Introduction A Sayalay is an ordained nun in the Myanmar Theravāda Tradition. It is similar to a sāmaṇerī or 10-precept female novice monk. However, to be respectful to the Theravāda tradition, it is not connected or equal to a sāmaṇerī and it is not a stepping stone for a bhikkhunī ordination. In the Myanmar Theravāda tradition, ordaining as a Sayalay provides women with a distinct path to practice the Dhamma formally without stepping into the roles traditionally reserved for monks or fully ordained bhikkhunīs.

There are three stories of loving-kindness told in the video posted below. The first story is from Kaua’i, Hawai’i, when a person did not want me on “his” street. Through the power of loving-kindness, things changed. Another story was also from the island in 2015. There were children on bicycles who were yelling at us to go away on multiple days. Through the power of loving-kindness, things changed. The last story is from 2011 during a trip to India.

The Wootens One of the few places I have been to in Sri Lanka besides Na-Uyana and The International Institute of Theravāda (IIT) is Spring Hill Forest Monastery located in the Hantanna Mountains above Kandy. My two donors from Kaua’i, John and Nandini Wooten were visiting Kandy and I decided it would be good to take a break from the IIT scenery and climate with a great inspirational place for the Wootens to visit me.

Introduction: There was a moment in world history where the Buddha’s teachings greatly affected world diplomacy during the Peace Treaty of 1951. We can learn from this type of history and apply the solution in our daily lives. In short, we can stop hatred with loving-kindness. J. R. Jayewardene President J.R. Jayewardene of Sri Lanka exits from a helicopter and walks to his airplane for departure after a state visit.

Autopsy Table found on Wikipedia. The table we saw did not have “containment walls” Is it true that forest monks actually attend autopsies? Yes it is actually quite common. After being a monk for perhaps more than 10 years, I remember a senior monk expressing surprise when he discovered I hadn’t seen one. He said, “You haven’t been to an autopsy yet?” “You haven’t been to an autopsy yet?”

A lay person named Chathuranga came to the International Institute of Theravāda looking to ordain in November, 2022. He is now a sāmaṇera (novice monk) and not yet a fully ordained bhikkhu. I thought that it would be interesting to show his path to monkhood to you. Stage 1: Regular Person First he was a regular lay person working as a construction assistant engineer in the Maldives and then made the transition to a devoted layperson.

I spent a little over 30 days in Thailand and I learned a great deal about Thai Buddhist culture and how things things are for monks outside of the vinaya saṅgha. What did I learn? Uncle Sam’s Banana Farm Uncle Sam’s Banana Farm First of all, this trip was well needed. Sabai means to be comfortable and relaxed. I really needed to be comfortable and relaxed and the goal was achieved.

Ven Ananda with the two donors Recently, we received six new tables arranged by a monk’s two donors. The tables were nice but I didn’t think we needed them, so I asked the monk why. He said there was not enough room on the tables for his donors’ donations, so they decided to donate more tables so they can donate more. When his donors make donations, they are not small.

Monk walking towards the world of the 5% If you are a Westerner and new to Buddhism, you might be surprised to learn that most monks use and handle money. I have calculated that around 95% use money while 5% do not use money. The general consensus of those I have consulted say that about 2 or 3 percent do not use money but I used a 5% number to be safe.

Introduction Foreigner monk gets a COVID vaccine jab during the times of the new Myanmar government In this article, I want to share with you some of my experiences of living as a monk in Myanmar during the covid pandemic and the government change that happened recently. I also want to explain why I left Myanmar at the end of 2022 and what I am doing now. I am an American Buddhist monk who has been living in Myanmar for many years.

Monk at The Bodhi Tree located at International Institute of Theravāda Theravada (Theravāda) is one of the major branches of Buddhism and is often referred to as the “School of the Elders.” It is the oldest surviving Buddhist school and it is the predominant religion of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Because of its age and orthodoxy, it can also be loosely translated as “Old School Buddhism” in some ways too.

Alms Tray and Cambodia Monk’s Full Bowl Introduction: This article explains the essence of piṇḍapāta (alms) and why we go for alms, even in poor villages. On the weekends, I have some time to go for alms in the nearby village. However, you might ask yourself, “Why would a monk collect food from a very poor village during an economic crisis when the monastery is mostly supported by wealthy people?

