A DISCOURSE ON THE HEMAVATA SUTTA – MAHĀSI SAYĀDAW

A DISCOURSE ON THE HEMAVATA SUTTA

MAHĀSI SAYĀDAW

Editor’s Foreword
About third of the late Venerable Mahāsi Sayādaw’s lectures have been translated into English and printed in Burma. Several of these valuable books, including this discourse on the Hemavata Sutta, have been reprinted in Malaysia. It was comprehensively revised when I first published an edition for three distribution in 1993 with the sponsorship of Mrs Sarojini Fernando in memory of her parents, Mr Hector de Fonseka and Mrs Inez de Fonseka.

This edition was updated in December 2013 with some minor revisions, some more footnotes, and numerous hyperlinks for the convenience of finding cross-references while reading in a PDF Viewer.

The Venerable Sayādaw’s discourses were addressed to meditators practising intensively at Mahāsi Sāsana Yeikthā, in Rangoon, so they contain many Pāḷi words which, though familiar to those who have heard regular discourses, may not be familiar to others. I have revised this edition for the benefit of those who may be unfamiliar with Pāḷi terms. However, it is not desirable to remove technical terms altogether because no translation can convey the full meaning. Although I have replaced most of the Pāḷi words with a translation, I have given the Pāḷi word in brackets the first time it is used. I have polished the English to make comprehension easier, but nothing has been omitted or changed substantially from the original translation.

To further help the reader I have added some footnote references. References are to the page numbers of the Pāḷi texts of the Pali Text Society which, in the translations, are given at the top of the page or sometimes in the body of the text. However, in the case of the Dhammapada or Sutta Nipāta,
references are simply given to verse numbers.

The Hemavata Sutta is from the Sutta Nipāta verses 153‑180.

An excellent translation of the Sutta Nipāta in contemporary language by the late Venerable Hammalawa Saddhātissa is available from Wisdom Books.