Establishing Awareness to Prevent the Violation of the Fifth Precepts, of the People of Pakkhlong Subdistrict, Phasi Charoen District, Bangkok

Abstract

          In this thesis, three objectives were purposely made: 1) to study the current state in keeping the fifth precept of the people in Pak Khlong Sub-district, Phasi Charoen District, Bangkok; 2) to study awareness to prevent violation of the fifth precept of the people in Pak Khlong Sub-district, Phasi Charoen District, Bangkok; 3) to propose guidelines for raising awareness to prevent violations of the fifth precept of the people in Pak Klong Subdistrict, Phasi Charoen District, Bangkok. This research employed qualitative method.  The research tool was in the interviewing form. Key informants consisted of 18 monks/people as follows-11 local people, four local monks, and three religious’ monks/people. As for the data analysis method, the descriptive analytics was used.

          It was found that (1) violation of the fifth precept under the current condition of people in the area was caused by three main reasons: 1) environment - parents lacking of awareness of being a good role model and being near their children, children meeting people both the repeatedly same ones and new ones who often drink alcohol, easy to access to buy intoxicant and not listening to their parents ; 2) social influence - the widening of the gap within families during the adolescent period, closer to their friends to socialize, not wanting to be insulted by others, and curiosity aroused to try drinking by various media and advertisements such as at merit-making events and festivals merely to be more lively and have more fun and; 3) personal reasons - drinking alcohol to help them forget problems that caused stress and seeing as it was common what people did and in the end not being able to help stop drinking; (2)  prevention of violating the fifth precept arisen from awareness with the following factors: 1) thinking about the negative effects both on oneself and others; 2) having good attitude on moral actions, speeches, and minds without breaking the precept and with good morals and consciousness; 3) having decent friends who are with concerns and care for warning and forbiddance bringing about helping raise their awareness; 4) having good families as the first teacher, the first model from childhood onwards to grow up with awareness and; 5) having consciousness to support to keep stimulating or pulling their awareness to make it work; (3) having guidelines for raising awareness to prevent violations of the fifth precept for people in the area designated to achieve concrete results requiring the raising of awareness through all four levels: 1) at the oneself level-selecting persons to associate with; 2) at the family level-promoting common activities and being good examples for children; 3) at the community level-creating mutual awareness, seeing the importance of creating peace in the community, having a sense of protecting young people from doing bad things, keeping them away from drinking, and condemning those who set bad examples and; 4) at the social level-reestablishing social values and helping each other among followers of all religions to realize the importance as mentioned above.