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Ashin Nandamālābhivaṁsa

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Ashin
Nandamālābhivaṃsa
နန္ဒမာလာဘိဝံသ
Portrait of Ashin Nandamālāābhivaṃsa
Title
Personal
Born
Htun Tin

(1940-03-22) 22 March 1940 (age 84)
Nyaungbin Village, Singu Township, Mandalay Division, British Burma
ReligionBuddhism
Parents
  • San Hla (father)
  • Khin (mother)
SchoolTheravada
SectShwekyin Nikāya
Education
Dharma namesNandamāla
Pen name
  • Ko Mālā
  • Ko Tula (Sagaing)
Organization
TempleMahā Subodhāyon Monastery
Senior posting
Teacher
Period in office
Predecessor
Successor
  • Incumbent (Rector of SIBA)
  • Ashin Chekinda (Rector of ITBMU)
Ordination
Websitewww.drnandamalabhivamsa.com.mm

Ashin Nandamālābhivaṃsa (Burmese: အရှင်နန္ဒမာလာဘိဝံသ, pronounced [əʃɪ̀ɰ̃ nàɰ̃da̰màlàbḭwʊ̀ɰ̃θa̰], Thai: สมเด็จพระนนฺทมาลาภิวงฺส; born 22 March 1940, Htun Tin, pronounced [tʰʊ́ɰ̃ tɪ̀ɰ̃]), also known as Rector Sayadaw (or Pamaukkhachoke Sayadaw, Burmese: ပါမောက္ခချုပ်ဆရာတော်, pronounced [pà maʊʔ kʰa̰ dʑoʊʔ sʰəjàdɔ̀]), is a Burmese Buddhist scholar-monk and specialist in Abhidhamma.[1] He is chief abbot[nb 1] of the monasteries of Mahā Subodhāyon and rector of Sitagu International Buddhist Academy. Recipient of the titles of Abhidhaja Mahā Raṭṭha Guru and Agga Mahā Paṇḍita, Ashin is an upaukkaṭṭha[nb 2] (associate Thathanabaing) and mahānāyaka[nb 3] of the Shwekyin Nikāya, the second largest monastic order of monks (nikāya) in Myanmar, since 2018.

Born in a village in Upper Burma and entered, at the age of 10, a monastery of the ninth Thathanabaing of the nikāya, in Sagaing, Ashin passed an examination of Abhidhamma at age 13 and the governmental Dhammācariya at 16, as a novice. Completing master's and doctoral degrees from Sri Lanka and India respectively, Ashin also served as rector of International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University from 2005 to 2019. In 2022, Ashin founded the University of Wisdom Land at which he assumes the position of chancellor.

Early life and education

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Ashin, the ninth of ten siblings,[2] was born on 22 March 1940[ME 1][3] in Nyaungbin Village, Singu Township, Mandalay Division to U San Hla and Daw Khin.[4] Nārada, one of Ashin's elder brothers, was also an upaukkaṭṭha of the Shwekyin Nikāya.

When U Kelāsa of Pawdawmu Monastery – under whom Ashin had learned basic monastic education since age of five[5] – died, Ashin was sent to Vipassanā Monastery, where Nārada had been resided for seven years (vassas), in Sagaing Hill[6] and ordained as a novice in July 1949,[ME 2] with Sankin Sayadaw, ninth head of the Shwekyin Nikāya, as preceptor.[7][8] He was conferred the Dhamma name Nandamālā (Burmese: နန္ဒမာလာ)[8] which literally means garland of rejoicing.[6]

All nine surviving members of Ashin's family, including Ashin and his parents, eventually joined Buddhist order of monks and nuns and entered the Vipassanā Monastery.[9]

Novicehood

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Sagaing Hill where monasteries of both Vipassanā and Mahā Subodhāyon located

At the age of 13, Ashin started learning Abhidhamma and its compendium (Abhidhammattha saṅgaha) under Nārada, and passed the three-level Abhidhamma examination in the same year.[10] He passed the three series of Pathamabyan examination – Pathamange, Pathamalat and Pathamagyi – in 1954 and 1955.[10] He took the first position in all three grades of Sakyasīha thamanegyaw examination and was, thus, conferred the title of Sakyasīha Sāsanālaṅkāra Thamanegyaw and the suffix -laṅkāra to his name, at the age of 19.[11]

