Buddhism and Education in Burma: Varying Conditions for a Social Ethos in the Path to “Nibbana”

Home , Buddhavamsa, Mingun Sayadaw, Monastic education, Ordination hall, Shin Arahan, Shwethalyaung Hill

BUDDHISM AND EDUCATION IN BURMA: VARYING CONDITIONS FOR A SOCIAL ETHOS IN THE PATH TO “NIBBANA”

Eugenia Kaw

A DISSERTATION

PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY

OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPY

RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE

BY THE DEPARTMENT OF

ANTHROPOLOGY

NOVEMBER 2005

UMI Number: 3169805

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Abstract

This is a comparative study of pedagogy in the various educational settings in which Buddhism is taught to lay persons in modern Burma: formal and non-formal, governmental and non-governmental, and lay and monastic-led. Findings suggest that the simultaneous development of faith and critical thinking skills is integral to motivating Buddhist ethics in the world. In present day Burma, it is the meditation monk teachers who can best provide that sort of education. They provide the educational conditions in which lay persons can aim for nibbana, the ultimate salvation, release from the cycle of rebirths, even as one lives and moves in the world.

Central to the meditation monks’ pedagogy is the instilling of a “conscience” of the Buddha, the ability of a people to remember and be moved by ethics as embodied in the Buddha (Obeyesekere 1991). The Buddha did not create the world, has passed on into nibbana, and no longer exists.

Therefore, he cannot be propitiated by prayers. As such, Buddhist ethics entail much self-responsibility and critical thinking. The Buddha modeled this path to wisdom through his practice of vipassana or insight meditation.

His path to wisdom was motivated by moral awareness. In his life as the

Buddha and in his many past lives, the Buddha fulfilled moral perfections including self-sacrifice. Hence, a conscience of the Buddha entails faith in his perfections and a willingness to develop one’s own ability to judge right

iii from wrong. The monks’ pupils not only become acquainted with stories of the Buddha’s astounding deeds, but also gain the practical means to verify for themselves the value of the Buddha’s ethics in the world. Through awareness of the material body, feelings, consciousness, and other mental objects, they learn to gauge for themselves the wholesome or unwholesome quality of conducts and motives, their own and that of others. By helping to transform the “conscience collective (Durkheim 1933)” of the Buddha in the larger society into an ethical “conscience” of the individual, the meditation monk teachers help to prevent notions of the Buddha’s greatness from becoming a mere nationalist symbol or propaganda tool of the state.

To Blake, Artemisia, Ellie, and Olivia

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………vii

Preface……………………………………………………………………ix

Introduction.………………………………………………………………1

Chapter 1 Conscience of the Buddha in Burmese Popular Culture: Importance of the Vernacular...... ……………………………48

Chapter 2 ‘Nibbana in This World’: A History of the Lay Elite...... ……………………………89

Chapter 3 Buddhism as an Authoritarian Instrument...... ……………………………108

Chapter 4 Contemporary Lay Elites and Buddhist Education...... ………………………………...150

Chapter 5 Meditation Monk Teachers and Buddhist Education...... …………………………………………..175

Conclusion Insight Meditation as Sublimation and Political Praxis: The Example of Aung San Suu Kyi………………………………………...242

References Cited……………..………………………………………...260

Appendix………..……………..………………………………………...266

vi Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my parents, sisters, brothers, nephew, and nieces for

being there for me. Their company has helped me to feel at ease in all my

endeavors.

I owe much gratitude to all my teachers, both in the United States and

Burma. I have been fortunate to have invaluable teachers throughout my lifetime, beginning with my parents. It would be difficult for me to name them all here. So, please let me take this opportunity to thank those who have directly influenced my dissertation. First, I would like to thank my main advisor from

Princeton University, Gananath Obeyesekere. He is a kind and wise mentor who has been an excellent source of inspiration throughout my studies, research, and writing. Because I wanted to learn about the anthropology of Buddhism, I chose to become a graduate student at the department of anthropology at Princeton.

Today, I feel certain that I had made the right decision. I also want to thank

Isabelle Clark-Deces for providing me with insight on the formulation and writing of my dissertation. Further, I thank Marguerite Conrad for helping to edit the final draft. I thank Gyan Prakash and Carol Greenhouse for being my readers.

Finally, I would like to thank all the professors from whom I have learned at

Princeton for giving me the tools to think before, during, and after my journey to

Burma.

I am also grateful to my teachers in Burma. They include the friends, strangers, professors, and relatives who patiently answered my barrage of questions, led me to places where I had never been, and let me become a part of

vii their lives. I am especially grateful to Sayadawgyi U Pandita and his monk disciples for teaching me how to practice insight meditation.

Finally, I would like to thank Carol Zanca for her helpfulness at all times,

Claire Brandin for her encouragements, and Carol Fong for her understanding and giving me the time off that was necessary to finish this dissertation. Last but not least, I would like to thank my first graders in Room 13 for making me feel fortunate to be their teacher.

Everyone I know has helped me along. Any shortcomings in this dissertation are a result of my own doing.

viii Preface

I have included words and phrases from both the Pali and Burmese

languages in my text. I have used Pali instead of Sanskrit spellings for Buddhist

terminologies, e.g., “nibbana” instead of “nirvana” and “kamma” instead of

“karma.” I have not included any diacritics.

There are some Burmese words in my text that are derived from the Pali language. When these are the titles of texts or prime Buddhist concepts, I have spelled them using Pali phonetics. For example, the Burmese word “kutho” means the same as the Pali word kusala (wholesome deeds). I have substituted

“kusala” for “kutho.” When they are names of persons or places, however, I have left their spellings unchanged as Burmese derivatives of Pali words. For example, U Thukha’s name is derived from the Pali word sukha (happy). But I have left his name as “Thukha” because that is the name by which he is popularly known in Burma.

ix Introduction

This is a study of Buddhist education in modern day Burma. It is a comparative study of pedagogy in the various educational settings in which

Buddhism is taught to lay persons in Burma today: formal and non-formal, governmental and non-governmental, and lay and monastic-led. Findings suggest that the simultaneous development of faith and critical thinking skills are integral to motivating Buddhist ethics in the world. In present day Burma, it is the meditation monk teachers who can best provide that sort of education. They provide the educational conditions in which lay persons can effectively aim for nibbana, the ultimate salvation, release from the cycle of rebirths, even as one lives and moves in the world.

Central to the meditation monks’ pedagogy is the instilling of a conscience of the Buddha. Obeyesekere has used the term “conscience of the Buddha” to refer to the ability of a people to remember and be moved by ethics as embodied in the Buddha (Obeyesekere 1991). The Buddha did not create the world, has passed on into nibbana, and no longer exists. Therefore, unlike central figures in monotheistic religions, he cannot give commands, interfere in the affairs of the world, bestow favors, grant forgiveness, or be propitiated by prayers in either theory or in practice. As such, Buddhist ethics entail much self-responsibility and critical thinking, particularly the ability to gauge for oneself right from wrong. The

Buddha modeled this path to wisdom through his practice of vipassana or insight meditation and the attainment of enlightenment. His path to wisdom was

1 motivated by moral awareness. The Buddha as “The Enlightened One” quelled demons, criminals, and other wrong-doers. In his past lives as different people, animals, gods, and other living creatures, he fulfilled paramitas (moral

perfections) such as patience, compassion, and self-sacrifice. Hence, a

conscience of the Buddha is two-fold: it entails faith in his moral perfections and

a willingness to develop one’s own ability to judge right from wrong as he did

through insight meditation. The meditation monk teachers are best able to instill

a conscience of the Buddha in pupils as they not only tell narratives of the

Buddha’s life and past lives but also encourage, through self-example, practice of

his ethics and path to critical insight.

Durkheim used the term conscience collective to refer to a “set of beliefs

and sentiments,” shared by members of a society, which forms a defined system

and has a life of its own (Durkheim 1933:79). The French word conscience is

ambiguous. It entails the connotations of both English words “consciousness”

and “conscience” (Lukes 1985:4). So, the beliefs and sentiments in a

“conscience collective” are simultaneously cognitive and moral or religious

(Lukes:4). The legend of the Buddha and Jataka tales (stories of his

astoundingly moral past lives) that are told time and again in homes, at monks’

sermons, and through temple frescoes and sculptures in Burma are a

“conscience collective” of this type. They create a common consciousness, a

presence of the Buddha in people’s minds throughout Burma. For the faithful,

they also help to produce a shared conscience, a shared sense of right and

wrong.

2 The conscience of the Buddha that the meditation monk teachers promote at their meditation retreats and Buddhist civility programs is different from the

“collective conscience” that is produced in the larger society. Pupils under their tutelage not only become acquainted with a sense of right and wrong as exemplified by the Buddha’s legend and stories of his past lives, but also gain the practical means to verify for themselves the value of the Buddha’s ethics in the world. That is, they do not simply take for granted the truthfulness of the

Buddhist morality tales. Through awareness of their material body, feelings,

consciousness, and other mental objects, they learn to gauge for themselves the wholesome or unwholesome quality of conducts and motives, both their own and

others’.

By helping to refine the “conscience collective” of the Buddha in the larger

society into an ethical “conscience” of the individual, the meditation monk

teachers help to prevent notions of the Buddha’s greatness from becoming only a

nationalist symbol or propaganda tool of the authoritarian state. The military

junta in Burma likes to promote a collective consciousness of the Buddha by

supporting mass venerations of the Buddha’s relics and images. They try to

promote a consciousness of the Buddha as a kind of auspicious political figure

legitimating the regime. Based primarily in faith, this psychologically soothing imagery has also served as a veneer of “false consciousness (Marx and Engels

1957)” covering the harsh political realities of living under authoritarian rule.

Based on such consciousness, a “collective conscience” of the Buddha can remain primarily a static phenomenon. In polar contrast, a conscience of the

3 Buddha, a remembrance and practice of his deeds and path to insight as

promoted at monastic meditation centers have led to both personal

transformations and political praxes.

A Brief History of Monastic Education for Lay Persons

It was the beginning of a cold, dry winter in Rangoon, the capital of

Burma. I had been in the country for nearly four months. I was interested in

studying the role of Buddhism, an other-worldly religion, in the this-worldly life of

the Burmese people. I had been studying the relationship between Buddhism

and modern education in Burma. Specifically, I was investigating the pedagogy

of monks who taught both Buddhism and a public school education to lay pupils

at government-administered monastic schools in and around Rangoon. My focus

had been on them because in pre-colonial days, monastic schools had been the

foundation of education in Burma, at least for the entire male Buddhist

population, regardless of class, occupation, or status. In the pre-colonial

monastic schools, monk teachers taught to their novice and lay pupils the

Burmese language, arithmetic, and verses and stories from the Tripitaka (“Three

Baskets” comprising the Buddhist canon) in the original Pali language with their

Burmese vernacular translations. The education was both loki (worldly) and

lokuttara (other-worldly) in nature (Kaung 1963:29-33). The students learned the

essential world view and ethics of their religion, devotional chants, and daily

observances, along with reading, writing, spelling, and mathematical skills

necessary for engaging in daily life within the larger society. Furthermore, some

4 Buddhist homilies written by contemporary Burmese Buddhist masters that

contained more specific worldly admonitions, such as discerning the

characteristics of a wise mate, a benevolent employer, a fair ruler, or performing the duties of children, teachers, and parents were also taught to pupils (Kaung:

29). In the more advanced stages, novices who decided to become monks went on to attain higher learning in the Pali texts, while lay students, notably in the case of princes and other royal members, tried to master the 18 worldly subjects called Aharathat, which included bow and arrow sports, thine (a Burmese martial arts), and sciences such as suryasiddhanta (astronomy), laghugraha (astrology), and dravyaguna (medicine) (Kaung:31). All of the education at the monastic schools in pre-colonial Burma was by choice. No one was required to be in attendance. One Burmese education professor from Rangoon’s Teachers’

College, U Thein Lwin, told me, “It was a student-based, individualized form of education.” Students progressed through different texts and subjects based on their own speed and abilities. The education was also free of charge. Monks were supported by donations they normally received from the lay community.

