Good morning!
Mr. President, Vice President of Republic of Union of Myanmar,
Your Excellencies and Ministers,
Excellencies, Ambassadors of many countries,
Ladies and gentle men!
I am very
happy, very glad in this great occasion of inauguration of our (opening)
ceremony, Sitagu International Buddhist Academy in Yangon (2011). I
founded Sitagu International Buddhist Academy in Sagaing Hills, which is the
main campus, since fifteen years ago. We are contributing the Teachings of Lord
Buddha to international students as well as national students. Mostly our
academic students are Theravada Buddhist monks from Theravada Buddhist
countries, Thailand, Lao, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Most of students are Myanmar
(Burmese).
I opened a new campus of Sitagu International Buddhist Academy in
Mandalay Hills (2009), at the foot of Mandalay hills, which is affiliated from
the main campus, Sagaing. Now we open a new campus of Sitagu International Buddhist
Academy in Yangon (2011), which is the second affiliated campus.
In other countries, I saw many academies, for example, navy
academy, air-force academy, military academy, defense academy, etc. In the
world today, in the Buddhist world also, we must establish Buddhist academy. In
this Buddhist academy we are teaching Theravada Buddhist Scriptures (Theravada
Buddhist teachings).
In our academy we founded the department of Vinaya, codes of
Discipline, department of Suttanta, discourses, department of Abhidhamma,
Buddhist Philosophy, and department of Missionary and Religion,
comparative study of religions, most important department is the department of Meditation.
Meditation is very wonderful technique. In this morning I would like to
interpret what does meditation mean. Meditation means a technique how to train
our mind to be cultured, how to train our mind to be polite and how to search
for the realistic nature and true nature within ourselves.
According to Buddhist Philosophical stand point as long as we do
not realize the true nature and realistic nature within ourselves, we can't
solve the problems of our life. So, to solve the problems of our life, we
must learn meditation, we must train meditation. It is not for religious
purpose and religion for worship. Meditation is for mental training or
spiritual training. Therefore, in our Buddhist Academy, the department of
meditation is most important department. We are running the above six
departments.
For the diploma students, they have to study for three years. For
the B.A, under graduate students, they have to study another four years. For
the Master Degree, post graduate students, they have to study and write their
dissertation for two years. And then they can upgrade their academic
study with their Ph.D. This is very brief information of Sitagu International
Buddhist Academy.
Now all of my dear brothers and sisters, ladies and gentle men,
your Excellencies, our Lord Buddha, after his enlightenment he lived as a
Buddha for forty-five years. At the age of eighty (580 BC), he passed away.
Within forty-five years, what the Buddha taught? He taught only Dhamma. Dhamma
is a very wonderful teaching taught by the Buddha himself. It is not a kind of
religious system but it is a system to learn, to practice, to train, to realize
for those who are keen to turn a new leaf of life. This is very brief meaning
of the Dhamma. Our Sitagu International Buddhist academy is teaching,
learning, training, practicing to realize what I am, where I am, what I have to
do. These three main points are very important to understand. This is
called right understanding to convert from evil to noble. Therefore, Dhamma is
the mighty technique to solve the problems of mankind.
Many religious leaders, many political leaders, many social leaders,
organize and form, reform many organizations in order to solve the problems of
their respective nation. For example, United Nation is a unique example in the
world. But unity and diversity, diversity and unity, love and hate, hate and
love, association and separation, etc., are unavoidable dualism in the world.
Nobody can find out ultimate solution of a nation in the world today. Science
and technology also never can find out the solution of the spirituality and
they can search, research the solution of material only. But these science and
technology can never reach to the end of the solution of the problems of in the
world, repeatedly researching latest solutions, but there is no latest solution
in the world today.
