page_title: Culture of Laos
section_title: Buddhism
hierarchical_section_title: Culture of Laos / Religion / Buddhism
caption_attribution_description: English: Golden Spirit house at Wat Kham Chanot, Thailand.
context_page_description: Laos developed its culture and customs as the inland crossroads of trade and migration in Southeast Asia over millennia. As of 2012 Laos has a population of roughly 6.4 million spread over 236,800 km², yielding one of the lowest population densities in Asia. Yet the country of Laos has an official count of over forty-seven ethnicities divided into 149 sub-groups and 80 different languages. The Lao Loum have throughout the country's history comprised the ethnic and linguistic majority. In Southeast Asia, traditional Lao culture is considered one of the Indic cultures.
  Laos is geographically isolated and mountainous, bounded by the Annamite Range in the east, forming a traditional political and cultural boundary with Vietnam. Much of the western borders of Laos are formed by the Mekong River which provided the major means of inland trade despite limited navigability along the river's length. Prior to the 20th century Lao principalities and the Kingdom of Lan Xang extended to the Sipsong Panna, Sipsong Chau Tai, and Khorat Plateau where the river was used as a transportation artery to connect Lao peoples on both the right and left banks.
context_section_description: Theravada Buddhism is central to Lao cultural identity. The national symbol of Laos is the That Luang stupa, a stupa with a pyramidal base capped by the representation of a closed lotus blossom which was built to protect relics of the Buddha.  The shrine has been rebuilt several times since being created in the thirteenth century by the Khmer, with the largest expansions by King Setthathirath in the 1500s as part of a nationwide building campaign.
  Traditionally in Laos males would become novice monks at some point in their lives, giving them the opportunity to gain both an education and religious merit.  Laos also has a somewhat unusual belief among Buddhist countries that merit (boun) is transferable among people, thus a son or daughter may make merit for a parent by temporarily entering a monastery.   Lay persons are expected to feed and care for the monks of their local community, with the morning processions of monks (tak bat) who walk to collect offerings.  Monks renounce material possessions and labor, thus the community and the monastery (wat) are bound in a mutually reinforcing relationship.
caption: Traditional spirit house
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