I was finding that the nature of the education in the current government- administered monastic schools for lay pupils was dramatically different from that in the pre-colonial monastic schools for lay pupils as the relationship between

Sangha (order of monks) and Burmese society was now also quite different.

One way in which the British colonial government “disestablished Buddhism

(Sarkisyanz 1965:110-127)” in the mid 19th century was by diminishing the role of

monks as the main educators of Burmese society. In their modernist campaign,

5 they centralized and formalized the education system in Burma under one

Education Department, standardized grades, supported Christian missionary

schools that competed well with the monastic schools by teaching English and

the modern sciences such as geography, required a knowledge of the English

language for jobs, and required monastic schools to register if they chose to be a

part of the education system. Many monk teachers refused to register. To do so would have limited their autonomy and caused transgressions of many of their vinaya (rules of conduct for monks), including having to work under lay teachers and administrators and also become a wage earner. For instrumental reasons, i.e., to ensure jobs for their children, parents began to send their children only to

government-recognized schools and especially ones that taught the English

language and the modern sciences. While monks’ role as spiritual counsel and a

field of merit remained, their role as “educators” diminished, except in isolated

rural areas where government schools were lacking. This trend continues today.

So, to this day, the term “phongyi kyuang tha” (“student who received his or her basic education at monastic schools”) is often used in a derogatory manner to

refer to someone who does not seem very well educated in Burma.

The Post-Colonial Revival of Monastic Schools for Lay Persons

The post-colonial governments inherited the colonial government’s

“modern” system of education with a centralized system and standardized

grades. However, they also had to deal with the inadequacies of that system,

namely the difficulty of getting children to school in a very poor nation that is also

6 mostly agrarian. According to Professor Thein Lwin, “The formal school system is not suitable to people’s lives. Many children have to help their parents with work. For instance, in the north (where beans are the main commodity crop), when beans sprout, all the formal schools have to close down because no one shows up.” According to him and his colleagues at the Teachers’ College, only

64% of all five-year-old children in Burma ever make it to kindergarten and of the

64% who do, only a quarter of them ever finish primary school. Finally, only one percent of the 64% gets to college. So, the military junta’s revival of monastic schools for lay students (so that monks can help teach primary school curricula and Buddhism to lay pupils) was the revamping of tradition to accomplish several modernist ends, i.e., to provide a cost effective “education for all,” to attract foreign capital via a tourist industry by appearing to be the protector of the country’s exotic ancient traditions, including Buddhism, and most of all, a means of social control for the masses. Firstly, monastic schools seemed like a cost effective method for spreading mass education. Monks did not need to be paid because according to the vinaya they cannot accept payment. Moreover, their school buildings already existed, so no new ones needed to be built. Secondly, having monks teach served to legitimate the state as the protector and propagator of tradition and the Buddhist religion. In this year, 1996, many government-administered monastic schools for lay children had opened and were much publicized in the state-run newspapers, including the English language version. Coincidentally, it was also the state’s officially designated

“Visit Myanmar Year.” “Come and see our traditions…” was the motto used by

7 the government in newspapers, posters, and billboards to attract tourists. Finally,

the monastic schools for lay students were also places that could help the

government with social control. The Department for the Perpetuation and

Propagation of the Sasana (Buddhist religion), otherwise known as DPPS, was

the branch of the Ministry of Religion that dealt specifically with spreading

Buddhism both within the nation and abroad. The deputy minister of the DPPS

who had provided me my visa and given me formal permission to study the

monastic schools for which his department is responsible, said that these schools

were a way in which his government was molding saritta (character) and yin kyey

aung lok (civilizing) the young people of the nation. “Monks are already civilized so they can discipline the students,” he said. He referred to the mass pro- democracy demonstrations in 1988 with regret:

Eugenia, you should have been here in 1988. It was a dark year in our history. There were young people beheading those whom they thought to be their enemy right on the streets and they were dragging bodies. We cannot let that happen again…Through our monastic schools, we are helping to put back on the correct path those who, because of blindness, are not on the correct path.

And, in fact, monastic schools that were used were in the urban or suburban areas where the government can keep a close supervision. The government brought to the monasteries rural poor children as boarders. Some of them were orphans and many of them were from hill tribe minorities who were neither

Burman nor Buddhist but whose ethnic groups were in rebellion or under threat of rebellion against the government.

Because the goals of monastic education for lay students had changed in the above ways, the content and nature of the education had also changed from

8 pre-colonial monastic education. There was much force involved, both in the

implementation and teaching. Firstly, the lay children were required to be there

and stay there. The monks, too, were coerced to be the main teachers and

supervisors of the students. In many cases, the monks and the schools were

picked and designated by the government, regardless of the monks’ wishes. The only form of “Buddhist” education I found in many of these monastic schools were basic daily ritual observances, such as prostrating in front of Buddha

images, giving offerings to the Buddha images, and rote memorization of a few

Buddhist chants, the meaning of which, many of the students could neither articulate nor understand. The unintended consequence of such Buddhist education is that Buddhism is denigrated, not only in its deep meaning, but also in the role of the Sangha, the order of monks. As the government does not take responsibility for the cost of the schooling, and only donates a few items at will, the monks were mostly left on their own to raise money for the cost of feeding, clothing, and buying books and pencils for the students. Yet, to raise money or even announce, without being asked, a need goes against the quite ascetic rules of the vinaya codes they must live by. When they do announce, too, whatever respect they have among their lay communities can easily diminish. Hence, many of the monks I met at the government-administered monastic schools were quite pre-occupied trying to figure out how to continue supporting their lay students. They had little time to perfect, much less do either of the two traditional duties of monks: pathibatti (meditate) or pariyatti (study and teach Buddhist texts). In fact, they had little time and resources to be the “educators” of young

9 people in any way. One of these monk teachers exclaimed to me, “They [the government] started this program. They should be the ones to take on the responsibility of making sure it can work out.”

I had begun my above research on government-administered monastic schools in August 1996. In the middle of December, my field work came to a sudden halt. In many ways, December was to become the most dramatic turning point of my field work. The events that occurred then helped to shape the larger scope and premises of my dissertation research. My concept of Buddhist education in modern Burma widened to include more non-formal settings such as non-governmentally affiliated meditation centers and lay Buddhist organizations.

A Consciousness of the Buddha in Informal Buddhist Education

As did many kings of Burma’s pre-colonial past, the military junta attempts to legitimate its rule and also sometimes tries to atone for its moral transgressions through state-sponsored Buddhist ceremonies. Sometimes these ceremonies have heightened a consciousness of the Buddha among ordinary citizens as the symbols used are so powerful. This shared presence of the

Buddha on people’s minds can help to bolster the state’s power, because the latter often portrays the Buddha as an auspicious protector of the state.

In December, one of the Buddha’s tooth relics was on a tour of Rangoon.

It arrived in Burma several months earlier from China as a sign of good will and friendship from the Chinese government. It had been touring Upper Burma.

10 Some kind of pwa operation (or copying) of it had been done in Upper Burma by

the military junta, according to the state-run media. Hence, in Upper Burma, its

replica was thapana-thwin or ceremonially inserted into the stupa of the Buddha’s

Tooth Relic Pagoda that had just been built in Mandalay by the military junta

(with donations from the public) for this very purpose of housing a Buddha’s tooth

relic in Burma. Another replica of it had yet to be made in Rangoon and inserted

into the Buddha’s Tooth Relic Pagoda that had just been completed here. So,

now, it was brought to Rangoon for a tour. The tooth relic, measuring about a

palm’s width and set on a golden, miniature, lotus throne was encased in a see-

through container shaped like a stupa. Its container was a glass shaped like an

inverted alms bowl with golden serpent coils and a mini-umbrella at the top. At

the bottom of the glass container were jagged golden tiers representing the

ptsayas (levels) and hapanataw (base). This image of the Buddha’s tooth relic

had been repeatedly shown on the state’s television since its ceremonial arrival

at the Rangoon Mingaladon Airport to its parade routes in Upper Burma,

including Mandalay, to its return now in Rangoon. Upon the tooth relic’s arrival

back in Rangoon, it was paraded en route to its last resting place in Burma (prior to its replication and then return to China): Maha Pasana Guha (The Great Cave) on the grounds of the Kaba Aye (World Peace) Pagoda (a vast, elegant, columned stadium where the Sixth Buddist Synod had been held in the 1950s under the parliamentary democracy of Prime Minister U Nu). At the parade which I attended, the Buddha’s tooth relic, in its transparent stupa shaped container, was hoisted on a white elephant that was dressed in royal regalia. A

11 white umbrella was held above the tooth relic by someone walking behind it who

was dressed as a royal soldier. Along with white elephants and civil servants

dressed as soldiers and ministers from the time of the Burmese kings were the

other two symbols of military might from pre-colonial Burma: horses and

carriages. All four traditional military symbols flanked the Buddha’s tooth relic on its way to the Great Cave at the World Peace Pagoda. While walking, the

“soldiers” and “ministers” threw fresh, fragrant jasmine flowers into the exuberant, cheering crowds along the parade line on Kaba Aye Road (World Peace Road).

When the tooth relic finally reached the Great Cave, it was displayed there

for public worship. Its whole container was hoisted onto a life-size golden throne

that was bedazzled with gems. Four white umbrellas were placed on each side

of the throne. Behind the throne, was a green and white signboard reading, “Out

of Friendship and Good Will Between the Two Nations, the Buddha’s Tooth Relic

from China Has Arrived.” Between the signboard and the tooth relic, two

Mahayana Buddhist monks from China sat. They were part of the Chinese

delegation that came to accompany and guard the tooth relic. People from

across Rangoon, from all different educational and occupational backgrounds,

took breaks from work and other obligations to wait in a long line outside the

Great Cave. They came to see and venerate the Buddha’s tooth relic. Taking off

their sandals at the opening, as one normally does at pagodas and monasteries,

they entered the Great Cave. In a line that stretched to the front of the cave

where the tooth relic laid in state, they waited until it was their turn to see it close

up. Loudspeakers played Dhamma teis or Dhamma songs, Buddhist protective

12 chants from the Tripitaka that were turned into songs. From the green and white

uniforms some wore, I could tell that there were teachers bringing their students.

