A Survey, What are the Buddhist Monk Daily Activities

In Buddhism, we recognize, monks’ life is better than lay people’s life because monks have full of their time to practice meditation or practice the eight noble paths by living depend on lay Buddhists. In the Buddha’s time, after their ordination, most monks went to their master asked for meditation object and went to practice in the forest. However, nowadays, there are very few monks live in the forest. Most monks live in the city or in the temple which surround by people. There are many activities monks do in their daily life. Most monks are not interested in practicing meditation especially young monks in the city. They just spend their time with playing computer game, watching TV, etc. therefore, I made a short question and gave to 36 monks who are studying at MCU, regarding their habits and activities that mostly they spent in their free time. The hypothesis is that monks who spend more time in studying dhamma or practice meditation would gain more benefits from their monks’ lives. Those who spend more time in watching movies or playing computer games would feel that it is just the time for relaxing while they are monks. And mostly they would soon bored in monk’s lives and going to disrobe or just stay with less benefit from Buddhism.

Purpose

In this study, I would like to do the research about the activities that most monks spend their time, whether mostly monks spend time with sitting meditation or playing computer games or watching TV etc. by going to ask question to 36 monks about how they spend their time in every day life.

Expected benefit

This research is very important because in propagating Buddhism, we need not only quantity, but also the quality of being Buddhist monks. The benefits from this research, we can rearrange the daily routine of monk organization to improve the situation according to the information we will get. However, the parameter of this research is focus on most monks who live in the city especially young monks who are MCU students.

The survey

A short questionnaire was given to 36 students of both international and Thai course of MahachulalongkornUniversity in July of 2010. The students are mostly from different countries including Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam,Bangladesh and Thailand. Those surveyed were generally in their 20’s with some over 30 years old.

Participants were asked:

Do you practice meditation everyday? …………………..

How long do you spend time to do it? …………………...

If no:

What activities do you like to do in your spend time?

Watching TV; because…………………………….…………

Playing computer games; because …...………………………

Watching movies; because…….…………………………….

Internet online; because……………………………………..

Reading book; because……………………………………..

Listening to music; because…………………………………

What is better for a person – meditated 30 minutes or do other activities?

Meditation because ………………………………………

Others because …………………………………………..

In giving the question, the spaces were given for participants to express their idea related to the activities which they like to do in their free time that they think will bring more benefits for their monk’s lives.

Participants were given 1 hour and a half to complete the questionnaire and return it.

Results

The questionnaires were returned subsequently from the middle of the class to the end. The students have 1 hour and a half to complete, so it is enough time and the task was expected that it is easy to do. The result showed, and out of a total 36 returned questionnaires only a few of them were filled out correctly. This, make a full statistical analysis difficult to present the results.

One of the biggest errors in the completion of the forms was that the students were very difficult to select the activities that they like to do because mostly they do them all sometimes after sometimes. So for the yes/no style question, Do you practice meditation everyday? Then “if no”, some students replied yes, but then they also ticked some boxes bellow. And some students replied more than one activity with the explanation that they do it sometime, some days they did this activity, other days they did others.

Part one

In total 20 students replied that they practice meditation every day. And for the time they spend are different. four students spend 5 minutes every day for sitting meditation, 8 students spend 10 minutes, 4 students spend 15 minutes, 2 students spend 20, and 2 students spend more than 1 hour. This is more than what have been expected.

12 students replied that they did not practice meditation.

4 students replied that they did not practice meditation every day, but sometime they spend 5 minutes to meditate.

As mentioned, many of the students answered “yes” they practice meditation every day, but also ticked other activities they usually do, because they did them all some days. It is very difficult to make the conclusion that what activity monks like to do most. So for the total result, I will count them all, if any monks ticked two or three activities, I will count by increase the number of monks according to the number of activity they ticked. So the total result we must have more than 36 monks, but any activity that was ticked by more monks, the number will increase, it is just make it easy to look for activity that ticked by monks more than others.

In total:

22 ticked reading books because they can earn more knowledge

14 ticked watching movies because they like to relax

8 ticked online internet because they can study many things from it.

4 ticked watching TV because they like learn some news or movies on it.

Note: other two activities play computer game and listening to music, were not ticked.

Part two

For the second question, on which is better for 30 minutes meditate or do some other activities, the answers was actually the same with what the student replied according to the first question. The term “better” was not explained whether it refer to what, but expected that the participants will understand themselves. It can refer to good practice to improve parami or good virtue to develop. In fact the answer were the same in part one. Those who practice meditation every day, they replied meditation is better in case of develop paramis. But, those who did not practice meditation every day, they ticked others with giving the reason that they are students reading books is must better for them to improve their knowledge or to learn more. So total, 20 answered meditation, 11 answered reading books, 2 watching movies, and 2 answered using internet.

Conclusion

From this survey, we can see that there are 72 % of the participants practiced meditations every day. This is more than what have been expected because the survey has done among the young monks who from different countries and they still are students. However, those who practice meditation every day did not spend much time to do it. And most of them even practice meditation every day, but they still ticked two or three more activities that they usually do in their spend time.

Among the activities were ticked by the participants, we can see that reading books is the activity was ticked more than other activities. It is 22 out of 36 participants. Next, is watching movies, then internet online. This showed that students’ situation is mostly good based on their daily activity because more students have practiced meditation every day and mostly they like reading book more than other activities. However, this survey has done just among small group of student monks at MCU, we can’t make the conclusion to the whole monks’ community.