Thread: Be coming a monk in Thailand.

This time of the year during the Songkran holidays, many young men decide to enter the monkhood. Some for just a week or so and then others for life.

The following photos were taken at one such event. The ceremony begins early in the morning and while serious in nature, there is a lot of partying.


Here the young monks are inhaling smoke from the candles.

After the Bhuddist ceremony everyone to include the new monk, his family and friends gathers outside the temple. The madness begins.




Now, everyone walks around the temple 3 times.

Throw in the band and...


beer and whiskey...

...people dancing!


More dancing!

The band seems to want to get around the temple as soon as possible. The family and friends want to go slow. I think this ceremony costs about B6,000.


Louder!

The family continues to walk around patiently.


More music.

Even hillbilly got into the act.


More dancing and yelling.

Finally we get to the end of the ceremony. These monks will now throw coins to the audience. Rather hectic, but unluckily my camera battery died.


I may do this ceremony myself next year for 3 days.

Originally Posted by hillbilly

I may do this ceremony myself next year for 3 days.

Are you serious ? I was wondering if any of the forum posters had done this or planned to ? I told my old lady I'd like to do it and she gave me the weirdest look.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

Are you serious ? I was wondering if any of the forum posters had done this or planned to ? I told my old lady I'd like to do it and she gave me the weirdest look.

Very serious. The only problem is the squatting position for an hour or two. Maybe they let falangs sit in a chair.

I had seen something like that. It really was fun but drinking beer and harder stuff in the hot sun is a bit too much.

Originally Posted by hillbilly

I may do this ceremony myself next year for 3 days.

If you do it do it close to home, as when you go on your 6 o'clock morning walkabout at least the misses cam put some decent grub in your bowl Traditionaly its done on their 20th birthday

It's going to be interesting for me to compare the Theravada versus Mahayana Buddhist traditions. I'm so used to the Zen side because of so many years living in Japan and my prior 13 year marriage to a Japanese. I've still got all my books from studying Mahayana and Zen but none of the other. Guess I'll get some in Thailand.

Here a pic from our village:

Finally at noon yesterday the Isan music stopped. A kid was being ordained as a monk in the town house phase of my muban, a good kilometer from my house. From Thursday night at 9pm through Saturday noon we were treated to a speaker set up bigger than Woodstock, and all the loud noise as well. They did turn it off from 1am till 5am then it was up and blasting again.

With all the Kreing Jai going on here in Thailand, I will never figure out how they justify that shit!!!