Self Examination

“If, by such self-examination[ref]In the previous paragraph, the Buddha instructs that one should ask oneself these ten questions, “‘Am I often given to longing or without longing? Am I often given to ill will or without ill will? Am I often overcome by dullness and drowsiness or free from dullness and drowsiness?  Am I often restless or calm? Am I often plagued by doubt or free from doubt? Am I often angry or without anger? Is my mind often defiled or undefiled? Is my body often agitated or unagitated? Am I often lazy or energetic? Am I often unconcentrated or concentrated?’[/ref], a bhikkhu knows: ‘I am often given to longing, given to ill will, overcome by dullness and drowsiness, restless, plagued by doubt, angry, defiled in mind, agitated in body, lazy, and unconcentrated,’ he should put forth extraordinary desire, effort, zeal, enthusiasm, indefatigability, mindfulness, and clear comprehension to abandon those same bad unwholesome qualities. Just as one whose clothes or head had caught fire would put forth extraordinary desire, effort, zeal, enthusiasm, indefatigability, mindfulness, and clear comprehension to extinguish the fire on his clothes or head, so too that bhikkhu should put forth extraordinary desire, effort, zeal, enthusiasm, indefatigability, mindfulness, and clear comprehension to abandon those same bad unwholesome qualities.” – AN 10.51

“Sace, bhikkhave, bhikkhu paccavekkhamāno[ref]”Abhijjhālu nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, anabhijjhālu nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, byāpannacitto nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, abyāpannacitto nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, thinamiddhapariyuṭṭhito nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, vigatathinamiddho nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, uddhato nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, anuddhato nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, vicikiccho nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, tiṇṇavicikiccho nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, kodhano nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, akkodhano nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, sankiliṭṭhacitto nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, asankiliṭṭhacitto nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, sāraddhakāyo nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, asāraddhakāyo nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, kusīto nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, āraddhavīriyo nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, asamāhito nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmi, samāhito nu kho bahulaṁ viharāmī’ti.”[/ref] evaṁ jānāti: ‘abhijjhālu bahulaṁ viharāmi, byāpannacitto bahulaṁ viharāmi, thinamiddhapariyuṭṭhito bahulaṁ viharāmi, uddhato bahulaṁ viharāmi, vicikiccho bahulaṁ viharāmi, kodhano bahulaṁ viharāmi, sankiliṭṭhacitto bahulaṁ viharāmi, sāraddhakāyo bahulaṁ viharāmi, kusīto bahulaṁ viharāmi, asamāhito bahulaṁ viharāmī’ti, tena, bhikkhave, bhikkhunā tesaṁyeva pāpakānaṁ akusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ pahānāya adhimatto chando ca vāyāmo ca ussāho ca ussoḷhī ca appaṭivānī ca sati ca sampajaññañca karaṇīyaṁ. Seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, ādittacelo vā ādittasīso vā. Tasseva celassa vā sīsassa vā nibbāpanāya adhimattaṁ chandañca vāyāmañca ussāhañca ussoḷhiñca appaṭivāniñca satiñca sampajaññañca kareyya. Evamevaṁ kho tena, bhikkhave, bhikkhunā tesaṁyeva pāpakānaṁ akusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ pahānāya adhimatto chando ca vāyāmo ca ussāho ca ussoḷhī ca appaṭivānī ca satisati ca sampajaññañca karaṇīyaṁ.”

