Myanmar Buddhist Titles

On 12 March 2017, his 80th birthday, Sītagū Sayadaw U Ñāṇissara was awarded Myanmar’s highest Buddhist title, Abhidhajamahāraṭṭhaguru, for his tireless, selfless work in the promotion of Dhamma through education, health care, and disaster relief. Previously, Sayadaw also received the following titles: Mahādhammakathika Bahujanahitadhara,  Aggamahāsaddhammajotikadhaja, Aggamahāpaṇḍita, and Aggamahāganthavācakapaṇḍita. To date, five institutions of higher learning have also conferred honorary PhDs. For a brief bio, see this page (up to 2013).

With that, one may wonder what other religious title are awarded by the Myanmar government. Following is a list of said titles sorted according to the category in which they belong.[ref]After hours of pouring over Myanmar government websites and romanising the titles, I stumbled across this Wikipedia page with the work already done, and made minor spelling corrections. This table is based on that. Thanks to Venerable Ānandajoti for the English renderings.[/ref]

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Tangles

“A tangle inside, a tangle outside,
This generation is entangled in a tangle.
I ask you this, Gotama,
Who can disentangle this tangle?”

[Buddha]
“A man established on virtue, wise,
Developing the mind and wisdom,
A bhikkhu ardent and discreet:
He can disentangle the tangle.

“Those for whom lust and hatred
Along with ignorance have been expunged,
The arahants with taints destroyed:
For them the tangle is disentangled.

“Where name-and-form ceases,
Stops without remainder,
And also impingement and perception of form:
It is here this tangle is cut.” – SN 7.6 (Ven. Bodhi)

“Antojaṭā bahijaṭā,
Jaṭāya jaṭitā pajā;
Taṁ taṁ gotama pucchāmi,
Ko imaṁ vijaṭaye jaṭan”ti.

[Buddha]
“Sīle patiṭṭhāya naro sapañño,
Cittaṁ paññañca bhāvayaṁ;
Ātāpī nipako bhikkhu,
So imaṁ vijaṭaye jaṭaṁ.

“Yesaṃ rāgo ca doso ca,
avijjā ca virājitā;
Khīṇāsavā arahanto,
tesaṁ vijaṭitā jaṭā.

“Yattha nāmañca rūpañca,
asesaṁ uparujjhati;
Paṭighaṁ rūpasaññā ca,
etthesā chijjate jaṭā”ti.

“ကိုယ်တွင်းသန္တာန်တွင် ဖွဲ့ယှက်တတ်သောတဏှာ၊ ကိုယ်ပသန္တာန်၌ ဖွဲ့ယှက်တတ် သောတဏှာ ယင်း (ကိုယ်တွင်း, ကိုယ်ပ၌ဖြစ်သော) ဖွဲ့ယှက်တတ်သော တဏှာသည် သတ္တဝါအပေါင်းကို ဖွဲ့ယှက်အပ်ပါ၏။ ဂေါတမမြတ်စွာဘုရား အရှင်ဘုရားအား ထို အကြောင်းကို မေးလျှောက်ပါ၏၊ ဤဖွဲ့ယှက်တတ်သော တဏှာကို အဘယ်သူသည် ဖြေရှင်းနိုင်ပါအံ့နည်း”ဟု (လျှောက်၏)။

“ပဋိသန္ဓေပညာရှိ၍ ပြင်းစွာ အားထုတ်မှုရှိသော ရင့်ကျက်သည့် ပညာရှိသော (သံသရာဘေးကို) ရှုလေ့ရှိသည့် ပုဂ္ဂိုလ်သည် သီလ၌ တည်၍ (သမာဓိ) စိတ်ကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ (ဝိပဿနာ) ပညာကိုလည်းကောင်း ပွားစေလျက် ဤဖွဲ့ယှက်တတ် သော တဏှာကို ဖြေရှင်းနိုင်၏။

