The Sanctuary of Truth: A Visitor's Review
A spiritual museum in Pattaya, Thailand.
When I went to Thailand about two weeks ago, a lot of things caught my eye. But few were as eye-popping as the Sanctuary of Truth.
Just look at this monstrosity of a structure. It looks like a castle, or a temple.
The resort-city of Pattaya, known for their sex tourism, is probably the last place in the country that one would expect this kind of thing. But perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise as the Sanctuary of Truth is as much of a tourist spot as the beaches of Pattaya are.
Despite what it looks like, the Sanctuary of Truth isn’t actually a temple. Rather, it’s a museum. Nor is it some ancient structure, as construction for it began only in 1981, and it is yet unfinished (which I’ll get into).
Speaking of, let’s get into the history of this place. The Sanctuary of Truth is the brainchild of Lek Viriyaphan, an “eccentric” Thai businessman. And no, that’s not my word, that’s Wikipedia’s:
But he was more than some rich guy. He was a man who demonstrated great interest in history and culture. In addition to The Sanctuary of Truth, he also financed the construction of other museum parks like Ancient Siam (I haven’t been to this one, but it sounds interesting).
Oh, he also founded an automobile company. While Viriyaphan is now deceased, having died in 2000, his descendants carried on his work as their company is currently constructing the first electric car battery factory in Southeast Asia.
I guess this guy was the Thai Elon Musk. Heck, this guy died before people even knew who Elon was. So it would be better to say that Elon Musk is the South African Lek Viriyaphan.
But anyways, let’s get into the actual Sanctuary of Truth. Going down from where I took the first picture of this post, I went through some woods and other paths before I finally made my way to what looked like a beach:
Yes, this thing looks even more impressive up close. Everyone there certainly thought so as they began taking pictures (including yours truly).
There was actually a tour guide throughout it all, telling us the history of the Sanctuary of Truth and all the good stuff. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite listen to everything that he said.
Thankfully, they had a brochure which helped me understand what the late Mr. Viriyaphan was trying to communicate to us through this massive structure. I’ll get into the brochure later.
Now let us move on. As you can see, the building is still incomplete:
As I have said before, this place is still under construction. The unfinished nature of this museum meant that we could only enter the place with a tour guide. Also, every visitor had to wear a construction helmet. That includes me.
The fact that the Sanctuary of Truth is still incomplete despite almost fifty years of construction might sound crazy, but like the museum’s location in Pattaya, it also shouldn’t be a surprise. In the Middle Ages (and even today, actually), Cathedrals would take centuries to build to completion. It is rather fitting that Viriyaphan died before this castle can be finished, leaving the work to be done by his successors (I assume his children and grandchildren) to finish.
But despite the unfinished nature of this castle/museum/temple building, this place still looked magnificent. Here’s more of the interior:
As you can see, this place is full of beautiful wood carvings. But these carvings aren’t there to just look beautiful. They’re also there to tell a story…
According to the tour guide, these carvings represent two contrasts: a virtue and a vice. One told of the vice of selfishness, the other the virtue of selflessness - the willingness to help others.
I think…
Honestly, it’s a little difficult to understand. But perhaps that’s because I’m not a Buddhist. These carvings remind me of stained-glass windows that you’ll find in a church. There’s a saying I’ve heard before: “stained glass windows don’t have subtitles”. In other words, the images do not need to be explained - one can understand them by simply looking at them.
If you want a demonstration, go to
’s Stained Glass Catechism Substack:
Unfortunately, the wood carvings at the Sanctuary of Truth is not quite as self-explanatory as a stained-glass window. Though I admit that it could be from my lack of familiarity with Buddhist and Hindu concepts. Also, there are actually “subtitles” in some of these. For example:
Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a picture of the wooden carving related to this one. I just found this story funny.
Finally, our tour ended. But we still stuck around to enjoy the surroundings. And here’s one more picture; this one was taken from the trail that took us back to where we came from:
So that was the Sanctuary of Truth. Definitely an interesting place, I even left a positive review for the place:
But I’m not done yet. Now I want to move from the what of The Sanctuary of Truth and into the why.
There’s a reason why Lek Viriyaphan decided to create this work of art. And you can see it from the brochures that this place gave. There, “the founder” (what the people there refer to Lek), gave the visitors - including me - his philosophical framework. I took the liberty to scan them and convert them into PDF files. Apologies if it doesn’t look as crisp as it should be, I used my phone to scan it. Free free to take a good look at it:
But wait, there’s more! Here’s the brochure, which I also scanned so I can upload it to this post:
So why did I go through the trouble of uploading these documents? Simple, I want to take his philosophy seriously. The temptation is to dismiss these as simply mystical mumbo jumbo. But I will do no such thing! After all, the founder of this museum clearly took them seriously enough to build this “sanctuary”.
