Debate:

debate
▶ dÇ'beÇt
■ n [C, U]
● (က) စကားအေခ်အတင္ေျပာျခင္း။ စကားရည္လုပြဲ။ စကားစစ္ထိုးပြဲ။

After a long debate, the House of Commons approved the bill. m a debate on abortion/capital punishment m to open the debate (ie be the first to speak) m the motion under debate (ie being discussed). (ခ) ျငင္းခံုျခင္း။ ေဆြးေႏြးျခင္း။ After much debate, we decided to move to Mandalay. m We had long debates at college about politics. m The importance of this development has been the subject of much/some debate. v ၁။ ~ (about sth) ေဝဖန္ေဆြးေႏြးသည္။ What are they debating about? m The issue/motion was first debated in the House 25 years ago. m We’re just debating what to do next. ၂။ ခ်ီတံုခ်တံု စဥ္းစားသည္။ I debated it for a while, then decided not to go. m I’m debating where to go on holiday. m She debated whether or not to tell him the news. m He debated buying a new car, but didn't in the end. o debater n စကားအေခ်အတင္ေျပာသူ။ အဆိုရွင္။ အေခ်ရွင္။
Debate ရဲ႕ အဘိဓာန္ အဖြင့္ေလးနဲ႔ အတူ အေမရိကန္ ဒုသမၼတေလာင္း ႏွစ္ေယာက္ရဲ႕ စကားစစ္ထိုးပြဲေလး ကို CNN ကူးယူၿပီး ပို႔စ္အျဖစ္တင္ေပးလိုက္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ စကားစစ္ထိုးပြဲရဲ႕ အက်ိဳးရလာဒ္ကို ခဏထားလို႔ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံၾကီးမွာ မၾကာမတင္ေသာ ကာလမွာ သူတို႔ႏွစ္ေယာက္ထဲက တစ္ေယာက္ကေတာ့ (ဥပေစၧဒက ကံေၾကာင့္ ေသဆံုးမႈမွ တစ္ပါး) က်ိန္းေသေပါက္ ဒုတိယ သမၼတျဖစ္ေတာ့မွာပါ။ အဲဒီလို မျဖစ္ေသးတဲ့ သမၼေလာင္း ႏွစ္ေယာက္ရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ေပၚလစီေတြနဲ႔ ပါတ္သက္လို႔ ဘယ္သူက ဘာျဖစ္တယ္။ ဘယ္ေနရာမွာေတာ့ အားနည္းခ်က္ရွိတယ္။ ဘယ္ကိစၥေတြမွာ မွားယြင္းခဲ့တယ္ စသည္ျဖင့္ အားသာခ်က္ အားနည္းခ်က္ေတြ ကို ရိုးသားမႈ၊ ပြင့္လင္းမႈ ေတြ အေျခခံၿပီး အေျခအတင္ေျပာဆိုတာကို သေဘာက်လို႔ ပို႔စ္ အျဖစ္တင္လိုက္တာပါ။ အဲဒီလို အေနအထားမ်ိဳးေတြ ဦးဇင္းတို႔ရဲ႕ ဗုဒၶဘာသာတရားေတြ ထြန္းကားပါတယ္ဆို တဲ့ ေရႊျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံၾကီးမွာေကာ မရွိသင့္ဘူးလား။ ႏိုင္ငံေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေခါင္းေဆာင္ လုပ္မဲ့သူေတြ မရိုးသားသင့္ဘူးလား၊ မပြင့္လင္းသင့္ဘူးလား၊ မလြတ္လပ္သင့္ဘူးလား။ ရိုးသားမႈ ပြင့္လင္းမႈေတြ လြတ္လပ္မႈ၊ တရားမွ်တမႈေတြကို ရိုးသားစြာ၊ ပြင့္လင္းစြာ ထုတ္ေဖၚေျပာဆိုခြင့္၊ ေရးသားခြင့္ေတြ မရွိသင့္ဘူးလား။ အေမရိကန္ ႏိုင္ငံကလူေတြလဲ လူေတြပါပဲ၊ ဦးဇင္းတို႔ ေရႊျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက လူေတြလဲ လူေတြပါပဲ။ ေဆြမ်ိဳးေပါက္ေဖၚ ေတာ္စပ္ပါတဲ့ တရုတ္ျပည္က လူေတြလဲ လူေတြပါပဲ။ ဒါဆိုဘာေတြ ကြာျခားေနၾကတာပါ လဲ။ ဘာေၾကာင့္ ကြာျခားေနၾကတာပါလဲ။
တိုင္းျပည္တစ္ျပည္မွာ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူနဲ႔၊ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခံ လူ ရယ္လို႔ ႏွစ္မ်ိဳးပဲ ရွိပါတယ္။ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တဲ့သူက ဘယ္လို အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မွာ လဲ ဆိုတဲ့ အေပၚမွာပဲ မူတည္ပါတယ္။ ဒို႔ဖိႏွိပ္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မလား၊ တရားမွ်တစြာ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မလား၊ ဥပေဒနဲ႔ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မလား၊ ဥပေဒမဲ့ အာဏာနဲ႔ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မလား၊ ဓားလွံ လက္နက္ မိုးၿပီး အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မွာလား၊ ဒုို႔ခ်ည္းပဲ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မွာလား၊ ခြဲေ၀ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မွာလား၊ ျပည္သူက ေရႊးခ်ယ္ေစတဲ့ စနစ္နဲ႔ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မွာလား။ အက်ိဳး အျပစ္ကေတာ့ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူလူေတြရဲ႕ စီမံခန္႔ခြဲမႈ။ တိုင္းသူျပည္သားေတြ အေပၚမွာ ေစတနာထားမႈ စသည့္ အေၾကာင္းတရားမ်ား အားေလ်ာ္စြာ အေကာင္း အဆိုးေတြ ေတြၾကရမွာပါ။
ဆိုလိုခ်င္တာက ဦးဇင္းတို႔ ႏိုင္ငံမွာေရာ တိုင္းျပည္ရဲ႕ အက်ိဳးအတြက္၊ ျပည္သူေတြရဲ႕ အက်ိဳးအတြက္ အထက္ပါ Debate ဆိုတာမ်ိဳးေတြ မရွိသင့္ဘူးလား။
ကိုယ့္အျမင္ေလးေတြ comments ေတြ ထားခဲ့ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဦးဇင္းကေတာ့ ရွိသင့္တယ္လို႔ ထင္ပါတယ္။ ရွိသင့္တယ္ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ရွိဘို႔ အတြက္ ဘာေတြ လုိအပ္သလဲ ဆိုတာ ဆက္လက္ ေဆြးေႏြး စဥ္းစားၾကပါကုန္။

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THE BUDDHA'S PARINIBBĀNA (DEATH)

THE BUDDHA'S PARINIBBĀNA (DEATH)

"The sun shines by day. The moon is radiant by night. Armoured shines the warrior King.
Meditating the brāhmana shines.
But all day and night the Buddha shines in glory."
-- DHAMMAPADA

The Buddha was an extraordinary being. Nevertheless He was mortal, subject to disease and decay as are all beings. He was conscious that He would pass away in His eightieth year. Modest as He was He decided to breathe His last not in renowned cities like Sāvatthi or Rājagaha, where His activities were centred, but in a distant and insignificant hamlet like Kusinārā.

In His own words the Buddha was in His eightieth year like "a worn-out cart." Though old in age, yet, being strong in will. He preferred to traverse the long and tardy way on foot accompanied by His favourite disciple, Venerable Ānanda. It may be mentioned that Venerable Sāriputta and Moggallāna, His two chief disciples, predeceased Him. So did Venerable Rāhula and Yasodhārā.

Rājagaha, the capital of Magadha, was the starting point of His last journey.

Before his impending departure from Rājagaha King Ajātasattu, the parricide, contemplating an unwarranted attack on the prosperous Vajjian Republic, sent his Prime Minister to the Buddha to know the Buddha's view about his wicked project.

Conditions of welfare

The Buddha declared that (i) as long as the Vajjians meet frequently and hold many meetings; (2) as long as they meet together in unity, rise in unity and perform their duties in unity; (3) as long as they enact nothing not enacted, abrogate nothing that has already been enacted, act in accordance with the already established ancient Vajjian principles; (4) as long as they support, respect, venerate and honour the Vajjian elders, and pay regard to their worthy speech; (5) as long as no women or girls of their families are detained by force or abduction; (6) as long as they support, respect, venerate, honour those objects of worship -- internal and external -- and do not neglect those righteous ceremonies held before; (7) as long as the rightful protection, defence and support for the Arahants shall be provided by the Vajjians so that Arahants who have not come may enter the realm and those who have entered the realm may live in peace -- so long may the Vajjians be expected not to decline, but to prosper.

Hearing these seven conditions of welfare which the Buddha Himself taught the Vajjians, the Prime Minister, Vassakāra, took leave of the Buddha, fully convinced that the Vajjians could not be overcome by the King of Magadha in battle, without diplomacy or breaking up their alliance.

The Buddha thereupon availed Himself of this opportunity to teach seven similar conditions of welfare mainly for the benefit of His disciples. He summoned all the Bhikkhus in Rājagaha and said:

(1) "As long, O disciples, as the Bhikkhus assemble frequently and hold frequent meetings; (2) as long as the Bhikkhus meet together in unity, rise in unity, and perform the duties of the Sangha in unity; (3) as long as the Bhikkhus shall promulgate nothing that has not been promulgated, abrogate not what has been promulgated, and act in accordance with the already prescribed rules; (4) as long as the Bhikkhus support, respect, venerate and honour those long-ordained Theras of experience, the fathers and leaders of the Order, and respect their worthy speech; (5) as long as the Bhikkhus fall not under the influence of uprisen attachment that leads to repeated births; (6) as long as the Bhikkhus shall delight in forest retreats; (7) as long as the Bhikkhus develop mindfulness within themselves so that disciplined co-celibates who have not come yet may do so and those who are already present may live in peace -- so long may the Bhikkhus be expected not to decline, but to prosper.

As long as these seven conditions of welfare shall continue to exist amongst the Bhikkhus, as long as the Bhikkhus are well-instructed in these conditions -- so long may they be expected not to decline, but to prosper.

With boundless compassion the Buddha enlightened the Bhikkhus on seven other conditions of welfare as follows:

"As long as the Bhikkhus shall not be fond of, or delight in, or engage in, business; as long as the Bhikkhus shall not be fond of, or delight in, or engage in, gossiping; as long as the Bhikkhus shall not be fond of, or delight in sleeping; as long as the Bhikkhus shall not be fond of, or delight in, or indulge in, society; as long as the Bhikkhus shall neither have, nor fall under, the influence of base desires; as long as the Bhikkhus shall not have evil friends or associates and shall not be prone to evil -- so long the Bhikkhus shall not stop at mere lesser, special acquisition without attaining Arahantship."

Furthermore, the Buddha added that as long as the Bhikkhus shall be devout, modest, conscientious, full of learning, persistently energetic, constantly mindful and full of wisdom -- so long may the Bhikkhus be expected not to decline, but to prosper.

Sāriputta's Praise

Enlightening the Bhikkhus with several other discourses, the Buddha, accompanied by Venerable Ānanda, left Rājagaha and went to Ambalatthika and thence to Nālandā, where He stayed at the Pāvārika mango grove. On this occasion the Venerable Sāriputta approached the Buddha and extolled the wisdom of the Buddha, saying: "Lord, so pleased am I with the Exalted One that methinks there never was, nor will there be, nor is there now, any other ascetic or brahman who is greater and wiser than the Buddha as regards self enlightenment."

The Buddha, who did not approve of such an encomium from a disciple of His, reminded Venerable Sāriputta that he had burst into such a song of ecstasy without fully appreciating the merits of the Buddhas of the past and of the future.

Venerable Sāriputta acknowledged that he had no intimate knowledge of all the supremely Enlightened Ones, but maintained that he was acquainted with the Dhamma lineage, the process through which all attain supreme Buddhahood, that is by overcoming the five Hindrances namely, (i) sense-desires, (ii) ill-will, (iii) sloth and torpor, (iv) restlessness and brooding, (v) indecision; by weakening the strong passions of the heart through wisdom; by thoroughly establishing the mind in the four kinds of Mindfulness; and by rightly developing the seven factors of Enlightenment.

Pātaliputta

From Nālandā the Buddha proceeded to Pātaligāma where Sunīdha and Vassakāra, the chief ministers of Magadha, were building a fortress to repel the powerful Vajjians.

Here the Buddha resided in an empty house and, perceiving with His supernormal vision thousands of deities haunting the different sites, predicted that Pātaliputta would

become the chief city inasmuch as it is a residence for Ariyas, a trading centre and a place for the interchange of all kinds of wares, but would be subject to three dangers arising from fire, water and dissension.

Hearing of the Buddha's arrival at Pātaligāma, the ministers invited the Buddha and His disciples for a meal at their house. After the meal was over the Buddha exhorted them in these verses:

"Wheresoe'er the prudent man shall take up his abode.
Let him support the brethren there, good men of self- control,
And give the merit of his gifts to the deities who haunt the spot.
Revered, they will revere him: honoured, they honour him again,
Are gracious to him as a mother to her own, her only son.
And the man who has the grace of the gods,
good fortune he beholds."

In honour of His visit to the city they named the gate by which He left "Gotama-Gate", and they desired to name the ferry by which He would cross "Gotama-Ferry", but the Buddha crossed the overflowing Ganges by His psychic powers while the people were busy making preparations to cross.

Future states

From the banks of the Ganges He went to Kotigama and thence to the village of Nadika and stayed at the Brick Hall. Thereupon the Venerable Ānanda approached the Buddha and respectfully questioned Him about the future states of several persons who died in that village. The Buddha patiently revealed the destinies of the persons concerned and taught how to acquire the Mirror of Truth so that an Arya disciple endowed therewith may predict of himself thus: "Destroyed for me is birth in a woeful state, animal realm, Peta realm, sorrowful, evil, and low states. A Stream-Winner am I, not subject to fall, assured of final Enlightenment."