ရဟန်းတို့ ဆင်ခြင်သော ရဟန်းသည် “(ငါသည်) အခါများစွာ အဘိဇ္ဈာများ၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ စိတ်ဖောက်ပြန်၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ ထိုင်းမှိုင်းမှု ‘ထိနမိဒ္ဓ’ နှိပ်စက်၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ ပျံ့လွင့်၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ ယုံမှားမှုရှိ၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ အမျက်ထွက်၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ စိတ်ညစ်နွမ်း၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ ကိုယ်ပင်ပန်း၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ ပျင်းရိ၍ နေ၏၊ အခါများစွာ မတည်ကြည်ဘဲ နေ၏”ဟု အကယ်၍ သိပါမူ ရဟန်းတို့ ထိုရဟန်းသည် ထိုယုတ်ညံ့သော အကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကိုသာလျှင် ပယ်ရန် လွန်ကဲသော အလိုကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ လုံ့လကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ အားထုတ်မှုကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ အလွန်အားထုတ်မှုကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ မဆုတ်နစ်မှုကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ အောက်မေ့မှု ‘သတိ’ ဆင်ခြင်ဉာဏ် ‘သမ္ပဇဉ်’ကိုလည်းကောင်း ပြုသင့်၏။ ရဟန်းတို့ ဤအတူပင် ထိုရဟန်းသည် ထိုယုတ်ညံ့သော အကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကိုသာလျှင် ပယ်ရန် လွန်ကဲသော အလို လုံ့လ အားထုတ်မှု အလွန် အားထုတ်မှု မဆုတ်နစ်မှု အောက်မေ့မှု ‘သတိ’ ဆင်ခြင်ဉာဏ် ‘သမ္ပဇဉ်’ ကို ပြုသင့်၏။

“Này các Tỷ-kheo, nếu Tỷ-kheo quán sát như vậy[ref]Đức Phật hỏi về mười câu hỏi này trong đoạn trước, “Có phải ta sống nhiều với tham? Có phải ta sống nhiều với không tham? Có phải ta sống nhiều với tâm có sân? Có phải ta sống nhiều vớt tâm không có sân? Có phải ta sống nhiều với hôn trầm thụy miên chi phối, hay ta sống nhiều với hôn trầm thụy miên được từ bỏ? Có phải ta sống nhiều với trạo cử, hay ta sống nhiều với không trạo cử? Có phải ta sống nhiều với nghi ngờ, hay ta sống nhiều vượt qua được nghi ngờ? Có phải ta sống nhiều với phẫn nộ, hay ta sống nhiều không bị phẫn nộ? Có phải ta sống nhiều với tâm bị ô nhiễm, hay ta sống nhiều với tâm không bị ô nhiễm? Có phải ta sống nhiều với thân nhiệt nóng, hay ta sống nhiều với thân không nhiệt nóng? Có phải ta sống nhiều với biếng nhác, hay ta sống nhiều với tinh tấn, tinh cần? Có phải ta sống nhiều với không định tĩnh, hay ta sống nhiều với định tĩnh?”[/ref], biết rằng: “Ta sống nhiều với tâm tham; ta sống nhiều với tâm sân; ta sống nhiều với tâm bị hôn trầm thụy miên chi phối; ta sống nhiều với trạo cử; ta sống nhiều với nghi ngờ; ta sống nhiều với phẫn nộ; ta sống nhiều với tâm bị nhiễm ô; ta sống nhiều với thân nhiệt nóng; ta sống nhiều với biếng nhác; ta sống nhiều với không định tĩnh”, thời Tỷ-kheo ấy cần phải quyết định, ước muốn, tinh tấn, nỗ lực, dõng mãnh, bất thối, chánh niệm, tỉnh giác để đoạn tận các pháp ác bất thiện ấy. Ví như, này các Tỷ-kheo, khi khăn bị cháy, hay khi đầu bị cháy, cần phải quyết định, ước muốn, tinh tấn, nỗ lực, dõng mãnh, bất thối, chánh niệm, tỉnh giác để dập tắt khăn hay đầu bị cháy ấy. Cũng vậy này Tỷ kheo, Tỷ kheo ấy cần phải quyết định, ước muốn, tinh tấn, nỗ lực, dõng mãnh, bất thối, chánh niệm, tỉnh giác để đoạn tận các pháp bất thiện ấy.”