Title Page In America, the Rote Method of learning is belittled as “learning like a parrot” and rarely or never taught in the Western school systems. However, it is a useful brute force method for memorizing Pali texts and the only way to memorize longer word for word Pāḷi texts such as the Pātimokkha. This system is used extensively in Myanmar schools and Myanmar study monasteries. If you hear lots of noise in the classrooms, rote learning is what they are doing.

Various items for Kaṭhina It is quite common in Myanmar to offer robes at the end of the Rainy Season (vassa) in a ceremony called Kaṭhina. How long do monk’s robes last? A monk normally has a set of three robes; a lower robe, an upper robe and a double robe sometimes referred to as the outer robe. During Kaṭhina, a set of robes are offered, but usually just the lower and upper robes since the double robe or outer robe lasts a long time.

Artistic digital recreation of Migalaṇḍika (an ascetic who looked like a monk) The Monastery Murder Massacre that happened in Vesālī during the time of The Buddha is not well known among lay people. It was because of this massacre that The Buddha made a rule about killing humans. For the first 20 years, there were no rules and this was the third rule that was ever created. Before this, the monks intuitively knew what was proper and there was no need for rules.

Download Android App Download iOS App Recently I made a mobile app to help me know when the Solar Noon is approaching and past. Why Is the Sun Important for Bhikkhus? Why Is The Sun Important for 8 & 10 Precepts? If you are a monk, nun or a practicing yogi who has vowed to not eat after Noon, you will benefit from this app. The real Solar Noon is not 12:00 pm when it comes to the Buddhist rules because there were no clocks back then.

cc WTC 9/11, 2001 wikimedia Attribution: Robert J. Fisch “They always wanted to get that building” That was what I said when I first heard about 9/11 three or four days later. I once had a job interview at Merrill Lynch in The World Financial Center which was connected to The World Trade Center by a sky bridge. My goal was to eventually work at WTC, but luckily I didn’t get that job and it was the only job interview I didn’t get an offer on.

15 Main Image Close Up, at the Mahabodhi Temple, cc-atrib-sa https://www.photodharma.net/India/Bodhgaya-Mahabodhi/Bodhgaya-Mahabodhi.htm Sometimes it is difficult to find free Buddha pictures. Even when Google shows you “free pictures,” sometimes, they require an account or were not really free in the first place. As a monk, even with our timeless Buddha, I still respect copyrights and encourage others to do the same. That is also one of the reasons why I use Linux as my main operating system.

Did the Buddha do intermittent fasting? The answer is: Yes. When I first became a monk, people were shocked about how I gave up eating after Solar Noon and I have not eaten dinner in over 20 years. Sometimes I switch to one meal per day, but I often find a light breakfast, mostly liquid foods or rice soup, with a full lunch works best for me. These days, many people are using intermittent fasting as a form of weight loss and when I describe my Buddhist monk diet, they give a nod and say “Intermittent Fasting… It’s Healthy.

Recently, I had a serious medical problem that had the potential to be extremely serious. Please don’t ask. In any case, I arranged permission to go outside and then arranged for someone to help me get to a clinic in Mandalay which had the proper technology to properly assess my problem. This article is not about going out. Instead this article is about coming back and staying in quarantine. Because we do not have monastery-wide vaccines yet, Pa-Auk is quite strict about letting people go outside because when you come back, you will need to be on a 3 week quarantine before testing for your release.

I’ve been looking forward to the Myanmar Internet being cut off, but it does not seem to be happening. I guess that is good for the people here. I will be taking a SIM break for about 5 days… Tuesdays are usually when I post things from the meditation hall because it is the day I have to manage the Tuesday cleaning crew. My job is to clean the Big Buddha (that is me below).

Chinese congee Photo By Daiju Azuma - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=567814 Rice soup is most popularly known as Congee (Kahn-Jee). However in the Buddhist world, it is referred to as yāgu in the Pāḷi Language. It occurs many many times in the tipiṭaka (more than 500 times) and it is still eaten today in Asia and Southeast Asia. To make it, you simply boil and then simmer one part rice with eight parts water for one or two hours.

I remember when I was living in Kaua’i in a tent propped up in the corner of my friend Uncle Gene Taylor’s property. I had just come home from my daily alms round and I popped into his room to say hello. He is old and has difficulty walking, yet he is usually quite cheerful. As part of the visit routine, he asked me how my day was and I smiled and happily said, “Today was a great day.

