A Lady Who I Knew


A tribute to the late Sis Gina Tan by Ven Cittara, Chief Abbot of Mangala Vihara.


28 Apr 2003 was the day I arrived in Singapore. It was my first time in Singapore. My friend told me that he was visiting a temple and asked me if I would like to go with him. I said yes. After paying respect to my teachers, we left for a temple. It was Mangala Vihara (MV). At MV, a lady received us and showed us around the temple at about 8 pm. BPC classes were being conducted at that time. I thought Burmese Buddhist Temple (BBT) was big. I was really humbled when I saw MV and its activities. I was happy as Buddhism was apparently deeply rooted in Singapore. What I really did not know at that time was that this temple would be giving me food and shelter and that the lady I met would be the one who I could share my ideas, feelings and personal difficulties for the several years that followed. Though she was a devotee, towards me, she could be likened as my sister. Believe it or not. That was who she was.

As a monk, I had very little time with my family. My parents wanted me to be a monk. I become a monk as they wished. But my parents had to pay the price dearly for their wish as both of them passed away during my absence. Being a monk, my current situation did not favour my sisters either. They had only a few hours to share with their little boy (Ko Toot) in 20 years. To be honest, as a human, I crave for love, care and kindness from my parents and sisters. The lady, somehow, shared her love, care and kindness with me. At first, I thought that she was kind to me. Later I realized that I was wrong. She was kind to many. And she was the one who knew my true personality. She understood the fact that “Everyone has weaknesses” Once again, believe it or not, that was who she was.

When I came and stayed in MV, she was the one who asked about my life, family and teacher's background. Soon after, the founder of Mangala Vihara, the late Bhante, passed away. MV needed stability in terms of having a resident monk. At least, that was what she felt. We may agree or disagree with her. But honestly, we all could not deny her “Never say never” attitude towards MV. That was who she was.

When I told her that I was going home, she said she also would like to come with me after getting her husband’s permission. She got permission and we went together. I asked, “Why do you want to come with me?” “I want to see some tourist sites so that we can organize a pilgrimage trip to Burma next year,” she replied. “Do you want to observe my family and teacher's background?” I asked. “Yes, part of it,” she said honestly. To me, like it or not. That was who she was.

Truth be told, quite a number of our members found it a bit difficult to accept the changes between the late Master's era and the new resident monks’ tenure. All Bhantes from Sri Lanka have their own temples. Our members thought that since they had their own temple, the Bhantes' attention would be halved. They could not give full commitment to MV. Our members were right from their own view. Moreover, for Sri Lanka Bhantes, they could not live in MV their entire life like the late Master. So how could they ignore their own temples in Sri Lanka? No one can deny that fact too.

The lady might have thought that I could be the solution as I have no temple of my own (in fact, I was a run-away monk) and no teacher who could take me back and order me to stay with him. She could have been rather relieved after coming back from Burma. I was truly a nomad monk. Very few people understood her intention towards MV. She took some blame for what she believed in and what she did. We may like her or we may not. But no one can deny her concern and commitment to the temple. That was who she was.

It was amusing. When my friends came for our ceremonies and saw somebody, they asked “Is the gentleman the lady’s husband?” I said yes with a gentle smile. When I explained about something to our helpers, they could not figure out someone’s name. Only a moment later a man asked “Do you mean the lady’s husband?” At that time I laughed loud. She had such an influential image on people. Believe it or not. That was who she was.

Though she knew she was gravely sick, somehow, she still managed to go on two trips, Sri Lanka and Burma. These were places she probably wanted to go, places where the Lord's teaching are strong in existence. She produced immense mental energy from her skinny body. Take it or leave it, that was who she was.

At least I could console myself that I became MV’s resident monk and I could contribute a bit for the temple when she was still with us. I just worry that I cannot fulfil her wish. But I make sure I try my best. More importantly, I could not experience my parents’ dying moments and I could not do anything at their last moments. However, I fully witnessed her last moments. I did my best. Yes. She has left us.

See you Madam Gina Tan.


-End of Article-


Editor’s Note:
Sister Gina Tan Kwai Kum left us on 21Feb2011. This article was read as the eulogy on the 100thday memorial service for Sis Gina Tan held on 21stMay 2011 at Mangala Vihara Temple. A Dana lunch for the MahaSangha was later held and the merits transferred to Sis Gina Tan.