比丘們!如果比丘觀察時[ref]佛陀在前一段問這十個問題『我多住於貪婪嗎?我多住於不貪婪嗎?我多住於瞋恚心嗎?我多住於不瞋恚心嗎?我多住於被惛沈睡眠纏縛嗎?我多住於離惛沈睡眠嗎?我多住於掉舉嗎?我多住於不掉舉嗎?我多住於疑嗎?我多住於脫離疑嗎?我多住於容易憤怒嗎?我多住於無憤怒嗎?我多住於心被污染嗎?我多住於心不被污染嗎?我多住於身體躁動嗎?我多住於身體不躁動嗎?我多住於懈怠嗎?我多住於活力已被發動嗎?我多住於得定嗎?我多住於不得定嗎?』[/ref],這麼知道:『我多住於貪婪,我多住於瞋恚心,我多住於被惛沈睡眠纏縛,我多住於掉舉,我多住於疑,我多住於容易憤怒,我多住於心被污染,我多住於身體躁動,我多住於懈怠,我多住於不得定。』比丘們!因為那樣,比丘應該為那些惡不善法的捨斷作極度的意欲、精進、勇猛、努力、不畏縮、正念、正知。比丘們!猶如衣服已被燒,或頭已被燒,就應該為那衣服或頭的熄滅作極度的意欲、精進、勇猛、努力、不畏縮、正念、正知。同樣的,比丘們!因為那樣,比丘應該為那些惡不善法的捨斷作極度的意欲、精進、勇猛、努力、不畏縮、正念、正知。

First: Black Drongo
Second: Crested Myna
©Ashin Sopāka 2018

Magic?

“Suppose, bhikkhus, that a magician or a magician’s apprentice would display a magical illusion at a crossroads. A man with good sight would inspect it, ponder it, and carefully investigate it, and it would appear to him to be void, hollow, insubstantial. For what substance could there be in a magical illusion? So too, bhikkhus, whatever kind of consciousness there is, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near: a bhikkhu inspects it, ponders it, and carefully investigates it, and it would appear to him to be void, hollow, insubstantial. For what substance could there be in consciousness?

“Seeing thus, bhikkhus, the instructed noble disciple experiences revulsion towards form, revulsion towards feeling, revulsion towards perception, revulsion towards volitional formations, revulsion towards consciousness. Experiencing revulsion, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion his mind is liberated. When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: ‘It’s liberated.’ He understands: ‘Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being.’” – SN 22.95

“Seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, māyākāro vā māyā­kāran­tevāsī vā catumahāpathe māyaṁ vidaṁseyya. Tamenaṁ cakkhumā puriso passeyya nijjhāyeyya yoniso upaparikkheyya. Tassa taṁ passato nijjhāyato yoniso upaparikkhato rittakaññeva khāyeyya, tucchakaññeva khāyeyya, asārakaññeva khāyeyya. Kiñhi siyā, bhikkhave, māyāya sāro? Evameva kho, bhikkhave, yaṁ kiñci viññāṇaṁ atītā­nāgata­pac­cup­pan­naṁ … pe … yaṁ dūre santike vā, taṁ bhikkhu passati nijjhāyati yoniso upaparikkhati. Tassa taṁ passato nijjhāyato yoniso upaparikkhato rittakaññeva khāyati, tucchakaññeva khāyati, asārakaññeva khāyati. Kiñhi siyā, bhikkhave, viññāṇe sāro?

“Evaṁ passaṁ, bhikkhave, sutavā ariyasāvako rūpasmimpi nibbindati, vedanāyapi … saññāyapi … saṅkhāresupi … viññāṇasmimpi nibbindati. Nibbindaṁ virajjati; virāgā vimuccati. Vimuttasmiṁ vimuttamiti ñāṇaṁ hoti … pe … nāparaṁ itthattāyāti pajānāti”.

