August 2017 to be published on 25 July
Courtesy of Sītagū Saṅgha Vihāra Florida
The joy of dāna... feel free to share
First of Waso
Happy First of Waso!
The joy of dāna... feel free to share
Buddha Tends a Sick Monk
Now at that time a certain monk was suffering from dysentery and lay where he had fallen in his own excrement. … Then the Lord said to Ānanda: “Go and fetch water so we can wash this monk.” So Ānanda brought water and the Lord poured it out while Ānanda washed the monk all over. Then taking the monk by the head and feet, the Lord and Ānanda together carried him and laid him on a bed. Later, the Lord called the monks together and asked them: “Why monks, did you not look after that sick monk?”
“Because he was of no use to us, Lord.”
“Monks, you have no mother or father to look after you. If you do not look after each other who will? He who would nurse me, let him nurse the sick.” -Vin i 268–Vin i 311
Tena kho pana samayena aññatarassa bhikkhuno kucchivikārābādho hoti. So sake muttakarīse palipanno seti … Atha kho bhagavā āyasmantaṁ ānandaṁ āmantesi—“gacchānanda, udakaṁ āhara, imaṁ bhikkhuṁ nahāpessāmā”ti. Bhagavā udakaṁ āsiñci. Āyasmā ānando paridhovi. Bhagavā sīsato aggahesi. Āyasmā ānando pādato uccāretvā mañcake nipātesuṁ. Atha kho bhagavā etasmiṁ nidāne etasmiṁ pakaraṇe bhikkhusaṁghaṁ sannipātāpetvā bhikkhū paṭipucchi – “Kissa taṁ bhikkhū na upaṭṭhentī”ti?
“Ahaṁ kho, bhante, bhikkhūnaṁ akārako; tena maṁ bhikkhū na upaṭṭhentī”ti.
“Natthi vo, bhikkhave, mātā, natthi pitā, ye vo upaṭṭhaheyyuṁ. Tumhe ce, bhikkhave, aññamaññaṁ na upaṭṭhahissatha, atha ko carahi upaṭṭhahissati? Yo, bhikkhave, maṁ upaṭṭhaheyya so gilānaṁ upaṭṭhaheyya.”
တရံရောအခါ တပါးသောရဟန်းအား ဝမ်းသက်သောရောဂါ ဖြစ်၏။ ထိုရဟန်းသည် မိမိကျင်ကြီးကျင်ငယ်၌ လူးလှမ့်လျက်အိပ်ရ၏။ ထို့နောက် မြတ်စွာဘုရားသည် အသျှင်အာနန္ဒာကို “အာနန္ဒာ သွားချေ၊ ရေဆောင်ယူခဲ့လော့၊ ဤရဟန်းကို ရေချိုးကုန်အံ့” ဟု မိန့်တော်မူ၏။ “ကောင်းပါပြီ အသျှင်ဘုရား” ဟု ဆို၍ အသျှင် အာနန္ဒာသည် မြတ်စွာဘုရားအား ဝန်ခံ၍ ရေကိုဆောင်ယူလာ၏၊ မြတ်စွာဘုရားသည် ရေကိုသွန်းလောင်းတော်မူ၏၊ အသျှင်အာနန္ဒာသည် ဆေးကြောလေ၏၊ မြတ်စွာဘုရားသည် ဦးခေါင်းမှ ကိုင်ယူတော်မူ၏၊ အသျှင်အာနန္ဒာသည် ခြေထောက်မှ ချီမ၍ ညောင်စောင်း၌ အိပ်စေကုန်၏။ ထို့နောက် မြတ်စွားဘုရားသည် ဤအကြောင်းအရာကြောင့် ရဟန်းအပေါင်းကို စည်းဝေးစေပြီးလျှင် ရဟန်းတို့ကို “ရဟန်းတို့ အဘယ်ကြောင့် ထိုရဟန်းကို မလုပ်ကျွေးကုန်သနည်း” ဟု (မေးတော်မူ၏)။