The Mirror of the Dhamma (Dhammādāsa)

'What, O Ānanda, is the Mirror of the Dhamma?

"Herein a noble disciple reposes perfect confidence in the Buddha reflecting on His virtues thus:

"Thus, indeed, is the Exalted One, a Worthy One, a fully Enlightened One, Endowed with wisdom and conduct, an Accomplished One, Knower of the worlds, an Incomparable Charioteer for the training of individuals, the Teacher of gods and men, Omniscient, and Holy."

He reposes perfect confidence in the Dhamma reflecting on the characteristics of the Dhamma thus:

"Well expounded is the Dhamma by the Exalted One, to be self-realized, immediately effective, inviting investiga-tion, leading onwards (to Nibbāna), to be understood by the wise, each one for himself."

He reposes perfect confidence in the Sangha reflecting on the virtues of the Sangha thus:

"Of good conduct is the Order of the disciples of the Exalted One; of upright conduct is the Order of the disciples of the Exalted One; of wise conduct is the Order of the disciples of the Exalted One. These four pairs of persons constitute eight individuals. This Order of the disciples of the Exalted One is worthy of gifts, of hospitality, of offerings, of reverence, is an incomparable field of merit to the world."

He becomes endowed with virtuous conduct pleasing to the Aryas, unbroken, intact, unspotted, unblemished, free, praised by the wise, untarnished by desires, conducive to concentration.

From Nadika the Buddha went to the flourishing city of Vesāli and stayed at the grove of Ambapāli, the beautiful courtesan.

Anticipating her visit, the Buddha in order to safeguard His disciples, advised them to be mindful and reflective and taught them the way of mindfulness.

Ambapāli

Ambapāli, hearing of the Buddha's arrival at her mango grove, approached the Buddha and respectfully invited Him and His disciples for a meal on the following day. The Buddha accepted her invitation in preference to the invitation of the Licchavi nobles which He received later. Although the Licchavi Nobles offered a large sum of money to obtain from her the opportunity of providing this meal to the Buddha, she politely declined this offer. As invited, the Buddha had His meal at Ambapāli's residence. After the meal Ambapāli, the courtesan, who was a potential Arahant, very generously offered her spacious mango grove to the Buddha and His disciples.

As it was the rainy season the Buddha advised His disciples to spend their Retreat in or around Vesāli, and He Himself decided to spend the Retreat, which was His last and forty-fifth one, at Beluva, a village near Vesāli.

The Buddha's Illness

In this year He had to suffer from a severe sickness, and "sharp pains came upon Him even unto death". With His iron will, mindful and reflective, the Buddha bore them without any complaint.

The Buddha was now conscious that He would soon pass away. But He thought that it would not be proper to pass away without addressing His attendant disciples and giving instructions to the Order. So He decided to subdue His sickness by His will and live by constantly experiencing the bliss of Arahantship.

Immediately after recovery, the Venerable Ānanda approached the Buddha, and expressing his pleasure on His recovery, remarked that he took some little comfort from the thought that the Buddha would not pass away without any instruction about the Order.

The Buddha made a memorable and significant reply which clearly reveals the unique attitude of the Buddha, Dhamma and the Sangha.

The Buddha's Exhortation

"What, O Ānanda, does the Order of disciples expect of me? I have taught the Dhamma making no distinction between esoteric and exoteric doctrine. In respect of the truths the Tathāgata has no closed fist of a teacher. It may occur to anyone: "It is I who will lead the Order of Bhikkhus," or "The Order of Bhikkhus is dependent upon me," or "It is he who should instruct any matter concerning the Order."

"The Tathāgata, Ānanda, thinks not that it is he who should lead the Order of Bhikkhus, or that the Order is dependent upon him. Why then should He leave instructions in any matter concerning the Order?"

"I, too, Ānanda, am now decrepit, aged, old, advanced in years, and have reached my end. I am in my eightieth year. Just as a worn-out cart is made to move with the aid of thongs, even so methinks the body of the Tathāgata is moved with the aid of thongs. Whenever, Ānanda, the Tathāgata lives plunged in signless mental one-pointedness, by the cessation of certain feelings and unmindful of all objects, then only is the body of the Tathāgata at ease."

"Therefore, Ānanda, be ye islands unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Seek no external refuge. Live with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge. Betake to no external refuge.

"How, Ānanda, does a Bhikkhu live as an island unto himself, as a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge, with the Dhamma as an island, with the Dhamma as a refuge, seeking no external refuge?"

"Herein, Ānanda, a Bhikkhu lives strenuous, reflective, watchful, abandoning covetousness in this world, constantly developing mindfulness with respect to body, feelings, consciousness, and Dhamma."

"Whosoever shall live either now or after my death as an island unto oneself, as a refuge unto oneself, seeking no external refuge, with the Dhamma as an island, with the Dhamma as a refuge, seeking no external refuge, those Bhikkhus shall be foremost amongst those who are intent on discipline."

Here the Buddha lays special emphasis on the importance of individual striving for purification and deliverance from the ills of life. There is no efficacy in praying to others or in depending on others. One might question why Buddhists should seek refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and the Sangha when the Buddha had explicitly advised His followers not to seek refuge in others. In seeking refuge in the Triple Gem (Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha) Buddhists only regard the Buddha as an instructor who merely shows the Path of Deliverance, the Dhamma as the only way or means, the Sangha as the living examples of the way of life to be lived. By merely seeking refuge in them Buddhists do not consider that they would gain their deliverance.

Though old and feeble the Buddha not only availed Himself of every opportunity to instruct the Bhikkhus in various ways but also regularly went on His rounds for alms with bowl in hand when there were no private invitations. One day as usual He went in quest of alms in Vesāli and after His meal went with Venerable Ānanda to the Capala Cetiya, and, speaking of the delightfulness of Vesāli and other shrines in the city, addressed the Venerable Ānanda thus:

"Whosoever has cultivated, developed, mastered, made a basis of, experienced, practised, thoroughly acquired the four Means of Accomplishment (Iddhipāda) could, if he so desires, live for an aeon (kappa) or even a little more (kappāvasesam). The Tathāgata, O Ānanda, has cultivated, developed, mastered, made a basis of, experienced, practised, thoroughly acquired the four Means of Accomplishment. If He so desires, the Tathāgata could remain for an aeon or even a little more."

The text adds that "even though a suggestion so evident and so clear was thus given by the Exalted One, the Venerable Ānanda was incapable of comprehending it so as to invite the Buddha to remain for an aeon for the good, benefit, and the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, benefit, and happiness of gods and men".

The Sutta attributes the reason to the fact that the mind of Venerable Ānanda was, at the moment, dominated by Māra the Evil One.

The Buddha Announces His Death

The Buddha appeared on earth to teach the seekers of Truth things as they truly are and a unique path for the deliverance of all ills of life. During His long and successful ministry He fulfilled His noble mission to the satisfaction of both Himself and His followers. In His eightieth year He felt that His work was over. He had given all necessary instructions to His earnest followers -- both the householders and the homeless ones -- and they were not only firmly established in His Teachings but were also capable of expounding them to others. He therefore decided not to control the remainder of His life-span by His will-power and by experiencing the bliss of Arahantship. While residing at the Capala Cetiya the Buddha announced to Venerable Ānanda that He would pass away in three months' time.

Venerable Ānanda instantly recalled the saying of the Buddha and begged of Him to live for a kappa for the good and happiness of all.

"Enough Ānanda, beseech not the Tathāgata. The time for making such a request is now past," was the Buddha's reply.

He then spoke on the fleeting nature of life and went with Venerable Ānanda to the Pinnacled Hall at Mahāvana and requested him to assemble all the Bhikkhus in the neighbourhood of Vesāli.

To the assembled Bhikkhus the Buddha spoke as follows:

"Whatever truths have been expounded to you by me, study them well, practise, cultivate and develop them so that this Holy life may last long and be perpetuated out of compassion for the world, for the good and happiness of the many, for the good and happiness of gods and men".

"What are those truths? They are:

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness,
The Four Kinds of Right Endeavour,
The Four Means of Accomplishment,
The Five Faculties,
The Five Powers,
The Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and
The Noble Eightfold Path."

He then gave the following final exhortation and publicly announced the time of His death to the Sangha.

The Buddha's Last Words

"Behold, O Bhikkhus, now I speak to you. Transient are all conditioned things. Strive on with diligence. The passing away of the Tathāgata will take place before long. At the end of three months from now the Tathāgata will pass away."

"Ripe is my age. Short is my life. Leaving you I shall depart. I have made myself my refuge. O Bhikkhus, be diligent, mindful and virtuous. With well-directed thoughts guard your mind. He who lives heedfully in this Dispensation will escape life's wandering and put an end to suffering. "

Casting His last glance at Vesāli, the Buddha went with Venerable Ānanda to Bhandagama and addressing the Bhikkhus said:

Morality, concentration, wisdom and Deliverance supreme.
These things were realized by the renowned Gotama.
Comprehending them, the Buddha taught the doctrine to the disciples.
The Teacher with sight has put an end to sorrow and has extinguished all passions.

The Four Great References

Passing thence from village to village, the Buddha arrived at Bhoganagara and there taught the Four Great Citations or References (Mahāpadesa) by means of which the Word of the Buddha could be tested and clarified in the following discourse:

(1) A Bhikkhu may say thus:-- From the mouth of the Buddha Himself have I heard, have I received thus: 'This is the Doctrine, this is the Discipline, this is the teaching of the Master?' His words should neither be accepted nor rejected. Without either accepting or rejecting such words, study thoroughly every word and syllable and then put them beside the Discourses (Sutta) and compare them with the Disciplinary Rules (Vinaya). If, when so compared, they do not harmonise with the Discourses and do not agree with the Disciplinary Rules, then you may come to the conclusion. "Certainly this is not the word of the Exalted One, this has been wrongly grasped by the Bhikkhu."

Therefore you should reject it.

If, when compared and contrasted, they harmonise with the Discourses and agree with the Disciplinary Rules, you may come to the conclusion: "Certainly this is the word of the Exalted One, this has correctly been grasped by the Bhikkhu".

Let this be regarded as the First Great Reference.

(2) Again a Bhikkhu may say thus:? 'In such a monastery lives the Sangha together with leading Theras. From the mouth of that Sangha have I heard, have I received thus: 'This is the Doctrine, this is the Discipline, this is the Master's Teaching.' His words should neither be accepted nor rejected. Without either accepting or rejecting such words, study thoroughly every word and syllable and then put them beside the Discourses (Sutta) and compare them with the Disciplinary Rules (Vinaya). If, when so compared, they do not harmonise with the Discourses and do not agree with the Disciplinary Rules, then you may come to the conclusion: 'Certainly this is not the word of the Exalted One, this has been wrongly grasped by the Bhikkhu."

Therefore you should reject it.

If, when compared and contrasted, they harmonise with the Discourses and agree with the Disciplinary Rules, you may come to the conclusion: "Certainly this is the word of the Exalted One, this has correctly been grasped by the Bhikkhu."

Let this be regarded as the second Great Reference.

(3) Again a Bhikkhu may say thus:-- 'In such a monastery dwell many Theras and Bhikkhus of great learning, versed in the teachings, proficient in the Doctrine, Vinaya, Discipline, and Matrices (Mātikā). From the mouth of those Theras have I heard, have I received thus: 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teaching of the Master. His words should neither be accepted nor rejected. Without either accepting or rejecting such words, study thoroughly every word and syllable and then put them beside the Discourses (Sutta) and compare them with the Disciplinary Rules (Vinaya). If, when so compared, they do not harmonise with the Discourses and do not agree with the Disciplinary Rules, then you may come to the conclusion: "Certainly this is not the word of the Exalted One, this has been wrongly grasped by the Bhikkhu."

Therefore you should reject it.

If, when compared and contrasted, they harmonise with the Suttas and agree with the Vinaya, then you may come to the conclusion: "Certainly this is the word of the Exalted One, this has been correctly grasped by the Bhikkhu."

Let this be regarded as the Third Great Reference.

(4) Again a Bhikkhu may say thus:? 'In such a monastery lives an elderly Bhikkhu of great learning, versed in the teachings, proficient in the Dhamma, Vinaya, and Matrices. From the mouth of that Thera have I heard, have I received thus: 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Master's Teaching.' His words should neither be accepted nor rejected. Without either accepting or rejecting such words, study thoroughly every word and syllable and then put them beside the Discourses (Sutta) and compare them with the Disciplinary Rules (Vinaya). If, when so compared, they do not harmonise with the Discourses and do not agree with the Disciplinary Rules, then you may come to the conclusion: "Certainly this is not the word of the Exalted One, this has been wrongly grasped by the Bhikkhu."

Therefore you should reject it.

If, when compared and contrasted, they harmonise with the Suttas and agree with the Vinaya, then you may come to the conclusion: "Certainly this is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Master's Teachings."

Let this be regarded as the Fourth Great Reference.

These, Bhikkhus, are the Four Great References.

The Buddha's Last Meal

Enlightening the disciples with such edifying discourses, the Buddha proceeded to Pava where the Buddha and His disciples were entertained by Cunda the smith. With great fervour Cunda prepared a special delicious dish called 'Sūkaramaddava'. As advised by the Buddha, Cunda served only the Buddha with the Sūkaramaddava and buried the remainder in the ground.

After the meal the Buddha suffered from an attack of dysentery and sharp pains came upon Him. Calmly He bore them without any complaint.

Though extremely weak and severely ill, the Buddha decided to walk to Kusinārā His last resting place, a distance of about three gāvutas from Pava. In the course of this last journey it is stated that the Buddha had to sit down in about twenty-five places owing to His weakness and illness.

On the way He sat at the foot of a tree and asked Venerable Ānanda to fetch some water as He was feeling thirsty. With difficulty Venerable Ānanda secured some pure water from a streamlet which, a few moments earlier, was flowing fouled and turbid, stirred up by the wheels of five hundred carts.