“အကြင်ပုဂ္ဂိုလ်အား တပ်စွန်းမှု ‘ရာဂ’၊ အမျက်ထွက်မူ ‘ဒေါသ’၊ မသိမှု ‘အဝိဇ္ဇာ’တို့သည် ကင်းပြတ်ကုန်၏၊ အာသဝကုန်ပြီး ဖြစ်၍ ရဟန္တာဖြစ်ကုန်၏။ ထိုပုဂ္ဂိုလ်တို့သည် ဖွဲ့ယှက်တတ်သော တဏှာကို ဖြေရှင်းအပ်ပြီ။

“အကြင်နိဗ္ဗာန်၌ နာမ်သည်လည်းကောင်း၊ ရုပ်သည်လည်းကောင်း၊ ထိပါးမှုဟူသော အမှတ် ‘ပဋိဃသညာ’သည်လည်းကောင်း၊ ရုပ်၌ ဖြစ်သော အမှတ် ‘ရူပသညာ’သည်လည်းကောင်း အကြွင်းမဲ့ ချုပ်၏။ ဤနိဗ္ဗာန်၌ ဖွဲ့ယှက်တတ်သော တဏှာသည် ကင်းပြတ်၏။”

Nội triền và ngoại triền,
Chúng sanh bị triền phược,
Con hỏi Gotama,
Ai thoát triền phược này?”

(Thế Tôn)
“Người có trí, trú giới,
Tu tập tâm và tuệ,
Nhiệt tâm và thận trọng,
Tỷ-kheo ấy thoát triền.

“Với ai đã từ bỏ,
Tham sân và vô minh,
Bậc Ứng cúng lậu tận,
Vị ấy thoát triền phược.

“Chỗ nào danh và sắc
Ðược đoạn tận vô dư,
Ðoạn chướng ngại sắc tưởng,
Chỗ ấy triền phược đoạn.”



「內結縛、外結縛,
世代糾結在結縛中,
我問你這個,喬達摩!
誰能解開這結縛?」

「人在戒上確立後,有慧的,
修習著心與慧,熱心、
明智的比丘,他能解開這結縛。

凡已離貪、瞋、無明之染者,
煩惱已盡的阿羅漢,他們的結縛已被解開,
所有名與色之處,被破壞無餘,
色的撞擊與想,那結縛在這裡被切斷。」

Garden Spider ©Ashin Sopāka 2017

Flower to Flower

“And furthermore, O king, those of the Bhikkhus who have taken upon themselves the extra vows, who desire little and are content, who would loathe any breach of the regulations as to the manner of seeking an alms, and beg straight on from hut to hut, as a bee smells flower after flower, and then go away into the loneliness of the woods, those who are indifferent as to their body and as to life, those who have attained to Arahatship, those who place the highest value on the virtues of the practice of the extra vows—such Bhikkhus are called, O king, “The judges in the Blessed One’s City of Righteousness.” Mil 6.4.1

“Ye pana te, mahārāja, bhikkhū dhutaṅ­ga­manugatā appicchā santuṭṭhā viñ­ñat­ti­ma­nesa­na­jigucchakā piṇḍāya sapadānacārino bhamarāva gandha­manu­ghāyitvā pavisanti vivittakānanaṁ, kāye ca jīvite ca nirapekkhā arahat­ta­manup­pattā dhutaṅgaguṇe agganikkhittāagga, evarūpā kho, mahārāja, bhikkhū bhagavato dhammanagare ‘akkhadassā’ti vuccanti.”

မင်းမြတ် အကြင်ရဟန်းတို့သည် ဓုတင်အကျင့်သို့ အစဉ်လိုက်ကုန်၏၊ အလိုနည်းကုန်၏၊ ရောင့်ရဲလွယ်ကုန်၏၊ မအပ်သော သိစေမှု မအပ်သော ရှားမှီးမှုတို့ကို စက်ဆုပ်ကုန်၏၊ ဆွမ်းအလို့ငှအိမ်စဉ်လှည့်လည်သော အကျင့်ရှိကုန်၏၊ ပျားပိတုန်းတို့သည် ရနံ့ကို စုပ်နမ်း၍ တောသို့ ဝင်ကုန်သကဲ့သို့ ထို့အတူ ဆိတ်ငြိမ်သော တောအရပ်သို့ ဝင်ကုန်၏၊ ကိုယ်၌လည်းကောင်း အသက်၌လည်းကောင်း ငဲ့ကွက်ခြင်းမရှိကုန်ဘဲ အရဟတ္တ​ဖိုလ်သို့ အစဉ်ရောက်ကုန်၏၊ ဓုတင်ဂုဏ်ကျေးဇူးကို အမြတ်ဟု ထားကုန်၏၊ မင်းမြတ် ဤသို့သဘောရှိကုန်သော ရဟန်းတို့ကို “မြတ်စွာဘုရား၏ တရားမြို့တော်ကြီး၌ တရားဆုံးဖြတ်သော တရားသူကြီးတို့” ဟူ၍ ဆိုအပ်ကုန်၏။

