Today Monks from all over Thailand walked by our office. They are on a pilgrimage. They started at the Dong Yang Meditation Center in Si Sa Ket, in the northeast of Thailand and traveled by bus to Phuket. The 659 monks started on the pilgrimage on the 22nd of November 2020 from The Big Buddha in Phuket, and they will continue until the 17th of January where they will arrive at Wat Phra Pathommachedi Ratcha Wora Maha Wihan in Nakhon Pathom, an 829 km walk.
Pilgrimage is a practice or one practice of the 13 items that the Buddha allows monks to choose to practice aiming for an additional practice of monks who intend to meditate and persevere in order to refine the mind to eliminate desires. The pilgrimage is just a practice or guidelines that is not part of the the 227 precepts of Buddhist monks.
The merits of the Pilgrimage
- Get patience.
- Get intense persistence.
- Make persistence and determination to reach the goal.
- Have seen the truth, understands the truth, and live by the truth.
- Life of a comfortable yogi on a pilgrimage make you know yourself better to become patient.
- Know the discipline of traveling as a group, that you need to walk in a neat line.
- Make you love and sympathize with each other when suffering.
- Can wait for each other with a charitable mind and be kind to each other.
- Make a feeling that everyone is like brothers and sisters.
- Feel the warmth and the joy of traveling together and creating happiness.
A generation or two ago this was also a way for the Thai Buddhist to give merit to the monks as back then there were not as many temples and monks as there is today.
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