When chanted

Spoken by candidates to their preceptor before ordination, asking to be taken under his dependence.

A note on this chant. The book prints this chant in Pali only, with no Thai translation. The English here is a working translation prepared for this edition — it is not the book's own, and has not yet been checked by a teacher.

Historical background

นิสสัย is dependence: the formal relationship by which a newly ordained monk lives under the guidance of a senior one and may not simply set up on his own.

It is requested before ordination rather than assigned after it, which is the point of printing it here. A person asks to be dependent before he is asked to be received.

Meaning and purpose

The request is four words long in Pali and is said three times: venerable sir, we ask for dependence. Nothing is offered in return and no undertaking is given.

The threefold repetition does what it does everywhere in this book — marks the thing as formally done. But here it also has a plain human effect, since asking to be placed under somebody is not easy to say once, let alone three times.

What follows in the ceremony is the preceptor's acceptance and then the request for ordination itself. The order is deliberate: dependence is settled first, so that nobody is ordained into a position of independence they have not earned.

The chant

As the book prints it: page 290 →

page 290