လူတိုင္း ေအာင္ျမင္ခ်င္ၾကပါတယ္။ ပညာေရး၊ လူမႈေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး၊ ဘ၀တေလွ်ာက္
လံုးမွာ စသျဖင့္ ေနရာတိုင္းမွာ ေအာင္ျမင္ခ်င္ ၾကပါတယ္။ ေအာင္ျမင္ခ်င္ရင္
A to Z ကို သတိရပါ တဲ့။ သူတို႕ေတြ ကေတာ့:_
Avoid negative sources, persons, places, things and habits.
အဆိုးျမင္တတ္တဲ့ အရင္းအျမစ္၊ လူေတြ၊ ေနရာေတြ၊ အရာ၀တဳေတြနဲ႕
အမူအက်င့္ေတြကို ေရွာင္ပါတဲ့။
Believe yourself.
ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကိုယံုၾကည္ပါ။
Consider things from every angle.
အရာတိုင္းကို ရႈေထာင့္စံုက စဥ္းစားေတြးေတာပါ
Don't give up and don't give in
ဘယ္ေတာ့မွ လက္မေလွ်ာ့ပါနဲ႕ ၿပီးေတာ့ အရံႈးမေပးပါနဲ႕
Enjoy life today. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come.
ပစဳပၸန္မွာ ဘ၀ကို ေပ်ာ္ေအာင္ေနပါ။ မေန႕က ကုန္လြန္ခဲ့ၿပီး မနက္ျဖန္က
ေရာက္ခ်င္မွ ေရာက္လာမွာပါ
Family and friends are hidden treasures, seek them and enjoy their values.
မိသားစုနဲ႕ သူငယ္ခ်င္း ဆိုတာ ပုန္းကြယ္ ေနတဲ့ ရတနာ ေတြပါ။
သူတို႕ကိုေတြ႕ေအာင္ ရွာေဖြၿပီး သူတို႕ကို ေကာင္းေကာင္း တန္ဖိုး ထားပါ။
Give more than you planned to
စီစဥ္မွန္းထားတာထက္ ပိုေပးပါ
Hang on to your dreams
အိပ္မက္မ်ားကို ျမဲျမဲဆုပ္ကိုင္ထားပါ
Ignore them who try to discourage you
သင့္ကို စိတ္ဓာတ္က်ေအာင္ၾကိဳးစားသူ၊ စိတ္ဓာတ္က်ေစသူမ်ားကို လ်စ္လ်ဴရႈပါ
Just do it
ရဲရဲသာလုပ္ပါ
Keep trying no matter how hard it seems, it may get easier
ဘယ္ေလာက္ခက္တယ္လို႕ ထင္ေနပါေစ၊ ဆက္ၾကိဳးစားေနပါ၊ ပိုလြယ္ေကာင္းလြယ္ေနပါလိမ့္မယ္
Love yourself first and most
ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကို ပထမဆံုးနဲ႕ အမ်ားဆံုးခ်စ္ပါ
Make it happen
အျဖစ္ရွိေအာင္ အလုပ္လုပ္ပါ
Never lie, cheat or steal, always strike a fair deal
ဘယ္ေတာ့မွ မလိမ္ပါနဲ႕၊ မညာပါနဲ႕၊ မခိုးပါနဲ႕၊ အျမဲ တရားမွ်တမႈရွိတဲ့
ဆက္ဆံေရးတစ္ခုကို တိုက္ယူပါ
Open your eyes and see things as they really are
သင့္အျမင္မ်ားကို ဖြင့္ထားပါ။ ၿပီးေတာ့ အရာရာကို အမွန္အတိုင္းျမင္ႏိုင္ပါေစ
Practice makes perfect
ေလ့က်င့္ျခင္းသည္သာ အမွန္တကယ္ ၿပီးျပည့္စံုေစသည္
Quitters never win and winners never quit
လက္ေလွ်ာ့သူ ဘယ္ေတာ့မွ မေအာင္ႏိုင္၊ ေအာင္ႏိုင္သူ ဘယ္ေတာ့မွ လက္မေလွ်ာ့
Read, study and learn about everything important in your life
သင့္ဘ၀အတြက္ အေရးႀကီးေသာ အရာအားလံုးကို အျမဲ ဖတ္ပါ၊ ေလ့လာပါ၊ သင္ယူပါ
Stop procrastinating
Take control of your own destiny
သင့္ပန္းတိုင္ကို သင္ကိုယ္တိုင္ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ပါ
Understand yourself to better understand others
သူမ်ားကိုပိုနားလည္ဖို႕အတြက္ သင္ကိုယ္တိုင္ကို သင္ ပိုနားလည္ပါေစ
Visualize it
စိတ္ထဲမွာ တံဆိပ္ခတ္ႏွိပ္ထားသလို ဓာတ္ပံုရိုက္ထားသလို စြဲျမဲေနပါေစ
Want it more than anything
ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကို နားလည္မႈကို အျခားအရာအားလံုးထက္ ပို လိုခ်င္ေနပါေစ
Xcellerate your efforts
ကိုယ့္အားထုတ္ၾကိဳးပမ္းမႈေတြကို အေကာင္းဆံုးျဖစ္ေအာင္ လုပ္ပါ။
You are unique of all God's creation, nothing can replace you
ေလာကမွာ ရွိတဲ့ သဘာ၀တရားရဲ႕ ဖန္တီးမႈေတြထဲမွာ သင္ဟာ
အႏႈိင္းမဲ့ျဖစ္တဲ့အတြက္ သင့္ကို မည္သည့္အရာကမွ အစားထိုးလို႕ မရႏိုင္ဘူး
ဆိုတာကို သတိရပါ။
Zero in on your target and go for it
သင့္ရည္မွန္းခ်က္ကို အာရံုစူးစိုက္ပါ။ ၿပီးေတာ့ အဲဒါကိုရေအာင္ ေရာက္ေအာင္ သြားပါ။
You are warmly welcome from this blog ^_^
Saturday, January 16, 2010
ေအာင္ျမင္ခ်င္ရင
ကိုယ့္ပုဆိန္ကို ေသြးၾကပါစို႔,
ကိုယ့္ပုဆိန္ကို ေသြးၾကပါစို႔,
တစ္ခါက ထင္းခုတ္သမား လူငယ္တစ္ဦး ေတာင္တက္ျပီး ထင္းခုတ္ေလသည္။ မၾကာမီ
ထင္းခုတ္သမား အဘိုးအိုတစ္ဦးလည္း ေရာက္လာခဲ့သည္။ ထင္းမ်ားကို ခုတ္ၾကရင္း
ညေနေစာင္းခ်ိန္တြင္ အဘိုးအို ခုတ္ၿပီးေသာထင္းအေရအတြက္မွာ လူငယ္ထက္
ပိုမ်ားေနခဲ့သည္။ အဘိုးအိုမွာ ေနာက္က်မွ ေရာက္လာျပီး သူ႔ထက္
ထင္းပိုမ်ားေနသည္ကို သတိျပဳမိေသာလူငယ္က ေနာက္ရက္တြင္ ေစာေစာထျပီး
ထင္းခုတ္ထြက္ရန္ ဆံုးျဖတ္လိုက္သည္။
ေနာက္တစ္ေန႔တြင္ လူငယ္မွာ အဘိုးအိုထက္ ေစာျပီး ထင္းခုတ္ရန္ ထြက္ခဲ့သည္။
စိတ္ထဲတြင္ အဘိုးအိုထက္ ထင္းပိုရမည္ဟုလည္း ေတြးေနမိသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္
အလုပ္သိမ္းခ်ိန္တြင္ အဘိုးအို၏ ထင္းမွာ သူ႔ထက္ ပိုမ်ားေနသည္ကို
ေတြ႔ျပန္သည္။ သို႔ႏွင့္ ေလး၊ ငါးရက္ဆက္တိုက္ ေတာင္ေပၚသို႔ ေစာစီးစြာ
ေရာက္ႏွင့္ေနျပီး မိုးခ်ဳပ္ေန၀င္မွ အိမ္ျပန္ခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း သူ၏ထင္းမွာ
အဘိုးအိုထက္ အၿမဲတမ္းလိုလိုပင္ နည္းေနခဲ့သည္။
ေျခာက္ရက္ေျမာက္ေန႔တြင္ သူသည္ မေအာင့္ႏိုင္ေတာ့သည့္အဆံုး အဘိုးအိုအား
ေမးျမန္းခဲ့သည္။
“ အဘိုး.... ကြ်န္ေတာ္က အဘိုးထက္ အားသန္တယ္... အဘိုးထက္ ေစာျပီး
ေတာင္ေပၚေရာက္ေအာင္ လာခဲ့တယ္.. ေနာက္က်မွ အိမ္ျပန္တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္
ကြ်န္ေတာ္ခုတ္ရတဲ့ ထင္းက အဘိုးထက္ နည္းေနခဲ့တယ္... ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲ”
“ဒီိလို လူေလးရဲ႕... အဘိုးက ထင္းခုတ္ျပီး အိမ္ျပန္ေရာက္တုိင္း အဘိုးရဲ႔
ပုဆိန္ကို အၿမဲေသြးတယ္။ လူေလးက မေသြးခဲ့ဘူး။ ထင္းခုတ္ၿပီး ဒီအတုိင္း
ပစ္ထားခဲ့တယ္။ အဘိုးက အသက္ၾကီးျပီ။ ေနာက္က်မွ ေတာင္ေပၚေရာက္သလို လူေလးထက္
ေစာျပီး အလုပ္သိမ္း ခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အဘိုးရဲ႔ ပုဆိန္က လူေလးပုဆိန္ထက္
ထက္ျမက္ေနတဲ့အတြက္ အဘိုး ေလး ငါးခ်က္ခုတ္လို႔ ျပတ္တဲ့ သစ္ပင္ကို လူေလးက
ဆယ္ခ်က္ေလာက္ ခုတ္ယူရတယ္... ဒါေၾကာင့္ လူေလးရဲ႕ ထင္းေတြ နည္းေနတာပါ”
ပံုျပင္ေလးကေတာ့ ဒါပါပဲ။
အလုပ္ထဲက လုပ္ေဖာ္ကိုင္ဖက္ေတြကို ေဟာေျပာပဲြေတြ သြားနားေထာင္ဖို႔၊
အခ်ိန္ပိုရင္ ကိုယ့္၀ါသနာပါရာ၊ ေလ့လာေနတဲ့ ပညာရပ္ဆုိင္ရာ သင္တန္းေတြ
တက္ဖို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ အျမဲ တိုက္တြန္းတတ္ပါတယ္။ အမ်ားစုက “အလုပ္ပင္ပန္းရတဲ့
ၾကားထဲ သင္တန္းေတြ ေဟာေျပာပဲြေတြ တက္ဖို႔ အခ်ိန္မရွိဘူး” လို႔
ညည္းျပၾကပါတယ္။
“ထင္းပဲခုတ္ေနျပီး ပုဆိန္ေသြးဖို႔ ေမ့ေနၾကရင္ အလုပ္အျပည့္ လုပ္ျပီး
ရလဒ္တစ္၀က္ပဲ ခံစားရမယ္ ဆိုတာကို တစ္ခ်ိန္ခ်ိန္က်ရင္ သိလာလိမ့္မယ္”
လူ႔ဘ၀လမ္းတစ္ေလ်ာက္မွာ ရွင္သန္ၾကီးျပင္းဖို႔ ၾကိဳးစားေနသလို တစ္ဖက္ကလည္း
ကိုယ့္ပညာ ဗဟုသုတေတြကို ျမွင့္တင္ယူရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အရင္ေခတ္တုန္းကေတာ့
ထင္းခုတ္ျပီး အသက္ေမြး၀မ္းလို႔ ရေပမယ့္ ေျပာင္းလဲေနတဲ့ ဒီေခတ္မွာ
ထင္းပဲခုတ္ေနလို႔ မလံုေလာက္ေတာ့ဘူး။ တစ္ဖက္က ထင္းခုတ္ရင္း တစ္ဖက္ကလဲ
ပုဆိန္ကို ေသြးေနသင့္ပါတယ္။ ႏို႔မဟုတ္ရင္ ေခတ္ေနာက္ မလိုက္ႏုိင္တဲ့
ကိုယ့္ကို အဲဒီေခတ္ကပဲ ပယ္ထုတ္ဖယ္ရွားသြားမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
တတ္သေလာက္ အဂၤလိပ္စာေလးနဲ႔ ဘာသာျပန္လုပ္စားေနတဲ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အတြက္
ဒီပံုျပင္ေလးက အိပ္ရာက လန္႔ႏိႈးလိုက္သလို ျဖစ္သြားေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ေဘာ္ဒါေရာင္းရင္းမ်ား၊ လုပ္ေဖာ္ကိုင္ဖက္ သူငယ္ခ်င္းမ်ားအတြက္လည္း
ဒီပံုျပင္ေလးက တစ္ခုခု ေပးသြားႏုိင္မယ္လို႔ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ပါတယ္။
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ကေတာ့ အဂၤလိပ္စာကို ဒီထက္ပို ေလ့လာႏုိင္မယ့္၊ သင္ေပးႏုိင္မယ့္
သင္တန္းမ်ား ထပ္တက္ၿပီး ေသြးသစ္ေလာင္းဖို႔ ျပင္ေနပါၿပီ။
ဒီက မိတ္ေဆြမ်ားေရာ.. ဘယ္လို စီစဥ္ထားပါသလဲ၊ ကုိယ့္ကိုကုိယ္ တတ္လွၿပီ
ထင္ရင္ေတာ့ သူမ်ားက တစ္ခ်က္တည္းနဲ႔ ခုတ္လို႔ ၿပီးသြားတဲ့ သစ္ပင္ကို
ကုိယ့္က်မွ နဖူးကေခၽြးေျခမ က်ေအာင္ အခ်က္ေပါင္း ေလးငါးဆယ္မက ခုတ္မွ
ရမယ္ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ ထူးအိမ္သင္သီခ်င္းထဲကလို နည္းနည္းေလးေတာ့ လြဲေနၿပီ
ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။
ဒီေတာ့ သင္တန္းခ်ည္းတက္ၿပီး တက္သမွ် မေလ့က်င့္ဘဲ၊ ျပန္ေမ့ေနရင္ေရာ
..ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ အဲဒါ ကိုယ့္သမုိင္း ျဖစ္သြားၿပီလို႔ပဲ ဆုိပါရေစ။ ဒီေနရာမွာ
တရုတ္ပညာရွိႀကီး ကြန္ျဖဴးရွပ္စ္ရဲ႔ စကားတစ္ခြန္း လက္ေဆာင္ပါးခ်င္ပါတယ္။
"လက္ေတြ႔မပါတဲ့ ပညာဟာ အသံုးမ၀င္သလို၊ ပညာမပါတဲ့ လက္ေတြ႔ဟာလဲ အႏၱရာယ္မ်ားတယ္"
အဲဒီလိုပဲ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ဟာ ကိုယ္သိသေလာက္၊ အေတြ႔အႀကံဳေလးနဲ႔ပဲ
ျပႆနာတုိင္းကို ေျဖရွင္းလို႔ မရႏုိင္ပါဘူး။ လိုအပ္ရင္ သင္တန္းေတြတက္
ပညာယူ ေလ့လာရေတာ့မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ ေန႔တုိင္းေန႔တုိင္း ဒီအလုပ္ေတြ
ကုန္းရုန္းလုပ္ရင္း ဒီေနရာမွာပဲ ရပ္တန္႔ေနေတာ့မွာလား၊ ကိုယ့္ဘ၀ကုိ
ဒီထက္ျမင့္ျမင့္ ပ်ံသန္းႏုိင္ဖုိ႔ အခ်ိန္ေလး အခြင့္အေရးေလး
မေပးႏုိင္ဘူးလား..။ တစ္ခ်က္တည္း ခုတ္လို႔ ျပတ္မယ့္ ေနရာမွာ
အခ်က္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ခုတ္ရင္း အခ်ိန္ကုန္၊ လူပန္းနဲ႔ ဘ၀ကို ေအာက္က်၊
ေနာက္က် ျဖတ္သန္းသြားမလား။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တုိ႔ ပုဆိန္ေတြ ေသြးၾကပါစို႔ဗ်ာ။
Got from forward mail..
ဂရုစိုက္ရမည့္နာရီမ်ား
သုေတသနျပဳခ်က္အရ ညဆိုင္းအလုပ္လုပ္သူမ်ားသည္ က်န္းမာေရးအေျခအေန
ကေမာက္ကမျဖစ္တတ္သည္။
အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားဆိုလွ်င္ရာသီမမွန္ျခင္း၊အရိုးပြေရာဂါျဖစ္ျခင္း၊
ရင္သားကင္ဆာျဖစ္ျခင္း၊ ကိုယ္၀န္မရရွိႏိုင္ျခင္း စသည့္
ေရာဂါမ်ားပိုမိုျဖစ္တတ္သည္။
ညသန္းေခါင္ ည ၁၂-နာရီ ၁၀-မိနစ္အထိ မအိပ္ေသးသူမ်ားတြင္ ခႏၶာကိုယ္၏
ဇီ၀ျဖစ္ပ်က္ေျပာင္းလဲျဖစ္စဥ္မ်ားသည္ ကိုယ္တြင္းအရည္ေလာင္ကၽြမ္းမႈကိုသာ
အားကိုးရသည္။ ကိုယ္တြင္းအရည္ေလင္ကၽြမ္းမႈသည္ အဆိပ္အေတာက္ျဖစ္ေပၚမႈမ်ားတတ္သည္။
ခႏၶကုိယ္၏ 'သက္ေစာင့္ရည္' မ်ားကို အက္ဆစ္ဓါတ္ျဖစ္ေစႏိုင္သည္။ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ ခဏခဏ
အိပ္ေရးပ်က္ခံသူမ်ားသည္ ေဆးလိပ္ေသာက္၊ အရက္ေသာက္သူမ်ားျဖစ္ႏိုင္သည့္ေရာဂါမ်ိဳးမ်ား ငါးဆပိုျဖစ္ႏိုင္သည္။ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ ေန႔စဥ္အတတ္ႏိုင္ဆံုး ည ၁၁-နာရီ မတိုင္မီ အိပ္ရမည္္။ မျဖစ္မေန
ညအလုပ္လုပ္ရန္ရွိသည္ဆိုလွ်င္လဲ (အသားမပါေသာ) ညလယ္စာစားလွ်င္ ခံသာေသးသည္။
နံနက္အခါ ေနထြက္သည္။ ညေနေရာက္လွ်င္ ေန၀င္သည္။ ေဆာင္းရာသီၿပီးလွ်င္
ေႏြရာသီေရာက္ေလသည္။ သဘာ၀ေလာကႀကီးသည္ အခ်ိန္မွန္မွန္၊စည္းခ်က္က်က်ျဖစ္ပ်က္ေနသည္။
လူ႔ခႏၶာကိုယ္လဲ သဘာ၀ ေလာကႀကီးတြင္ တည္ရွိၿပီး အခ်ိန္မွန္မွန္၊စည္းခ်က္က်က်
လႈပ္ရွားမွသာ က်န္းမာေပ်ာ္ရႊင္မည္။
ည ၉-နာရီ မွ နံနက္၃-နာရီ = ခႏၶာကို္ယ္အားျဖည့္ခ်ိန္
ည ၉-နာရီ မွ ည ၁၁-နာရီ = ေရာဂါခုခံကာကြယ္စနစ္အခ်ိိန္
(အလယ္တန္းေအာက္ကေလးသူငယ္မ်ားသည္
ေရာဂါခုခံကာကြယ္စနစ္တည္ေဆာက္မႈမျပည့္စံုေသးသျဖင့္ ည ၉-နာရီတြင္
အိပ္ႏိုင္လွ်င္ေကာင္း၏)
ည ၁၁-နာရိ မွ နံနက္ ၁-နာရီ = ရိုးတြင္းခ်ဥ္ဆီမွ ေသြးနီဥ တည္ေဆာက္ခ်ိန္
နံနက္ ၁-နာရီ မွ နံနက္ ၃-နာရီ= အသည္း၏အခ်ိန္
နံနက ၃-နာရီ မွ နံနက္ ၅-နာရီ= အသက္ရႈစနစ္အတြက္အခ်ိန္
နံနက္ ၄-နာရီ = ခႏၶာကိုယ္၏ ေသြးခုန္အားအေပ်ာ့ဆံုး၊ ႏွလံုးခုန္ႏႈန္း အေႏွးဆံုးအခ်ိန္
(ေဆးပညာတြင္ 'အႏၱရာယ္မ်ားသည့္ေလးနာရီ' ဟုေျပာစမွတ္ျပဳၾကသည္။
လက္ေတြ႔တြင္ ဤအခ်ိန္၌ ရင္ၾကပ္၊ႏွလံုး၊ေလျဖတ္၊ဦးေႏွာက္ေသြးေၾကာေရာဂါ၊
ေသြးတိုးေရာဂါ စသည္တို႔ ေရာဂါေဖာက္ျပန္ေသာ အခ်ိန္ျဖစ္တတ္သည္။ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္
အဘိုးအဘြားမ်ား နံနက္ ၅-နာရီေက်ာ္မွကိုယ္လက္လႈပ္ရွားလမ္းေလွ်ာက္ထြက္သင့္သည္။)
နံနက္ ၅-နာရီ မွ နံနက္ ၇-နာရီ = အူမႀကီးအလႈပ္ရွားဆံုးအခ်ိန္
နံနက္ ၇-နာရီ မွ နံနက္ ၉-နာရီ = အစာအိမ္အလႈပ္ရွားဆံုးအခ်ိန္
(ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ နံနက္ ၇-နာရီ မတိုင္ခင္ နံနက္စာစားသင့္သည္)
နံနက္ ၉-နာရီ မွ နံနက္ ၁၁-နာရီ = သရက္ရြက္အလႈပ္ရွားဆံုးအခ်ိန္
နံနက္ ၁၁-နာရီ မွ ေန႔လယ္ ၁-နာရီ = ရိုးတြင္းခ်ဥ္ဆီ ေသြးတည္ေဆာက္ခ်ိန္
(ေကာင္းစြာအနားယူႏိုင္ပါက ေသြးအားနည္းေရာဂါမျဖစ္ေတာ့ေပ)
ေန႔လယ္ ၁-နာရီ မွ ညေန ၃-နာရီ = အူသိမ္အလႈပ္ရွားဆံုးအခ်ိန္
(ေန႔လယ္ ၁-နာရီ မတိုင္ခင္ေန႔လည္စာစားလွ်င္ေကာင္း၏ - သို႔မဟုတ္က အစာအိမ္ေရာဂါ
ေလထိုးေလေအာင့္ေရာဂါျဖစ္တတ္သည္။)
ညေန ၃-နာရီ မွ ညေန ၅-နာရီ = ဆီးအိမ္အလႈပ္ရွားဆံုးအခ်ိန္
(ဤအခ်ိန္တြင္ေရမ်ားမ်ားေသာက္ရန္အေရးႀကီးသည္။)
ညေန ၅-နာရီ မွ ည ၇-နာရီ = ေက်ာက္ကပ္အလႈပ္ရွားဆံုးအခ်ိန္
ည ၇-နာရီမွ ည ၉-နာရီ = ႏွလံုးႏွင့္ဦးေႏွာက္အာရံုေၾကာစနစ္၏အလႈပ္ရွားဆံုးအခ်ိန္
(ဤသည္မွာ ေရွးတရုတ္တိုင္းရင္းေဆးပညာရွင္တို႔၏ အဆိုျဖစ္သည္။)
အကိုး။ ။ လင္ကြမ္ခ်န္၏က်န္းမာေရးစာအုပ္မွ
(ပါေမာကၡ ေဒၚခင္ျဖဴ)
ျမတ္မဂၤလာစာေစာင္ အတြဲ-၂၅၊အမွတ္-၁၊ ၂၀၀၉ခုႏွစ္၊ ဇူလိုင္လ မွ ေကာက္ႏုတ္ေဖၚျပသည္။
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
his is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
အေမ..