U Cittara







Copyright © 2012 ကမ္းလက္. All rights reserved.

ဆင္ရယ္၊ ထီးရယ္၊ အိမ္သာေၾကြခြက္ရယ္

ညီမေလး…. ေရ

တစ္ခါကတဲ့ကြယ္။ ဘုရားရွင္ကိုယ္ေတာ္ျမတ္ႀကီး ေဇတဝန္ေက်ာင္းမွာ သီတင္းသံုးေနသတဲ့။ တစ္ခုေသာ ညေနခ်မ္းမွာေတာ့ ဆင္ရယ္၊ ထီးရယ္၊ အိမ္သာေၾကြခြက္ရယ္   ေရာက္လာရတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းကေတာ့ ဘယ္လိုကံေတြ ၊ ဘယ္ဘဝက၊ ဘယ္လို ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၾကလို႔ ဒီလိုျဖစ္ေနရတယ္ ဆိုတာ သိခ်င္ၾကလို႔တဲ့ကြယ့္။

ပထမဆံုးဆင္ႀကီးက ဘာေၾကာင့္ သူ႔ႏွာေခါင္းႀကီး ဒါေလာက္ရွည္ေနရတာလည္းလို႔ ေမးေလွ်ာက္သတဲ့။


ဂရိပံုျပင္ထဲက ေကာင္ေလးကို မယံုလို႔တဲ့။ ဂရိပံုျပင္ထဲက ေကာင္ေလးခမ်ာမွာေတာ့ စကား အမွားတစ္ခြန္းေျပာမိ တိုင္း ႏွာေခါင္းေလး လက္တစ္သစ္ ပိုရွည္တယ္တဲ့။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ သူ႔ခမ်ာ ေလသံေတာင္ သိပ္မဟရဲေတာ့ဘူးေပါ့။ သင္က ဒါကို မယံုၾကည္ပဲ လိမ္ေျပာလည္း ဘာမွ မျဖစ္ပါဘူးဆိုၿပီး ဘဝ တစ္ေလွ်ာက္လံုး လိမ္ညာလာခဲ့တာ။ အဲဒါေၾကာင့္ ဒီဘဝမွာ ဆင္ႀကီးျဖစ္လာတာတဲ့။ ဆင္ႀကီးလည္း ေတာ္ေတာ္ သံေဝဂရသြားသတဲ့။

ဒါနဲ႔ ထီးကလည္း သူဘယ္ကံေၾကာင့္ထီး ျဖစ္ရတယ္ဆိုတာ ေမးေလွ်ာက္တာေပါ့။

ဒါနဲ႔ ဘုရားရွင္က သင္ဟာ တစ္ခုေသာ ဘဝမွာ ပရဟိတ အလုပ္လုပ္သူျဖစ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ပရဟိတ လို႔သာေျပာၿပီး အတၱဟိတ အတြက္ လုပ္ခဲ့ကမ်ားေနေတာ့ ဒီဘဝမွာ ထီးျဖစ္ရတာတဲ့။ ထီးဆိုေတာ့ သူတစ္ပါး ကို ေနအပူကေန ကာကြယ္၊ မိုးေရမိုးေပါက္ေတြကေန ကာကြယ္ေပးရေပမယ့္ သင္ထီးခမ်ာေတာ့ ေနပူနဲ႔ေလာင္၊ မိုးေရေတြနဲ႔ ရႊဲစိုေနရတယ္လို႔ ေျဖသတဲ့။ ထီးခမ်ာလည္း သံေဝဂေတာ္ေတာ္ရသြားရွာသတဲ့။

အိမ္သာေၾကြခြက္ႀကီးကလည္း မေနႏိုင္မထိုင္ႏိုင္ သိခ်င္ေတာ့တာေပါ့ကြာ။ ဒါနဲ႔ သူ႔အတိတ္ကံကိုေမးတာေပါ့။
 

