HlaMin

Blog

  • TMC

    Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa gave a talk “The ten meanings of Tatagatha” at the Tathagata Meditation Center (TMC) at 1215, Lucretia Street, San Jose.

    U Silananda

    History and Activities

    For the history and activities of the meditation center, please visit

    http://www.tathagata.org/

    TMC Dining Hall

    • In the dining hall, there is an album about Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa’s early years in the US (e.g. meditation retreat at a church, dhamma classes at a Zen Buddhism Temple).
    • There are also photos about the Summer Camp for children and young adults.
    • There are two cabinets of books: one for dhamma dana distribution, and another for sale.

    Newsletter

    • The “Dhamma Bell Newsletter” was edited by volunteers (U Theikdi & Maureen O’Brien).
    • It was published quarterly.
    • It featured dhamma talks given at TMC and also recipes (e.g. vegetarian spring rolls).
  • Mechanical Sayas

    Mechanical Sayas

    by Hla Min

    Updated : May 2025

    Mech Sayas
    • The photo was probably taken in the late 1980s.
    • There were only two Sayamas among the 40 or so Mechanical Engineering Sayas & Sayamas.

    The following sayas are GBNF

    • U Maung Maung Than
    • U Ba Than
    • U Aung Than
    • S. Arya
    • U Khin Maung
    • U Soe Lwin
    • U Kyaw Sein
    • U Tin Maung Oo
    • Dr. Chan Nyein
    • U Thein Tun Aung
    • U Hla Thwin
    • S Kyaw Aye

    Comments

    • The photo does not include U Tin Myint, Dr. Lu Aye and U Zaw Hein Kyaw — all M80. They were doing postgraduate studies in Melbourne, Australia.
    • Dr. Jesse Htwe was in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2000, but she did not attend SPZP-2000.
    • I met several Mech sayas at the SPZPs and Mech Gatherings (as Guest) in Yangon.
  • The power of Kabyar

    The power of Kabyar

    • Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War) is a distinguished poet, writer, editor and publisher.
    • He wrote for newspapers, magazines and journals.
    • He has compiled and published some collections of his works.
    • His mentor was Daung Nwe Swe (Laureate Poet).
    • He served as an all-round volunteer for the publication of the Annual Magazine of RUESU (Rangoon University Engineering Students Union).

    Chief Editor and/or Publisher

    • RIT Annual Magazines
    • Hlyat Sit Sar Saung (for RIT EE Association)
    • Commemorative issues of Swel Daw Yeik Sar Saung for SPZP-2002, SPZP-2007, and SPZP-2010
    • Commemorative issues of Swel Daw Yeik Magazine for Swe YaDu and SPZP-2016

    The (hidden) power of Kabyar

    Kabyar is animate

    But [it’s life is] not just a [fleeting] morn

    Kabyar is a weapon

    But not for destroying the world

    Kabyar is key

    For liberation and independence

    But not devoid of principles [and morals]

    Kabyar has power

    Hidden but efficient & effective

    Like sharp-pointed spear-head

    Can thrust into [the heart of] a power-maniac

    Cause trembling, shivering, throbbing & anguished pain

    Poem by Tekkatho Moe War (Saya U Moe Aung)

    Translated by Hla Min

  • Gathering in New Jersey and Trip to Canada in 2018

    Gathering in New Jersey and Trip to Canada in 2018

    by Hla Min

    Updated : May 2025

    East Coast Gathering

    For the past several years, Ivan had hosted RIT-UCC gathering at his New Jersey home. The timing is chosen so that Sayagyi Dr. Aung Gyi and Saya U Soe Paing can attend the gathering to meet with their former students.

    In June 2018, the special guests include Saya Dr. Tin Win and Daw Lily from Southern California, Saya U Aung Myint (who lives in Singapore and New Zealand) and Daniel Tint Lwin from Singapore. Ivan suggested repeating the Whirlwind Road Trip taken a few years back to visit Sayagyi U Aung Khin (in Windsor) and Sayagyi Dr. Aung Gyi (in Napean, Ottawa). This time there would be three cars.

    Visit Sayagyi U Aung Khin

    On 23rd June, 2018, the following visited Sayagyi U Aung Khin in Windsor, Canada.

    • Saya U Tin Win (M62)
    • Daw Lily Win (Khin Hta Yee, T72)
    • Saya U Htun Aung Kyaw (ChE67)
    • Saya U Aung Myint (M69)
    • Ivan Lee (M69)
    • Frederick Thet Gyi (M69)
    • U Tint Lwin (Daniel, M69)

    Paying respect to Sayagyi U Aung Khin

    UAK 1
    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is windsor-2.jpg
    UAK 2
    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is windsor-3.jpg
    UAK 3



  • Tekkatho Moe War 3

    Tekkatho Moe War (U Moe Aung)

    So the saying goes…
    “Once a Teacher, always a Teacher”
    BUT, NOT for some, in some occasions, does it really exist

    “ခံစားချက်ဝေဒနာ၏ ဟိုမှာဘက်ကမ်းသို့”

    နှစ်ပေါင်းများစွာ
    ငါ… မေတ္တာပေးခဲ့…။
    ကာလများစွာ
    ငါ… စေတနာ ဝေဖြာခဲ့…။
    အချိန်များစွာ
    ငါ… ​ပုံသွန်အောခဲ့…။
    သိပ္ပံ ပညာ
    ငါ… ဖြန့်ဝေခဲ့လည်း…။
    မတ်တတ် ခုံစွန်း
    ခြေ ပွန်းစားလည်း…။
    မြေဖြူမှုန်လှေး
    ခွံ့ကျွေးပါးစပ်၊ ခြောက်ကပ်ကပ်လည်း…။
    ပေးဝေစွန့်လွှတ်
    မချွတ်မချော်၊ လှော်ရင်း တုံ့နှေး
    ကမ်းနှင့်ဝေးခဲ့၊ ဖြည်းလေး တက်ကျိုး
    မမျှော်ကိုးခဲ့ ဘဝ၊ မေ့ကြပြီထင့်
    ပြယ်လွင့်ခဲ့ ဘဝ၊ သတိရစေ
    တောင်းဆုခြွေရင်း၊ ဝပ်စင်းပူဇော်
    ငါ.. မမျှော်ဝံ့၊ ငါ.. စွန့်ခဲ့ပြီး
    ရင်းနှီးခဲ့သမျှမူ၊ ပြန်မရယူစတမ်း
    ခရီးလမ်းဆုံး အဝေးတိုင်တိုင်…။ ။

    တက္ကသိုလ် မိုးဝါ
    ၂၁- ၁၂- ၂၀၁၈

  • Aung Zaw 7

  • Aung Zaw 1

  • Aung Zaw 5

  • Aung Zaw 4

  • Aung Zaw 3