At that time a man named Pukkusa, approached the Buddha, and expressed his admiration at the serenity of the Buddha, and, hearing a sermon about His imperturbability, offered Him a pair of robes of gold.

As directed by the Buddha, he robed the Buddha with one and Venerable Ānanda with the other.

When Venerable Ānanda placed the pair of robes on the Buddha, to his astonishment, he found the skin of the Buddha exceeding bright, and said ? "How wonderful a thing is it, Lord and how marvellous, that the colour of the skin of the Exalted One should be so clear, so exceeding bright. For when I placed even this pair of robes of burnished gold and ready for wear on the body of the Exalted One, it seemed as if it had lost its splendour."

Thereupon the Buddha explained that on two occasions the colour of the skin of the Tathāgata becomes clear and exceeding bright -- namely on the night on which the Tathāgata attains Buddhahood and on the night the Tathāgata passes away.

He then pronounced that at the third watch of the night on that day He would pass away in the Sāla Grove of the Mallas between the twin Sāla trees, in the vicinity of Kusinārā.

Cunda's Meritorious Meal

He took His last bath in the river Kukuttha and resting a while spoke thus -- "Now it may happen, Ānanda, that some one should stir up remorse in Cunda the smith, saying: "This is evil to thee, Cunda, and loss to thee in that when the Tathāgata had eaten His last meal from thy provisions, then He died." Any such remorse in Cunda the smith should be checked by saying: "This is good to thee, Cunda, and gain to thee, in that when the Tathāgata had eaten His last meal from thy provision, then He died." From the very mouth of the Exalted One, Cunda, have I heard, from His very mouth have I received this saying: "These two offerings of food are of equal fruit, and of equal profit, and of much greater fruit and of much greater profit than any other, and which are the two?

The offering of food which when a Tathāgata has eaten He attains to supreme and perfect insight, and the offering of food which when a Tathāgata has eaten He passes away by that utter cessation in which nothing whatever remains behind -- these two offerings of food are of equal fruit and of equal profit, and of much greater fruit, and of much greater profit than any other.

There has been laid up by Cunda the smith a Kamma redounding to length of life, redounding to good birth, redounding to good fortune, redounding to good fame, redounding to the inheritance of heaven and of sovereign power."

In this way, Ānanda, should be checked any remorse in Cunda the smith."

Uttering these words of consolation out of compassion to the generous donor of His last meal, He went to the Sāla Grove of the Mallas and asked Venerable Ānanda to prepare a couch with the head to the north between the twin Sāla trees. The Buddha laid Himself down on His right side with one leg resting on the other, mindful and self-possessed.

How the Buddha is Honoured

Seeing the Sāla trees blooming with flowers out of season, and other outward demonstrations of piety, the Buddha exhorted His disciples thus:

"It is not thus, Ānanda, that the Tathāgata is respected, reverenced, venerated, honoured, and revered. Whatever Bhikkhu or Bhikkhuni, Upāsaka or Upāsika lives in accordance with the Teaching, conducts himself dutifully, and acts righteously, it is he who respects, reverences, venerates, honours, and reveres the Tathāgata with the highest homage. Therefore, Ānanda, should you train yourselves thus -- "Let us live in accordance with the Teaching, dutifully conducting ourselves, and acting righteously."

At this moment the Venerable Upavāna, who was once attendant of the Buddha, was standing in front of the Buddha fanning Him. The Buddha asked Him to stand aside.

Venerable Ānanda wished to know why he was asked to stand aside as he was very serviceable to the Buddha.

The Buddha replied that Devas had assembled in large numbers to see the Tathāgata and they were displeased because he was standing in their way concealing Him.

The Four Sacred Places

The Buddha then spoke of four places, made sacred by His association, which faithful followers should visit with reverence and awe. They are:

1. The birthplace of the Buddha ,

2. The place where the Buddha attained Enlightenment,

3. The place where the Buddha established the Incomparable Wheel of Truth (Dhammacakka), and

4. The place where the Buddha attained Parinibbāna.

"And they", added the Buddha, "who shall die with a believing heart, in the course of their pilgrimage, will be reborn, on the dissolution of their body, after death, in a heavenly state."

Conversion of Subhadda

At that time a wandering ascetic, named Subhadda, was living at Kusinārā. He heard the news that the Ascetic Gotama would attain Parinibbāna in the last watch of the night. And he thought -- I have heard grown-up and elderly teachers, and their teachers, the wandering ascetics, say that seldom and very seldom, indeed, do Exalted, Fully Enlightened Arahants arise in this world. Tonight in the last watch the Ascetic Gotama will attain Parinibbāna. A doubt has arisen in me, and I have confidence in the Ascetic Gotama. Capable, indeed, is the Ascetic Gotama to teach the doctrine so that I may dispel my doubt.

Thereupon Subhadda, the wandering ascetic, went to Upavattana Sāla grove of the Mallas where the Venerable Ānanda was, and approaching him spoke as follows: "I have heard grown-up and elderly teachers and their teachers, the wandering ascetics, say that seldom, and very seldom, indeed, do Exalted, Fully Enlightened Arahants arise in this world. Tonight in the last watch the Ascetic Gotama will attain Parinibbāna. A doubt has arisen in me, and I have confidence in the Ascetic Gotama. Capable, indeed, is the Ascetic Gotama to teach the doctrine so that I may dispel my doubts. Shall I, O Ānanda, obtain a glimpse of the Ascetic Gotama?"

"Enough, friend Subhadda, do not worry the Accomplished One. The Exalted One is wearied," said the Venerable Ānanda.

For the second and third time Subhadda repeated his request, and for the second and third time Venerable Ānanda replied in the same manner.

The Buddha heard the conversation between the Venerable Ānanda and Subhadda, and addressing Ānanda, said:

"Nay, Ānanda, do not prevent Subhadda. Let Subhadda, O Ānanda, behold the Accomplished One. Whatsoever Subhadda will ask of me, all that will be with the desire for knowledge, and not to annoy me. And whatever I shall say in answer he will readily understand."

Thereupon the Venerable Ānanda introduced Subhadda to the Buddha.

Subhadda exchanged friendly greetings with the Buddha and sitting aside said: "There are these ascetics and priests, O Gotama, who are leaders of companies and congregations, who are heads of sects and are well-known, renowned religious teachers, esteemed as good men by the multitude, as, for instance, Pūrana Kassapa, Makkhali Gosāla, Ajita Kesakambali, Pakudha Kaccāyana, Sa?aya Belatthiputta, Nigantha Nātaputta-- have they all, as they themselves claim, thoroughly understood the Truth or not, or have some of them understood. and some not?"

"Let it be, O Subhadda! Trouble not yourself as to whether all or some have realized it or not. I shall teach the doctrine to you. Listen and bear it well in mind. I shall speak."

"So be it, Lord!" replied Subhadda.

The Buddha spoke as follows:

"In whatever Dispensation there exists not the Noble Eightfold Path, neither is the First Samana, nor the Second, nor the Third, nor the Fourth to be found therein. In whatever Dispensation, O Subhadda, there exists the Noble Eightfold Path, there also are to be found the First Samana, the Second Samana, the Third Samana, the Fourth Samana. In this Dispensation, O Subhadda, there exists the Noble Eightfold Path.

"Here, indeed, are found the First Samana, the Second Samana, the Third Samana, and the Fourth Samana. The other foreign schools are empty of Samanas. If, O Subhadda, the disciples live rightly, the world would not be void of Arahants.
"My age was twenty-nine when I went forth as a seeker after what is good. Now one and fifty years are gone since I was ordained. Outside this fold there is not a single ascetic who acts even partly in accordance with this realizable doctrine."

Thereupon Subhadda spoke to the Buddha as follows:

"Excellent, Lord, excellent! It is as if, O Lord, a man were to set upright that which was overturned, or were to reveal that which was hidden, or were to point the way to one who has gone astray, or were to hold a lamp amidst the darkness, so that whoever has eyes may see, even so has the doctrine been expounded in various ways by the Exalted One.

"And I, Lord, seek refuge in the Buddha, the Doctrine, and the Order. May I receive the Lesser and the Higher Ordination in the presence of the Exalted One!"

"Whoever, Subhadda," said the Buddha, "being already committed to the other doctrines desires the Lesser and the Higher 0rdination, remains on probation for four months. At the end of four months, the disciples approving, he is ordained and raised to the status of a Bhikkhu. Nevertheless, on understanding, I make individual exception."

Then said Subhadda:

"If, Lord, those already committed to other doctrines, who desire the Lesser and the Higher Ordination in this Dispensation, remain on probation for four months, I too will remain on probation; and after the lapse of that period, the disciples approving, let me be received into the Order and raised to the status of a Bhikkhu."

Thereupon the Buddha addressed Ānanda and said:

"Then, Ānanda, you may ordain Subhadda."

"So, be it, Lord!" replied Ānanda.

And Subhadda, the wandering ascetic, spoke to the Venerable Ānanda as follows:

"It is a gain to you, O Venerable Ānanda! It is indeed a great gain to you, for you have been anointed by the anointment of discipleship in the presence of the Exalted One by Himself."

Subhadda received in the presence of the Buddha the Lesser and the Higher Ordination.

And in no long time after his Higher Ordination, the Venerable Subhadda, living alone, remote from men, strenuous, energetic, and resolute, realized, in this life itself, by his own intuitive knowledge, the consummation of that incomparable Life of Holiness, and lived abiding in that state for the sake of which sons of noble families rightly leave the householder's life for the homeless life. He perceived that rebirth was ended, completed was the Holy Life, that after this life there was none other.

And the Venerable Subhadda became one of the Arahants. He was the last personal convert of the Buddha.

The Last Words to Ānanda

The Venerable Ānanda desired to know what they should do with the body of the Tathāgata.

The Buddha answered. Do not engage yourselves in honouring the remains of the Tathāgata. Be concerned about your own welfare (i.e. Arahantship). Devote yourselves to your own welfare. Be heedful, be strenuous, and be intent on your own good. There are wise warriors, wise brahmins, wise householders who are firm believers in the Tathāgata. They will do honour to the remains of the Tathāgata.

At the conclusion of these interesting religious talks Venerable Ānanda went aside and stood weeping at the thought: "Alas! I am still a learner with work yet to do. But my Master will finally pass away -- He who is my sympathiser".

The Buddha, noticing his absence, summoned him to His presence and exhorted him thus -- "Enough, O Ānanda! Do not grieve, do not weep. Have I not already told you that we have to separate and divide and sever ourselves from everything that is dear and pleasant to us?

"O Ānanda, you have done much merit. Soon be freed from Defilements."

The Buddha then paid a tribute to Venerable Ānanda, commenting on his salient virtues.

After admonishing Venerable Ānanda in various ways, the Buddha ordered him to enter Kusinārā and inform the Mallas of the impending death of the Tathāgata. Mallas were duly informed, and came weeping with their wives, young men, and maidens, to pay their last respects to the Tathāgata.

The Last Scene

Then the Blessed One addressed Ānanda and said:

"It may be, Ānanda, that you will say thus: 'Without the Teacher is the Sublime Teaching! There is no Teacher for us.' Nay, Ānanda, you should not think thus. Whatever Doctrine and Discipline have been taught and promulgated by me, Ānanda, they will be your Teacher when I am gone."

"Let the Sangha, O Ānanda, if willing, abrogate the lesser and minor rules after my death," remarked the Buddha.

Instead of using the imperative form the Buddha has used the subjunctive in this connection. Had it been His wish that the lesser rules should be abolished, He could have used the imperative. The Buddha foresaw that Venerable Kassapa, presiding over the First Council, would, with the consent of the Sangha, not abrogate any rule hence His use of the subjunctive, states the commentator.

As the Buddha has not clearly stated what these minor rules were and as the Arahants could not come to any decision about them, they preferred not to alter any rule but to retain all intact.

Again the Buddha addressed the disciples and said: "If, O disciples, there be any doubt as to the Buddha, or the Doctrine, or the Order, or the Path, or the Method, question me, and repent not afterwards thinking, -- we were face to face with the Teacher, yet we were not able to question the Exalted One in His presence." When He spoke thus the disciples were silent.

For the second and third time the Buddha addressed the disciples in the same way. And for the second and third time the disciples were silent.

Then the Buddha addressed the disciples and said: "Perhaps it may be out of respect for the Teacher that you do not question me. Let a friend, O disciples, intimate it to another."

Still the disciples were silent.

Thereupon the Venerable Ānanda spoke to the Buddha as follows:

"Wonderful, Lord! Marvellous, Lord! Thus am I pleased with the company of disciples. There is not a single disciple who entertains a doubt or perplexity with regard to the Buddha, the Doctrine, the Order, the Path and the Method."

"You speak out of faith, Ānanda, with regard to this matter. There is knowledge in the Tathāgata, that in this company of disciples there is not a single disciple who entertains a doubt or perplexity with regard to the Doctrine, the Order, the Path and the Method. Of these five hundred disciples, Ānanda, he who is the last is a Stream Winner, not subject to fall but certain and destined for Enlightenment.

Lastly the Buddha addressed the disciples and gave His final exhortation.

"Behold, O disciples, I exhort you. Subject to change are all component things. Strive on with diligence (Vayadhammā samkhārā, Appāmadena sampādetha).

These were the last words of the Blessed One.

The Passing Away

The Buddha attained to the first Ecstasy (Jhāna). Emerging from it, He attained in order to the second, third, and fourth Ecstasies. Emerging from the fourth Ecstasy, He attained to "The Realm of the Infinity of Space" (Akāsāna?āyatana). Emerging from it He attained to "The Realm of the Infinity of Consciousness" (Vi?ānaἦ#257;yatana). Emerging from it, He attained to "The Realm of Nothingness" (Āki?a?āyatana). Emerging from it, He attained to "The Realm of Neither Perception nor Non-perception" (N'eva sa?ā nāsaᦣ257;yatana). Emerging from it, He attained to "The cessation of Perceptions and Sensations". (Sa?āvedayita-Nirodha).