ရဟန်းတို့ ဥပမာသော်ကား မျက်လှည့်သမားဖြစ်စေ၊ မျက်လှည့်သမား၏ တပည့်ဖြစ်စေ လမ်းဆုံလမ်းမ၌ မျက်လှည့်ပြရာ၏၊ ထိုမျက်လှည့်ကို မျက်စိအမြင်ရှိသော ယောကျာ်းသည် ကြည့်ရာ၏၊ တစိမ့်စိမ့်ရှုရာ၏၊ အသင့်အားဖြင့် ဆင်ခြင်ရာ၏၊ ထိုယောကျာ်းသည် ကြည့်နေစဉ် တစိမ့်စိမ့် ရှုနေစဉ်အသင့်အားဖြင့် ဆင်ခြင်နေစဉ် ထိုမျက်လှည့်သည် အသုံးမဝင်ဟူ၍ သာ ထင်ရာ၏၊ အချည်းနှီးဟူ၍ သာထင်ရာ၏၊ အနှစ်မဲ့ ဟူ၍ သာ ထင်ရာ၏။ ရဟန်းတို့ မျက်လှည့်၌ အနှစ်ဟူ၍ အဘယ်မှာ ရှိနိုင်မည်နည်း။ ရဟန်းတို့ ဤအတူပင် အတိတ် အနာဂတ် ပစ္စုပ္ပန်လည်းဖြစ်သော။ပ။ အဝေး အနီးလည်းဖြစ်သော ဝိညာဏ်အားလုံးကို ရဟန်းသည် ကြည့်၏၊ တစိမ့်စိမ့် ရှု၏၊ အသင့်အားဖြင့် ဆင်ခြင်၏။ ထိုရဟန်းသည့်ကြည့်နေစဉ် တစိမ့်စိမ့် ရှုနေစဉ် အသင့်အားဖြင့် ဆင်ခြင်နေစဉ် အသုံးမဝင်ဟူ၍ သာ ထင်ရာ၏၊ အချည်းနှီး ဟူ၍ သာ ထင်ရာ၏၊ အနှစ်မဲ့ဟူ၍ သာ ထင်ရာ၏။ ရဟန်းတို့ ဝိညာဏ်၌ အနှစ်ဟူ၍ အဘယ်မှာ ရှိနိုင်မည် နည်း။

ရဟန်းတို့ ဤသို့ မြင်သော အကြားအမြင်ရှိသော အရိယာတပည့်သည် ရုပ်၌လည်း ငြီးငွေ့၏၊ ဝေဒနာ၌လည်း ငြီးငွေ့၏၊ သညာ၌လည်း ငြီးငွေ့၏၊ သင်္ခါရတို့၌လည်း ငြီးငွေ့၏၊ ဝိညာဏ်၌လည်းငြီးငွေ့၏၊ ငြီးငွေ့သော် စွဲမက်မှု ကင်း၏၊ စွဲမက်မှု ကင်းခြင်းကြောင့် ကိလေသာမှ လွတ်မြောက်၏၊ ကိလေသာမှ လွတ်မြောက်သော် “လွတ်မြောက်ပြီ”ဟု အသိဉာဏ်သည် ဖြစ်၏။ပ။ ဤမဂ်ကိစ္စအလို့ငှါတစ်ပါးသော ပြုဖွယ် မရှိတော့ပြီဟု သိ၏။

“Ví như, này các Tỷ-kheo, một ảo thuật sư hay đệ tử một ảo thuật sư, tại ngã tư đường bày trò ảo thuật. Một người có mắt nhìn chuyên chú, như lý quán sát trò ảo thuật ấy. Do người ấy nhìn chuyên chú, như lý quán sát, ảo thuật ấy hiện rõ ra là trống không, hiện rõ ra là trống rỗng, hiện rõ ra là không có lõi cứng. Làm sao, này các Tỷ-kheo, lại có lõi cứng trong ảo thuật được? Cũng vậy, này các Tỷ-kheo, phàm thức gì thuộc quá khứ, vị lai, hiện tại … hoặc xa hay gần; Tỷ-kheo nhìn chuyên chú, như lý quán sát, thức ấy hiện rõ ra là trống không, hiện rõ ra là trống rỗng, hiện rõ ra là không có lõi cây. Làm sao, này các Tỷ-kheo, lại có lõi cây trong thức được?

“Thấy vậy, này các Tỷ-kheo, vị Ða văn Thánh đệ tử nhàm chán đối với sắc … đối với thọ … đối với tưởng … đối với các hành … nhàm chán đối với thức. Do nhàm chán, vị ấy ly tham. Do ly tham, vị ấy giải thoát. Trong sự giải thoát, trí khởi lên: “Ta đã giải thoát … không còn trở lui trạng thái này nữa”. Vị ấy biết rõ như vậy.”

「比丘們!猶如幻術師或幻術師的徒弟,如果在十字路口表演幻術,有眼的男子如果檢視、靜觀、如理審察;當檢視、靜觀、如理審察時,對他來說,它看起來只是空無的、空虛的、無實心的。比丘們!在幻術中,有什麼實心呢?同樣的,比丘們!凡任何識,不論過去、未來、現在……(中略)或遠、或近,比丘檢視、靜觀、如理審察;當檢視、靜觀、如理審察時,對他來說,它看起來只是空無的、空虛的、無實心的。比丘們!在識中,有什麼實心呢?

