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April 22nd has since 1970 been designated as ‘Earth Day’ and this date is now recognised by the United Nations.
This year it also coincided with the 60th birthday of the abbot of the temple of Wat Dhammakaya, the venerable Rajbhavanavisudh (herein after just referred to as ‘the abbot’).
Our Pattaya City Expats club first became introduced to Wat Dhammakaya just over a month ago when our chairman, Drew Noyes, met a monk from this temple, Phra Nicolas and invited him to address one of our Sunday club meetings.
Phra Nicolas is in fact British although he is now and has been for many years a fully ordained Buddhist monk, and who now spends a lot of his time representing his temple abroad.
At the time of his visit to our club, he gave us a fascinating talk about his coming to Buddhism and more especially to the virtues of Buddhist meditation, as well as freely answering questions from club members on a whole range of topics, so much so that we hope to have him back again shortly for a further session.
At that time he also invited us to visit his temple of Wat Dhammakaya which is located on the North Eastern side of Bangkok, on that occasion to celebrate the Buddhist festival of Macha Bucha.
I was not personally able to go on that occasion, but a number of our club members did so, and brought back some amazing photos and film of the venue and the occasion – so much so that I was determined to visit it at the next available opportunity.
So it was that in the early morning of April 22nd I joined around 20 of my fellow club members to board a luxury coach in central Pattaya for the journey to Wat Dhammakaya. The coach had been kindly provided by Khun Sompon, a Thai beautician who has been very active in helping our club participate in events within the Thai community.
After a trouble free journey of about two hours, during which we were entertained with some video footage of previous events at the temple, we arrived at the Wat (for those of you unfamiliar with the term ‘Wat’ – it is simply the Thai word for temple)
Having seen some photos of the previous visit I was partly prepared for the sight that greeted me on arrival, for this was no ordinary temple, and certainly not built in the traditional temple style.
Instead there is one vast assembly hall with the sides open to the outside, and to the front and rear of this are two huge dome shaped buildings looking (as you can see from the photo at the head of this article) amazingly like spaceships.
On disembarking from our coach, we joined a huge throng of people heading for this main assembly hall. Most people seem to have come in groups and most were led by someone carrying a banner indicating their point of origin. Many were in Thai but a good many were not and bore destinations such as ‘Malaysia’, Singapore’, and even ‘New York’ and ‘Seattle’ – truly this was going to be an International event.
As we made our way into the hall we found ourselves surrounded on all sides by vast numbers of people all sitting quietly in the main arena. Like all of them, we had been requested to dress in white attire, and we made our way through this huge throng to our appointed place, where much to our relief we found that chairs had been provided for us.
 We sat and joined this enormous congregation who were engaged in a meditation session led by the senior monks of the Wat. They were seated on a central dais whose shape again resembled the spaceship style buildings we had seen on arrival, with a further group of monks seated on raises platforms to either side of them.
Seated above them all, but below the main Buddha image, on a raised platform was the Abbot who throughout the entire day remained in the same pose without so much as moving an eyelid.
 The figures given to us later confirmed our impression that there were at least a quarter of a million people present in the hall as well as over 10,000 monks.
To aid us in our understanding of the proceedings, we were each given a small radio with an earpiece which was tuned into a number of language translations being simultaneously provided, including English.
Through this it was explained to us that the highlight of the day’s events would be the simultaneous casting of 300,000 small Buddha images which were eventually to be placed on the dome of one of the buildings we had seen on our arrival.
So that we could all feel a part of this, every person present was given a small ball of p ure gold which we were told to keep safe for later in the day.
The meditation session we had joined continued until around 11 o’clock with the speeches on the virtues of meditation being translated for us.
Then it was time to offer the midday meal to the monks who are not permitted to eat after that time of day, and this was as would be expected done with due reverence and ceremony.
Then they all retired, apart from the Abbot who remained seated and impassive, and it was time for our lunch, kindly provided by Khun Sompon. There was also food and water available at various points in the hall, all being expected in return being a small donation to the temple. At every stage of the proceedings we were overwhelmed by the kindness and help given to us, even extending to providing plastic bags to carry our shoes in so they didn’t get lost – in the main assembly area it was correct procedure to remove one’s footwear.
 During the lunch interval, one of the temple guides instructed us in the procedure to be followed later in the day during the image casting process and also showed us where we were to assemble round the main dome or Dhammakaya Cetiya.
The monks then reassembled and the afternoon session commenced. This consisted of further instruction in the practices of meditation as well as a sort of practice run for the evening’s main event.
Towards the end of this, there was a call for donations to be given and almost the whole 250,000 people surged forward to place their envelopes containing gifts of money in the donation boxes.
As might be imagined this took quite some time to complete and was accompanied by chanting whilst in progress – it was also an amazing spectacle. Drew, who joined the throng to make his personal donation (the rest of us had settled for putting some money into a communal envelope) later described his experience in simply trying to get to the front to place his envelope in the box. He described trains of elderly Thai ladies pushing forward with a thrust that simply brushed others aside like flies, but he like all the rest eventually succeeded.
Then it was time to proceed outside and group ourselves round the dome where the c asting was to take place.
Again the sheer numbers of people made this quite a lengthy process but led by Khun Sompon carrying our club banner so that we would not get lost in the crowd, we made our way to our designated location, where once again we found that we were the only people for whom chairs had been provided.
The monks actually assembled on the lower tier of the dome, making a huge saffron coloured band all the way round it, whilst the congregation grouped itself alongside a series of long raised platforms spreading out from the dome like spokes of a wheel.
 On each of these platforms, spread out at regular intervals was a number of casting moulds and at the end of each platform a small furnace was already belching smoke.
At the edge of each platform had been constructed a long thin metal runway whose purpose later became clear.
Once everyone was assembled, there was another short meditation session (we found that our translation radios also worked in this outdoor arena, enabling us to once again follow the proceedings).
After the conclusion of this, it was time for the casting ceremony and on the sound of a bell, we all rose and placed the gold ball we each had been given earlier onto this metal runway which was sloped so that the balls all ran down onto a series of collection plates.
Monks collected the assembled gold balls and poured these into the furnace and a short tim e later the molten gold was poured out into large pots each held by two monks using long handles.
They then proceeded up the platform to the farthest set of casting moulds and proceeded to pour the gold into each of these.
This process continued until all the moulds had been filled and they were then allowed to cool whilst this part of the ceremony proceeded to its conclusion,  during which as darkness descended, the floodlights on the top of the dome illuminated giving a truly amazing spectacle.
There was one further session scheduled for back in the main hall, but it now approaching 7 o’clock in the evening we decided it was time to return to our coach for the return trip home.
However most other people had decided the same and therefore we were faced with approximately 1,000 buses or coaches all trying to leave the temple grounds at the same time.
It goes without saying that this caused considerable chaos, in complete contrast to the superb organisation inside, and it took us the best part of 3 hours to extract our coach from this, making for very late return to Pattaya, arriving back around midnight.
About the only blot on an otherwise fascinating and well worthwhile visit, and as a remembrance on leaving the temple we were each given a commemorative medallion with an image of Wat Dhammakaya on one side, and the image of a jewelled wheel on the other.
Apologies that some of the photos are below the usual quality expected, some camera problems were experienced.
To view any of the above photos in full size, just click on it.
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