I also saw soldiers dressed in uniforms who were lining up behind and in front of saffron robbed monks. While viewing the tooth relic close-up, the devotees clasped their hands together to pay respect to it while standing. I saw a mother also helping to clasp the palms of her toddler son who was viewing the relic from the top of her shoulders. After viewing and paying respects as such, the devotees stepped off to the side where they were greeted cheerfully by ladies from the Ministry of Religion who generously placed bunches of Eugenia leaves and chrysanthemums into their palms. The devotees sat back down on the vast floor in front of the tooth relic. With the flowers and Eugenia leaves in their hands, they again prostrated. Many continued to say prayers and chants. A few counted beads or meditated. Upon leaving, many devotees placed monetary

donations into glass donation boxes and silver bowls manned by civil servants

from the Ministry of Religion. For about a week, the Buddha’s tooth relic was

displayed at the Great Cave for public worship as such. Regardless of class,

status, or political perspective, the entire city seemed to arrive. At any hour, one

could see at least three hundred devotees in the cave and the lines did not abate. Of about twenty devotees I formally interviewed, about half were also returning for more than one time. “The more you come to be in its presence, the more kusala (merit) you get,” one woman told me. Moreover, no one that I knew among my own relatives and friends, from maids, to clerks, to housewives, to teachers, to doctors and engineers, including those who voiced their dislike of the

13 military government, missed this opportunity to go and worship the Buddha’s tooth relic at least once.

Civil servants at the Department of the Perpetuation and Propagation of the Sasana were responsible for putting together the parade of the tooth relic across the city’s streets. Now, the clerks and low level officials of this department were also responsible for guarding it at the Great Cave. Among these clerks and low level officials were my older cousin and her friends. Almost on a daily basis since my arrival in Burma, I had been visiting my cousin and her four friends at the department head quarters, a vast, oval building right near the

Great Cave, which, during U Nu’s time, had been the Institute for Advanced

Buddhist Studies. Now, it was mostly an empty office building filled with a few palm leaf manuscripts and a library with English language books dating back to the 1960s and earlier. And the only researcher there now was me. My cousin and her friends were all in their twenties like myself and in college or just graduated from college. They mostly tended to paper work and chores handed to them from their superiors. For me, they were not only pleasant company but also provided useful insights into popular, contemporary youth perspectives on

Buddhism in Rangoon. In addition, through them and their supervisors, I was collecting data on and gaining access to government sponsored monastic schools for lay children throughout Rangoon. In their company, I also gained access to many state-run Buddhist ceremonies involving high-level government officials, such as General Khin Nyunt’s Umbrella Ceremony commemorating the completion of the Buddha’s Tooth Relic Pagoda in Rangoon.

14 Now that my cousin and her friends were taking turns guarding the

Buddha’s tooth relic at the Great Cave, I accompanied them there, too, across several days, so that I could observe and interview devotees. Of the twenty people I interviewed, all stated that they came because it is like a “once in a life time” chance to encounter the Buddha’s tooth relic. Upon being asked how it compared to worshipping at Rangoon’s famous Shwedagon Pagoda (which is said to contain the Buddha’s hair relic in its main stupa), they said that they were more familiar with the latter because they could visit it anytime. According to them, worshipping both the Shwedagon Pagoda and the Buddha’s tooth relic were meritorious acts, but that the Buddha’s tooth relic, being only of temporary access to them, evoked extraordinary feelings of devotion in them. Placing her palm on her heart area, the seat of the mind according to Burmese Buddhist belief, a retired civil servant in her fifties said about viewing the tooth relic, “In my mind there is a very deep feeling of consolation and comfort.” A younger woman, a sales lady, told me that she felt “tremors of happiness” in her mind, because

“it’s only like once in a life time that I have the opportunity to come and venerate it.” Some said that they were praying they would be able to “attain the wisdom that would lead them to nibbana.” Some prayed that they would be able to sasana pyu (help propagate the Buddhist religion). Many also prayed to be successful in worldly matters, such as the ability to sell one’s plot of land or to cure their illness, such as cancer. The retired civil servant in her 50s said that she made an aditthan (promise) in front of the Buddha’s tooth relic on a previous visit several days ago that if she were able to sell her plot of land, she would

15 come back to the Great Cave and make more contributions in the donation

boxes. According to her, she was able to sell her plot of land the day after.

Hence, she had now come again to venerate the relic and to donate more

money. “How powerful the Buddha’s dagou (magical aura) is!” she exclaimed.

Like her, almost all my interviewees referred to the extraordinary dagou of the

Buddha and said that being in the presence of the tooth relic was almost like

being in the presence of the Buddha. When asked what they saw in their mind

when venerating it, most said that they saw the Buddha. The Buddha’s tooth

relic was, in this regard, a socially unifying object in Rangoon and in Burma at

large, in the Durkheimian sense of the word “sacred (Durkheim 1965).” In

concretizing the memory of their religion’s “unrivaled” founder who passed away

(entered parinibbana) 2,500 years ago, it represented, however temporarily, the

collective consciousness of the people.

Faith in the Buddha and Critical Thinking

Yet as unifying as it was, the presence of the Buddha’s tooth relic also

became the backdrop for much ensuing political conflict. Just a couple of days after my visits to the Great Cave on the grounds of the World Peace Pagoda where the tooth relic was displayed, a bomb exploded in the cave. While it did no damage to the relic, a top government official who was paying respect to it died on the spot. Since then, all civil servants at the Department of the

Perpetuation and Propagation of the Sasana, including my cousin and her friends

16 were frisked for weapons upon entering and leaving their workplace, both at the

Great Cave and at the department head quarters. Moreover, the state run

newspapers (the only two newspapers in the nation) linked various foreigners,

including Americans, to the event. They used, in fact, a webbed diagram to show

the relationships. One of the Americans whose photograph was printed was an

acquaintance of mine whom I had once met in Thailand. I, being American, was

no longer allowed at the DPPS building. In fact, I was interviewed by a state intelligence official, had to submit my video footages of the tooth relic ceremonies for review, and had to sign a letter to clear myself of any involvement in the

assassination incident. While I was completely innocent, the interview left me

stigmatized within my circle of Burmese friends, particularly at the DPPS. Few

wanted to associate with me now for fear of being found guilty by association.

Needless to say, I was rattled by the cloud of suspicion and suspense that hung in Rangoon. Like many of the city’s people, I was also concerned about the violence that might be unleashed by the government upon its larger citizenry.

Parallel to the bombing in the Great Cave, the military government was also disconcerted by recent anti-government student protests on the streets. In fact, reminiscent of the violent clashes in 1988 between the military government and university students at the Rangoon Institute of Technology that spurred nation- wide pro-democracy protests, there was a conflict recently between soldiers and students at a busy intersection on the Rangoon University campus. From what I heard from word of mouth, soldiers used water hoses to break up a crowd of anti- government student protestors. A couple of the students were smothered and

17 killed by the gushing water. The government, worried about further riots and

backlashes against them, now ordered a curfew and was patrolling the streets.

So, in this misty December, in the aftermath of the unifying pilgrimages to the Buddha’s tooth relic at the Great Cave, the military government, SLORC

(State Law and Order Restoration Council) deployed their tanks out onto the streets. The political climate was such that many people in the city, including my uncle and his wife whom I lived with and all my relatives and friends who worked downtown at his music shop, were anxious, gossipy, and curious about what had occurred and what would happen next between the government and opposition elements. For myself, as a foreigner, I could no longer travel about the city, even as freely as I used to, especially not for research purposes.

One cold night in late December, I found myself sitting across from my

uncle at the dining room table telling him, “I really want to become a nun and

meditate for some time.” Immediately, my uncle’s eyes turned wide. He stared

at me in disbelief. While my uncle, a man in his 70s, was a devout Buddhist like

so many men his age in Burma, daily bowed to the Buddha, gave regular

offerings to monks, and chanted parittas (protective chants), like most Burmese

Buddhists, he had never entered a meditation retreat. His mother, my late

grandmother, had meditated regularly at meditation centers in the last decade of

her life prior to her death in 1969. But no one in his immediate family now had

ever entered a meditation retreat and much less as a monk or a nun. “Are you

certain?” he asked. “I am quite certain,” I told him. “Meditating is not going to be an easy task,” he warned. “I know,” I said. Worried that I would have to shave

18 my head as a nun, he said, “Well, you know, you can meditate without being a nun, too.” “I know, but I really want to do something very pure right now,” I told him. I also knew that he was worried that I would not finish my Ph.D. program if I decided that I liked meditating and being a nun. “I will do it only for a month.

Besides, I will learn a lot more about Buddhism while doing it,” I reassured him.

Yet, while I was certain of my strong desire suddenly to become a temporary nun and enter a meditation retreat, I had also many questions about why I wanted to do these things and so unexpectedly. I knew that partly my decision had to do with the constant urging I’d gotten from many monks and lay persons who had meditated, as had many previous Western scholars studying

Buddhism in Burma (for example, King 1965:225), to “come and practice the

Buddha’s teachings if you really want to understand it.” The monk and lay meditators were echoing what the Buddha had said regarding one of the distinct qualities of his teachings as stated in the parittas called “Virtues of the Dhamma”:

“Ehi passi ko” or “It invites one to practice it.” By “practice,” I knew as King did studying Buddhism in Burma in the 1960s that what was meant was the practice of meditation (King:225). One lay meditator who had been urging me to

“practice” was a woman in her forties who was a former head nurse at Rangoon

General Hospital. She had already told me the logistics of how I could enter a meditation retreat where she now lived and practiced. It was a famous meditation center in Rangoon called Panditarama, a branch of the internationally renowned Mahasi Meditation Center, which was headed by a meditation monk teacher and abbot named Sayadaw U Pandita. “Whenever you feel ready, just

19 come,” she had told me. Although I knew I wanted to meditate partly in order to

understand Buddhism better, I had many questions about my motives. Was it

also to escape my personal hardship of not being able to do any other type of

field work at the moment? Was it to flee from the political unrest in Burma?

Also, if I were meditating to understand Buddhism better, was it so that I could

become a better Buddhist? Was it to reach nibbana? Or, was it so that I could

more skillfully write my thesis, earn my Ph.D., and land a job? These questions

about my personal motives led me to consider the following questions about

Buddhism and “education” in the more general sense in Burma.

Insight Meditation as a Form of Education

What were the goals of Burmese Buddhist lay meditators I would

encounter? With what insights did they enter meditation and with what insights did they re-enter the mundane world? According to Buddhist doctrine as

expressed in the Satipattana Sutta (Discourse on the Four Foundations of

Mindfulness) of the Pali canon and explained in a subsequent commentary,

Visuddhi Maggha (The Path to Liberation), by the 5th century A.D. Sri Lankan

monk, Buddhaghosa, vipassana or insight meditation is the ultimate vehicle for

reaching nibbana, the salvation goal in Buddhism. According to doctrine, the

practice of vipassana meditation would permit one to gain penetrative, intuitive

insight into the truths of dukkha (suffering), anicca (impermanence), and anatta

(the non-existence of the self). In fully coming to know these truths, one would

20 be able to detach oneself from lokkadhamma, the ways of the mundane world, with a sense of equanimity and eventually attain nibbana, liberation from samsara (the cycle of rebirths). Traditionally, vipassana meditation was the practice of religious virtuosos, the monks who would retreat to the forest to practice for long periods of months and years. It was transmitted from monk to monk through informal, one-on-one tutorials. While percentage-wise, very few lay persons in Burma actually meditated still, the number had grown significantly since a century ago. That is because meditation had become very accessible to the ordinary lay person. It had become something of a mass education industry.

