ရန္ကုန္တိုင္းေတာင္ပိုင္းခရိုင္၊ သန္လ်င္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊ ဘုရားကုန္းေက်းရြာအုပ္စု၊ လက္ယက္စမ္းရြာ မွာရွိတဲ့ ၀ိရတီေတာရ စမ္းသီတာသီလရွင္ေက်ာင္းေလးဟာ ပအို႔၀္တိုင္းရင္းသူသီလရွင္အပါး ၃၀ေက်ာ္နဲ႔ လက္လုပ္လက္စားေတြရဲ႕သားသမီးေပါင္း၁၃၀ေက်ာ္ကိုအခမဲ့ပညာသင္ၾကားေကၽြးေမြးေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေပးလ်က္ရွိပါတယ္။

သီလရွင္ဆရာႀကီးေဒၚေဟမာသီက “ဆရာေလး အသက္၁၅ႏွစ္မွာသီလရွင္၀တ္ခ်င္စိတ္ေပၚ လာတယ္။ အေမကမ၀တ္ေစခ်င္ေပမဲ့ မရမကခြင့္ေတာင္းလို႔ သီလရွင္၀တ္ခြင့္ရခဲ့တာပါ။ ၀တ္ၿပီးေတာ့ လည္းအေမကလူထြက္ဖို႔လာေျပာေသးတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ သာသနာမွာေပ်ာ္ေနေတာ့လူမထြက္ခ်င္ေတာ့ ဘူး။ အႀကီးတန္းေအာင္တဲ့အထိ ပရိယတၱိစာေပေတြသင္ယူခဲ့တယ္” လို႔ေျပာျပပါတယ္။

“စာမသင္ခင္မနက္ပိုင္း အလွဴခံၾကြရတယ္။ ဆယ္နာရီခြဲေလာက္ဆိုရင္ ေက်ာင္းျပန္ေရာက္ၿပီ။ တစ္ႏွစ္တစ္ခါေက်ာင္းပိတ္ရင္ အိမ္ျပန္ခြင့္ျပဳတယ္။ ညဘက္မွာဆိုရင္ ည၀ါတို႔၊ ပ႒ာန္းတို႔ကို စာျပန္ ေဆာင္မွာ စာျပန္ၾကရတယ္။ စာမရရင္ျပင္းျပင္းထန္ထန္အျပစ္ေပးခံၾကရတယ္။”

“ေအးေအးခ်မ္းခ်မ္းတရားအားထုတ္ဖို႔ဆိုၿပီး ၂၀၀၇ခုမွာ ဒီေက်ာင္းကိုေရာက္လာတာ။ ေနာက္ပိုင္း အနီးအနားမွာရွိတဲ့ကေလးေတြကို ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ရင္းနဲ႔ ပညာစသင္ေပးျဖစ္သြားတာပါ။ စသင္တဲ့ႏွစ္မွာပဲ ကေလးအေယာက္၇၀ေက်ာ္ရွိပါတယ္။ အခုဆိုရင္ ပအို႔၀္တိုင္းရင္းသူေလးေတြ ၃၀ေက်ာ္အပါအ၀င္ ၁၆၀ေလာက္ရွိပါတယ္။”

“ေနရာကေခ်ာင္က်ေတာ့ အလွဴရွင္ေတြက တစ္ခါတစ္ခါမွ လာပါတယ္။ ပန္းသီးေဖာင္ေဒးရွင္း ကလည္းတတ္ႏိုင္သေလာက္လွဴဒါန္းေပးေနပါတယ္။ အစားအေသာက္ဆိုရင္လည္း ေန႔တိုင္း ပဲကတၱီ ပါျပဳတ္နဲ႔ ငါးပိေထာင္းနဲ႕ ဆန္ၾကမ္းကိုပဲစားၾကရပါတယ္။ က်န္းမာေရးေစာင့္ေရွာက္မႈအဖြဲ႔တစ္ဖြဲ႕က ဘီပိုးကာကြယ္ေဆးေတြ လာထိုးေပးသြားတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာ ဆရာေလးတစ္ပါးတည္း ဘီပိုးရွိေနတာကို ေတြ႕ရတယ္။”

“စိတ္ဓာတ္မက်ပါဘူး။ တရားနဲ႕ပဲေျဖပါတယ္။ ေဆးကုသမႈလည္းခံယူသလို အားတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ လည္း တရားထိုင္ပါတယ္။ အခုမွသာသနာေတာ္အတြက္ စလုပ္တယ္လို႔ပဲ ခံယူပါတယ္။ ေရွ႕ဆက္ၿပီး ကေလးေတြရဲ႕ပညာေရးကို ပါရမီျဖည့္သြားခ်င္ေသးတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ဆရာေလး ကိုယ္စြမ္းဥာဏ္စြမ္းရွိ သမွ် ဆက္လုပ္သြားမွာပါ။”

Virati Tawya Santhida Nunnery in Let Yet San Village, Phayagon Village-tract, Thanlyin Township, southern Yangon Region, provides free education and meals and takes care of over 30 PaO nuns and over 130 children of labourers.  

Presiding Nun Daw Hemasi said, “At the age of 15, I was in the mood to be ordained as a nun. My mother didn’t agree with that, but in the end, I was given permission because I persisted in my demand. Some days after that, she came to the nunnery and persuaded me to leave the religious order. But I was happy to be a nun there, so I didn’t leave the religious order. I completed the senior grade residing in that nunnery.”

 “Before the morning class, we had to go around the ward for alms. We got back the nunnery by half past ten. We were allowed to go back home in summer vacation once a year. We had to recite by heart evening studies and Patthana in the lecture hall in the evening. We were given severe punishments if we weren’t found to digest our lessons.”

 “I moved to this nunnery in 2007 with the aim of leading a secluded life for doing meditation. Later I took care of nearby needy children and happened to teach them. In the very first year, I received over 70 children. Now, I have 160 children including over 30 PaO nuns.”

 “Our nunnery is in a little deserted place, so well-wishers seldom make donations to our nunnery. The Apple Foundation provides us with as much aid as it can. As to meals, we have boiled bitter lablab, pounded shrimp paste and hard rice every day. Recently, a health organization vaccinated us against Hepatitis B. At that time, I was the only one who was found Hepatitis B positive here.”

 “However, I’m not downhearted. I console myself with the thought that it’s due to my past misdeeds. I receive medical treatment and in my spare time, I do meditation to cure the disease. I assume that I’ve made only a start for contribution to the Sasana. I’m eager to keep teaching the children as part of my fulfilling perfection in wisdom. So, I’ll keep working with brains and brawn.”