Venerable Ānanda, who had then not developed the Divine Eye, addressed Venerable Anuruddha and said: "O Venerable Anuruddha, the Exalted One has passed away."

"Nay, brother Ānanda, the Exalted One has not passed away but has attained to "The Cessation of Perceptions and Sensations".

Then the Buddha, emerging from "The Cessation of Perceptions and Sensations", attained to "The Realm of Neither Perception nor Non-perception." Emerging from it, He attained to "The Realm of Nothingness." Emerging from it, He attained to "The Realm of the Infinity of Consciousness." Emerging from it, He attained to "The Realm of the Infinity of Space." Emerging from it. He attained to the fourth Ecstasy. Emerging from it, He attained to the third Ecstasy. Emerging from it, He attained to the second Ecstasy. Emerging from it, He attained to the first Ecstasy. Emerging from it, He attained to the second Ecstasy. Emerging from it, He attained to the third Ecstasy. Emerging from it, He attained to the fourth Ecstasy. Emerging from it, and immediately after, the Buddha finally passed away.

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THE BUDDHA'S DAILY ROUTINE

THE BUDDHA'S DAILY ROUTINE

"The Lord is awakened. He teaches the Dhamma for awakening."
-- MAJJHIMA NIKĀYA

The Buddha can be considered the most energetic and the most active of all religious teachers that ever lived on earth. The whole day He was occupied with His religious activities except when He was attending to His physical needs. He was methodical and systematic in the performance of His daily duties. His inner life was one of meditation and was concerned with the experiencing of Nibbānic Bliss, while His outer life was one of selfless service for the moral upliftment of the world. Himself enlightened, He endeavoured His best to enlighten others and liberate them from the ills of life.

His day was divided into five parts, namely, (i) The Forenoon Session, (ii) The Afternoon Session, (iii) The First Watch, (iv) The Middle Watch and (v) The Last Watch.

The Forenoon Session

Usually early in the morning He surveys the world with His Divine Eye to see whom he could help. If any person needs His spiritual assistance, uninvited He goes, often on foot, some times by air using His psychic powers, and converts that person to the right path.

As a rule He goes in search of the vicious and the impure, but the pure and the virtuous come in search of Him.

For instance, the Buddha went of His own accord to convert the robber and murderer Angulimāla and the wicked demon Ā1avaka, but pious young Visākhā, generous millionaire Anāthapindika, and intellectual Sāriputta and Moggallāna came up to Him for spiritual guidance.

While rendering such spiritual service to whomsoever it is necessary, if He is not invited to partake of alms by a lay supporter at some particular place, He, before whom Kings prostrated themselves, would go in quest of alms through alleys and streets, with bowl in hand, either alone or with His disciples.

Standing silently at the door of each house, without uttering a word, He collects whatever food is offered and placed in the bowl and returns to the monastery.

Even in His eightieth year when He was old and in indifferent health, He went on His rounds for alms in Vesāli.

Before midday He finishes His meals. Immediately after lunch He daily delivers a short discourse to the people, establishes them in the Three Refuges and the Five Precepts and if any person is spiritually advanced, he is shown the Path to Sainthood.

At times He grants Ordination to them if they seek admission to the Order and then retires to His chamber.

The Afternoon Session

After the noon meal He takes a seat in the monastery and the Bhikkhus assemble to listen to His exposition of the Dhamma. Some approach Him to receive suitable objects of meditation according to their temperaments; others pay their due respects to Him and retire to their cells to spend the afternoon.

After His discourse or exhortation to His disciples, He Himself retires to His private Perfumed Chamber to rest. If He so desires, He lies on His right side and sleeps for a while with mindfulness. On rising, He attains to the Ecstasy of Great Compassion (Mahā Karunā Samāpatti) and surveys, with His Divine Eye, the world, especially the Bhikkhus who retired to solitude for meditation and other disciples in order to give them any spiritual advice that is needed. If the erring ones who need advice happen to be at a distance, there He goes by psychic powers, admonishes them and retires to His chamber.

Towards evening the lay followers flock to Him to hear the Dhamma. Perceiving their innate tendencies and their temperaments with the Buddha-Eye, He preaches to them for about one hour. Each member of the audience, though differently constituted, thinks that the Buddha's sermon is directed in particular to him. Such was the Buddha's method of expounding the Dhamma. As a rule the Buddha converts others by explaining His teachings with homely illustrations and parables, for He appeals more to the intellect than to emotion.

To the average man the Buddha at first speaks of generosity, discipline, and heavenly bliss. To the more advanced He speaks on the evils of material pleasures and on the blessings of renunciation. To the highly advanced He expounds the Four Noble Truths.

On rare occasions as in the case of Angulimāla and Khemā did the Buddha resort to His psychic powers to effect a change of heart in His listeners.

The sublime teachings of the Buddha appealed to both the masses and the intelligentsia alike. A Buddhist poet sings:

"Giving joy to the wise, promoting the intelligence of the middling, and dispelling the darkness of the dull-witted, this speech is for all people."

Both the rich and the poor, the high and the low, renounced their former faiths and embraced the new Message of Peace. The infant Sāsana, which was inaugurated with a nucleus of five ascetics, soon developed into millions and peacefully spread throughout Central India.

The First Watch

This period of the night extends from 6 to 10 p.m. and was exclusively reserved for instruction to Bhikkhus. During this time the Bhikkhus were free to approach the Buddha and get their doubts cleared, question Him on the intricacies of the Dhamma, obtain suitable objects of meditation, and hear the doctrine.

The Middle Watch

During this period which extends from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Celestial Beings such as Devas and Brahmas, who are invisible to the physical eye, approach the Buddha to question Him on the Dhamma. An oft-recurring passage in the Suttas is: "Now when the night was far spent a certain Deva of surpassing splendour came to the Buddha, respectfully saluted Him and stood at a side." Several discourses and answers given to their queries appear in the Samyutta Nikāya.

The Last Watch

The small hours of the morning, extending from 2 to 6 a.m. which comprise the last watch, are divided into four parts.

The first part is spent in pacing up and down (cankamana). This serves as a mild physical exercise to Him. During the second part, that is from 3 to 4 a.m. He mindfully sleeps on His right side. During the third part, that is from 4 to 5 a.m., He attains the state of Arahantship and experiences Nibbānic bliss. For one full hour from 5 to 6 a.m. He attains the Ecstasy of Great Compassion (Mahā Karunāsamāpatti) and radiates thoughts of loving-kindness towards all beings and softens their hearts. At this early hour He surveys the whole world with His Buddha-Eye to see whether He could be of service to any. The virtuous and those that need His help appear vividly before Him though they may live at a remote distance. Out of compassion for them He goes of His own accord and renders necessary spiritual assistance.

The whole day He is fully occupied with His religious duties. Unlike any other living being He sleeps only for one hour at night. For two full hours in the morning and at dawn He pervades the whole world with thoughts of boundless love and brings happiness to millions. Leading a life of voluntary poverty, seeking His alms without inconveniencing any, wandering from place to place for eight months throughout the year preaching His sublime Dhamma, He tirelessly worked for the good and happiness of all till His eightieth year.

According to the Dharmapradipikā the last watch is divided into these four parts.

According to the commentaries the last watch consists of three parts. During the third part the Buddha attains the Ecstasy of Great Compassion.

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စာဖတ္နည္း

“ စာေပဟူသည္ ေခတ္တစ္ေခတ္၏ ေၾကးမံု ျဖစ္၏” ဒီလိုဆိုၾကတယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့ စာေပထဲမွာ ေခတ္၏ သေဘာ ပါ၀င္တယ္လို႔ အဓိပၸါယ္ရတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ စာဖတ္နည္းကို ေဖၚျပၾကျခင္း ျဖစ္တယ္။
စာဖတ္နည္းကို SIMAC လို႔ အတိုေကာက္ ဆိုၾကတယ္။ အဲဒီအထဲက S ဆိုတာကေတာ့ Situation “ေခတ္၏ အေျခအေန”လို႔ အၾကမ္းဖ်င္း အနက္ရတယ္။ I ဆိုတာကေတာ့ Intention “ စာေရးသူ၏ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္၊ စာေရးသူ ၏ ေစတနာ” ျဖစ္တယ္။ M ဆိုတာကေတာ့ Matter “အေၾကာင္းအရာ” ျဖစ္တယ္။ A ဆိုတာကေတာ့ Approach “ခ်ည္းကပ္နည္း” ျဖစ္တယ္။ ယခုေခတ္ကေတာ့ “ေဇာင္း” ေပးျခင္းလို႔ ဆိုတယ္။ C ကေတာ့ Consistency “အေၾကာင္းအက်ိဳး” သုိ႔မဟုတ္ “ေရွ႕ႏွင့္ေနာက္ ဆီေလ်ာ္ျခင္း” သို႔ မဟုတ္ “ညီညြတ္ျခင္း”ျဖစ္တယ္။

အဲဒီေတာ့ စာတစ္ပုဒ္ကို ဖတ္ရင္ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ေရးရင္ျဖစ္ေစ ဒီအဂၤါ ၅ခ်က္ကို ေတြ႕ေအာင္ ရွာရတယ္။ ဒီအဂၤါ ၅ခ်က္ကလည္း ေပၚတင္ၾကီးေတာ့ ရွိမေနရဘူး။ ေပၚတင္ၾကီး ရွိေနျပန္ရင္လည္း ေဒါသသင့္တယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ရွိေတာ့ ရွိရမယ္၊ သြယ္သြယ္၀ိုက္၀ိုက္ ရွိရမယ္။ ဒါမွ ဂုဏ္ေျမာက္တယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ ၅ ခ်က္ထဲမွာ အေရၾကီးဆံုးကေတာ့ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္နည္းပဲျဖစ္တယ္။

အေၾကာင္းအရာ ဆိုတာကေတာ့ “ပံု”ေဖာ္စရာျဖစ္တဲ့ သေဘာမို႔ သိပ္ၿပီး အေရးၾကီးလွတယ္လို႔ မသတ္မွတ္ၾကပါဘူး။ သူသူငါငါ ေျပာၾကတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းအရာမ်ား အားလံုးကို အက်ဥ္းခ်ံဳးလိုက္လွ်င္ This “ဒီဟာ” ဆိုတာကိုပဲ ရပါတယ္။ ေလာကီေရး အရ ေျပာေျပာ၊ ေလာကုတၱရာေရး အရ ေျပာေျပာ၊ ဘယ္သူကပဲ ေျပာေျပာ “ဒီဟာ” ကိုပဲ ေျပာၾကတာပဲ။

ဒီေနရာမွာ “ဒီဟာ” ဆိုတာ ပစၥဳပၸန္တည့္တည့္ ျမင္ရ၊ ၾကားရ၊ သိရတဲ့ အာရံုမ်ားပဲ ျဖစ္ပါ တယ္။ ဒီအာရံုမ်ားကို ေျပာၾကတဲ့ ေနရာမွာ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္မႈ သို႔မဟုတ္ ေဇာင္းေပးမႈကို လိုက္ၿပီး ၀ါဒအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး ျဖစ္ေပၚလာျခင္းပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ပဋိစၥသမုပၸါဒ္ အႏုေလာမနည္းနဲ႔ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ေတာ့ ဒုကၡပြားစီးေရးကို ျမင္ရပါတယ္။ ပဋိစၥသမုပၸါဒ္ ပဋိေလာမနည္းနဲ႔ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ေတာ့ ဒုကၡျငိမ္းေရးကို ျမင္ရပါတယ္။ ဒုကၡ ပြားစီးေရးအတြက္ ေဇာင္းေပးျခင္းကို “မိစၧာပဋိပဒါ” လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ဒုကၡ ခ်ဳပ္ျငိမ္းေရးအတြက္ ေဇာင္းေပးျခင္းကို “သမၼာပဋိပဒါ” လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။

ဘာပဲဆိုဆို ၾကည့္စရာကေတာ့ “သဠာယတန” မွာ ထင္တာ အာရံုတစ္မ်ိဳးတည္းပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီအာရံု တစ္မ်ိဳး တည္းကိုပဲ This “ဒီဟာ”လို႔ ဆိုျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ အေၾကာင္းအရာထက္ ေဇာင္းေပးျခင္းက ပို၍ အေရးၾကီးပါတယ္။

This “ဒီဟာ” ကိုပဲ ေဇာင္းေပးတဲ့အခါမွာ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္၀ါဒႏွင့္ ေဇာင္းေပးရင္ This “ဒီဟာ”က တစ္မ်ိး ျဖစ္သြားပါတယ္။ This “ဒီဟာ” ကေတာ့ This “ဒီဟာ” ပါပဲ။ ပရမတၳ အရ မေျပာင္းလဲ ႏိုင္ေသာ္လည္း ပညတၱိ အရေတာ့ ေျပာင္းသြားတာပါပဲ။ ဘာသာေရးစကားႏွင့္ ေျပာမယ္ဆိုရင္ ၀ဋၬနိႆိတ ၀ါဒႏွင့္ ၾကည့္ရင္ ဒါန သီလ ဘာ၀နာက တစ္မ်ိဳးျဖစ္ၿပီး။ ၀ိ၀ဋၬနိႆိတ၀ါဒ ႏွင့္ ၾကည့္ရင္ ဒါန သီလ ဘာ၀နာက တစ္းမ်ိဳးျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ အေရးၾကီးတဲ့ ေဇာင္းကိုေပးခ်င္လို႔ ျမတ္စြာဘုရား ပြင့္ေတာ္မူလာျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ဒီေနရာမွာ ေဇာင္း ဆိုတာကေတာ့ သမၼာပဋိပဒါ သို႔မဟုတ္ ၀ိပႆနာ သမၼာဒိ႒ိပါ။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ စာကို ဖတ္သည္ပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္။ စာကို ေရးသည္ပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ စာဖတ္နည္း အဂၤါ ၅ မ်ိဳးႏွင့္ ဖတ္တတ္ဖို႔ လိုပါတယ္။