With the growth of urban meditation centers and instructional books on meditation written by learned monks and directed at a lay audience, vipassana meditation had become a type of education not only for the forest acetic, but also for lay persons who were absorbed in the world and who, for the most part, did not plan to leave it. Now, lay persons could choose to practice vipassana meditation in a retreat center anytime and also choose to return back to their householder’s life anytime. And certainly, they did not have to stay on meditating at these urban retreats for months and/or years as monks would often choose to do so in forests. There were now in Rangoon both monk and lay teachers teaching meditation to lay persons, sometimes by the masses, e.g., fifty to three hundred persons at a time at various centers. In some cases, meditation was a part of Buddhism courses for lay persons, particularly young people, ages 8 to

25, who came to meditation centers or to lay Buddhist organizations in the summer vacations to learn Buddhism. Were people expecting to attain nibbana

21 in ten days? In a month? In two months? In three months? Those were the

average lengths of meditation retreats that lay persons had chosen to do. Did

they expect to attain nibbana while sitting, walking, eating, and sleeping among

fifty to three hundred people? And if the direct goal in meditating for many lay

persons in Burma was not nibbana, then what was it? How did the learning and

practice of insight meditation at the urban meditation centers in Burma socialize

the lay person for re-engagement with the world? How different was the nature

of Buddhist education taught by lay meditation teachers as opposed to

meditation monk teachers? How were both their methods, in turn, different from

the Buddhist education at government sponsored monastic schools for young,

lay persons? How did each of these three settings nurture lay Buddhist ethos to

adapt it to modernity?

Buddhism and Modernity in South and Southeast Asia

Weber spent much of his career trying to understand the causes for the

increasing rationalizing and consequent disenchantment of life in the modern

West. By rational, he meant two things: a theoretical mastery of the world by

increasingly precise and abstract concepts or attainment of practical ends by

increasingly systematic, precise, and calculated means (Weber 1958:293). By

disenchantment, he meant the condition in which rationalization had become so

pervasive that “one need no longer have recourse to magical means...,”

“progress” becomes equated with “practical and technical” ends only, and there

22 is a loss of existential “meaning” (Weber:139,140). In his comparative studies of

the impact of religious ethos on economic action, he attempted to understand the

conditions that gave rise to rationality and disenchantment in the West. He wrote

that the Protestant religious ethic with its emphasis on a self-responsible, individualistic, practical mastery of the world as the sign of grace or being chosen

by God for salvation gave rise to a capitalist ethic in the West (Weber 1930). In

this capitalist ethic, actions such as thrift, re-investments, and other increasingly

precise, instrumental, and calculated means for practical gains became norm.

According to him, the “this-worldly ascetism” of the Protestant ethic and later, the

capitalist ethic which it gave rise to, are the hallmarks of the roots of extreme

rationality and disenchantment in the West.

In contrast to Protestantism in which lay persons actively mastered the

world to confirm their grace or salvation, Weber saw the Buddhist religion as one in which quite “other-worldly” oriented religious virtuosos, namely monks, were the sole practitioners of the religion:

Buddhism was propagated by strictly contemplative, mendicant monks, who rejected the world and, having no homes, migrated. Only these were full members of the religious community; all others remained religious laymen of inferior value: objects, not subjects, of religiosity. [Weber:269]

Considering what he understood as the activities of monks, he had stated that the Buddhist ethos could do little to motivate this-worldly actions as the Buddhist path to salvation is one of “rejection” of the world and a “flight” from it:

The Buddhist monk was also active, but his activities were withdrawn from any consistent rationalization in this world; this quest for salvation was ultimately oriented to the flight from the ‘wheel’ of rebirths. [Weber:292]

23 Since Weber, many anthropologists studying Buddhism in the societies of South and Southeast Asia have shown that Buddhist monks have long been engaged with the world and that the tension between monks’ this-worldly and other-worldly activities is not a problem solved but one that is constantly negotiated by different sectors of Buddhist society throughout history. For example, Tambiah has shown in his studies of Buddhism in Thailand that the relationship between the

Sangha and lay persons is a more complex one than the clearly compartmentalized model which Weber assumed (Tambiah 1976, 1988). As monks renounce the world to meditate in forests areas, ordinary lay persons become attracted to their charisma as religious virtuosos. In addition, the state, like kings of the past, also wants to support and sponsor these religious virtuosos to legitimate their own political power. Hence, some of these meditating forest monks return to the urban centers where they reciprocate their supporters with blessings, often concretized as amulets. In so doing, their charisma itself can become threatened as now they are back in urban centers and engaged in or proximate to this-worldly activities. This has become increasingly so in modern

Thailand with increasing commercialization and fetishization of forest monks’ amulets. So, instead of the distinct “other-worldly” monk virtuoso and “this- worldly” lay divide that Weber saw in Buddhist societies, Tambiah demonstrates a much more tenuous triad between lay persons, urban monks, and forest monks

(Tambiah 1988).

Similarly, Mendhelson who studied the relationship between Sangha and state in Burma demonstrated that sectarianism has been a trend of Sangha there

24 throughout Burma’s history, precisely because of the this-worldly and other- worldly tension inherent in their life conduct (Mendhelson 1975). Although doctrine has never been a point of contention, the degree to which different groups of monks follow the vinaya, the quite ascetic rules of conduct for monks, has been much debated. Periodically, different kings and governments have officially called for a “purification” of the Sangha, leading to their support of so- called more “orthodox” sects. This has been the political center’s means of legitimizing itself. Also, the reverse has been true. When the state sponsored sects appear not to follow the vinaya well, more orthodox sects have formed, with a more world renouncing, ascetic life as their political praxis, even as they live and move in society. In fact, the meditation monk teachers in my study who live and teach meditation in the city belong to a more ascetic sect called “Shwegyin” which formed in opposition to a more lax, less ascetic, lifestyle of another sect called “Dwaya.” The Dwaya sect was favored by the most influential of Burma’s last kings, King Mindon, and has also been bestowed with high positions in the

Sangha hierarchy by the present military junta. These Shwegyin monks have gained their charisma among more ordinary lay persons from their more ascetic life style, including some experience of having meditated in the forests.

However, they are also very much engaged with the world in that their relatively stricter adherence to the vinaya is itself a political praxis in opposition to the state. Sometimes, as part of their political praxis, these monks also act as spiritual counsels to members of the nation’s political opposition. In fact,

Sayadaw U Pandita, the abbot of the Mahasi meditation center, Panditarama, is

25 a close spiritual advisor to Aung San Su Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who

is the opposition leader of Burma. Also, such monks are in contact with lay

persons on a daily basis as they teach meditation, perform ceremonies, give

Dhamma talks, and accept offerings. Finally, they are counseling and teaching

meditation to lay persons who, for the most part, do not plan to leave a

householder’s life and hence, come to the meditation monk teachers to find

“Buddhist” solutions to engage with the modern world. And it is such ambivalent

relationships between other-worldly and this-worldly activities and concerns of

Buddhist monks that permit Buddhist doctrine to be articulated with modernity.

Scholars have shown that in Sri Lanka, the primary Buddhist response to

modernity has been one of almost exact mimicry of the rationalization in the

modern West, sometimes to such an extent as to plague Buddhist societies with

all the existential dilemmas inherent in the rational thinking and life conduct of the

modern West. Anthropologists have written that in contemporary Sri Lanka,

many monks engage rather actively in the world for very calculated, practical

ends. In particular, they point to the recent transformations in the role of monks

in Sri Lanka in the post-colonial era and how the increasingly political role monks

have assumed, including political polemics they now engage in, have

transformed Buddhism itself in Sri Lanka (Seneviratne 1999, Tambiah 1992).

Obeyesekere and Gombrich have more specifically pointed out that the Buddhist

response to modernity there has been one of increasing rationalization, almost in

the ethos of Protestantism that Weber had described. They stated that while

Buddhism has always been rational in the sense that the “Buddha appealed to

26 reason and stressed a human ethical code, just as he preached that ritual was

useless for salvation,…no need had been felt (earlier) to justify the rationality of

Buddhism, let along to posit a contrast between religion and philosophy: the

Dhamma [the Buddha’s teachings] was both (Gombrich and Obeyesekere

1988:221).” With the strong influence of Western Orientalists, such as those in

the Theosophical Society, the overwhelming response of the Buddhist Sinhalese

to the sciences presented by the Western, Protestant missionaries of the colonial

era, has been to propagate and rationalize Buddhism as a philosophy more

scientific than Protestantism ever could be. This trend has led to

“disenchantment” in Sinhalese Buddhism so that catechisms and academic

treatises have replaced stories and verses in everyday Buddhist practice. The

result is that a “conscience” of the Buddha has become quite extinct in Sri Lanka

(Obeyesekere 1991). By a conscience of the Buddha, Obeyesekere meant the

ability for living people to remember and be moved by Buddhist ethics as

exemplified by the Buddha, a figure who, unlike the “God” or “deities” of the other

major world religions, poses several problems in the task of trying to remember

him. The Buddha did not create the world, is no longer alive, and does not exist.

Due to such problems in the task of remembering him, the socialization of the

conscience of the Buddha had been dependent on an emphasis of the past, the time when the Buddha was alive in the world, both in his final life as the Buddha and in his many past lives when he was perfecting his exemplary deeds that

would ensure his final life as the Buddha. What the Buddhist modernist

movement in Sri Lanka attempted was to uproot the stories, verses, rites,

27 ceremonies, faith and devotion that were an important aspect of this cultivation of

a conscience of the Buddha.

The crisis in the ability to develop a conscience of the Buddha also

resulted in an ethical crisis in contemporary Sri Lanka. Firstly, Buddhism came to

be learned and practiced largely for instrumental rational reasons, that is for quite

calculated, this-worldly causes such as to increase one’s wealth, to cure

illnesses, or for gaining certificates and degrees (Gombrich and

Obeyesekere:235-237). Also, it came to be understood in a very particularistic rather than a universalistic manner. That is Buddhism as a national and ethnic identity became predominant over its universal, ethical bases. Traditionally,

iconography and the Jataka stories had presented the Buddha as a non-erotic,

completely non-threatening, totally benevolent figure (with both feminine and

masculine qualities), who is never punishing. In stories of his lives and of those

who were his disciples, good and evil were never presumed to be a permanent

quality of characters; in fact, in keeping with the law of kamma (that wholesome

deeds beget wholesome results and unwholesome deeds beget unwholesome

results) and also the transient nature of all things, good and evil were always

subject to transformation (Obeyesekere and Obeyesekere 1990). Yet, when

such stories and iconography became exempt from transmissions of Buddhism in

modern Sri Lanka, notions of who are good and who are evil became more

crystallized. So, now, as Obeyesekere writes of the present ethnic conflicts

between the minority Tamil Hindus and the majority Sinhala Buddhists in Sri

Lanka, “Thus, ordinary people might not participate in violence against the alien

28 ethnic group; they can, and often do, condone that violence (Obeyesekere 191:

237).” In many ways, too, the idealization and lay support of monks as religious virtuosos became much less significant. That is, there is an increasing lay control of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Along with this, insight meditation there, the ultimate vehicle for attaining nibbana, the salvation goal in Buddhism, is no longer the monopoly of the contemplative mendicant monks, i.e., forest ascetics,

as Weber assumed. Insight meditation centers, largely an import from Burma

since World War II, have cropped up in many urban areas of Sri Lanka. In fact,

according to Obeyesekere and Gombrich, insight meditation has been practiced

by lay persons mainly as a “means to success in everyday life,” e.g., for curing

illnesses, for managing stress, for coping with relationships, and sometimes for

pure recognition and status, such as the attainment of certificates (Gombrich and

Obeyesekere :237-240). Obeyesekere and Gombrich saw the existential

dilemma posed by meditation, an ascetic practice, becoming a practice for those

who are very much engaged in the day to day life as a householder. For

instance, there are those lay meditators who maintain a mate yet vow to be

celibate in their daily life. “Thus, a lay man is to be both a layman and monk at

the same time—to live in the world, yet to strive to leave it (Gombrich and

Obeyesekere:232).”

