Ven Sunanda (China) One of the Chinese monks named Venerable Sunanda recently had his birthday. For his birthday, he determined to offer 100 shoulder cloths to various monks and ended up making 123. What is a shoulder cloth? It is a small robe that monks often like to wear underneath their upper robe. from http://www.justwalkedby.com/2016/03/sweeping-monk/ creative commons attrib nc We have an abundance of robes in the storage room and with vassa coming up, we will get more and more.

Of course I’m happy! On November 24, I helped make a nice breakfast and lunch for Pa-Auk Forest Monastery, Pyin Oo Lwin. I organized 28 monks including myself to be the donors for the whole day meals + fresh squeezed apple juice, for a full value of 1,250,000 Myanmar Kyat. It fed approximately 530 yogis across four sections in Pa-Auk Forest Monastery. But how is that possible for monks to donate money?

reposted from https://withmetta.net (2016) . When a Buddhist monk says “sabbe satta,” that is a shorthand for metta practice. “Sabbe satta” means “all beings.” One of my friend’s collects the leftover food and cakes and says or acts on this everyday after each meal at the Mudon Pa-Auk monastery. But in reality, even though he says “sabbe satta,” he really just seems to feed the birds with the leftover food and cakes.

When should you give to Saṅgha? When should you give to individual monks? This is a question that is not addressed very often and it can cause lots of trouble for monks knowingly and unknowingly. Quite often, many monks blindly prompt donors to recite a line of pāḷi before they offer anything to them. “Bhikkhu Saṅghassa demi.” There are some variations, but that is the generic formula. It means, “I give to the community of monks.