HlaMin

Category: Buddhism

Sayadaws, Suttas, Terms

  • GBNF — 2025 (Part 2)

    GBNF — 2025 (Part 2)

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 7th October 2026

    1. U Pyinnyadipa

    Beelin Sayadaw
    • Patron, Panditarama Monastery
    • Former Chief Sayadaw, Hse Mile Gone Monastery
    • Former Chief Sayadaw, Tathagata Meditation Center, San Jose, California, USA
    • Passed away in Yangon on June 18, 2025
    • I was Interpreter for some of Sayadaw’s talks (at TMC)

    2. Daw Myint Thwe

    Daw Myint Thwe
    Betty / Daw Myint Thwe
    • Aka Betty
    • Passed away in Sydney, Australia
    • Spouse : Dr. Freddie Ba Hli (GBNF)
    • Daughter : Tin Tin Hlaing (UCC)
    • Sons : Tha Hlaing (EC83, UCC), Min Thet Tun (GBNF)
    • U Sein Tin (EC75, UCC) created a video for the Memorial Service
    • Daw Mya Win (Alison, BBS, UN, former classmate) gave a Eulogy

    3. Maung Kaung

    • 1st BE Intake of 64
    • M71
    • GBNF #143
    • U Ohn Khine & team maintain the GBNF list for the Class

    4. Kaung Aye

    • Aka Peter
    • Studied M.Sc (Computer Science) at UCC
    • Passed away in Sydney, Australia
    • Spouse : Theresa Wong
    • Aung Ngwe Tun (Glen) & ex-UCC group posted photos & videos of the last journey
  • U Thittila (1896-1997) ဦးသေဌိလ

    U Thittila (1896-1997) ဦးသေဌိလ

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 6th October 2026

    U Thittila
    • Ovadacariya to Sanagha Maya Nayaka, trustees of renowned pagodas
    • Outstanding teacher and writer
    • Played an important role in reviving Buddhism in India and propagating the study of Abhidhamma
    • Very modest; rarely talked about his many achievements
    • Patamagyaw scholar of all Burma (1918) : selected from among 5000 candidates
    • Panyattisasanahita (1923) : among the 4 out of 150 entrants who passed the toughest monastic examination
    • Studied Sanskrit in India; English in India and England
    • Lectured in US, UK, France, … (25+ countries)
    • Translated Vibhanga (second of the seven Adbhidhamma texts) from Pali to English : published by the Pali Text Society in 1969 under the title of The Book of Analysis
    • Essential Themes of Buddhist Lectures
    • Collection of unconnected individual talks given between 1938 – 1983
    • Part 1 : Introductory articles or Talks of Buddhism (10 lectures)
    • Part 2 : Talks involving Sila in particular (5 lectures)
    • Part 3 : Talks involving Samadhi in particular (12 lectures)
    • Part 4 : Talks involving Panna in particular (4 lectures)
    • Part 5 : Talks dealing with Buddhism in general (12 lectures)
  • Anattalekhana Sutta အနတ္တလက္ခဏသုတ်

    Anattalekhana Sutta အနတ္တလက္ခဏသုတ်

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 6th October 2026

    Mahasi Sayadaw

    Atta အတ္တ and Anatta အနတ္တ

    Some early religions talked about reincarnation (transmigration of atta, atman, soul). In contrast, Buddhism discusses rebirth and no-soul (anatta).

    Sutta သုတ္တန်

    The Buddha delivered “Anattalakkhana Sutta” as a follow-up sermon to the “Taya Oo” to his five disciples led by Ashin Kondanna. The Sutta’s title literally means “No-self characteristic discourse”.

    Buddha taught that “each of the five khandas ခန္ဓာ (aggregates) are subject to impermanence (အနိစ္စ anicca), and suffering, unsatisfactoriness, or misery (ဒုက္ခ dukkha) and thus unfit for identification with a self”.

    The five disciples became enlightened after listening to the Sutta. They became members of the (Paramatta ပရမတ္ထ) Sangha သံဃာ, the third of the Triple Gems.

    Books

    Book

    There are many books on the Sutta including the one by Mahasi Sayadaw explaining the relevance of the Sutta to Vipassana meditation.

    There is also an English translation of the Sutta by Saya U Pe Maung Tin.