ဒီေတာ့ ဘုရားရွင္က တစ္ခုေသာ ဘဝမွာ သင္ဟာ ရည္းစားပစ္တာကို ခံခဲ့ရဖူးတယ္။ သင့္ရည္းစားယူသြားတဲ့ အမ်ိဳးသမီးက သင့္ထက္ပိုၿပီး အသားျဖဴေတာ့ သင္က အသားမည္းလို႔ ရည္းစားပစ္တာ ခံရတယ္။ အသားျဖဴရင္ဒီလိုျဖစ္မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူးဆိုၿပီး ကုသိုလ္ေကာင္းမႈလုပ္သမွ် ဘယ္ဘဝေရာက္ေရာက္ ျဖဴျဖဴေဖြးေဖြးေလး ျဖစ္ရပါလို၏ လို႔ဆုေတာင္းတယ္။ တကယ္ေတာ့ သင့္ရည္းစားက သင့္ကို ပစ္ထားခဲ့တာဟာ အသားမည္းလို႔ မဟုတ္ဘဲ စိတ္မည္းလို႔တဲ့။


အဲ စိတ္ျဖဴဖို႔ထက္ အသားျဖဴဖို႔ကိုပဲ ဆုေတာင္းခဲ့လို႔ အဲဒီေကာင္းမႈ၊ မေကာင္းမႈေရာေနတဲ့ ကံေတြေၾကာင့္ ရုပ္ဝတၳဳဘဝကို ေရာက္တာေတာင္ ျဖဴစင္ၿပီး ဘယ္သူမွ ငံု႔ၿပီး ေမႊးေမႊးမေပးခ်င္တဲ့ အိမ္သာေၾကြခြက္ႀကီးျဖစ္ရတာလို႔ ေျဖသတဲ့။

ဒီအထဲမွာ ေနာင္တ အရဆံုးကေတာ့ ျဖဴစင္တာေတာင္ ေမႊးေမႊးေပးတာ မခံရဖူးရွာတဲ့ အိမ္သာေၾကြခြက္ႀကီးတဲ့ကြယ္။

ေဒသနာလည္းဆံုးေရာ

ဆင္ရယ္၊ ထီးရယ္၊ အိမ္သာေၾကြခြက္ႀကီးရယ္ဟာ အမွန္ေတြပဲေျပာဖို႔၊ ပရဟိတသက္သက္လုပ္ဖို႔
၊ စိတ္ျဖဴဖို႔သာ ပဓာန လို႔အျမင္မွန္ကိုယ္စီရသြားၾကသတဲ့ကြယ္။

ႏွစ္သိန္းေလးေသာင္း သတၱဝါေတြလည္း တရားထူးေတြရၾကသတဲ့ ။ ဒါပါပဲ ညီမေလးရယ္။ ခ်စ္လို႔ေျပာတာမွတ္ထားရမယ္ေနာ္။ ဟုတ္ဟုတ္ … မဟုတ္ဟုတ္။





 

ဇင္ေဝေသာ္















Copyright © 2011 ကမ္းလက္. All rights reserved.

ေလးဆ

၁၉၄၅ နဲ႔ ၁၉၉၂ ႏွစ္ ကာလၾကားမႇာ ကမၻာအႏွံ႔ စစ္ပၸဲေပါင္း ၁၆၃ ပၸဲ ႐ႇိခဲ့ျပီး
လူေပါင္း ၂၃ သန္း အသက္ေပးခဲ႔ရတယ္၊ ဝမ္နည္းစရာ ေကာင္းတာက
သာမန္အရပ္သား ေသဆုံးမွဳက စစ္သားေတၸေသဆုံးမႉထက္
ေလးဆ ပုိျမင္႔ေနပါသတဲ႔။ ဒါေတၸနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လုိ႕
ဗုဒၶဘာသာက ဘာေတၸ ဝင္ေဆၸးေႏၸးနုိင္ပါ သလဲ။

Impact of Buddhism on social Conflicts by Walmoruwe Piyaratana ရဲ႕ေဆာင္ပါးက
တစ္ခုခု ေျပာထားတယ္လု႔ိထင္မိပါတယ္။
Nanapabha ( The light of wisdom) ဆုိတဲ႔ စာအုပ္ထဲမွာ ႐ွာဖတ္ႏုိင္ပါတယ္။











Copyright © 2011 ကမ္းလက္. All rights reserved.