That's really interesting story
“ခ်မ္းလို္က္တာ…..”
ခေမာက္ အမိုးထဲကို ၀င္ႏိုင္သမွ် ၀င္ေအာင္ ကိုယ္ကိုက်ံဳ႕ ၀င္ရင္း ညီးတြားမိပါတယ္…
အေ၀းကၾကည့္ရင္ လူကိုေတြ႕၇မယ္ မထင္ပါ ခေမာက္ အၾကီးၾကီး
တစ္ခုကိုပဲေတြ႕ႏိုင္ပါလိမ့္မယ္ က်ေနာ့္ အတြက္ ဒီခေမာက္ က မိုးကာလဲ
ဟုတ္..ထီးလဲ ဟုတ္ပါတယ္…မိုးတြင္းအဆက္ဆက္တိုင္းကို ဒီ ခေမာက္ေလးနဲ႕ပဲ
ျဖတ္ေက်ာ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္…အခုလဲ မိုးဖြဲဖြဲေလး က်ေနပါတယ္…က်ေနာ့္ေျခေထာက္ေတြ လဲ
ေအးစက္ေနပါျပီ…ဒါေပမယ့္ က်ေနာ္ အိမ္မျပန္ခ်င္ေသးပါ.. ။ က်ေနာ့္ အေမ
ေနမေကာင္း ျဖစ္တာ တပါတ္ေလာက္ရွိပါျပီ အခုမွ အဖ်ား ေပ်ာက္ကာစဆိုေတာ့
အားနည္ေနပါတယ္ .. အေမ့့ကို ငါးဟင္းစြတ္ျပဳတ္ေလး ျပဳတ္တိုက္ခ်င္လို႕
မိုးရြာၾကီးထဲမွာ က်ေနာ္ ငါးထြက္မွ်ားေနတာပါ…။
“ဟာ…တြတ္ျပီ…”
ေဒါင္းမွီးနဲ႕လုပ္ထားတဲ့ ေဖာ့တံေလးက လႈပ္လာပါတယ္ ေပၚခ်ီ ျမဳပ္ခ်ီမဟုတ္ပဲ
လႈပ္ရံုတင္ လႈပ္တာဆိုေတာ့ ငါးၾကီးျဖစ္ဖို႕ မ်ားပါတယ္…
“ငါးရံ႕ ရရင္ေကာင္းမယ္ …”
ေဖာ့ျမဳပ္သြားပါျပီ..ဘူစီေပါင္းေတြ ပလံုစီေအာင္တတ္လာတာ
ကိုၾကည့္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ ငါးခူျဖစ္မယ္ ထင္ပါတယ္..
ေဖာ့ျမဳပ္တဲ့ဖက္ႏွင့္ဆန္႕က်င္ဖက္ကို ခပ္ဆပ္ဆပ္ေလး ရိုက္ ဆြဲတင္လိုက္ပါတယ္…။
ထီးရိုး၀ါးျဖင့္လုပ္ထာေတာ့ ငါးမွ်ားတံ ကညႊတ္ ျပီးပါလာပါတယ္…
“အာ.. အၾကီးၾကီး ပဲဟ…”
ဟုတ္ပါတယ္ ငါးခူ ၾကီးက ႏႈတ္ခမ္းေမႊး အ၀ါနဲ႕ က်ေနာ့္လက္ တေတာင္
ေက်ာ္ထိေအာင္ကိုၾကီး လွပါတယ္…ငါးခူ အစြယ္က အဆိပ္ရွိပါတယ္
သတိၾကီးစြာထားျပီးေတာ့ သူ႕ရဲ႕ အစြယ္ႏွစ္ဖက္ေအာက္ကို လက္ညိႈး
လက္သန္းထည့္..ေအာက္ေမးရိုးကို လက္မႏွင့္ လွန္ခ် ျပီးေတာ့
ခ်ိတ္ကိုျဖဳတ္လိုက္ပါ..အဲ့လိုျဖဳတ္တတ္ဖို႕ ငါမွ်ားတတ္တဲ့ဦးေလး ၾကီးဆီမွာ
အခ်ိန္ေတာ္ေတာ္ၾကာ သင္ခဲ့ရတာပါ..။ငါးကိုေသခ်ာၾကည့္လိုက္ေတာ့ ဗိုက္
၀ိုင္းၾကီးပါ ျဖဴလဲ ျဖဳေနပါတယ္..ဒါ ငါးခူအထီး ၾကီးပါ..ငါးခူ
အေကာင္ၾကီးေတြက အေဖာ္နဲ႕ ေနတတ္ပါတယ္ ဒီအခ်ိန္က ငါးေတြ သား က်ခ်ိန္ဆိုေတာ့
ငါးအမၾကီး ရွိႏိုင္ပါတယ္..က်ေနာ္လဲ ေဘးပါတ္၀န္းက်င္ တေလ်ာက္
လုိက္ေလ့လာၾကည့္လိုက္ပါတယ္…
“ဟာ”
ေတြ႕ပါျပီ ငါးသားအုပ္ၾကီးပါ..ငါးခူအုပ္ဆိုတာ ၾကည့္တာနဲ႕ သိပါတယ္ မည္းမည္း
နဲ႕ ငါးသားေလးေတြ လဲ အမ်ားၾကီးပါ... အဲ့ဒီေအာက္မွာ ငါးမၾကီး
ရွိပါတယ္..ငါးအမ မ်ားဟာ အထီးမ်ားထက္ အေကာင္ၾကီးၾကပါတယ္...သားခ် ထားလို႕
ပိန္ေတာ့ ပိန္တတ္ပါတယ္…
“အင္း ငါးသားေလးေတြ ကၾကီးေတာ့ တီနဲ႕ ခ်လို႕ကေတာ့ သူတို႕ ၀ိုင္းစား
ၾကတာနဲ႕ ကုန္မွာ ပဲ ပိုးဟပ္နဲ႕ မွ်ားမွ”
က်ေနာ့္ စိတ္ကူးနဲ႕ က်ေနာ္ အစာခ်လိုက္ပါတယ္…ငါး အေမ ၾကီးရဲ႕ ဟာ သူတို႕
သားအုပ္ေပၚ ျဖတ္ေျပးတဲ့ ေမြက အစ ဟပ္ပါတယ္ ..။ သားသမီးကို ကာကြယ္တတ္ေသာ
မိဘ ေတြရဲ႕ ပံုစံ အမွန္ပါ..။က်ေနာ့္ အစာကိုလဲ တန္းျပီးဟပ္ပါတယ္..။
က်ေနာ္ ငါးအေမ ၾကီးကိုဆြဲတင္လိုက္ပါတယ္..
အားပါးပါး ဒီတစ္ေကာင္က ပိုေတာင္ၾကီးပါေသးတယ္..
က်ေနာ္ ရဖူးတဲ့ ငါးခူေတြ ထဲမွာ ဒီအေကာင္ေလာက္ၾကီးတာေတာ့ မေတြ႕ဖူးပါ
တေကာင္တည္္း နဲ႕တင္ ၅၀ သားေက်ာ္ေလာက္ရွိပါတယ္…။
က်ေနာ္ ငါးေတြကို ေၾကးနန္းၾကိဳးနဲ႕ သီျပီး ျပန္ဖို႕ျပင္လိုက္ပါတယ္…။
ငါးအုပ္ကို ျပန္ၾကည့္မိတယ္…သူတို႕ အရင္လို မိခင္ေနာက္ကို
အံုခဲျပီးလိုက္ေန သလိိုမ်ိဳး တစုတေ၀းထဲ ျဖစ္မေနေတာ့ပါ..ဦးတည္ရာမဲ့
ေလ်ာက္သြားေနပါေတာ့တယ္…ဒီထဲမွာ တခ်ိဳ႕က ကံေကာင္းျပီး အသက္ရွင္ႏုိင္သလို
တခ်ိဳက်ေတာ့လဲ ငါးအၾကီးၾကီး ေတြရဲ႕ အစာ ျဖစ္သြားမွာပါ…ေအာ္ သူတို႕ မိဘ
မဲ့ျဖစ္သြားျပီကိုး…။
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
“အေမေရ အေမ အေမ..”
"ဟဲ့ သားေလး ဘယ္ေတြ ေလ်ာက္သြားေနတာလဲ မိုးရြာေနတာကို "
“အေမ သားငါးခူ ဖမ္းလားတယ္”
“ဟယ္ၾကည့္စမ္း သား အေမဘာေျပာထားလဲ သူမ်ားအသတ္ မသတ္ရဘူးလို႕ ေျပာထားတယ္ေလ
အေမ့စကား ကိုနားမေထာင္ဘူးေပါ့ …ဟုတ္လား ကိုဇင္”
“သားက အေမ့ကို စြတ္ျပဳတ္လုပ္တိုက္ခ်င္လို႕ပါ..အေမ ေနေကာင္းကာစ ဆိုေတာ့
အားရွိေအာင္ပါ..”
အေမက က်ေနာ့္ကိုၾကည့္ရင္း မ်က္ရည္၀ဲလာပါတယ္…
“လာ သားေလး ေခါင္းေတြ သုတ္စမ္း ဖ်ားေတာ့မွာပဲ ဒီကေလးကေတာ့…”
အေမ က်ေနာ့္ ကို မဆူ ရက္ေတာ့ ပါ...။
“အေမ ငါးခူကို ရြက္ယိုရြက္နဲ႕ ခ်က္စားရေအာင္ေနာ္ ..ပိုတာကို အေမ့အတြက္
စြတ္ျပဳတ္လုပ္ေပးမယ္..”
“အမယ္ နင့္ငါးခူ ကဘယ္ေလာက္ ၾကီးလို႕လဲ..”
က်ေနာ္လဲ အိမ္ေဘးက စဥ္းအိုးေဘးမွာ ခ်ထားတဲ့ ငါးခူႏွစ္ေကာင္တြဲ
ကိုလက္ညိဳးထိုးျပလိုက္ပါတယ္..
“ဟိုမွာေလ..”
“ဟယ္ေတာ့ အၾကီးၾကီး ပဲ…သားေလး အိမ္မွာ ထမင္းခ်က္ထား ဒီအခ်ိန္ ဆို
ေစ်းမကြဲေသးဘူး အေမး ေစ်းမွာ သြားေရာင္းလိုက္မယ္…”
“အေမ့…..ငါးခူနဲ႕ ရြက္ယိုရြက္ ေလ….”
“သားေလး အိမ္မွာဆန္ကုန္ေနျပီေလ..ဒါေလးေရာင္းရရင္ အဆင္ေျပမွာ..သားကလိမာ
ပါတယ္ ေနာက္မွ အေမအဆင္ေျပရင္ သား စားခ်င္တာခ်က္ေကၽြးမယ္ေလ..ေအာ္
ေနာက္တစ္ခါေတာ့ အဲ့လိုငါးထြက္မွ်ားတာ အေမခြင့္မျပဳေနာ္ သားေလ…ကို႕
ရဲ႕အခက္ခဲ အတြက္ သူမ်ား အသက္ကို သတ္တာ သိပ္ေအာက္တန္းက်တယ္ ေနာ္သား”
“ဟုတ္ ကဲ့ပါ အေမရဲ႕..အေမ ျမန္ျမန္ျပန္လာေနာ္ ေနေကာင္းေသးတာလဲ မဟုတ္ဘူး”
“ေအးပါသားရဲ႕ အေမ ေနေကာင္းေနပါျပီ..ထမင္းခ်က္ထားေနာ္..”
အေမက ေျပာရင္းနဲ႕ ဇလံုထဲကို ခ်ိန္ခြင္ေတြ ဓါးေတြ ၊ ငါးေတြ ထည့္ျပီး
ခါးေစာင္းတင္ေရြ႕ ထြက္သြား ပါေတာ့သည္..။
……………………………………………………………………………………….
“ငါးခူေတြ ရမယ္ ငါးခူေတြ လတ္တယ္ေနာ္…လတ္တယ္…”
သူမအသံမွာ အားလံုး၀ မရွိပါ…သူမေဘးမွ အသံစာစာျဖင့္
ေအာ္ေရာင္းေနေသာတျခားငါးသည္ ေတြရဲ႕ အသံကို ဖံုးသြားေအာင္လဲ သူမ
မေအာ္ႏိုင္ပါ…ဒါေပမယ့္သူမ အဆက္မျပတ္ ေအာ္ေနပါတယ္...။
“ငါးခူေတြ ရမယ္ ငါးခူေတြ”
“အမၾကီးေစ်းေကာက္…”
“အဲေတာ့ ေမာင္ေလးရယ္ အမမွာ တစ္က်ပ္မွ ကိုမရွိတာပါ…”
“ခင္ဗ်ားတို႕ ကလဲ ေျပာလို္က္ရင္အဲ့လို ၾကီးပဲ က်ဴပ္တို႕ကလဲ
ေကာက္ခ်င္လို႕ေကာက္ေနတာ မဟုတ္ဘူးဗ် ေကာက္ခိုင္းသေလာက္ မရရင္
အိပ္စိုက္ရမွာဗ်”
“ေအးပါ ကြယ္ အမ ငါးေရာင္းရရင္ ေပးပါ့မယ္ ျပန္လာခဲ့ ေနာ္…”
ေစ်းေကာက္ ေကာင္ေလးမွာ မေက်မနပ္ျဖင္ ့ထြက္သြားပါေတာ့တယ္..ေအာ္သူလဲ
သူ႕ဒုကနဲ႕ သူပဲေလ..
…………………………………………………………………………………………..
“အေမ သမီး ငါးခူ ေၾကာ္စားခ်င္တယ္…”
“ဟုတ္လား သမီးစားခ်င္ရင္ အေမေၾကာ္ေကၽႊးမွာေပါ့ ဒီအခ်ိန္က ငါခူ
ရပါ့မလားေတာင္ မသိဘူး…”
“အေမ အၾကီးၾကီး ကိုေၾကာ္စားခ်င္တာေနာ္…”
“ေအးပါ ေတြ႕ရင္ အေမ ၀ယ္ပါ့မယ္ သမီးကလဲ..”
“ေမေမ ဟိုမွာ ႏႈတ္ခမ္းေမြးၾကီးနဲ႕ …ဟိုမွာ ငါးခူေတြ..”
“ဘယ္မွာလဲ သမီးရဲ႕ ေအာ္ ဟိုမွာ လာလာ သမီး..”
ပ်ံက်ေစ်းေပမယ့္ လဲ ေစ်း၀ယ္လို႕ ေကာင္းလို႕ ဒီေစ်းကိုပဲ လာလာ
၀ယ္ျဖစ္ၾကပါတယ္…ဒီေန႕လဲ ေဒၚသြယ္တေယာက္ ကိုယ္တိုင္
ေစ်း၀ယ္ထြက္လာခဲ့ပါတယ္..ဒီျမိဳ႕နယ္မွာေတာ့ ေဒၚသြယ္တို႕က လူခ်မ္းသာ
စာရင္း၀င္ေတြ ပါ..။
“ဟိတ္.. ငါးခူ ဘယ္ေစ်းလဲ …”
“၈၀ ပါ အမ…”
“ဟဲ့ ညည္းဟာက မ်ားလွခ်ီလား ေလ်ာ့ပါဦးဟ…”
“အမ ရယ္ ငါးခူေစ်းက ၁၀၀ ပါ ညီမက ေခါင္းရြက္ဗ်က္ထိုးေစ်းသည္မို႕လို႕
ေလ်ာ့ေရာင္းတာပါ..”
“နင့္ငါးခူေတြ ကလဲ ၾကီးလွ ခ်ီလား ဘုရားငါးခူေတြ ျဖစ္ေနမယ္ေနာ္…”
“မဟုတ္ပါဘူး အမရယ္…က်မသားေလးကိုယ္တိုင္ အိမ္ေရွ႕ ကန္ၾကီးထဲက မွ်ားလာတာပါ..”
“အမေလးေနာ္ လိုက္လဲ လိုက္တဲ့သားအမိပဲ ကဲကဲ
ႏွစ္ေကာင္လံုးခ်ိန္လိုက္…အေလးမခိုးနဲ႕ေနာ္…”
“စိတ္ခ်ပါ အမရဲ႕… အားလံုး ၉၅ က်ပ္ သားပါ အမ ၉၀ သားပဲ ထားလိုက္ပါ့မယ္ ရ၂၀ ပါ..”
“၇၀၀ ပဲထားလိုက္ ေရာ့ ..ကိုင္ေပးဦးေနာ္…”
“ဟုတ္ကဲ့အမ ..”
သူမ ငါးကိုအခၽႊဲ ခ်ြတ္ ျပီး ဆူးေတာင္ေတြ ခုတ္ေပးလိုက္ပါတယ္…။ကုန္ျပီ ျပန္ရံုပါပဲ..
