These days, Charan Pakdithanakul, 57, the permanent secretary for justice and concurrently the chairman of the Constitution Drafting Subcommittee, works virtually seven days a week, often going to his office at the Justice Ministry on Saturdays and Sundays to catch up with what he has missed during the week.

"I'm fed up with political quarrelling, especially over the contents of the new charter. There are complaints that I've talked too much about politics publicly. The latest onslaught came from a veteran politician and a former PM who completely disagreed with the proposal to redraw the constituencies for the next polls so that voters would vote for more than one MP in each of the constituencies," says the former Supreme Court judge and secretary-general of the high court's president. "So, please don't ask me those questions. However, I'd like to discuss Buddhism as a scientific discipline."

Charan, who earned his law degree from Cambridge University and became a barrister at law in 1978, says the Lord Buddha's teachings should be treated as a comprehensive set of scientific principles for they are always valid when applied properly.

"The teachings are very practical and can be proved by individuals who have the faith. It's more than a philosophy and has varying levels from the basics like the five Buddhist precepts to the more advanced practice of jhana, a state of blissfulness in which one can undertake an intense practice of meditation. I like to call Buddhism a science of the mind," he said.

"At the basic level, the act of giving, for instance, is a goodness and it leads to friendship, but whether an act of giving is going to be worthwhile depends on the recipient, the giver's intent and the quality of that giving. If all the key factors are favourable, that giving will always be useful and lead to a new friendship."

Charan added: "At the next level, which is called the practice of jhana, the means are more refined. We need to train our mind intensively to achieve a new mental condition that allows us to manage greed, anger, illusion and so on effectively. In other words, proper meditation over a period of time will increase our mental capacity and security while unleashing our inner potential we have not previously realised. In fact, not only meditation will lead to such a greater mental capacity. Playing sports or music intensively will also have the same effects on the mind.

"More specifically, there is a total of eight levels of jhana. It starts with the effort to direct the mind to practise the Buddha's teachings and try to maintain that status quo. If you're successful, you will have a sense of great delight, which is level two. Third, further meditation will render you the sense that such pleasure will soon be gone and you will become more mentally cohesive. Fourth, you're going to do away with the senses of both happiness and sorrow. It's called ubekka, or a sort of equanimity.

"Fifth, there are no such senses as greed, anger or illusion. It's a new mental space or mental universe. Sixth, you attain the level of vethana with regard to your awareness or perception. Seventh, it becomes a state of nothingness or non-existence. Eighth, there is not even vethana. You're not aware of those worldly things any more.

"All these jhana were practised before the Lord Buddha attained nirvana. Greed, anger, illusion could still return after a while because they're only suppressed, not killed, by those who practise such meditation. Then, it's nirvana, which means the extinction of all desires and individual existence," says Charan.

Charan recalls that his first serious Buddhist text, titled "Buddhism in Daily Lives", authored by an Australian in the 1970s, was given to him as he was preparing to leave for the United Kingdom to further his study of law at Cambridge on a government scholarship.

"The book's bilingual. You got one page in Thai and the opposite in English. It was excellent for mastering the English language at the time as well as the Buddha's teachings, so I used it regularly before going to bed for three-and-a-half years while I was at Cambridge. My second-favourite book on Buddhism is 'Dharma Prateep', authored by Phra Phommanee. The third one is 'Buddhism for the Judiciary', a collection of Buddhadasa Bhikku's teachings for the swearing in of new judges since BE2500," he says.

After all, Buddhism seems to have provided Charan a really nice escape route from the pressures of politics.

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

nop1122@yahoo.com