29 Burma, Buddhism, and Modernity

In Burma, I find that the Buddhist response to modernity has not taken on the overwhelming tendency toward an instrumental rationality that it has in Sri

Lanka. My examinations of ritual life, art, architecture, and literary life in Burma, even within the various Buddhist-modernist educational settings I have outlined above, show that a “collective conscience” of the Buddha, images of his complete benevolence and stories of his astounding deeds, including miracles he had performed, are still actively kept alive in Burma. One example of this shared conscience is clear to me from my observations of the Buddha’s tooth relic ceremonies. All sectors of Burmese society, including those learned in modern subjects, such as physicians, academicians, and engineers, including sympathizers and non-sympathizers of the government, came to this national ceremony sponsored by the government because they shared at some level a strong conscience of the Buddha. They were conscious of him, i.e., he was present in their minds. They also had a conscience about the morality he embodied. The image of the completely benevolent Buddha suddenly evoked by the presence of one of his relics united the people and moved them emotionally.

For a moment at least, the military junta who could take credit for bringing over the Buddha’s tooth relic got to legitimate its rule, as has many kings in Burma’s past, as the protectors of the Buddhist religion who were blessed by the

Buddha’s magical aura. The traditional symbols of military might, the horses, carriages, white elephants, and soldiers on foot, were evoked along with a

30 consciousness of the Buddha as concretized in the tooth relic to represent a continuity between past and present in the ways rulers protected and propagated

Buddhism in Burma. In one way, the overwhelming turn out and exuberance of the lay devotees could be interpreted in Marxian terms as a sign of their “false consciousness,” their inability to see their government’s manipulation of symbols to earn its legitimacy, however momentarily. There was an outpouring of donations from across the nation for building the pagodas to house the replicas of the Buddha’s tooth relic. The government did not need to contribute any money, yet could promote themselves as the masters of ceremony, in the parading of the Buddha’s tooth relic, in its display, and the completion of the pagodas to house its replicas.

However, the consequent assassination of a high government official right in front of the tooth relic, the government’s quick accusations, the consequent pro-democracy demonstrations by students on the streets, and the government’s hasty attempts to quell any oppositions, including the use of water hoses and military tanks, also indicated that a strong devotional faith was not antithetical to, but in fact, conducive to independent or critical thinking among the masses in this largely Buddhist nation. In fact, even in learning an ascetic discipline like meditation, which was originally suited for the rational day to day life of the monk, and the goal of which, nibbana, requires a lucid and precise knowledge of all mental and physical phenomena, the meditator in Burma can still be motivated by a devotional faith in the Buddha at every step of his or her meditation. That is, in the Burmese social context, it is possible for a Buddhist teacher to create the

31 conditions whereby the path to insight is propelled by faith rather than divested of

it. The way this has been done is by creating for the pupil various embodied

experiences of the Buddha’s example. As Weber wrote, Buddhism is an

“exemplary” as opposed to an “emissary prophetic” religion, its founder led by exemplary living and not by demands to the world in the name of a god

(Weber:285 ). It is also one in which its founder has passed away (entered parinibbana) and cannot intervene in the affairs of the world (Obeyeskere

1991:230). The concretization of his charismatic example becomes a powerful psychological motivation to live and move as he, “The Awakened One,” did, not only with precise knowledge of mental and physical phenomena but also a perfection of such benevolent characteristics as karuna (compassion) and dana

(generosity). In my studies, I found that the meditation monk teachers were best

able to bring his charismatic example alive. They did this in the course of each

meditation day, through stories of the Buddha’s lives and deeds, through

devotional rituals dedicated to the Buddha, and most of all, through self-example.

By “self-example,” I do not mean to imply that these meditation monk teachers

were “perfect” like the Buddha or even that I have any way of knowing for certain

their inner spiritual states or motivations. In fact, they articulated many inner

conflicts as well as demonstrated in their demeanor some flaws of ordinary

human beings. Yet, my focus is on their general presentation of themselves

whenever they were in the eyes of their pupils and devotees, including myself,

from moment to moment. Like the Buddha who spread his teachings among

monks, nuns, and lay persons for 45 years after becoming fully enlightened, self-

32 effacement and mindfulness were their main modes of deportment. That is, they helped to create the conditions at the meditation center by which ways of being most directly conducive to nibbana were modeled and embodied. So, even when one’s quest for nibbana remains incomplete at their meditation centers, and most often it probably is, and one must retire again into a householder’s life, the

Buddha’s goal of nibbana can remain one’s goal in everything one does without any existential angst or lack of meaning. By contrast, at the Buddhist education centers led by lay teachers, i.e., the lay Buddhist organizations where Buddhist texts and the lay meditation centers where meditation was taught, faith in the

Buddha, on the one hand, and the rational quest for salvation that is insight meditation, on the other, were radically separated. Through much animated and passionate narrations, commentaries, and exegeses by lecturers and college professors, many of them with a literary background of Buddhist texts, including many stories and verses, lay students at the lay Buddhist organizations often learned to take an almost evangelical joy in their faith. At the lay meditation centers, however, the focus was more on efficiency in learning the Buddha’s path to salvation. There is little or no devotional rituals and even the presence of

Buddha images are scarce, compared to their ubiquitousness at the monks’ meditation centers. Where as bhavana (meditation) is emphasized in positive terms as a “cultivation of positive mental states” by meditation monk teachers, the lay teachers here emphasize it in negative terms, as the “cutting away” of illusions. The two lay meditation centers that I visited and learned about were branches of the same famous lay meditation tradition in Burma founded by an

33 accountant, U Ba Khin, and now led by his pupil and former businessman U

Goenka. There, only lay teachers taught. Unlike the meditation monk teachers, the lay teachers provide a timeline and schedule for when one should observe various phenomena in one’s mind and body. They, in fact, coach you through different parts of the body. There is much less room for trial and error. Their goal is to help you gain significant insight in ten days. The retreat is closed after ten days. Finally, at the government-administered monastic schools for lay students, neither faith nor the rational elements of Buddhism are inculcated very effectively. That is, because the secular modernist interests of the state looms large there. If anything, the disciplines and coercions the lay students undergo there, including, in many cases, isolation from their ethnic and home communities and being labeled “untamed” or “uncivilized” because of their creed or ethnicity, teaches the students only self-hate, fear of authority, and a knowledge Buddhism as only a particularistic identity. Therefore, I show in my thesis that although the conscience of the Buddha is quite pervasive in contemporary Burmese society it may or may not prevent disenchantment in modern life. In response to modernity with its emphasis on the secularization of learning and life, there are many different kinds of non-formal settings now where

Buddhism is taught as a course or a program. In these settings, depending on how Buddhism is transmitted from teacher to pupil, either the faith elements or the rational aspects get emphasized, neither gets emphasized, or both get emphasized as integral parts of a whole. In the case of the latter, the conditions

34 for adapting Buddhism to modernity without divesting it of existential meaning are

ripest.

My findings lead me to disagree with Spiro’s thesis that Buddhism has

historically transformed in Burma to such an extent that the ideals and practice of

Buddhism had become compartmentalized into three quite distinct, unrelated

tiers. With increasing worldliness from the first to the last, the different kinds of

Buddhism he observed were “Nibbanic Buddhism (concerned with achieving

detachment from the world and ultimately reaching Nibbana), “Kammatic

Buddhism (concerned with increasing ones meritorious deeds so that one’s health and wealth increases),” and “Apotropaic Buddhism (reliance on the magical aura of Buddhas, the magic of weikzas [wizards], and the spiritual powers of deities, and spirits for one’s worldly success)” (Spiro 1982). Hence, for

Spiro, it was no surprise that the lay persons he encountered in his study used meditation instrumentally for worldly ends, such as for merit and to cure illnesses

(Spiro:273). Using psychoanalytic theory as his lens, he saw that the soteriological goal in Buddhism, nibbana, was of such a “flight” from the world in the Weberian sense and so counter to natural human desires, that there were unintended consequences of the otherworldly soteriology in Burmese society.

Most Burmese Buddhists could not emotionally handle the soteriological goal of nibbana and had decisively parted from it. While I agree with his observation that the goal of nibbana is quite counter to basic human tendencies, such as an attachment to the things of the world, the part he did not fully examine was that so did the Buddha! In the Dhammapada, a part of the suttas (the Buddha’s

35 discourses), that is a collection of pithy sayings from the Buddha, that is available

to Buddhists everywhere, including Burma, the Buddha is quoted as saying that

while the path he expounded is “good,” it is not an easy one: “Easy to do are

things that are bad and harmful to oneself. But exceedingly difficult to do are

things that are good and beneficial (Dhammapada Verse 163).”1 Seeing how

difficult the path was and viewing it as a gradual self-taming process, he also did

not expect all his followers to try to spend a lifetime trying to achieve its ultimate

goal. He emphasized that a little effort was better than none: “Better it is to live

one day wise and meditative than to live a hundred years foolish and

uncontrolled (Dhammapada Verse 111).”2 That is, while Spiro viewed Buddhist

practice in terms of one lifetime and gauged people’s soteriological goals by

whether or not they were striving to attain nibbana at any one moment within this

life, the Buddhist time frame for achieving salvation may be much longer,

involving at least a few more lifetimes in the round of rebirths. In fact, I found in

my study that many lay meditators in Burma often returned to their worldly life

because they were not trying to attain nibbana in this life. They knew that

doctrinally, there were three stages of enlightenment prior to arahantship or full

enlightenment whereby one entered nibbana. Their main goal in this life was to reach the first stage, sottapana (or stream winner), whereby after seven more

lives in the realm of rebirths, they will attain the conditions to finally reach

nibbana. That is, many lay meditators postponed nibbana without departing from

it as an ultimate goal.

36 While Spiro did not fully recognize this motivation, he was observant in recognizing some of the existential dilemmas people faced because of it. In

Burma, as in Sri Lanka, there are meditators living in the world who are incomplete and often imperfect in the attainment of nibbana. They try at some level to strive to leave the world while living in it. For some, this apparent contradiction is difficult to resolve and becomes the cause for personal problems, such as becoming a social outcast. In some cases, it has even led to mental disturbances, or at the least, a dependence on gurus and the magical abilities of spiritual leaders, namely weikzas (wizards), who may have nothing or very little to do with the way of life that should lead to nibbana. In fact, such problems are part of the reason why in Burma, as in Sri Lanka, meditation teachers stress that meditation should be done under and in regular consultation with a skilled teacher. However, the extent to which such existential dilemmas plague lay persons in Burma is also dependent on how Buddhism and meditation is learned, whether the conscience of the Buddha is invoked, how it is invoked, and how it may or may not be integrated with critical thinking skills in one’s quest for salvation. Spiro failed to examine in Burma the many different ways in which

Buddhism has become a discourse and a practice that is consciously transmitted to suit modernity in the post-colonial era.

