Today I woke up at 4:30am, having not been able to sleep until about 2:00am. This was so I could experience alms round where monks would walk on set routes around the local area to receive offerings of food from the lay people. They would either go alone or in pairs. The shift would start at 5:00am and each pair or individual would leave the temple in 10 or 20 minute intervals. I guess the routine varies with different monasteries and routes. I was supposed to follow the deputy abbot on the alms round but I couldn’t find him. Instead I followed another monk at 5:40am.

He was a very pleasant fellow and he asked about my history and why I wanted to become a monk. He also said that he was going to Birmingham in the near future. He advised to follow the practice diligently and that from now on, the chance to get ordained again would be few and far in between. We walked from the main gate of Wat San Jao all the way out to the main road and back again. The entire trip took about 1 hour 20 minutes. There were people the whole way to provide food for the monks. A handyman from the monastery followed with a cart so food would be transferred there from the alms bowl. The monk that I followed ended up with enough food for about 10 people.

Every now and then lay people would bow and ask for a blessing. They would never ask directly, but it was implied in their posture as they woud get on their knees and do the anjali. I guess I will need to learn that blessing too eventually. There were so many stray dogs in the area which was not surprising, I heard them all last night. The monks walk bare-footed of course. On reaching the monastery again my back was aching terribly. I thought it would be easy given how much I walk in the UK.

My parents came to visit today so we had lunch together. I detected a hint of dissatisfaction from the abbot when he heard that they would be coming every day until ordination. I think he wanted me to get acclimatise to monk life properly without distractions. He had also given an official name to be used as a monk which is Dhammapalo which apparently means the guardian of Dhamma.

Otherwise we had a big lunch and I’ve got resources to survive the next few nights. It’s a little perplexing too that there are so many different versions of the Ukasa chant and it’s not easy to know what the order will eventually be.

In the evening there was a longer than usual evening chanting session because apparently today is Wan Phra. There was also some meditation afterwards. I was then given a particular version of the Ukasa chant by the abbot. All I have to do now for the preparation is, learn the differences from the version that I had been studying, learn the 10 precepts in Pali that I will need to recite and remember the name Dhammapalo. Shaving without a mirror was a little challenging but not too bad.

Terms

añjali Joining the palms in front of oneself as a gesture of respect; still widely used in Buddhist countries and India today.

Wan Phra (Thai) Literally: ‘Holy Day’. A weekly Buddhist holiday, corresponding with the lunar phases.

Today is the anniversary of the death of my great-grandfather and so the whole extended family have come to pay respects to him at a temple dedicated to him. It is unlikely that my grandmother will be able to turn up on the day of ordination itself, so she got the chance to cut a little of my hair today instead. The temple also happens to be next to the monastery where I will be ordaining so we had a chat with the abbot to see if I’m missing anything. I needed to get specific health checks with certificates before ordination so I handed them in today too.

We found that we were still missing an item of clothing so my parents will help get them tomorrow. Then it came time for them to leave and it felt weird. It’s almost the same feeling as when my parents left me at boarding school for the first time all those years ago. The environment was completely new to me and I was unsure as how to properly communicate with others in the capacity that I was in.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon learning Ukasa but periodically falling asleep in the afternoon. In the evening I decided to try to adapt to monk life a little by not eating at all, which turned out to be fine. This was followed by the evening chanting session and this is where I still need to learn the chants. I’m not sure if I will be able to learn this any time soon and in fact I’m not really looking forward to it.

The night was the toughest as I have yet to get over jet lag so it was almost impossible to get any sleep. The new environment was nowhere near as comfortable as home. The mattress is hard and not like anything that I’m used to. The pillow was new but a little too low so I needed to put some trousers underneath. I was not comfortable using too much of the monastery’s resources so I didn’t turn on the air conditioning very high so it was rather warm. I was fortunate enough to be put in the only room with one as well. Still I had to use some sort of blanket as there were so many mosquitoes. The room faced the street and the street lamps were difficult to ignore. The lack of curtains didn’t help either. I didn’t have an eye mask so I decided to fold up some underwear and use that instead. The stray dogs were barking and howling all night, but luckily I had some earplugs.