ဒီစာဖတ္နည္း ၅ မ်ိဳးဆိုတာကလည္း တကယ္ေတာ့ နည္းသစ္နည္းဆန္း မဟုတ္ပါ။ ေနတၱိက်မ္းမွာ ပါၿပီးျဖစ္တဲ့ ေရွးေခတ္ ပိဋကတ္ေတာ္မ်ားေလ့လာေရး နည္းပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ယုတၱိဟာရ၊ လကၡဏာဟာရႏွင့္ စတုဗ်ဴဟာ ဟာရဟာ ဒီစာဖတ္နည္းမ်ားထက္ ပိုၿပီးေတာ့ စံုပါတယ္။

စာဖတ္တဲ့ အခါ ဘာေၾကာင့္ ဒီအဂၤါေတြႏွင့္ ျပည့္စံုဖို႔ လိုသလဲ။

ဒါကို သေဘာေပါက္ဖို႔ အတြက္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာတို႔၊ သခ်ာၤတို႔ အေၾကာင္းကို နည္းနည္း သိဖို႔ လိုတယ္။ အဲဒါသိရင္ စာဖတ္တဲ့အခါ ဒီအဂၤါႏွင့္ျပည့္စံုမွ အနက္ကို သိမွာပဲ။ ဒီလိုနားလည္လာမယ္။ မဟုတ္လို႔ကေတာ့ သူတစ္လူ ငါတစ္မင္း တစ္ေယာက္ႏွင့္ တစ္ေယာက္ မတူဘဲ သိခ်င္သလို သိေနၾကမွာ။ အဲဒီေတာ့ ပုဂၢလဓိ႒ာန္ ျဖစ္ၿပီး ဓမၼဓိ႒ာန္ ဒါ ဘယ္ရွိေတာ့မလဲ။ ဒီလိုဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ တစ္ဆင့္ထက္ တစ္ဆင့္ ျမင့္မားတဲ့ စာရယ္လို႔ ဘယ္လိုလုပ္ၿပီး ထြက္လာႏိုင္ေတာ့မလဲ။

သခ်ာၤ ဆိုပါေတာ့။ သခ်ာၤဟာ ေရွးတုန္းက အေတာ္ခက္တဲ့ ဘာသာ။ ေဒါက္တာဘြဲ႕ ရဖို႔ ေတာ္ေတာ္ ခက္တယ္။ ခုေတာ့ ေဒါက္တာဘြဲ႕ ရတဲ့သူေတြ မ်ားလာၿပီ။ မ်ားလာၿပီးဆိုတာ ရွိလာၾကလို႔ေျပာတာ။ အဲဘာေၾကာင့္လဲဆိုရင္ ေလ့လာနည္းစနစ္ ကြာလို႔ပဲ ျဖစ္တယ္။ လူကေတာ့ သိပ္ကြာလွတာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။

ေရွးကေတာ့ ဉာဏ္ရည္ဉာဏ္ေသြးကို ပဓာနျပဳတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ ဉာဏ္ေကာင္းမွ တတ္တာေပါ့။ ခုေတာ့ ဒီလိုမဟုတ္ဘူး။ အခ်က္အလက္ကို မဓာနျပဳတယ္။ အခ်က္အလက္ ရွာနည္းကို မဓာနျပဳၿပီး သင္တယ္။ အခ်က္အလက္ ရွာတတ္လာရင္ တြက္နည္းအဆင့္ကို ျမင္လာတယ္။ တြက္နည္းအဆင့္အတိုင္း တြက္ရင္ ဘယ္သူတြက္တြက္ မွန္တာေပါ့။ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာဆိုရင္ ပိုထင္ရွားတယ္။ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာမွာ သိစိတ္ေတာင္ မရွိဘူး။

ဒါေပမဲ့ အခ်က္အလက္ေတြကို “ယုတၱိ” ႏွင့္ အညီ ထည့္ေပးလိုက္ရင္ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာက အေျဖထုတ္ေပးလိုက္တာ ပဲ။ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာဆိုတာ ဘယ္စဥ္းစားတတ္မလဲ။ သိစိတ္မွ မရွိတာ။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ အေျဖထုတ္ဖို႔ အတြက္ အခ်က္အလက္လိုတယ္။ “ယုတၱိ” လိုတယ္။

ဒါဆိုရင္ စာဖတ္တဲ့အခါမွာ အေျဖ “တစ္သံတည္း” ထြက္ဖို႔အတြက္ စာဖတ္နည္းပါ အခ်က္အလက္မ်ား သိဖို႔လိုေၾကာင္း ထင္ရွားတာေပါ့။ အခ်က္အလက္မ်ားကို ျပည့္စံုေအာင္ မသိရင္ေတာ့ “ေကာင္းတယ္”လို႔ ေျပာတဲ့သူက ေျပာမယ္။ “မေကာင္းဘူး”လို႔ ေျပာတဲ့သူကေျပာမယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ ခက္တာေပါ့။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ စာဖတ္တဲ့အခါမွာ စာဖတ္နည္းမ်ားကို နားလည္ေအာင္ ေလ့လာထားသင့္တယ္။

စာဖတ္နည္းကို ပံုစံထုတ္တဲ့အေနနဲ႔ “မေကာင္းဘူး။ အမွားေတြ ပါတယ္”လို႔ ေျပာတဲ့ ဓမၼရံသီ ေဆာင္းပါးအ ေၾကာင္းကို ေျပာရေအာင္။ ပထမ မွားတယ္လို႔ ေျပာတဲ့ အခ်က္က “ ျမတ္စြာဘုရားသည္ သႏၲိသုခ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ကို တည္ေထာင္ေတာ္ မူ၏” ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ပဲျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ နိဗၺာန္ကို “ေရြျပည္” ႏွင့္ တင္စားေလ့ ရွိပါတယ္။ ေရွးေခတ္ကေတာ့ ျပည္ေပါ့။ ခုေခတ္ၾကေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံ။ ဒီလို ေ၀ါဟာရ ေျပာင္းသြား ပါတယ္။ ဒီလို တင္စားတာကို သမာဓိဂုဏ္ ေရာက္တယ္လို႔ ဆိုၾကတယ္။

သမာဓိဂုဏ္ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ကဗ်ာဒါသမွာ-
“အညဓေမၼာ တေတာညၾတ၊ ေလာကသီမာ နုေရာဓိနာ”လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ “သိၿပီးသားနဲ႔ မသိေသးတာကို ဆြဲေခၚတဲ့ သေဘာကို သမာဓိဂုဏ္”လို႔ ဆိုလိုပါတယ္။

ဒီေနရာမွာ ျပည္တို႔၊ ႏိုင္ငံတို႔ ဆိုတာက သိၿပီးသားပါ။ နိဗၺာန္ကေတာ့ မသိေသးတဲ့ ဓမၼ ဆိုပါေတာ့။ မသိေသး ဆိုတာကလည္း သစၧိကရဏ သေဘာႏွင့္မသိျခင္းကို ေျပာတာ။ အႏုမာန သေဘာနဲ႔ေတာ့ အားလံုးသိပါတယ္။ ဒါဟာလည္း ျပႆနာ မရွိပါဘူး။ နိဗၺာန္ဆိုတာ ျပည္လည္းမဟုတ္ဘူး၊ ႏိုင္ငံလည္း မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အထည္ျဒပ္လည္း မရွိဘူး။ အသခၤတ နိစၥ-ဓူ၀ သႏၲိသုခ သေဘာသက္သက္ပဲလို႔ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ၀င္ အားလံုးက သိၿပီးသားပါ။

ဒီသေဘာကို လက္ရွိ ေခတ္ အေျခအေနရႈေထာင့္ကေရာ။ ေရွးေခတ္အေျခအေန ရႈေထာင့္ကေရာ ျမင္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ၀င္တို႔ရဲ႕ အသိဉာဏ္အင္အားကို အထင္ေသးလို႔ မရပါဘူး။ ဒါက ရွင္းပါတယ္။

မရွင္းတာက တည္ေထာင္သူပါ။ သမာဓိဂုဏ္ရဲ႕ လကၡဏာမွာ “ ေလာကသီမာ ႏုေရာဓိနာ” လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ျပည္မွန္သမွ်၊ ႏိုင္ငံမွန္သမွ် တည္ေထာင္သူ ရွိရပါတယ္။ ဒါက ေလာကဓမၼတာပါ။

“သမာဓိဂုဏ္” ေရာက္ေအာင္ တင္စားတဲ့ အခါ ေလကဓမၼတာကို လိုက္နာရတယ္။ ဒါမွ သမာဓိဂုဏ္ ေရာက္တယ္။ လိုက္နာတာကို “ေလာကသီမာ ႏုေရာဓိ” ေခၚတယ္။ ေလာကဓမၼတာကို မလိုက္နာမိရင္ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ တင္စားစရာ ရွိတာကို “အကုန္လံုး” မတင္စားရင္ ျဖစ္ေစ “သသံသယ ေဒါသ” သင့္ႏိုင္တယ္။ ဒါက ကဗ်ာဒါသ ရဲ႕ အဆိုပါ။ ကဗ်ာဒါသ ၌-
“နိဏၰယုတၱံ ပယုတၱာနိ၊ သံသယံ ဇနယႏၲိေစ” လို႔ ဆိုတယ္။ “အေၾကာင္း အရာ တစ္ခုကို ဆံုးျဖတ္လို႔ ရေအာင္ေရးပါ။ သံသယ ရွိေအာင္ မေရးပါနဲ႔။ သံသယ ရွိေအာင္ေရးရင္ သံသယေဒါသ သင့္တတ္တယ္”လို႔ ဆိုတယ္။ ေနာက္တစ္ခါ တင္စားစရာ ရွိရင္လည္း “အကုန္”တင္စားပါ၊ ခ်န္မထားပါနဲ႔လို႔ ကဗ်ာဒါသဆရာက သမာဓိဂုဏ္နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး-
“ယုဂပေႏၷက ဓမၼာနံ၊ အစ်ာ ေသာ စ မေတာ ယထာ”လို႔ မွာျပန္ပါတယ္။ ဒီမွာထားခ်က္အရ အလကၤာရ စာေပ အျမင္မွ သႏၲိသုခႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ကို တည္ေထာင္သူဟာ ျမတ္စြာဘုရား။ မာယာသုခ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ကို တည္ေထာင္သူက မာရ္နတ္လို႔ အျပည့္အစံု တင္စားျခင္းပါ။ ထာ၀ရဘုရားကမ်ား ဖန္ဆင္းတာ ျဖစ္ေလမလား ဆိုတဲ့ သသံသယ ေဒါသကို မေရာက္ေစလိုလို႔ အျပည့္အစံု တင္စားျခင္းျဖစ္တယ္။

အေၾကာင္းအရာ တစ္ခုကို ဆံုးျဖတ္တဲ့အခါ “ဘက္စံု” ျမင္ဖို႔ ၾကိဳးစားရတယ္။ ဘက္စံု မျမင္ဘဲ ဆံုးျဖတ္ရင္ ဒႆန ဆရာမ်ားက “အဒၶဇရာတိယ ပ႑ိစၥ”လို႔ ကဲ့ရဲ႕တယ္။ အဒၶဇရာတိယ၏ အနက္က “တစ္၀က္အို” ျဖစ္တယ္။ သီလကၡာန္ ဋီကာသစ္ဆရာၾကီးကေတာ့ “သတၱဘဂႌနယ”လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။

အေၾကာင္း အရာတစ္ခုမွာ ျမင္ေထာင့္ ၇ ခုရွိတယ္။ ဒီျမင္ေထာင့္မ်ားဟာ သူ႔ေထာင့္ အလိုက္ေတာ့ တစ္ခုစီ အေနနဲ႔ မွန္တယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အျပည့္အစံု ေတာ့ မမွန္ဘူး။ အျပည့္အစံုမွန္ရေလေအာင္ ေထာင့္ ၇ ခုလံုးကို ေခ်ဖ်က္ၿပီး ေျပာရတယ္။ ဒါက “သတၱဘဂႌနယ”ရဲ႕ ဆိုလိုရင္းပါ။ အိႏၵိယ ဒႆနကေတာ့ သတၱဘဂႌနယကို “သိယာ၀ါဒ”လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ တစ္ခုခ်င္းစီ အေနနဲ႔ေတာ့ ျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေျခ ရွိတယ္လို႔ ဆိုတာပါ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အားလံုးက်ေတာ့ ”မွားတယ္”လို႔ ဆိုလိုတာပါ။

ဥပမာအေနနဲ႔ ေျပာရရင္ မ်က္မျမင္ ပုဏၰား ၆ေယာက္ ဆင္ကိုလက္နဲ႔ စမ္းၿပီး ေျပာသလိုပါ။ သူ႔ဟာနဲ႔ သူေတာ့ အမွန္ပဲ။ တစ္ခုလံုး အတြက္ မွန္လားဆိုေတာ့ မမွန္ဘူး။

ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ ႏွစ္ခုရွိတယ္။ မာယာသုခႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ႏွင့္ သႏၲိသုခႏိုင္ငံေတာ္။ ဒါေတြဟာ သမာဓိဂုဏ္ အတြက္ အားလံုး တင္စားခ်က္ေတြပါ။ တင္စားတာလား ၊ မုခ်လားလို႔ ခြဲမသိတဲ့လူ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ၀င္ ထဲမွာ ရွိမွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ အရိယာမ်ားဟာ ဘ၀ခ်မ္းသာ၌ မေမြ႔ေလ်ာ္ၾကဘူး။ သုဒၶ၀ါသ ဘံုမ်ား၌ပင္ ေနရေစကာမူ ဘ၀ခ်မ္းသာ၌ မေမြေလ်ာ္ၾကဘူး။ ဘ၀ဟာ သုခမဟုတ္ဘူး၊ ဒုကၡဆိုတာ သူတို႔သိၾကတယ္။

ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဘံုဘ၀၌ ျငီးေငြၿပီး ဘံုဘ၀မွ အားလံုးလြတ္ေျမာက္လိုၾကတယ္။ ကိုက ေနေပမဲ့ စိတ္က မေနဘူး။
ဒီသေဘာကို ရည္ရြယ္ၿပီးေတာ့ “မာယာသုခ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ၌ အရိယာမ်ား ေနေတာ္မမူၾကေခ်”လို႔ ဆိုတာပါ။ ဒါဟာလဲ တင္စားတာပါ။ သမာဓိဂုဏ္အတြက္ တင္စားျခင္းပါ။ တင္စားမွန္းလည္း သိၾကပါတယ္။ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ စာဖတ္ပရိတ္သတ္ဟာ မညံ့ပါလွပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမဲ့ “ညံ့လြန္း”ရင္လည္း အႏၲရယ္ မရွိဘူး။ “ေတာ္လြန္း” ရင္လည္း အႏၲရာယ္မရွိဘူး။ မညံ့တည့ံ (၀ါ) မက်က္တက်က္သာ အႏၲရယ္ ရွိတယ္ လို႔ ေလာကနီတိ ဆရာကလဲ “အပၸပေညာ မဟာသေကာ၊ အပၸပူေရာ ဃေဋာ ေခါေဘ”လို႔ ဆိုတယ္။ အဂၤလိပ္ စကားပံုကလည္း Little knowledge is dangerous လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။ ဒီအဆင့္မ်ိဳး ဗုဒၶဘာသာ စာဖတ္ပရိတ္သတ္ထဲမွာ မရွိပါဘူး။

“ျမတ္စြာဘုရားသည္သာ သႏၲိသုခႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ကုိ သိေတာ္မူ၏” လို႔ဆိုတာကလည္း စာဖတ္တဲ့အခါ-
၁။ ေခတ္ႏွင့္ ေခတ္၏ အေျခအေနကို သိမယ္။
၂။ စာေရးသူ၏ ဦးတည္ခ်က္ကို သိမယ္။
၃။ အေၾကာင္းအရာကို သိမယ္။
၄။ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ေထာင့္ကို သိမယ္။
၅။ ေရွ႕ႏွင့္ေနာက္ ညီညြတ္မႈ ရွိမရွိကို သိမယ္။ ဒီ ၅ ခ်က္ကို သိထားရင္ စာပိုဒ္ရဲ႕ အနက္မွန္ကို သိပါတယ္။ အနက္မွန္ သိေရးအတြက္ ဒီ ၅ ခ်က္ဟာ အနည္းဆံုး လိုအပ္ခ်က္ပါပဲ။ ဒီ ၅ ခ်က္ကိုမွ သိမထားရင္ေတာ့ စာတစ္ပိုဒ္၏ အနက္ကို သိဖို႔ ခက္တယ္။

ေခတ္ႏွင့္ ေခတ္အေျခအေနကို ၾကည့္မယ္ဆိုရင္ မဟာသကၠရာဇ္ ၁၀၃ ကဆုန္လျပည့္ေက်ာ္ ၁ ရက္ေန႔မွ ၀ါဆိုလျပည့္ေက်ာ္ ၅ရက္မတိုင္မီ တစ္လေက်ာ္ကာ အေျခအေနကို သိဖို႔လိုမယ္။ အေလာင္းေတာ္ မင္းသားဟာ “စၾကာ၀ေတးမင္း”ျဖစ္ေအာင္ မလုပ္ဘူး။ “ဘုရား”ျဖစ္ေအာင္လုပ္မယ္ဆိုၿပီးေတာ့ က်င့္ေတာ္မူလိုက္တာ ခု ဘုရားျဖစ္ၿပီ၊ နိဗၺာန္ကို မ်က္ေမွာက္ျပဳၿပီ။ သစၥာေလးပါးကို သိၿပီ၊ ဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ နိဗၺာန္ကိုသိတာ ျမတ္စြာ ဘုရားတစ္ပါးတည္း ရွိေသးတယ္။ ဒါက တစ္ခ်က္။

ေနာက္တစ္ခ်က္က ျမတ္စြာဘုရားသည္ “အတုလ” ျဖစ္တယ္။ “ဧကပုဂၢလ“ျဖစ္တယ္ ဒါမွန္တယ္။ ေနာက္ပဥၥ၀ၢီတို႔ ေသာတာပန္ျဖစ္ၿပီး နိဗၺာန္ကို မ်က္ေမွာက္ျပဳတယ္။ သစၥာေလးပါးကို သိတယ္။ ၀ါဆိုလျပည့္ေက်ာ္ ၅ရက္ေန႔က်ေတာ့ အားလံုးရဟႏၲာျဖစ္သြားၾကတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ သႏၲိသုခကို သူတို႔လည္း သိတာေပါ့။ အားလံုး နိဗၺာန္ကို မ်က္ေမွာက္ျပဳတဲ့ေနရာမွာ သစၥာေလးပါးကို သိေတာ္မူတဲ့ ေနရာမွာ အတူတူပဲ။ ဘာမွ မထူးဘူး။

ဒီလို ဆိုၾကတယ္။ ဒါက အာရံုပိုင္းဆိုင္ရာ ျပႆနာ Ontological View အေနနဲ႔ ေျပာၾကျခင္း ျဖစ္တယ္။ သိမႈပိုင္း ဆိုင္ရာ ျပႆနာ Epistemological View အေနနဲ႔က်ေတာ့ မတူဘူး။ ထူးတယ္။

ျမတ္စြာဘုရား၏ အရတၱမဂ္ဉာဏ္က “သဗၺညဳတ” ထိုက္တဲ့ ဉာဏ္။ အျခားအရိယာမ်ား၏ အရဟတၱမဂ္ဉာဏ္က သဗၺညဳတ မထိုက္ဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ျမတ္စြာဘုရားသည္ အရဟတၱမဂ္ဉာဏ္ကို ရတာနဲ႔ သဗၺညဳတဉာဏ္ ရျခင္း ကိစၥကိုပါ ၿပီးစီးေစႏိုင္ျခင္းျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါက ခ်ဥ္းကပ္နည္းနဲ႔ ဆိုင္တဲ့ အနက္ပါ။

သဗၺညဳတအရ “အားလံုးကို သိတယ္” ဆိုတဲ့ေနရာမွာ အားလံုးဟာ ၂ မ်ိဳးရွိတယ္။ အေရအတြက္ အရ အားလံုးႏွင့္၊ အရည္အခ်င္းအရ အားလံုးျဖစ္တယ္။ အေရအတြက္ အရ အားလံုးဆိုတာ သိစရာ မွန္သမွ် တစ္ခုမွ မက်န္ အားလံုးကုိ သိျခင္းျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါဟာ အာရံုပိုင္းဆိုင္ရာ ျပႆနာပါ။

အဲဒီ သိစရာေတြ သိတဲ့အခါမွာ အားလံုးကို တစ္ျပိဳင္နက္ သိတာမဟုတ္ဘူး။ တစ္ခုစီ တစ္ခုစီ အာရံုျပဳၿပီး သိတာ။ ဥပမာအားျဖင့္ “က”ကို သိတယ္ဆိုရင္ အျခားပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ားက “က”ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္သမွ် အားလံုးကို မသိဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ သဗၺညဳ” မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ျမတ္စြာဘုရားကေတာ့“က”ကို သိရင္ “က”ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္တာ အားလံုးကို သိတယ္။ “ခ”ကို သိရင္ “ခ”ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္တာ အားလံုးကို သိတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ “သဗၺညဳ”ျဖစ္တယ္။

“သဗၺညဳ” ျဖစ္ေလာက္ေအာင္လည္း အရဟတၱ မဂ္ဉာဏ္ျဖင့္ နိဗၺာန္ကို မ်က္ေမွာက္ျပဳတုန္းက ၀ါသနာႏွင့္တကြ ကိေလသာေတြ အားလံုးကို ပယ္ႏိုင္ေသာေၾကာင့္ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဥပါဒါနပစၥယာ ဘေ၀ါ(ေဇာ) အရ ၀ါသနာဟာ သိမႈအေပၚမွာ ဘယ္ေလာက္ လႊမ္းမိုးႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ ထင္ရွားပါတယ္။ “ဣႆာ” ၀ါသနာပါတဲ့သူဟာ သူတစ္ပါးကို “ဣႆာ” မ်က္စိနဲ႔ပဲ ျမင္တတ္တယ္။ “ေလာဘ” ၀ါသနာပါတဲ့ သူဟာ ဘာကိုၾကည့္ၾကည့္ “ေလာဘ” မ်က္စိနဲ႔ပဲ ၾကည့္တတ္တယ္။

ကိေလသာကုိ ၀ါသနာႏွင့္တကြ ပယ္သတ္ႏိုင္ျခင္းသည္ သဗၺညဳတဉာဏ္ ရျခင္း၏ အေၾကာင္း ျဖစ္တယ္။ အာရံုပိုင္း အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ နိဗၺာန္ဟာ အေျပာင္းအလဲ မရွိဘူး။ This ဒီဟာ- ဒီဟာပါပဲ။

အာရမၼဏိကပိုင္း အေနနဲ႔က်ေတာ့ အေျပာင္းအလဲ ရွိတယ္။ ေလာကမွာ ျမတ္စြာဘုရားႏွင့္ ရည္တူ သိသူရယ္လို႔ မရွိပါဘူး။ ေလာကမွာလည္း ဆိုရိုးရွိတယ္။ အေၾကာင္းအရာ တစ္ခုႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေတာ့ အသိဆံုး ျဖစ္ရင္ “သူသာသိတာ၊ တျခား “သူ႔”ေလာက္ ဘယ္သူမွ မသိဘူး” ဒီလိုေျပာရိုးဆိုစဥ္ရွိတယ္။

ဒါေၾကာင့္ ေခတ္ႏွင့္ ေခတ္၏ အေျခအေနမွ ၾကည့္ရင္လည္း ထိုအခ်ိန္မွာ ျမတ္စြာဘုရား တစ္ပါးတည္းပဲ သစၥာ ေလးပါးကို သိသူ ရွိေသးတာ။ ဒီေနာက္ သိမႈဆိုင္ရာ ျမင္ကြင္း (Epistemological View) ကၾကည့္ရင္လည္း ျမတ္စြာဘုရားဟာ သစၥာေလးပါးကို သိတဲ့ေနရာမွာပဲ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ အျခား ဘယ္ေနရာမွာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ “အတုလ” ၀ါ၊ “ဧကပုဂၢလ” ၀ါ။ သဒၵါနည္းအရ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ “သဒၶါဓိေကာ အတၱာဓိေကာ” ေပါ့။

ဒီေတာ့ ဘက္စံုၾကည့္နည္းအရ ၾကည့္လွ်င္ ဒီစာပိုဒ္ဟာ မမွားပါဘူး။ ဆင္ရဲ႕ အစြယ္ကိုသာ စမ္းမိၿပီး “ဆင္” ဟာ “သန္လ်က္လိုပဲ” လို႔ေျပာတဲ့ မ်က္မျမင္ပုဏၰား အျမင္မ်ိဳးနဲ႔ ၾကည့္ရင္ေတာ့ စာတစ္ပိုဒ္၏ အနက္ကို မွန္ေအာင္ သိဖို႔ မလြယ္ဘူး။

ေနာက္တစ္ခ်က္က “နာနာကၡဏိက `ကံ` ဟာ ဥပါဒ္၊ ဌီ၊ ဘင္ မရွိဘူး” ဒီအဆိုကို မွားတယ္ လို႔ ဆိုၾကတယ္။
အမွန္ကေတာ့ မမွားဘူး။ ပ႒ာန္းအရဆိုလွ်င္ “ကံ”ဆိုတာ ေဇာ ေစတနာပဲ။ ဒီေတာ့ ပထမ ေဇာေစတနာကို ေျပာရမယ္ဆိုရင္၊ မိမိမခ်ဳပ္ခင္ အခိုက္မွာ သဟဇာတကမၼျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ ကမၼ၊ သဟဇာတ၊ နိႆယ၊ အဟာရ၊ အတၳိ၊ အ၀ိဂတ”လို႔ ၆ ပစၥည္း ျပိဳင္ႏိုင္တယ္။

ဒီမွာ အတၳိ ႏွင့္ အ၀ိဂတ ပါတယ္။ အတၳိႏွင့္ အ၀ိဂတ ပါေတာ့ သဟဇာတကမၼမွာ ဥပါဒ္၊ ဌီ၊ ဘင္ ရွိတဲ့ သေဘာကို ေျပာတာ။ ဒါက “သဟဇာတကမၼ”အခိုက္။

ေနာက္ ပထမေဇာ ခ်ဳပ္သြားၿပီ၊ ဒုတိယေဇာ ၀င္လာတယ္။ ဒုတိယေဇာ၀င္လာေတာ့ ပထမေဇာက သဟဇာတကမၼကေန အနႏၲရ ကမၼ(အာေသ၀န) ျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ ပထမေဇာက ကမၼ(အာေသ၀န)၊ အနႏၲရ၊ သမနႏၲရ၊ ဥပနိႆယ၊ နတၳိ၊ ၀ိဂတလို႔ ၆ ပစၥည္းျပိဳင္တယ္။ ဒီမွာ နတၳိႏွင့္ ၀ိဂတပါတယ္။ နတၳိႏွင့္ ၀ိဂတဆိုတာ ဥပါဒ္၊ ဌီ၊ ဘင္ မရွိတဲ့သေဘာကို ေျပာတာ။

