He gets the rites just right

THAILAND IS awash in start-ups at the moment – everyone seems to be starting up or investing in a new business, and it usually involves the latest technology. Jaroensak “Win” Boonmuang’s start-up involves Buddhism.

Phi Thee Boon, as the 28-year-old Chiang Rai native calls his service, might well be Thailand’s first modern organiser of Buddhist blessing ceremonies.

The rites involved in blessing a home, factory, car or other possession can get too complex for the average layman, and the danger is that the faithful will drift away. Phi Thee Boon makes it easy to maintain the faith with its full-service blessings for all occasions – and at reasonable prices. 

The name itself means “blessing ceremony”, of course. Win will organise a perfect and pleasant ritual, eliminating all the usual headaches. He was doing this long before he went into business – he was a monk for 15 years. 

“I was ordained in Chiang Rai when I was only 12, mainly to get an advantage in my education,” he says. “Upcountry it’s a good way to get access to higher education. I loved learning about both spiritual and secular matters, so I was very happy at the temple and became very active in Buddhism-related activities.”

As Phra Rattanamethi, Win took a business master’s course at Sripatum University. 

“My classmates were office workers and entrepreneurs and they could easily come up with ideas for cafes, shops and other businesses. I’d been a monk all my life, so all I could think of was a service offering religious ceremonies, based on solving the kind of problems I’d seen as a monk.” 

Hosting even a small religious ceremony can be difficult for laymen if they’re not intimately familiar with the complicated process – from the protocol to the equipment needed to selecting the incantations to be chanted. It’s not easy getting everything right and proper. 

“When I set up a Facebook page for Phi Thee Boon to complete my assignment at school, I didn’t think for a minute that it could actually exist in the real world. But after I got my degree I started getting calls from people who’d stumbled across the page, asking about the service. 

“So Phi Thee Boon became a reality last year, after I left the monkhood.”

This era of convenience has produced organisers for every kind of life event, from weddings to funerals, but people planning blessing ceremonies, which happen much more frequently, have had to rely on their own instincts. 

Thais commonly have their new houses consecrated, and many renew the blessing every year to chase out any bad fortune or spiritual impurity that might have accumulated. We get blessings on our birthdays, offer blessings for the souls of deceased loved ones, and invite monks to take a seat in our new cars to grant us safe motoring. 

Religious rites conducted at temples have the personnel, know-how and equipment built in, but hosting a ceremony elsewhere means starting from scratch. And it’s not like you have the local abbot’s phone number on speed dial. 

What incantations are right for a given situation? How exactly are the candles on the altar to be lit? Where do specific guests sit? Are the monks going to be hungry when they’ve completed their duties, and if so, what will they eat? How do you get them back to the temple later? There are all sorts of tiny details like that. 

Phi Thee Boon covers all the bases – Win even has different “packages” to choose among, like a wedding planner.

“One of our biggest selling points is that we can always get as many monks as you need – if you want nine, you get nine. Often, especially on short notice, you get fewer than you need, and it’s disappointing when you want everything to be just right. 

“I maintain a network of contacts among monks and almost of all them are from respectable royal monasteries, so you can be sure they’ll behave properly. 

“Another highlight of our service is that we have our own emcees who are also former monks and know every detail of the ceremony very well.”

The price of a full-service ceremony is Bt15,000, which includes all the arrangements for the monks, food and beverages and the emcee. Phi Thee Boon has so far organised more than 200 events, the biggest of which had 200 guests. 

If you prefer to handle some aspects yourself, for Bt3,000 you can rent the accoutrements, such as the altar, the monks’ talipot fans and cushioned seats. 

“A blessing ceremony is an auspicious event, something you do to feel good, so you want every detail to be nice and presentable,” says Win. 

“Every detail is important, and we don’t arrange the ceremony just to ‘get it over with’. We go the extra mile to make sure everything looks nice.” 

Once a package is chosen and the deposit paid, Win’s team will visit the premises, take measurements and decide on the appropriate equipment and accessories. Afterwards they also do the cleanup. 

Convenience and presentation aside, ceremonies organised by Phi Thee Boon adhere unerringly to Buddhist protocol. And Win makes full use of his experience in the temple.

“Having been a monk myself, I know what kinds of offerings the monks are most likely to keep and what they’ll give away. If you buy a bucket of offerings from a store, you always get pretty much the same essential items, but monks need other things, too. 

“There is also the matter of the robes. If you don’t get the colour right – temples of different doctrines use different shades of saffron – the monks can’t wear them. The robes end up being ‘recycled’ through ceremony after ceremony without ever serving their intended purpose. A lot of laymen don’t realise there is this small but significant problem.”

As a devout Buddhist, Win has little time for superstition, but he admits there’s “a fine line separating it from ceremonial essentials”. 

“Buddhism is a creed based purely on belief, and it becomes tangible to most people through ceremonies based in Brahmanism. Whatever else is believed to be essential might not actually be at all that important.

“There’s no such thing as ‘auspicious dates’ in Buddhism, for example. You can have any ceremony whenever you like, because the best date for it is the day that suits you best – the day when you’re readiest, physically, emotionally and financially. 

“I consider it my responsibility to inform my clients of this so that they get to the essence of Buddhism and don’t just blindly follow whatever they think is right. I hope my service is bringing Buddhism closer to modern people, whose busy and hectic lifestyles might otherwise lead them away from spiritual fulfilment.”

 

Ceremonies made simple

 

- Make arrangements directly with Win (Jaroensak Boonmuang) |at (081) 107 8466.

- Find out more at www.PhiTheeBoon.com and www.Facebook.com/ PhiTheeBun.