Because Ashin passed a total of five subjects in government-sponsored Dhammācariya examination with distinction in two subjects – hence received the title of Sāsanadhaja Sirīpavara Dhammācariya – at the age of 16, he became a tutor at Jayamedanī Monastery of Maha Visudhāyon Taik Thit, in Mandalay, despite being a novice.[12]

On 1 June 1958,[ME 3] Ashin and his five brothers – Nārada, Vimala, Ñānabala, Uttara, and Gandhasāra[13] – founded Mahā Subodhāyon Monastery in Sagaing.[14][15] At the time of establishment, Nārada was chief abbot, and Ashin served as an instructor.[16]

Early years of monkhood

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Monastic residents in Sagaing Hill for which Sitagu Yay Ahludaw's water pump installation ran

On 22 April 1959,[ME 4] with the support[nb 4] of Thar Din and Kyin from Mandalay, Ashin was ordained as a monk at Sāsana Mañjarī Ordination Hall in Mahāsubodhāyon Monastery, under the patronage of Sankin Sayadaw.[17]

Ashin received the titles of Cetiyaṅgaṇa Pariyatti Dhammācariya Gaṇavācaka and Pariyatti Sāsanahita Dhammācariyābhivaṃsa in his 4th (1963) and 6th vassas (1965) respectively, after he passed both two stages of Cetiyaṅgaṇa and Sakyasīha examinations.[18] He passed remaining four subjects of government examination of Dhammācariya by 1967,[ME 5] receiving the title of Sāsanadhaja Dhammācariya Vinaya Pāḷi Pārugū in 1965 for passing an honors course of Pācityādhi Pāḷi Aṭṭhakathā.[18] Since he passed all three examinations of Dhammācariya – Sakyasīha, Cetiyaṅgaṇa and government one – Ashin received the degree of S.C.G. Dhammācariya and was bestowed the suffix -bhivaṃsa. In 1964, Ashin was promoted to main instructor at the monastery.[19] He learned English from Chanmyay Sayadaw[20] while joining for compilation of the Tipiṭaka dictionary of Pāḷi to Myanmar, in 1967 at age 26.[21][22]

Ashin served as a member of the Sagaing Township Saṅgha Mahā Nāyaka Committee of Shwegyin Nikāya,[23] which was formed after the First Congregation of All Orders for the Purification, Perpetuation and Propagation of Sāsanā was held in Rangoon from 24 to 27 May 1980.[24] From 1980 to 1985, he was a member of committees for various monastic examinations, such as Dhammācariya and Pathamabyan examinations.[23]

In 1980, Ashin joined the leading committee of Sitagu Yay Ahludaw,[nb 5][25] the first project of Sitagu Sayadaw to install a water pump for the monastic residents in Sagaing Hill.[26]

For further studies, Ashin arrived at Kandi-Myanmar Monastery, in Sri Lanka, in January 1987[27] and pursued a diploma at Kelaniya University in July.[28] While writing Buddhist Attitude to World Knowledge, thesis for his master's degree in Buddhist studies which he completed in 1989,[29] Ashin gave lectures on Abhidhamma at YMBA and a meditation center.[30]

Years as a rector

[edit]
Sitagu International Buddhist Academy at Sagaing Hills

Back to Myanmar in 1994,[31] Ashin was promoted to an administrator at Subodhāyon Monastery. [32] Before returning to Myanmar, in August 1994, he gave lectures on Abhidhamma at Mingalārāma Monastery in Silver Spring, Maryland.[33] When Sitagu International Buddhist Academy was established in 1995, Ashin served as rector and taught courses in language and Abhidhamma.[34]

In 1996, Ashin was offered the title of Aggamahāganthavācakapaṇḍita[nb 6] by the government.[35] On 1 January 1998, he was in charge of Vinayadhara (lit. 'custodian of Vinaya') as a member of the State Independent Vinayadhara Association, the jury authorized by the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, to oversee the violation of Vinaya by Sangalay Sayadaw.[36][37]

