Leave Cat Hopping Temple and return to the lake to watch the sunset, where the sun slowly hides on the other side of the mountain, dragging long golden shadows on the lake.

The fisherman's trumpet-shaped basket is a special local fishing tool, the basket has no bottom, and the body of the basket is a loose fishing net. The fisherman inserts the basket into the water and traps the fish in the center, so that those who don't have time to escape will get stuck in the net.

After sunset, the sunset turns the whole sky pink, and all this is reflected in the water. Fishermen, oars, and baskets have become the most beautiful decorations of this lake at this moment.

The next day, we came to the largest monastery in Myanmar, with more than 2,000 monks, ranging from 10-year-old novices to 60-year-old abbots, as well as great monks. Among the countries of Buddhism, the Burmese monks have the strictest testing system, and those who pass the Vinaya test are called Vinaya holders.

The person who passes through all the three Tibets is called the Sanzang Master, which is the highest honor for Burmese monks. The monks here mainly study Buddhism and do not need to go out on their own. A man must become a monk once in his life, and there is no limit to the number of times he can become a monk, and the duration can be as long as a few years, as few months or even as little as a week or two.

Only in this way will the society recognize them as adults, they will be respected, and they can enjoy the right to marry after returning to the world, and of course, they can also convert to Buddhism from then on, but once a Burmese woman becomes a nun she will not be able to return to the world for the rest of her life.

Children wearing white robes are equivalent to apprentices, and after a period of study and labor, they can only change into red robes and officially enter the monastery after passing the examination.

When you enter the monastery, you will first pass a small bell tower, and after turning into the bell tower, you will find a large group of courtyards, and the houses with the shadows of trees are dormitories and classrooms for the monks. It feels like a secluded hideaway where monks study Buddhism without hearing the distractions of the outside world.

The so-called "1,000-person monk's meal" is due to the fact that there are the largest number of monks here, and every day at 10 a.m., the scene of 1,000 monks gathering for lunch is quite spectacular.

At 10:15 a.m., the bell rang on time, and thousands of monks walked from their dormitories and from all directions to the path outside the cafeteria. The appearance of this monastery is not special, passing through the corridor in front of the bell tower, at the end of which is the large dining hall, and on both sides of the corridor are the places where the monks study and stay.

Every day at 10:30, everything seems to turn into a performance, and tourists from all over the world gather around the monks' procession with their cameras, shooting wildly at the whole ceremony, all kinds of long guns and short cannons. Over time, it became a famous must-visit attraction, and what was originally a normal life for the monks evolved into a commercial performance due to the gradual increase in tourists?

And the monks seem to be accustomed to, although they are not repulsive, but they will not be easy for you to photograph, and the monks who walk around either dodge, or bow their heads, or simply turn their backs, or look ahead with a blank face, in short, they do not give tourists a good look.

Look at their feet, the very young monks have deformed their feet from walking barefoot every day, and there are marks left on their bodies by the mosquitoes of Myanmar.

The monks were barefoot, neatly lined up in two rows, and walked slowly and orderly with expressionless faces. During this period, the monks did not communicate with the believers, but only silently accepted the alms of the believers, and the contents of the monks' avatar bowls were also varied, such as sweets, bread, glasses, coins, books, and so on.

This is a Theravada Buddhist country, and monks are required to strictly observe noon and begging, and can only eat two meals a day, one at 4 o'clock in the morning and one at 10 o'clock in the morning, from late afternoon to midnight, and no longer eat anything except drinking water.

I heard that the high-ranking monks in the monastery would eat alone, not only because of the abundance of food, but also by attendants. The lower-ranking monks sat in rows on either side of the long table, eating silently without making a sound. Many monks do not eat in the cafeteria, but just sit for a while and then leave with their food.

At the door of the canteen is a crowd of people who depend on alms for their livelihood, and both tourists and monks will give them the food they give for the day. People who get food, even a few pieces of candy, smile genuinely and contentedly.

In this country, the questions about monks are also quite subversive, such as being able to eat meat and having a wife. Of course, you can return to the vulgar, but you can also become a monk again at any time. When a person wants to become a monk, his parents must agree, if he is already married, then his wife must agree, and if he has a job, his boss must also agree.

So in our country, every Golden Week holiday, all the attractions are overcrowded, and in Myanmar, every holiday is all the temples are overcrowded, because many people use the holiday to go to the monastery for a short period of time, until the end of the holiday, they return to the secular to continue working.

Having a wife does not mean that when a person is a monk, he can go home every day to live a married life, but that when a person gets married, he can still go to the temple to be a monk, but at this time his wife's consent is required.

When this person is a monk in the temple, he must follow the monk's lifestyle, eat and live in the temple, go to fasting every morning, and so on, until he is still a monk and no longer a monk, and after he is still a monk, he is still married to his wife.

It used to be said that there are only two colors in Myanmar television, green and orange. Green refers to the army, while orange refers to monk's robes.

Under the long-term influence of Buddhist thought, philanthropy is generosity. In Myanmar, almost every day, there are people who collect donations and give alms, and it has become a habit for Burmese people to pay attention to whether they are willing or not, regardless of the value of the goods.

There is a saying that a sincere person can be rewarded with a gift as small as a banyan tree seed if he gives something as small as a banyan seed, but a person with a dishonest heart can only accumulate merit as small as a banyan tree seed even if he gives something as big as a banyan tree.

If you can give a glass of cool and clean water to passers-by on a hot summer day, it is a very good thing. So, you will see that at the entrance of the Burmese people's homes, at the bus stop in the city, or in the park, pagoda and other places, there are always jugs and cups full of clean water for passers-by to drink.

Alms and donations are everywhere. Tens of thousands of stupas and countless temples were built with donations; 320,000 monks and nuns across the country were given meals, robes and daily necessities by their followers; even the pergolas of city buses and the pavilions and stone benches in parks for tourists to rest were all built with donations and were engraved with the names of the benefactors.

Many people's greatest wish in life is to donate money to repair the pagoda, reluctant to eat and wear, and donate all their savings to build a pagoda when they die.