page_title: Merit (Buddhism)
section_title: Phu Mi Bun movements
hierarchical_section_title: Merit (Buddhism) / In modern society / Phu Mi Bun movements
caption_attribution_description: English: Dilgo Kyentse Yangsi Rinpoche examining a crab prior to release.
context_page_description: Merit is a concept considered fundamental to Buddhist ethics. It is a beneficial and protective force which accumulates as a result of good deeds, acts, or thoughts. Merit-making is important to Buddhist practice: merit brings good and agreeable results, determines the quality of the next life and contributes to a person's growth towards enlightenment. In addition, merit is also shared with a deceased loved one, in order to help the deceased in their new existence. Despite modernization, merit-making remains essential in traditional Buddhist countries and has had a significant impact on the rural economies in these countries.
  Merit is connected with the notions of purity and goodness. Before Buddhism, merit was used with regard to ancestor worship, but in Buddhism it gained a more general ethical meaning. Merit is a force that results from good deeds done; it is capable of attracting good circumstances in a person's life, as well as improving the person's mind and inner well-being. Moreover, it affects the next lives to come, as well as the destination a person is reborn. The opposite of merit is demerit, and it is believed that merit is able to weaken demerit.
context_section_description: The idea of merit is also at the basis of the  Phu Mi Bun movements as has been studied in Thailand and other Buddhist societies. Phu Mi Bun are people who are considered to have much merit from past lives, whose influence morally affects society at large. Phu Mi Bun are in many ways similar to people declared Bodhisattvas in Buddhist societies, and in fact, the word Phu Mi Bun is often used in traditional Thai texts about the previous lives of the Buddha. Besides the example of the king himself, certain monks and shamans have assumed this role throughout history. In Thailand, around the turn of the twentieth century, a millennialist movement arose regarding the coming of a Phu Mi Bun, to the extent of becoming an insurgency which was suppressed by the government. This insurgency became known to Thai historians as the "rebellion of the Phu Mi Bun" (RTGS: Kabot Phu Mi Bun), commonly known in English as the Holy Man's Rebellion. Several of such rebellions involving Phu Mi Bun have taken place in the history of Thai, Laos, Cambodia and Burma. For example, in Cambodia, there were Phu Mi Bun–led revolts against the French control of Cambodia. Lucien Hanks has shown that beliefs pertaining to Phu Mi Bun have profoundly affected the way Thai people relate to authority. Indologist Arthur Basham, however, believed that in contemporary Thai society the Phu Mi Bun is more of a label, and merit more of a secular term than a deeply-rooted belief.
caption: Merit release is a ritual of releasing animals from captivity, as a way of making merit.[304]
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