“အသျှင်ဘုရား ဤရဟန်းသည် ရဟန်းတို့အား မလုပ်ကျွေးဘူးပါ၊ ထို့ကြောင့် ထိုရဟန်းကို ရဟန်းတို့သည် မလုပ်ကျွေးပါကုန်” ဟု (လျောက်ကုန်၏)။
ရဟန်းတို့ သင်တို့အား လုပ်ကျွေးမည့် အမိအဖတို့ မရှိကုန်၊ ရဟန်းတို့ သင်တို့သည် အချင်းချင်း မလုပ်ကျွေးခဲ့လျှင် အဘယ်သူသည် လုပ်ကျွေးလတ္တံ့နည်း။ ရဟန်းတို့ ငါဘုရားကို လုပ်ကျွေးသော ရဟန်းသည် နာဖျားသော ရဟန်းကို လုပ်ကျွေးရာ၏။
Vào lúc bấy giờ, có vị tỳ khưu nọ bị bệnh kiết lỵ. Vị ấy nằm dài ở đống phân và nước tiểu của chính mình, bị lem luốc … Khi ấy, đức Thế Tôn đã bảo đại đức Ānanda rằng:—“Này Ānanda, hãy đi và mang nước lại. Chúng ta sẽ tắm cho vị tỳ khưu này.”—“Bạch ngài, xin vâng.” Rồi đại đức Ānanda nghe theo đức Thế Tôn đã mang nước lại. Đức Thế Tôn đã xối nước. Đại đức Ānanda đã rửa ráy toàn bộ. Rồi đức Thế Tôn đã đỡ phần đầu, đại đức Ānanda ở phần chân, đã nâng lên và đặt ở trên giường. Sau đó, đức Thế Tôn nhân lý do ấy nhân sự kiện ấy đã triệu tập hội chúng tỳ khưu lại rồi hỏi các vị tỳ khưu rằng: “Vì sao các tỳ khưu không phục vụ vị ấy?”
“Bạch ngài, vị tỳ khưu ấy là người không có làm gì cho các tỳ khưu, do đó các tỳ khưu không phục vụ vị ấy.”
“Này các tỳ khưu, các ngươi không có mẹ, không có cha là những người có thể phục vụ các ngươi. Này các tỳ khưu, nếu các ngươi không phục vụ lẫn nhau thì giờ đây ai sẽ phục vụ đây? Này các tỳ khưu, vị nào có thể phục vụ ta, vị ấy có thể phục vụ người bệnh.
The joy of dāna... feel free to share
Faith and Confidence
“Bhikkhus, in three cases one may be understood to have faith and confidence. What three? When one desires to see those of virtuous behavior; when one desires to hear the good Dhamma; and when one dwells at home with a mind devoid of the stain of miserliness, freely generous, openhanded, delighting in relinquishment, devoted to charity, delighting in giving and sharing. In these three cases, one may be understood to have faith and confidence.” – AN 3.42
‘‘Tīhi, bhikkhave, ṭhānehi saddho pasanno veditabbo. Katamehi tīhi? Sīlavantānaṁ dassanakāmo hoti, saddhammaṁ sotukāmo hoti , vigatamalamaccherena cetasā agāraṁ ajjhāvasati muttacāgo payatapāṇi vossaggarato yācayogo dānasaṁvibhāgarato. Imehi kho, bhikkhave, tīhi ṭhānehi saddho pasanno veditabbo.”
