Four Summaries of Dhamma

“Great king, there are four summaries of the Dhamma that have been taught by the Blessed One who knows and sees, accomplished and fully enlightened. Knowing and seeing and hearing them, I went forth from the home life into homelessness. What are the four? ‘Life in any world is unstable, it is swept away’… ‘Life in any world has no shelter and no protector’…‘Life in any world has nothing of its own; one has to leave all and pass on’…‘Life in any world is incomplete, insatiate, the slave of craving.’” – MN 82

“Atthi kho, mahārāja, tena bhagavatā jānatā passatā arahatā sammāsambuddhena cattāro dhammuddesā uddiṭṭhā, ye ahaṁ ñatvā ca disvā ca sutvā ca agārasmā anagāriyaṁ pabbajito. Katame cattāro? ‘Upaniyyati loko addhuvo’… ‘atāṇo loko anabhissaro’… ‘asaraṇo loko sabbaṁ pahāya gamanīyaṁ’… ‘ūno loko atitto taṇhādāso’ti.”

“Thưa Ðại vương, có bốn sự thuyết giáo Chánh pháp, được Thế Tôn, bậc Tri Giả, Kiến giả, bậc A-la-hán, Chánh Ðẳng Giác giảng dạy. Do tôi biết, tôi thấy và tôi nghe thuyết giáo ấy, mà tôi xuất gia, từ bỏ gia đình, sống không gia đình. Thế nào là bốn? ‘Thế giới là vô thường, đi đến hủy diệt’… ‘Thế giới là vô hộ, vô chủ’… Thế giới là vô sở hữu, ra đi cần phải từ bỏ tất cả’… ‘Thế giới là thiếu thốn, khao khát, nô lệ cho tham ái.'”

「大王!有這四個法的總說被那有知、有見的世尊、阿羅漢、遍正覺者誦說,我知道、看到、聽到那些後而從在家出家,成為非家生活。哪四個呢?『世間是不堅固的,它被帶走。』… 『世間無庇護所、無保護者。』… 『世間是無所有的,應該走向捨斷一切。』… 『世間是不足的、不滿足的、渴愛的奴隸。』

Crested Myna ©Ashin Sopāka 2018

No Footprints

“For him whose pollutants are destroyed, who is not
dependent on the foods, for him whose resort is
the liberation that is empty or signless,
like the birds in the sky, his footprint’s hard to find.” – Dhp 93

“Yassāsavā parikkhīṇā, āhāre ca anissito,
suññato animitto ca vimokkho yassa gocaro,
ākāse va sakuntānaṁ, padaṁ tassa durannayaṁ.”

အကြင်ပုဂ္ဂိုလ်တို့အား အာသဝေါကုန်ခန်း၏။ အစာအာဟာရ၌လည်း (တဏှာဒိဋ္ဌိဖြင့်) စွဲမှီခြင်း မရှိ၊ ရာဂစသည် ဆိတ်သုဉ်းသော ရာဂစသော နိမိတ် မရှိသော နိဗ္ဗာန်သည် အကြင်ရဟန္တာပုဂ္ဂိုလ်၏ ကျက်စားရာအာရုံ ဖြစ်၏။ ကောင်းကင်၌ ငှက်တို့၏ ခြေရာကို မသိနိုင်သကဲ့သို့ ထိုရဟန္တာပုဂ္ဂိုလ်၏ ခြေရာဟူသော လားကြောင်းကို မသိနိုင်။

“Ai lậu hoặc đoạn sạch,
Ăn uống không tham đắm,
Tự tại trong hành xứ,
“Không, vô tướng giải thoát. ”
Như chim giữa hư không,
Dấu chân thật khó tìm.”
「阿羅漢猶如大地,耐心具足,
若受人刺激,也不憤怒;
阿羅漢虔誠堅定,一如因陀揭羅;
阿羅漢內心安祥清淨,
如無污泥的池塘,不再生死輪迴。」

 

Little Heron ©Ashin Sopāka 2018

Most Excellent Field

“Just like the field that is excellent are the bhikkhus and bhikkhunı̄s to me. I teach them the Dhamma that is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end, with the right meaning and phrasing; I reveal the holy life that is perfectly complete and pure. For what reason? Because they dwell with me as their island, with me as their shelter, with me as their protector, with me as their refuge.” – SN 42.7

“Seyyathāpi, gāmaṇi, yaṁ aduṁ khettaṁ aggaṁ; evameva mayhaṁ bhikkhubhikkhuniyo. Tesāhaṁ dhammaṁ desemi – ādikalyāṇaṁ majjhekalyāṇaṁ pariyosānakalyāṇaṁ, sātthaṁ sabyañjanaṁ kevalaparipuṇṇaṁ parisuddhaṁ brahmacariyaṁ pakāsemi. Taṁ kissa hetu? Ete hi, gāmaṇi, maṁdīpā maṁleṇā maṁtāṇā maṁsaraṇā viharanti.”

“Ví như thửa ruộng tốt, này Thôn trưởng, là các Tỷ-kheo, Tỷ-kheo-ni của Ta. Ðối với họ, Ta thuyết pháp sơ thiện, trung thiện, hậu thiện, có nghĩa, có văn. Ta nói lên cho họ biết đời sống Phạm hạnh hoàn toàn viên mãn, thanh tịnh. Vì sao? Này Thôn trưởng, vì họ sống lấy Ta làm ngọn đèn, lấy Ta làm hang ẩn, lấy Ta làm chỗ che chở, lấy Ta làm chỗ nương tựa.”

ရွာသူကြီး ငါ၏ ရဟန်းယောက်ျား ရဟန်းမိန်းမတို့သည် ထိုအကောင်းစားလယ်နှင့် တူကုန်၏၊ ရွာသူကြီး ထိုသူတို့သည် ငါသာလျှင် မှီခိုရာ ငါသာလျှင် လဲလျောင်းရာ ငါသာလျှင် ပုန်းအောင်းရာ ငါသာလျှင် ကိုးကွယ်ရာ ရှိ၍ နေကြသောကြောင့် ထိုသူတို့အား အစ၏ ကောင်းခြင်း အလယ်၏ ကောင်းခြင်း့အဆုံး၏ ကောင်းခြင်းရှိသော အနက်နှင့် ပြည့်စုံသော သဒ္ဒါနှင့် ပြည့်စုံသော တရားကို ငါ ဟော၏၊ အလုံးစုံ ပြည့်စုံသော ထက်ဝန်းကျင် စင်ကြယ်သော အကျင့်မြတ်ကို ငါ ပြ၏။

「那塊最好的田,對我來說,猶如比丘、比丘尼,我為他們教導法:開頭是善、中間是善、終結是善;意義正確、辭句正確的法,我說明唯獨圓滿、遍清淨的梵行,那是什麼原因呢?村長!因為他們住於以我為洲、以我為庇護、以我為救護、以我為歸依。」

Dhammikārāma Burmese Buddhist Temple, Monk Meditating ©Ashin Sopāka 2018