  • Ratana Sutta ရတနာ့သုတ်

    Ratana Sutta ရတနာ့သုတ်

    by Hla Min

    Update : 6th October 2026

    Ratana / Yadanar

    Ratana ရတနာ means Gem (precious jewel)

    Ratana Sutta

    • Second Sutta in “Paritta Pali”
    • Ashin Ananda အရှင်အာနန္ဒာ recited the Sutta at Vesali ဝေသာလီ
    • Assertion of truth
    • To overcome three calamities ကပ်ကြီးသုံးပါး — massive losses due to famine, diseases, and
      [destructive] weapons

    Triple Gems

    • Buddha ဗုဒ္ဓ
      The Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Enlightened One
    • Dhamma ဓမ္မ
      Teachings of the Buddha
    • Sangha သံဃာ
      Monastic Order of the Buddha; Congregation of [paramatta] monks

    Three Refuges သရဏဂုံ

    • I take refuge in the Buddha
    • I take refuge in the Dhamma
    • I take refuge in the Sangha

    Sutta သုတ္တန်

    Pali in Burmese script

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    Sutta 1
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    Sutta 2
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    Sutta 3
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    Sutta 4

    Pali Text & English Translation

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    Sutta 5
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    Sutta 5
    Paritta Pali
    Payeik Kyee

  • Payeik Kyee Pali Theik Kha ပရိတ်ကြီးပါဠိသိက္ခာ

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 6th October 2026

    • Payeik Kyee ပရိတ်ကြီး aka Paritta Pali ပရိတ္တပါဠိ and Protective Verses Collection of eleven Protective Verses
      is recited in part or full by monks, novices, and lay people.
    • Pali ပါဠိ — Language of discourse in Theravada Buddhism
    • Theik Kha သိက္ခာ — Practice
    • Thamane Kyaw သာမဏေကျော် — Pen name of Sayadaw U Dhammika ဦးဓမ္မိက , who won the prestigious award of Thamane Kyaw (Distinguished novice scholar) in his youth.
    • Payeik Kyee Pali Theik Kha
      ပရိတ်ကြီးပါဠိသိက္ခာ — The book discusses Pali terms, phrases & grammar.
    Payeik Kyee Pali Theik Kha
    • For a comprehensive treatment on Protective Verses, refer to the epic work by “Thabyekan Sayadaw” သပြေကန်ဆရာတော် and a treatise by U Jotalankara ဦးဇောတလင်္ကာရ (Dhammanda Vihara, Half Moon Bay, California, USA).
  • Memories of Sagaing စစ်ကိုင်း

    Memories of Sagaing စစ်ကိုင်း

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 6th October 2026

    Dr. Chit Swe

    Ma Ma Mi (Daw Khin Khin Latt) is from Sagaing. She wanted Saya Chit (Dr. Chit Swe) to be a Yahan (temporary monk) at a monastery in Sagaing Hills. Some monastery compounds are named after the towns in Irrawaddy Delta.

    Ko Myint Oo and I offered to be temporary monks with Saya Chit.

    Ordination

    There are two phases to become a monk :

    (a) Novitiation (ရှင်ပြု Shin Pyu) or “Lower Ordination” to become a “Ko Yin” (ကိုရင် novice)

    (b) “Thane Wyn” or “Higher Ordination” in a Sima (သိမ် Thane) to become an Upazin ဥပဇင်း

    At least five monks are needed to conduct the “Higher Ordination”.

    In Yangon, the ceremony takes 15 – 30 minutes.

    The final part is an Exhortation by the Preceptor. As Mentor to the newly ordained monk, the Preceptor shares his knowledge and gives advice.

    When the Preceptor learned that Saya Chit is a renowned Professor and the Founder/Director of UCC, he gave “extra” attention by exhorting for “close to three hours”. Sayadaw enjoyed illuminating Saya Chit.

    Since I could barely squat, I was “offered” a pillow to rest my knees and I was allowed to “kneel down” on the pillow.

    Tourist Guide for a day

    After a week of monk hood, we returned to our lay life sans (without) our hair.

    Ko Myint Oo is a social animal. He knew two Guides from “Tourist Burma”. At least one of them was new. They had a reasonably tough assignment. They had to guide an American student (in his senior year at a New York University) trying to write a first-hand report about the Buddhist artifacts in Mandalay and Sagaing.

    The Guides requested help from Ko Myint Oo. Ko Myint Oo shunted and in a moment I became a volunteer tourist guide explaining (to the best of my knowledge) Buddhism & rites and rituals.