ဧဝံေမသုတံ- အရူးကတစ္မူးသာ

တစ္ခါက အရူးတစ္ေယာက္ဟာ ခရီးသြားေတြနားတတ္တဲ့ ဇရပ္ခါးပန္းမွာ ၃/၁ ဆိုတဲ့ ဂဏန္းေလးႏွစ္လံုး ေျမျဖဴနဲ႔ ေရးထားသတဲ့ကြယ္။ အဲဒီဇရပ္ထဲကို ဗိေႏၶာေဆးဆရာရယ္၊ ဓာတုေဗဒဆရာရယ္၊ အဘိဓမၼာဆရာရယ္ သံုးေယာက္ေရာက္လာၿပီး နားခုိၾကသတဲ့။

          အဲဒီအရူးေရးတဲ့ ၃/၁ ဆိုတဲ့ ဂဏန္းေလးကိုေတြ႔ၿပီး ပထမဆံုးဗိေႏၶာဆရာက “ ေတာ္ေတာ္ပညာရွိတဲ့လူပဲ၊ ဂဏန္းေလးႏွစ္လံုးနဲ႔ အားလံုးကို ၿခံဳငံုမိေအာင္ ေျပာျပႏိုင္တယ္။ ဓာတ္ႀကီးေလးပါးထဲမွာ ပထဝီဓာတ္ဟာ အေရးအႀကီးဆံုးနံပါတ္တစ္ပဲ။ ၿပီးေတာ့ အာေပါရယ္၊ ေတေဇာရယ္၊ ဝါေယာရယ္ ဓာတ္သံုးပါးေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ပထဝီ တစ္၊ အာေပါ ေတေဇာ ဝါေယာက သံုး” လို႔ အဓိပၸါယ္ဖြင့္ဆိုတယ္။

          ဒီေတာ့ ဓာတုေဗဒဆရာက “ မဆိုင္လိုက္တာဗ်ာ။ ၃/၁ ဆိုတာ ေရဓာတ္ကို ေျပာတာဗ်။ အိတ္(ခ်) တူးဆိုတဲ့ ဟိုက္ဒရိုဂ်င္ ႏွစ္ဆရယ္၊ အို ဆိုတဲ့ ေအာက္ဆီဂ်င္တစ္ဆရယ္၊ သံုးခုေပါင္းလိုက္ရင္ ေရဆိုတဲ့(၁) ကို ရတယ္လို႔ ဆိုလိုတာဗ်” လို႔ အဓိပၸါယ္ဖြင့္ဆိုသတဲ့ကြယ္။

          ေနာက္ဆံုး အဘိဓမၼာဆရာက-
          “ မဆီမဆိုင္ေတြဗ်ာ။ ဒါက သစၥာေလးပါးကို ၿခံဳၿပီးေျပာတာဗ်။ (၃) ဆိုတာက ဒုကၡ၊ သမုဒယ၊ မဂၢသစၥာတို႔ကို ဆိုလိုတာျဖစ္ၿပီး တစ္က သီးသီးသန္႔သန္႔ျဖစ္တဲ့ နိဗၺာန္ဆိုတဲ့ နိေရာဓသစၥာကို ညႊန္းဆိုတာပါ” လို႔ ရွင္းျပသတဲ့။

          သူတို႔ ပညာရွင္ေတြ ျငင္းခံုေနၾကတုန္းမွာပဲ အဲဒီ ၃/၁ ရဲ႔ ပိုင္ရွင္အရူးက ေရာက္လာၿပီး ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ ဘာေတြေျပာေနၾကတာလဲလို႔ ေမးသတဲ့။ ပညာရွင္ႀကီးေတြကလည္း သူတို႔ အယူအဆ ေတြကို ရွင္းျပၾကတာေပါ့။

          ဒီေတာ့ အရူးက “ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔အားလံုး အရူးေတြပါဗ်ာ။ က်ဳပ္ဆိုလိုတာက (၃/၁) ဆိုတာ သစ္တံုးပါဗ်ာ။ လြယ္ေနတာကုိ ခက္ေအာင္လုပ္ၾကတယ္ဆိုၿပီး စိတ္ပ်က္ပ်က္နဲ႔ ထြက္သြားသတဲ့ကြယ္။



ဟုတ္ေတာ့လည္း ဟုတ္သားပဲ။ သံုးတစ္ဆိုတာ သစ္တံုးပဲေလ။ ပညာလြန္ေတာ့ ကြန္႔သြားတာကိုး ကေလးတုို႔ရဲ့။

( ဆရာတစ္ေယာက္ရဲ့ အရႊန္းကိုျပန္ေဖာက္တာပါဗ်ာ။ ၾကားဖူးသူေတြအတြက္ ေတာင္းပန္ပါတယ္။)
          
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