「比丘們!當這麼看時,已受教導的聖弟子在色上厭,在受上厭,在想上厭,在行上厭,在識上厭;厭者離染,經由離貪而解脫,當解脫時,有『[這是]解脫』之智,他了知:『出生已盡,梵行已完成,應該作的已作,不再有這樣[輪迴]的狀態了。』」

Eyes

“The fleshly eye, the divine eye,
And the unsurpassed wisdom eye—
These three eyes were described
By the Buddha, supreme among men.

“The arising of the fleshly eye
Is the path to the divine eye,
But the unsurpassed wisdom eye
Is that from which knowledge arises.
By obtaining such an eye
One is released from all suffering.” – It 61

“Maṁsacakkhu dibbacakkhu,
paññācakkhu anuttaraṁ;
Etāni tīṇi cakkhūni,
akkhāsi purisuttamo.

Maṁsacakkhussa uppādo,
maggo dibbassa cakkhuno;
Yato ñāṇaṁ udapādi,
paññācakkhu anuttaraṁ;
Yassa cakkhussa paṭilābhā,
sabbadukkhā pamuccatī”ti.

”မံသစက္ခု ဒိဗ္ဗစက္ခုနှင့် အတုမရှိသော ပညာစက္ခုဟူကုန်သော စက္ခုသုံးပါးတို့ကို ယောကျာ်းမြတ်ဖြစ်တော်မူသော မြတ်စွာဘုရားသည် ဟောကြားတော်မူ၏။

မံသစက္ခု၏ ဖြစ်ခြင်းသည် ဒိဗ္ဗစက္ခု၏ အကြောင်းတည်း။ အကြင်အခါ အတု မရှိသော ပညာစက္ခုဟူသော အာသဝက္ခယဉာဏ်သည် ထင်ရှားဖြစ်၏။ ထိုအခါ ယင်းပညာစက္ခုဟူသော အာသဝက္ခယဉာဏ်ကို ရခြင်းကြောင့် ဆင်းရဲအားလုံးမှ ကင်းလွတ်၏”

Mắt thịt, mắt chư Thiên,
Vô thượng mắt trí tuệ,
Có ba loại mắt ấy,
Ðược bậc Vô thượng nhân,
Ðã tuyên bố trình bày,
Sanh khởi của mắt thịt,

Con đường mắt chư Thiên,
Từ đấy, trí khởi lên,
Tuệ nhãn là tối thượng,
Ai chứng được mắt ấy,
Giải thoát mọi đau khổ.

Common Myna ©Ashin Sopāka 2017

Dirty Water Clean Water

“Suppose there were a pool of water—sullied, turbid, and muddy. A man with good eyesight standing there on the bank would not see shells, gravel, and pebbles, or shoals of fish swimming about and resting. Why is that? Because of the sullied nature of the water. In the same way, that a monk with a sullied mind would know his own benefit, the benefit of others, the benefit of both; that he would realize a superior human state, a truly noble distinction of knowledge & vision: Such a thing is impossible. Why is that? Because of the sullied nature of his mind.”

“Suppose there were a pool of water—clear, limpid, and unsullied. A man with good eyesight standing there on the bank would see shells, gravel, & pebbles, and also shoals of fish swimming about and resting. Why is that? Because of the unsullied nature of the water. In the same way, that a monk with an unsullied mind would know his own benefit, the benefit of others, the benefit of both; that he would realize a superior human state, a truly noble distinction of knowledge & vision: Such a thing is possible. Why is that? Because of the unsullied nature of his mind.” – AN 1.45-46

‘‘Seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, udakarahado āvilo luḷito kalalībhūto tattha cakkhumā puriso tīre ṭhito na passeyya sippisambukampi sakkharakaṭhalampi macchagumbampi carantampi tiṭṭhantampi. Taṁ kissa hetu? Āvilattā, bhikkhave, udakassa. Evamevaṁ kho, bhikkhave, so vata bhikkhu āvilena cittena attatthaṁ vā ñassati paratthaṁ vā ñassati ubhayatthaṁ vā ñassati uttariṁ vā manussadhammā alamariyañāṇadassanavisesaṁ sacchikarissatīti netaṁ ṭhānaṁ vijjati. Taṁ kissa hetu? Āvilattā, bhikkhave, cittassā’’ti.

