An Application of Gāravāsadhamma for Enhancing Peaceful Families

บทคัดย่อ

This thesis is of 3 objectives: 1) to study principles of Gāravāsadhamma in Theravada Buddhism, 2) to study the enhancement of peaceful families, and 3) to apply the principles of Gāravāsadhamma for enhancing peaceful families, which its tool is qualitative research aiming to study both documentation and in-depth interview.

From the research, it is found that Respect is an important Dhamma; a person being progressive or declining in practicing Dhamma is depended on having respect or disrespect because respect is the discipline for binding people into groups or organizations to mutually join the pleasure of behaving merit conduct; exceedingly, it is also the power to attract them to pay respect to one another leading to harmonized unity and sympathy with loving-kindness and compassion.   

Enhancing peaceful families according to the above-mentioned principles of Gāravāsadhamma has its following implications: family members have respect to the elders; there are teachings to family members to live their lives rightly; there is always the expression of having respect to each other; there is suggestion or persuasion to do activities together for tightening relationship; giving respect to family members’ ways of living lives for not being careless; and there are always respect and warm welcome to family visitors.    

The way to apply Gāravāsadhamma to enhance peaceful families requires knowledge and understanding principles in Buddhism by having the main conceptual ideas to lead to the way and purpose of creating peaceful families according to the principles of Gāravāsadhamma which its core is to prevent family conflicts as the implication of ‘Gāravāsadhamma’ is ‘respect’ meaning the respect towards actions, thoughts and speech that show giving of ‘honor’ to each other.