The body of actions: 'sajja-tham' as a practice of Buddhist self-making at Wat Thamkrabok
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Paul Webley Wing (Senate House)
- Room
- Wolfson Lecture Theatre (SWLT)
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
This seminar examines sajja-tham, a practice of ethical vow-taking at Wat Thamkrabok in central Thailand.
Practitioners describe their approach as a 'Buddhism of action', in which vows are enacted through everyday routines of ritual, labour, and communal life. Rather than treating Buddhism as a set of beliefs, sajja-tham frames ethical understanding as something cultivated through disciplined practice.
The seminar explores how this orientation reframes everyday life as a primary site of religious knowledge. It also considers practitioners’ claim that actions accumulate into a lasting 'body of actions' (doagratham), carried forward through material forms such as buildings and shared spaces. Taking this claim seriously unsettles familiar distinctions between material and spiritual life, drawing attention to a form of Buddhist practice in which ethics, labour, and materiality are closely intertwined.
Registration
This event is free to attend, open to the public, and held in-person only.
South East Asian Studies Seminar Series
This semester’s theme foregrounds how communities across Southeast Asia have sought to live, believe, and flourish through the practices of everyday life. From ritual and governance to kinship and sport, the seminars explore how ordinary practices are imagined and enacted across different times and places.
The series brings historical and ethnographic perspectives into conversation to illuminate the ethical, political, and creative dimensions of daily life in the region.
About the speaker
Alastair Parsons
Alastair Parsons is a medical and social anthropologist whose research has focused on addiction, selfhood, religion, and the ways people transform themselves. He received a PhD from UCL in 2026. His doctoral work is based on a year of research at Wat Thamkrabok in Thailand, where he lived, practiced, and learned first-hand about this singularly unique monastic community’s approach to addiction therapeutics and Buddhism. Alastair’s work has been published in Ethos, and he is co-founder of the ASA Addiction Anthropology Network.
