The Application of Buddhist Dhamma Principles in the Management of the Nam Chum Community Welfare Fund, Sung Men District, Phrae Province: A Philosophical Analysis
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Abstract
The objectives of this research are: 1) to study the Buddhist principles applied to community welfare fund management according to Buddhist perspectives; 2) to investigate the contextual conditions, problems, and obstacles in managing the Nam Chum Community Welfare Fund, Sung Men District, Phrae Province; and 3) to analyze the application of Buddhist principles in the administration of the Nam Chum Community Welfare Fund. This qualitative study employed interpretive inquiry, gathering data from 15 key informants through in-depth interviews.
The findings reveal that: (1) the core Buddhist principle applied is the Threefold Training (Tisikkhā), which functions not merely as a private moral code but as a socio-ethical architecture for community regulation; (2) the Nam Chum fund operates within a tension between structural constraints and the pursuit of communitarian sovereignty, where the primary obstacles are identified as epistemological poverty in conceptualizing welfare and administrative alienation; and (3) the strategic application of Dhamma transforms financial assets into ìEthical Capitalî through a framework of Dharmic Governance. This transformation redefines welfare from a mere technical distribution of resources to the establishment of ontological security, empowering the community to safeguard human dignity against the precarity of contemporary economic crises.
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