Man with Vision

Olive Backed Sunbird 6 Aug-16-8“As a man with vision, while he is endeavouring, would avoid dangerous paths,
So a wise man in the world of the living, should avoid bad deeds.” – Ud 5.3

“Cakkhumā visamānīva, vijjamāne parakkame;
Paṇḍito jīvalokasmiṁ, pāpāni parivajjaye”ti.

Olive Backed Sunbird 24 Apr 16”မျက်စိအမြင်ရှိသူသည် လုံ့လဝီရိယရှိလတ်သော်မညီညွတ်သောအရပ်တို့ကို ရှောင်ကြဉ်သကဲ့သို့ ဤအတူ သတ္တလောက၌ ပညာရှိသောသူသည် မကောင်းမှုတို့ကို ကြဉ်ရှောင်ရာ၏”

“Như người có mắt nhìn, cố gắng tránh lồi lõm,
Cũng vậy kẻ trí tránh, điều ác giữa đời này.”

Olive Backed Sunbird ©Ashin Sopāka 2016

Fragrant Flowers Fragrant Virtue

“Like a beautiful flower full of color but without fragrance,
even so, fruitless are the fair words of one who does not practice them.

“Like a beautiful flower full of color and also fragrant,
even so, fruitful are the fair words of one who practices them.” – Dhp 51 & 52

Little White Flower 19 May 16“Yathāpi ruciraṁ pupphaṁ,
vaṇṇavantaṁ agandhakaṁ;
Evaṁ subhāsitā vācā,
aphalā hoti akubbato.

“Yathāpi ruciraṁ pupphaṁ,
Vaṇṇavantaṁ sagandhakaṁ;
Evaṃ subhāsitā vācā,
Saphalā hoti kubbato.”

“အဆင်းသာရှိ၍ အနံ့မရှိသောတင့်တယ်လှပသော (ပေါက်ပွင့်စသော) ပန်းသည် ပန်ဆင်သူအား အနံ့တည်းဟူသော အကျိုးကို မဆောင်နိုင်သကဲ့သို့ ကောင်းစွာ ဟောကြားတော်မူအပ်သော (ပိဋကတ်) စကားတော်သည် မလိုက်နာ မကျင့်ကြံသူအား အကျိုးကို မဆောင်နိုင်။

“အဆင်း အနံ့ ပြည့်စုံ၍ တင့်တယ်လှပသော စံပယ် စကား စသောပန်းသည် ပန်ဆင်သူအား အနံ့တည်းဟူသော အကျိုးကို ဆောင်နိုင်သကဲ့သို့ ကောင်းစွာ ဟောကြားတော်မူအပ်သော (ပိဋကတ်) စကားတော်သည် လိုက်နာကျင့်ကြံသူအား အကျိုးကို ဆောင်နိုင်၏။”

“Như bông hoa tươi đẹp,
Có sắc nhưng không hương.
Cũng vậy, lời khéo nói,
Không làm, không kết quả.

“Như bông hoa tươi đẹp,
Có sắc lại thêm hương ;
Cũng vậy, lời khéo nói,
Có làm, có kết quả.”

人若不能奉行自己所說的善語,
無法得到善果,
就像美麗但毫無香氣的花朵。

人若奉行自己所說的善語,
必得善果,
像美麗又芳香的花果。

Little White Flower ©Ashin Sopāka 2016

Teacher

Asian Koel 4-Apr-16“If you have no satisfactory teacher, then take this sure Dhamma and practice it. For the Dhamma is sure, and when it is rightly undertaken it will be to your welfare and happiness for a long time.” – MN 60

“Manāpaṁ vo, gahapatayo, satthāraṁ alabhantehi ayaṁ apaṇṇako dhammo samādāya vattitabbo. Apaṇṇako hi, gahapatayo, dhammo samatto samādinno, so vo bhavissati dīgharattaṁ hitāya sukhāya.”

“သူကြွယ်တို့ သင်တို့သည် နှစ်သက်လောက်သော ဆရာသမားကို မရကြသော် ဧကန် အကျိုးရှိသော ဤအကျင့်တရားကို ကောင်းစွာ ဆောက်တည်၍ကျင့်ထိုက်၏။ သူကြွယ်တို့ ဧကန် အကျိုးရှိသော အကျင့်တရားကို စွဲယူ ဆောက်တည်ထားသော် ထိုအကျင့်တရားသည် သင်တို့အတွက် ရှည်မြင့်စွာသော ကာလပတ်လုံး စီးပွါးခြင်း ချမ်းသာခြင်းငှါဖြစ်လတ္တံ့။”

Female Asian Koel  24-Jul-16“Này các Gia chủ, nếu các Ông không có một vị Ðạo sư khả ý nào, thời hãy lấy pháp không gì chuyển hướng này mà thực hành. Này các Gia chủ, pháp không gì chuyển hướng này được khéo thọ trì, khéo thành tựu, sẽ đưa đến hạnh phúc, an lạc lâu dài cho các Ông.”