It would be confusing to start the diary without providing any context as to what and why I ended up doing some of the things I did and I’ll add these throughout the various posts. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really know much of what I was getting into at the time either, other than that I thought it was the right thing to be doing. An overly simplified outline of Buddhism in Thailand is in order.

Disclaimer: This diagram is NOT an exhaustive summary of all the Buddhist traditions as there would be too many to show. I have decided show only those branches that are relevant to my experiences (highlighted).

Books are written on the different sects and branches of Buddhism but the flavour that exists today in Thailand originated from Sri Lanka. Other well known forms of Buddhism such as the Tibetan is form of Mahayana Buddhism (led by the famous Dalai Lama) and similarly Zen Buddhism of Japan. Each branch or sect would have slightly different methods of practice but the core philosophies are very much similar to each other.

In Thailand however, Buddhist tradition is split into two orders but the Dhammayuttika order accounts for a small minority of monks so I’d like to focus on the other. If you happen to come to Thailand, the vast majority of the monks that you’ll see are Maha Nikaya (literally translated as the great collection) monks and they’ll most likely belong to the ‘House Tradition’ (วัดบ้าน translates literally to House Monasteries). For my ordination and the few days after, I stayed at a monastery following this tradition. Only when I travelled up to Chiang Mai during the last week of January did I start to follow the stricter practices of the Forest Tradition.

There are many differences governing the practices between the House and Forest monks and the most immediate one was the process of ordination. In the Ajahn Chah tradition where I spent the bulk of my time (ajahn literally means teacher in Thai), the length of time it took to go from a lay person to a “full-time” monk could mean years in between as a novice monk. It was purposely more difficult as he wanted monks to truly pursue the path long term. There’s nothing stopping Buddhist monks from leaving the practice, the process known as disrobing, and it is intentionally easy as individuals are never held against their will should make the decision. However, the belief was simply “Hard to ordain, hard to disrobe. Easy to ordain, easy to disrobe.”

This made my opportunity to spend time practising at a Forest Monastery even more special and I have many to thank along the way. As I did not have the intention of permanent ordination, I would have to first ordain as a monk and visit in a different capacity. Since it was much faster to ordain as a House monk, I would do so first at a monastery about half an hour north of Bangkok near a relative. Our family have known the monastery for many years and getting ordained there was a relatively simple matter. This was the beginning of my journey. I would have to stay there for a few days before ordination day to get acclimatised to the monastic lifestyle. Once I am ordained as a monk, I would then travel to stay at the Forest Monastery in the capacity of a visiting monk. As a visiting monk, I would be held to slightly different set of disciplines compared to full time monastics of the Forest Tradition.

From the next post onwards I will be beginning with the diary entries. They will be slightly adapted as I was never a prolific writer, let alone a diarist. Much of the entries amounted to “I did X, and then I did Y. And then I did Z” so I will take a stab to make the prose slightly more readable than the source material.

Much of the first few days were spent stressing over the Ukasa, which is a style of the ordination ceremony that all laypeople must undergo. It requires the memorising and chanting of long Pali (an old Indian tongue) passages before a preceptor, also known as an ordinating monk. In fact, the attached video was the very same one that I referred to when learning and I was anxious at first to know that I would have to recite so many words when I had no idea what anything meant.

The question I got asked most before I left was “why?” or “what are you looking to achieve?”. I’m not sure I can accurately answer those overarching questions but I can try to give an explanation as to some of the key motivations.

I was perhaps a little early to the Work From Home (WFH)/self-quarantine game. Back in mid 2019 I suffered a fully ruptured Achilles playing football caused by none other than myself. Maybe I had not been looking after my health well, consecutive late nights at the pub had seen to that. I had also been rather overweight with the trend seemingly ever going in the wrong direction. One push off to receive the ball and the next moment there was a loud thud like a thick elastic band snapping and I was rolling on the ground. In no time I was in an Uber to A&E and I have to thank my friend Wayne for accompanying me and making sure I was taken care of.