International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University where Ashin has served as rector for 14 years

In 1998, when International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University was first established,[38] Ashin served as a visiting professor and gave lectures on Abhidhamma, for the request of Sitagu Sayadaw.[39] He completed his doctoral thesis Jainism in Buddhist Literature[40] from Magadh University in 2003.[41] When Ashin Silānadābhivamsa, the first rector of ITMBU, died on 13 August 2005 at California, he was appointed as the rector of the university.[42][43] Since then, Ashin has served for about 14 years[44] until he retired in November 2019, for health reasons.[45][46] On 1 August 2009, Ashin became the padhāna-nāyaka (chief abbot) at the Subodāyon Monastery[47] when his brother Ashin Nārada died.[48]

Ashin was offered the titles of Aggamahāpaṇḍita, Aggamahāsaddhammajotikadhaja, and Abhidhajamahāraṭṭhaguru in 2000,[41] 2018[49] and 2020 respectively.[50][51] At the 20th All Buddha Sāsana Shwegyin Nikāya Sangha Meeting held in 2018, at Cekindārāma Monastery in Hmawbi, Ashin was appointed as the upaukkaṭṭha (associate Thathanabaing) of the nikāya,[15] alongside Ceeshin Sayadaw who died in 2023.[52]

On 3 December 2022, taking the position of chancellor, Ashin officially founded the University of Wisdom Land in Hlegu Township, Yangon.[53]

Notes

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  1. ^ full-moon day of Tabaung, 1301 ME
  2. ^ Waso, 1311 ME
  3. ^ full-moon day of Nayon, 1320 ME
  4. ^ full-moon day of Tagu, 1321 ME
  5. ^ 1329 ME
  1. ^ Pali: padhānanāyaka, Burmese: ပဓာနနာယက, lit. 'main patron'
  2. ^ Burmese: ဥပဥက္ကဋ္ဌ; associate head or vice-president
  3. ^ Burmese: မဟာနာယက, lit. 'great/noble patron/leader'
  4. ^ Burmese: စတုပစ္စယ, Pali: Catupaccaya; the four requisites, viz. food, clothing, medicine and lodgings
  5. ^ Burmese: သီတဂူရေအလှူတော်, lit. 'Sitagu water donation'
  6. ^ Burmese: အဂ္ဂမဟာဂန္ထဝါစကပဏ္ဍိတ, the title offered to the most senior lecturers in monasteries

References

[edit]

