Early morning around my hostel in Yangon, I saw young monks and old alike who were roaming the streets going house to house. They always walk on a single line. They were uniformly clad in their robes and holding pots to place the collected food and alms from the neighborhood. I heard that the monastery was just close by so they were always apparent in the community. These were some of the groups participated in the Saffron Revolution attributed to their robes’ color during the anti-government protests in 2007 against the fuel price increase as immediate cause.

I was amazed also that a multitude of young girls in robe and shaven heads was sitting side by side. They recited a prayer. They are novitiates to become nuns. Novice is called samaneri whereas a fully ordained Buddhist nun is called bhikkhuni. They are only fully ordained after reaching the age of 20. Samanera is the term for novice monk and fully ordained monk at age 20 to be called as bhikkhu. Both males and females follow the monastic discipline called Vinaya, a set of rules.

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