  • Mental States

    Mental States

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 6th October 2026

    Cetasika စေတသိက်

    • Mental states
    • All types of cetasikas are able to arise only be depending on Citta (စိတ် consciousness)
    • There are 52 types = 13 + 14 + 25
    • Classified into three groups

    First Group : 13 types

    • Annasamana : Common to others : 13 types = 7 + 6

    • Universal annasamana : associates with all cittas : 7 types
    • Contact, Feeling, Perception, Motivation, One-pointedness, Faculty of mental life, Attention

    • Particular annasmana : associates with some cittas : 6 types
    • Initial application, Sustained application, Decision, Effort, Joy, Wish to do

    Second Group : 14 types

    • Akusla : Immoral mental state : 14 types
    • Ignorance, Shamelessness, Fearlessness, Restlessness, Attachment, Wrong view, Hatred (fear), Envy, Stinginess, Remorse, Sloth, Torpor, Doubt

    Third Group : 25 types

    • Sobhana : mental state with virtue : 25 types = 19 + 3 + 2 + 1
    • Mental states that are common to all types of sobhana citta : 19 types
    • Faith, Mindfulness, Moral shame, Moral dread, Non-attachment, Non-hatred, Equanimity, Tranquility of mental factors, Tranquility of mind, Lightness of mental factors, Lightness of mind, Pliancy of mental factors, Pliancy of mind, Adaptability of mental factors, Adaptability of mind, Proficiency of mental factors, Proficiency of mind, Rectitude of mental factors, Rectitude of mind
    • Mental state that abstains from evil speech, action, and livelihood : 3 types
    • Right speech, Right action, Right livelihood
    • Mental state that has limitless objects on which one must be practiced : 2 types
    • Compassion, Sympathetic joy
    • Mental state that realizes an object : 1 type
    • Faculty of wisdom

    Books by

    • Dr. Nandamalabivamsa
    • Dr. Mehm Tin Mon
    Abhidhamma
  • Visuddhimaggarasa ဝိသုဒ္ဓိမဂ္ဂသာရ

    Visuddhimaggarasa ဝိသုဒ္ဓိမဂ္ဂသာရ

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 5th October 2026

    Vissudimagga

    ဝိသုဒ္ဓိမဂ္ဂ

    • The Path of Purification
    • Translated from Pali into English by Bhikkhu Nyanamoli

    Vissudimaggasara

    ဝိသုဒ္ဓိမဂ္ဂသာရ

    • The Essence of the Path of Purification
    • It is an abridged version of Vissudimagga
    • By Dr. Ottara Nyana

    THE PATH OF PURIFICATION

    • Vissudhimaggarasa
    • An abridged edition of Bhikku Nyanamoli’s translation by :
    • Dr. Ottara Nyana
    • Head of the Birmingham Buddhist Vihara, UK
    • Publisher : Triple Gems Publication
    • First edition : 2011
    • PART I : VIRTUE (Sila)
    • Chapters 1 – 2
    • PART II : CONCENTRATION (Samadhi)
    • Chapters 3 – 13
    • PART III : UNDERSTANDING (Panna)
    • Chapters 14 – 23
    • Index

    Posts

    • Buddhism
    • Dhamma Books
    • Pali
    • Sayadaws
  • Talk — Karuna ကရုဏာ၊ Mudita မုဒိတာ၊ Uppekha ဥပေက္ခာ

    Talk — Karuna ကရုဏာ၊ Mudita မုဒိတာ၊ Uppekha ဥပေက္ခာ

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 5th October 2026

    Video Broadcast on January 11, 2021

    Four Byamaso Taya ဗြဟ္မစိုရ်တရား

    • Metta မေတ္တာ
      Unbounded Love / Loving Kindness
    • Karuna ကရုဏာ
      Compassion
    • Mudita မုဒိတာ
      Altruistic Joy or Sympathetic Joy
    • Uppekkha ဥပေက္ခာ
      Equanimity

    Karuna

    • Pali term
    • Rendered as Compassion
    • One of the four Bhamaso Taya
    • Buddha is called “The Compassionate One”
    • Mahayana Buddhists emphasize the importance of Compassion
    • Sayadaw U Sobhana (GBNF) had four Indonesian siblings as his students.
      Named one of them Karuna.
      She was present at Sayadaw’s Last Journey.
    • U Moe Myint (M76) and several alumni are members of the “Karuna Ah Thinn” in Singapore.
      One activitiy is to help the needy for the Last Journey of their loved one.
    • We saw an outpouring of Karuna in the relief efforts for Disaster Recovery (e.g. Cyclone Nargis)

    Practicing Karuna

    • May suffering ones be suffering-free
    • And the fear-struck fearless be
    • May the grieving shed all grief
    • And all beings find relief

    Mudita

    • Pali term.
    • Rendered as Altruistic Joy or Sympathetic Joy
    • One of the four Bhamaso Taya
    • One should feel joyful when one hears good news about others.

