Three Days as a Theravada Buddhist Monk

Earlier this year my father-in-law passed away. This had been an expected situation as his health had gotten progressively worse over the past couple of years and I spent my days feeding and helping him out during breaks from work. With his passing also came a tradition in which the eldest son becomes a monk to earn merit for the deceased. Since Som had no sons, I decided to volunteer and be a monk for three days. It is an experience I’ll never forget which has given me much deeper insight into Buddhism and Khmer culture.

I’m sharing my experience both for my own personal reflection as well as to share since most of us Westerners rarely get a good personal glimpse into Theravada Buddhism and the monastic life. Worth mentioning is that I am by no means a Buddhist but have a heavy interest in it as more of a philosophical approach to life.

Overview of a Khmer Buddhist Ceremony

Before delving into my time as a monk it is worth giving an introduction and overview of what a Khmer Buddhist funeral rite consists of. Something important to understand is that 97% of Cambodians are adherents to Theravada Buddhism and as such even many specific Khmer cultural traditions, celebrations and holidays have a heavy inclusion of Buddhism in which monks play an important role.

Typically a funeral is led by four monks representing the Four Noble Truths and lasts for about three days. An important part of this process is that the deceased’s eldest blood son (or in some instances, grandson) will take on temporary monastic vows and become a novice monk. Serving as a novice monk is understood to earn merit for one’s parents and express gratitude for their care. My father-in-law had no blood sons so I volunteered to take this task for him to honor him.

The monks arrived in town Thursday evening and following an evening prayer service we took them out to an AirBnB we rented out for them to stay at over the weekend. Friday was a busy day with an offering of breakfast, morning prayers, an offering of lunch to the monks and a lunch reception for our guests. After lunch we took the monks back to the AirBnB to relax before heading to the temple for ordination.

Friday Evening: Ordination

Before heading to the temple, first we made a quick run to Target to pick up an electric shaver. Best to be prepared! We then drove out to our community temple slightly outside the city limits to meet up with the monks and get the process started.

The head shaving ceremony was pretty straight forward. We entered the temple and I sat down as the monks took turns shaving my head and my eyebrows. I took the liberty of shaving my beard before hand to streamline the process so we could save some time. This was followed by washing to remove the excess hair and dressing in a white robe and white towel to prepare for the ordination ceremony.

At this point the monks brought out a package of orange robes and candles for the ceremony and I approached the head monk to recite the vows necessary to temporarily become a monk. This unfortunately is where I ran into a little bit of trouble. The vows were in Pāli but repetition was made worse by the fact I am also hearing impaired so repeating the words was profusely difficult. I began to sweat as the minutes ticked away and I struggled repeating the vows. The monks were very patient and stood next to me to help me understand the words I needed to repeat. However this still proved quite difficult and the head monk resorted to writing on a piece of paper the best Latin spelling of the words as he could for me to recite. This finally worked and we made it through the whole process by about 6:30pm. The monks gathered around me chanting and we also posed for some photos.

We then travelled back to our house for evening ceremonies and the monks gave me much guidance on the proper protocol. For example, as we sat down how to sit, when everyone came out to give us plates of tea to put our hands out to accept it, etc. My children were also quite fascinated, with my daughter approaching me and loudly shouting “you can’t hug me daddy because you’re a monk!” Richard was also quite upset because I couldn’t play Nintendo Switch with him. He sat next to me and mimicked my behavior.

Spending the Evening with the Monks

We finished up ceremonies around 9:30pm and departed for the AirBnB. I had my own room and stayed with them over the weekend to practice what it is like living as a monk. They showed me to my room and how to remove my outer robes and took a bit of fascination in the books I brought with me to read.

I decided to spend my time as a monk reading and meditating, continuing my study of Buddhism which I honestly hadn’t really known more beyond reading several wikipedia pages and articles over the past few years. Searching the library Thursday was actually quite a challenge; most books you’ll find in the Buddhism section will typically be self-help books or books that fall heavily into a more westernized version of Buddhism… practically akin to desiring to learn about Christianity and only finding books by Joel Osteen . Luckily I landed on The Dhammapada by Glenn Wallis which served as a good introduction to Buddha’s teachings in a form that made for an easily accessible read. Something I liked about this edition is that it presented the original text in first half of the book with the commentary and author notes in the second half.

As part of clearing my mind and meditating I also decided to not use my phone while a monk… too much negativity can stream in constantly from social media and news sites. So my phone basically just became a device to receive text messages and phone calls from my family.

Saturday

Mornings I continued my usual schedule of waking up around 5am but since I couldn’t exactly go to the gym, I’d start my day by cleaning up, grabbing a cup of coffee and reading The Dhammapada until the rest of the monks woke up and were ready. Once they were ready, I’d drive us to my house to be served breakfast and perform morning prayers and ceremonies.

Before the funeral, our temple actually needed the monks to officiate over a Khmer cultural holiday ceremony since our monk was in the hospital at the time, so after breakfast we headed to the American Legion where the community served us lunch. I’ve seen this type of offering of food several times but being on the receiving end gave me a much more interesting perspective. While an outsider might perceive lay practitioners as praying to the monks, as a monk I instead felt they were giving respect and also took great pride in their reverential treatment of the monastics.

Once the service was complete we headed down to the funeral home for Som’s funeral service. This was a time for us to reflect on Som’s life and remember him… Than gave a very tearful eulogy of how inspiration her father was to her and I have a small speech on how diligent he was. We then led a procession to the cremation site and paid our final respects.

After the funeral service we returned to the house to relax until evening ceremonies. Than told me that since the cremation was finished I technically now had the option to perform the vows to disrobe now or wait until Sunday afternoon. I really felt indifferent either way so I decided to continue until the final day. We wrapped up the evening heading back to the AirBnB to retire for the evening (and wrap up on studying the Dhammapada).

Sunday

The final day we arrived at the house at 6:30am for breakfast and to perform final ceremonies as well as offer gifts to the monks and donations for their temple. After lunch would also signal time for me to disrobe and return to a lay practitioner. This included reciting some vows as part of the disrobing ceremony which, thankfully, my wife Than wrote down so I could study during breaks and be prepared to recite them without any difficulty as I did with the ordination vows. Whew!

I then changed into my normal clothes and offered the robes back to the monks, who then in turn gave me the option to keep them as a memento of my experience. I accepted and placed them on the top shelf of my closet, an experience I’ll never forget.