For my analysis of insight meditation at meditation centers and my study of all other rituals, I will do a Durkheimian analysis of how certain symbols unite and move the Burmese Buddhist lay persons who had gathered. Finally, I will show how sensory details in the different Buddhist lessons shape the pupils’

37 Buddhist ethos. That is because ritual is based not only on symbols but also the

senses (Dejarlais 1992). This is especially true for Buddhist practices such as

meditation which relies on sensory details.

Organization of Chapters

In Chapter 1, “Conscience of the Buddha in Burmese Popular Culture:

Importance of the Vernacular,” I show that while informal socialization in Burma may not be too different from other Buddhist nations like Sri Lanka in that the

Burmese Buddhist is surrounded physically in the nation by many images of the

Buddha, the conscious transmission and consumption of both a consciousness and conscience of the Buddha is much more prominent Burma. Popular and intellectual cultures in Burma do not reject but seem to rejoice in the miracles, stories, and faith and devotional aspects surrounding memories of him. In literature that is widely consumed in schools and popular life, almost everything

is traced back to him, not only the history of pagodas and other sacred places,

but also the history of the nation, and the biography of saints. Also, literature

emphasizes the astounding, awe-inspiring, exemplary aspects of his life and that

of his disciples. In this chapter, I will focus on both the hagiographies of a

famous 20th century lay meditation master and a famous 20th century meditation monk teacher. Their pedagogical traditions are contrasted in a later chapter for how the lay meditation tradition repudiates a conscience of the Buddha more than the monks’ meditation tradition. In this first chapter, however, I focus on

38 showing how prominent the “conscience collective” of the Buddha is in Burmese society as a whole. I show how even accounts of a modern lay master’s life by his disciples is filled with a consciousness of the Buddha. Namely, the lay teacher is seen as being blessed and legitimized by a Buddha-like saintly figure in Burma, a monk named Weibu Sayadaw. I will also show how the short stories and movies of the famous 85-year-old writer/director U Thuka, have helped in the past century to keep alive a conscience of the Buddha among Burma’s middle class. I show how he popularizes “intermediate texts (Obeyesekere and

Obeyesekere 1990)” or texts that try to present the Buddha’s discourses in layman’s terms. Finally, his own portrayals through the use of visceral language of how ordinary monks have tried to achieve perfections of such traits as unbounded compassion and the strength of equanimity even in the face of the worst kinds of worldly adversities, have greatly contributed to a conscience of the

Buddha in Burma. That is, U Thukha has helped to elevate the image of monks as an intermediary link between the Buddha that was and what ordinary persons could strive to become.

In Chapter 2, “`Nibbana in This World’: History of the Lay Buddhist Elite in Modern Burma,” I trace some of the historical conditions that help to perpetuate and propagate the “conscience collective” of the Buddha in Burma, even in the works of modern educated elites like U Thukha. I show how the leaders that successfully resisted the British colonial government, ruled in the successive post-colonial governments, and had much influence over the popular and intellectual culture of Burma were not the Anglicized elites but ones who

39 went to Burmese Buddhist national schools. They promoted a different idea of

Burmese modernity from those in the Anglicized sectors. Instead of rationalizing

Buddhist doctrine into a science, they relished in the stories, the miracles, the faith and devotional aspects, the rites, and the ceremonies, that were a part of traditional Burmese Buddhist practice. Referring back to Ashokan ideals, they believed that the way to maintain the salvation goal nibbana as one lived and moved in the world was by helping to make the world a better place materially and socially so that people could meditate to achieve nibbana. The influence of these leaders and intellectuals with Ashokan ideals have been so great in Burma that the conscience of the Buddha has been kept alive there, even among the educated middle class, via all kinds of narrative means. Some of the reasons why traditional intellectuals could connect well with the masses during the independence movement and after were the relatively short time period in which

Burma was colonized, the widespread access to education provided by traditional monastic schools for lay persons, and the resistance of these schools to change during the colonial era.

In Chapter 3, “Buddhism as an Authoritarian Instrument,” I will show how a consciousness of the Buddha (a presence of him in people’s mind) is encouraged yet a conscience of him (awareness of the ethics he embodied and promoted) is suppressed in the modernist discourse of the current totalitarian military junta in Burma in regard to Buddhist education. Specifically, through an analysis of interviews with government officials and a look at how government policy is publicized through state-run newspapers, I examine how the military

40 junta equates “progress” with economic development and how they try to commoditize Burmese “traditional” culture as a part of their development plan. In trying both to prepare Burma as a vanguard of tradition and to promote the political stability that is needed for economic development, they attempt to

“civilize” the citizenry in Burma through a revival of monastic schools for lay students. Their definition of Buddhist civility is obedience to authority. The

Buddha is represented as one of many authority figures. It is an authoritarian agenda they promote in their pedagogy at regular schools as well. At their monastic schools, many of the students they house are poor or orphaned ethnic minority children from rebelling ethnic groups who are not even Buddhist.

Through ethnographic descriptions of the setting and pedagogy at these monastic schools, I demonstrate that many symbols, rituals, and teacher-pupil interactions that could promote a “conscience” of the Buddha and his complete benevolence is almost entirely missing there as are the development of critical thinking and questioning skills that one normally associates with a modern education. Through the largely punitive nature of education in these monastic schools, what is promoted in effect is the secular modernist ideology of the state that categorizes the children in these schools as the bottom rung of Burmese society. Buddhism as promoted in these monastic schools is one that is entirely particularistic, one that attempts to uphold a Buddhist Burmese ethnic identity as the apex of human civilization. In describing these monastic schools, I also demonstrate how the force involved on the part of the government in making monk teachers be the main supervisors and teachers at these schools denigrates

41 monks’ role in the neighborhood and community and unsettles their ability to live

a world renouncing life. The existential dilemmas of these monks along with that

of the Ministry of Religion officials who force them to do their job parallels the

highly self-conflicted nature of Burmese Buddhists Spiro described in his studies:

they both have a very difficult time rejecting or even pretending to reject the world

(officials from the Ministry of Religion must show a pious exterior) as they must

every bit be a part of it. With historical examples of varying modes of monastic

pedagogy, I show how authoritarianism is neither an essential nor a necessary

form of pedagogy at monastic schools.

In addition to studying the nature of Buddhist education and ethos at

these government-administered monastic schools, I followed, interviewed, and

observed a famous lay speaker hired by the government to speak to public

school students in Rangoon and in the Mon State, two of the places in Burma

where a Burmese Buddhist ethnic and national identity are strong. With the

legitimacy of his being Mon, the originators of the Burmese heritage of

Theravada Buddhism, and of having been educated in a physics doctoral program in the United States, Dr. Min Tin Mon was the Buddhist-modernist face of the national government. His mission was to embolden a Burmese Buddhist national and ethnic identity where the investment was most promising.

In Chapter 4, “Contemporary Lay Elites and Buddhist Education,” I examine the indirect influence of Cartesian dualism in the teaching of Buddhism by elite lay teachers. I describe the pedagogy of meditation by a tradition of lay teachers at the International Meditation Center in Rangoon and its branch in the

42 Rangoon suburb called Dala where many of the government officials and civil servants come to learn Buddhist meditation. These are also the choice of meditation centers for non-governmental lay elites, particularly those, such as university professors, who are highly educated in modern disciplines. I show how the focus on efficiency in gaining insight and the lack of devotional rituals at these centers work to promote a path to knowledge that is very rational, disenchanted, and quite devoid of a conscience of the Buddha. For this study, I use a collection of talks and instructions by U Goenka, the lay teacher who is currently the head of these meditation centers. I also use data from my own one- day meditation experience at the Dala center under one of his lay disciples.

Finally, I use interviews of other lay meditators at these centers.

I also describe and analyze the teaching of Buddhist texts by university professors at lay Buddhist organizations in Rangoon. I show that in these settings, the literary tools bring alive the stories of the Buddha’s past lives in a very entertaining and almost evangelical fashion. The focus here is primarily on faith-building. Hence it is almost as if, in Cartesian fashion, the lay intellectual elite in Burma has separated faith from critical knowledge in the learning of

Buddhism: faith is inculcated in the lectures at the lay Buddhist organizations while critical knowledge is instilled at the lay meditation centers.

Finally, I trace the lay meditation tradition of the civil servants, government officials, and lay intellectual elite to an internationally famous accountant general in the 1950s and ultimately to the teacher of his lay teacher, an internationally famous monk of 19th century Burma, Ledi Sayadaw. By answering the questions

43 that Western Orientalists such as Rhys Davids then had about Buddhism, the

Ledi Sayadaw, who also meditated a lot in the forests, had begun a trend by

which meditation and Buddhist doctrine were translated into the quite rational

and disenchanted mode of Western Orientalists.

In Chapter 5, “Meditation Monk Teachers and Buddhist Education,” I

show how a conscience of the Buddha is very much pervasive at Panditarama,

the meditation center where I ended up meditating for a month, even as the

practice of meditation is taught as a path to critical insight. By helping to transform the “conscience collective” of the Buddha in the larger society into an ethical “conscience” of the individual, the meditation monk teachers help to prevent notions of the Buddha’s greatness from becoming only a nationalist symbol or legitimization tool of the authoritarian state. Here, art, daily observances, teacher-pupil relations, and the pedagogical style of monks that embodies the Buddha’s moral example, all work to promote the path to enlightenment, the path to critical insight, as one that is propelled by faith rather than one that is devoid of it. As evidence, I also outline my own experiences of being taught meditation, analyze interviews of Burmese lay meditators, and finally present the methods and rituals involved in the Buddhist “civility” course for young people there. Through awareness of their material body, feelings, consciousness, and other mental objects, the monks’ pupils learn to gauge for themselves the wholesome or unwholesome quality of conducts and motives, both their own and others’. By showing how a social ethics is integral to the

44 practice of insight meditation at Panditarama, I critique Weber’s perspective that

the path to salvation in Theravada Buddhism is self-ish.

In the Conclusion, “Insight Meditation as Sublimation and Political Praxis:

The Example of Aung San Suu Kyi,” I demonstrate how the modes of being

promoted and perpetuated by the meditation monk teachers of the Shwegyin

sect, namely Mahasi tradition have become modes of psychological sublimation

and political praxis for many lay persons, including the opposition leader, Aung

San Suu Kyi. I critique Spiro’s perspective that there exists in Burma a pervasive

existential dilemma between what people know as a quite highly ascetic path to

nibbana and their primordial desires. I conclude that where such dilemmas exist, they can be resolved by existing Buddhist practices in Burma. The only solution

he had seen was one imposed by him, that is, psychoanalysis.

I trace the above line of Buddhist education at Panditarama to two monks

of the Shwegyin sect, the Mahagandayone Sayadaw and the Mahasi Sayadaw.

