-22- A Dhamma Discourse on Saturdays and Demonstrative Alms Offering

~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~

Regarding demonstrative alms offering, this is to show an example of how people in the Buddha’s time offered alms to the monks: the offerers took the alms bowls into the kitchen, put enough food into them, and brought them back to the monks. The monks could have a second helping, and when they finished the meal, they washed the alms bowls. That’s the how-to of demonstrative alms offering. It neither creates a wasteful surplus nor causes much trouble; it works well even with a few hundred monks. For well-off people or millionaires, this way of offering is child’s play. Nowadays, we still have this activity, but it is a little bit adapted from what was in the Buddha’s time. Instead of taking the alms bowls into the kitchen to fill with food, we take the food from the kitchen and put it in the alms bowls in front of the sitting monks. We preserve the offering rite this way because it is easy, like giving food to cats: various kinds of food are put together in the same alms bowl. Sometimes we call it ‘cat-feeding style offering,’ but the real reason is that it’s economical, frugal, and less troublesome. However, the rite is limited to Saturdays during the dry season, just like the regular discourse. Now it is the rainy season break. The rite will resume in January and continue until the end of September.

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“24 Benefits of Suan Mokkh,” is a series of weekly posts published to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the foundation of Suan Mokkh in May 1932 in Chaiya, southern Thailand.

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For other Dhamma teachings by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu (audios, free ebooks, interviews, poems), please visit Suan Mokkh – The Garden of Liberation.

Photograph from the Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives collection (Ref. BW-02-032-070)