DHAMMAKĀYA MOVEMENT. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the Dhammakāya (Thai, Thammakāi) movement was one of the most dynamic and controversial aspects of Thai Theravāda Buddhism. The Pali word dhammakāya corresponds to the Sanskrit term dharmakāya, which in Mahāyāna Buddhism has come to refer to one of the three aspects of the buddha-nature, specifically its unmanifest yet all-pervading essence. By the late twentieth century the term had also been applied to a specific meditation method and to the movements that taught it. By the early twenty-first century, the most prominent of these movements, based at Wat Phra Dhammakāya on the north edge of Bangkok, had attracted tens of thousands of followers in Thailand and established several branch centers abroad. Highly skilled at organization and proselytization, this movement was also plagued by public...