They wanted to empower monks and citizenry alike with insight. In their

pedagogy, they attempted to collapse the dichotomy betwen pariyatti (the literary

study of Buddhist texts) with pathibatti (the practice of the Buddha’s teachings,

including meditation) so that they can promote a form of literary learning for

monks that combined critical thinking with a faithful observance of the codes of

conduct for monks as well as meditation. For instance, the Mahagandayone

Sayadaw de-emphasized rote learning of Buddhist texts for a more dialogic

approach. They also tried to promote a visceral knowledge of the Buddha’s

teachings among lay persons. The Mahagandayone Sayadaw wrote many

45 intermediate texts of the Pali canon for young novices, lay adults, and lay

children. As his successor monk abbot said, “The Mahagandayone Sayadaw

wrote Buddhist texts with the goal that people can understand and practice, even

without the need of a teacher.” Many of these texts include stories from the

Buddha’s life and past lives. Also, the Mahasi Sayadaw was the first monk to

write a compendium for ordinary lay persons of how to practice insight

meditation. In his center as in Panditarama, which is headed by one of his direct

monk disciples, the Buddha’s statues and paintings of the Buddha’s lives are ever present, even in and near the meditation halls. Also, every insight

meditation day is accompanied by some devotional rituals to the Buddha and

Sangha, the sending of loving-kindness to all living beings, and Dhamma talks or sermons by monks that include many examples from the Buddha’s lives and past lives. Moreover, the strict adherence to the vinaya that both monks promoted

among their monk disciples assured a monk-teacher/lay-pupil relationship that is

imbued with much respect on the part of lay pupils. In other words, the

Mahagandayone Sayadaw, the Mahasi Sayadaw, along with their disciple,

Sayadaw U Pandita (the abbot at Panditarama), have helped to prevent in

modern Burma, the Cartesian dualism, the Western Orientalist efforts to

dismantle Buddhist faith from the path to critical insight.

I also show how Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader in Burma, and

the winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, learned to meditate under Sayadaw U

Pandita. Moreover, he has become one of her most trusted spiritual advisors. In

turn, she has come to his center to speak in front of the young lay students at the

46 summer Buddhist “civility” course led by the abbot not only to let students know

of the spiritual benefits of meditation, but also of how its “moral” and “non-violent”

approach helps in the arena of politics. In particular, she evoked for them the

Ashokan ideal of political leadership, one that Prime Minister U Nu before her

had promoted, in which one strove to give for social welfare and morally lead in

this world with the goal of nibbana in mind.

ENDNOTES

1Venerable Buddharakkhita, Dhammapada: A Practical Guide to Right Living, Sukhihotu Dhamma Publications, Selangor, Malaysia, p. 75.

2Venerable Buddharakkhita, Dhammapada: A Practical Guide to Right Living, Sukhihotu Dhamma Publications, Selangor, Malaysia, p. 109.

Chapter 1

Conscience of the Buddha in Burmese Popular Culture: Importance of the Vernacular

In order to explain what is meant in my thesis by a “conscience” of the

Buddha and to demonstrate more clearly its role in Burmese Buddhist society, I

will first contrast it with a prominent form of Buddhist modernity in another

colonized Buddhist nation, Sri Lanka.

I borrow the term “conscience” of the Buddha from Obeyesekere. In his

writings about the history of modern transformations in Buddhism from a religion to a “science” or “philosophy” in Sri Lanka, Obeyesekere pointed out that a

“conscience” of the Buddha was something that became nearly eliminated in Sri

Lanka (Obeyesekere 1991). By a conscience of the Buddha, he meant the ability

for living people to remember and be moved by Buddhist ethics as exemplified by

the Buddha, a figure who, unlike the “God” or “deities” of the other major world

religions, poses several problems in the task of trying to remember him. The

Buddha did not create the world, is no longer alive, and does not exist. Due to

such problems in the task of remembering him, the socialization of the conscience of the Buddha had been dependent on an emphasis of the past, the time when the Buddha was alive in the world, both in his final life as the Buddha and in his many past lives when he was perfecting his exemplary deeds that

48 would ensure his final life as the Buddha. What the Buddhist modernist

movement in Sri Lanka attempted to do was to uproot the faith and devotion that

was an important aspect of this cultivation of a conscience of the Buddha and

relegate these conscience-building elements to the realm of superstition.

Colonel Henry Steele Olcott, the son of a Protestant minister, a Buddhist

convert, and a leader in the Theosophical Society of late 19th century Sri Lanka, led an educational campaign against Christian missions by defending what he saw as Buddhism’s higher scientific legitimacy. He wrote catechisms to spread his message about Buddhism’s empiricism. In a question and answer format, in which he basically answered all the questions, he repudiated the relevance of such popular religious elements in Buddhist practice as ceremonialism, devotional rites, chants, and prayers by categorically calling these “superstition”:

Q: What was the Buddha’s estimate of ceremonialism? A: From the beginning, he condemned the observance of ceremonies and other external practices, which only tend to increase our spiritual blindness and our clinging to mere lifeless forms….

Q: What striking contrasts are there between Buddhism and what may be properly called ‘religions’? A: Among others, these: It teaches the highest goodness without a creating God; a continuity of line without adhering to the superstitions and selfish doctrine of an eternal, metaphysical soul-substance that goes out of the body; a happiness without an objective heaven; a method of salvation without a vicarious Savior; redemption by oneself as the Redeemer, and without rites, prayers, penances, priest or intercessory saints and a summum bonum, that is Nirvana, attainable in this life and in this world by leading a pure, unselfish life of wisdom and of compassion to all beings. [Obeyesekere 1991:224-225]

In Olcott’s own life time, his Buddhist Catechism had astounding influence. It

was translated into 22 languages, went into 40 editions, and the Sinhala

translation was used in Buddhist schools in Sri Lanka. His work was continued

49 and popularized by the Sinhalese Buddhist reformer, Angarika Dharmapala

(1864-1933), a layman, a graduate of Christian missionary schools, and follower of Olcott, who saw in the “scientific” or “philosophic” version of Buddhism a national pride to behold in the face of colonialism. The modern Buddhist curriculum in Sri Lanka, such as at schools, has been quite pervasively influenced by the Catechism and the tradition of Buddhist modernism from which it sprung.

This tradition of Buddhist modernism, in effect, devalued faith, devotion, story telling, miracles, and parables which not only remained a part of folk practices in Sri Lanka but also exist to some extent in the original doctrinal corpus. Obeyesekere outlined four such elements found in the Tripitaka

(Obeyesekere 1991:230-234). Firstly, like other Indian rishis, the Buddha was known to possess many supernormal powers, such as to converse with devas

(gods) or tame demons on earth, although he castigated the use of these powers for worldly gains. Secondly, while it is true that Buddhist prayers are not generally supplicatory or propitiatory as the Buddha is said to have passed away

(entered parinibbana), worshipping of the Buddha for praise of him or commemoration of him followed almost immediately after his death. It has been of a more fervent nature akin to devotion of a religion’s founder than to any philosopher. Thirdly, while the Buddha is not the center of the Buddhist faith, he is its hero par excellence. It is through the Jatakas, stories of his enactment of the perfections, that the ethical principles of Buddhism are embodied and transmitted. Finally, gods and demons are ever present in these Jatakas as in

50 many other parts of the original doctrinal corpus, because the theory of kamma, that wholesome intentions beget wholesome results (including wholesome rebirth) and unwholesome intentions beget unwholesome results (including unwholesome rebirth), ensures that gods and demons are a part of the ethically bound cosmic order, the cycle of rebirths called samsara. When Olcott,

Dharmapala, and whole generations of bourgeois or formally educated middle class relegated these “folk” but also doctrinal elements as superstitious irrelevance, what resulted in Sri Lanka was a crisis in the ability to develop a conscience of the Buddha.

This crisis in the ability to develop a conscience of the Buddha also resulted in an ethical crisis in contemporary Sri Lanka. Firstly, Buddhism came to be learned and practiced largely for instrumental rational reasons, that is, for quite calculated, this-worldly causes such as to increase one’s wealth, to cure illnesses, or for gaining certificates and degrees (Gombrich and

Obeyesekere:235-237). Also, it came to be understood in a very particularistic rather than a universalistic manner. Buddhism as a national and ethnic identity became predominant over its universal, ethical bases. Traditionally, in iconography as well as in the Jataka stories, the Buddha had been presented as a non-erotic, completely non-threatening, totally benevolent figure (with both feminine and masculine qualities), who is never punishing. In stories of his lives and of those who were his disciples, good and evil were never presumed to be an intrinsic, permanent quality of characters; in fact, in keeping with the law of

51 kamma and also the transient nature of all things, good and evil were always

subject to transformation.

From the repertoire of stories of the Buddha’s past lives, many stories had traditionally been recounted in Sri Lanka that dealt with the themes of non- violence, forgiveness, and the futility of retaliating when confronted with violence.

One popular story is the story of the demoness Kali. In it, a young man, upon inheriting the responsibilities of a household upon the death of his father, was

betrothed by his mother to a woman of his choice. However, the woman turned

out to be barren. The man’s mother, concerned about perpetuating the lineage asked the man to take on another wife. Seeing that the man would probably eventually obey his mom, his wife decided to try to find a second wife for him.

However, she did so with much deception. She promised the young woman’s family that the woman’s child, their grandchild, would become the rightful heir to her husband’s fortunes. However, each time the young woman, the co-wife, was pregnant, the barren woman fed her dangerous medicines to abort the fetuses.

When she was found out by the co-wife upon the pregnancy of the third child, the barren woman tried to kill both the fetus and the co-wife by feeding the latter dangerous medicines during labor. Upon dying, the co-wife fervently announced her motivation for vengeance against the barren woman. The co-wife made a rebirth-wish to be reborn as a demoness who would be powerful enough to devour the barren woman and the children she would bear one day. The co-wife became reborn as a cat in the household. The barren wife, upon her own death, became reborn as a hen in the same household. The cat devoured the eggs of

52 the hen three times. Seeing that the cat may eventually eat her, too, the hen

made a rebirth-wish to be able to eat the cat and her young ones in her next

birth. The hen died and became reborn as a tigress. The cat died and became

reborn as a young doe. Three times the tigress ate up the young to whom the

doe gave birth. When the tigress was about to eat the doe, the latter wished to

be reborn as a demoness who would eat the former and her children. So, finally,

in the lifetime of the Buddha, the doe was reborn as a demoness. The tigress

was born as a daughter of a nobleman in the city of Savatti. Deceitfully, in disguise as a friend, the demoness was able to gain access to the inner chambers of the noble woman upon the birth of the noble woman’s first two children. The demoness ate them. Prior to giving birth to the third child, the noble woman went to her parents’ house for protection from the demoness.

While giving a bath to her child in the pond near the Jetavanarama monastery where the Buddha was preaching, the noble woman spotted the demoness approaching. Recognizing her, the noble woman ran into the temple and laid her child down at the Buddha’s feet. The Buddha, also seeing the demoness at the entrance, told the noble woman that there was no need to fear. He told the demoness that her vengeance could have lasted eons if she had not met him and that he was glad she met him. He said,

Listen demoness, when your body is filthy with spit, phlegm, and snot, you cannot clean it with the same spit, phlegm, and snot--in fact it will only get more filthy. So when you abuse those who abuse and revile you, or kill or beat up those murderers who beat you up, or indulge in criminal acts against those who do criminal acts against you, it is like adding fuel to fire; enmity on both sides never ceases…[Obeyesekere and Obeyesekere: 325]

53 Gradually, the Buddha encouraged the demoness to attain at least the first stage

of enlightenment. Symbolically, he gave her sotapanna (stream-enterer) rice as

her nourishment in her journey toward nibbana. Instead of human flesh, it is the

path to nibbana that she would now partake. As for the noble woman, he also

encouraged her to let go of her fear of the demoness. He said, “Give your child

to the demoness to hold.” “Lord, I’m afraid to give the child to her,” she replied.

