The Body of Actions: Sajja-tham as a practice of Buddhist self-making at Wat Thamkrabok, Thailand

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.