Humility

A Thai monk, in his saffron robes, between sermons in an old Thai wooden house.

The special dress of ordained people, the robes, comes from the idea of wearing cheap clothes simply as protection against the elements, and of course for modesty, not made from one piece of cloth, but sewn from several pieces. Since dark red was the cheapest colour in Kashmir, the Tibetan tradition has red robes, elsewhere in Asia the colours of the robes vary from yellow to saffron which had had cultural associations in India, and particularly in east Asia to grey or black.