to Prof Young, Wat Dhammakaya resembles the White Lotus movement in China in the 1330s.
"And as a professor, [I can say that] the concept of dark power and light power is similar to the White Lotus movement," he said.
