Wat Sala Daeng: Temple of the Red Pavilion

Here you see our local temple, Wat Sala Daeng, literally the temple of the red pavilion. It's an easy walk from my house, on the way to the local market. The temple in a local area takes on the role of the cathedral in a medieval town, the center physically and spiritually.

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Most weekends I've spent an hour or so in or around the temple, very peaceful and quite beautiful. Also interesting as they're in the process of renovation and I love watching the new buildings take shape.

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This is the temple where our school brought our freshly-made beautiful candles, a marvellous procession from the school to the temple and then a quite formal ceremony inside at which the monks received the candles, giving their blessing in return.

Now begins the time when monks are traditionally confined to the temple for three months. They have living quarters and meditation space in surrounding buildings (also quite beautiful at least from the outside); the ceremony of presenting the candles was held in a lower level of the same building you see here.

You don't often see monks in the main pavilion itself, and as far as I can tell no formal services are held here. It's more a place for ordinary people to sit in the presence of the Buddha, sometimes chatting quietly and sometimes taking photos (thus my comfort in gathering images to share...) Usually people enter quietly, bow low three times to the Buddha, and then sit in the respect position for as long as they want to. It was especially popular on the full-moon weekend of July, the official beginning of Buddhist Lent.