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I find myself again and again watching attentively to see if he is just saying these words of advice for others, or if he himself really follows them. One can see how he wholeheartedly values and practices them. At present (1996), Sayadaw is seventy-five years of age. Along this lifetime journey of his, he has worked on a great many enterprises. He has tried to used that practice on every one of these enterprises. As much as he has been able to apply this practice, his projects have seen success. He has found that he achieved much greater success.
People all over the world work to make a success of their various enterprises. There are those who are successful because of their efforts, and there are those who are unsuccessful. Those who are unsuccessful generally search for the cause of their failure. Those who are successful get intoxicated. They get greedy and forget the task at hand. They bask in the taste of success. Though they have been successful, their enterprises may yet have needs, flaws, and deficiencies. Successful people often forget to attend to these. They don't make a practice of being watchful for them. Those kind of people may have enterprises which see success once, twice, even thrice. Yet, no one can say whether they will see more and more success, time and time again. If one can fill the needs, and rectify the flaws and deficiencies which can be present even in successful enterprises, one will surely pile success upon success.
At present, the Shwe Taung Gon Sâsana Yeiktha has just turned five years old. Seeing the awesome facilities large and small, like the three story Dhamma hall and the three story ordination hall, some of the monks, nuns, and lay people even say, "Did the devâ Visachoun come down and materialize these with his psychic power?" These facilities large and small came into being in such a short period of time that some say, "Palaces in the devâ realms must be built like this!" That is what you call successful development in the realm of material things.
No matter how much development one achieves in the realm of material things, if the inner essences of sîla (morality), samâdhi (concentration), and panña (wisdom) are not developed, it is not yet fully solid development. It is not something to look up to and emulate. Neither can this be called essential progress of the Sâsana.
It seems to me that the Shwe Taung Gon Sâsana Yeiktha Sayadaw has carried out many more projects for the Sâsana than proportionate to his age. He is striving with the firm intention to ensure that the theoretical study of the Sâsana (teachings) is not devoid of practice, and that the practice is not carried out in the absence of theory. His aim and object is successful, as it should be. You would have to say that he has been successful from the perspectives of both scholarship and practice. To take the perspective of scholarship, in the five year existence of the Shwe Taung Gon Sâsana Yeiktha, it has had students pass the government Pâli examinations in first place out of the entire nation every year. As for the practice perspective, yogis are arriving all the time to come meditate.
The occasion on which I heard the words of advice above was when the three story Dhamma hall was nearing completion. The Buddhist Culture Course was about to
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