I can’t respect monks, can I?

Question: Today, monks behave disrespectfully. I want to respect only the Buddha and Dharma, not Sangha. Can I?

Answer: Those who respect dharma must have an important thing in mind – they don’t like to find others’ faults. Instead, they prefer to see others’ goodness.

You question if you can respect only the Buddha and Dharma, not the Sangha. The answer is no because your reason shows that you like to find others’ faults, lack good observation and summarize something too easy. There are about 200,000-300,000 monks around Thailand, and how many monks do you know? Luang Por assumes you know at most 1,000 monks. If you saw 1,000 bad monks, would the other 300,000 monks be bad?

Your habit of finding faults will make you not find good monks. You close your mind until it blinds. Luang Por suggests you change your thought. Look at the temples like the academic schools, and you will find two types of people: the first type is the students, and the second type is the teachers.

The students have a chance to misbehave. Do you mind the students’ behaviour? No, because we count them as the young who are studying. We forgive them. But, if the teachers did something wrong, we would blame them.

The first type is the student monks. They have just been ordained to study dharma for a few days, months, or years. They are newcomers in Dhammavinaya; therefore, they sometimes do something wrong. It is usual for the student monks.

The second type is the teaching monks. Over 100,00 total teaching monks are the core in all temples in Thailand. They intend to meditate regularly. If they didn’t do it continuously, the temples would be abandoned, and Buddhism could not continue to be established in Thailand.

Observingly that these good teaching monks are full of duties. It is also not the monk’s habit to promote himself that how good he is. They prefer to meditate. Some monks pilgrimage in the forest; some live in the town or the cities. In addition, they teach his disciples thoroughly, not announce themselves in newspapers or on TV. They have never told the public how good they are because they are like full water bottles. Shaking full water bottles sounds silent, like those with great virtues don’t boast.

In the schools, you can know students or teachers because of their clothes and ages. However, in the temples, you can’t because the monks wear the same kinds of saffron robes.

Therefore, knowing some few bad monks, maybe five monks, ten monks or at most 1,000 monks, and judging that they are too bad until you want not to respect all hundred–thousands of monks in Thailand. Is it correct? It would be best if you think again.

Luang Por wants you to think like this. When you make merit with any monks, you don’t know whether they are student monks or teaching monks. It would be best to think that whenever they didn’t break Dhammavinaya seriously, you would make merit to support them to meditate more for being good fields of merit in the future. When you meet some monks with calm manners, make merit with them fully.

When you hear some good monks with respectful behaviour, even if they are far away, you should visit and bow to them, and you would get a good field of merit as you want. If you couldn’t find your ideal monks in your mind, keep calm, meditate more and open your mind. One day you will meet your ideal ones. Don’t judge any bad monks until you would respect only the Buddha and Dharma. It would be best if you respect the Triple Gems. Then, you will be safe in this life and the next life. You will be able to reach Nirvana.