The Tiger and the Monk - The Secrets of Nature Documentary

A somewhat controversial documentary from a 2011 Series called the Secrets of Nature.
This short documentary is about Tiger Temple (Wat Pa Luangta Maha Bua) in Kanchanaburi province, Thailand.
The film interviews the Abbot (his Pali name is Phra Vissuthisaradhera, and he is better known as Luangta Chan) about how the temple got started along, what his aims are, and where they go from here.

[@SirJaymesDAudelée]

As a Buddhist, I’d been enthralled by this temple and the tigers there. I love Tigers. And I also understand that when you see animals for who they really are, they see you too, and a relationship can occur that might astonish most people. I have no doubt this monk once had a very magical relationship to the animals. But unfortunately, in years later, he would be discovered trafficking in tiger cubs. He was allowed to keep the original 8 tigers, but told he could not breed them by the Thai authorities. Well he did breed them, and sadly, he killed the offspring, stored them in freezers, and traded them illegally. And this supposedly began as part of an ongoing plan he had to fund the upkeep of the animals and the sanctuary. Where he went astray in his outlook towards the whole thing, is unclear to me. But I think we can safely say that he did go stray, as a monk, living in the Buddhist manner. For myself, I had the strange feeling that he wasn’t right in the mind, when, one moonlit evening, the big tiger decided to go for a swim in the fountain, instead of off to his sleeping cage. The monk sat on the edge watching the tiger in the water, worried at how long it was going to take to get him out. So he went and got a cooked chicken to lure him out. If I’d been sitting at the edge of a fountain, watching a tiger cool off in the water, under a moonlit sky, I might have thought I’d died and gone to heaven.