Citations

[edit]
  1. ^ Braun 2015, p. 15.
  2. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 38.
  3. ^ Nandamālābhivaṃsa 2011, pp. 1–2.
  4. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 7.
  5. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 81.
  6. ^ a b Mya Than San 2020, p. 91.
  7. ^ Mya Than San 2020, pp. 89–90.
  8. ^ a b Nandamālābhivaṃsa 2005, p. 7.
  9. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 101.
  10. ^ a b Mya Than San 2020, p. 111.
  11. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 112.
  12. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 114.
  13. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 122.
  14. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 121.
  15. ^ a b "ပါမောက္ခချုပ် ဆရာတော်ကို တွဲဘက် သာသနာပိုင်တင်" [Rector Sayadaw was elevated to associate Thathanabaing]. BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 1 February 2018.
  16. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 123.
  17. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 135.
  18. ^ a b Mya Than San 2020, p. 136.
  19. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 164.
  20. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 253.
  21. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 137.
  22. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 255.
  23. ^ a b Mya Than San 2020, p. 246.
  24. ^ Seekins 2006, pp. 152–153.
  25. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 262.
  26. ^ Kawanami 2009, p. 219.
  27. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 272.
  28. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 274.
  29. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 304.
  30. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 299.
  31. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 337.
  32. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 338.
  33. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 333–5.
  34. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 351–2.
  35. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 352.
  36. ^ Mya Than San 2020, pp. 357–8.
  37. ^ စမ်းကလေးဝါဒဝိနိစ္ဆယ [Sangalay Vada Vinnicchaya] (PDF). Ministry of Religious Affairs. 2009. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  38. ^ "International Theravāda Buddhist Missionary University: Prestigious Buddhist University Of Myanmar". Global New Light Of Myanmar. 22 March 2021. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
  39. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 398.
  40. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 335.
  41. ^ a b Mya Than San 2020, p. 399.
  42. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 421.
  43. ^ "ပါမောက္ခချုပ်ရာထူး ဓမ္မဒူတဆရာတော် ဒေါက်တာအရှင်ဆေကိန္ဒကို ခန့်အပ်ဖို့ စီစဉ်" [Planned to appoint Dhammadūta Sayadaw Dr Ashin Chekinda as rector]. BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 5 February 2020.
  44. ^ "ပါမောက္ခချုပ်ဆရာတော် တရားပွဲများနှင့် ဓမ္မပညာသင်တန်းများ လာမည့် ဧပြီလမှစ၍ ယာယီရပ်နားမည်" [Rector Sayadaw will temporarily stop preaching and lecturing since April]. The Myanmar Times. 24 January 2019. Archived from the original on 22 January 2022. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
  45. ^ "ပါမောက္ခချုပ်ဆရာတော် အသည်းအကြိတ် ဆေးကုသမှု အတွက် အနားယူတာလို့ သာသနာရေးက ထုတ်ပြန်" [Rector Sayadaw resigns for liver tumor treatment, Ministry of Religious Affairs announced]. BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 14 November 2019.
  46. ^ Lin, Htet Khaung (14 November 2019). "ပါချုပ်ဆရာတော် ကိုယ်တိုင် အငြိမ်းစား ယူလိုဟု သာဝန် ဆို" [Religious minister says Rector Sayadaw himself wants to retire]. Irrawaddy. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
  47. ^ Mya Than San 2020, p. 455.
  48. ^ Mya Than San 2020, pp. 453–5.
  49. ^ "သာသနာတော်ဆိုင်ရာ ဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော်များ ဆက်ကပ်လှူဒါန်း" [Religious titles offered]. Kyemon. 4 January 2021. p. 16. Retrieved 17 March 2022.
  50. ^ "၂၀၂၀ ပြည့်နှစ် သာသနာတော်ဆိုင်ရာ ဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော်များ ဆက်ကပ်ပူဇော်ပွဲ မဟာမင်္ဂလာအခမ်းအနား ကျင်းပ | Ministry Of Information" [2020 Religious Titles Offering Ceremony]. www.moi.gov.mm. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
  51. ^ "ပါမောက္ခချုပ် ဆရာတော်ဒေါက်တာ နန္ဒမာလာဘိဝံသ အပါအဝင် ဆရာတော်ကြီးခုနစ်ပါးအား ပရိယတ္တိဆိုင်ရာ အဘိဓဇမဟာရဋ္ဌဂုရု ဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော်ကို နိုင်ငံတော်သမ္မတက ဆက်ကပ်လှူဒါန်း" [President offers seven sayadaws, including Rector Sayadaw, the title of Abhidhaja Mahā Raṭṭha Guru]. Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd (in Burmese).
  52. ^ "ရွှေကျင်ဂိုဏ်း- တွဲဖက်သာသနာပိုင် စည်ရှင်ဆရာတော်ကြီးပျံလွန်တော်မူ" [Associate Thathanabaing Ceeshin Sayadaw died]. BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 19 November 2023. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  53. ^ "ပညာဘူမိတက္ကသိုလ် University of Wisdom Land ၏ သုတဓမ္မဒီပလိုမာ Level 1 နှင့် 2 စာမေးပွဲ ပြင်ဦးလွင်မြို့ ဓမ္မသဟာယသာသနစင်တာအပါအဝင် တစ်နိုင်ငံလုံးရှိ စာဖြေဌာန (၃၂) ခု၌ တစ်ပြိုင်နက် ကျင်းပ | Information and Public Relations Department" [Diploma in Sutadhamma by University of Wisdom Land held throughout the country]. www.moi.gov.mm. Retrieved 21 June 2024.

Sources

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