Identifying Features
This meditation school formally belongs to the ancient Maha Nikaya tradition of Thai Theravada Buddhism., being correctly regarded as revivalist rather than a new movement or a fundamentalist movement. It supposedly has many doctrinal elements to distinguish it from conventional Theravāda Buddhism and in some respects resembles the tathagatagarbha (Buddha Nature) doctrines of Mahāyāna Buddhism; some of the Thai meditation masters who teach of a true Self (Dhammakaya), of which they claim meditative experience, are highly revered and even worshipped as arhats and Bodhisattvas by members of the Thai Buddhist populace. The Dhammakāya school of meditation is marked by its literal interpretation of Buddhist technical terms, (including the term dhammakāya) in their physical meaning, as described by Phramongkolthepmuni. Many sermons of Phramongkolthepmuni himself can be traced back to some schools of meditation in Southeast Asia preserved only in ancient meditation manuals. According to the Dhammakaya Movement, the Buddha made the discovery that nirvana is nothing less than the atta '.
Read more about this topic: Dhammakaya Movement
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