Published On:Sunday, 23 November 2014
Posted by Unknown
Far miles to go before sleep
Uzzal Barua Basu: It was 07 November 2014, 07 am, I was chanting in front of Lord Buddha at Uttara Buddhist Temple, Dhaka. Suddenly the venerable of this temple told me to open the gate. I went to the gate and saw three persons of Sri Lanka were knocking the gate. They came here with flowers and food. They would show respect to Lord Buddha by giving flowers and would give the foods to the monks of this temple.
Dear, reader, you can think that they came with flowers and food, is it a great matter to write? Buddhist people can do it because it's a culture of them to give alms or food to the monk and show higher respect to Buddha by flowers. But here, there was different thing, the day was holiday. In this holiday we sleep up to 10 am. We want to enjoy this day. But these Lankan people didn't think so. In stead of arising late in holiday they started cooking may be from 3 to 4 am, then they started towards temple from home at 5 am. Finally they reached in temple at 7 am.
Dear reader, I passed wonderful moment with them on that day. I went there to meet with the venerable of that temple for a work of book printing where I got great chance to meet and discuss with them.
We Bangladeshi Buddhist often say that getting human life is rare. But we never want to understand the value of this rare life. The Lankan people understand the value that is why after passing a busy life of six days in their personal life with job, they came this day to temple to give time for their own development through Dhamma.
In the discussion, they told me that they would get two holiday on next month, they requested me to bring them in a forest meditation center so that they can pass that holiday through meditating.
Dear reader, we get holiday in various occasion, will we do such kind of good deeds regularly for salvation? Not only these three people but also most of the people of Sri Lanka budget theirs time to do meditation, chanting or listening dhamma talks from Buddhist monks.
English poet Robert Frost wrote in his poem " And far miles to go before I sleep". Actually these Lankan people think so that is why they don't want to waste time of this holiday also. They are using this holiday to get rid of from re-birth to get ultimate salvation "Nivvana". They have to go far miles before the death.
We the Buddhist should think that we have to die, we have to reach at least "Srotapotti" before our death. If we able to do this on that time we able to give the proper value of getting this rare human life.So to give proper value of this rare life we should always remember "Far miles to go before sleep". Because death can catch us any time. So lets start to give the proper value of this rare life by practising vipassana meditation by doing good deeds when we get time, it may be on holiday or it may be on any other day.