‘‘Seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, udakarahado accho vippasanno anāvilo tattha cakkhumā puriso tīre ṭhito passeyya sippisambukampi sakkharakaṭhalampi macchagumbampi carantampi tiṭṭhantampi. Taṁ kissa hetu? Anāvilattā, bhikkhave, udakassa. Evamevaṁ kho, bhikkhave, so vata bhikkhu anāvilena cittena attatthaṁ vā ñassati paratthaṁ vā ñassati ubhayatthaṁ vā ñassati uttariṁ vā manussadhammā alamariyañāṇadassanavisesaṁ sacchikarissatīti ṭhānametaṁ vijjati. Taṁ kissa hetu? Anāvilattā, bhikkhave, cittassā’’ti.

“ရဟန်းတို့ ဥပမာသော်ကား ရေအိုင်သည် နောက်ကျု၏၊ ဘောက်ဘက်ခတ်၏၊ ညွန်အနည် ထ၏၊ မျက်စိအမြင်ရှိသော ယောကျာ်းသည် ကမ်းနား၌ ရပ်၍ ထို ရေအိုင်၌ သွားနေသည်လည်းဖြစ်သော ရပ်တည်နေသည်လည်းဖြစ်သော ယောက်သွား ခရုကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ ကျောက်စရစ် အိုးခြမ်းကွဲကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ ငါးအပေါင်းကိုလည်းကောင်း မမြင်နိုင်ရာ။ ထိုသို့ဖြစ်ခြင်းသည် အဘယ့်ကြောင့်နည်းဟူမူ— ရဟန်းတို့ ရေ၏ နောက်ကျုနေခြင်းကြောင့်တည်း။ ရဟန်းတို့ ဤအတူပင် ထိုရဟန်းသည် နောက်ကျု သော စိတ်ဖြင့် စင်စစ် မိမိအကျိုးကိုလည်း သိလတ္တံ့၊ သူတစ်ပါးအကျိုးကိုလည်း သိလတ္တံ့၊ နှစ်ပါးစုံ အကျိုးကိုလည်း သိလတ္တံ့၊ အရိယာတို့အား လျောက်ပတ်သော ဉာဏ်အမြင် အထူးဖြစ်သော လူတို့၏ ကုသိုလ်ကမ္မပထတရားဆယ်ပါးထက် လွန်မြတ်သော (ဈာန် မဂ် ဖိုလ်)တရားကိုလည်း မျက်မှောက်ပြု လတ္တံ့ဟူသော ဤအကြောင်းသည် မရှိ။ ထိုသို့ဖြစ်ခြင်းသည် အဘယ့်ကြောင့်နည်းဟူမူ— ရဟန်းတို့ စိတ်၏ နောက်ကျုနေခြင်းကြောင့်တည်းဟု (မိန့်တော်မူ၏)။

“ရဟန်းတို့ ဥပမာသော်ကား ရေအိုင်သည် ကြည်လင်၏၊ သန့်ရှင်း၏၊ နောက်ကျုခြင်း ကင်း၏၊ မျက်စိအမြင်ရှိသော ယောကျာ်းသည် ကမ်းနား၌ ရပ်၍ ထို ရေအိုင်၌ သွားနေသည်လည်းဖြစ်သော ရပ်တည်နေသည်လည်းဖြစ်သော ယောက်သွား ခရုကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ ကျောက်စရစ် အိုးခြမ်းကွဲကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ ငါးအပေါင်းကိုလည်းကောင်း မြင်နိုင်ရာ၏။ ထိုသို့ဖြစ်ခြင်းသည် အဘယ့်ကြောင့်နည်းဟူမူ— ရဟန်းတို့ ရေ၏ မနောက်ကျုခြင်းကြောင့်တည်း။ ရဟန်းတို့ ဤအတူပင် ထိုရဟန်းသည် မနောက်ကျု သော စိတ်ဖြင့် စင်စစ် မိမိအကျိုးကိုလည်း သိလတ္တံ့၊ သူတစ်ပါးအကျိုးကိုလည်း သိလတ္တံ့၊ နှစ်ပါးစုံ အကျိုးကိုလည်း သိလတ္တံ့၊ အရိယာပုဂ္ဂိုလ်တို့အား လျောက်ပတ်သော ဉာဏ်အမြင်အထူးဖြစ်သော လူတို့၏ ကုသိုလ်ကမ္မပထတရား ဆယ်ပါးထက် လွန်မြတ်သော (ဈာန် မဂ် ဖိုလ်)တရားကိုလည်း မျက်မှောက် ပြုလတ္တံ့ဟူသော ဤအကြောင်းသည် ရှိ၏။ ထိုသို့ဖြစ်ခြင်းသည် အဘယ့်ကြောင့်နည်းဟူမူ— ရဟန်းတို့ စိတ်၏ မနောက်ကျုခြင်းကြောင့်တည်းဟု (မိန့်တော်မူ၏)။”