သူမပါလာေသာ ပစည္းမ်ားကို အလ်င္အျမန္ ေကာက္သိမ္းလိုက္ပါတယ္..။သူမရဲ႕
လႈပ္ရွားမႈ မွာ ေပါ့ပါးလြန္းလွပါတယ္…။လက္ခ်ိဳးေျခခတ္ ခပ္သြက္သြက္ျဖင့္
ကခတ္ ေနေသာ ကေခ်သည္ မေလးႏွင့္ပင္တူေနပါေတာ့သည္..။
“သားေလးေတာ့ ဆာေနေတာ့ မွာပဲ..”
သူမ ကုန္စံုဆိုင္ ကို အေျပးေလး သြားရင္း ပဲနဲ႕ ဆန္ဆီ
အနည္းငယ္၀ယ္လိုက္ပါတယ္ ေစ်းထဲ ကို ျပန္ေျပးျပီး ဘူးသီးတစ္လံုးလဲ
၀ယ္လိုက္ပါေသးသည္…ညေနစာအတြက္ ကေတာ့ လမ္းထိပ္ထမင္း ဆိုင္မွာ ပဲ ၀က္နံရိုး
တစ္ရာဖိုးနဲ႕ ငါးပိရည္တို႕စရာ မ်ား၀ယ္လာလိုက္ပါတယ္..
“အင္း သားေလး ေက်းဇူးနဲ႕ နက္ျဖန္ေတာ့ ဘူးသီးေၾကာ္နဲ႕ ဘယာေၾကာ္ေလး
ျပန္ထြက္ႏိုင္မယ္ထင္တယ္..”
သူမ ေနမေကာင္းျဖစ္တဲ့ တပတ္မွာ အိမ္စရိတ္ ေဆးဖိုးနဲ႕ သူမရဲ႕ လက္လုပ္
အေၾကာ္ဆိုင္ေလး အရင္းျပဳတ္သြားခဲ့တာပါ..
……………………………………………………………………………………..
“ဆရာမ ..”
“ဆရာမ”
ဒုတိယ ေျမာက္ ေခၚသံနဲ႕အတူ မည္သည့္စာရင္းေတြ လုပ္ေနသလဲ မသိေသာ
က်ေနာ့္၏အတန္း ပိုင္ ဆရာမ မ်က္လႊာပင့္ျပီးေတာ့
က်ေနာ့္ကိုၾကည့္ပါတယ္..ျပီးေတာ့ မွ က်ေနာ့္ရဲ႕ ေဟာင္းႏြမ္းေနေသာ
ေက်ာင္း၀တ္စံုနဲ႕ ပံုစံခပ္မိႈင္းမိႈင္းကို ျမင္မိျပီး ရြံ သလို ကိုယ္ ကို
ရို႕ သြားပါတယ္..
“ေျပာ ဘာလဲ..”
“ဆရာမ က်ေနာ့္ အဂၤလိပ္စာ အမွတ္ေတြ က ေပါင္းတာ မွားေနလို႕…”
“ျပစမ္း ဘယ္နားမွားလို႕လဲ ဆရာမ ေသခ်ာေပါင္းထားတာပဲ”
“ဒီမွာ ဆရာမ (၇) မွတ္တန္ ႏွစ္ပုဒ္နဲ႕ (၆ )မွတ္ တန္ တစ္ပုဒ္ ေလ
သားအကုန္မွန္တဲ့ဟာကို ဆရာမက ၁၀ မွတ္ပဲေရးထား ျပီးေတာ့ ေပါင္းထားလို႕…”
“အာ ဟုတ္သားပဲ ၾကည့္ဦး ဆရာမ ကလဲ အလုပ္ေတြ ရႈပ္ေနတာနဲ႔ ေသခ်ာေတာင္
မၾကည့္မိဘူး..သားကလဲ အခုမွ လာေျပာရလား အမွတ္ေတြ ကရီပို႕ ကတ္ေတြ ထဲေတာင္
ေရာက္ေနျပီ..”
“သားတို႕ အေျဖလြာစာအုပ္က မနက္ကမွရလို႕ပါ ဆရာမ…”
“ေအာ္ ေအေအ သားနာမည္က ဘယ္သူ ဇင္ေယာ္ ေနာ္..သားက ေတာ္သားပဲ
အဆင့္ေလးတဲ့…ေတာ္ေရာေပါ့သားရယ္ အဆင့္ေလးဆို ေရွ႕ဆံုးတန္းမွာ
ထိုင္ရမွာေနာ္…”
“ဆရာမ ဒီတဟ္ပါတ္ အဆင့္ တစ္က ဘယ္သူလဲ ဟင္ “
“ေအာ္ ဒီတပါတ္ က ေက်ာ့ေကသြယ္ရတာ..”
ေၾသာ္ ေက်ာင္းဆင္းရင္ ကားျဖင့္လာလာၾကိဳ တတ္ေသာ သေဌးမၾကီး ေဒၚသြယ္ရဲ႕ သမီး
ကိုး..အဲ့ဒီကားျဖင့္ ေက်ာင္းဆင္းတိုင္း ဆရာမလဲ ပါပါ သြားတတ္တာ ကို
ေတြ႕ဖူးပါတယ္..
“အကယ္ေရႊ႕ အခုလိုေနတဲ့ ၁၀ မွတ္ကို ထည့္ေပါင္းရင္ သားအဆင့္ဘယ္ေလာက္ရမလဲ ဟင္..”
“အင္း သားက တစ္ေပါ့ ဒါေပမယ့္ ေပါင္းလို႕ မရေတာ့ ဘူးသားရဲ႕ ေနာက္တစ္ပါတ္
မွ အဆင့္ တစ္ယူေတာ့ေနာ္…”
“ဟုတ္…”
ဟုတ္လို႕သာ ေျပာရတာ သိပ္ေတာ့ မေက်နပ္ခ်င္လွပါ ..က်ေနာ္က အရင္ လပါတ္ေလးေတြ
မွာ အျမဲတမ္း အဆင့္တစ္ရခဲ့တာပါ ဒါေပမယ့္ က်ေနာ့္ေနရာက တတိယတန္း
ျပတင္းေပါက္ အစြန္ကေန လံုး ၀မတတ္ပါဘူး က်ေနာ့္ပံုစံ နဲ႕
ေရွ႕ဆံုးတန္းထိုင္ရင္ A ခန္ဂုဏ္ငယ္မယ္လို႕ ထင္လို႕
ေနမွာပါ..ဒီတစ္ခါေျဖထားတဲ့ စာေမးပြဲက ပထမ အစမ္း စာေမးပြဲ ၾကီးပါ ..ဒီ
စာေမးပြဲ မွာ အဆင့္ (၁) ရတဲ့ လူတုိင္းကို ေက်ာင္းအုပ္ၾကီးက ဆုခ် ျမဲပါ
ဒါေၾကာင့္က်ေနာ္ လိုခ်င္ခဲ့တာ ပါ ခုေတာ့ မရႏိုင္ေတာ့ ပါတဲ့ေလ..ဘာလို႕
မရႏိုင္ပါလိမ့္လို႕ ေတြးေနရံုကလြဲေရြ႕လဲ က်ေနာ္ ဘာမွ မတတ္ႏိုင္ပါ..။
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
“အေမ့..”
“ဟဲ့ ပလုပ္တုတ္ အမေလး လန္႕လိုက္တာေနာ္ သားေလး ေက်ာင္းကျပန္လာျပီလား…”
“အေမေရာင္းေကာင္းလား …”
“ေကာင္းပါ့ေတာ္ အခု ဘယာေၾကာ္ေလး နည္းနည္းက်န္ေနလို႕ ေစာင့္ေနတာ
တေယာက္စာပဲ က်န္ေတာ့တယ္..သားေလးဗိုက္ဆာရင္ ထမင္းစား ေလ အေမ
ခ်ဥ္ေပါင္ေၾကာ္ထားတယ္..”
“ဟာရွယ္ပဲ အေမ ပုဇြန္နဲ႕ေရာေၾကာ္ထားတာ လား ၀က္သားနဲ႕ ေရာထားတာလား"
အေမက ျပန္မေျဖပါ က်ေနာ့္ကို မ်က္လံုးျပဴးျပီး အံၾကိတ္ျပပါတယ္…”
“ဟုတ္ပါတယ္ဗ်ာ ထမင္းစားဖို႕ အသက္ရွင္တာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး အသက္ရွင္ဖို႕
ထမင္းစားတာပါ ခ်ဥ္ေပါင္ရြက္ ရိုးရိုးနဲ႕စားလဲ မေသႏိုင္ပါဘူးေလ…”
“ဟြန္း ေလသံကေတာ့ သူ႕ အေဖ ေလသံ အတိုင္း ပဲ..”
“ဟဲဟဲ အေမ သားမကူေတာ့ဘူးေနာ္ ထမင္းစားျပီး၇င္ သား စာသြားက်က္ေတာ့မယ္
…အေမလဲ အေဖ့ကိုသတိ ရမေနနဲ႕ဦး..ေနာ္”
“ၾကည့္စမ္း ဒီေကာင္ေလး အေမကို ..”
“ဟားဟ …”
က်ေနာ္အေမ့ ပါးကိုတစ္ခ်က္နမ္းရင္း အိမ္ေပၚ ကိုေျပးတက္လိုက္ပါေတာ့တယ္..။
က်ေနာ္တို႕ ကအေမတစ္ခုသားတစ္ခုပါ.. ကေနာ့္အေဖ ကေတာ့ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ၃ ႏွစ္က
ဌက္ဖ်ားေရာဂါ နဲ႕ ေဆးရံုမွာ အသက္ ဆံုးပါးခဲ့ ရပါတယ္ ။ က်ေနာ္
ကအလယ္တန္းေက်ာင္းသားပဲ ရွိပါေသးတယ္.. သူမ်ားေက်ာင္းသားေတြလို လဲ
က်ဳရွင္မယူႏုိင္ပါဘူး .. အေမ့ရဲ႕
အေၾကာ္ဆိုင္၀င္ေငြ အိမ္လခ ဖိုး စားေသာက္ စရိတ္နဲ႕ က်ေနာ့္ ရဲ႕
ပညာသင္စရိတ္ကို မနည္း က်ားကန္ထားရတာပါ..ဒါေေတာင္ အေမက က်ေနာ့္ကို
ျမိဳ႕နယ္ရွိ အေကာင္းဆံုး ေက်ာင္းမွာ မရမက ေက်ာင္းထားလို႕
ပါတ္၀န္းက်င္ကေတာင္ ေမးေငါ့ၾကရပါတယ္..
ထမင္းၾကမ္းနဲ႕ ခ်ဥ္ေပါင္ေၾကာ္ ကိုအစာေျပစားျပီးတာနဲ႕ ေခါင္းရင္းအိမ္ က
အမၾကီးဆီကို ေျပးရပါမယ္…သူက က်ေနာ့္ကို ေစတနာနဲ႕ စာျပေပးပါတယ္..
သူကုိယ္တိုင္ကလဲ ပထမႏွစ္ တကၠသို္လ္ေက်ာင္းသူပါ.က်ေနာ္နားမလည္တဲ့
စာမ်ားကို ေမးလို႕ရပါတယ္.. သူ႕ေမာင္ေလးကလဲ က်ေနာ္တို႕နဲ႕ အတန္းတူပါတယ္
.ေနာက္တစ္ခု က သူတို႕ အိမ္က မိီးရပါတယ္ မီးမလာတဲ့ ေန႕ဆိုရင္လဲ သူတို႕
ကဘက္ထရီအိုးနဲ႕ ၾကည့္ၾကတာပါ က်ေတာ္တို႕ သားအမိမွာက ေရနံဆီ မီးခြက္ေလး
တစ္ခြက္ပဲ ရွိပါတယ္ အဆင္မေျပ လွပါ.. အေမယပ္ခပ္တာကို ခံျပီး
စာက်က္ခ်င္တဲ့ဆႏၵကေတာ့ ဆႏၵ အျဖစ္ပဲ ရွိေနခဲ့ပါတယ္…က်ေနာ္ စာက်က္ျပီးလို႕
အိမ္ျပန္ ျပီး အေမနဲ႕ ညေနစာစား မနက္ျဖန္အတြက္ အေမ ျပင္ဆင္တာကို ကူ
..အလုပ္ေတြအားလံုး ျပီးရင္ေတာ့ အေမက က်ေနာ့္ကိုရင္ခြင္ထဲ ထားျပီးေတာ့
စကားေတြ ေျပာၾကပါတယ္ အေမက တစ္ခါတစ္ေလ ပံုေျပာျပပါတယ္
သီခ်င္းဆိုျပပါတယ္…က်ေနာ့္ ဘ၀မွာ အဲ့ဒီ အခ်ိန္ ကိုအရမ္း သေဘာက်တာပါ..။
တေနကုန္ဘယ္ေလာက္ ပဲ စိတ္ပင္ပန္းတဲ့ဟာေတြ ၾကံဳ ရပါေစ က်ေနာ္ရဲ႕ အေမ့ရင္ခြင္
ဗိမာန္ ကို မွာ အားလံုးဖြင့္ခ် ျပီးေတာ့ ညေတြတိုင္း ကို က်ေနာ္
ေအးခ်မ္းစြာ အိပ္စက္ခဲ့ရတာပါ..။
“အေမ…”
“ရွင့္…”
“အေမ သခ်ၤာတတ္လား ဟင္…”
“အေမက ၄ တန္းထိပဲ ေက်ာင္းေနဖူးတာ သားရဲ႕..သားေလာက္ေတာ့ ဘယ္တတ္မလဲ..”
“အေမ (၇) ရယ္ (၇) ရယ္ (၆) ရယ္ေပါင္းရင္ ဘယ္ေလာက္ရလဲ …”
“အမယ္ အေမက ေစ်းသည္ပါေနာ္ အဲ့ေလာက္ေတာ့ သိပါတယ္..၂၀ ေပါ့သားရဲ႕…”
“ဟာ အေမက ေတာ္လိုက္တာ သားတို႕ အတန္းပိုင္ဆရာမ က အေမ့ေလာက္ေတာင္ သခ်ၤာ မတတ္ဘူး…”
“ဟိတ္ ကို႕ ဆရာသမား ကိုအဲ့လိုမေျပာရဘူးေလ…”
“အေမသိလား သားဒီတစ္ပါတ္ စာေမးပြဲမွာ အမွတ္အမ်ားဆံုးရတာ သိလား ဒါေပမယ့္
သား အဆင့္က ၄ ပဲ ရတာ ဆရာမ က အမွတ္မွားေပါင္းတာေလ…”
“ေအာ္ သားေလးရယ္ ဘာျဖစ္လဲ အဆင့္ ၄ ရေတာ့ေရာ..သားက စာေမးပြဲမွာ အဆင့္
ေကာင္း ဖို႕ စာသင္တာလား ..စာတတ္ခ်င္လို႕ စာသင္တာလား….”
အေမ့စကားကိုက်ေနာ္ ဥာဏ္မွီသေလာက္ ေတြးလိုက္ပါတယ္..
“ဟုတ္တယ္ေနာ္ အေမ ေက်ာင္းတတ္တယ္ဆိုတာ တကယ္တန္းေတာ့ စာတတ္ဖို႕ပဲ ေနာ္…”
“ဟုတ္တယ္ သားေလးရဲ႕ စာကိုပဲ တတ္ေအာ္သင္ေနာ္..ငါ့သားေလးကို အေမက အဲ့ဒီ
ေက်ာင္းမွာထားတာ စာတတ္ေစခ်င္လို႕ အဆင့္ေကာင္းေစခ်င္လို႕ မဟုတ္ဘူး..”
“ဟုတ္ ..”
ထိုကဲ့သို႕ အေမ သည္ က်ေနာ့္ အား ေက်ာင္းမွ သင္ေပးေသာ ေက်ာင္းစာမ်ားထက္
ပိုေရြ႕ ခက္ခဲျပီး နားလည္ရန္လဲ ခက္ခဲေသာ ဘ၀ သင္ခန္းစား မ်ားအား ညစဥ္္
ညတိုင္း ပို႕ခ် ခဲ့ပါတယ္..။
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၀ါတြင္းကာလဥပုဒ္ ေန႕မို႕ အိမ္တိုင္းမွ အဖိုးအဖြားမ်ားႏွင့္
အိမ္ရွင္မမ်ားဥပုဒ္ သီလယူရန္ ရက္ကြက္ဓမာရံု သို႕ သြားေနၾကပါတယ္..က်ေနာ့္
အေမကေတာ့ ေခၽႊးတစ္လံုးလံုးနဲ႕ အေၾကာ္တဲ့ေလး ထဲမွာ အလုပ္မ်ားေနပါတယ္…
“အေမ ဥပုဒ္ သြား မေစာင့္ဘူးလား…”
“သားေလးရယ္ အေမ တို႕ တေန႕လုပ္မွ တေန႕စားရတာ ..”
“ဟာ အေမကလဲ သားလဲ အေၾကာ္ေၾကာ္တတ္ေနတာ ပဲကို ျပီးေတာ့ ဥပုဒ္ေန႕ဆို
ေက်ာင္းပိတ္ေနၾက ပဲေလ..သား အေမ့ကို ကုသိုလ္ ျပဳျပီးေတာ့
အေၾကာ္ေၾကာ္ေပးမယ္ ေလ ေနာ္အေမ…”
အေမက က်ေနာ့္ကို ေတြေတြေလး ၾကည့္လို႕ ျပံဳးေနပါတယ္..
“သား ရယ္ အေမ့လဲ ဥပုဒ္ယူျပီး တေနကုန္ ေစတီေလးမွာ တရားမွတ္ခ်င္တာ ေပါ့..
ဒါေပမယ့္ အေမ့မွာ မွာ ေယာဂီ ထည္ေလးေတာင္ မွမရွိတာ အေၾကာ္ဆီေတြ ေပေနတဲ့
အင္းက်ီနဲ႕ ဆို အေမ့ကို ႏွာေခါင္းရံႈ႕ ၾကမွာေပါ့ ကေလးရဲ႕…အေမ့ဘာသာ
အိမ္မွာ ဘုရားရွိခိုး တရားထိုင္လဲ အဆင္ေျပပါတယ္ ငါ့သားေလးက
ကုသိုလ္လိုခ်င္တယ္ ဆိုရင္ စာကိုၾကိဳးစား သင့္ေပါ့ ေနာ္…အေမကေလ ဘယ္ေလာက္
ပဲ ပင္ပန္းပင္ပန္း ငါ့သားေလးကို သားသူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြ က စာလာေမးတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ဆို
ေၾသာ္ ငါ့သားေလးက သူတို႕ထက္ စာကို ေကာင္းေကာင္း သင္ယူတာပဲ ဆိုျပီး
ပိတိနဲ႕ အေမာေတြ ေျပသြားေရာ..”
“သားက အိုေအစစ္ ေလးေပါ့ေနာ္ ဟုတ္လား အေမ..”
“ဘာလဲ အိ္ုေအစစ္..”
ဟိုဟာေလ ေရသန္႕ဗူး ကုိေျပာတာ..
“ဒါေပါ့ ငါ့သားေလးက အေမ ကို အေမာေျပေစတာေပါ့..”
ေဟးးးး…ဟားဟား
က်ေနာ္ နွင့္ အေမ့ရဲ႕ ရယ္သံမ်ား အေၾကာ္ တဲေလးထဲမွာ ဆူညံေနခဲ့ပါတယ္..
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“အေဒၚ အဲ့ဒီ ေယာဂီထမီေလးက ဘယ္ေလာက္လဲ ဟင္…”
“အဲ့တာက အစံုလိုက္အပ္မွ ခ်ဳပ္ေပးတာ ေကာင္ေလးရဲ႕ အင္းက်ီေရာ တဘက္ေရာေလ ၃၅၀၀ ..”
“၃၅၀၀ ေတာင္လား .. ဟုတ္ ေနာက္မွ ၀ယ္ေတာ့မယ္ ေနာ္…”
“ေအးပါေအးပါ…”
အထည္ဆိုင္မွ အမၾကီးက က်ေနာ့္ကိုမယံုသလိုႏွင့္ ျပံဳး စစေျပာပါတယ္…က်ေနာ့္
စိတ္ထဲမွာေတာ့ အေမ့ကို ေယာဂီထည္ေလး မရမက ၀ယ္ေပးခ်င္ေနခဲ့ပါတယ္…
စာသင္ခန္းထဲ ေရာက္တာေတာင္ စိတ္ကူးထဲက ေယာဂီ၀တ္စံု ေလးနဲ႕ အေမ့ကို
မ်က္စီထဲက မထြက္ပါ..