ေနာက္ဒုတိယေဇာ ခ်ဳပ္သြားၿပီ။ တတိယေဇာ ၀င္လာတယ္။ ဒီမွာ ဒုတိယေဇာက တတိယေဇာအား ကမၼ(အာေသ၀န)၊ အနႏၲရ၊ သမနႏၲရ၊ ဥပနိႆယ၊ နတၳိ၊ ၀ိဂတလို႔ ၆ ပစၥည္းျပိဳင္တယ္။ ပထမေဇာက တတိယေဇာအား ကမၼ(နာနာကၡဏိက)၊ ဥပနိႆယ လို႔ ၂ ပစၥည္းပဲ ျပိဳင္တယ္။

ဒီမွာ ဆိုခ်င္တာက “ပထမေဇာ”သည္ မိမိ ဥပါဒ္ခိုက္ သဟဇာတကမၼျဖစ္တယ္။ ဥပါဒ္၊ ဌီ၊ ဘင္ဟူ၍ ခဏငယ္ သံုးခ်က္ရွိတယ္။ ဒုတိယေဇာ ၀င္လာတယ္။ ဒီတစ္ခါ “ပထမေဇာ”သည္ အနႏၲရ၊ ကမၼ(အာေသ၀န) ျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ ဥပါဒ္၊ ဌီ၊ ဘင္ ဟူ၍ ခဏငယ္သံုးခ်က္ မရွိေတာ့။ ဒီတစ္ခါ “ပထမေဇာ” သည္ နာနာကၡဏိက ကမၼျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ ဥပါဒ္၊ ဌီ၊ ဘင္ဟူ၍ မရွိေတာ့။ “ေဇာ”ေတြဟာ ဒီသေဘာခ်ည္းပါပဲ။

ဒါျဖင့္ “ဥပါဒ္၊ ဌီ၊ ဘင္ မရွိရင္ ဘာမွ် မရွိေတာ့ဘူးလား”လို႔ ေမးရင္ေတာ့၊ နိဗၺာန္ မရမခ်င္း သတိၱ အေနနဲ႔ အရိပ္ပမာ သႏၲာန္၌ အစဥ္လိုက္ပါတယ္။

ဒီပ႒ာန္းေဒသနာေတာ္ကို ေထာက္ရင္ နာနာကၡဏိက ကမၼဟာ ဥပါဒ္၊ ဌီ၊ ဘင္ ဆိုတဲ့ ခဏတၱယဟာ မုခ်အားျဖင့္ မရွိဘူးဆိုတာ ထင္ရွားပါတယ္။ ဥပစာရ အားျဖင့္ ရွိတယ္လို႔ ဆိုခ်င္ရင္ေတာ့ ဆိုပါ။

ေနာက္တစ္ခ်က္က “ဘ၀ ပြားစီးေရးအတြက္ လုပ္တဲ့ ဒါန၊ သီလ၊ ဘာ၀နာဟာ သာသနာေတာ္ကို ဖ်က္လိုစိတ္ မရွိပါဘဲနဲ႔ ဖ်က္ဆီးရာေရာက္တယ္” ဆိုတဲ့ အဆိုနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေတာ့ မမွားေၾကာင္း သံဃ၊ ၂၊ ၁၈(ပဋိပဒါ) သုတ္မွာ-
ယံ ဟိ ကိဥၥိ ဘ၀တၱယ သခၤါတံ ၀ဋၬ ပေတၳတြာ ပ၀တၱိတံ၊ အႏၲမေသာ ပဥၥဘိညာ အ႒ ၀ါ သမာပတၱိေယာ၊ သဗၺံ တံ ၀ဋၬပကၡိယံ ၀ဋၬ သီသႏၲိ၊ ၀ဋၬ သီသတၱာ မိစၧာပဋိပဒါ၀ ေဟာတိ- လို႔ဆိုတယ္။ ျမတ္စြာ ဘုရား ပြင့္ေတာ္မူလာ တာက “သမၼာပဋိပဒါ” ကို ေဟာခ်င္လို႔ ပြင့္လာတာ။ ဒီေတာ့ “မိစၧာပဋိပဒါ”နဲ႔ “သမၼာပဋိပဒါ” ဟာ ေျဖာင့္ေျဖာင့္ ဆန္႔က်င္ပါတယ္။

ဒီေတာ့ စာတစ္ပိုဒ္ရဲ႕ အနက္မွန္ကို သိခ်င္ရင္ စာဖတ္နည္းကို သိမွ၊ စာဖတ္နည္းကို သိခ်င္ရင္ ေနတၱိ က်မ္းကို ေလ့လာမွ။ အကုန္လံုး မေလ့လာႏိုင္ရင္ေတာင္ “ယုတၱိဟာရ၊ လကၡဏာဟာရ၊ စတုဗ်ဴဟာ ဟာရ” ကိုေတာ့ သိမွျဖစ္မယ္။

ေဆာင္းပါးရွင္ေတြဟာ သူ႔ပရိတ္သတ္နဲ႔သူပါ။ အျမင္ခ်င္း တူၾကရင္ အၾကိဳက္ခ်င္းတူၾကတာပဲ။ ခက္တယ္၊ လြယ္တယ္ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။

ဓမၼရံသီ မဂၢဇင္းပါ “ခ်မ္းသာကို ရွာေဖြျခင္း” ေဆာင္းပါးရဲ႕ ဦးတည္ခ်က္က ဘ၀ကို မဇၥ်ိမပဋိပဒါႏွင့္ ၾကည့္တတ္ရင္ “သႏၲိသုခ”ကို ရတယ္လို႔ ဆိုတာပါ။ အေၾကာင္းအရာကေတာ့ ပဋိစၥသမုပၸါဒ္ကို အေျခခံၿပီး ဓမၼစၾကာႏွင့္ အနတၱလကၡဏသုတ္၊ ေပါင္းသံုးသုတ္ကို ေရးျခင္းပါ။ ဒီသံုးသုတ္ဟာ ျမတ္စြာဘုရားရဲ႕ သာသနာေတာ္မွာ ပထမဦးဆံုးလည္းျဖစ္၊ အေရးအၾကီးဆံုးလည္းျဖစ္။ အေျခခံ အက်ဆံုးလည္း ျဖစ္လို႔ပါပဲ။
ေဆာင္းပါးအမွတ္စဥ္က (၁၇)ရွိသြားပါၿပီ။

ေနာက္ဆံုးေျပာခ်င္တာက “ငါ့ေလွ ငါထိုး ပဲခူးေရာက္ေရာက္”ဆိုတဲ့ ၀ါဒဟာ မကၡလိေဂါသာလ ၏ ၀ါဒျဖစ္လို႔ အင္မတန္ အႏၲရယ္ၾကီးတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ပါပဲ။ ဆင္ျခင္ဖြယ္ပါ။ သံေ၀ဂယူဖြယ္ပါ။

“လက္ဖက္ရည္ ပန္းကန္လံုးထဲ၌ မုန္တိုင္းကို ျမင္ခ်င္းသည္ မွန္ေသာျမင္ျခင္း။” မဟုတ္ပါ။ ဤသေဘာကို စာဖတ္သူမ်ား အေနျဖင့္ သတိျပဳႏိုင္ရန္ တင္ျပျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။

မွတ္ခ်က္။ အမွားပါလွ်င္ ေရးကူးသူ အကၽြန္ႏုပ္၏ အမွားသာျဖစ္ပါသည္။

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THE BUDDHA'S MINISTRY

THE BUDDHA'S MINISTRY
"Freed am I from all bonds, whether divine or human.
You, too, O Bhikkhus, are freed from all bonds."
-- MAHĀVAGGA

The Buddha's beneficent and successful ministry lasted forty-five years. From His 35th year, the year of His Enlightenment, till His death in His 80th year, He served humanity both by example and by precept. Throughout the year He wandered from place to place, at times alone, sometimes accompanied by His disciples, expounding the Dhamma to the people and liberating them from the bonds of Samsāra. During the rainy season (vassāna) from July to November, owing to incessant rains, He lived in retirement as was customary with all ascetics in India in His time.

In ancient times, as today, three regular seasons prevailed in India, namely, vassāna, (rainy) hemanta (winter) and gimhāna (hot). The vassāna or rainy season starts in Āsālha and extends up to Assayuga, that is approximately from the middle of July to the middle of November.

During the vassāna period, due to torrential rains, rivers and streams usually get flooded, roads get inundated, communications get interrupted and people as a rule are confined to their homes and villages and live on what provisions they have collected during the previous seasons. During this time the ascetics find it difficult to engage in their preaching tours, wandering from place to place. An infinite variety of vegetable and animal life also appears to such an extent that people could not move about without unconsciously destroying them. Accordingly all ascetics including the disciples of the Buddha, used to suspend their itinerant activities and live in retirement in solitary places. As a rule the Buddha and His disciples were invited to spend their rainy seasons either in a monastery or in a secluded park. Sometimes, however, they used to retire to forests. During these rainy seasons people flocked to the Buddha to hear the Dhamma and thus availed themselves of His presence in their vicinity to their best advantage.

The First Twenty Years

1st Year at Benares.

After expounding the Dhammacakka Sutta to His first five disciples on the Āsālha full moon day, He spent the first rainy season in the Deer Park at Isipatana, near Benares. Here there was no special building where he could reside. Yasa's conversion took place during this Retreat.

2nd, 3rd, 4th Years at Rājagaha.

Rājagaha was the capital of the Kingdom of Magadha where ruled King Bimbisāra. When the Buddha visited the King, in accordance with a promise made by Him before His Enlightenment, he offered his Bamboo Grove (Veluvana) to the Buddha and His disciples. This was an ideal solitary place for monks as it was neither too far nor too near to the city. Three rainy seasons were spent by the Buddha in this quiet grove.

5th Year at Vesāli.

During this year while He was residing in the Pinnacle Hall at Mahāvana near Vesāli, He heard of the impending death of King Suddhodana and, repairing to his death chamber, preached the Dhamma to him. Immediately the King attained Arahantship. For seven days thereafter he experienced the bliss of Emancipation and passed away.

It was in this year that the Bhikkhuni Order was founded at the request of Mahā Pajāpati Gotami.

After the cremation of the King, when the Buddha was temporarily residing at Nigrodhārāma, Mahā Pajāpati Gotami approached the Buddha and begged permission for women to enter the Order. But the Buddha refused and returned to the Pinnacle Hall at Rājagaha. Mahā Pajāpati Gotami was so intent on renouncing the world that she, accompanied by many Sākya and Koliya ladies, walked all the way from Kapilavatthu to Rājagaha and, through the intervention of Venerable Ānanda, succeeded in entering the Order.

6th Year at Mankula Hill in Kosambi, near Allahabad.

Just as He performed the "Twin Wonder" (Yamaka Pātihāriya) to overcome the pride of His relatives at Kapilavatthu, even so did He perform it for the second time at Mankula Hill to convert His alien followers.

7th Year at Tāvatimsa Heaven.

A few days after the birth of Prince Siddhattha Queen Mahā Māyā died and was born as a Deva (god) in the Tusita Heaven. In this seventh year, during the three rainy months, the Buddha preached the Abhidhamma to the Devas of the Tāvatimsa Heaven where the mother-Deva repaired to hear him. Daily He came to earth and gave a summary of His sermon to the Venerable Sāriputta who in turn expounded the same doctrine in detail to his disciples. What is embodied in the present Abhidhamma Pitaka is supposed to be this detailed exposition of the Dhamma by him.

It is stated that, on hearing these discourses, the Deva who was His mother attained the first stage of Sainthood.

8th Year at Bhesakalā Forest, near Sumsumāra Rock, in the Bhagga District.

9th Year at Kosambi.

It was in this year that Māgandiyā harboured a grudge against the Buddha and sought an opportunity to dishonour him.

Māgandiyā was a beautiful maiden. Her parents would not give her in marriage as the prospective suitors, in their opinion, were not worthy of their daughter. One day as the Buddha was surveying the world, He perceived the spiritual development of the parents. Out of compassion for them He visited the place where the father of the girl was tending the sacred fire. The brahmin, fascinated by His physical beauty, thought that He was the best person to whom he could give his daughter in marriage and requesting Him to stay there until his arrival, hurried home to bring his daughter. The Buddha in the meantime stamped His footprint on that spot and moved to a different place. The brahmin and his wife, accompanied by their daughter who was dressed in her best garments, came to that spot and observed the footprint. The wife who was conversant with signs said that it was not the footprint of an ordinary man but of a pure person who had eradicated all passions. The Brahmin ridiculed the idea, and, noticing the Buddha at a distance offered his daughter unto Him. The Buddha describing how He overcame His passions said:

"Having seen Tanhā, Arati and Ragā,
I had no pleasure for the pleasures of love.
What is this body, filled with urine and dung?
I should not be willing to touch it, even with my foot."

Hearing His Dhamma, the brahmin and his wife attained Anāgāmi, the third stage of Sainthood. But proud Magandiyā felt insulted and she thought to herself -- "If this man has no need of me, it is perfectly proper for him to say so, but he declares me to be full of urine and dung. Very well, by virtue of birth, lineage, social position, wealth, and the charm of youth that I possess I shall obtain a husband who is my equal, and then I shall know what ought to be done to the monk Gotama."

Enraged by the words of the Buddha, she conceived a hatred towards Him. Later she was given as a consort to the King of Udena. Taking advantage of her position as one of the Royal consorts, she bribed people and instigated them to revile and drive the Buddha out of the city. When the Buddha entered the city, they shouted at him, saying: "You are a thief, a simpleton, a fool, a camel, an ox, an ass, a denizen of hell, a beast. You have no hope of salvation. A state of punishment is all that you can look forward to."

Venerable Ānanda, unable to hear this filthy abuse, approached the Buddha and said -- "Lord, these citizens are reviling and abusing us. Let us go elsewhere."

"Where shall we go, Ānanda?" asked the Buddha.

"To some other city, Lord," said Ānanda.

"If men revile us there, where shall we go then?" inquired the Buddha.

"To still another city, Lord," said Ānanda.

"Ānanda, one should not speak thus. Where a difficulty arises, right there should it be settled. Only under those circumstances is it permissible to go elsewhere. But who are reviling you, Ānanda?" questioned the Buddha.

