Mass Ordination
of 100,000 monks throughout Thailand
This project has been made possible by the support of the entire Sangha Community, the Committee on Education, Religion, Arts and Culture Group, the House of Representatives, along with more than 25 organizations. The project is the continuation of the Mass Ordination of 7,000 monks from 7,000 Sub-districts.
The Purpose
In order to maintain weakened Buddhism in Thailand, Buddhist monks have to collaborate to spread Lord Buddha’s teachings. However, in this present time, there are 5,937 deserted temples in Thailand (according to an official record of the National Office of Buddhism, dated June 1, 2552 B.E.(2009)) mainly because fewer people are entering monkhood. When people spend less than a month in monkhood, they do not have sufficient time to train themselves and to study Dhamma profoundly. As a result, very few people are aware of the true value of ordination. Morever, these days very few employers allow their employees to take a three-month leave of absence to be ordained as monks during the Rains Retreat period. Hence, there are very few ordainees to propagate Buddhist teachings, resulting in the critical situation of Buddhism in Thailand.
How do we do it?
Therefore, in order to produce the new generation of Buddhist monks to become the troop of Buddhism, Wat Phra Dhammakaya held a mass ordination of 7,000 monks from 7,000 villages throughout Thailand in year 2552 B.E. (2009) and over 10,000 people were interested in participation. In consequence, Wat Phra Dhammakaya continued to arrange appropriate trainings for the rest of people interested.
And in year 2553 B.E.(2010), the mass ordination of 100,000 monks from 70,000 villages started twice a year—one in summer and the other one during the rains-retreat. Every year, there are a lot of people interested to participate in the program and even extend their stay in monkhood and are assigned to different temples in their hometowns, resulting in the decreasing numbers of deserted temples.
In the most recent record of the National Office of Buddhism, in November 2557 B.E.(2014), the numbers of deserted temples had been decreased down to only 4,000 temples.
