The 108 bowls of Wat Pho

The temple and the Buddha

Wat Pho — properly Wat Phra Chetuphon — is one of the oldest temples in Bangkok and predates the city as a capital. It is also, by long tradition, a place of learning: its inscriptions on medicine and massage are on the UNESCO Memory of the World register, and the national school of Thai massage still operates on the grounds.

The Reclining Buddha is forty-six metres long and fifteen high, covered in gold leaf, and fills its hall so completely that you can never see all of it at once. The soles of the feet are three metres tall and inlaid with mother-of-pearl showing 108 auspicious characteristics by which a Buddha is identified.

Why 108

That number is the link. The 108 signs on the feet, and the 108 bowls along the wall, are the same count deliberately repeated. The number recurs throughout Buddhist and Hindu practice — 108 beads on a mala, 108 bells rung at the Japanese new year — and is variously explained as the number of defilements to be overcome or the product of a set of sacred multiples. No single explanation is authoritative and the number's persistence is older than any of them.

You buy a small bowl of satang coins at the entrance to the corridor for a modest sum, and the money supports the upkeep of the temple. This is stated openly, which makes it one of the more honest arrangements in this guide: you are told what your coins are for before you give them.

Walking the line

One coin per bowl, in order, without hurrying. If you run out before the end, that is common and not treated as a failure. The intention is that the walk lasts, that the same small motion is repeated over a hundred times, and that you finish somewhere different from where you started.

The sound is the part people remember. Bronze bowls at slightly different tunings, struck by small coins at the pace of a slow walk, with several people doing it at once — it is an accidental instrument, and standing in the middle of that corridor with your eyes shut is worth the entrance fee on its own.

It is said to bring good fortune and to help make merit. In Thai Buddhist practice merit is the operative concept, and it is not quite the same as luck: it accumulates through action, and giving is one of its principal sources.

If you go

Wat Pho sits beside the Grand Palace, and the two are usually visited together. Come early: it opens at eight and the tour groups arrive around ten.

The dress code is enforced. Shoulders and knees covered for everyone; shoes are removed before entering the hall of the Reclining Buddha and carried in the bag provided.

Ignore anyone outside who tells you the temple is closed today for a ceremony and offers an alternative tour. It is not closed. That particular approach has been running for decades.

Questions people ask

What does 108 mean at Wat Pho?

It matches the 108 auspicious signs inlaid in mother-of-pearl on the soles of the Reclining Buddha's feet. The number recurs across Buddhist and Hindu practice and has several competing explanations.

Can you use your own coins?

The convention is to buy the small bowl of coins provided at the entrance, which is how the practice supports the temple.

Keep reading

• Lam Tsuen, Tai Po, Hong Kong

  The Wishing Trees of Lam Tsuen

  Wishes written on red paper, tied to an orange and thrown into a banyan — a tradition that had to be redesigned after a branch came down.

• How to make a wish

  Strip away the local detail and every wishing tradition on earth does the same four things. Here they are, and here is why they work.

• Why we throw coins into fountains

  The habit predates fountains, predates Christianity, and began as something considerably more serious than luck.