Window on Southeast Asia: From Monkey to Monk
continued
After a little while the parents (and sometimes younger siblings) sat facing their children holding the yellow robes, many of which had lotus buds or jasmine garlands on them. After a signal from the monks, all the parents slowly handed their children the yellow robes at once. With that, the children went to the wiharn to change into their yellow robes. The children, now monks, returned a few minutes later for another sermon and to be presented with their alms bowls. Normally they would use the bowls to walk around outside the temple and collect offerings (mostly food and hygiene supplies) from lay people. By giving alms to the monks lay people earn spiritual merit which will hopefully enable them to have the strength to become monks in a future lifetime and some day end the cycle of birth and rebirth and pass on into nirvana. Such merit also brings about good luck in the next life, and can be used by spending a certain amount of time in Heaven between one death and the next rebirth. Another use for the merit is to cancel out the bad merit brought about by bad deeds. If someone commits bad deeds they accumulate bad merit and are reborn as lowly animals, or worse, into one of the Hells. If they are especially bad, they may go to Hell forever.
Of course, giving to monks is not the only way to gain merit; any good deed brings about merit. One charming form of merit in Lanna (the northern part of Thailand whose culture is a little different from the rest of Thailand) is made by leaving ornate clay pots filled with water in small alcoves in front of the house. A gourd dipper is placed next to the pots so people passing by can have a drink. That day, however, the new monks only walked around the temple grounds collecting coins from their parents. Normally of course, the money would go to the temple, but in this case the children are given the money the day that the leave the monkhood. After the "Alms round," Somjit, Kath, and I followed Niw up to his room where he gave the money to Somjit. The parents will return the money (with interest, according to a rumor) on Friday when they are no longer monks.
With that, the ceremony was over and the new monks began their week of studying the Buddha's words and meditation. The parents all said goodbye to their children, many of whom were little monkeys, and left them there as monks. I'd bet that 1 or 2 of the parents stopped by the shrine to the Hindu God Brahma to pray for a good week for their Buddhist-monk sons who had been ordained to celebrate a Catholic school's 100th anniversary.
Robert Wilson is an English teacher in northern Thailand. Pictures of his travels can be seen at photos.yahoo.com/robert_92122.
Don't miss future articles from Robert in our continuing series, Window on Southeast Asia.