You’re Excellencies, ladies and gentle men! The world of living
being is composed of both, mind and matter. One of the Buddha's message, I
would like to contribute this morning "Mano Pubbangama dhamma"
very beautiful words of the Buddha. Mind is forerunner, mind makes everything,
mind mould human life, and mind is the master of a man. Human beings are
architecture of their own life. So, in order to create a beautiful life, we
should train our mind to be beautiful. This is called 'meditation'. Now-a-day
the whole world is full of the kills, full of the evils, full of battle, full
of crime, full of the sorrows, full of the suffering. These unpleasant
situations and miserable events are generated by the evil mind, wicked mind. In
many Buddha's messages, it is mentioned that the starting point of this
miserable event is selfish, thought of ego centric world.
The beginning of a competition or a conflict is the thought of
jealousy and unhappy of the other's progress and other's success. Therefore,
the Buddha emphatically stated that you should exert to convert your mind from
selfishness to selflessness, from jealousy to joy, from evil to noble.
The message of the Buddha is absolutely tolerance. And in-tolerance
is the greatest enemy of all human beings. The Buddha advised his disciples not
to become angry, not to be discontent, even not to be displeased when the other
spoke of ill. In the Buddha's teachings, if you show displeasure you will not
bring yourself into happiness, you will bring yourself only into the danger of
spiritual law. Do not be angry but develop your loving-kindness. This is a very
wonderful Buddha's message. The tolerance is the foundations of a unity and peace;
another one of his profound message is to exercise the loving-kindness to every
living-being making no distinction, whosoever. He clearly stated that
loving-kindness and tolerance are the foundations for brotherhood spirit of all
nations and all religions. This universal brotherhood spirit of
loving-kindness, bondless compassion and great tolerance will break down all
barriers separating one nation from another. If we all followers have different
faith, because of different faith, different believe, different idea, if we
could not meet on a common platform like brothers and sisters, this is simply
because we belong to different religion, then surely the noble religious
leaders would have failed. Noble religious leaders also would have failed to
work our noble missionary and ministry services to humanity.
You’re
Excellencies! Therefore, we all national leaders and religious leaders try to
remove such evil spirits of internal enemies of everyone from respective
religious stand point. To solve the common problems of all nations, therefore,
we should build the common platform to work together. These are our common
platform which is the thought of selflessness, the thought of compassion, the
thought of tolerance, the thought of right understanding what we are, where we
are, what we have to do.
You’re
Excellencies, ladies and gentle men! What we are now doing is establishing of
the academy, Buddhist Academy, we invite all of the Buddhist students from
various countries, and different faiths to come gather and together to learn,
to practice, and to train our wicked mind to be noble and to turn a new leaf of
our life from evil to noble.
I would like
to cordially invite all of my dear brothers and sisters, to come our academy to
learn. Especially today I would like to announce for the lay people, not only
for Buddhist monk-students and nun-students, we going to offer a course 'The
Fundamental Buddhism' to lay people. We are now preparing a curriculum how
to teach lay people, how to train lay people to give the best service to the
man-kind. Anyone can come and study here in the morning. We are going to open
morning classes for lay people. This is our brief information and short
information and the purpose why I open Buddhist Academy in Yangon.
All of my
dear brothers and sisters, ladies and gentle men, especially, Excellencies, our
Vice President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, and other Ministers, I
am very happy and glad to come and join in this great grand opening ceremony of
our Buddhist academy.
May all of you be
peaceful! May all of you be happy!
May all of you be
successful in any attempts for all of the nations!
Dr. Ashin Nyanissara
(Ph.D., D.Litt.)
Aggamahapandita,
Aggamahasaddhammajotikadhaja,
The Chancellor of
Sitagu International Buddhist Academy
The Chairman of
International Theravada Buddhist Universities
May the Sublime Dhamma prevail in its pristine purity in every
corner of the world.
ရန္ကုန္ေက်ာင္းဖြင့္ပြဲ speech ကို ကူးယူ ေဖာ္ျပပါသည္။
သီတဂူစမ္းလပမာ ခ်မ္းျမသာယာရွိၾကပါေစ။
ကိုရင္အာယု (မန္းသီတဂူ)
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