(Alvin’s Note: Our dear fellow Life Coach, and passionate personal developer extraodinaire, Paiboon Busayarak, has embarked on a 3 month initiation into Buddhist monkhood in his native Thailand. He just sent me this post via email to share a sneak-peak behind the scenes into becoming a monk. The words are his, the grammer tweaking is mine Enjoy!)

Here are my pictures, before:

And after:

(Pretty cute, isn’t he? )

After going through the identity change process in the shrine hall, I found that I’ve changed in these areas: Physical appearance, Attire, Peers, Residence, People Reaction, My Daily Activity and most importantly; my New Behavior.

Physical Appearance

As you can see the hair and eyebrows are gone. Am I becoming more attractive with no hair and eyebrows? Probably not, and that’s the point. The second objective is that it’s easier to take care of my hair because I have no hair to take care of anymore, I just shave them off every month.

Attire

I only wear 3 pieces of clothing. Of course, they are not a shirt, pants and underwear. They are 3 different sizes of rectangular-shaped cloths, called robes, folded in a particular way (I found the art of folding these cloths very fascinating, which I’ll share with you later). Why? Because another objective of being a monk is to be content, so complicated ways of cutting and sewing are no longer needed.

A monk lives on donations from people e.g. food, cloth. And in the past, people donate whatever they have, some big, some small pieces of cloth, so monks in the old times had to sew those small pieces together to make robes for wearing. But nowadays they will donate ready-made robes; there are at least close to 40 rules (!) about the robes.

New Behavior

As a monk I have 227 rules of new behavior (percepts) in many areas like verbal communication with women, clothing, residence, and food. For example, I can’t have sex, can’t masturbate, can’t talk to a girl alone (must have a male adult present during conversation), can’t have snacks or meals after noon, etc. There are many funny rules, which I’ll share with you as time goes by.

Peers

I can tell you, monks have high expectations from each other. It’s really true that your performance is in direct proportion to the expectations of your peers. Some of them put themselves to extremes and are very disciplined, some are quite laid-back (I think the law of averages apply in every society) but all of them are weird people! Well, I should say unique. The most important thing is that I can learn from all of them; having monks as my peers is like another world for me. And I like it because I’m unique too!

Residence

I now live in the temple. Priests have very strict rules about places to stay, beds, no householder in the bedroom allowed. I think there are around 20-30 percepts on residential areas. Overall, the percepts prevent monk from being too luxurious. That’s good.

People’s Reaction

The whole process of ordination in the shine hall took about 45 minutes. And it took me 5 minutes to change from household attire to robes. And people’s reaction to me changed completely. In Thai, there are new sets of vocabulary for monks, the way people talk and behave has completely changed.

One of the percepts is to refrain from paying homage to householders. On the other hand, a householder has to lift folded hands as a token of reverence to monks. And the moment my parents prostrated themselves on to my feet, my tears dropped. In my entire life I’ve saluted them, but now they have to pay homage to me. Who am I that’s so valuable that my parents salute me? That was the question I asked myself. I only had 227 percepts, 3 pieces of robes, an alms-bowl, and a few of a monk’s personal items.

My Daily Activity

This is my rough schedule: Alms at 5:50am, Morning Recitation at 8am, lunch at 11am, Evening Recitation at 8pm. Study doctrine-knower almost 30 hours a week. I meditate 3 hours daily.

New Goals

Next step is becoming a doctrine-knower.

(Well, that’s it from Paiboon for now. All the best, Paiboon! I hope you have more interesting experiences and tales to tell soon, until next time, take care )