"Lord, everyone is reviling us, slaves and all," replied Ānanda. Admonishing Venerable Ānanda to practise patience, the Buddha said:

i) "As an elephant in the battle-field withstands the arrows shot from a bow, even so will I endure abuse. Verily, most people are undisciplined."

ii) "They lead the trained horses or elephants to an assembly. The King mounts the trained animal. The best among men are the disciplined who endure abuse."

iii) "Excellent are trained mules, so are thorough-bred horses of Sindh and noble tusked elephants; but the man who is disciplined surpasses them all."

Again He addressed Venerable Ānanda and said -- "Be not disturbed. These men will revile you only for seven days, and, on the eighth day they will become silent. A difficulty encountered by the Buddhas lasts no longer than seven days."

10th Year at Pārileyyaka Forest.

While the Buddha was residing at Kosambi, a dispute arose between two parties of Bhikkhus -- one versed in the Dhamma, the other in the Vinaya -- with respect to the transgression of a minor rule of etiquette in the lavatory. Their respective supporters also were divided into two sections.

Even the Buddha could not settle the differences of these quarrelsome monks. They were adamant and would not listen to His advice. The Buddha thought:-- "Under present conditions the jostling crowd in which I live makes my life one of discomfort. Moreover these monks pay no attention to what I say. Suppose I were to retire from the haunts of men and live a life of solitude. In pursuance of this thought, without even informing the Sangha, alone He retired to the Pārileyyaka Forest and spent the rainy season at the foot of a beautiful Sal-tree.

It was on this occasion, according to the story, that an elephant and a monkey ministered to His needs.

11th Year at Ekanālā, brahmin village.

The following Kasibhāradvāja Sutta was delivered here:

On one occasion the Buddha was residing at Ekanālā in Dakkhinagiri, the brahmin village in Magadha. At that time about five-hundred ploughs belonging to Kasibhāradvāja brahmin were harnessed for the sowing. Thereupon the Exalted One, in the forenoon, dressed Himself and taking bowl and robe went to the working place of the brahmin. At that time the distribution of food by the brahmin was taking place. The Buddha went to the place where food was being distributed and stood aside. The brahmin Kasibhāradvāja saw the Buddha waiting for alms. Seeing Him, he spoke thus -- "I, O ascetic, plough and sow; and having ploughed and sown, I eat. You also, O ascetic, should plough and sow; and having ploughed and sown, you should eat."

"I, too, O brahmin, plough and sow; having ploughed and sown, I eat." said the Buddha.

"But we see not the Venerable Gotama's yoke, or plough, or ploughshare, or goad, or oxen, albeit the Venerable Gotama says -- "I too plough and sow; and having ploughed and sown, I eat," remarked the brahmin.

Then the brahmin Bhāradvāja addressed the Exalted One thus:

"A farmer you claim to be, but we see none of your tillage. Being questioned about ploughing, please answer us so that we may know your ploughing."

The Buddha answered:

"Confidence (saddhā) is the seed, discipline (tapo) is the rain, wisdom (pa?ā) my yoke and plough, modesty (hiri) the pole of my plough, mind (mano) the rein, and mindfulness (sati) my ploughshare and goad.

"I am controlled in body, controlled in speech, temperate in food. With truthfulness I cut away weeds. Absorption in the Highest (Arahantship) is the release of the oxen.

"Perseverance (viriya) is my beast of burden that carries me towards the bond-free state (Nibbāna). Without turning it goes, and having gone it does not grieve.

"Thus is the tilling done: it bears the fruit of Deathlessness. Having done this tilling, one is freed from all sorrow."

Thereupon the brahmin Kasibhāradvāja, filling a large bronze bowl with milk-rice, offered it to the Exalted One, saying "May the Venerable Gotama eat the milk-rice! The Venerable Gotama is a farmer, since the Venerable Gotama tills a crop that bears the fruit of Deathlessness."

The Exalted One, however, refused to accept this saying:

"What is obtained by reciting verses is not fit to be eaten by me. This, O brahmin, is not the rule of seers. The Enlightened reject such food. While this principle lasts, this is the livelihood.

"Serve the unique, cankerless, great sage of holy calm with other kind of food and drink, for He is like a field to him that desires to sow good deeds."

12th Year at Vera?ā.

A brahmin of Vera?ā, hearing that the Buddha was residing at Vera?ā near Naleru's Nimba tree with a large company of His disciples, approached Him and raised several questions with regard to His conduct. The brahmin was so pleased with His answers that he became a follower of the Buddha and invited Him and His disciples to spend the rainy season at Vera?ā. The Buddha signified His assent as usual by His silence.

Unfortunately at this particular time there was a famine at Vera?ā and the Buddha and His disciples were compelled to live on food intended for horses. A horse-dealer very kindly provided them with coarse food available, and the Buddha partook of such food with perfect equanimity.

One day, during this period, Venerable Sāriputta, arising from his solitary meditation, approached the Buddha and respectfully questioned Him thus: "Which Buddha's Dispensation endured long and which did not?"

The Buddha replied that the Dispensations of the Buddhas Vipassi, Sikhī and Vessabhū did not endure long. while the Dispensations of the Buddhas Kakusandha, Konāgamana and Kassapa endured long.

The Buddha attributed this to the fact that some Buddhas did make no great effort in preaching the Dhamma in detail and promulgated no rules and regulations for the discipline of the disciples, while other Buddhas did so.

Thereupon Venerable Sāriputta respectfully implored the Buddha to promulgate the Fundamental Precepts (Pātimokkha) for the future discipline of the Sangha so that the Holy Life may endure long.

"Be patient, Sāriputta, be patient," said the Buddha and added:

"The Tathāgata alone is aware of the time for it. Until certain defiling conditions arise in the Sangha the Tathāgata does not promulgate Means of Discipline for the disciples and does not lay down the Fundamental Precepts (Pātimokkha). When such defiling conditions arise in the Sangha, then only the Tathāgata promulgates Means of Discipline and lays down the Fundamental Precepts for the disciples in order to eradicate such defilements.

"When, Sāriputta, the Sangha attains long standing (ratta?umahattam), full development (vepullamahattam), great increase in gains (lābhaggamahattam) and greatness in erudition (bahussutamahattam), defiling conditions arise in the Sangha. Then does the Tathāgata promulgate Means of Discipline and the Fundamental Precepts to prevent such defilements.

"Sāriputta, the Order of disciples is free from troubles, devoid of evil tendencies, free from stain, pure, and well established in virtue. The last of my five-hundred disciples is a Sotāpanna (Stream-Winner) not liable to fall, steadfast and destined for enlightenment."

(The rainy season at Vera?ā forms the subject of the Introduction to the Pārājikā Book of the Vinaya Pitaka).

At the end of this rainy season the Buddha went on a preaching tour to Soreyya, Samkassa, Kannakujja, Payāga, and then, crossing the river, stayed some time in Benares and returned thence to Vesāli to reside at the Pinnacle Hall in Mahāvana.

13th Year was spent at Cāliya Rock.

14th Year at Jetavana Monastery, Sāvatthi.

The Venerable Rāhula received his Higher Ordination at this time on the completion of his twentieth year.

15th Year at Kapilavatthu.

The pathetic death of King Suppabuddha who was angry with the Buddha for leaving his daughter, Princess Yasodharā, occurred in this year. It may be mentioned that the Buddha spent only one rainy season in his birthplace.

16th Year at the city of Ālavi.

The conversion of Ālavaka the demon, who feasted on human flesh, took place in this year.

Ā1avaka, a ferocious demon, was enraged to see the Buddha in his mansion. He came up to Him and asked Him to depart. "Very well, friend," said the Buddha and went out. "Come in," said he. The Buddha came in. For the second and third time he made the same request and the Buddha obeyed. But when he commanded Him for the fourth time, the Buddha refused and asked him to do what he could.

"Well, I will ask you a question," said Ālavaka, "If you will not answer, I will scatter your thoughts, or rive your heart, or take you by your feet and fling you across the Ganges."

"Nay, friend," replied the Buddha, "I see not in this world inclusive of gods, brahmas, ascetics, and brahmins, amongst the multitude of gods and men, any who could scatter my thoughts, or rive my heart, or take me by my feet and fling me across the Ganges. However, friend, ask what you wish."

Ā1avaka then asked the following questions:

"Herein, which is man's best possession?
Which well practised yields happiness?
Which indeed is the sweetest of tastes?
How lived, do they call the best life?"

To these questions the Buddha answered thus:

"Herein confidence is man's best possession.
Dhamma well practised yields happiness.
Truth indeed is the sweetest of tastes.
Life lived with understanding is best, they say."

Ālavaka next asked the Buddha:

"How does one cross the flood?
How does one cross the sea?
How does one overcome sorrow?
How is one purified?"

The Exalted One replied:

"By confidence one crosses the flood, by heedfulness the sea.
By effort one overcomes sorrow, by wisdom is one purified."

Ā1avaka then inquired:

"How is wisdom gained? How are riches found?
How is renown gained? How are friends bound?
Passing from this world to the next how does one not grieve?"

In answer the Buddha said:

"The heedful, intelligent person of confidence gains wisdom by hearing the dhamma of the Pure Ones that leads to Nibbāna. He who does what is proper, persevering and strenuous, gains wealth. By truth one attains to fame. Generosity binds friends.

"That faithful householder who possesses these four virtues -- truthfulness, good morals, courage and liberality -- grieves not after passing away."

"Well, ask many other ascetics and brahmins whether there is found anything greater than truthfulness, self-control, generosity, and patience."

Understanding well the meaning of the Buddha's words, Ā1avaka said:

"How could I now ask diverse ascetics and brahmins? Today I know what is the secret of my future welfare.

"For my own good did the Buddha come to Ālavi. To-day I know where gifts bestowed yield fruit in abundance. From village to village, from town to town will I wander honouring the Fully Enlightened One and the perfection of the sublime Dhamma."

17th Year was spent at Rājagaha.

18th Year was spent at Cāliya Rock.

19th and 20th years were spent at Rajāgaha.
Buddha and Angulimāla

It was in the 20th year that the Buddha converted the notorious murderer Angulimāla. Ahimsaka (Innocent) was his original name. His father was chaplain to the King of Kosala. He received his education at Taxila, the famous educational centre in the olden days, and became the most illustrious and favourite pupil of his renowned teacher. Unfortunately his colleagues grew jealous of him, concocted a false story, and succeeded in poisoning the teacher's mind against him. The enraged teacher, without any investigation, contrived to put an end to his life by ordering him to fetch a thousand human right-hand fingers as teacher's honorarium. In obedience to the teacher, though with great reluctance, he repaired to the Jalini forest, in Kosala, and started killing people to collect fingers for the necessary offering. The fingers thus collected were hung on a tree, but as they were destroyed by crows and vultures he later wore a garland of those fingers to ascertain the exact number. Hence he was known by the name Angulimāla (Finger-wreathed). When he had collected 999 fingers, so the books state, the Buddha appeared on the scene. Overjoyed at the sight, because he thought that he could complete the required number by killing the great ascetic, he stalked the Buddha drawing his sword. The Buddha by His psychic powers created obstacles on the way so that Angulimāla would not be able to get near Him although He walked at His usual pace. Angulirnāla ran as fast as he could but he could not overtake the Buddha. Panting and sweating, he stopped and cried: "Stop, ascetic." The Buddha calmly said: "Though I walk, yet have I stopped. You too, Angulimāla stop." The bandit thought --"These ascetics speak the truth, yet He says He has stopped, whereas it is I who have stopped. What does He mean?"

Standing, he questioned Him:

"Thou who art walking, friar, dost say: 'Lo I have stopped!'
And me thou tellest, who have stopped, I have not stopped!
I ask thee, friar, what is the meaning of thy words?
How sayest thou that thou hast stopped but I have not?"

The Buddha sweetly replied:

"Yea, I have stopped, Angulimāla, evermore.
Towards all living things renouncing violence;
Thou holdest not thy hand against thy fellowmen,
Therefore 'tis I have stopped, but thou still goest on."

Angulimāla's good Kamma rushed up to the surface. He thought that the great ascetic was none other but the Buddha Gotama who out of compassion had come to help him.

Straightway he threw away his armour and sword and became a convert. Later, as requested by him he was admitted into the Noble Order by the Buddha with the mere utterance -- 'Come, O Bhikkhu!' (Ehi Bhikkhu).

News spread that Angulimāla had become a Bhikkhu. The King of Kosala, in particular, was greatly relieved to hear of his conversion because he was a veritable source of danger to his subjects.

But Venerable Angulimāla had no peace of mind, because even in his solitary meditation he used to recall memories of his past and the pathetic cries of his unfortunate victims. As a result of his evil Kamma, while seeking alms in the streets he would become a target for stray stones and sticks and he would return to the monastery 'with broken head and flowing blood, cut and crushed' to be reminded by the Buddha that he was merely reaping the effects of his own Kamma.

One day as he went on his round for alms he saw a woman in travail. Moved by compassion, he reported this pathetic woman's suffering to the Buddha. He then advised him to pronounce the following words of truth, which later came to be known as the Angulimāla Paritta.

"Sister, since my birth in the Arya clan (i.e. since his ordination) I know not that I consciously destroyed the life of any living being. By this truth may you be whole, and may your child be whole."

He studied this Paritta and, going to the presence of the suffering sister, sat on a seat separated from her by a screen, and uttered these words. Instantly she was delivered of the child with ease. The efficacy of this Paritta persists to this day.

In due course Venerable Angulimāla attained Arahantship.

Referring to his memorable conversion by the Buddha, he says:

"Some creatures are subdued by force,
Some by the hook, and some by whips,
But I by such a One was tamed,
Who needed neither staff nor sword.

The Buddha spent the remaining twenty-five years of His life mostly in Sāvatthi at the Jetavana Monastery built by Anāthapindika, the millionaire, and partly at Pubbārāma, built by Visākhā, the chief benefactress.

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