A successful ordination for 100 novices in Ingyinbin!
The subsequent details provide insights into the heartwarming impact of Ashin Mandala's efforts to ordain 100 young children as novices, highlighting their parents' deep sense of joy and the enduring significance of this ancient tradition in Myanmar. We thank all donors who supported this effort with their generous contribution!
Earlier this year, a special event in which 100 young children were ordained as novices, was conducted at the sacred site of the most revered Webu Sayadaw, through the generous donation from the international donors and local individual donors. Ashin Mandala informed us that it was a successful event in which 100 young children from Ingyibin village and nearby villages entered into the Buddha’s Sasana (meaning the monastic order). He gladly said that he and his team could collect and ordain 100 children easily due to the recurring armed combats in the region. Mostly, in the normal days before the pandemic, they could not collect that many children because they often tended to go to school for lay-people’s education rather than the traditional Buddhist education monastic schools where they study basic Buddhist literatures and Burmese basics.
Now, after the military coup, many children were keen to enter the Buddhist monastic order as novices and their parents favored them with it because they can stay and study safely in the monastery. Otherwise, they had to flee and run across the fields whenever the junta’s forces raided their villages. Also, the junta’s forces were easily suspicious of the 13- or 16-year-olds as local people’s defense force members and they often tended to capture and harm them. Or they also tend to impress them as porters for their military campaigns. For these reasons, the foreseeable compassionate monk Ashin Mandala and his trustees started to organize a 100-novice-ordination event during the New Year Festival in 2022, on the purpose of protecting young children from being impressed as porters by the junta’s forces and educating them for their basic literacy and teaching them Buddhist literatures. It was mainly sponsored by Ashin Mandala and the donations from international donors. It was to be evaluated as a ‘successful event’ because over 60 of the ordained children continued living in noviceship. After this inspiration, Ashin Mandala and his trustees tried to organize a similar event again this year. Upon his request, Better Burma organized a fundraising for it and made a call for donations from the international donors. Again in this year, international meditators contributed to the event and it could help the other 100 children to obtain the noviceship as well as a chance to study.
Ashin Mandala and his implementation team reported that they could traditionally organize the event in peace and safety this year. (Last year, they conducted it in anxiety about the junta's forces coming into the monastery and disturbing it.) They spent the fund donated by the international donors to buy a set of two novice robes (the monks wear ‘Ticivara’ defining 'three robes': a lower robe, upper robe and outer cloak robe), a buckled belt, a pair of monastic slippers, an iron suitcase and a mosquito net for each novice. They also could spend the fund this year to borrow 100 sets of the ceremonial dress which the novice-to-be children traditionally wear. [Since the noviceship is noble or sacred according to the Buddhist tradition that a novice-to-be child honorably deserves to be paid homage by every laity, it is a custom for him to wear a dress like a king.]
One thing notable is that the most reverend Webu Sayadaw adoringly described the novice-to-be children as “the little divines” at the novice ordination ceremony on his last day before he passed away. [Reference: “The Most Venerable Webu Sayadaw’s Theruppatti and Practice.” See page number 77: the Webu Sayadaw said, “Hey, the Shin-longs (novices-to-be) look like the little divines,” in the novice-ordination ceremony which was held by his three disciples, Ven. Sumana, Ven. Kheminda and Ven. Vamsapāla.] The trustee committee of Ashin Mandala also managed to feed lunch to all the guests and parents of the novices. All the parents were delighted to see their sons in ‘Shin-long dresses (novice-to-be King-alike dresses)’ and novice robes. It is the first dream for Myanmar parents to ordain their son as a novice once they have him. There are many dramatic stories about the parents’ love and dream to ordain their son as a novice. Since it’s also a traditional duty for Myanmar parents, in some Burmese stories (which are ‘true stories’), the father tried to make it happen to ordain his son in noviceship though he was too poor to buy a set of robes and his wife died. A true story named ‘Mi-ta-soe Shin-pyu (Motherless Child's Novitiation Ceremony)’ which was written by U Phoe Kyar in the British Colonial Times, is a famous story about the Burmese parents’ dream to ordain their son in noviceship.
Some of the parents whose sons got involved in the 100-novice-ordination event led by Ashin Mandala, said that they would be happy if they even died during this hard time among recurring armed conflicts: because they had already ordained their child as a novice! These sayings expressed how deeply they felt happy to see their sons to be ordained under the Sasana (teachings of the Lord Buddha). It’s true. Ashin Mandala is not only teaching them for their literacy but he is also teaching them the essence of Buddha’s teachings which is Vipassana. He said he's just following the path that the most revered Webu Sayadaw ordained him as a novice in his presence and urged him to meditate, in his childhood. He has taught the novices of both the batches how to meditate, for months and the number of novices who remain in noviceship after the event this year, is showing how much the children have enjoyed the bliss of meditating and staying under the Sasana. Over 70 of the children have remained in noviceship until now.
This is good news and Ashin Mandala wished to pass this delightful message to all the international donors who supported to make this event happen. Ashin Mandala concluded the telephone conversation that he would send me the photos and videos of the novice ordination event through the ‘Myanmar Techniques’ which he called and which he said that they tie a cell phone at the top of a bamboo pole and erected at the top of a tree so it is accessible to the poor Internet connection and the tethering hotspot is turned on to connect to another phone.