We
very much doubt that most Thai Buddhists would be bothered by any need to distinguish
a “miraculous” category. Their traditional religion teaches that at the highest level of
enlightenment all forms are illusions; thus the whole world and everything in it can be
interpreted as metaphors or “names” ultimately. Nothing in such a world can, in essence,
ever be real or unreal, illogical or logical in the Western Aristotelian sense.
The murals are an assertion of certain core values expressed in ancient Buddhist symbols as a defense of the totality of the religious system against perceived threats from competing modern values.
[These] murals help to
make Buddhist ideas concrete