“Ví như, này các tỷ kheo, một hồ nước uế nhớp, bị khuấy động, đục bùn. Tại đấy có người có mắt, đứng trên bờ, không thể thấy các con ốc, các con sò, các hòn sạn, các hòn sỏi, các đàn cá qua lại, đứng yên. Ví cớ sao? Vì nước bị khuấy đục. Này các Tỷ-kheo, cũng vậy, vị Tỷ-kheo với tâm bị khuấy đục biết được lợi ích của mình, hay biết được lợi ích của người, hay biết được lợi ích cả hai, hay sẽ chứng ngộ các pháp thượng nhân, tri kiến thù thắng xứng đáng các bậc Thánh; sự kiện như vậy không xảy ra. Vì cớ sao? Vì rằng tâm bị khuấy đục, này các Tỷ-kheo.

“Ví như, này các Tỷ-kheo, một hồ nước trong sáng, sáng suốt, không bị khuấy đục. Tại đấy có người có mắt, đứng trên bờ, có thể thấy các con ốc, các con sò, các hòn sạn, các hòn sỏi, các đàn cá qua lại, đứng yên. Vì cớ sao? Vì nước không bị khuấy đục, này các Tỷ-kheo. Cũng vậy, này các Tỷ-kheo, vị Tỷ-kheo với tâm không bị khuấy đục biết được lợi ích của mình, hay biết được lợi ích của người, hay biết được lợi ích cả hai, hay sẽ chứng ngộ các pháp thượng nhân, tri kiến thù thắng xứng đáng các bậc Thánh; sự kiện như vậy có xảy ra. Ví sao? Vì rằng tâm không bị khuấy đục, này các Tỷ-kheo.”

Top: Lesser Whistling Duck
Middle: Common Snipe
Bottom: Little Pond Heron
©Ashin Sopāka 2017

Shining

“Bhikkhus, there are these three things that shine when exposed, not concealed. What three? The moon that shines…. The sun that shines…. The Dhamma and discipline proclaimed by the Tathāgata shines when exposed, not when concealed.” – AN 3.131

“Tīṇimāni, bhikkhave, vivaṭāni virocanti, no paṭicchannāni. Katamāni tīṇi? Candamaṇḍalaṃ … sūriyamaṇḍalaṃ … tathā­gatap­pa­vedito dhammavinayo, bhikkhave, vivaṭo virocati … no paṭicchannānī”ti.

“ရဟန်းတို့ ဤသုံးမျိုးတို့သည် ပွင့်လင်းကုန်သော်သာ တင့်တယ်ကုန်၏၊ လျှို့ ဝှက်ကုန်သော်မတင့်တယ်ကုန်၊ အဘယ်သုံးမျိုးတို့နည်း ဟူမူ – ရဟန်းတို့ လဝန်းသည် … နေဝန်းသည် … မြတ်စွာဘုရား ဟောကြားသည့် တရားတော်သည် ပွင့်လင်းသော်သာ တင့်တယ်၏၊ ဖုံးကွယ်သော် မတင့်တယ်။”

“Này các Tỷ-kheo, ba pháp này chói sáng, được hiển lộ, không có che giấu. Vành tròn của mặt trăng … Vành tròn của mặt trời … Pháp và Luật được Thế Tôn tuyên thuyết, này các Tỷ-kheo, chói sáng, được hiển lộ, không có che giấu.”

Intermediate Egret ©Ashin Sopāka 2017