On the other hand, I don’t want to take everything the founder said at face value. As a Christian, I want to explore these ideas and give my own critique of Viriyaphan’s Conceptual Framework.
From what I can tell, Viriyaphan saw the great change brought about by globalization (or rapid technological development as he called it) and attempted to find a solution to them from the traditions of his native Thailand. Thus, this framework made heavy use of Buddhist philosophy with a tinge of Hinduism added into the mix.
That said, this isn’t necessarily a Buddhist thing. The picture below shows a statue of the late King Rama IX (also known as Bhumibol), the previous King of Thailand and the current king’s father. According to our guide, he ruled with the perspective that all religions are equal whether they be Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and so on.
From my understanding, religious indifferentism is something that is common to Buddhist thought. Understandable. But it does show the difference between Buddhism and Christianity, as the idea that “all religions are equal” is not congruent with the words of Christ.
The Catholic Church expresses the words of Christ in a rather blunt way:
While one can argue the meaning behind these phrases, we can all agree the core meaning of it: not all religions are the same. Some are better than others.
That is one critique of the philosophy behind The Sanctuary of Truth. But it is not the only one. I want to focus more on Viriyaphan’s Conceptual Framework.
But first: a clarification. While not all religions are equal, that doesn’t mean that one can’t find value in other faiths and philosophies. This is why I tried to take this seriously rather than simply dismissing it.
There are actually good things that can be taken away from Viriyaphan’s philosophy. For example: “We brought nothing to the world, so we cannot take anything out of it, however, our good or bad actions remain”.
This sounds very much like Job who once said, “naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there” (Job 1:21).
On the other hand, there are other things that I disagree with. For example, Viriyaphan said, “associate only with good people, be respectful for those who deserve it, surround yourself with positive people”, and so on.
These principles sound good... if you are a man of the world.
If you are a Christian, the objections to these points are obvious. Christ did not just associate with good people, in fact He came for sinners. Nor was He “respectful for those who deserve it”. If he was, He wouldn’t have held His verbal punches against the Pharisees who challenged His ministry in bad faith. Also, “surround yourself with positive people”. Christ also didn’t do it, as He made, Judas Iscariot - who would later betray Him - to be one of His apostles.
Of course, there’s a reason for that. And it’s a simple one: you cannot completely avoid bad people. They are inevitable in this fallen world of ours. Even the Church has to deal with corruption and bad men.
Again, this isn’t to say that there aren’t value in Viriyaphan’s philosophy. But there are clear limits. I think it’s good for people to be respectful and to be in harmony with one another.
It is also true that real change should start from oneself. How can you fix the world if you can’t even fix yourself?
Viriyaphan realized that, which was why his framework was organized the way it was. If there is a critical mass of people who made themselves better, then we can apply this to the level of society, and thus made societies better, and in the end...
World Peace.
If you - like me and most people of my generation (I was born in 1992) - naturally lean towards cynicism and humor, the temptation is to make fun of this thinking. But in all honesty, I can see where he’s going with it.
Yes, it does sound like a self-help book at times. The difference is that self-help books only focus on the self while Viriyaphan tried to channel his “self-helpness” of his philosophy onto the societal level.
Thus, I can respect Viriyaphan’s philosophy even if I ultimately disagree with it. And I respect his works too, as he was willing to pour money into a project that he knew he wouldn’t live to see its completion.
To end this post, I want to go to the back of the brochure. It had a short manifesto:
This work indicates that humans are only dust in the universe and will ultimately be one with it.
Physical being is deteriorated, ravaged by the time, but truth and goodness are immortal,
Materialistic pleasure is a superficial physical and external joy. True happiness is found in intrinsic spiritual pleasure.
Ideal makes human life more meaningful; determination to go to the ideal world is something desired by all men.
Every belief, every religion and every philosophy leads there by different paths.
To ponder the great questions of heaven and earth and yet live for humanity, to study and teach the sublime knowledge of scholar of the past, and to create eternal peace for all mankind, this is the true goal and the knowledge great men strive to achieve.
-Lek Viriyaphan
Right off the bat, I already have an objection: “humans are only dust in the universe”? The Christian objection to this is obvious. No, we are not mere dust in the universe.
As for the rest of Viriyaphan’s manifesto, I think I have covered them, both the good and the bad.
That’s all I have to say about The Sanctuary of Truth. As I have said before, I didn’t expect to see this kind of thing in Pattaya of all places. Nor did I expect to do a critique of Buddhist-ish philosophy (I’m not sure if Viriyaphan is necessarily representative of Buddhist thought), but there you go.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this unexpected essay of mine.
Until next time, Michael P. Marpaung