အေသာကရဲ႕ အကၡရာမ်ား-၉ (အပိုင္း၂)

“ဟာ…မဂၤလာ မ႐ွိလိုက္တာ”

ဒီလို ဒီလို မေတြ႕မႀကံဳ မခံစားရေစဖို႔….



ေဒ၀ါနံပိယ ပိယဒသီမင္းသည္ ဤသို႔ မိန္႔ၾကား၏။ ဤေလာက၌ လူတို႔သည္ မဂၤလာႀကီးငယ္ ျပဳလုပ္ေနၾက၏။ အနာေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ေသာအခါ ထိမ္းျမားေသာအခါ သားသမီးရေသာအခါ ခရီးထြက္ေသာအခါႏွင့္ အျခားအခါတို႔၌ မဂၤလာႀကီးငယ္ ျပဳလုပ္ေလ့႐ွိၾက၏။ ထိုမွတပါး သားသမီးရေသာ မိန္းမမ်ားသည္ အထူးထူးအေထြေထြ အက်ိဳးမ႐ွိ သိမ္ဖ်င္းေသာ မဂၤလာမ်ားကို ျပဳလုပ္တတ္ၾက၏။ စင္စစ္ ထိုမဂၤလာမ်ားကို ျပဳလုပ္ေသာ္လည္း အက်ိဳး ေက်းဇူးမ႐ွိ။
တရားမဂၤလာသာ အက်ိဳးႀကီး၏။ ယင္းတို႔မွာ ေက်းကၽြန္-သူခစားတို႔အား ေကာင္းစြာ ၾကည့္႐ႈျခင္း, ဆရာသမားတို႔အား ေကာင္းစြာ ဆည္းကပ္ျခင္း, သတၱ၀ါတို႔အား ေကာင္းစြာ ေစာင့္ေ႐ွာက္ျခင္း, ရဟန္းပုဏၰားတို႔အား ေကာင္းစြာပူေဇာ္ျခင္းတို႔ ျဖစ္၏။ ဤနည္းတူစြာ အျခားအလားတူ ျပဳလုပ္ျခင္းတို႔သည္လည္း တရားမဂၤလာမည္၏။ “ဤတရားမဂၤလာသည္ ေကာင္းျမတ္၏။ အလို႐ွိေသာ အက်ိဳးကို ၿပီးေျမာက္ေစ၏”ဟု အဖ,သား, ညီအကို, အ႐ွင္, သခင္, အေဆြ, ခင္ပြန္း, အိမ္နီးခ်င္းတို႔သည္ ေဟာေျပာၾကရမည္။
ထို႔ျပင္ အလွဴဒါနဟူသည္ ေကာင္းျမတ္၏။ ဤေလာက၌ တရားအလွဴ, တရားခ်ီးေျမႇာက္ျခင္းကဲသို႔ေသာ လွဴဒါန္းခ်ီးေျမႇာက္ျခင္းမ်ိဳးမ႐ွိ”ဟု အေဆြ, ခင္ပြန္း, အသိ, အကၽြမ္း, ေဆြမ်ိဳး, ဥာတကာ, အေပါင္းအသင္းတို႔သည္ မျပတ္မလပ္ ေဟာေျပာၾကရမည္။ “ဤတရားမဂၤလာ, တရားအလွဴ, တရားခ်ီးေျမႇာက္ျခင္းတို႔ကို ျပဳသျဖင့္ နတ္႐ြာေရာက္ႏိုင္၏။ ယင္းသို႔ နတ္႐ြာေရာက္ေၾကာင္း အထူးခ်ီးေျမႇာက္ျခင္းမ်ိဳး တစံုတရာမ႐ွိ” ဟုု ေဟာေျပာၾကရမည္။
(သိရီဓမၼာေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ ကိုးတိုင္းကိုးဌာန ဗုဒၶဓမၼႏိုင္ငံေတာ္-ဦးေသာ္ဇင္)


