Chiang Mai Morning: Placing Food into the Alms Bowl

Chiang Mai, 2026. Two monks walking past the old city’s red-brick wall. Photo by Paul Lai.

On the morning I was leaving Chiang Mai, pigeons were already on the ground pecking for food, and street cleaners pushed their tools along the road. I carried my GR camera and walked a loop around the old city, wanting to see how this city wakes up.

In front of the red-brick wall, two monks walked by barefoot. Their orange robes were bright in the morning, bright in a quiet way.

The Diamond Sutra opens with: “He put on his robe, took up his bowl, and entered the great city of Śrāvastī to beg for food.”¹

The phrase “beg for food” has always left me a little puzzled. Someone revered as the World-Honored One—why would he, every day, carry a bowl into the city and wait for others to give him that day’s food?

Behind that question, perhaps, is the fact that ever since I was young, the word “beg” has carried a kind of embarrassment; it feels like one should rely on oneself and not open one’s mouth to ask others for anything.

Chiang Mai, 2026. A market vendor places food into a monk’s alms bowl. Photo by Paul Lai.

Following the monks to a market on the edge of the city, I watched vendors pause what they were doing and place food into the bowls. The gesture was brief—so brief my GR’s shutter almost didn’t catch it. But in the moment of palms pressed together, head lowered, and a short pause, a complete story was already told.

That scene brought to mind Chiang Hsun’s As I Heard It: Notes on the Diamond Sutra . I used to be confused by the words “beg for food” too, but standing there in the market, I remembered Chiang’s suggestion that what we’re seeing can also be understood as “making an offering.”

The Diamond Sutra goes on: after the World-Honored One has begged for food, he returns to his residence; after eating, he puts away robe and bowl, washes his feet, lays out his seat, and sits. ¹ It doesn’t rush to deliver some grand doctrine. First it writes only of putting on clothes, holding a bowl, eating, washing feet—and then sitting down.

I had only meant to photograph Chiang Mai’s morning. But after coming back, I kept thinking about these utterly ordinary actions. What I witnessed in Chiang Mai made me think of the Diamond Sutra’s first lesson: in life, you don’t have to understand profound principles first—just do what’s in front of you well.

So many things that look ordinary may already be a kind of practice—and a kind of cultivation.

This is a footnote from my trip, Chiang Mai, Thailand (2026) . More moments photographed along the way are collected on that page.