“ဒီေန႕ ဆရာမၾကီးက ဆုေတြ လိုက္ေပးမယ္တဲ့ ဟိုမွာ ေက်ာ့္ေကသြယ္တို႕ အိမ္က
ဓါတ္ပံုဆရာေတာင္ ေခၚလာတယ္ ေတြ႕လား…”
ေဘးနားမွ က်ေနာ့္ သူငယ္ခ်င္းတေယာက္ရဲ႕ အသံေၾကာင့္ လက္ရွိအေျခေနကို
ပိုစိတ္ ၀င္စား မိပါတယ္..
“ဘာလို႕ဖို႕လဲဟ ဓါတ္ပံုဆရာ…”
“အာ မင္းကလဲ အဲ့တာ သူ႕သမီးဘယ္ေလာက္ေတာ္လဲ ဆိုတာ ကို ဓါတ္ပံုရိုက္ အိမ္မွာ
အၾကီးခ်ဲ႕ ျပီးခ်ိတ္ထား မွာေပါ့ ဧည့္သည္လာေတာ့ ၾကြားလို႕ရတာေပါ့..ကြ…”
“ေအာ္ အဲ့လိုလား…”
ေက်ာင္းအုပ္ဆရာမၾကီးက ေက်ာ့ေကသြယ္ ကို ေက်ာင္းသံုးဗလာစာအုပ္ ေဘာပင္ ခဲတံ
ႏွင့္ တျခားေက်ာင္းသံုး ပစည္းမ်ားကို ဆုခ် ပါတယ္…။ အခန္းထဲ မွာ
ေက်ာ့ေကသြယ္ တို႕က ပိုက္ဆံရွိအသိုင္းအ၀ိုင္းမို႕ ေက်ာင္းသံုးပစည္းေတြ
ဆိုလွ်င္ အသစ္အဆန္း ေနာက္ဆံုးေပၚေတြ သံုးတတ္လြန္းလို႕ က်ေနာ္တို႕ ေငးၾကရ
စျမဲပါ..။
အေကာင္းဆံုးနဲ႕ အေခ်ာ့ေမြ႕ဆံုး စာအုပ္ေတြကိုသာ သံုးတတ္တဲ့ ေက်ာ့္ေကသြယ္
တေယာက္.. ေက်ာင္းအုပ္ဆရာ မၾကီး ဆုခ်တဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသံုး ဗလာစာအုပ္ မ်ားကို
ဘာလုိအသံုးခ်မလဲ ဆိုတာကို အနားလိပ္ေနျပီျဖစ္ေသာကုန္ခါနီး
က်ေနာ့္သခ်ၤာစာအုပ္
၏ အနားစမ်ားကို ျပန္ျဖန္႕ရင္း ေတြးမိပါေတာ့ သည္..။
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“အေမ..”
“ေျပာ သားေလး…”
“လူေတြ ကေလ ပိုက္ဆံ ရွိမွ အထင္ၾကီးၾကတာလားဟင္ … သားတို႕ အခန္းထဲ
ကေကာင္မေလး တေယာက္ဆို သူ႕မိဘေတြ ပိုက္ဆံ ရွိေတာ့ သူ႕ကုိဆို လူတိုင္းက
အားက် အထင္ၾကီးၾကတယ္ …”
“သား က လူအထင္ၾကီးတာ လိုခ်င္လို႕လား…”
“အဲ့တာ မေကာင္းဘူးလား အေမ ရဲ႕…”
“သားရဲ႕ လူ႕ဘ၀မွာ ေလ လူေတြအထင္ၾကီးတယ္ဆိုတာ က အေပၚယံပဲ သားရဲ႕
ပိုက္ဆံရွိရင္ အထင္ၾကီးတယ္ ဂုဏ္ရွိန္ေတြ ရွိေနရင္ အထင္ၾကီးတယ္…အဲ့တာေတြ
ကတကယ္ေတာ့ ဘာမွ အႏွစ္သာရ မရွိဘူးသားေလးရဲ႕…လူ႕ဘ၀မွာ သူမ်ားက ကို႕ကို
အထင္ၾကီးဖို႕ ထက္ ကို႕ကိုကို အထင္ၾကီးဖို႕က အေရးၾကီးတယ္ကြယ့္…”
“ကို႕ကို ကို အထင္ၾကီးဖို႕ ဟုတ္လား အဲ့တာ ဘယ္လိုမ်ိဳးလဲ…”
“လူတိုင္းက ကို႕ရဲ႕ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ မွားလား မွန္လားဆိုတာကို ကိုယ္ကိုတိုင္
ပဲ သိတာေလ ကို႕ အေၾကာင္းကို ကိုပဲ အသိၾကဆံုးေလ…အဲ့ဒီေတာ့ ကို႕ရဲ႕
လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ဟာ အထင္ၾကီးဖို႕ ေကာင္းလား မေကာင္းဘူးလား ဆိုတာလဲ
ကိုယ္ကိုယ္တုိင္ ထက္ ဘယ္သူမွ မသိႏိုင္ၾကဖူးေလ အဲ့ဒီ ေတာ့ သားေလး ဘာပဲ
လုပ္လုပ္ ကို႕ကိုကို အထင္ၾကီး ႏူိုင္မဲ့ အလုပ္ေတြ ပဲျဖစ္ရမယ္ သူမ်ားေတြ
အထင္ၾကီးတာ အထင္ေသးတာေတြ ၾကည့္မေနနဲ႕ ဟုတ္ျပီလား..”
“ဒါဆို သား သူမ်ားေတြ အထင္ၾကီးေအာင္ မေနေတာ့ ဘူး.. ကို႕ကိုကို
အထင္ၾကီးေအာင္ ပဲေနေတာ့မယ္ …”
“ဒါေပါ့ သားေလးရဲ႕ …”
“ေအာ္ အေမ ဒီေန႕ အေမ အေၾကာ္ေတြ အေစာၾကီးကုန္သြားတာလား…”
“မဟုတ္ဘူး သားေလးရဲ႕ အေမ အေၾကာ္ေတြ ကို လိုက္ေရာင္းလိုက္တာ…”
“ဟာ အေမ ကလဲ ပင္ပန္းမွာေပါ့ ကို႕ဘာသာ ဆိုင္မွာ ထိုင္ေရာင္းပါ လား အေမရဲ႕…”
“အေမလဲ အဲ့လိုပဲ ေရာင္းခ်င္တာေပါ့ သားေလးရယ္ ေန႕လည္က စည္ပင္က လာေျပာတယ္
အေမ့ အေၾကာ္တဲက သူတို႕ နယ္ေျမထဲ ေရာက္ေနလို႕တဲ့…မနက္ျဖန္ က်ရင္ အေၾကာ္တဲ
ဖ်က္ရမွာ …”
“ဟင္ ဒါဆို အေမေန႕တိုင္း အေၾကာ္ဗန္း ရြက္ေနရမွာေပါ့..အေမရယ္…”
“ရပါတယ္ သားရယ္ အေမ အရင္ကလဲ အဲ့လို ေရာင္းဖူးပါတယ္…”
က်ေနာ္ တကယ္ စိတ္မေကာင္းျဖစ္မိပါတယ္ အေမ အေစာၾကီးထ အေၾကာ္ေတြ ေၾကာ္
ျပီးေတာ့ ဗန္းထဲ ထည့္ ျပီး အေၾကာ္ေတြ မကုန္မခ်င္း အသံေတြ နာေအာင္ ေအာ္
ျပီးေရာင္းရမွာ…။
“ အဲ့ဒီ စည္ပင္ နယ္ေျမ ေတြ ကလဲ ေနရာ တကာပဲေနာ္..သူတို႕ ၀ယ္ထားတာ
ၾကေနတာပဲ…သူတို႕နယ္ေျမေတြလို႕သာ ေျပာတာပါ လမ္းထိပ္က ဘီယာ ဆိုင္ ၾကီး
က်ေတာ့ စည္ပင္သာယာ နယ္ေျမဆိုတဲ့ ဆိုင္းဘုတ္ ၾကီး ကို ခြေဆာက္ထားတာ
အဲ့ဒီဆိုင္ကိုက်ေတာ့ မဖ်က္ခိုင္းဘူး … ဟြန္း ေတာ္ေတာ္ တရားတယ္ေနာ္ အေမ..”
“သားေလး ကလဲေလ … ေလာကမွာ က အမွန္တရား ဆိုတာ ေနရာတိုင္းမွာ
ရွိေနပါတယ္သားေလးရဲ႕ မတရားမႈဆိုတာ ရွိသလို တရားမႈ ဆိုတာလဲရွိတာပဲေလ …
သားေလးက ေလာကမွာ ဘယ္ဟာက အမွန္တရား ဆိုတာ သိသြားတဲ့တေန႕ အမွန္တရား ဘက္မွာ
ရပ္တည္ရဲတဲ့ တေန႕ အေမ့သားေလး လူပီသတဲ့ ေန႕ပဲ..အမွန္တရားကို မသိခ်င္ေဆာင္
ေဆာင္ေနသေရြ႕ေတာ့ ငါ့သားေလး လူနံဳ ေလး တေယာက္ ျဖစ္ေနမွာပဲ..”
“ဟာ အေမကလဲ သား လူနံဳလူအေလး ေတာ့ အျဖစ္ မခံႏိုင္ပါဘူး အမွန္တရားကို
သိေအာင္လုပ္မွာ..”
“ဒါေပါ့ သားေလးရဲ႕ သားေလး အမွန္တရားကိုသိေအာင္လို႕ အေမက ကူညီေပးမွာေပါ့…”
“ဟုတ္ ..”
က်ေနာ္ အေမ့ ရင္ခြင္ ထဲကို တိုး၀င္ရင္း စိတ္ေက်နပ္စြာ
ေမွးစက္လိုက္ပါေတာ့တယ္ .. …………………………………………………………………………………………………..
“ပညာေရးမႈး လာ မယ္တဲ့…”
“ဟုတ္လား…”
က်ေနာ္ အံ့ၾသစြာ ေမးမိပါတယ္… က်ေနာ္တို႕ အလယ္တန္း ေက်ာင္းသား ဘ၀ ေရာက္တဲ့
အထိ ပညာေရးမႈးဆိုတာကို မေတြ႕ ဖူး စကား မေျပာဖူးပါ..
ပညာေရးမႈးေတြ ဟာ ေက်ာင္းအုပ္ၾကီးလိုက္ျပတဲ့ အခန္းေတြကိုပဲ လိုက္ၾကည့္ျပီး
ျပန္သြားၾကတာလား မသိပါ..
“ေက်ာ့္ေကသြယ္ က ပညာေရးမႈးကို အဂၤလိပ္ႏႈတ္ဆက္ ရမွာ ေလ ငါ့တို႕ အခန္းကို
လာစစ္ခဲ့ရင္ေပါ့..လာမယ္လဲ မထင္ပါဘူး …”
က်ေနာ့္ သူငယ္ခ်င္းက ေ၀ဖန္လိုက္ပါတယ္..။
“ဟေရာင္ ဇင္ေယာ္ မင္း အင္းက်ီက ေက်ာင္းစိမ္း ေရာ ဟုတ္ရဲ႕လား
ေက်ာင္းဘက္ေတာင္ မပါဘူး ..ဒီေန႕ ပညာေရးမႈ လာပါမယ္ဆိုမွ …”
“ ေအးကြာ ငါ့အင္းက်ီ ကေလ်ာ္ထားလို႕ မႏွစ္က အင္းက်ီ ကိုျပန္၀တ္လာတာ
ေက်ာင္း တံဆိပ္ က ဘယ္ကတည္း က ျပဳတ္ေနမွန္းေတာင္ မသိေတာ့ဘူး…ေနပါဦးဟ
ငါမသိလို႕ေက်ာ့ေကသြယ္ က အဂၤလိပ္ ေကာင္းေကာင္းေျပာတတ္လို႕လားဟ…”
“မေန႕က ဆရာမ ႏႈတ္တိုက္ သင္ေပးထားတယ္ေလ … ဟိုမွာေတြ႕လား ဗီဒီယို ကင္မရာ
သူစကားေျပာေနတာကို ရိုက္ဖို႕တဲ့ …”
က်ေနာ္ ျပံဳး လိုက္မိပါတယ္ အေမေျပာတဲ့ လူေတြ အထင္ၾကီးေအာင္ထက္ ကို႕ကိုကို
အထင္ၾကီးေအာင္ ေနဆိုတဲ့ စကား ကိုလဲ ျပန္အမွတ္ရမိျပန္ပါတယ္…။
ပညာေရးမႈးက တကယ္ပဲ အခန္းကို ေရာက္လာပါတယ္…ပညာေရးမႈး ကိုေၾကာက္လို႕
ေက်ာင္းသားေတြလဲ အသံတိတ္ေနတာမွ အပ္က်သံ ေတာင္ ၾကားရေလာက္ပါတယ္…
ေက်ာ့ေကသြယ္ ကေတာ့ အဂၤလိပ္ ႏႈတ္တိုက္ သင္ထားေသာ ႏႈတ္ဆက္ပံု
ႏႈတ္ဆက္နည္းေတြ နဲ႕ ရႊန္းရႊန္းေ၀ေအာင္ ေျပာေနပါေတာ့သည္..
ပညာေရးမႈးဆိုတဲ့ ဆရာၾကီးကလဲ ျပံဳးလ်က္နားေထာင္ေနပါတယ္…
“သမီးက ဒီအခန္းထဲမွာ စံျပ ေက်ာင္းသူထင္တယ္..”
“ဟုတ္ပါတယ္ ရွင့္ …”
အတန္းပိုင္ဆရာမက ၀င္ေျပာတာပါ…
ပညာေရးမႈး ကေခါင္းညွိတ္လ်က္..
“အင္း ဒါဆို အဘကို သမီးတို႕ အတန္းမွာ သင္ခဲ့ရတဲ့ The Last Leave ဆုိတဲ့
အဂၤလိပ္ ဇာတ္လမ္းေလး အေၾကာင္းကို သမီးခုနက အဘကို ႏႈတ္ဆက္ သြားသလို ပဲ
အဂၤလိပ္လိုု သမီးမွတ္မိသေလာက္ ရွင္းျပ ပါလား…”
သြားျပီ ေက်ာ့ေကသြယ္ တေယာက္ မိႈင္သြားပါသည္..ေတာ္ေတာ္လဲ ေၾကာက္ေနပံု
ရပါတယ္ အတန္းပိုင္ ဆရာမကို အားကိုးသလိုၾကည့္ ေနပါသည္..။ဆရာမလဲ မ်က္ႏွာ
အလြန္႕အလြန္ ကိုငယ္ေနပါသည္..။ပညာေရးမႈ က အေျခေန ကိုခ်က္ခ်င္း
သေဘာေပါက္သြားပံုပါ..
“ကဲ ဒါဆို သားတို႕ သမီးတို႕ ထဲ က ဘယ္သူ အဘ ကိုေျပာႏိုင္မလဲ …”
ရုတ္တရက္ က်ေနာ္ လက္ေထာင္မလို႕ ဟန္ျပင္လိုက္ျပီးေတာ့မွ က်ေနာ့္ရဲ႕
ေက်ာင္း၀တ္စံုကို သတိျပဳမိျပီး ဒီတိုင္းေလးပဲ ေနလိုက္ပါေတာ့တယ္…
“ဘယ္သူမွ မရွိၾကဘူးလား .. ကဲကဲ ကေလး ေတြ အဘ ကိုမေၾကာက္နဲ႕ ေနာ္
ေျပာတတ္ရင္ ထြက္ေျပာၾက…ကေလးေတြ ထဲ က အဲ့ဒီ အေၾကာင္းကို အဂၤလိပ္
လိုေျပာႏိုင္တဲ့ သူကို အဘ က ဆုခ်မယ္ဗ်ာ…”
“ကဲကဲ ဘယ္သူေျပာမလဲ ဆုေတာ္ေငြ ၃၀၀၀ ေပးမယ္ကြာ ၃၀၀၀ ..ခ်က္ခ်င္းဆုခ်မွာ …”
ဟင္ ၃၀၀၀ ဆိုပါလား.. က်ေနာ္ အားတတ္သြားပါသည္.. ဟာ အေမ့ အတြက္က်ေနာ္
၀ယ္ေပးခ်င္တဲ့ေယာဂီ ၀တ္စံုေလးက ၃၅၀၀ ဆိုေတာ့ သိပ္ေတာင္
မလိုေတာ့ပါလား…က်ေနာ္ ဘာမွ မစဥ္းစား ေတာ့ပဲ …လက္ေထာင္ လိုက္ပါတယ္..
“ေဟာ ဟုတ္ျပီ တေယာက္ေတာ့ လက္ေထာင္ျပီ လာလာ အေရွ႕ကိုလာပါ…”
“မဂၤလာပါ…”
က်ေနာ္ ျမန္မာလိုပဲ ႏႈတ္ဆက္လိုက္ပါတယ္..
“ေအေအ မဂၤလာပါ…”
ပညာေရးမႈး က ျပံဳးရြင္စြာ ေျပာပါသည္..။
“ကဲ သား အဘကို ေျပာျပပါ..”
“အဘ က်ေနာ္ ေျပာႏိုင္ရင္ က်ေနာ့္ ကို ၃၅၀၀ ေပးပါ..”
“ေဟ…”
“ဟင္….”
ပညာေရးမႈး ေရာ ေက်ာင္း အုပ္ၾကီး နဲ႕ ဆရာမ မ်ားပါ အသံမ်ိဳးစံု ထြက္ လာၾကပါတယ္.
ပညာေရးမႈးက ေအးခ်မ္းစြာ ျပန္ေျပာပါတယ္..
“ေကာင္းပါျပီ ကြာ သားေျပာႏိုင္ရင္ သားကို အဘက ၅၀၀၀ ေပးမယ္..”
“ဟင့္ အင္း အဘ က်ေနာ္ ၃၅၀၀ ပဲ လိုခ်င္ပါတယ္…”
ပညာေရး မႈးလဲ ဆုေၾကးေငြ ကိုေစ်းဆစ္ေနေသာ က်ေနာ့္ကို အထူးအဆန္း တေယာက္လို
ၾကည့္ေနပါတယ္..
“ေအးပါကြာ..သား သေဘာပါ..”
“ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်…”
ပညာေရးမႈးအား ရိုေသစြာဦးညြတ္လို္က္ျပီး က်ေနာ္ စေျပာ လိုက္ပါတယ္
“Su and John were artists. They live with Mr.Barman in NewYork city…”
က်ေနာ္ ေျပာသမွ် ကို အဘ နားေထာင္ရံု သက္သက္မဟုတ္ပဲ
တစ္ပိုဒ္ေျပာျပီးတိုင္း အဂၤလိပ္လို ေမးခြန္း ျပန္ထုတ္ပါတယ္..က်ေနာ္
ကျပန္ေျဖရပါတယ္..အဘ ေမးေတာ့ မရွင္းလွ်င္ က်ေနာ္ ကျပန္ေမးပါရန္ ေမတၱာ
ရပ္ခံ ပါတယ္..က်ေနာ္နဲ႕ အဘ ရဲ႕ စကား ေျပာေနတာကို အားလံုးျငိမ္ ျပီး
နားေထာင္ေနပါတယ္..အဘ က ေမးခြန္း လွည့္ေမးရင္လဲ က်ေနာ္က မရမက အေျဖရေအာင္
ေျဖပါတယ္..ေနာက္ဆံုးေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ ေအာင္ျမင္သြားတယ္..။ က်ေနာ္လဲ ေတာ္ေတာ္
ေမာသြားပါတယ္
အဘ ကက်ေနာ့္ကို ခ်ီးက်ဳးစကား မေျပာပါ..အိပ္ကပ္ထဲမွ ၅၀၀ တန္ အထပ္လိုက္
ကိုထုတ္ျပီးေတာ့ ၃၅၀၀ ရီျပီးေတာ့ က်ေနာ့္ကို ထုတ္ေပးပါတယ္ က်ေနာ္လဲ
လက္ႏွစ္ဖက္ျဖင့္ ရိုရိုေသေသ ယူလိုက္ပါတယ္…ျပီးေတာ့ ကို႕ေနရာကို ျပန္ရန္
လွည့္အထြက္..