Consequently, I spent the next few months WFH and with multiple complications in the skin not healing (if only surgery wounds would seal themselves up tidily) it was a period where I was overcome with frustration. Still I must thank the surgeon Professor Ali Ghoz who made sure the procedure went off without a hitch and was supportive throughout the recovery. Having a small flat was a huge boon given the lack of mobility. The downside was for a time, life consisted primarily of moving between the desk and bed which were spaced a metre apart. The monotony coupled with the inability to escape the situation (I needed multiple treatments to make sure the skin closed, while the tendon itself had already healed) made me question many things regarding how I got into that position, what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go next. I was very lucky to have friends come and visit to keep my spirits high and have nothing but gratitude towards them. Even so, I felt like it was a time for a change, a reset of sorts.

Luckily, my mum had been living with me at the time. My sister had given birth not long before and my mother had come to help look after the newborn. Instead of caring for her grand child she had to see to her crippled son. Things wouldn’t have been so bad except for that we lived on the top floor of an old London apartment without any lifts. Each day she would have to walk up and down the steep stair case to go anywhere at all. The sight of her resting at the top of the stairs massaging her knees after carrying up a large load of groceries made my heart sink daily.

As an Asian kid growing up in the west I seem to adopted a muddled pool of sentiments and values. The fact that I had to rely on my mother for a long time was bruising on the Western ego, the will of independence and the need to rely on myself and myself alone. The Asian in me could feel nothing but shame and guilt. The situation should be reversed and it is the thirty or so year old adult son that should be tending to the ageing now grandmother. I promised that once I had recovered I would do something as a means of showing gratitude towards my mother.

During the lengthy contemplations I had been questioning whether the person I had become was who I intended to be. Growing up in the west one naturally leans towards the ideals that focus on the empowerment of the individual. In search for measure, the majority of those with the tag of success had a strong sense of will and confidence, of ego regardless of whether it was misplaced or not. Maybe I had misunderstood the landscape and attempted too hard emulate those I took to be the ideals. Perhaps I spent too long working in the finance sector.

Whatever the case, I ended up never particularly liking the person I had become and I could never find peace with it. Then I did remember such a time when I did. It was during my teenage years when my parents had sent me on a meditation retreat with a well-known monk living in a hermitage in Thailand known as the Venerable Ajahn Jayasaro. I remembered learning about Theravada Buddhism, about Dhamma and practising meditation and thinking that it was good and right. However in the quest for success I had forgotten it all. I needed a refresh.

It didn’t take long to conclude that becoming a monk was the most obvious path. For Thai men it used to be a rite of passage and still is a common tradition to be temporarily ordained. This period used to be three months but is often much shorter in the current day. I felt that this was the perfect opportunity to potentially cultivate and develop the spiritual welfare that had been lacking. There is a deeply embedded belief in Thai culture that temporary ordination was the supreme expression of gratitude towards one’s parents and I felt the same way. Fortunately with the assistance of the Venerable Ajahn Jayasaro I was offered the opportunity to be spend a short time as a visiting monk at the International Forest Monastery. I had absolutely no idea what was in store for me and my family and I only thought that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I will be going into detail in subsequent posts about the monastery and the forest tradition itself.

After some deliberation I decided to ask my employer of eight years for a lengthy sabbatical which would begin with the ordination towards the end of January. I have nothing praise for my employer Icon Solutions who have supported me since my very first day as my first job out of university. The rest of 2020 was left unplanned with perhaps some exploratory work experience in Thailand, some travelling around Asia or anything I may want to pursue after a potentially life changing experience. Well, we all know now how that has transpired and only goes to show that the only certainty in this world is its ever changing nature.

I would be leaving work on the 10th January, landing in Thailand on 13th and entering the monastery on 16th. I still had absolutely no idea of what to expect.

It’s been over three months since my 2-month temporary ordination in Thailand and I’ve been meaning to talk to people about it in a bit more detail. At the time there was a belief or hope that COVID would quickly disappear and I’d be back on familiar shores. Now the only certainty is that it’s likely to remain for a while, which would also mean the same for my own circumstances.

In that case I thought it might be a good idea to do some writing up of that time just in case it might be valuable to anyone. It’s not often that one becomes a Buddhist monk following the Thai Forest tradition but most importantly, I kept a diary during that period. My sister wanted me to do this much earlier but I had delayed mostly out of laziness and desire to do other things so hopefully this will at least satisfy her, should no one else ever come across this.