Answers to FAQs on the procedure of making offerings of robes and other requisites on the kathina day
Offering of Kathina cloth (7:30am)
Sponsor for SBS Kathina 2024 is a group named Mahāsanti (Great Peace) Group.
Representatives of the group will offer the Kathina cloth at 7:30am in the sima hall.
The cloth is then cut and sewn into a robe by the participating monks.
Offering of rice (8:45am)
Devotees will get to offer rice (pindapata style) to the monks.
To participate in this, please line up, following the instructions of the pindacara marshals wearing orange vests.
You will then be given a small box of rice plus a spoon.
The monks will walk along the pindacara route for you to offer rice into their bowls.
Following the monks are volunteers who will collect the empty rice boxes and spoons.
The rice for pindacara and food for monks are prepared by the organising committee.
Devotees are not encouraged to bring their own rice and food to offer.
Offering of requisites (8:45am)
After offering rice, please remain in line.
Appointed representatives will walk past you with trays of robes & other requisites to be offered to the monks at the Kathina Bojhana Sala.
You’re invited to touch the trays as a symbolic gesture of offering.
*Individuals do not offer robes to monks.
If you wish to offer robes, please contribute to the Kathina Fund, which is used to buy the robes & other requisites, and to defray the expenses of the Kathina ceremony.
Any excess will go to the support of the SBS Sangha and maintenance of SBS. This way, everyone has a share in contributing towards all the above.
It is not a practice for individuals to offer robes on this day because the monks don’t need so many robes.
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Requisites brought by individuals
Any extra requisites should be placed at the Monks’ Requisite Station at the Sangha Court.
When the kathina robe has been sewn, washed dyed and dried at night, then the resident monks will decide what to do with the extra offerings brought by individuals.
Supporting monks with what is potentially allowable
Please hand your ang pows to the volunteers at the Monks’ Requisites Station.
Or, you can place your ang pows on the tray carried by a volunteer who will walk past you during the offering of rice and requisites.
Each member of the Sangha present at the SBS kathina ceremony will receive what is potentially allowable from a portion of the total sum collected from your ang pows.
The ang pow of that portion will later be entrusted to his kappiyakāraka to provide what is allowable in times of need. The remaining sum will be deposited in the SBS Sangha Dayaka Fund.
In order to invite the monks to obtain whatever is potentially allowable and obtainable from the ang pows, all devotees will repeat after the emcee and recite in unison:
Ven. Sirs, we entrust these ang pows
to the head of the kappiya-kārakas
Bro. XYZ.
He will subsequently hand a portion of the ang pows
to the kappiya-kāraka you have appointed
who will provide
at your request
whatever is allowable.