“သား ေနပါဦး..အဘ မသိလို႕ သားက အဲ့ဒီပိုက္ဆံ ၃၅၀၀ ကို ဘာလုပ္ဖို႕လဲ သားရဲ႕..”
“က်ေနာ့္ အေမ အတြက္ ေယာဂီ ထည္ ၀ယ္ေပးခ်င္လို႕ပါ…၃၅၀၀ ကုန္မွာ မို႕လို ပါ…”
က်ေနာ္ ေျပာတာကို ပညာေရးမႈး က အဓိပါယ္ ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ပါေသာ မ်က္လံုးျဖင့္
ၾကည့္ေနပါတယ္…က်ေနာ္ေတာ့ အဓိပါယ္ မေဖာ္တတ္ ပါ… ညက်မွ အေမ့ကို အဲ့ဒီ
အျဖစ္ပ်က္ေလးကို ေျပာျပေဆြးေႏြးရပါမယ္…။
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
“ အေဒၚ ၾကီး.. က်ေနာ္ေယာဂီထည္၀ယ္ မလို႕…”
“ အန္ လူက ဘယ္မွာလဲ လူေခၚလာမွ တိုင္းလို႕ ရမွာေပါ့ ေကာင္ေလးရဲ႕…”
“ ပံုစံက ဟိုအေဒၚ ၾကီးေလာက္ပဲ..ခ်ဳပ္ေပးထားပါ ပိုက္ဆံ ေပးထားခဲ့မယ္…”
ေဘးနားမွာ စက္ခ်ဳပ္ေနေသာ အေမ့အရြယ္ ကိုယ္လံုးကိုေပါက္နဲ႕ အေဒၚၾကီး
တေယာက္ကို လက္ညိႈးထိုးျပရင္ ေျပာလိုက္ပါတယ္…
အဲ့လို မလုပ္ေရႊ႕ မျဖစ္ …အေမ့ ကိုအသိေပးပါက အေမက လက္ခံမည္မဟုတ္.က်ေနာ့္
ေက်ာင္းစရိတ္ ထဲ ပါသြားလိမ့္ မယ္..။ အေမ့ကို လုပ္ေပးခ်င္တာ လုပ္ေပးခြင့္
ရခဲ့ လို႕ က်ေနာ္ေပ်ာ္ေန ပါ သည္…။
“ ဟင္…”
က်ေနာ့္ အိမ္ေရွ႕ မွာ လူေတြ မ်ားလွခ်ီလား…ဘာ ျဖစ္လို႕ပါလိမ့္…က်ေနာ္ ဇေ၀
ဇ၀ါ ျဖင့္ ျခံထဲ သို႕ ၀င္လိုက္ပါသည္…
ဟင္ ေက်ာ့ေကသြယ္တို႕ သားအမိပါလား..ဘာလာလုပ္တာပါလိမ့္…က်ေနာ္သူတို႕
သားအမိကို ႏႈတ္ဆက္ လိုက္ပါတယ္..
“ အေဒၚ ေနေကာင္းတယ္ေနာ္.. က်ေနာ္တို႕ အိမ္ ကို ဘာ အေၾကာင္းရွိလို႕ လာတာလဲ မသိဘူး…”
က်ေနာ္ ေမးေနတာကို သူ မေျဖပါ..အဲ့ဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ ပဲ ေဘးနားသို႕ က်ေနာ့္ကို
အျမဲ စာျပေပး တဲ့ အမၾကီးေရာက္လာပါတယ္..က်ေနာ့္ ပုခံုးကုိ ကိုင္ျပီးေတာ့
ေလသံတိုးတိုးေလးျဖင့္ ေျပာျပပါတယ္..
“ ေမာင္ေလး မမ ေျပာျပမယ္နားေထာင္ေနာ္..စိတ္ ေအးေအး ထား..ဒီေန႕ ေမာင္ေလး
အေမ က ေစ်းေရာင္းသြားတယ္ အဲ့တာ ကားလမ္းျဖတ္ကူးေတာ့ ဒီက အေဒၚၾကီး
ေမာင္းလားတဲ့ကားနဲ႕ တိုက္မိတာ ကားကလဲ ဘရိတ္ေပါက္ေနေတာ့ အရွိန္မထိန္း…”
က်ေနာ္ ထို အမၾကီး ေျပာေနတဲ့ အသံကို မၾကားႏိုင္ေတာ့ ပါ
သူ႕ကိုတြန္းဖယ္လွ်က္ အိမ္ေပၚ ကိုအတတ္ ႏိုင္ဆံုးစိတ္ကိုထိမ္းေရြ႕
တက္လိုက္ပါတယ္…
က်ေနာ့္ နဲ႕ အေမ ညဖက္တိုင္း လဲေလ်ာင္းျပီး စကား ေျပာေနက် က်ေနာ့္ကို အေမ
ဘ၀ အေၾကာင္းေတြ သင္ေပးေနၾက ေနရာမွာ အေမ တေယာက္တည္း မလႈပ္မလ်က္
လဲေလ်ာင္းေနပါတယ္…
“ အေမ…”
က်ေနာ္ ေခၚေနၾက ပံုစံ အတိုင္းပဲ ရိုးရိုးေလး ေခၚလိုက္ပါတယ္..အေမ ျပန္မထူး
ပါ အေမ့ မ်က္ႏွာ ကိုသာ က်ေနာ္ ေတြေတြ ေလး ေငးေနမိပါတယ္…
အေမ ရယ္…. သား ကို အမွန္တရား ေတြ႕ဖို႕ အတြက္ ကူညီမယ္ဆို…
အေမ ရယ္…. သား ကို ရင္ခြင္ထဲ မွာ ေမွးသိပ္ျပီးေတာ့ လူေလာက ရဲ႕ သေဘာတရား
အသစ္ေတြ ကို သင္ေပးပါဦး အေမရယ္..
သား ေတြ႕ၾကံဳ ေနရတဲ့ ဘ၀ အခက္ခဲေတြ နဲ႕ သားနားမလည္တဲ့ လူ႕ေလာက ပုစာၦေတြ
ကို ကူညီ ေျဖရွင္းေပးပါဦး အေမ ရယ္…
က်ေနာ္ ၀ယ္ေပးတဲ့ ေယာဂီ ေလး ၀တ္ျပီး ၀တ္ျပဳသြားတာ ကို သား ျမင္ခ်င္ ေသးတယ္ အေမရဲ႕..
(((((အေမ့…)))))
က်ေနာ္ စိတ္တြင္းမွ ခ်ံဳး ပြဲခ် ငိုလိုက္မိပါတယ္ မ်က္ရည္ေတာ့
က်မလာပါ..တမလြန္ ဘ၀ကေန အေမ ေတြ႕ရင္ စိတ္မေကာင္း ျဖစ္ျပီး က်ေနာ့္ကို
စိတ္မခ် ျဖစ္ေနမွာ စိုးလို႕ပါ..
“ကိုဇင္ သားအေမက ဆံုးသြားခဲ့ျပီ…”
ေဘးနား ကရက္ကြပ္ ၁၀ အိ္မ္မႈး က က်ေနာ့္ကို သတိေပးသလို ေျပာပါတယ္..
က်ေနာ့္ အေမ မဆံုးပါ က်ေနာ့္ ရင္ထဲမွာ က်ေနာ့္ အေမက အသင္ရွင္မွာပါ က်ေနာ္
အသက္ဆံုး သြားတဲ့အခ်ိန္က်မွ အေမက တကယ္ဆံုးပါးသြားမွာပါ..
က်ေနာ္ အေမ့ မ်က္ ႏွာ ကို ေသခ်ာ စိုက္ၾကည့္ေနရင္းနဲ႕ ထိန္းထားတဲ့ ၾကားမွ
မ်က္ရည္တစ္စက္ က်လာပါတယ္…မ်က္စိထဲ မွာလဲ မိခင္ၾကီး မရွိေတာ့ လို႕
ဦးတည္ရာ မဲ့ ကူးခတ္သြားလာေနေသာ မိဘမဲ့ ငါးခူ အေကာင္ ေပါက္ေလးမ်ား ကို
ျပန္လည္ ျမင္ေယာင္ လာမိပါေတာ့တယ္……………
Got from forward mail and don't know who is the writer . so, would like to apologize to owner of this piece for using here . thanks you .
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Values and Vision
Wealth without work
Knowledge without character
Science without humanity
Politics without principle
Pleasure without conscience
Business without morality
Religion without sacrifice
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What money won’t buy: the most precious things in life. People with character, integrity and right values are not for sale.
Money will buy:<
Vision
Where the vision is one year, cultivate flowers.
Where the vision is ten years, cultivate trees.
Where the vision is eternity, cultivate people.
Winnners don’t do different things
They do things differently.”
Winning is an event. Being a winner is a spirit.
Winners are gracious.
Winners leave a legacy.
In relationships: working on yourself works. Trying to change other people does not.
In fixing your life: working on yourself works. Trying to change the world does not.
We work on ourselves. We discover that there is such a thing as doing your best in the present and letting life unfold--- that often life will present us with greater rewards than we could ever have imagined. We discover that there is a balance to be achieved between hard work and good timing. We see that there are alternatives to desperation and frustration. As we achieve greater balance and peace of mind, our belief in struggle is replaced by a sense of challenge.
Meaning is the present. Being “ there” is no better than being “ here”. If you want to find meaning , you pay attention to the moment--- and it is in the moment you find the rewards.
TEN IDEAS FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT
1. We are here to learn lessons, and the world is our teacher.
2. The universe has no favorites.
3. Your life is a perfect reflection of your beliefs.
4. The moment you get too attached to things, people, money…. You screw it up.
5. What you focus in life expands.
6. Follow your heart!
7. God is never coming to say to you, “ Now you have permission to be successful”.
8. When you fight life, life always wins.
9. How do you love people? Just accept them.
10. Our mission in the world is not to change the world but to change ourselves.
OTHER IDEAS
Growth is breaking new grounds
The only way to beat fear is to face it
Every person who walks into your life is a teacher
Life is like a ladder. People handle their steps in different ways
(selected from ABAC Ethics Text Book)
VALUES
WHAT ARE VALUES?
What makes you to visit a sick friend in the hospital rather than stay at home alone watching television? Is it friendship? Care for others? Your fear of what your friend will think of you, if you don’t visit him or her. You sense of duty? Or, something else?
What makes you give away of your money to a poor man, the money you had set aside to go for a movie? Is it charity? Your concern for others? To get a good name? To please somebody? Or something else?
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What makes you work very hard at your studies and aim at high ranks? Is it to please your parents? To become popular among your peers? To gain respect and recognition? Is it to get a good job and makes lots of money and live comfortable life? Or something?
What makes you do these things? The answer to what makes you do something, especially when you ar free to do other things, often reveals your values.
We may label values using words like love, service, obedience, duty, friendship, freedom, punctuality, patriotism and so on.
Your values will reflect your personal attitudes and judgments, your decision, and choices, your behavior and relationships. They influence your thoughts, feelings and actions. Values are central to your personality and will affect you almost in every aspect of your lift. For example, if you value honesty, you will tend to be honest always. You probably will not tell lies to get off the hook, you will not cheat in an examination, you will not shop-life, and you will return to the owner, if you found a purse full of money I the campus.
If you value knowledge, you will study hard, read a lot, watch informative television programmes, visit museums, go to listen to talks by learned men and women and so on.
People, particularly young people, are not clearly aware of their values, and how their values affect all aspects of their life. The problem becomes all the more acute today because of the prevailing value confusion among young people caused by a variety of factors like: the breakdown of traditional values without proper replacements, lack of adequate role models or influential role models counter-witnessing to acceptable values, conflicting ideologies and double standards practiced by adults in positions of power and influence.
Values are central in our lives. Hence, it is important that we take time to reflect to them, to identify and clarify them, to question, evaluate, confirm or change them, to live happy, productive and worthwhile lives.
CHAINING YOUR VALUES 
Our values and priorities may change from time to time, as life situations change. But, how does change of values come about? We can think of two steps through which values changes take place breakdown of old values and buildup of new values.
In the past few decades, social scientists and psychologists have learnt much about value breakdown and how that can be affected. Brainwashing techniques were successfully utilized in destroying personal values in the concentration camps and on political prisoners in totalitarian regimes. It has also been established that people already possess. However, it has been found that neither brainwashing techniques nor advertising can be effectively used building up new values.
It is clear that so far no one has yet deviced a technique to create new values in you. You have to do it yourself. For example, if patriotism is your most important value, someone may be able to breakdown this value so that it may not be any more your primary value. But nobody can force on you security as your primary value in its stead. That decision depends entirely on you.
Values changes take place usually very slowly, through various life experiences, through the influence of people you live and associate with, the books you read, the things you see and so on. Your close friends have a significant influence on your values and value system; Often friends have common interests and similar values.
(selected article from ABAC's Ethics Text Book)
Deep Relaxation
Doctors have found that during even a few minutes of deep relaxation there is a rapid fall in blood pressure and heart rate; muscular tension drops even below the level of relaxation during sleep, and the overtaxed nerve centers are revitalized. The whole body is reinvigorated in the shortest possible time, and many ailments, especially those due to nervous tension, may be relieved completely.
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As increasing numbers of people everywhere fall ill and die due to stress-related diseases ( heart disease, stroke, stomach ulcer, gastro-intestinal disorders, arthritis, cancer, etc.) it is obvious that the ability to release tension and relax at will, if developed from early childhood, is a valuable asset throughout life. This kind of preventive health care through education in self-mastery is sadly neglected in most societies. Thus many doctors agree, “If relaxation training were taught in all schools, the world could heal itself.”
In one experiment, high blood pressure patients who regularly performed deep relaxation posture were cured not only of their high blood pressure but also of their headaches, nervousness, irritability , and insomnia. Meditation has also been shown in many experiments to have the healthful, tranquilizing effects as deep relaxation.
The first layer of the mind after the physical body is the conscious mind, which deals with the external world through the sense and motor organs. Anyone who has ever been around a small child has surely marveled at the powerful instinct which propels the child into constant interaction and play with the world around—smelling shoes, tasting rocks and mud, feeling flowers and trees, crawling and shouting, opening and closing, pulling and throwing. For the small child, newly incarnated into a physical body, is continuously and enjoy exploring the physical world through the sense and motor organs; and in the process its conscious layer of mind is rapidly developing. Maria Montessori, whose method of instruction emphasizes proper sensory-motor development, once noted the intense concentration that small children can maintain when their senses and motor organs are engaged in satisfying activity.
The conscious mind is also a layer of instinct: for when stimuli are received through the sense organs, the conscious mind is motivated by its instinctive impulses of desire or aversion to these stimuli, and then it acts to materialize that desire or aversion with the motor organs. This instinctive layer is dominant in animals, and even in human life. Most of our daily actions are propelled by desires of the conscious mind. Dragged about ceaselessly by the wild horses of the senses, the “chariot” of the mind lurches from place to place in search of pleasure.
Thus on this conscious level of instinctual desire and aversion, human beings are most similar to animals, motivated by the four basic instincts which dominate all lower creatures : food, sleep, fear and sex--- the instincts of self preservation and reproduction. One of the functions of education must be to teach the proper control of the conscious mind with its restless, instinctive desires, and for this the sense and motor organs must be properly developed.
( Copy from ABAC's Ethics Text Book)
SELF-HEALING
Today more and more doctors all over the world are becoming aware of the fact that many, if not most, of our diseases are actually psychosomatic, that illness is inseparably linked to the mind. Many recent studies have shown that negative emotions can cause the breakdown of the body’s internal defenses against disease by lowering the immune response to dangerous viruses and bacteria; and that people who are extremely moody and high emotional have a much greater chance of developing serious illness such as cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease and dying young. The chronic tendency to bottle up anger has been correlated to cancer of the breast, and anxiety has been shown to play an important role in allowing viruses to produce canker sores.
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But, if due to the subtle interdependence of mind and body, mental attitudes play a significant part in our getting sick, they can also play a significant part in our getting well. Human beings have an astonishing capacity to enhance the efficiency of their immune systems, and thus their level of health, by positive ideation. Positive mental attitudes and self-relaxation can reduce pain and relieve many illness including high blood pressure, chronic headaches, and even paralysis and asthma !.
Thus instead of continually surrendering our bodies and minds to medical professionals who attempt to control all physical problems from outside, by administering powerful and often dangerous drugs, we must learn to contact, as Albert Schweitzer said, “ the doctor within”, we must learn to use our own built-in capacity for self-healing, for the self-regulation of our internal states. As more and more people all over the world are becoming helplessly dependent on their physicians, addicted to painkillers, or are suffering the serious side-effects of allopathic drugs, it is becoming clear that every individual must take more personal responsibility for his or her health and this responsibility must be inculcated from childhood itself.
Learning The Techniques of Self-Healing
William Braud outlined five major mental techniques that he believed have important effects on the self-healing processes:
1. The need for relaxation and quietude.
2. Learning to focus your attention on one thing (e.g. breathing), which allows you to develop mental self-control and avoid distractions.(The above two points are achieved through meditation).
3. Learning creative visualization or imagery techniques since pictures are the preferred language of the mind.
4. Incorporating intent into the process, a wish for some goal to be reached and an expectation that it will.
5. The evocations of strong positive emotions during the healing process.
The Technique for Self-Healing
The following is the basic mental technique:
1. Go to your alpha level of mind.
Get the Alpha audio below. This free audio will guide your mind to the relaxed alpha level, which is suitable for mental healing.
2. Visualize Your Current State of Health on Your Mental Screen.
Visualize the current condition of the body, including the ailment or pain that is bothering you. You do not need to memorize or know what each component of your body actually looks like. Simple pictures are enough to speak to your mind. A lung can be imagined as a balloon. A kidney can resemble a kidney bean. Create a representative picture of the ailment. Feel the emotions associated with this problem.
3. See Yourself Healing and Getting Better and Healthier.
Now visualize the ailment disappearing. Create, with your imagination, a system to remove the ailment.
Examples:
* Kidney stones can be crushed into harmless powder that is then excreted.
* Tumors can be visualized as large black blobs, while your immune system and white blood cells are visualized as tiny soldiers attacking the tumor. On each attack the tumor shrinks.
* A sore muscle can be bathed in an imaginary healing light that alleviates the pain and restores the muscle to a healthy state.
The exact image you use is irrelevant – create something that speaks to you. It does not have to be scientifically correct. It only has to be symbolic. Your subconscious mind will get the message.
4. Let the final picture be one of perfect health.
Feel the joy and energy of having perfect health. Imagine it to be true and already occurring. It helps to say an affirmation such as: "I have a perfectly healthy body and mind"or "My ______ is now functioning perfectly and is in a state of excellent health."
5. Let Go.
Let go and trust your body’s self-healing ability. You can now come out of the alpha level. Trust that the healing action is taking place.
Note that mental healing should not be used as a replacement for a visit to your doctor. Always consult a doctor first for serious health conditions. Mental healing is a type of complementary medicine – as the name suggests it is to be used alongside but not as a replacement for modern medicine.
No matter what type of healing you use – conventional medicine, surgery, or more holistic therapies such as acupuncture, yoga, or massage – the Silva Life system can speed and smooth the normal healing process amazingly.
"What If I’m already Healthy?"
If you have no health problems and are perfectly healthy at the moment, you can still meditate and visualize yourself staying in perfect health. This way you may never have to worry about having to heal yourself.
(Selected from ABAC's Ethics Text Book.)
A simple Hug
There's something in a simple hug
That always warms the heart;
It welcomes us back home
Makes it easier to part.
A hug's the way to share the joy
And sad times we go through,
Or just a way for friends to say
They like you 'cause you are you.
Hugs are meant for anyone
For whom we really care,
From grandma to your neighbor,
Or a cuddly teddy bear.
A hug is amazing thing-
It's just the perfect way
To show the love we are feeling
But can't find the words to say.
It's funny how a little hug
Makes everyone feels good;
In every place and language,
It's always understood.
No special equipment needed,
No batteries or parts----
Just open up your hearts.
