Food Offerings

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The people we spent an afternoon chatting and drinking with a few days ago in Ban Hom invited us to join them in making a food offering to the monks at the temple in their village. The event was to mark the birthday of one of the group. A lot of Buddhist celebrate their birthday by making an offering at the temple.

It was suggested that we should wear something appropriate, like the shirt that Sai’s mother gave me and top she gave Lorenza. Plus, they gave us a sash to wear across our left shoulders. Our fiends also prepared some baskets of food for us, including bananas, drinks, sticky rice and other delicacies. According to local custom we added some cash donations to this as well. We carried our offerings on special bowls used just for this purpose.

At the temple the Abbott gave a short Dhamma talk and the temple elder led the chanting of various prayers in Pali (the ancient language spoken during the time of Lord Buddha). Aside from reciting the words in a slightly different accent to the folks at the Burmese temple we visit from time to time I could recognise the chants as being the same. After all, Theravada Buddhism is practised in many Southeast Asian countries, particularly Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. There are some regional differences but it is much the same practice throughout these countries.

Our food offerings had to be placed in each monk and novices alms bowl at the front to of the temple. The cash was placed delicately on the rim of the bowl so as not to touch the food. Also, we had a bottle of water that we had to open while kneeling at the front of the temple and the Abbot blessed the water as we slowly poured it into our empty offering bowls.

After making our offerings the laypeople collected all the items together and prepared the food on a low table for the monks. They also counted the cash and locked it away. The Abbott then sprinkled us all with some water and us laypeople went outside with our offering bowls and poured the water on the roots of a tree while the temple elder recited another prayer. It was explained that the ceremony was to send good luck and blessings to our ancestors.

Back inside, after the monks had eaten the lay people all shared a meal together sitting on mats on the floor of the temple. It was a nice way to mark our friend’s birthday and to get an insight into the local traditions.

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