This will be the largest Thai Buddhist temple outside of Bangkok. It’s being built right now a little outside Boston, in Raynham, Massachusetts.

Monks in saffron robes chanted a traditional blessing as the uppermost steel girder was hoisted 100 feet in the air and placed atop what will be the largest Thai Buddhist temple outside of Bangkok and the tallest structure in Raynham. [See previous stories for the background.]

“As a Buddhist, there is great merit in participating in building this beautiful temple, not just for the Thai people but for all mankind,” said architect Been Z. Wang of Architectural Resources Cambridge at the “topping off” ceremony Thursday morning for the NMR Meditation Center at 382 South Street East.

Dignitaries from Thailand, members of the local …

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Amy Sawitta Lefevre: Beam Atchimapon is already three days late for the new school term in her native city, the Thai capital of Bangkok – but for a good cause.

The nine-year-old is part of a small but growing group of Thai girls who choose to spend part of the school holiday as Buddhist nuns, down to having their heads shaven.

The temporary ordination of young men has long been part of Thai culture, with men spending a few days as monks and returning to their normal professions after time at a monastery.

But the ordination of “mae ji” or “nuns” is less common …

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Lisa Kosian, Boston Globe: Except for the statues of Buddha at the entrance, the Boston Buddha Vararam Wat in Bedford looks more like a New England home than a religious temple with its roots in Thailand.

The three arches in front are due for some adornment, said Rojana Laplume, a temple member; that is on the “to-do’’ list, along with finishing work on the monks’ living quarters upstairs.

To help with such work, as well as upkeep costs, the small community of Buddhists, predominantly from Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, is reaching out to a wider audience, with its first fund-raising dinner and concert …

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Rebecca Hyman: Several years ago, one of the highest-level Buddhist monks in Thailand and an advisor to the king was driving around Boston looking for inspiration for a massive meditation center to be built in Raynham when he laid eyes on the Genzyme building on the Charles River and said, “This is the image of my temple.”

“He wanted East to meet West,” said Architect Been Wang, who designed Genzyme and the meditation center that broke ground on South Street East last week and will be the largest Thai Buddhist temple outside of Bangkok.

The royal temple, Wat Nawamintararachutis, also known as the…

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Richard S. Ehrlich: Come to Thailand and go straight to hell.

Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval Garden of Earthly Delights and other paintings include sinners in a Christian hell, but if the Dutch artist is ever reincarnated as a Buddhist, he might be intrigued by Thailand’s temple murals and larger-than-life statues of horrific karmic punishments.

Want to copulate in an immoral tryst? Murder someone? Or violate some other important Buddhist precept?

You will soon find yourself in the midst of fiendish demons gleefully boiling wide-eyed sinners in hot, bubbling cauldrons. You’ll be screaming among men and women who have been stripped naked to maximize…

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Venerable Ajahn Cagino, 43, lives in a cave with two snakes and eight bats. The cave is 2km from the nearest village in Mae Hong Son in northern Thailand. Nestled in a deep valley hemmed in by high mountain ranges that border Myanmar, Mae Hong Son is isolated from the outside world and is covered with mist throughout the year.

“I’ve had enough of wandering,” says the Malaysian monk of Thai Forest Tradition, which is a branch of Theravada Buddhism.

For 12 years, Cagino had been walking through the remotest jungles of Thailand, before settling…

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See also a slideshow of the exhibition below.

Tim Ward, author of What the Buddha Never Taught, says young adults should spend time learning what is meaningful to them alone

If you’re looking for the meaning of life, you’ll benefit from seeking it out yourself, said author Tim Ward, who spent time in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand in the 1980s.

“I think it’s really valuable for everybody, preferably in their 20s, to really come up against the question, ‘Where does meaning reside,’ ” Ward said. “I think that there is an answer, and that is that part of what it is to be human is to generate meaning.

Ward wrote about his experiences in What the Buddha Never Taught, which …

Foreign Policy magazine’s exclusive look inside what it calls a “booming multibillion-dollar, evangelical, global Thai cult.”

Picture this: millions of followers gathering around a central shrine that looks like a giant UFO in elaborately choreographed Nuremberg-style rallies; missionary outposts in 31 countries from Germany to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; an evangelist vision that seeks to promote a “world morality restoration project”; and a V-Star program that encourages hundreds of thousands of children to improve “positive moral behavior.” Although the Bangkok-based Dhammakaya movement dons saffron robes, not brown shirts, its flamboyant ceremonies have become increasingly bold displays of power for this cult-like Buddhist group that was founded in the 1970s, …

A plan to build a Thai Buddhist temple in Columbus, Ohio, is far from dead. In fact, construction on the temple could begin in the spring.

Representatives of the Columbus Buddhism Center have submitted paperwork to the city requesting a lot split for property on Blacks Road.

They also have submitted new paperwork outlining possible plans for the temple.

John Tai, a representative from the Columbus Buddhism Center, could not be reached for comment on the temple project because he is out of the country, but Pataskala Planning Director Diane Harris said she has spoken to Tai and the project is moving forward.

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