NOTE: Tipitaka Pāḷi Reader is the new Pāḷi Reading app. Click link below: Tipitaka Pali Reader A new beautiful app written in Flutter for all Desktops and Mobile Devices. If you are still interested you can read below: News: Developers are encouraged to join our Discord server for our 2.0 total rewrite called Ultimate Pali Reader June 21, 2022 Version 1.4.0 is now released (Win, Linux Snap) ( android 1.2.1)

It occured to me that people don’t know one type of Buddhist monk from the other and a post was needed to explain this. First a little bit of history. Theravada is the closest thing as one can get to the original form of Buddhism and is based on the Pali texts. The countries that have Theravada as their national religion are; Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. It dates back to the Buddha from 5th century BCE Later, came Mahayana - Chinese Buddhism of the 1st century BCE.

A friend of mine once told me his story about how he had a knife in his hand and was raging with anger. He was going to kill his wife and her new found lover. Below is a short retelling of the story in third person. The Story My friend from the former Soviet Union did his first Goenka meditation retreat in 1999. The retreat was free and was very popular around the world.

Image not found. The Pali Text Society has made its Vinaya, Sutta and Abhidhamma books available for non-commercial use since 2013. The Sutta books have been extracted from the Buddhadust Website which is still considered as “work in progress.” However, the work was good enough to reformat as eBooks in its current state. Stephen Torrence and myself did most of the work to reformat the web pages into eBook versions.

Recently, I had a chance to go to a Lao Monastery in Elgin, Chicago, IL, USA for 12 days. I usually avoid American Theravada Temples like the plague because most of these places have monks who use money and much of the monk life is centered around collecting money. This is a typical standard not only in America but in most countries. This monastery however, is different. In 2015, the committee decided to stop being a useless, unwholesome temple that teaches wrong dhammavinaya (teaching and training — on wrong ways to give donation and wrong ways to make merit, and obviously wrong kamma and results).

![Radio Tower ](/images/Telecommunication-Tower-Wave-Radio-Broadcast–273x300.webp" >}} Here is the link to the 2015 KKCR radio show. We were interviewed on Kauai Community Radio for about one hour instead of the scheduled 20 minutes. We all had fun doing it. It will give you a good taste of what we did on the island in 2015 and what I am doing now. I often enjoy revisiting this recording, and I hope you do too.

Kauai Update #3 I have moved from the Botanical Gardens recently. I was able to stay there for 5 months and the majority of the time there was wonderful. However things were changing and it was time for me to look for another place and now I am staying in a new long term location in Kilauea. It all happened after a wonderful person picked me up on the side of the road holding my signs the day my parents, brother and in-law dropped me off (I’ll get back to that family-visit part later).

How to Pronounce Theravāda Have you ever wondered if you were pronouncing Theravāda correctly? Read this article to find out how to properly pronounce Theravāda. Most of the resources out on the web mispronounce the word Theravāda, and Google has failed me when I did a search too. However, it was a good excuse to write this small article. The “Th” sound in Theravāda is not the English “Th” like “Them” or “Think.

Downloads: Download PDF Listen to Audiobook Going For Broke: Travelogs On Becoming a Buddhist Monk is a compilation of travel stories. It is an anonymously written book about a lay person who quit his job in order to travel the world and then become a Buddhist Monk. Most people either love it and read it in a few days or never finish it. Here is the back cover: “Going for Broke” consists of travel stories written by a young American man who gave up his lucrative job to travel the world and decide if he would fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a Buddhist monk.

The Seeds From Long Ago I remember when I first learned how to meditate on my breath some time in 1990, during my university years. Back then, meditation was not so well known. The beat generation’s Zen trend in the 60’s had died out with disco in the 70’s. Barnes and Noble maybe had only a few shelves in a single bookcase labeled with “Eastern Philosophy” that covered all Eastern religions, including Buddhism.

Bhikkhu Subhuti’s Blog has moved! pub domain monk seal from wikipedia The blog at https://Subhuti.withmettanet has moved to https://AmericanMonk.org The new title of the blog is American Monk: Bhante Subhūti Why change The Domain Address? The reason why I changed the name of the domain was to streamline my verbal website announcements to let them known how to find the monk in Kauai. Usually a conversation will start up with some new person in Kauai and then I say, “Hey, you can check out my blog at americanmonk.

