DEC. 20, 2016 New York Times
White-clad devotees at Dhammakaya Wat, Thailand’s largest temple, in February. The number of adherents has grown into the hundreds of thousands both in Thailand and abroad. Credit Nicolas Asfouri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
PATHUM THANI, Thailand — It is a temple for a changing Thailand: clean, unadorned, high-tech and unashamed of praying for wealth.
“Sit here and get rich,” read small medallions embedded in the floor under each white plastic chair in a vast, open-sided meditation center. In his sermons, the temple’s charismatic 72-year-old leader, Phra Dhammachayo, often exhorts his adherents, “Be rich, be rich, be rich!”
Đọt Chuối Non 