Mahamuni Buddhist Society 23A Jalan Mas Puteh

Singapore 128628 Tel: (65) 6777-7018

You are cordially invited..

Date: 20 July 2008 (Sun)

Venue:

Mahamuni Buddhist Society

Time: 0830 hrs

Vassa 2008

Vassa also called Rains Retreat, is the traditional retreat during the rainy season lasting for three lunar months from July to October. During this time Buddhist monks remain in a single place, generally in their temples. In some monasteries, monks dedicate the Vassa to intensive meditation practice. During Vassa, many Buddhist lay people reinvigorate their spiritual training and adopt more ascetic practices, such as giving up meat, alcohol, or smoking (Vassa is sometimes known as "Buddhist Lent”). Commonly, the number of years a monk has spent in monastic life is expressed by counting up the number of Vassas he has observed. The origins of the Vassa tradition are ascribed to early Buddhist times. Gotama Buddha ordered his disciples to observe a pre-existing practice whereby holy men avoided travelling for a three month period during the rainy season, in order to avoid damaging crops. Asalha Puja or “Dhamma Day" commemorates the Buddha’s first sermon, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, given at the Deer Park in Benares to the First Five Disciples, advising Buddhists to practice the Middle Path, avoiding the 2 extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification, to realize the Four Noble Truths, namely, Suffering, Cause of Suffering, End of Suffering, and Middle Path to end suffering. This resulted in the founding of the Buddhist sangha, as Kondanna, one of those Five Disciples attained first level of enlightenment, that is a Sotapana, thus completed the Triple Gem of Buddha (the Teacher), Dharma (the teaching of the Truth), and Sangha (the Noble Disciples). The day is observed by donating offerings to temples and listening to sermons. The annual Rains retreat (vassa) begins the following day. The end of vassa is marked by joyous celebration. The following month, the

Kathina ceremony is held, during which the laity gathers to make formal offerings of robe cloth and other requisites to the Sangha.

Message To All Members & Devotees

Item Amount Full Set Requisites S$50 Robe S$25 Slipper S$10 Umbrella S$10 Fan S$5 Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu! May all beings be free from sufferings!

The Management Committee

Vassa Programme Time Programme

1st Session

0600 Offering of breakfast to the Sangha 0830 Assembly of Resident Monks &

Invited Monks 0835 Welcome speech by the Sangha 0840 Taking of 3 Refuges & 5 Precepts 0845 Pali Paritta Chanting 0910 Dhamma Speech by Ven Thupiya

(Burmese) and Ven Vicitta (English) 0935 Offering of Robes & Requisites 1030 Sharing of Merits 1130 Offering of Lunch to Sangha and

Devotees

2nd Session 1700 Taking of 3 Refuges & 5 Precepts 1715 1730

Paritta Chanting (Pali) & Dhamma Speech Offering of Robes & Requisites

1800 Sharing of Merits

၀၀၀၀ါဆသကၤနးလဒါနးပြ ဖတၾကားလႊာါဆသကၤနးလဒါနးပြ ဖတၾကားလႊာါဆသကၤနးလဒါနးပြ ဖတၾကားလႊာါဆသကၤနးလဒါနးပြ ဖတၾကားလႊာ

ဗဒၶဘာသာ၀င သေတာစင အေပါငးတ႔အား Mahamuni Buddhist Society က ခငမင ရငးႏးစြာ ဖတၾကားအပပါသည။ ျမတစြာ ဘရား႐ငသည မဟာသကရာဇ (၁၀၃)ခ ၀ါဆလျပည စေနေန႔၌ တရားဥး ဓမၼစၾကာ တရားေတာက ေဟာၾကားေတာမခၿပး ဓမၼရတနာႏင သဃာရတနာတ႔ ေပၚေပါက လာခပါသည။ ထ႔ေၾကာင ဤေန႔က ဓမၼေန႔ (အာသဠေန႔) ဟလညး ေခၚတြငပါသည။ ဓမၼစၾကာသတေတာက နာယရေသာ အ႐င ေကာ႑ည မေထရျမတသည ပညာစကၡ အလငးရ၍ ေသာတာပတဖလသ႔ ဆက ေရာကခပါသည။ ေလာကဓါတ တစခလး လညး သြတသြတခါေအာင တနလႈပခပါ သည။ ဤကသ႔ေသာ ေန႔ထးေန႔ျမတအခါ သမယ၌ ဗဒၶဘာသာ၀င သေတာစင အေပါငးတ႔ အေနျဖင တဖကပါ အစအစဥ အတငး ကြေရာကၿပး ၀ါဆသကၤနး ဆကကပလဒါနးျခငး၊ သရဏဂသလ ေဆာကတည၍ တရားဓမၼနာယျခငးစသည ကသလပါရမမား ျဖညကငႏငၾကေစရန နဗၺာနအကးေမာကး၍ ႏႈးေဆာတကတြနး လကရပါသည။ ဖတၾကားသမား ဆရာေတာမားႏင Management Committee Mahamuni Buddhist Society Singapore