Thai Temple Visit

Community Development Worker Shirley Billes reflects on her recent visit to the Dhammapadipa Thai Buddhist Temple, along with children from a local primary school

Through our ‘Shaping the Future Together’ project, twenty – three various faith and community groups applied for a small grant and worked alongside our staff team and each other, as together they identified outcomes relating to specific areas of work and moved towards realising them. I had the pleasure of working with the Thai Buddhist Monks in ‘The Dhammapadipa Temple’ in Edinburgh.

Phramaha Prasert Prommala explained that they are primarily a support for the Thai community, particularly many of the Thai women who now live in Edinburgh . The Temple is a safe space for Thai women where they can seek advice and help from the Monks. The Temple are keen to connect and offer welcome to the wider community. As part of the agreement for ‘Shaping the Future Together’ one of the outcomes created was that, ‘The Temple is a place where people from the local community come to learn about Buddhist religion and culture’. Potential evidence sited under that outcome was ‘To begin initial contact and open lines of communication with local groups’. A positive outcome indicator was ‘To have more school and youth group visits than they had previously had prior to COVID-19’.

Consequently, I connected the Monks with a local Head Teacher and a Primary 6 Class Teacher. The children in this Primary School come from a variety of backgrounds, including families who move house regularly with parents spending many months away from home because of their work commitments in the military. These children, who have faced many social and emotional challenges, had a variety of interesting and insightful questions for the Monks. They clearly felt welcomed and listened to during their visit. The Monks showed generous hospitality to the Primary 6 class and to each individual child. The children were all given gifts of prepacked biscuits, wrapped boiling sweets and woven bracelets which Buddhists believe connects them to the Buddha when they are chanting or meditating. This visit linked in to a ‘Mind, Body, Soul’ project which has potentially broadened the children’s understanding about themselves as physical, mental and emotional/spiritual beings. The connection to the Temple and discussion about other local groups, also showed the wider support available to people living in their own community. For some of the children this has been a very welcome and significant opportunity to see beyond the confines of their own familiar context, at a time when much of the focus has had a narrow view, due to recent circumstances beyond anyone’s control.