(Anonymous)
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Learn to Accept and Express Feelings
The following 10 poems are taking from my “Ethics Text Book”, (Chapter 10). Hope, you can learn how to express your feeling sometime ...enjoy them
1. I FEEL LONELY
I feel lonely
So terribly lonely
I want to run away
From this aching void
I long to reach out and touch someone
And to be touched
My heart is thirsty
I feel like a barren wasteland
Giving nothing, getting nothing
Meaning nothing to anyone
My days are utterly lonely
I dread facing the night lonely
I try to forget my troubles
In work, in pleasure, in music
Try to get attention
Put on a brave smile
But nothing works
The empty hours drag on
Followed by more empty hours …
Is this the way you feel when you feel lonely???
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2. I AM ANGRY
I feel so upset, so angry
Almost out of control
I didn’t know I could be so angry
I am consumed by rage
I sweat, I shake, my voice trembles
I wish I could give vent to my anger
Scream to my heart’s content
I am upset, annoyed, and angry
More angry than I can put into words
I want to knock someone down… beat him black and blue
I feel like murdering someone…
Have you experienced feelings like these?
How do you deal with these feelings?
How do you deny them?
How do you repress them?
How do you accept them and control them?
3. ANXEITY:
I am anxious, troubled, and restless
My heart is heavy
My body tense, my hands cold and sweaty
My speech is rushed
Trying to say a hundred things at once
I want to rush here and there
Reach out to all the answers I need
Look for peace
My in most being carves for
In my anxious search
I fret and fume
And run around in circles…
I feel helpless, hopeless, lost….
4.SLEEPLESS NIGHT 
I cannot sleep tonight
I toss about in bed
The night seems endless
The minutes feel like hours
And the hours drag on, heavy with fatigue
I am exhausted
I feel restless
I would give anything for sleep
Did you ever experience a sleepless night?
5. MY BODY 
I think of the pleasures
I have experienced
Through my body…
The taste of food
The beauty of nature
The feel of things
The closeness of others:
Gentle care and reassuring warmth:
And intimate tenderness
Without the need of words
The hungers
The fatigue after work
The pain of injury
And illness
The ache of parting
Do I look nice?
Attractive?
Am I too tall,
Too short?
Too fast?
Too lean?
Too dark?
Too fair?
Am I losing my charm as I age?
How will I face pain?
How will I die?
6. I AM IN LOVE
I find myself in love
I feel so alive
I feel strong
I feel tender
I understand the beauty of tears
The pain of separation
And I ache and long for you
I feel you in my heart
I feel your presence intensely
I feel treasured and cared for
I feel a new aliveness
A new respect and reverence for myself
I am in love with life
Close to all that lives
And closer than ever to you
I feel like singing
I feel like shouting
I feel healed of a thousand hurts
Thank you for the beauty
We have discovered in each other
The sparkle in the eye
The little gestures of tenderness
The warm glow on the face
The radiance that come from within
7. MY SEXUALITY
My whole being reminds me-
Gently or not so gently –
That I am sexual
Deeply and beautifully sexual
I have suffered guilt and shame
Embarrassment and fear
Imagining that I was strange
When I was just being human
I am born
Through the tender passion
Of a man and a woman
My sexual nature
Makes me intimately related…
Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters
Adoring grand parents
Huggable babies…
The beauty of our lives
Flows from our sexual nature
It pulls us out of ourselves
And makes us present to one another
Intensely, tenderly, passionately
Let’s open our eyes
To the beauty of sexuality
The mystery of human love
The power and fragility of all that is human
8. I AM NERVOUS
I feel so nervous
I feel it here in the pit of my stomach
In my head, in my skin
In this disconcerting tightness
My overworked fantasy
Paints pictures of failure
Scenarios of shame
Everyone laughs at me
They make me nervous
I feel I can’t face it
I am afraid of failure
I dread making mistakes
I imagine
Others will laugh at me
That I can’t face
How easily I forget
That I am only human
I sense dimly, in my better moments
That it is I who frighten myself
I let my imagination
Paint pictures of doom,
And before I realize it,
I take these to be facts.
9. UNJUST TREATEMENT 
I did not expect that people I trusted
Would turn against me
This is a bitter pill to swallow
A very bitter pill indeed
May this pain teach me thoughtfulness
and make me wise, not bitter
May my wounds never blind me
to the needs of the truly wounded …
or to the beauty of nature
or the goodness of people –
to my own capacity to harvest joy
from this field of pain…
10. LEARN TO FORGIVE
There are angry days
When I feel revengeful
When I would gladly lash out
And hurt those who hurt me
There is more anger in me
Than others normally see
I am shocked at the rage
I am capable of
I fume at others
And then hate myself for hating those I love
I have been angry at those I hold dear
And nurtured hurts caused by loved ones
But if I can forgive
I can rise above my anger
I can be stronger than evil
Let me learn to forgive
It is in pardoned
It is in forgiving
We find our human nature
A forgiving and healing love
Shows us who we are
Vessels of clay holding divine power
I have fallen more times
Than I care to admit
I have received loving pardon
So let me learn to forgive
Let me become more deeply human
That I may know the joy
Of forgiving form my heart
Monday, July 6, 2009
snopes.com: Katie Kirkpatrick
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
Who is Buddha?
Who is BUDDHA and what is Buddhism???
The Buddha is dead so how can he help us?
Was the Buddha a god?
If the Buddha is not a god, then why do people worship him?
But I have heard people say that Buddhists worship idols.
Is Buddhism scientific?
You have talked about rebirth, but is there any proof that such a thing happens?
You have talked a lot about rebirth but is there any proof that we are reborn when we die?
What did the Buddha teach about magic and fortune telling?
Then why do people sometimes practice such things and believe in them?
But if there are no gods how did the universe get here?
What does the Buddha say about the origin of the universe?
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Who was the Buddha?
In the year 563 BC, a baby was born into a royal family in northern India. He grew up in wealth and luxury but eventually found that worldly comfort and security do not guarantee happiness. He was deeply moved by the suffering he saw all around - and resolved to find the key to human happiness. When he was 29 he left his wife and child and set off to sit at the feet of the great religious teachers of the day to learn from them. They taught him much but none really knew the cause of human sufferings and how it could be overcome. Eventually, after six years study and meditation he had an experience in which all ignorance fell away and he suddenly understood. From that day onwards, he was called Buddha, the Awakened One. He lived for another 45 years in which time he traveled all over northern India teaching others what he had discovered. His compassion and patience were legendary and he made thousands of followers. In his eightieth year, old and sick, but still happy and at peace, he finally died.
Wasn't it irresponsible for the Buddha to walk out on his wife and child?
It couldn’t have been an easy thing for the Buddha to leave his family. He must have worried and hesitated for a long time before he finally left. But he had a choice, dedicating himself to his family or dedicating himself to the whole world. In the end, his great compassion made him give himself to the whole world. And the whole world still benefits from his sacrifice. This was not irresponsible. It was perhaps the most significant sacrifice ever made.
The Buddha is dead so how can he help us?
Faraday, who discovered electricity, is dead but what he discovered still helps us. Ltiis Pasteur who discovered the cures for so many diseases is dead, but his medical discoveries still save lives. Leonardo da Vinci who created masterpieces of art is dead, but what he created can still uplift and give joy. Noble men and heroes may have been dead for centuries but when we read of their deeds and achievements, we can still be inspired to act as they did. Yes, the Buddha is dead but 2500 years later his teachings still help people, his example still inspires people, his words still change lives. Only a Buddh7a could have such power centuries after his death.
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Was the Buddha a god?
No, he was not. He did not claim that he was a god, the child of a god or even the messenger from a god. He was a man who perfected himself and taught that if we followed his example, we could perfect ourselves also.
If the Buddha is not a god, then why do people worship him ?
There are different types of worship. When someone worships a god, they praise and honour him or her, make offerings and ask for favors, believing that the god will bear their praise, receive their offerings and answer their prayers. Buddhists do not indulge in this kind of worship.
The other kind of worship is when we show respect to someone or something we admire. When a teacher walks into the room we stand up, when we meet a dignitary we shake hands, when the national anthem is played we salute. These are all gestures of respect and worship and indicate our admiration for persons or things. This is the type of worship Buddhists practice. A statue of the Buddha with its hands rested gently in its lap and its compassionate smile reminds us to strive to develop peace and love within ourselves. The perfume of incense reminds us of the pervading influence of virtue, the lamp reminds us of the light of knowledge and the flowers, which soon fade and die, remind us of impermanence. When we bow, we express our gratitude to the Buddha for what his teachings have given us. This is the nature of Buddhist worship.
But I have heard people say that Buddhists worship idols.
Such statements only reflect the misunderstanding of the persons who make them. The dictionary defines an idol as - "an. image or statue worshipped as a god". As we have seen, Buddhists do not believe that the Buddha was a god, so how could they possibly believe that a piece of wood or metal is a god? All religions use symbols to express various concepts. In Taoism,the ying-yang is used to symbolize the harmony between opposites. In Sikhism, the sword is used to symbolize spiritual struggle. In Christianity, the fish is used to symbolize Christ’s presence and the cross is used to symbolize his sacrifice. And in Buddhism, the statue of the Buddha is used to symbolize human perfection. The statue of the Buddha also reminds us of the human dimension in Buddhist teaching, the fact that Buddhism is man-centered, not god-centered, that we must look within not without to find perfection and understanding. So to say that Buddhists worship idols is not correct.
________________________________________
Why do people burn paper money and do all kinds of strange things in Buddhist temples?
Many things seem strange to us when we don’t understand them. Rather than dismiss such things as strange, we should strive to find out their meaning. However, it is true that Buddhist practice sometimes has its origin in popular superstition and misunderstanding rather than the teachings of the Buddha. And such misunderstandings are not found in Buddhism alone, but arise in all religions from time to time. The Buddha taught with clarity and in detail and if some fail to understand fully, the Buddha cannot be blamed. There is a saying;
If a man suffering from a disease does not seek treatment even when there is a physician at hand, it is not the fault of that physician.
In the same way, if a man is oppressed and tormented by the disease of the defilement but does not seek the help of the Buddha, that is not the Buddha’s fault.
JN 28-9
Nor should those who don’t practice it properly judge Buddhism or any religion. If you wish to know the true teachings of Buddhism, read the Buddha’s words or speak to those who understand them properly.
If Buddhism is so good why are some Buddhist countries poor?
If by poor you mean economically poor, then it is true that some Buddhist countries are poor. But if by poor you mean a poor quality of life, then perhaps some Buddhist countries are quite rich. America, for example, is an economically rich and powerful country but the crime rate is one of the highest in the world, millions of old people are neglected by their children and die of loneliness in old people’s homes, domestic violence and child abuse are major problems. One in three marriages end in divorce, pornography is easily available. Rich in terms of money but perhaps poor in terms of the quality of life. Now, take Burma, a country that is economically backward. Parents are honored and respected by their children, the crime rate is relatively low, divorce and suicide are almost unheard of as are domestic violence and child abuse, and pornography and sexual license are non-existent. Economically backward, but perhaps a higher quality of life than in a country like America. But even if we judge Buddhist countries in terms of economics alone, one of the wealthiest and most economically dynamic countries in the world today is Japan where 93% of the population call themselves Buddhists.
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Why is it that you don't often hear of charitable work being done by Buddhists?
Perhaps it is because Buddhists don’t feel the need to boast about the good they do. Several years ago the Japanese Buddhist leader Nikkho Nirwano received the Templeton Prize for his work in promoting inter-religious harmony. Likewise a Thai Buddhist monk was recently awarded the prestigious Magsaysay Prize for his excellent work among drug addicts. In 1987 another Thai monk, Von. Kantayapiwat was awarded the Norwegian Children’s Peace Prize for his many years of work helping homeless children in rural areas. And what about the large scale social work being done among the poor in India by the Western Buddhist Order? They have built schools, child minding centers, dispensaries and small-scale industries for self-sufficiency. Buddhists see help given to others as an _expression of their religious practice just as other religious do but they believe that it should be done quietly and without self-promotion. Thus you don’t hear so much about their charitable work.
________________________________________
Why are there so many different types of Buddhism?
There are many different types of sugar: brown sugar, white sugar, granulated sugar, rock sugar, syrup and icing sugar but it is all sugar and it all tastes sweet. It is produced in different forms so that it can be used in different ways. Buddhism is the same. There is Theravada Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, Yogacara Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism but it is all Buddhism and it all has the same taste - the state of freedom. Buddhism has evolved into different forms so that it can be relevant to the different cultures in which it exists. It has been reinterpreted over the centuries so that it can remain relevant to each new generation. Outwardly, the types of Buddhism may seem very different but at the center of all of them are the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. All major religions, Buddhism included, have split into schools and sects. But the different sects of Buddhism have never gone to war with each other, they have never expressed hostility towards each other and to this day, they go to each other’s temples and worship together. Such tolerance and understanding is certainly rare.
________________________________________
You certainly think highly of Buddhism. I suppose you think your religion is right and all the others are wrong.
No Buddhist who understands the Buddha’s teaching thinks that other religions are wrong. No one who has made a genuine effort to examine other religions with an open mind could think like that either. The first thing you notice when you study the different religions is just how much they have in common. All religions acknowledge that man’s present state is unsatisfactory. All believe that a change of attitude and behavior is needed if man’s situation is to improve. All teach an ethics that includes love, kindness, patience, generosity and social responsibility and all accept the existence of some form of Absolute.
They use different languages, different names and different symbols to describe and explain these things; and it is only when they narrow-mindedly cling to their one way of seeing things that religious intolerance, pride and self-righteousness arise.
Imagine an Englishman, a Frenchman, Chinese and an Indonesian all looking at a cup. The Englishman says, "That ‘s a cup." The Frenchman answers, "No it’s not. It’s a tasse." The Chinese comments, "You’re both wrong. It’s a Pei." And the Indonesian laughs at the others and says "What fools you are. It’s a cawan." The Englishman gets a dictionary and shows it to the others saying, "I can prove that it is a cup. My dictionary says so." "Then your dictionary is wrong," says the Frenchman "because my dictionary clearly says it is a tasse." The Chinese scoffs at them. "My dictionary is thousands of years older than yours, so my dictionary must be right. And besides, more people speak Chinese than any other language, so it must be a Pei." While they are squabbling and arguing with each other, a Buddhist comes up and drinks from the cup. After he has drunk, he says to the others, "Whether you call it a cup, a tasse, a pei or a cawan, the purpose of the cup is to be used. Stop arguing and drink, stop squabbling and refresh your thirst." This is the Buddhist attitude to the other religions.
_______________________________________
Is Buddhism scientific
Before we answer that question it would be best to define the word ‘science’. Science, according to the dictionary is - "knowledge which can be made into a system, which depends upon seeing and testing facts and stating general natural laws, a branch of such knowledge, anything that can be studied exactly.
There are aspects of Buddhism that would not fit into this definition but the central teachings of Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths, most certainly would। Suffering, the First Noble Truth is an experience that can be defined, experienced and measured. The Second Noble Truth states that suffering has a natural cause, craving, which likewise can be defined, experienced and measured. No attempt is made to explain suffering in terms of a metaphysical concept or myths. Suffering is ended, according to the Third Noble Truth, not by relying upon a Supreme Being, by faith or by prayers but simply by removing its cause. This is axiomatic. The Fourth Noble Truth, the way to end suffering, once again, has nothing to do with metaphysics but depends on behaving in specific ways. And once again behavior is open to testing Buddhism dispenses with the concept of a Supreme Being, as does science, and explains the origins and workings of the universe in terms of natural laws. All of this certainly exhibits a scientific spirit. Once again, the Buddha’s constant advice that we should not blindly believe but rather question, examine, inquire and rely on our own experience has a definite scientific ring to it. He says:
"Do not go by revelation or tradition do not go by rumour, or the sacred scriptures, do not go by hearsay or mere logic, do not go by bias towards a notion or by another person’s’ seeming ability and do not go by the idea ‘He is our teacher’. But when you yourself know that a thing is good, that it is not blamable, that it is praised by the wise and when practiced and observed that it leads to happiness, then follow that thing"
we could say that although Buddhism is not entirely scientific, it certainly has a strong scientific overtone and is certainly more scientific than any other religion। It is significant that Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the twentieth century said of Buddhism:
"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that would cope with modem scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.
What are the main teachings of the Buddha?
ANSWER: All of the many teachings of the Buddha center on the Four Noble Truths just as the rim and spokes of a wheel center on the hub. They are called ‘Four’ because there are four of them. They are called ‘Noble’ because they ennoble one who understands them and they are called ‘Truths’ because, corresponding with reality, they are true.
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What is the First Noble Truth?
ANSWER: The First Noble Truth is that life is suffering. To live, you must suffer. It is impossible to live without experiencing some kind of suffering. We have to endure physical suffering like sickness, injury, tiredness, old age and eventually death and we have to endure psychological suffering like loneliness, frustrations, fear, embarrassment, disappointment, anger, etc.
Isn’t this a bit pessimistic?
ANSWER: The dictionary defines pessimism as ‘the habit of thinking that whatever will happen will be bad,’ or ‘The belief that evil is more powerful than good.’ Buddhism teaches neither of these ideas. Nor does it deny that happiness exists. It simply says that to live is to experience physical and psychological suffering which is a statement so true and so obvious that it cannot be denied. The central concept of most religions is a myth, a legend or a belief that is difficult or impossible to verify. Buddhism starts with an experience, an irrefutable fact, and a thing that all know, that all has experienced and that all is striving to overcome. Thus Buddhism is the only truly universal religion because it goes right to the core of every individual human being’s concern - suffering and how to avoid it.
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What is the Second Noble truth?
ANSWER: The Second Noble Truth is that all suffering is caused by craving. When we look at psychological suffering, it is easy to see how it is caused by craving. When we want something but are unable to get it, we feel frustrated. When we expect someone to live up to our expectation and they do not, we feel let down and disappointed. When we want others to like us and they don’t, we feel hurt. Even when we want something and are able to get it, this does not often lead to happiness either because it is not long before we feel bored with that thing, lose interest in it and commence to want something else. Put simply, the Second Noble Truth says that getting what you want does not guarantee happiness. Rather than constantly struggling to get what you want, try to modify your wanting. Wanting deprives us of contentment and happiness.
But how does wanting and craving lead to physical suffering?
ANSWER: A lifetime wanting and craving for this and that and especially the craving to continue to exist creates a powerful energy that causes the individual to be reborn. When we are reborn, we have a body and, as we said before, the body is susceptible to injury and disease; it can be exhausted by work; it ages and eventually dies. Thus, craving leads to physical suffering because it causes us to be reborn.
That’s all very well. But if we stopped wanting altogether, we would never get or achieve anything.
ANSWER: True. But what the Buddha says is that when our desires, our craving, our constant discontent with what we have, and our continual longing for more and more does cause us suffering, then we should stop doing it. He asks us to make a difference between what we need and what we want and to strive for our needs and modify our wants. He tells us that our needs can be fulfilled but that our wants are endless - a bottomless pit. There are needs that are essential, fundamental and that can be obtained and this we should work towards. Desires beyond this should be gradually lessened. After all, what is the purpose of life? To get or to be content and happy.
_______________________________________
You have talked about rebirth, but is there any proof that such a thing happens?
ANSWER: There is ample evidence that such a thing happens, but we will look at this in more detail later on.(See in the Rebirth Q & A)
What is the Third Noble Truth?
ANSWER: The Third Noble Truth is that suffering can be overcome and happiness attained. This is perhaps the most important of the Four Noble Truths because in it the Buddha reassures us that true happiness and contentment are possible.
When we give up useless craving and learn to live each day at a time, enjoying without restless wanting the experiences that life offers us, patiently enduring the problems that life involves without fear, hatred and anger, then we become happy and free. Then, and only then, do we begin to live fully. Because we are no longer obsessed with satisfying our own selfish wants, we find we have so much time to help others fulfill their needs. This state is called Nirvana. We are free from all psychological suffering as well. This is called Final Nirvana.
What or where is Nirvana?
ANSWER: It is a dimension transcending times and space and thus is difficult to talk about or even think about. Words and thoughts being only suited to describe the time-space dimension. But because Nirvana is beyond time, there is no movement and so no aging or dying. Thus Nirvana is eternal. Because it is beyond space, there is no causation, no boundary, and no concept of self and not self and thus Nirvana is infinite. The Buddha also assures us that Nirvana is an experience of great happiness. He says:
Nirvana is the highest happiness
Dp 204
But is there any proof that such a dimension exists?
