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.
ဟြန္း…. စားစရာေတြရုိက္ျပျပန္ပီ…
ႏွိပ္စက္က်…ႏွိပ္စက္က်… ဆရာတံုလည္းတူတူပဲ… ကင္မရာတစ္လံုးနဲ႔…စားစရာရိုက္ျပေနတာ.. :((