Abstract

             This thesis aims to study belief in meritorious and wrong actions of People in Theravada Buddhism, to compare their beliefs in meritorious and wrong actions, as classified by personal factors of residents in girīmās, Sukhothai and to examine problems, setbacks and suggestions for clarifying their beliefs impacting on making their livings in the district. It was the quantitative research using the survey. The sampling group is employed for the research amount of  383 deducted out of 55,332 populations in the district, securing the exact numbers through R.V.Krejcie’s and D.W. Morgan’s table. The research instrument was the questionnaire handout with the reliability for all questions at 0.925. Utilized Statistics for data analyses embraced frequencies, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test and F-test (One-way ANOVA, testing pair differences of means by way of least significant differences (LSD).

             Results of the research have yielded the following findings: -

             The beliefs in meritorious and wrong actions impacting on making their livings have been rated at the high scale ( = 4.02)  in the overall aspect as the same as each of aspects taken into account.

             The comparative results of their beliefs in meritorious and wrong actions impacting on making their livings as classified by their personal factors of genders, ages, educations, occupations and incomes have found no differences in the level of their opinions on beliefs as such, thereby refusing the established hypotheses.

Problems, setbacks and suggestions for realizing their beliefs impacting on making their livings are that their problems and setbacks arise from the lack of genuine understanding of meritorious and wrong actions, hell, heaven and karmic actions that cause their lives far harder to lead. Regarding suggestions, there must have someone clarifying their opinions on making merits, the hell, the heaven and karmic actions yet to yield the consequences and vice versa. As a result, they can understand negative consequences of karma impacting on their lives at present

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