Common Myanmar Words with Buddhist Origin
"Use the Force, Luke... Use the Force!"
In Gorge Lucas' creation of Star Wars movies, the Jedi Knights with light sabres have gone through strict mental training somewhat like
သံဃာ | thun3-ga2
— the Buddhist monks.
However, unlike the Jedi Knights, the accomplished ones in Theravada Buddhist tradition known as
ရဟန်း | ya1-hun3
have gained
ပညာ | pyin2-nya2
— knowledge and understanding
of the true Nature of existence through
ဝိပဿနာ | we1-pup-tha1-na2
— Vipassana or insight Meditation.
Respectable ရဟန်း | ya1-hun3 would not use the Dark Forces of
စကြဝဠာ | set-kja2 wa1-la2
— the Universe
even if they have the knowledge, because they understand that
လောက | lau3-ka1
— the existential world
that we live in is သင်္ခါရ | thin2-kha2-ra1.
သင်္ခါရ | thin2-kha2-ra1,
or Sankhara in Pali language means that our formation or existence is dependent on external conditions and has the characteristics of
ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1
— nothing is ultimately satisfying
အနိစ္စ | a-nate-sa1
— nothing lasts forever
အနတ္တ | a-na1-ta1
— nothing can be pointed to say unchanging "me" "my" and "mine"
Those who are familiar with the romanization of the Pali language will recognize those terms as Dukkha, Anicca, and Anatta.
Here's my YouTube Video.
In Love & in War there is no such thing as "ma1-ta1-ya3 bu3"
Some Burmese words with Buddhist origin have merged into every day usage out of religious context. One such word is
တရား | ta1-ya3.
ta1-ya3 in religious context means the teaching of the Buddha. In everyday usage, it means fairness (noun), or to be fair (verb).
တရား | ta1-ya3 — fairness and
တစ်ရာ | ta1-ya2 — one hundred (100).
Related Words
တရားသူကြီး | ta1-ya3 dthu2-ji3
— the Judge who is impartial.(noun)
တရားရုံး | ta1-ya3 yone3
— Court House (noun)
တရားခံ | ta1-ya1-khan2
— defendant or a suspect (noun)
တရားလို | ta1-ya1-lo2
— plaintiff (noun)
တရားစွဲ | ta1-ya3 sweare3
— to file a legal case; to sue (verb)
တရားစွဲ | ta1-ya3 sweare3 — sue
ခံ | khan2 — subjected to
ရ | ya1 — to get
တယ် | deare2 — ending confirmation word
တရားစွဲ ခံရတယ်
ta1-ya3 sweare3 khan2 ya1 deare2
He got sued.
တရားထိုင် | ta1-ya3 htine2
means to do sitting meditation, where
ထိုင် | htine2
is to sit.
The complete sentence is
တရားထိုင်ချင်တယ်
ta1-ya3 htine2 chin2 deare2
I want to practice Meditation.
မြန်မာ | myan2-ma2 — Myanmar
ပြည် | pyi2 — country
မှာ | hma2 — postpositional marker "at"
တရား | ta1-ya3 — teaching of the Buddha.
ထိုင် | htine2 — sit
ချင်တယ် | chin2 deare2" — "I want to... " (want + affirmative ending word)
မြန်မာပြည်မှာ တရားထိုင်ချင်တယ်
myan2-ma2 pyi2 hma2 ta1-ya3 htine2 chin2 deare2"
I want to practice meditation in Myanmar.
If you are a business man or a business woman, make sure that you do
တရားဝင် | ta1-ya1-win2
which means in accordance with the law (legally).
တရားဝင်လုပ်မယ်
ta1-ya1-win2 loat meare2
I will do it legally!
(legally [adverb] + do [verb] + ending word indicating future action [postpositional marker])
တရားဝင်လုပ်ကြမယ်
ta1-ya1-win2 loat ja1 meare2
We will do it legally!
(legally [adverb] + do [verb] + plural [particle] + ending word indicating future action [postpositional marker])
NOTE: In some words like
တရားခံ | ta1-ya1-khan2
— defendant or a suspect
တရားလို | ta1-ya1-lo2
— plaintiff and
တရားဝင် | ta1-ya1-win2
— to do something legally,
ရား | "ya3" of the word
တရား | "ta1-ya3"
in the 3rd tone is read as short sliding
ရ | "ya1"
in the 1st tone.
The negative term of တရား | ta1-ya3 is မတရားဘူး | ma1-ta1-ya3 bu3 . You can protest something by saying:
မတရားဘူး | ma1-ta1-ya3 bu3 — That's not fair!
Suffering is Doat-kha1
"Dukkha" in romanization of the Pali originally means all our worldly pursuit end up like holding on to the mirage
and nothing is ultimately satisfying and lasting. In everyday Burmese usage,
ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1
means troublesome.
ဒုက္ခပါပဲ
doat-kha1 ba2 beare3 — We are in big trouble now!
Suffering is ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 and ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 is suffering. In this never ending rounds of births and deaths, there was, there is, and there will always be doat-kha1. The generation before us had it. We have it. And, the next generation will have it.