ANSWER: No, there is not. But its existence can be inferred. If there is a dimension where time and space do operate and there is such a dimension - the world we experience, then we can infer that there is a dimension where time and space do not operate - Nirvana. Again, even though we cannot prove Nirvana exists, we have the Buddha’s word that it does exist. He tells us:
"There is an Unborn, a Not-become, a Not-made, a Not-compounded. If there were not, this Unborn, Not become, Not-made, Not-corn-poundec4 there could not be made any escape from what is born, become, made, and com-pounded. But since there is this Unborn, Not be-come, Not-made, Not-compounded, therefore is there made known an escape from what is born, become, made, and compounded "
Ud 80
We will know it when we attain it. Until that time, we can still practice.
What is the Fourth Noble Truth?
ANSWER: The Fourth Noble Truth is the Path leading to the overcoming of suffering. This path is called the Noble Eightfold Path and consists of Perfect Understanding, Perfect Thought, Perfect Speech, Perfect Action, Perfect Livelihood, Perfect Effort, Perfect Mindfulness and Perfect Concentration. Buddhist practice consists of practicing these eight things until they become more complete. You will notice that the steps on the Noble Eightfold Path cover every aspect of life: the intellectual, the ethical, the social and economic and the psychological and therefore contain everything a person needs to lead a good life and to develop spiritually.
Where does man come from and where is he going?
ANSWER: There are three possible answers to this question. Those who believe in a god or gods usually claim that before an individual is created, he does not exist, then he comes into being through the will of a god. He lives his life and then, according to what he believes or does during his life, he either goes to eternal heaven or eternal hell. There are others, humanists and scientists, who claim that the individual comes into being at conception due to natural causes, lives and then at death, ceases to exist. Buddhism does not accept either of these explanations.
The first gives rise to many ethical problems. If a good god really creates each of us, it is difficult to explain why so many people are born with the most dreadful deformities, or why so many children are miscarried just before birth or are stillborn. Another problem with the theistic explanation is that it seems very unjust that a person should suffer eternal pain in hell for what he did in just 60 or 70 years on earth. Sixty or seventy years of non-belief or immoral living do not deserve eternal torture. Likewise, 60 or 70 years of good living seem a very small outlay for eternal bliss in heaven. The second explanation is better than the first and has more scientific evidence to support it but still leaves several important questions unanswered. How can a phenomenon so amazingly complex as consciousness develop from the simple meeting of two cells, the sperm and the egg? And now that parapsychology is a recognized branch of science, phenomena like telepathy are increasingly difficult to fit into the materialistic model of the mind.
Buddhism offers the most satisfactory explanation of where man came from and where he is going. When we die, the mind with all the tendencies, preferences, abilities and characteristics that have been developed and conditioned in this life, re-establishes itself in a fertilized egg. Thus the individual grows, is re-born and develops a personality conditioned both by the mental characteristics that have been carried over and by the new environment. The personality will change and be modified by conscious effort and conditioning factors like education, parental influence and society and once again at death, re-establish itself in a new fertilized egg. This process of dying and being reborn will continue until the conditions that cause it, craving and ignorance, cease. When they do, instead of being reborn, the mind attains a state called Nirvana and this is the ultimate goal of Buddhism and the purpose of life.
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How does the mind go from one body to another?
ANSWER: Think of it being like radio waves. The radio waves, which are not made up of words and music but energy at different frequencies, are transmitted, travel through space, are attracted to and picked up by the receiver from where they are broadcast as words and music. It is the same with the mind. At death, mental energy travels through space, is attracted to and picked up by the fertilized egg. As the embryo grows, it centers itself in the brain from where it later “broadcasts” itself as the new personality.
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Is one always reborn as a human being?
ANSWER: No, there are several realms in which one can be reborn. Some people are reborn in heaven, some are reborn in hell, and some are reborn as hungry ghosts and so on. Heaven is not a place but a state of existence where one has a subtle body and where the mind experiences mainly pleasure. Some religions strive very hard to be reborn in a heavenly existence mistakenly believing it to be a permanent state. But it is not. Like all conditioned states, heaven is impermanent and when one’s life span there is finished, one could well be reborn again as a human. Hell, likewise, is not a place but a state of existence where one has a subtle body and where the mind experiences mainly anxiety and distress. Being a hungry ghost, again is a state of existence where the body is subtle and where the mind is continually plagued by longing and dissatisfaction.
So heavenly beings experience mainly pleasure, hell beings and ghosts experience mainly pain and human beings experience usually a mixture of both. So the main difference between the human realm and other realms is the body type and the quality of experience.
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What decides where will we be reborn?
ANSWER: The most important factor, but not the only one, influencing where we will be reborn and what sort of life we shall have, is kamma. The word kamma means ‘action’ and refers to our intentional mental actions. In other words, what we are is determined very much by how we have thought and acted in the past. Likewise, how we think and act now will influence how we will be in the future.
The gentle, loving type of person tends to be reborn in a heavenly realm or as a human being who has a predominance of pleasant experiences, the anxious, worried or extremely cruel type of person tends to be reborn in a hell realm or as a human being who has a predominance of painful experiences. The person who develops obsessive craving, fierce longings, and burning ambitions that can never be satisfied tends to be reborn as a hungry ghost or as a human being frustrated by longing and wanting. Whatever mental habits are strongly developed in this life will continue in the next life. Most people, however, are reborn as human beings.
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So we are not determined by our kamma. We can change it.
ANSWER: Of course we can. That is why one of the steps on the Noble Eightfold Path is Perfect Effort. It depends on our sincerity, how much energy we exert and how strong the habit is. But it is true that some people simply go through life under the influence of their past habits, without making an effort to change them and falling victim to these unpleasant results. Such people will continue to suffer unless they change their negative habits. The longer the negative habits remain, the more difficult they are to change. The Buddhist understands this and takes advantage of each and every opportunity to break mental habits that have unpleasant results and to develop mental habits that have a pleasant and happy result. Meditation is one of the techniques used to modify the habit patterns of the mind as does speaking or refraining to speak, acting or refraining to act in certain ways. The whole of the Buddhist life is a training to purify and free the mind. For example, if being patient and kind was a pronounced part of your character in your past life, such tendencies will re-emerge in the present life. If they are strengthened and developed in the present life, they will re-emerge even stronger and more pronounced in the future life. This is based upon the simple and observable fact that long established habits tend to be difficult to break.
Now, when you are patient and kind, it tends to happen that you are not so easily ruffled by others, you don’t hold grudges, people like you and thus your experiences tends to be happier.
Now, let us take another example. Let us say that you came into life with a tendency to be patient and kind due to your mental habits in the past life. But in the present life, you neglect to strengthen and develop such tendencies. They would gradually weaken and die out and perhaps be completely absent in the future life. Patience and kindness being weak in this case, there is a possibility that in either this life or in the next life, a short temper, anger and cruelty could grow and develop, bringing with them all the unpleasant experiences that such attitudes create. We will take one last example. Let us say that due to your mental habits in the last life, you came into the present life with the tendency to be short-tempered and angry, and you realize that such habits only cause you unpleasantness and so you make an effort to change them. You replace them with positive emotions. If you are able to eliminate them completely, which is possible if you make an effort, you become free from the unpleasantness caused by being short tempered and angry. If you were only able to weaken such tendencies, they would re-emerge in the next life where with a bit more effort, they could be eliminated completely and you could be free from their unpleasant effects.
You have talked a lot about rebirth but is there any proof that we are reborn when we die?
ANSWER: Not only is there scientific evidence to support the Buddhist belief in rebirth, it is the only after-life theory that has any evidence to support it. There is not a scrap of evidence to prove the existence of heaven and of course evidence of annihilation at death must be lacking. But during the last 30 years parapsychologists have been studying reports that some people have vivid memories of their former lives. For example, in England, a 5 year-old girl said she could remember her “other mother and father” and she talked vividly about what sounded like the events in the life of another person. Parapsychologists were called in and they asked her hundreds of questions to which she gave answers. She spoke of living in a particular village in what appeared to be Spain, she gave the name of the village, the name of the Street she lived in, her neighbors’ names and details about her everyday life there. She also tearfully spoke of how she had been struck by a car and died of her injuries two days later. When these details were checked, they were found to be accurate. There was a village in Spain with the name the five-year-old girl had given. There was a house of the type she had described in the street she had named. What is more, it was found that a 23-year-old woman living in the house bad been killed in a car accident five years before. Now how is it possible for a five-year-old girl living in England and who had never been to Spain to know all these details? And of course, this is not the only case of this type. Professor Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia’s Department of Psychology has described dozens of cases of this type in his books. He is an accredited scientist whose 25 year study of people who remember former lives is very strong evidence for the Buddhist teaching of rebirth*.
Some people might say that the so-called ability to remember former lives is the work of devils.
ANSWER: You simply cannot dismiss everything that doesn’t fit into your belief as being the work of devils. When cold, hard facts are produced to support an idea, you must use rational and logical arguments if you wish to counter them not irrational and superstitious talk about devils.
You say that talk about devils is superstition but isn’t talking about rebirth a bit superstitious also?
ANSWER: The dictionary defines ‘superstition’ as a belief, which is not based on reason or fact but on an association of ideas, as in magic’. If you can show me a careful study of the existence of devils written by a scientist I will concede that belief in devils is not superstition. But I have never heard of any research into devils; scientists simply wouldn’t bother to study such things, so I say there is no evidence for the existence of devils. But as we have just seen, there is evidence, which seems to suggest that rebirth does take place. So if belief in rebirth is based on at least some facts, it cannot be a superstition.
* See Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and Cases of Reincarnation
Type, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville USA 1975.
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Well, have there been any scientists who believe in rebirth?
ANSWER: Yes. Thomas Huxley, who was responsible for having science, introduced into the 19th century British school system and who was the first scientist to defend Darwin’s theories, believed that reincarnation was a very plausible idea. In his famous book ‘Evolution and Ethics and other Essays’, he says:
"In the doctrine of transmigration, whatever its origin, Brahmanical and Buddhist speculation found, ready to hand, the means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the Cos-mos to man ... Yet this plea of justification is not less plausible than others; and none but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the ground of in-herent absurdity Like the doctrine of evolution itself that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality; and ft may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying."
Then, Professor Gustaf Stromberg, the famous Swedish astronomer, physicist and friend of Einstein also found the idea of rebirth appealing।
Opinions differ whether human souls can be reincarnated on the earth or not. In 1936 a very interesting case was thoroughly investigated and reported by the government authorities in India. A girl (Shanty Devil from Delhi) could accurately describe her previous life (at Muttra, five hundred miles from Delhi) which ended about a year before her “second birth “. She gave the name of her husband and child and described her home and life history. The investigating com-mission brought her to her former relatives, who verified all her statements. Among the people of India reincarnations are regarded as com-monplace; the astonishing thing for them in this case was the great number of facts the girl remembered. This and similar cases can be regarded as additional evidence for the theory of the indestructibility of memory.
Professor Julian Huxley, the distinguished British scientist who was Director General of UNESCO believed that rebirth was quite in harmony with scientific thinking.
There is nothing against a permanently surviving spirit-individuality being in some way given off at death, as a definite wireless message is given off by a sending apparatus working in a par-ticular way. But it must be remembered that the wirelesss message only becomes a message again when it comes in contact with a new, material structure - the receiver. So with our possible spirit-emanation. It... would never think or feel unless again ‘embodied’ in some way Our per-sonalities are so based on body that it is really impossible to think of survival which would be in any true sense personal without a body of sorts.. I can think of something being given off which would bear the same relation to men and women as a wireless message to the transmitting apparatus; but in that case ‘the dead’ would, so far as one can see, be nothing but disturbances of different patterns wandering through the universe until.. they.. came back to actuality of consciousness by making contact with soemthing which could work as a receiving apparatus for mind.
Even very practical and down-to-earth people like the American industrialist Henry Ford found the idea or rebirth acceptable. ford was attracted to the idea of rebirth because, unlike the theistic idea or the materialistic idea, rebirth gives you a second chance to develop yourself Henry ford says:
"I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty-six. Religion offered nothing to the point. .Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life ñ the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talen4 but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more... The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease... If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us."
So the Buddhist teachings of rebirth does have some scientific evidence to support it. It is logically consistent and it goes a long way to answering questions that theistic and the materialistic theories fail to do. But it is also very comforting. What can be worse than a theory of life that gives you no second chance, no opportunity to amend the mistakes you have made in this life and no time to further develop the skills and abilities you have nurtured in this life. But according to the Buddha, if you fail to attain Nirvana in this life, you will have the opportunity to try again next time. If you have made mistakes in this life, you will be able to correct yourself in the next life. You will truly be able to learn from your mistakes. Things you were unable to do or achieve in this life may well become possible in the next life. What a wonderful teaching!
What did the Buddha teach about magic and fortune telling?
ANSWER: The Buddha considered such practices as fortune telling, wearing magic charms for protection, fixing lucky sites for building, prophesizing and fixing lucky days to be useless superstitions and he expressly forbids his disciples to practice such things. He calls all thses things ‘low arts’.
"Whereas some religious men, while living offfood provided by the faithful make their living by such low artsj, such wrong means of livelihood as palmisti~ divining by signs, mtezpretmg dreams bringing good or bad lucky. invoking the goddess of luck...picking the lucky site for a building, the monk Gotazna refrains from such low art.s, such wrong means of livelihood” "
DI 9-12
Then why do people sometimes practice such things and believe in them?
ANSWER: Because of greed, fear and ignorance. As soon as people understand the Buddha’s teachings, they realize that a pure heart can protect them much better than bits of paper, bits of metal and a few chanted words and they no longer rely on such things. In the teachings of the Buddha, it is honesty, kindness, understanding, patience, forgiveness, generosity, loyalty and other good qualities that truly protect you and give you true prosperity.
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But some lucky charms do work, don’t they?
ANSWER: I know a person who makes a living selling lucky charms. He claims that his charms can give good luck, prosperity and he guarantees that you will be able to pick three numbers. But if what he says is true then why isn’t he himself a multi-millionaire? If his lucky charms really work, then why doesn’t he win the lottery week after week? The only luck he has is that there are people silly enough to buy his magic charms
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Then is there such a thing as luck?
ANSWER: The dictionary defines luck as ‘believing that whatever happens, either good or bad, to a person in the course of events is due to chance, fate or fortune.’ The Buddha denied this belief completely. Everything that happens has a specific cause or causes and there must be some relationships between the cause and the effect. Becoming sick, for example, has specific causes. One must come into contact with germs and one’s body must be weak enough for the germs to establish themselves. There is a definite relationship between the cause (germs and a weakened body) and the effect (sickness) because we know that germs attack the organisms and give rise to sickness. But no relationship can be found wearing a piece of paper with words written on it and being rich or passing examinations. Buddhism teaches that whatever happens does so because of a cause or causes and not due to luck, chance or fate. People who are interested in luck are always trying to get something -usually more money and wealth. The Buddha teaches us that it is far more important to develop our hearts and minds. He says:
Being deeply learned and skilled
Being well-trained and using well-spoken words; this is the best good luck.
To support mother and father, to cherish wife and child and to have a simple livelihood; this is the best good luck.
Being generous, just helping one’s relatives and being blameless in one’s actions this is the best good luck.
To refrain from evil and from strong drink, and to be always steadfast in virtue; this is the best good luck.
Reverence, humility, contentment, gratitude and hearing the good Dhamma, this is the best good luc
What is Meditation?
Meditation is a conscious effort to change how the mind works The Pali word for meditation is ‘bhavana’ which means ‘to make grow’ or ‘to develop’.
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Is meditation important?
ANSWER: Yes, it is. No matter how much we may wish to be good, if we cannot change the desires that make us act the way we do, change will be difficult. For example, a person may realize that he is impatient with his wife and he may promise himself: “From now on I am not going to be so impatient.” But an hour later he may be shouting at his wife simply because, not being aware of himself, impatience has arisen without him knowing. Meditation helps to develop the awareness and the energy needed to transform ingrained mental habit patterns.
I have heard that meditation can be dangerous. Is this true?
ANSWER: To live, we need salt. But if you were to eat a kilogram of salt it would kill you. To live in the modem world you need a car but if you follow the traffic rules or if you drive while you are drunk, a car becomes a dangerous machine. Meditation is like this, it is essential for our mental health and well being but if you practice in a stupid way, it could cause problems. Some people have problems like depression, irrational fears or schizophrenia, they think meditation is an instant cure for their problem, they start meditating and sometimes their problem gets worse. If you have such a problem, you should seek professional help and after you are better then take up meditation. Other people over reach themselves, they take up meditation and instead of going gradually, step by step, they meditate with too much energy for too long and soon they are exhausted. But perhaps most problems in meditation are caused by ‘kangaroo meditation’. Some people go to one teacher and do his meditation technique for a while, then they read something in a book and decide to try that technique, then a week later a famous meditation teacher visits town and so they decide to incorporate some of his ideas into their practice and before long they are hopelessly confused. Jumping like a kangaroo from one teacher to another or from one meditation technique to another is a mistake. But if you don’t have any severe mental problem and you take up meditation and practice sensibly it is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
How many types of meditation are there?
ANSWER: The Buddha taught many different types of meditation, each designed to overcome a particular problem or to develop a particular psychological state. But the two most common and useful types of meditation are Mindfulness of Breathing (anapana sati) and Loving Kindness Meditation (metta bhavana).
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If I wanted to practice Mindfulness of Breathing, how would I do it?
ANSWER: You would follow these easy steps: the four Ps - place, posture, practice and problems. First, find a suitable place, perhaps a room that is not too noisy and where you are not likely to be disturbed. Second, sit in a comfortable posture. A good posture is to sit with your legs folded a pillow under your buttocks, your back straight, the hands nestled in the lap and the eyes closed. Alternatively, you can sit in a chair as long as you keep your back straight. Next comes the actual practice itself As you sit quietly with your eyes closed you focus your attention on the in and out movement of the breath. This can be done by counting the breaths or watching the rise and fall of the abdomen. When this is done certain problems and difficulties will arise. You might experience irritating itches on the body or discomfort in the knees. If this happens, try to keep the body relaxed without moving and keep focusing on the breath. You will probably have many intruding thoughts coming into your mind and distracting your attention from the breath. The only way you can deal with this problem is to patiently keep returning your attention to the breath. If you keep doing this, eventually thoughts will weaken, your concentration will become stronger and you will have moments of deep mental calm and inner peace.
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How long should I meditate for?
ANSWER: It is good to do meditation for 15 minutes every day for a week and then extend the time by 5 minutes each week until you are meditating for 45 minutes. After a few weeks of regular daily meditation you will start to notice that your concentration gets better, there are less thoughts and you have moments of real peace and stillness.
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What about Loving Kindness Meditation? How is that practiced?
ANSWER: Once you are familiar with Mindfulness of Breathing and are practicing it regularly you can start practicing Loving Kindness Meditation. It should be done two or three times each week after you have done Mindfulness of Breathing. First, you turn your attention to yourself and say to yourself word like “May I be well and happy. May I be peaceful and calm? May I be protected from dangers? May my mind be free from hatred? May my heart be filled with love? May I be well and happy.” Then one by one you think of a loved person a neutral person, that is, someone you neither like nor dislike, and finally a disliked person, wishing each of them well as you do so.
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What is the benefit of doing this type of meditation?
ANSWER: If you do Loving Kindness Meditation regularly and with the right attitude, you will find very positive changes taking place within yourself You will find that you are able to be more accepting and forgiving towards yourself You will find that the feelings you have towards your loved ones will increase. You will find yourself making friends with people you used to be indifferent and uncaring towards, and you will find the ill-will or resentment you have towards some people will lessen and eventually be dissolved. Sometimes if you know of someone who are sick, unhappy or encountering difficulties you can include them in your meditation and very often you will find their situation improving.
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How is that possible?
ANSWER: The mind, when properly developed, is a very powerful instrument. If we can learn to focus our mental energy and project it towards others, it can have an effect upon them. You may have had an experience like this. Perhaps you are in a crowded room and you get this feeling that someone is watching you. You turn around and, sure enough, someone is staring at you. What has happened is that you have picked up that other person’s mental energy. Loving Kindness Meditation is like this. We project positive mental energy towards others and it gradually transforms them.
Do I need a teacher to teach me meditation?
ANSWER: A teacher is not absolutely necessary but personal guidance from someone who is familiar with meditation is certainly helpful. Unfortunately, some monks and laymen set themselves up as meditation teachers when they simply don’t know what they are doing. Try to pick a teacher, who has a good reputation, a balanced personality and who adheres closely to the Buddha’s teachings.