“ရဟန်းတို့ အကြောင်းသုံးမျိုးတို့ဖြင့် ကြည်ညိုသူကို သဒ္ဓါတရားနှင့် ပြည့်စုံသူဟူ၍ သိအပ်၏။ အဘယ်သုံးမျိုးတို့နည်းဟူမူ— သီလနှင့်ပြည့်စုံသော သူတို့ကို ဖူးမြင်လိုသူ ဖြစ်၏၊ သူတော်ကောင်းတရားကို နာကြားလိုသူဖြစ်၏၊ လွတ်လွတ်စွန့်ကြဲခြင်း ရှိသည်ဖြစ်၍ ဆေးကြောအပ်သော လက်ရှိသည် စွန့်လွှတ်ခြင်း၌ ပျော်မွေ့သည် တောင်းခံခြင်းငှါ သင့်သည် ပေးလှူမှု ဝေဖန်ခန့်ခွဲမှု၌ မွေ့လျော်သည်ဖြစ်၍ ဝန်တိုခြင်းဟူသော အညစ်အကြေးမှ ကင်းသော စိတ်ဖြင့် အိမ်၌နေသူ ဖြစ်၏။”
“Do ba sự kiện, này các Tỷ-kheo, một người được biết là có lòng tin. Thế nào là ba? Ưa thấy người có giới hạnh, ưa nghe diệu pháp, với tâm ly cấu uế của xan tham, sống trong nhà, bố thí rộng rãi với bàn tay sạch sẽ, ưa thích từ bỏ, sẵn sàng để được yêu cầu, thích phân phát vật bố thí. Do ba sự kiện này, này các Tỷ-kheo, một người được biết là có lòng tin.”
「比丘們！以三種情況能知道有信的淨信者，哪三種呢？他是想要看見持戒者、他是想要聽聞善法者、他是要以離慳垢之心住於在家，自在地施捨，親手施與，樂於捨，回應乞求，樂於均分與布施者，比丘們！以三這處能知道有信的淨信者。」
Rock Pigeon ©Ashin Sopāka 2017
The joy of dāna... feel free to share
A Friend
“Cultivate a friend whose ways are seven. What seven? He gives what is hard to give, does what is hard to do, bear what is hard to bear, he confesses his secrets and keeps your secrets, in times of trouble he does not abandon you, and he does not despise you when you are down.” – AN 7.36
“Sattahi, bhikkhave, aṅgehi samannāgato mitto sevitabbo. Katamehi sattahi? Duddadaṁ dadāti, dukkaraṁ karoti, dukkhamaṁ khamati, guyhamassa āvi karoti, guyhamassa
pariguhati, āpadāsu na jahati, khīṇena nātimaññati.”
“ရဟန်းတို့ အင်္ဂါခုနစ်မျိုးတို့နှင့် ပြည့်စုံသော အဆွေခင်ပွန်းကို မှီဝဲအပ်၏၊ အဘယ်ခုနစ်မျိုးတို့နည်းဟူမူ — (သူတစ်ပါးတို့) ပေးနိုင်ခဲသော အရာဝတ္ထုကို ပေးတတ်၏၊ ပြုနိုင်ခဲသော အမှုကို ပြု၏၊ သည်းခံနိုင်ခဲသော အရာကို သည်းခံ၏၊ မိမိ၏ လျှို့ဝှက်အပ်သော အရာကို ထိုအဆွေခင်ပွန်းအား ထင်စွာပြု၏၊ ထိုအဆွေခင်ပွန်း၏ လျှို့ဝှက်အပ်သော အရာကို လျှို့ဝှက်၏၊ ဘေးရန်တို့ကြောင့် မစွန့်ပစ်၊ ပစ္စည်းဥစ္စာကုန်ခြင်းကြောင့် မထီမဲ့မြင် မပြု။”
“Thành tựu bảy chi phần, này các Tỷ-kheo, một Tỷ-kheo cần phải thân cận như một người bạn. Thế nào là bảy? Cho những gì khó cho, làm những gì khó làm, nhẫn những gì khó nhẫn, nói lên những gì bí mật của mình, che giấu bí mật của người khác, không từ bỏ khi gặp bất hạnh, không có khinh rẻ khi tài sản khánh tận.”
「比丘們！具備七支者應該結交為朋友，哪七個呢？他給與難給與的、他做難做的、他忍耐難忍耐的、顯露他的秘密、守［你的］秘密、在災難時不離棄、不以［你的財富］滅盡而輕蔑。」
Top: Lineated Barbet
Bottom: Brown Throated Sunbird
©Ashin Sopāka 2017
The joy of dāna... feel free to share