HSOON OFFERING

Photo Information
Camera – Nikon D40
Exposure Time – 1/20s
ISO Speed – 400
Focal Length – 38mm

PRE-SHOOTING

One of my friends shared me that every SUNDAY morning, there is HSOON OFFERING ceremony on SHWEDAGON PAGODA. This piece of information had surged into my mind. Being a traditions lover, it has been my thirst to have this shot being published on here. It was back in October 2008. I was there exclusively to arrest HSOON OFFERING ceremony. “HSOON” in Burmese language refers to alms / the meal being offered to Lord Buddha or monks.

SHOOTING

As usual, I woke up a bit late on that day. I drove my car with a NEED FOR SPEED frenzy. I couldn’t even park my car properly. I was in a genuine fuss that the ceremony would be over by the time I arrived there. Luck was on my side. I saw a group of women still preparing for the ceremony. “That’s it”, I murmured to myself. I requested the leader of the group to allow me to take some photos. She openhandedly said “YES”. I captured only 2 shots because I also wanted to interview the lady.

“Son, this is weekly HSOON OFFERING ceremony. Every SUNDAY, we gather here to offer HSOON to the Buddha images (statues) on SHWEDAGON PAGODA. We have approximately 200 members organized for this ceremony. We normally offer HSOON (alms) exactly at 7:00 AM and started preparing since 4:00 AM. Cash donations primarily come from our friends, relatives and yes also from our pockets. We perform HSOON offerings throughout three-month Buddhist lent. Meanwhile, there are 12 offerings for a year. Apart from these 12, we also perform similar offerings on full moon days of every Burmese lunar month and also on the important days of our religion. We have succeeded this custom from our grandparents. I have been doing this since I was 14”, the group leader said.

She continued, “Our HSOON offering include rice, water, candle light and assorted seasonal fruits of 9 different kinds. There are thousands of Buddha images here on SHWEDAGON. So, we spend 150,000 – 200,000 Kyats per offering. I am so much delighted that we have more than 100 teenagers being members. I will manage to hand over this gracious tradition to these new generations”.

Credits: Particular thanks Aunty D.Win Nu Swe for her short but adequate interview.

Kyi Cin Shwe

ဟြန္း…. စားစရာေတြရုိက္ျပျပန္ပီ…
ႏွိပ္စက္က်…ႏွိပ္စက္က်… ဆရာတံုလည္းတူတူပဲ… ကင္မရာတစ္လံုးနဲ႔…စားစရာရိုက္ျပေနတာ.. :((
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Kyi Cin Shwe >> Hey Hey…. these are nah edibles. These are ALMS being prepared for LORD BUDDHA…
Win Thiri Kyaw

Thanks for sharing…It’s very pleasant to know our citizens’ religiosity:)
http://www.nyinyimyanmar.co.cc/ Nyi Lin Win

ဘာလို႕ ကင္မရာ အသစ္နဲ႕ မ႐ိုက္တာလဲ?
http://BurmeseMTV.com/ Linn

hey, you become photo journalist now.. well done with the interview…

:)
http://photography.zinonline.com Soe

Way to go, Ye Lwin Oo! Nice picture to go along with concise interview.
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Win Thiri Kyaw >> Thanks for your kind comment, my sis…

@ Nyi Lin Min >> This shot was created 5 months ago. So, my D90 was still in the dream at that time…

@ Linn >> Lolz, I appreciate your comment, bro…

@ Soe >> It happened, bro. I asked her for an interview and she was so willing. So yea?
http://www.hello-mobile.net Arkar

ကင္မရာအသစ္နဲ႕ပံုေတြ တင္ပါဗ်ိဳ႕
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Arkar >> I will, my friend… Sooner than later…
http://www.myohanhtun.com MYO HAN HTUN

ဟုတ္ပါတယ္ ဗ်ဳိ႕ .. ကင္မရာ အသစ္နဲ႕ ရိုက္တဲ့ ပံုေတြ တင္ပါေတာ့ ဗ်ဳိ႕ ..
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ MYO HAN HTUN >> Alright, bro. My next post will be a D90 shot…
Suwei

=)
so much food, so generous are people of MM! ..
my my my..
thanks for sharing bro..!
o and yes..looking forward to seeing pix taken by ur current love D90..keke
btw..how much did u buy for it? :P
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Suwei >> Thanks for your visit too. My next post will be a D90 shot, sis… How much I paid for my new SLR? It’s confidential, sis. If my parents know how much I spent, they will definitely kick my ass…
hsu hlaing

i really think u r becoming a photo journalist too :)
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Hsu Hlaing >> Thanks a lot for your words…
http://BurmeseMTV.com/ Linn

I dunno much about cameras, but u take good pictures.. :) and yea, good composition in both photo and your post.
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Linn >> Your comments always means A LOT to me, bro… Thanks for your supports along the way…
http://www.daweithar.ning.com လက္၀ဲကၽြန္းသား

ဟုတ္တယ္ဗ်ာ
ဗိုက္ေတာင္ ဆာလာၿပီ။
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ လက္၀ဲကၽြန္းသား >> ညီေလး။ ဆြမ္းေတာ္စြန္႔တာ ေစာင္႔ၿပီး စားပါ။ ဟဲ ဟဲ။
PonGyi

nice shot & clear description again!!! ur pic simply portrays the religious nature of Myanmar people… u know… it’s such a graceful tradition of our country & our people… like the lady from ur interview said, we should hand over that gracious tradition to our new generation & hope that ur pic could remind the new generation about this very gracious tradition… ;D
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ PonGyi >> Impressed by your thoughtful comments, my sis…
http://yelwinoo.com/festivals-events/merry-kason.html MERRY KASON

[...] direction. The worshipers chant verses in praise of Buddha. Moreover, on this special day, people offer alms, keep precepts and practice meditation in order to remember Buddha’s [...]

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