Grandmother’s Prayer

In front of the altar, my grandmother enters a different world. Here she is in touch with her ancestors and with my dead sister. At the altar, her past, present, and future interweave and become one.

Prayer quiets her mind and brings her tranquility. Devotion is her path. Few paths have been offered to her. As a Buddhist woman of her time, she has learned her place. Women do not have an opportunity to attain higher merit by being ordained. Offerings, prayers, and devotions are the only paths to merit open to my grandmother. She has hosted numerous Tod Kratin, rainy season devotions when Buddhists offer material goods to the monks. She says that Tod Kratin devotions bring powerful merit.

According to my grandmother, there are two kinds of offerings. One kind, like Tod Kratin, is to the monks, who live life to purify their minds. This kind of offering is called “making bunya.” The other kind is made to those with greatest need—the poor—and is known as “giving dhana.” The giver attains a higher merit when making bunya, since monks have highly purified minds.

On her seventh lunar cycle, when she turned eighty-four, Grandmother gave a food dhana to the whole village. There was enough food for 50 people. Grandmother believes that this food dhana will probably ensure her food security in her next life. Monks who receive food cultivate the good deed of giving. They yield good merit to the giver in this life and the next. But Grandmother thought that some of the people in the village might refuse to take the food for fear that they would have an inferior birth to her in their next life. I took the food. I told Grandmother that if I hang out with her in her next life, I am guaranteed not to be hungry.

[Second in a series of writings Jip did around 2001.]