Digital donations in Thailand
Images adapted from: Khaosodenglish
In the digital age, technology has been changing almost every aspect of our lives in the name of comfort. And now, this digital wave is also tweaking a Thai-Buddhist traditions, such as the act of offering food to monks.
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Image credit: Khaosodenglish
On Sunday, Monk Itthiyawat in Trang shared his first-hand experience on Facebook after some folks had ordered him food on Foodpanda as an offering. Once finished, the delivery person had to Facetime the client so the monk could give them a blessing.
Image credit: Khaosodenglish
Normally, the way of doing this is to wake up early in the morning and wait outside our houses with food. Then, monks from the nearest temple will come and collect the food before giving a blessing in return.
Netizens weren’t really surprised
The post has since been shared for over 7,000 times. In the comments section, many Thai netizens revealed that they’ve been doing this for a long time now.
Translation: My friends have been doing this for me. They even did a group Facetime.
Translation: When you want to make merit but don’t really have time.
Translation: [Tagging a friend] See?! It’s not only us. LOL
It’s not wrong to do so
After the post went viral, Monk Itthiyawat revealed to Sanook that many people flooded his inbox, asking him if this is appropriate or not.
He replied that this method was not wrong as people have different conditions in life. And if they have a “charitable intent” to begin with, then they’ll be blessed. Even the delivery man will be blessed too – that’s really nice.
However, Monk Itthiyawat still encourages people to come to temples if they can, because monks, like many other people, want to interact with fellow humans too.
Thanks to this story, we now know what to do next time we want to make good merit by offering monks food when we don’t really have time.
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