    Myanmar Mudita Sar Saung

    • Saya U Nyunt Htay (Met73) is Chief Editor
    • Contributor : Tekkatho Moe War (U Moe Aung)
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    Mudita Sar Saung
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    Upekkha

    • Pali term
    • Rendered as Neutral [Feeling]
    • Also translated as Equanimity
    • One of the four Bhamaso Taya

    In a loose usage in Burmese, “Upekkha Shu” means “ignore”. It is not representative of the importance of Upekkha, which provides a balance of life and avoids the two extremes stated in the Dhammacakka Sutta

    It is non-trivial to sense Upekkha while practicing Vipassana (Insight) Meditation.

    Feelings may be be categorized as

    • Pleasant Feeling
    • Unpleasant Feeling
    • Non-Pleasant and Non-Unpleasant Feeling

    Upekkha is synonymous with “Non-Pleasant and Non-Unpleasant Feeling”.

    Buddhist Dictionary
  • Talk — Metta မေတ္တာ

    Talk — Metta မေတ္တာ

    by Hla Min

    Updated : 5th October 2026

    Video Broadcast on January 10, 2021

    Metta CD

    Four Byamaso Taya

    • Metta
      Unbounded Love / Loving Kindness
    • Karuna
      Compassion
    • Mudita
      Altruistic Joy or Sympathetic Joy
    • Uppekkha
      Equanimity
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    Book by U Thu Kha

    Metta

    • Pali term
      Written in Burmese as Myitta
    • Rendered as
      Unbounded Love
      Loving Kindness
    • One of the four Bhamaso Taya or Bhama Vihara (along with Karuna, Mudita, and Uppekha)
    • Practiced as a form of meditation
    • U Silananda‘s book on Protective Verses has a section on how to practice Loving Kindness Meditation.
    • Tipitaka Mingun Sayadawgyi recited the Two Methods of sending Metta.
      As mentioned in Metta Sutta
      Alternative: 528 “Metta” (13 x 4 x 12)
      They can be found on YouTube and CDs.
    • “Metta Sutta” is one of the eleven Suttas in “Paritta Pali” (Protective Verses).
      Also known as Karaniya Metta Sutta
      Chanted at most Buddhist ceremonies.
    • Myitta is covered along with Thitsar (Truth) in Dr. Min Tin Mon‘s book “Myitta and Thitsar“
    • U Thu Kha wrote a book on Metta Sutta.
    • U Jotalankara‘s book explains the 528 Metta.
    • A Physics teacher said, “Myitta So Dar Ah Hlyar Ah Nan Ma Shee Bay Mei Ah Thwar Ah Pyan Shee Bar Thay Dae.”
    • Metta is also used as a name or part of a name.
    • Metta is a Myanmar comedian.
    • Mettananda Vihara is a monastery in Northern California.
      Moved from Central Avenue, Fremont to Castro Valley.
    • Metta Vihari is an association that performs Chanting, and also offers food dana at selected gatherings.

    Practicing Metta

    By Way of LOCATION:

    • May I be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all beings in this house be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all beings in this area be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all beings in this city be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all beings in this country be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all beings in this world be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all beings in this universe be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all beings be well, happy and peaceful.

    By Way of PERSONS:

    • May I be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May my teachers be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May my parents be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May my relatives be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May my friends be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May the indifferent persons be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May the unfriendly persons be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all meditators be well, happy and peaceful.
    • May all beings be well, happy and peaceful.

    Metta Sutta

    • Third sutta in “Paritta Pali”
    • also referred to as Karaniya Metta Sutta
    • Desirable qualities of a Practitioner
    • Loving Kindness Meditation
    • Formal
      Translation from Pali into Burmese/Myanmar and English
    • Informal
      Books by Saya U Thu Kha and Saya Dr. Mehm Tin Mon

    Chanting

    Two ways (as per Mingun Tipitaka Sayadawgyi)

    • Referred in Metta Sutta
    • 528 “Metta” (13 x 4 x 12)
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    Buddhist Dictionary