14 DAY TRIAL // Buddha means 'awake,' and some Buddhist monks seem to have taken the name a tad too far and literally. On Tuesday, Thai officials have asked monks to avoid using social networking sites to woo women, according to Reuters. One advocacy group found that some of the holy men, instead of sharing their enlightenment, were actually trying to convince women to come to their temple and have sex with them. I remember the peons in Warcraft III saying "I'm awake!" when idle and clicked upon, and there's a rather ironic similarity to the present situation.
The Thai police in the northeast detained a monk who was accused of using the Internet to get a woman to visit him in his room at the temple and raped her. It is not uncommon, the media in the Asian country report, as similar cases have happened before, the degradation hitting rock bottom with Buddhist monks using or selling drugs.
"I call on Hi5 users to tell the monks to leave the site if they are found using it," junior minister Jakrapob Penkair told reporters after a Buddhist monitoring group had said that some monks had been flirting on the popular social network. Meanwhile, a senior Culture Ministry official said that instead of banning the monks from accessing the Internet, they should instead be encouraged to teach the young the path to spiritual enlightenment. Many barbaric, Geean ancient cultures believed that while climaxing during sexual intercourse, a person is closer to God. It's a little far-fetched but other than human carnal sins not being purged from the holy people's bodies, I don't see another explanation for the stone cold facts.
"Instead of using the Net to flirt with young girls, monks should find ways to preach Dharma and lead them in the right direction," Ladda Thangsupachai, head of the Cultural Surveillance Centre, told the cited source.