屋主們!以未得到合意的大師,你們應該受持後轉起無風險法,屋主們!因為,當無風險法完全地被受持時,那對你們將有長久的利益與安樂。屋主們!」

Asian Koel (top left: male; lower right: female)
©Ashin Sopāka 2016

Five Benefits of Listening to Dhamma

Blue Winged Pitta 11-Jun-16“Bhikkhus, there are these five benefits in listening to the Dhamma. What five? One hears what one has not been heard; one clarifies what has been heard; one emerges from perplexity; one straightens out one’s view; one’s mind become placid. These are the five benefits of listening to the Dhamma.” – AN 5.202 (Bodhi)

“Pañcime, bhikkhave, ānisaṁsā dhammassavane. Katame pañca? Assutaṁ suṇāti, sutaṁ pariyodāpeti, kaṅkhaṁ vitarati, diṭṭhiṁ ujuṁ karoti, cittamassa pasīdati. Ime kho, bhikkhave, pañca ānisaṁsā dhammassavane”ti.

“ရဟန်းတို့ တရားနာခြင်း၌ အာနိသင်တို့သည် ဤငါးမျိုးတို့တည်း။ အဘယ်ငါးမျိုးတို့နည်းဟူမူ— မကြားဖူးသည်ကို ကြားနာရ၏။ ကြားဖူးသည်ကို ဖြူစင်စေ၏။ ယုံမှားမှုကို ကူးမြောက်နိုင်၏။ အယူကို ဖြောင့်မတ်စွာ ပြုနိုင်၏။ ထိုသူ၏ စိတ်သည် ကြည်လင်၏။ ရဟန်းတို့ တရားနာခြင်း၌ အာနိသင်တို့သည် ဤ ငါးမျိုးတို့တည်းဟု (မိန့်တော်မူ၏)။”

“Này các Tỷ-kheo, nghe pháp có năm lợi ích này. Thế nào là năm? Ðược nghe điều chưa nghe, làm cho trong sạch điều được nghe, đoạn trừ nghi, làm cho tri kiến chánh trực, làm cho tâm tịnh tín. Này các Tỷ-kheo, nghe pháp có năm lợi ích này.”

「比丘們!在法的聽聞中有這五種效益,哪五種呢?聽聞未聽聞的、使已聽聞的遍純淨、度脫疑惑、導正見解、心的明淨,比丘們!在法的聽聞中這些是五種效益。」

Blue Winged Pitta ©Ashin Sopāka 2016

Burmese Names

MahabhoteAfter speaking with some other non-Burmese monastics, I learned that we were all asked at the time of our ordinations if we wanted to choose a Pāḷi name, or if we wanted our preceptor to give us one. Only one said he chose his own name, but for the rest of us, it was given by our preceptors. The names are not given willy-nilly; there is a process and a meaning behind the process.

The first question asked is “On what day of the week were you born?” That’s a toughie for most, but for the Burmese it’s something they know off the top of their heads. In Burmese astrology, one’s astrological sign is determined by the day of the week on which one was born. Once that is known, the first auspicious letter for the name is selected (see the chart below), then, an aspirational Pāḷi name is given.

Days Letters Animal
Monday (တနလင်္ာ) k (က), hk (ခ), g (ဂ), g (ဃ), ng (င) Tiger
Tuesday (အင်္ဂါ) s (စ), hs (ဆ), z (ဇ), z (ဈ), ñ (ည , ဉ) Lion
Wednesday morning (ဗုဒ်ဓဟူး) l (လ), w (ဝ) Elephant w/tusks
Wednesday afternoon (ရာဟု) y (ယ), y / r (ရ) Elephant w/o tusks
Thursday (ကြာသာပတေး) p (ပ), hp (ဖ), b (ဗ), b (ဘ), m (မ) Rat
Friday (သောကြာ) th (သ), h (ဟ) Guinea Pig
Saturday (စနေ) t (တ), ht (ထ), d (ဒ), d (ဓ), n (န) Dragon
Sunday (တနင်္ဂနွ) vowel (အ, ဣ, ဩ) Garuda

In fact, this is an ancient practice in Burmese culture for the naming of children as well, except, of course, parents don’t choose Pāḷi names. So should you non-monastics decide to date a Burmese, you don’t need to ask “What is your sign?”, you can determine if from their first name!

With monastics, though, it’s a bit trickier because of the unique Burmese pronunciation of some Pāḷi letters (not that you should be trying to determine their signs for the sake of dating compatibility!). The following table shows a few examples:

Pāḷi
s
c
j
v

Burmese
th (သ)
s (စ)
z (ဇ)
w (ဝ)

So, for example, the first Shwekyin Sayadaw U Jāgara, Mingun Sayadaw U Vicittasārābhivaṁsa, and even humble ole me, U Sopāka, in Burmese writing and pronuciation, are U Zāgara (ဥုးဇာဂရ),  U Wisittathārābiwangtha (ဥုးဝိစိတ္တသာရာဘိဝံသ), and U Thawpaka (ဥုးသောပါက), born on Tuesday, Wednesday morning, and Friday, respectively. The “U” is a title for monks, and uncles, but that’s for another time.

Buddha and SopākaAs mentioned earlier, the names have meaning and are meant, in a sense, to be aspirational. Zāgara means “waking, watchful, careful, vigilant”[ref]PTS Pāḷi-English Dictionary[/ref], while mine, on the one hand, is to perhaps remind me of the boy Sopāka, who after hearing the Dhamma, attained sotāpanna at the tender age of seven. On the other hand, it means “a man of a very low caste, an outcast Sn 137,” and in another spelling variation, Sapāka, a “dog-cooker”! Not sure what to make of that.