When chanted

Spoken by the candidates to the assembly, asking for ordination.

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

The request the whole ceremony answers. Everything printed around it — the callings-in, the appointments, the questioning, the formal act — is the assembly's response to these three sentences.

It is short, and it is the only point in the sequence where the candidates address the whole Sangha directly rather than being spoken about.

Meaning and purpose

What is asked for is put in a single word — ordination — and then the manner of asking is added: อุลลุมปะตุ โน ภันเต, may the Sangha raise us up.

The image in that verb is of lifting somebody out of something, and the clause that follows names the ground on which it is asked: อะนุกัมปัง อุปาทายะ, out of compassion. Not because they are ready, and not because they have asked properly.

Said three times, by people who have already asked for dependence and been rehearsed in the questions. By the time this sentence is spoken there is very little left to arrange, and the request is made in the plainest possible terms.

The chant

As the book prints it: page 290 →

page 290