Early Buddhist dhammakāya: Its philosophical and soteriological significance

This work proposes a different interpretation of the early Buddhist term dhammakāya (Skt. dharmakāya) which has been long understood, within the academic arena, to owe its philosophical import only to Mahāyāna Buddhism. In the introductory chapter, this study reviews scholarly interpretations of the term dhammakāya as it is used in early Buddhist texts and locates the problems therein. It observes that the mainstream scholarly interpretation of the Pali dhammakāya involves an oversimplification of the canonical passages and the employment of incomplete data. The problems are related mainly to possible interpretations of the term’s two components - dhamma and kāya - as well as of the compound dhammakāya itself. Some scholarly use of Chinese Āgama references to supplement academic understanding of the early Buddhist dhammakāya involves similar problems. Besides, many references to dharmakāya found in the Chinese Āgamas are late and perhaps should not be taken as representing the term’s meaning in early Buddhism. This work, thus, undertakes a close examination of relevant aspects of the Pali terms dhamma, kāya, and dhammakāya in the second, the third, and the fourth chapters respectively. Occasionally, it discusses also references from the Chinese Āgamas and other early Buddhist sources where they are relevant. The methodologies employed are those of textual analysis and comparative study of texts from different sources. The result appears to contradict mainstream scholarly interpretations of the early Buddhist dhammakāya, especially that in the Pali canon. It suggests that the interpretation of the term, in the early Buddhist usage, in an exclusive sense of ‘teachings collected together’ or ‘collection of teaching’ is insufficient or misleading and that a more appropriate interpretation is a ‘body of enlightening qualities’ from which the teachings originate. That being the case, dhammakāya appears to be the essence of enlightenment attained by early Buddhist nobles of all types and levels

A Fragment of 50 Misrememberings: A Collection of Poetry

This literary work includes three selected poems from a larger collection of poems

Vegetation classification on Prathong Island, Phang Nga, Thailand

Habitat mapping as defined by plant communities is a common component of the planning and monitoring for conservation management. This study provided the test of two classifiers for producing the vegetation mapping in a tropical island. The selected area is Prathong Island, Phang Nga Province, Southern part of Thailand. The performance of the support vector machines (SVMs) image classification technique for vegetation classifying was assessed and compared with maximum likelihood classifier (MLC). The vegetation was grouped into 6 categories as Grassland, Beach forest, Mangrove forest, Swamp forest, Sand and Water. The overall and individual classification results were compared to find out the suitable classifier for producing a vegetation map. THEOS multispectral image with 15-m resolution, achieved on 19th January 2009, was used for this study. The results are useful to identify the boundary of each ecosystem on Prathong Island. Additional research is needed to assess the full potential of both classifiers and THEOS imagery for exploring potential applications on other tropical environments

Spatial Dialogues between Exhibited Interiors and Cultural Exteriors: How Local Museums Connect to the Community

Local museums can no longer simply wait for visitors to come and see their exhibited interiors. They are tasked with community engagement and cultural continuity. They must remain relevant to their communities, but how? Recently, local museums, especially those promoting local history, have struggled to relate to rapidly changing and diverse communities. To ensure museums are community-centred spaces, this research suggests that their spatial components need rethinking. While exhibitions in local museums should be designed through a collaboration and co-creation process between museum staff and locals, semi-outdoor and exterior spaces could be organised to host community gatherings, cultural events, and public conveniences. The paper explores the spatial dialogue between exhibited interiors, semi-outdoor multifunction spaces, and cultural exteriors of four local museums in Thailand, including how they build communities and support cultural heritage. The paper elucidates that while the exhibited interiors of these local museums represent pride in treasures of the past, semi-outdoor multipurpose spaces and cultural exteriors support heritage continuity. With a combination of the three spatial components: exhibited interior, semi-outdoor multifunction space, and cultural exterior, local museums can look forward to a promising future

Material Cost Prediction for Jewelry Production Using Deep Learning Technique

Production cost management is a key factor to increase industrial competitiveness. The precious metals and the gemstones comprise 65% of the jewelry material cost. Managing raw material cost is a challenging task especially when the price highly fluctuates. In this article, deep learning models were proposed to predict the prices of main raw materials of jewelry which are silver, gold, and diamond. These models are designed for Thai jewelry manufactures which are mostly small businesses. Therefore, our models only consider historical price data. This is because small businesses usually do not have access to other relevant data, i.e. oil prices and other economic data. The proposed precious metal price model can provide prediction with RMSE of 0.00765 which is comparable to other models in literature while requires less data and offers a simpler model. Also, the proposed diamond price model can provide RMSE of 0.0181 which is 42.41% improvement from the model normally used by jewelry manufacturers. In addition to the raw material price prediction model, a quantization method of diamond 4C grade is proposed and validated statistically and visually. This quantization method could be used in a diamond analysis

Impacts of spatial resolution on land cover classification

Regularly updated land cover information is a requirement for various land management application. Remote sensing scenes can provide information highly useful for real-time modeling of the earth environment. However, the spatial resolution is also a very important factor to acquire the information on satellite imagery. This paper summarizes the basic conclusions of work in which the spatial resolution of satellite imagery, related to the factor of scale for land cover classification, was investigated. Optical data collected by two different sensors (THEOS with 15-m resolution and Landsat 5-TM with resolution 30-m) in 2010 were tested against the ability to correctly classify specific land cover classes at different scales of observation. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) classifier was used and Kathu district, Phuket, Thailand was the study area. The land cover was classified into 7 groups as forest, built-up, road, water, agriculture, grassland and bare land. The result indicated that the overall accuracy of THEOS with 15 m was slightly higher than Landsat-5 TM with 30 m resolution (90.65% and 89.00%, respectively). The outcome of the study can be discussed further to assess the suitable spatial resolution for land cover classification mapping of Kathu district. Understanding the role of scale on the spectral signatures of satellite data will help the correct interpretation of any classification results