Beginner steps

>> Come April, the hottest month of the year, celebration is in full swing for the Thai New Year with Songkran. People from all walks of life head home for the holidays to reunite with family and spend quality time together. It is also time for youngsters to enjoy their school break, and engage in summer camps and other extracurricular programmes. For many boys, this can mean novice monk ordination.

In Saraphi, a small district of Chiang Mai, an annual summer ordination programme is underway, with 144 boys enrolled. Some are from the area, while some are the sons of highlander families and Myanmar migrant workers based in the province.

Before the ordination, the boys attend a prep course in which they live at the local temple and learn prayer routines. They also perform simple temple chores in the mornings and evenings, training them in structure and discipline. Other activities include studying the basic Buddhist precepts and clergy practices.

On the official ordination day, the boys leave home in traditional costume. Seated on a horse, they proceed along Chiang Mai-Lamphun road. The parents, holding the sacred ordination items in hand, set out alongside their sons on foot for the 1.5-kilometre journey towards the temple.

The ordination ceremony is preceded by an elaborate Thai fingernail dance performed by young girls and women who lead the boys towards the temple grounds.

The boys steadily file into the ordination hall where they lay down a lotus flower, incense sticks and candle before the principal Buddha statue.

The ordination starts with the neatly-folded saffron robes being placed on the boys’ arms as they recite the pledge to enter the monkhood. They retreat to put on the robe and return to the hall to proclaim they will follow the 10 fundamental Buddhist precepts.

Afterwards, the boys receive a monk’s bowl and rosary. They leave the hall to collect alms for the first time as monks from their parents and new devotees waiting outside.

The boys spend the next 10 to 15 days studying Buddhism and practising the lifestyle of a novice monk before the ordination programme comes to an end. PRINTED AND DISTRIBUTED BY PRESSREADER PressReader.com +1 604 278 4604 ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY COPYRIGHT AND PROTECTED BY APPLICABLE LAW