A Bhikkhu Manual

This small (both in dimensions and in length) book, printed as a revised and expanded second edition in mid-2003, is meant specifically for the use of Theravada Buddhist monks, and even more specifically for those amongst them able to read English and romanized Pali. It is a handbook meant to assist those living their life practising the Buddha's Teaching within a monastic context. Most people within the category, wherever they may be on this planet, are likely to have already recieved a copy of this book should they wish to have one.

However, it is not impossible that there may also be laypeople who will find something of interest in this book -- maybe in the Essential Chants section, maybe in the glimpses of monastic life available in the Vinaya Notes section, or maybe in the second Appendix to the Vinaya Notes where much wise advice is collected in the most compressed and insistent way -- and therefore it is here made available for download.

Here is a section of the preface to the book:

This small handbook is intended to be no more than an aid to memory, and to provide only the necessary minimum of both the Pali chanting and Pali formulae used regularly by those living the bhikkhu life....

The Pali chants are those traditionally used in Thailand. For this second edition we have expanded the number of chants considerably, and have also included some chants from the Sri Lankan tradition.

A major effort has been made to achieve greater accuracy in transliterating the Pali. Where there are variable readings we have chosen to use the Thai versions of the texts as the standard. However references have now been given for each chant, and these point to the universally available Pali Text Society edition of the Pali Canon.

Since different communities may arrange the chanting in slightly different ways, some alternatives or variations are pointed out.

A few English translations have been included and these have been taken mostly from the Amaravati Chanting Book....

The book is here available as a downloadable Adobe Acrobat (= "electronic book") file, suitable for printing, though suitable also for on-screen reading. To view or print the file, you need to have the freeware Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your system (-- if you don't already have the Reader, you can download it from any of the major software download sites on the Web, or from  http://www.adobe.com).

Download the book, "A Bhikkhu Manual", its two sections compressed into a zip file, bhikkhu_manual.zip (532KB), by clicking here.

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