Visiting Hell parks is a popular pastime in contemporary Thailand. Situated near Buddhist temples, these gruesome sculpture gardens depict the Buddhist vision of Hell. These grotesque and violent sculptures are usually seen as an oddity and a form of low art. Perhaps for this reason, they are rarely studied by scholars. This article focuses on the parks as modern entertainment. Usually found in rural areas, these spots try to answer the challenges of the commercialisation and globalisation of Thai society. A detailed analysis of four Hell parks, Wang Saen Suk, Wat Pa Lak Roi, Wat Pa Non Sawan and Wat Pa Thewapithak, shows that these religious amusement parks serve not only as means of entertainment but are also places of Buddhist morality.

* This work was supported by the Jagiellonian University’s Council of Students’Academic Associations as part of the Badanie nieortodoksyjnych świątyń buddyjskich w północno-wschodniej Tajlandii i Birmie [Study of unorthodox Buddhist temples in Northeast Thailand and Myanmar] Grant.

“The Implementation of the Buddha-Dharma in the Construction of Socialist Society”. On the Beginning of Legalization of the First Buddhist Community in the Polish People’s Republic

The pioneering community of Polish Buddhists called “Zen Circle”, operating in the 1970s, raised well-founded concerns of national public and administrative order bodies. This group, derived mainly from artistic and hippie environments, should be considered one of the most original and radical manifestations of an alternative and contesting culture to the reality of the People’s Republic of Poland. At the same time, the effectiveness of the activities undertaken by the community in the administrative field, led to a precedent situation in which its religious and non-religious activities were legalized. In this article, I reconstruct the administrative efforts made in the first period of community activity (1975–1978), but above all, I analyze the attitudes and motivations of the parties involved in the above-mentioned process: community members, decision-making officials and services responsible for the internal security of the country. Based both on the group’s internal materials and interviews with members, as well as on documents prepared by state bodies, I analyze the process of shaping the identity of the first Polish Buddhists.

Activity of the Buddhist Community „Zen Circle” in 1978–1980 in the Context of Political and Administrative Conditions of the Polish People’s Republic

The article attempts to present the beginnings of the first Buddhist community in Poland, the „Zen Circle”, which crystallized and legalized its activity in the conditions of a state with an undemocratic political system. In the chronological aspect, it is a continuation of the content contained in the article entitled The Realization of the Buddha-dharma in the Construction of Socialist Society. On the Beginnings of the Path to the Legalization of the First Buddhist Community in the People’s Republic of Poland, focusing on the period when the painter Andrzej Urbanowicz (1938–2011) was the leader of the community. This text presents and analyzes the further efforts of Buddhists who, under the leadership of Andrzej Janusz Korbel (1946–2015), developed effective forms of religious and popularizing activity, and led to the registration of the community (1980), despite police and administrative repressions that began almost a decade earlier. In the second part of the article, I pre- sent some possible reasons for the decision taken by the Office for Religious Affairs to enter the „Zen Buddhist Community in Poland – Religious Association” into the register of associations. The lack of preserved documentation containing the formal argumentation of this decision prompts us to formule hypotheses that will be discussed in more detail in the doctoral dissertation being prepared.

The topic of knowledge of God is one of the most important questions discussed by St Gregory Palamas in the majority of his works. Palamas distinguishes four basic types of knowledge of God: knowledge of God drawn from creation, Christian knowledge gained from Scripture and Tradition, mystical knowledge understood as true wisdom, and the deifying vision of the Light of Tabor, which is called knowledge only in an improper sense of this word. All the above types of cognition concerning God are deeply embedded in the whole of Palamite theology, being linked to ideas such as objective distinction between God’s essence and energy or teaching about deification through participation in divine grace.

“I Consider Myself a Heretic and a Gnostic, and I Pride Myself on Being One.” Jerzy Prokopiuk’s Esoteric Reception of Gnosis and Gnosticism

In the paper, the author presents Jerzy Prokopiuk’s (1931–2021) outlook on gnosis and Gnosticism. Prokopiuk was a Polish esotericist, translator, and non-academic specialist in religious studies. His views on this subject can be divided into four areas: (1) definition of gnosis; (2) the essence and de- scription of Gnosticism as a historical religious formation; (3) description and understanding of the post-Gnostic tradition; (4) gnosis and Gnosticism as a hermeneutic tool. As to (1) definition of gno- sis, the Prokopiuk presents three forms of this special kind of knowledge: escapist gnosis (know- ledge liberates the human spirit from material body and the physical world); transformational gnosis (knowledge transforms the human soul, body and earthly nature); lateral gnosis (idea of alternative worlds). Regarding (2) Gnosticism, Prokopiuk says that its source was ancient mysteries and a par- ticular type of religious experience. He sees (3) the post-Gnostic tradition as an unbroken chain of esoteric groups and figures from late antiquity to the present day. Finally, gnosis and Gnosticism are (4) a hermeneutic tool for Prokopiuk because they allow him to interpret phenomena and texts of culture (in the field of literature, cinema, psychology, and others). The paper also reflects on the usefulness of some of Prokopiuk’s ideas for contemporary humanities.