Good Deeds at the Pagoda or Virtuous Action

By Sann Ni Lar Winn

THREE things are most important to Buddhists, namely the ‘Buddha’, the ‘Dhamma’ and the ‘Sangha’.

The ‘Noble Buddha’ is the Founder of the Buddhist religion, the ‘Dhamma’ in his teaching and the ‘Sangha’ is the Holy or­der of the enlightened disciples, who preserve and propagate the religion. Buddhists regard all three as the objects of the high­est veneration. Collectively, they are called the ‘Holy Triple Gem’.

Taking refuge in the Holy Triple Gam is effected by the rec­itation of the following passages, administered by the officiating monk ;

(1) Buddhham saranam gacchami = I go the Buddha for refuge (ဗုဒ္ဓံသရဏံဂစ္ဆာမိ)

(2) Dahmman saranam gacchami = I go the Dhama for refuge (ဓမ္မံသရဏံဂစ္ဆာမိ)

(3) Sangham saranam gac­chami = I go the sangha for ref­uge (သံဃံသရဏံဂစ္ဆာမိ)

In my childhood, I was schooling as a primary student in a monastery, so I was taught the basics of Buddhism to be­come a good Buddhist teacher by our presiding monk of the monastery. According to his man­agement, we sat for the Mingala Sutta examination, which was held by YMBA (Young Men's Buddhist Association). Besides, we began to observe the eight precepts as we can afford on every Sabbath day. Therefore, we got unaccountable good ad­vantages from the training of our presiding monk since my prima­ry school student.

Teaching by our presiding monk, we learned the Mingala Sutta(The Thirty Eight Bless­ings). If we carefully examine the thirty-eight blessings, we shall find that each is useful in itself and is directly relevant in our lives. For example, the first blessing tells us not to get in­volved with evil people and al­low ourselves to be influenced by their evil ways. The second one advises us to associate with good people, for such an associ­ation would bring us no harm but happiness and prosperity.

Since my retirement, I have had a good chance to serve as pa­goda trustee of Eaindawya Pago­da, which is situated near Myoma Kyaung Street in Yagon Region. Every religion has a system of worship. According to generally accepted nations, worship is an expression of reverent honour shown to entities or supernatu­ral beings whom the worshiper believes are capable of prevent­ing misfortunes and dangers, or granting them certain boons and blessings.

Buddhism is a very old reli­gion, more than 2,500 years old, founded by the noble Buddha who lived in India in the sixth century BC. India is known as the birthplace of Buddhism be­cause it was there that Buddhism arose, and from there it spread to other parts of the world.

Buddhism is a religion of self-help. It teaches people to de­pend on themselves, to be coura­geous and confident in their own ability. Buddhism places them at the centre of all things; it advis­es the people to strive and work hard to achieve their goods, ma­terial or spiritual, through their own efforts, not through prayer or mere wishful thinking. It also teaches that the entire people are born equal and are free to choose whatever is best for themselves.

Buddhism teaches people to be kind and gentle. Buddhists are peace-loving people and have never made war in the name of the religion. Today, there is vio­lence everywhere in our society because many people are selfish and lack kindness.

The Buddhist emphasis on peace and loving kindness makes the religion appealing to peace-loving people in the world.

We are Buddhists and are, therefore, Buddhist followers. He is our Spiritual father, for He gave us spiritual life. Because of this, we should always love Him, respect Him, and be grateful to Him.

The Dhamma is the teaching of the Buddha. If the universal law that the Buddha discovered and taught to the world. It is the Truth itself. And because the Dhamma is Truth, it must be true, valid and universal at all times and in all places.

The Buddha, the Dhamma and and the Sangha are closely interrelated. All three are essen­tial for the rise and the spread of the religion.

When we worship, we should therefore honour the Dhamma and the Sangha, not allowing our minds to be clouded with other thoughts or worries. We should feed our faith and conviction to do good, strengthened with every word of worship we utter.

One month ago, the ambas­sador of Thailand to Myanmar, and the diplomatic staff came to worship at Eaindawya Pago­da, for the donation of the Thai King’s queen. They believe that the Eaindawya Pagoda and the Botahtaung Pagoda in Myanmar give them many good advan­tages concerning housing and wealth-seeking affairs, etc.

Generally, Myanmar Bud­dhists always go to the pagoda to worship to pary at the corner assigned to the day of their Birth, according to Myanmar Astrol­ogy. In fact, good deeds at the pagodas make a virtuous action or merit.

Every person who does good actions will get good results; like­wise, this person who does bad things will get bad results. This is the law of Kamma (Actions: (1) Bodily action, (2) Verbal action, and (3) Mental action (ကာယကံ၊ ၀စီကံ၊ မနောကံ) according to our noble Buddhism.