Thai Monks and Mobile Phones

[hotnutts]

My wife often visits the local Buddhist temple and takes with her the obligatory Tesco Orange plastic bucket stuffed with things to make a monks frugal life bearable. While she is at the temple she always gives a monetary donation .
 

Now I know this subject may have been aired before , but its some thing that makes me get upset and confused about . This morning my wife drove me to large shopping mall and we ended up looking for a new mobile phone for her , while we were in the mobile phone section we stopped at a counter to check out a mobile phone my wife had her eye on ( iMobile) while we stood there several Thai monks came to the same counter and asked to see a Samsung phone . My wife recognized one of the monks from our local Buddhist temple .  we spent about half an hour checking out a few different models and of course I was running in my discount mode .

 
By now the group of monks had made their mind up and decided to buy a top end Samsung phone, the part that made me look twice was the fact that one of the monks pulled out from his Orange bag several large fat bundles of all twenty Baht notes and proceeded to un wrap the bundled notes and count them out ,  finally after the count , I think it was around five thousand Baht short , one of the monks produced a fancy wallet and handed over the out standing cash in thousand Baht notes , I think around twenty thousand Baht in total .
 
 

When I asked my wife where she though all those bundles of twenty Baht notes came from , she just smiled and changed the subject so I asked her again , and got the reply not sure . I said don't you feel its a bit strange that the monks paid around twenty thousand Baht mainly with twenty Baht notes , the same type of twenty Baht notes that you and hundreds more people put in the money tree in your temple every day . Not wanting to press the wife too hard I said could the twenty Baht notes be from kind donations at the temple , the answer my wife gave was , if people give donations to a temple , its up to the monks to use the money in any way they want , even if its to buy a top end mobile phone. I ended the subject there and then and went for some thing to eat still scratching my head. 











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[Wayne from Aus]

You give food, you give money by way of donation. There by you have 'made merit'
really who cares
TIT

[mahdam]

To a point Wayne, yes.
But this is kicking the ass out of it!!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/10157509/Buddhist-monk-picture-on-private-jet-has-assets-frozen.html

[hotnutts]

Ah making merit chestnut 

As old Somchai pauses at the end of a long grueling working day trying to eke out a meagre living tending his rice field , he wipes the sweat off his sun wrinkled brow and heads home trying hard to ignore the constant joint pains and aching bones of advanced old age , behind him shuffles Noi his wife of many years her bent arch like posture displaying a life time of hard work stooped over planting rice . 

One the trek home they pass the local village wat and as normal they pause there to look for a blessing and may be a lucky lottery number . Noi all her fingers now disfigured with arthritis fumbles in a bag and pulls out an old battered purse containing a few last twenty Baht notes , with her unsteady old hands shaking she places one of her twenty Baht notes onto the ever present money tree .


She wai's reverently at the line of smiling monks and starts to head home with her long held belief that although her donation is only small and as much as she can afford , that sweat stained twenty Baht note will be put to good use providing the monks with the basic amenities that befit people who have made sacred vows to give up all worldly goods possessions and pleasures.


May be its good that Somchai and Noi don't have the means to make a trip into the city where if they ever did they would be confronted by bands of roaming monks wandering around the computer , phone and luxury designer goods shops , and strangely paying for what ever takes their fancy with bundles of sweaty twenty Baht notes.

The kitchen needs to be entered and smell the coffee   
 

 


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[nookiebear]

I was quite recently in a bank inside Big C in Buriram,lo & behold this old monk shuffled through the door & handed his bank book & a huge wod of 1000baht notes to the bank girl by the door...........He waited OUTSIDE for his book to be returned.

[hotnutts]

I was quite recently in a bank inside Big C in Buriram,lo & behold this old monk shuffled through the door & handed his bank book & a huge wod of 1000baht notes to the bank girl by the door...........He waited OUTSIDE for his book to be returned.

nookie , was it this guy waiting to have a new set of tyers fitted to his Merc 







or one of these two , out for a spin in the new car ( notice the bundle of notes in the drivers hand )   












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