During Buddha’s time, the Buddha didn’t allow his monks to accept robes directly from lay people. It had to be material that no one owned. So the monks had to use cast-away material, either from rubbish tips or corpses. A rich lady at the time felt sorry for the monks; so she came up with an idea. She would place the material on the branch of a tree in the wood. When a monk walked past, he could pick up that material because it didn’t belong to anyone. This is the beginning of what the Thai people call ‘Tod Pha Pa’. Tod means to lay something out, Pha means material, and Pa means forest, wood.
Put together, it means to lay a piece of material in the forest.
This has become a Buddhist tradition that has been passed down for two millennia and has evolved over time.
Tod Pha Pa nowadays is a way to ‘tam boon’ or do wholesome deeds. Thai Buddhists believe that Tod Pha Pa contributes to widespread good karma as their giving isn’t aim at particular monks but instead at the entire Buddhist community – a positive evolution of the tradition; reducing bias with the expression of unconditional love.
Today, Tod Pha Pa has become a way to raise funds for temples for them to carry out construction projects and building maintenance. It’s what we know as ‘crowdfunding’ today.
The practise of hanging material on trees in the forest has evolved to be more symbolic; a neatly folded bundle of fabric placed at the base of a decorated tree with the addition of bank notes donated by the public attached to its branches.
Thai people call it a ‘money tree’.
The temple will announce the Tod Pha Pa day 2-3 months ahead. Once people know about it, the community will start the fundraising. Famous temples may raise up to a hundred million baht for projects like making a Buddha statue. Tod Pha Pa is an annual event for all temples in Thailand.
This leads me to our recent Tod Pha Pa event at the Innocent Perception Centre in Salaya, Thailand. After having the main building for the Centre funded by my students and an additional plot of land donated to the Innocent Perception Foundation by a student, we decided to create a ‘Garden of Eden’ to create a magnificent high-energy environment for people who come for retreats. To complete the project of digging a pool and four small structures for accommodation, we need a budget of no less than 4 million Thai baht. I looked at our bank account; we had only 700,000 Baht, which was way less than we needed. I ran out of ideas on how to raise funds.
One morning during my daily meditation last year while at the Centre, I thought to go and ask the abbot of Wat Rai King for help. The Rai King temple is a famous temple in the central region of Thailand and is in the same province as our Innocent Perception Centre. Throngs of people come daily to this temple to pay their respects. The abbot is in a high position; in charge of all the temples in this province, not an easy man to reach and I had no obvious way to contact him. Within those few days however, the sheriff of the local district came to see me at the Centre. We clicked the first time we met. He asked my permission to let him call me ‘mother’, which isn’t unusual for Thai people. He told me never to hesitate to ask him for help. I mentioned asking the abbot for help and right away he said: ‘I know the secretary to the abbot, I can make a phone call right now and ask him to set an appointment for you to see the abbot.’ To my great surprise, I had an appointment with the abbot within 5 minutes.
On the day of the appointment, I went with two of my staff and the sheriff. I told him that even though I’m a layperson, I’ve been doing the same work as monks; propagating Buddha’s core teaching to help people attain Nirvana. I then told him about the construction project at the Centre and asked his advice on how to raise funds. He advised me to Tod Pha Pa.
Traditionally Tod Pha Pa could only be instigated by the monk community, not lay individuals like myself. Having lived in the West for over four decades, I lost touch with traditions; I only discovered recently that individuals can do the Tod Pha Pa as long as it’s for a charitable cause.
A few weeks before I returned to the UK; I announced to my students that I would Tod Pha Pa following the advice of the abbot of Wat Rai King. We had a window of 3 months for us to raise funds.
The date of receiving the Pha Pa ceremony was set for Sunday 24th March 2024. An auspicious day because that was the third anniversary of the opening of the Innocent Perception Centre.
Traditionally, all the funds from the Tod Pha Pa would belong to the monk community. Then, the nine monks must consult and declare to the congregation that they would return the funds to us to fulfil our construction project to serve the wider community.
We were overwhelmed by the response: we raised 2 million Thai baht. This will allow construction for half of the project at the Centre to begin and we hope to raise funds again later in the year.
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to everyone who donated to our Tod Pha Pa ceremony.
If you would like to make a donation, you can do so by clicking on the link below.
Thank you.