SufferingSuffering is ဒုက္ခ | Doat-kha1 and ဒုက္ခ | Doat-kha1 is suffering. In this never ending rounds of births and deaths, there was, there is, and there will always be Doat-kha1. The generation before us had it. We have it. And, the next generation will have it. In everyday Burmese usage out of religious context, ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 means troublesome. [35 seconds]
Posted by Naing Tinnyuntpu on Wednesday, May 11, 2016
ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 — troublesome condition
ရောက် | yout — reach
ပါ | ba2 — soften tone
ပြီ | byi2 — has reached a condition or state
ဒုက္ခရောက်ပါပြီ
doat-kha1 yout ba2 byi2
Similar phrase to describe the messy situation.
ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 — trouble
ရောက် | yout — reach
လိမ့် | lain1 — points to future after the verb word, "to reach" in this case
မယ် | meare2 — will
ဒုက္ခ ရောက် လိမ့်မယ်
doat-kha1 yout lain1 meare2
"You will get into trouble."
An advice to (or not to) do something in view of negative future consequences.
Be mindful with full of "dtha1-de1"
Burmese word
သတိ | dtha1-de1
is an another common word with Buddhist origin. This original Pali word is romanized by the Western Buddhist scholars as "Sati" meaning "mindfulness". "Satipatthana", or the 4 foundations of mindfulness is practiced by the meditators. In Burmese language, this Buddhist term is known as
သတိပဋ္ဌာန | dtha1-de1 pa1-hta2-na1.
In everyday usage,
သတိ | dtha1-de1
means to be watchful or careful about potential dangers. dtha1-de1 can also have the nostalgic sense about the good old days as in
သတိရတယ် | dtha1-de1 ya1 deare2,
which means to remember by or miss someone.
နင့် | nin1 — You
ကို | go2 — to
အမြဲပဲ | a-myeare3 beare3 — always
သတိ | dtha1-de1 — attention
ရ | ya1 — get
ပါ | ba2 — soften tone
တယ် | deare2 — ending word
နင့်ကို အမြဲပဲ သတိရပါတယ်
nin1 go2 a-myeare3 beare3 dtha1-de1 ya1 ba2 deare2
You're always on my mind.
(As sung by Willy Nelson and Elvis Presley)
You can tell someone on the slippery roof doing his repair job like this:
သတိ | dtha1-de1 — attention
ထား | hta3 — to maintain and keep
နော် | nau2 — warm feeling tone
သတိထားနော်
dtha1-de1 hta3 nau2 — Be careful!
You may reach "a-nate-sa1" if you don't have "dtha1-de1"
If you don't have
သတိ | dtha1-de1
when you are on the roof, it is possible that you may reach
အနိစ္စ | a-nate-sa1.
As we have seen in the beginning, this original Pali word in Buddhist sense is impermanence. Nothing lasts forever.
အနိစ္စရောက် | a-nate-sa1 yout
is the formal literary word which means to pass away.
အနိစ္စရောက်သွား၏။
a-nate-sa1 yout thwa3 e1
He has passed away.
Sharing of Merit
After someone
အနိစ္စရောက် | a-nate-sa1 yout,
the bereaved family has certain customs to perform. Burmese Buddhists have the custom of sharing the merit to the dead at the funerals, and
to the beings in the other World, especially to those in the lower realms who need the most. To perform this act is called
a-hmya1 — equal portion
way2 — distribute.
အမျှဝေ | a-hmya1 way2
However, if the deceased is believed to be in the Heavenly World, there's no need for it. Listen to this.
Long live Buddhism!
Here's another very common proclamation by the volunteers going around the neighborhood collecting the donation, or by the monk with the loudspeaker in the car ahead of other monks going for alms. It generally means "long-live Buddhism!"
ဗုဒ္ဓ သာသနံ စိရံ တိဋ္ဌတု | boat-da1 tha2-dtha1-nun2 si1-yan2 ti1-hta1-tu1
The Middle Way
မဇ္ဈိမပဋိပဒါ | myit-zi1-ma1 ba1-di1-ba1-da2
— The Middle Way (Majjhimāpaṭipadā)
proclaimed by the Buddha avoids indulgence of whatever the mind's desire in one extreme, and extreme form of physical torment practiced in those days to gain enlightenment in the other.
He did not say that you cannot excel in something and just be an average person. In fact, he had the determination, and full intention to achieve what he had attained. After six years of unsuccessful attempts through perseverance, he found success.
We need to keep some "desire" to excel. Selfless desire for the good of many is admirable. But, unfortunately, most of us cannot become saintly monks. We need to maintain at least some level of "selfish" greed in order to survive in this world.
A "good and fair ambition" in our worldly pursuit doesn't harm ourselves or the others including the environment. And we don't use
မတရား | ma1-ta1-ya3
means to achieve our objectives. That's exactly what the Buddha had prescribed for the lay people in
သမ္မာအာဇီဝ | tha1-ma2 ah2-zi2-wa1
— Right livelihood (samma ajivo)
of the
မဂ္ဂင် ရှစ်ပါး | met-gin2 shit pa3
— Noble Eightfold Path (ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga).
You just enjoy what you do, just like me working on these "Free online Burmese Lessons".