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I have heard that meditation is widely used today by psychiatrists and psychologists. Is this true?
ANSWER: Yes, it is. Meditation is now accepted as having a highly therapeutic effect upon the mind and is used by many professional mental health workers to help induce relaxation, overcome phobias and bring about self-awareness. The Buddha’s insights into the human mind are helping people as much today as they did in ancient times.
Do Buddhists believe in a god?
ANSWER: No, we do not. There are several reasons for this. The Buddha, like modem sociologists and psychologists, believed that religious ideas and especially the god idea have their origins in fear. The Buddha says:
Gripped by fear men go to sacred mountains, sacred groves, sacred trees and shrines.
Dp 188
Primitive man found himself in a dangerous and hostile world, the fear of wild animals, of not being able to find enough food, of injury or disease, and of natural phenomena like thunder, lightning and volcanoes was constantly with him. Finding no security, he created the idea of gods in order to give him comfort in good times, courage in times of danger and consolation when things went wrong. To this day, you will notice that people become more religious at times of crisis, you will hear them say that the belief in a god or gods gives them the strength they need to deal with life. You will hear them explain that they believe in a particular god because they prayed in time of need and their prayer was answered. All this seems to support the Buddha’s teaching that the god-idea is a response to fear and frustration. The Buddha taught us to try to understand our fears, to lessen our desires and to calmly and courageously accept the things we cannot change. He replaced fear, not with irrational belief but with rational understanding.
The second reason the Buddha did not believe in a god is because there does not seem to be any evidence to support this idea. There are numerous religions, all claiming that they alone have god’s words preserved in their holy book, that they alone understand god’s nature, that their god exists and that the gods of other religions do not. Some claim that god is masculine, some that she is feminine and others that it is neuter. They are all satisfied that there is ample evidence to prove the existence of their god but they laugh in disbelief at the evidence other religions use to prove the existence of another god. It is not surprising that with so many different religions spending so many centuries trying to prove the existence of their gods that still no real, concrete, substantial or irrefutable evidence has been found. Buddhists suspend judgement until such evidence is forthcoming.
The third reason the Buddha did not believe in a god is that the belief is not necessary. Some claim that the belief in a god is necessary in order to explain the origin of the universe. But this is not so. Science has very convincingly explained how the universe came into being without having to introduce the god-idea. Some claim that belief in god is necessary to have a happy, meaningful life. Again we can see that this is not so. There are millions of atheists and free-thinkers, not to mention many Buddhists, who live useful, happy and meaningful lives without belief in a god. Some claim that belief in god’s power is necessary because humans, being weak, do not have the strength to help themselves. Once again, the evidence indicates the opposite.
One often hears of people who have overcome great disabilities and handicaps, enormous odds and difficulties through their own inner resources, through their own efforts and without belief in a god. Some claim that god is necessary in order to give man salvation. But this argument only holds good if you accept the theological concept of salvation and Buddhists do not accept such a concept. Based on his own experience, the Buddha saw that each human being had the capacity to purify the mind, develop infinite love and compassion and perfect understanding. He shifted attention from the heavens to the heart and encouraged us to find solutions to our problems through self-understanding.
ANSWER: All religions have myths and stories which attempt to answer this question. In ancient times, when man simply did not know, such myths were adequate, but in the 20th century, in the age of physics, astronomy and geology, such myths have been superseded by scientific fact. Science has explained the origin of the universe without recourse to the god-idea.
What does the Buddha say about the origin of the universe?
ANSWER: It is interesting that the Buddha’s explanation of the origin of the universe corresponds very closely to the scientific view. In the Aganna Sutta, the Buddha describes the universe being destroyed and then re-evolving into its present form over a period of countless millions of years. The first life formed on the surface of the water and again, over countless millions of years, evolved from simple into complex organisms. All these processes are without beginning or end, and are set in motion by natural causes.
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You say there is no evidence for the existence of a God. But what about miracles?
ANSWER: There are many who believe that miracles are proof of gods existence. We hear wild claims that a healing has taken place but we never get an independent testimony from a medical office or a surgeon. We hear second-hand reports that someone was miraculously saved from disaster but we never get an eye-witness account of what is supposed to have happened. We hear rumors that prayer straightened a diseased body or strengthened a withered limb, but we never see X-rays or get comments from doctors or nurses. Wild claims, second-hand reports and rumors are no substitute for solid evidence and solid evidence of miracles is very rare. However, sometimes unexplained things do happen, unexpected events do occur. But our inability to explain such things does not prove the existence of gods. It only proves that our knowledge is as yet incomplete. Before the development of modem medicine, when people didn’t know what caused sickness people believed that god or the gods sent diseases as a punishment. Now we know what causes such things and when we get sick, we take medicine. In time when our knowledge of the world is more complete, we will be able to understand what causes unexplained phenomena, just as we can now understand what causes disease.
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But so many people believe in some form of god, it must be true.
ANSWER: Not so. There was a time when everyone believed that the world was flat, but they were all wrong. The number of people who believe in an idea is no measure of the truth or falsehood of that idea. The only way we can tell whether an idea is true or not is by looking at the facts and examining the evidence.
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So if Buddhists don’t believe in gods, what do you believe in?
ANSWER: We don’t believe in a god because we believe in man. We believe that each human being is precious and important, that all have the potential to develop into a Buddha a perfected human being. We believe that human beings can outgrow ignorance and irrationality and see things as they really are. We believe that hatred, anger, spite and jealousy can be replaced by love, patience, generosity and kindness. We believe that all this is within the grasp of each person if they make the effort, guided and supported by fellow Buddhists and inspired by the example of the Buddha. As the Buddha says:
No one saves us but ourselves,
No one can and no one may
We ourselves must walk the path,
But Buddha clearly shows the way
D
Other religions derive their ideas of right and wrong from the commandments of their god or gods. You Buddhists don’t believe in a God, so how do you know what is right and wrong?
ANSWER: Any thoughts, speech or actions that are rooted m greed, hatred and delusion and thus lead us away from Nirvana are bad and any thoughts, speech or actions that are rooted in giving, love and wisdom and thus help clear the way to Nirvana are good.
To know what is right and wrong in god-centered religions, all that is needed is to do as you are told. But in a man-centered religion like Buddhism, to know what is right or wrong, you have to develop a deep self-awareness and self-understanding. And ethics based on understanding are always stronger than those that are a response to a command.
So to know what is right and wrong, the Buddhist looks at three things - the intention, the effect the act will have upon oneself and the effect it will have upon others. If the intention is good (rooted in giving, love and wisdom), if it helps myself (helps me to be more giving, more loving and wiser) and help others (helps them to be more giving, more loving and wiser), then my deeds and actions are wholesome, good and moral. Of course, there are many variations of this. Sometimes I act with the best of intentions but it may not benefit either myself or others. Sometimes my intentions are far from good, but my action help others nonetheless. Sometimes I act out of good intentions and my acts help me but perhaps cause some distress to others. In such cases, my actions are mixed - a mixture of good and not-so-good. When intentions are bad and the action helps neither myself nor others, such an action is bad. And when my intention is good and my action benefits both myself and others, then the deed is wholly good.
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So does Buddhism have a code of morality?
ANSWER: Yes, it does. The Five Precepts are the basis of Buddhist morality. The first precept is to avoid killing or harming living beings. The second is to avoid stealing, the third is to avoid sexual misconduct, the fourth is to avoid lying and the fifth is to avoid alcohol and other intoxicating drugs.
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But surely it is good to kill sometimes. To kill disease-spreading insects, for example, or someone who is going to kill you?
ANSWER: It might be good for you. But what about that thing or that person? They wish to live just as you do. When you decide to kill a disease-spreading insect, your intention is perhaps a mixture of self-concern (good) and revulsion (bad). The act will benefit yourself (good) but obviously it will not benefit that creature (bad). So at times it may be necessary to kill but it is never wholly good.
You Buddhists are too concerned about ants and bugs.
ANSWER: Buddhists strive to develop a compassion that is undiscriminating and all embracing. They see the world as a unified whole where each thing and creature has its place and function. They believe that before we destroy or upset nature’s delicate balance, we should be very careful. Just look at those cultures where emphasis is on exploiting nature to the full, squeezing every last drop out of it without putting anything back, conquering and subduing it. Nature has revolted, the very air is becoming poisoned, the rivers are polluted and dead, so many beautiful animal species are extinct, and the slopes of the mountains are barren and eroded. Even the climate is changing. If people were a little less anxious to crush, destroy and kill, this terrible situation may not have arisen. We should all strive to develop a little more respect for life. And this is what the first precept is saying.
The Third Precept says we should avoid sexual misconduct. What is sexual misconduct?
ANSWER: If we use trickery, emotional blackmail or force to compel someone to have sex with us, then this is sexual misconduct. Adultery is also a form of sexual misconduct because when we marry we promise our spouse we will be loyal to them. When we commit adultery we break that promise and betray their trust. Sex should be an _expression of love and intimacy between two people and when it is, it contributes to our mental and emotional well-being.
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Is sex before marriage a type of sexual misconduct?
ANSWER: Not if there is love and mutual agreement between the two people. However it should never be forgotten that the biological function of sex is to reproduce and if an unmarried woman becomes pregnant it can cause a great deal of problems. Many mature and thoughtful people think it is far better to leave sex until after marriage.
But what about lying? Is it possible to live without telling lies?
ANSWER: If it is really impossible to get by in society or business without lying, such a shocking and corrupt state of affairs should be changed. The Buddhist is someone who resolves to do something practical about the problem by trying to be more truthful and honest.
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Well, what about alcohol? Surely a little drink doesn’t hurt.
ANSWER: People don’t drink for the taste. When they drink alone it is in order to seek release from tension and when they drink socially, it is usually to conform. Even a small amount of alcohol distorts consciousness and disrupts self-awareness. Taken in large quantities, its effect can be devastating.
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But drinking just a small amount wouldn’t be really breaking the precept, would it?
It’s only a small thing.
ANSWER: Yes, it is only a small thing and if you can’t practice even a small thing, your commitment and resolution isn’t very strong, is it?
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The five precepts are negative. They tell you what not to do. They don’t tell you what to do.
ANSWER: The Five Precepts are the basis of Buddhist morality. They are not all of it. We start by recognizing our bad behavior and striving to stop doing it. That is what the Five Precepts are for. After we have stopped doing bad, we then commence to do good. Take for example, speech. The Buddha says we should start by refraining from telling lies. After that, we should speak the truth, speak gently and politely and speak at the right time. He says
"Giving up false speech he becomes a speaker of truth, reliable, trustworthy, dependable, he does not deceive the world Giving up malicious speech he does not repeat there what he has heard here nor does he repeat here what he has heard there in order to cause variance between people. He reconciles those who are divided and brings closer together those who are already friends. Harmony is his joy, harmony is his deligh4 harmony is his love; it is the motive of his speech. Giving up harsh speech his speech is blameless, pleasing to the ear, agreeable, going to the heart, urbane, liked by most. Giving up idle chatter be speaks at the right time, what is correc4, to the point, about Dhamma and about discipline. He speaks words worth being treasured up, seasonable, reasonable, well defined and to the point"
I often hear Buddhists talk about wisdom and compassion. What do these two terms mean?
ANSWER: Some religions believe that compassion or love (the two are very similar) is the most important spiritual quality but they failing to develop any wisdom. The result is that you end up being a good-hearted fool, a very kind person but with little or no understanding. Other systems of thought, like science, believe that wisdom can best be developed when all emotions, including compassion, are kept out of the way.
The outcome of this is that science has tended to become preoccupied with results and has forgotten that science is to serve man not to control and dominate him. How, otherwise could scientists have lent their skills to develop the nuclear bomb, germ warfare, and the life. Religion has always seen reason and wisdom as the enemy of emotions like love and faith. Science has always seen emotions like love and faith as being enemies of reason and objectivity. And of course, as science progresses, religion declines. Buddhism, on the other hand, teaches that to be a truly balanced and complete individual, you must develop both wisdom and compassion. And because it is not dogmatic but based on experience, Buddhism has nothing to fear from science.
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So what, according to Buddhism, is wisdom?
ANSWER: The highest wisdom is seeing that in reality all phenomena are incomplete, impermanent, and not self This understanding is totally freeing and leads to the great security and happiness which is called Nirvana. However, the Buddha doesn’t speak too much about this level of wisdom. It is not wisdom if we simply believe what we are told. True wisdom is to directly see and understand for ourselves. At this level then, wisdom is to keep an open mind rather than being close-minded, listening to other points of view rather than being bigoted; to carefully examine facts that contradict our beliefs, rather than burying our heads in the sand; to be objective rather than prejudiced and partisan; to take time about forming our opinions and beliefs rather than just accepting the first or most emotional thing that is offered to us; and to always be ready to change our beliefs when facts that contradict them are presented to us. A person who does this is certainly wise and is certain to eventually arrive at true understanding. The path of just believing what you are told is easy. The Buddhist path requires courage, patience, flexibility and intelligence.
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I think few people could do this. So what is the point of Buddhism if only a few can practice it?
ANSWER. It is true that not everyone is ready for Buddhism yet. But to say therefore that we should teach a religion that is false but easily understandable just so that everyone can practice it is ridiculous. Buddhism aims at the truth and if not everyone has the capacity to understand it yet, they perhaps will be ready for it in their next life. However, there are many who, with just the right words or encouragement, are able to increase their understanding. And it is for this reason that Buddhists gently and quietly strive to share the insights of Buddhism with others. The Buddha taught us out of compassion and we teach others out of compassion.
So we arrive at compassion. That, according to Buddhism, is compassion?
ANSWER: Just as wisdom covers the intellectual or comprehending side of our nature, compassion covers the emotional or feeling side of our nature. Like wisdom, compassion is uniquely human quality. Compassion is made up of two words ‘co’ meaning together and ‘passion’ meaning a strong feeling. And this is what compassion is. When we see someone in distress and we feel their pain as if it were our own, and strive to eliminate or lessen their pain, then this is compassion So all the best in human beings all the Buddhalike qualities like sharing readiness to give Comfort sympathy, concern and caring-an are manifestations of compassion You will notice also that in the compassionate person, care and love towards others has its origins in care and love for oneself We can really understand others when we really understand ourselves. We will know what’s best for others when we know what’s best for ourselves. We can feel for others when we feel for ourselves. So in Buddhism, one’s own spiritual development blossoms quite naturally into concern for the welfare of others. The Buddha’s life illustrates this very well. He spent six years struggling for his own welfare, after which, he was able to be of benefit to the whole of mankind.
So you are saying that we are best able to help others after we have helped ourselves. Isn’t that a bit selfish?
ANSWER: We usually see altruism, concern for others before oneself, as being the opposite of selfishness, concern for oneself before others. Buddhism does not see it as either one or the other rather as a blending of the two. Genuine self-concern will gradually mature into concern for others as one sees that others are really the same as oneself. This is genuine compassion. Compassion is the most beautiful jewel in the crown of the Buddha’s teaching.
What you said so far is very interesting to me. How do I become a Buddhist?
ANSWER: Once there was a man called Upali. He was the follower of another religion and he went to the Buddha in order to argue with him and try to convert him. But after talking to the Buddha, he was so impressed that he decided to become a follower of the Buddha. But the Buddha said:
”Make a proper investigation first. Proper inves-tigation is good for a well-known person like yourself”
“Now I am even more pleased and satisfied when the Lord says to me: ‘Make a proper inves-tigation first. ‘For if members of another religion had secured me as a disciple they would have paraded a banner all around the town saying:
‘Upali has joined our religion.’ But the Lord says to me: ‘Make a proper investigation first. Proper investigation is good for a well-known person like yourself”
M11379
In Buddhism, understanding is the most important thing and understanding takes time. So do not impulsively rush into Buddhism. Take your time, ask questions, consider carefully, and then make your decision. The Buddha was not interested in having large numbers of disciples. He was concerned that people should follow his teachings as a result of a careful investigation and consideration of facts.
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If I have done this and I find the Buddha’s teaching acceptable, what would I do then if I wanted to become a Buddhist?
ANSWER: It would best to join a good temple or Buddhist group, support them, be supported by them and continue to learn more about the Buddha’s teachings. Then, when you are ready, you would formally become a Buddhist by taking the Three Refuges.
What are the Three Refuges?
ANSWER: A refuge is a place where people go when they are distressed or when they need safety and security. There are many types of refuge. When people are unhappy, they take refuge with their friends, when they are worried and frightened, they might take refuge in false hopes and beliefs. As they approach death, they might take refuge in the belief m an eternal heaven. But, as the Buddha says, none of these are true refuges because they do not give comfort and security based on reality.
Truly these are not safe refuges, the refuge supreme. Not the refuge whereby one is’ freed from all sorrow. But to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha and see with real understanding the four Noble Truths, Suffering, the cause of suffering, the transcending of suffering and the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to the transcending of suffering, This in deed is’ a safe refuge, it is the refuge supreme. It is the refuge whereby one is freed from all suffering.
Dp 189-192
Taking Refuge in the Buddha is a confident acceptance of the fact that one can become fully enlightened and perfected just as the Buddha was. Taking refuge in the Dhamma means understanding the Four Noble Truths and basing one’s life on the Noble Eightfold Path. Taking Refuge in the Sangha means looking for support, inspiration and guidance from all who walk the Noble Eightfold Path. Doing this one becomes a Buddhist and thus takes the first step on the path toward Nirvana.
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What changes have taken place in your life since you first took the three refuges?
ANSWER: Like countless millions of others over the last 2500 years, I have found that the Buddha’s teachings have made sense out of a difficult, world, they have given meaning to what was a meaningless life, they have given me a humane and compassionate ethics with which to lead my life and they have shown me how I can attain a state of purity and perfection in the next life. A poet in ancient Inda once wrote of the Buddha:
To go to him for refuge, to sing his praise, to do him honors and to abide in his Dhamma is to act with understanding.
I agree with these words completely.
I have a friend who is always trying to convert me to his religion. I am not really interested in his religion and I have told him so but he won’t leave me alone. What can I do?
ANSWER: The first thing you must understand is that this person is not really your friend. A true friend accepts you as you are and respects your wishes. I suspect that this person is merely pretending to be your friend so he can convert you. When people try to impose their will on you they are certainly not friends.
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But he says he wants to share his religion with me.
ANSWER: Sharing your religion with other is a good thing. But I suggest that your friend doesn’t know the difference between sharing and imposing. If I have an apple, I offer you half and you accept my offer, then I have shared with you. But if you say to me “Thank you, but I have already eaten” and I keep insisting that you take half the apple until you finally give in to my pressure, this can hardly be called sharing. People like your ‘friend’ try to disguise their bad behavior by calling it ‘sharing’, ‘love’ or ‘generosity’ but by whatever name they call it, their behavior is still just rude, bad manners and selfish.
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So how can I stop him?
ANSWER: It is simple. Firstly, be clear in your mind what you want. Secondly, clearly and briefly tell him so. Thirdly, when he asks you questions like “What is your belief on this matter” or “Why don’t you wish to come to the meeting with me”, clearly, politely and persistently repeat your first statement.
“Thank you for the invitation but I would rather not come”.
“Why not?”
“That is really my business. I would rather not come.
“But there will be many interesting people there.”
“I am sure there will be but I would rather not come.”
“I am inviting you because I care about you.”
“I am glad you care about me but I would rather not come.”
If you clearly, patiently and persistently repeat yourself and refuse to allow him to get you involved in a discussion he will eventually give up. It is a shame that you have to do this, but it is very important for people to learn that they cannot impose their beliefs or wishes upon others.
Should Buddhists try to share the Dhamma with others?
ANSWER: Yes, they should and I think most Buddhists understand the difference between sharing and imposing. If people ask you about Buddhism, tell them. You can even tell them about the Buddha’s teachings without their asking. But if, by either their words or their actions, they let you know that they are not interested, accept that and respect their wishes. It is also important to remember that you let people know about the Dhamma far more effectively through your actions than through preaching to them. Show peoples the Dhamma by always being considerate, kind, tolerant, upright and honest. Let the Dhamma shine forth through your speech and actions. If each of us, you and I, know the Dhamma thoroughly, practice it fully and share it generously with others, we can be of great benefit to others and ourselves also.
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Sunday, April 12, 2009
Stress Management Tips!
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It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final
Thursday, April 9, 2009
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