Song of Sunita by Rev. Heng Sure 

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Sunita
Music: Rev. Heng Sure
Lyrics: Adapted from The Theragatha by Rev. Heng Sure
2,500 years ago, the Buddha’s disciples wrote auto-biographical verses which were collected into the Theragatha (Therigatha for nuns). The verses tell how each individual met the Buddha’s teachings and found liberation from confusion and suffering. These verses number among humanity’s oldest spiritual literature. Our author, Sunita, was an Untouchable, the lowest strata of Indian society. A beggar, he survived only by reselling the cast-off remains of wealthy people’s offerings at shrines. Although poor, he maintained a practice of making ritual prostrations. He bowed every day. One day this Untouchable risked death by daring to bow at the Buddha’s feet as the Buddha walked through town for alms. The Buddha compassionately took him into the monastic Sangha on the spot and gave him instructions in cultivation. Sunita experienced a spiritual awakening. The delicious irony of Sunita’s poem comes as Indra and Brahma, chiefs among the gods, salute the former beggar and outcaste as a “thoroughbred of humans,” one “worthy of offerings.” This may be one of the world’s only folk songs that celebrates “austerity, celibacy, restraint and self-control.”