The dawn of a year brings the meaning of Dhamma

The dawn of a year brings the meaning of Dhamma
To removes all worries by worshipping the Buddha
Today is that great day which brings healing to every human being

As the full moon rises in the eastern sky, breaking through the darkness of the evening of the bright Far-Distant Path, a historical religious legend about our country comes to our minds. It is about this ‘Duruthu Poya Day, when the Buddha first visited this beautiful island. Two thousand five hundred years ago, the Tathagata’s first journey to Lanka took place on a Duruthu Poya Day.
Nine months after attaining the Buddhahood, the Buddha converted the three main groups living beside the three rivers, namely, Uruvel Kasup, Nadi Kasup, and Gaya Kasup. One thousand Jatilas including the three leaders were ordained.
Then, disappearing from there, he descended in the air to the fertile land called Minipe, near Mahaweli River in Sri Lanka. The ‘Yakka’ warriors gathered in the garden known as the Mahanaga forest and engaged in a great battle against the Buddha, who was sitting on the roof of the land they had inherited, But the Buddha, spreading a beam of light rays, shone like the moon, preached the Dhamma in a sweet r and enchanting voice and broke their heat. God Sumana Saman , a resident of Sri Pada, who had come there to see the beauty of the Buddha, became a great devotee and attained Sotapanna.
On that same day, the Buddha, at the request of God Sumana Saman , offered few starnds of his hair to him. The Gods Sumana Saman accepted the hair with a golden bowl, and after the Buddha sat down, they spread many lotuses on the ground, built a stupa of blue stone, a meter high, and enshrined the Hair Relics.

This Miyuguna Stupa was built in the very first year that the Buddha attained the Enlightenment. This is the first stupa built by a God. It has become a national symbol that recalls the infinite and immeasurable value of the Tathagata, which is still remembered today in the whole world as a legend of an ancient great battle.

Similarly, after forty-five years, at the Maha Parinibbana of the Buddha was placed in a wooden coffin by the venerable Arahant Sariputta, and burnt into ashes. Sarabhu, the assistant of Arahant Sariputta, collected a Neck bone Relic and built a stupa enshrining it. This Myugunu Stupa can also be considered the first stupa built under the guidance of an Arahant.

Then, Prince Uddhachulabhaya, younger brother of King Devanampiyatissa developed the Myugunu stupa into a thirty cubit high coffin. Within a hundred years, King Dutugemunu , the great hero of Sri Lanka who unified the country, erected it into an eighty cubits high stupa.

The Miyugnu Seya is the first Seya to be built in Sri Lanka. It is a national heritage and a royal shrine that proclaims the past glory of Sri Lanka to the world. It is more ancient than the history of the Sinhalese nation. It is a stupa that has become physically and aesthetically pure with a continuous history older than the Sri Lankan Buddhist Sasana.

It is none other than the Mahiyangana Stupa, which commemorates the noble historical first visit of the Buddha to Sri Lanka, bringing light to a nation immersed in darkness and to civilize a nation living in barbarism, is still being honored and glorified by the Buddhist people of the entire world.

Duruthu Poya Day, is the day that this land of Sri Lanka became a holy land after receiving the touch of the Buddha’s feet, marking the beginning of the nation’s genealogy and paved the way for the glory of the nation and the nobility of the country, is a religious and historical day for Sinhala Buddhists.

In addition, Duruthu Poya Day, is the day Mahinda Maharahat set out to prepare the field of Lanka to plant the seeds of Dhamma, should be remembered with great joy by everyone as a devotee awakened by the Buddha’s enlightenment, and the peace that the nation and the people achieved through that great gift of Dhamma.