September 11th and Jeremy Glick I have a personal story I want to tell you about Jeremy Glick and September 11, 2001. The short story is that my name is Jeremy Glick and I was a computer programmer. However, I had left my regular world in 1999 and people who have lost track of me remembered me when 9/11 happened. About seven months after I ordained as a Buddhist Monk in 2001, the famous 9/11 or September 11th event happened.

A Tale of Love and Samādhi Explained: A’capella Inertia A little Valentines story for all of you. The topside title is just a description of what the story is generally about. However, the real title of the story is called, “A’capella Inertia.” This is not a short one, but I think you will like this one very much. It has received high marks and it will take about 30 minutes to read.

This is a small video on how to make a monk’s needle case from a used up disposable pen. It is one of the 8 requisites of a Buddhist monk. It is mostly intended for monks to view, but lay people might find it interesting. https://youtu.be/WwzeZHSz5r8

Here is a quick tip on how to make a filter in just a few minutes. Maybe as fast as one minute. This is useful for monks who want to put filters on their water taps. It is my own invention as far as I know, but I am sure other monks somewhere else also do the same. The Buddha did mention that if we did not have a filter, we could use the corner of our robes (that we are wearing).

I Finally Did It! This Rainy Season (Vassa) I was able to learn the Pātimokkha (227 Rules) by heart. It is the first round and it takes me a long time to do it, and there are mistakes. Never the less, it is considered “learned” and “memorized” at this stage. I will hopefully recite the Pātimokkha for the full moon November 3rd if all goes well. I need to get my 2+ hours of recitation down to at least 1:15 minutes.

How Do Monks Say Grace Before Eating? Do Theravāda monks say anything before they eat? Do they give thanks? Who do they say thanks to? Or is it something else? Buddhist monks generally do a reflection and chant something before eating. In fact it is said that the monks incurs debt if they doe not reflect before eating. Actually, there are 4 reflections concerning the Four Requisites: 1. Robes

Here is an instructional video on how to make a foot-rug from old and discarded monk’s robes. If you are a monk, perhaps you will be very interested in this. I made the video as I was making my very first rug. Ven. Khemavamsa is the one who helped in the end. It was his idea and I have never seen this before. The story from the texts is below:

Here is a comparison of 5, 8 and 10 precepts. The Buddhist who follows five precepts is known as a regular lay Buddhist. The person who follows 8 precepts is known as a serious Buddhist yogi. The person who follows the 10 precepts is known as a novice monk. A bhikkhu follows 227 rules. It is important to know these classes to know which rules are more important to follow. It also can explain, what class of rules a monk is following.

A Story from 1993 from my college days, before the Internet was around. I remember all the way back in ‘93, when I was in college and I had just spent a few weeks in China for an academic scholarship. Because I was now some type of “International” student, I was asked to attend a “lunch hour” question and answer session with Helmut Schmitt. Although I had international travel experience, I was hardly experienced in “international issues,” and I did not even know who or what he was.

Calculation of odds. Do you believe in devas? Devas are the Buddhist equivalent to angels. Ok .. Here is the story. I was on alms round two weeks ago and a regular supporter invited us to ask for anything for our studies at school. I needed some pens, so I asked for some pens. He told me to wait and showed up with a huge pen gift-box. He opened it up for me and there was a fat and expensive Cross pen inside.

Download Free A4 format PDF Download Free A5 format PDF Tutorial on How to Sit Many times I have given advice to yogis on how to sit properly and I have received raving success. In fact, I asked one fellow student to model for the pictures you will see in this article and he was absolutely amazed at how comfortable he was as soon as he sat down. He spoke loudly with joy and excitement as soon as he was seated in the Samādhi-Sausage, which prompted other people to peek inside the room to see what all of the commotion was about.

Here is a sample video and written instructions for making a self-contained incense holder made from a plastic bottle. It is the coolest incense holder I have ever used. The idea is not mine. An American lay person had one at his dorm room and I thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. I made mine in minutes. The Problem: No matter how you slice it, incense holders often let the ashes fall outside of the “catching-base.

For those of you who do not know what an Asian shower room looks like! This one is luxurious with a stainless steel water bowl! Ahhh! I often prefer this method over a shower head (This shower room does not have one, but if it did I would still prefer this method). A long time ago, Westerners did this too. The toilet is inside the same room too, not shown.