Thus saith His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King: People perform various ceremonies. In troubles, marriages of sons and daughters, birth of children, departures from home on these and other (occasions) people perform many different ceremonies. But in such (cases) mothers and wives perform numerous and diverse, petty and worthless ceremonies.
Now ceremonies should certainly be performed. But these bear little fruit. That, however, is productive of great fruit which is connected with Dharma. Herein are these: Proper treatment of slaves and employees, reverence to teachers, restraint of violence towards living creatures and liberality to Brahman and Sramana ascetics. These and such others are called Dharma-mamgalas.
Therefore should it be said by a father, or a son, or a brother, or a master, or a friend, a companion, and even a neighbour: “This is commendable; this is the ceremony to be performed until the purpose thereof is fulfilled; this shall I perform." For those ceremonies that are other than these they are all of doubtful effect. It may achieve that purpose or may not. And it is only for this world. But this ceremonial of Dharma is not of time. Even if one does not achieve that object in this world, in the world beyond is produced endless merit. But if one achieves that purpose in this world, the gain of both results from it that object in this world, and endless merit is produced in the other world by this Dharma-mangala.
(Asoka-R.K. Mookerji)


Thus speaks the Beloved of the Gods, the king Piyadassi: People practice various ceremonies. In illness, at the marriage of sons and daughters, at the birth of children, when going on a journey—on these and on other similar occasions people perform many ceremonies. Women especially perform a variety of ceremonies, which are trivial and useless. If such ceremonies must be performed they have but small results. But the one ceremony which has great value is that of Dhamma. This ceremony includes, regard for slaves and servants, respect for teachers, restrained behavior towards living beings, and donations to sramanas and brahmans---these and similar practices are called the ceremony of Dhamma. So father, son, brother, master, friends, acquaintance, and neighbor should think, “This is virtuous, this is the ceremony I should practice, until my object is achieved.
Or else they should say to themselves: Other ceremonies are doubtful in their effectiveness. They may achieve their objects or they may not, and they are only effective in temporal matters. But the ceremony of Dhamma is effective for all the time, for even if its object is not attained in this life, endless merit is produced for the life to come. But if the object is attained in this life, there is a gain in both respects. For in this life the object is attained, and in the next life, endless merit is produced through that ceremony of Dhamma.
More over, they say: “Giving is good.” But there is no gift on favor comparable to the gift of Dhamma or the favor of Dhamma. So it is essential that a friend, companion, relative, or colleague should advice on all occasions, saying, “This should be done. Through this one can gain heaven”—and what can be more important than to gain heaven?
(Asoka and the decline of the Mauryas- Romila Thapar)



King Piyadarsi, the Beloved of the Gods, said: People observed many rites in sickness, at marriages, on the birth of children and before resuming journey. On these and other similar occasions people observe many rites. On these occasions, women observe many ordinary and useless rites of various nature. Rites should be performed. But rites of this nature are productive of very meager result. That rites, however, is of considerable value which is Dharma-mangala. This includes proper treatment of servants and employees, respect to teachers, non-violence towards living beings and liberality towards Brahmanas and Sramanas. These and other of this type are called Dharma-mingalas. Therefore, it should be said by a father, a son, a brother, a master, a friend or a companion, and even by a neighbors “this is good, this rite should be performed till the aim is achieved, this shall I perform.”
And it has been said, “Gift is good.” But there is no obligation compared to that of Dharma. Therefore, a friend, a well wisher, a relative or a companion out to convince (one another) on these occasions, saying: “it is a duty, it is good, it is possible to gain heaven with it.” And what is more important of attainment through this than the attainment of heaven?
For those ceremonies other than these are all of dubious effect. It may attain success or it may not attain. And it (Dharma-mangala) is not intended for if one does not attain the intended object in the material world, it produces endless merit in the other world. But if the intended object is achieved in this world, the results of both are gained, that object in this world and endless merit in the other world through this Dharma-mangala.
(Inscriptions of Asoka- N. P. Rastogi)