“Tâu đại vương, hơn nữa những vị tỳ khưu nào đã theo đuổi các pháp từ khước, ít ham muốn, tự biết đủ, chán ghét sự yêu cầu và sự tầm cầu sai trái, đi khất thực theo từng nhà, tợ như các con ong hút lấy hương hoa rồi đi vào khu rừng cô quạnh, không quan tâm đến thân thể và mạng sống, đã đạt được phẩm vị A-la-hán, đã được xem là tối thắng về đức hạnh của các pháp từ khước, tâu đại vương, những vị tỳ khưu như thế được gọi là ‘những vị quan tòa’ ở thành phố Giáo Pháp của đức Thế Tôn.”

Bee Fly ©Ashin Sopāka 2016

Seven Elements

“The light element, the beauty element, the base of the infinity of space element, the base of the infinity of consciousness element, and the base of nothingness element: these elements are to be attained as attainments with perception. The base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception element: this element is to be attained as an attainment with the residue of formations. The cessation of perception and feeling element: this element is to be attained as an attainment of cessation.” – SN 14.11

“Yā cāyaṁ, bhikkhu, ābhādhātu yā ca subhadhātu yā ca ākāsānañ­cāyata­na­dhātu yā ca viñ­ñā­ṇañ­cāyata­na­dhātu yā ca ākiñ­cañ­ñā­yatana­dhātu—imā dhātuyo saññāsamāpatti pattabbā. Yāyaṁ, bhikkhu, neva­saññā­nā­sañ­ñāyata­na­dhātu—ayaṁ dhātu saṅ­khā­rā­vasesa­samā­patti pattabbā. Yāyaṁ, bhikkhu, saññā­ve­dayi­ta­nirodha­dhātu—ayaṃ dhātu nirodha­samā­patti pattabbā”ti.

“ရဟန်း အာဘာဓာတ်၊ သုဘဓာတ်၊ အာကာသနဉ္စာယတနဓာတ်၊ အာကိဉ္စညာယတနဓာတ်ဟူသော ဤဓာတ်တို့သည် သညာသမာပတ်သို့ ရောက်အပ်ကုန်၏။ နေဝသညာနာသညာယတနဓာတ်သည် သင်္ခါရမှ ကြွင်းသော သမာပတ်သို့ ရောက်အပ်၏။ ရဟန်း သညာဝေဒယိတနိရောဓဓာတ်သည် နိရောဓသမာပတ် သို့ ရောက်အပ်၏။”

“Này các Tỷ-kheo, Quang giới này với Tịnh giới, Không vô biên xứ giới, Thức vô biên xứ giới, Vô sở hữu xứ giới, những giới này lấy tưởng Thiền chứng (Sannàsamàpatti) được chứng đắc. Này các Tỷ-kheo, Phi tưởng phi phi tưởng xứ giới này lấy hành hữu dư Thiền chứng được chứng đắc. Này các Tỷ-kheo, Diệt thọ tưởng giới này lấy diệt đẳng nhập được chứng đắc.”

「比丘!這光界、淨界、虛空無邊處界、識無邊處界、無所有處界,這些界應該從想等至達到,比丘!這非想非非想處界,此界應該從殘行等至達到,比丘!這想受滅界,此界應該從滅等至達到。」

Ground Skimmer, Blue Percher, Little Blue Darter ©Ashin Sopāka 2017