He told her of his ability to tame the most hardened criminals: “Do not fear.

Angulimala, the great Thera, once said, ‘I will cut a thousand fingers to perform

my sacrificial rites,’ and killed many people and caused much trouble. I tamed

him. Now he does not harm so much as an ant…”1 While he spoke as such, the noble woman handed her child over to the demoness to carry. The demoness embraced and caressed the child and handed him back to the mother. She burst out weeping. As such, this popular story had underlined how a cycle of hatred and violence could only be stopped and dismantled by an extraordinary gesture of trust. That trust was also shown in the story as an ethic embodied in the

Buddha himself. Through self-example, he trusted the demoness, he let her enter the temple, he allowed the child that is placed at his feet to be placed in her hands, he fed the demoness the nourishment that is the path to enlightenment, and he tamed her gradually.

When stories and iconography such as this became exempt from transmissions of Buddhism in modern Sri Lanka, notions of who are good and

who are evil became more crystallized. That is, good and evil came to be known

as more intrinsic, rather than mutable qualities of people. So, now, as

54 Obeyesekere writes of the present ethnic conflicts between the minority Tamil

Hindus and the majority Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka, “Thus, ordinary people

might not participate in violence against the alien ethnic group; they can, and

often do, condone that violence (Obeyesekere 1991: 237).”

In many sectors of Burmese society, too, as in some of the educational

settings I will describe in later chapters, a conscience of the Buddha is either

lacking or minimal. Burmese Buddhist ethnic chauvinism, too, is not completely

absent in Burma. Yet, in Burma, the intellectual tradition found in post colonial Sri

Lanka, one that upholds Buddhism as a kind of science or a philosophy has

never taken firm roots, not even among the educated middle class. Influenced

by Western Orientalists like Rhys Davids, a Burma Research Society was

founded in Rangoon in the late 19th century and lasted through the 1950s. The

Society’s journal, written in English, was a forum in which Buddhism became an

object of study. In the journal, topics of interest to Orientalists, such as “Is

Buddhism a Science?” or “What is the Empirical Basis for Nibbana?” did become

discussed. An Anglicized elite, those who graduated from missionary schools

and received degrees from abroad, dominated the research society. However,

their journal became an esoteric, purely academic endeavor, used by foreign

intellectuals, but never really reaching the Burmese general public. As I will

show in my next chapter, the leaders that successfully resisted the British

colonial government, ruled in the successive post-colonial governments, and had

much influence over the popular and intellectual culture of Burma were not the

Anglicized elites but ones who went to Burmese Buddhist national schools. They

55 promoted a different idea of Burmese modernity from those in the Anglicized sectors. Instead of rationalizing Buddhist doctrine into a science, they relished in the stories, the miracles, the faith and devotional aspects, the rites, and the ceremonies, that were a part of traditional Burmese Buddhist practice. Referring back to ideals of kingship held by Buddhist King Ashoka of 3rd century B.C.,

India, they believed that the way to maintain the salvation goal nibbana as one lived and moved in the world was by helping to make the world a better place materially and socially so that people could meditate to achieve Nibbana. The influence of these leaders and intellectuals with Ashokan ideals have been so great in Burma that the conscience of the Buddha has been kept alive there, even among the educated middle class, via all kinds of narrative means: a plethora of Buddhist magazines filled with stories and legends, hagiographies of

Buddhist saints, plays, novels and movies embodying Buddhist ethics, sacred histories of pagodas linking them to the Buddha’s life, and many “intermediate texts (Obeyesekere and Obeyesekere:318),” i.e., texts written in the vernacular and in narrative form that expound Buddhist ethics as found in the doctrine, such as collections in the Burmese language of Jatakas or tales of the Buddha’s past lives. All of these literatures are always widely available in Rangoon, sold at street corners or in the bookstores of downtown and at the little bookshops along the steps leading to the stupa of the famous Shwedagon Pagoda.

56 Concretization of the Buddha’s Charisma in Art

To some extent, all the Buddhist nations have a consciousness of the

Buddha. The ever present pagodas and stupas, many of which are said to contain relics of the Buddha, commemorate the Buddha upon his parinibbana

(passing away). They can be seen from afar as white or glistening spires atop green hills or as giant golden mounds pointing into skies right in the center of urban sprawls. The numerous Buddha statues at the pagodas embody his universal compassion and calm repose. Still, while informal socialization in

Burma may not be too different from a Buddhist nation like Sri Lanka in that the

Burmese Buddhist is surrounded physically in the nation by many images of the

Buddha, the conscious transmission and consumption of a conscience of the

Buddha continue to be prominent here in the modern era. Tambiah has shown that in Thailand, too, there is a strong belief, even among the modern educated elite today, of the magical aura of the Buddha, his relics, and images of him to such an extent that small images of the Buddha are bought and sold and worn on the body as amulets, as are those of meditating forest monks, ones believed to have Buddha-like saintly qualities. However, in Burma, where capitalism in the sense of a free market economy has not had a long and rooted history as in

Thailand (a relatively free market only resurfaced in Burma in the 1990s after 30 years of socialism), such commodification and subsequent fetishization of

Buddha or Buddhist saints’ images have not become central or even relevant to society’s “collective conscience” of the Buddha. Photographs of the Buddha and

57 Buddhist saints’ images are bought and sold and given as gifts for purposes of worship in Burma. Many people place these photographs at or near the

Buddha’s shrine in their homes and some also place them on the upper part of their front windshields in their cars where they can be seen by the driver and passengers. However, they are never worn on the body. I have also never seen them being stored in people’s wallets or purses. They are not amulets in this sense, but objects of remembrance, worship, and reverence. The “conscience collective” of the Buddha in Burma, then, is quite replete in that it entails not only a consciousness of his magical qualities but also a complete idealization and reverence of his ethics and strivings toward nibbana.

That is, in Burma, both popular and intellectual cultures do not reject but rejoice in the miracles, faith, and devotional aspects surrounding memories of him while simultaneously attaching high esteem to the very rational practice of insight meditation, including the sila (ethics) and samadhi (concentration) that are its foundations. So, even statues of the Buddha here tend to emphasize the miraculous nature of his accomplishments while at the same time they underscore his work of meditation. Frescoes, terracotta plaques, statues, and carvings at many of the pagodas in Burma, dating as far back as the first

Burmese Buddhist kingdom, Pagan, in 12th century A.D., and as recent as the present show him in his past lives enacting exemplary deeds. Moreover, practically every Buddhist home in Burma, regardless of class, status, or occupational background, also has a shrine of the Buddha, complete with a statue of him in meditative repose. In Burma, the particular posture of the

58 statues of the Buddha in meditative repose accomplishes several ends simultaneously: they express several allusions to the awe-inspiring, almost magical, nature of his ethical deeds such as generous giving, they establish the relevance of his teachings for the world (he is usually pointing to the earth), and also, they underscore the importance of his message to meditate. The most characteristic form of the Buddha’s statue in Burma is the Buddha seated in a posture known as ‘earth-witness’ attitude (Lowry 1974:Plate 8). An overwhelming majority of images of a seated Buddha in Burma is in this posture.

It represents him in the night before enlightenment when he was seated meditating under the Bodhi tree and Mara, an evil spirit who wanted to prevent him from his path, had asked him to name someone who could give evidence that he had once given alms. So, the Buddha is shown as having moved slightly from his normal meditative repose whereby his right and left hands had been folded in the same way on his lap. Here, he had moved his right hand slightly to touch the earth to say that the earth could bear witness. The earth could bear witness that during his previous life as King Vessantara, he had given so much alms as to cause the earth to quake. In seeing this posture of pronouncement, a slight movement of his right hand with the left still folded in a meditating position, the viewer can also perceive that just moments prior to this touching of the earth, the Buddha had been meditating. In Burma, such statues of the Buddha often share the same room as that of shrines for the family nat (spirit guardian), who is thought to have magical powers but are considered to be much less on the spiritual scale than the Buddha and even some ordinary human beings, for

59 spirits, even when they are from the heavens, possess no material body through

which they can meditate and enter nibbana. Thus, the Buddha’s shrine is the

center and is placed at a higher level than those of the nats. Daily, flowers, food,

and water are offered to him in memory and in praise of him.

Reclining Buddhas in Burma: Reminders of Impermanence and the Urgency of Practice

Another kind of popular image of the Buddha in Burma, so gigantic that one can see them atop hills in at least several major towns across the country and within pagodas such as the Khyauk Thet Kyi (Great Six Steps) pagoda right in the middle of Rangoon, are giant statues of the Buddha in a reclining pose to commemorate his Mahaparinibbana (Great Passing Away). These reclining

statues, whose tradition can be traced all the way to the temples of Pagan,

embody another of the three most popular postures of the Buddha in Burmese

art (Lowry:Plate 8). They are quite unique to Burma in their pervasiveness and gigantism. As they represent the moments right before the Buddha’s death and entry into nibbana, these statues, in particular, are a reminder of the transient nature of life, including the Buddha’s life, and the urgency of meditating while one can to escape the cycle of rebirths and the suffering inherent in it. In the moments prior to his passing away, the Buddha had admonished his followers to diligently practice insight meditation which is the prime means of reaching nibbana and entails mindfulness of all mental and physical phenomena. So, the statues represent these last words of the Buddha to his disciples:

60 Behold, O Bikkhus, now I speak to you. Transient are all conditioned things. Strive on with diligence…Ripe is my age. Short is my life. Leaving you I shall depart. I have made myself my refuge. O Bikkhus, be diligent, mindful and virtuous. With well-directed thoughts, guard your minds. He who lives heedfully in this Dispensation will escape life’s wandering and put an end to suffering. [Narada 1988:136-137]

Vernacular Narratives

In Burma, the above kinds of images of the Buddha have a high potential

to invoke the ethics and the work of meditation that is propounded by the

Buddha, because there also continues to be there a high emphasis on a tradition

of narratives, both oral and written in the vernacular, about the Buddha’s last life

and also his many past lives. An interesting development in recent decades is

the existence of narratives of the Buddha’s exemplary deeds expressed quite

literally within some of the reclining statues in Burma. That is, one can enter the

body of the Buddha as represented by these statues to experience some of the events of his last life, one in which he was the Buddha, a hero par excellence.

There are sculpted, life-size depictions of scenes of his immaculate conception and birth as Prince Siddhartha (his mother, Maya, dreamt of a white elephant, a symbol of luck, upon conceiving him), his encounter with an old person, a sick person, a corpse, and a monk in the city outside the confines of his sheltered

royal existence, his subsequent renunciation to the forest, his attainment of

enlightenment through his meditation under a bodhi tree, and his taming in an

extraordinary manner of nats (gods/spirits), ogres, animals, and people,

including hardened criminals such as Angulimala, whom he encountered in the

61 years before his death and entry into nibbana. Written captions in the vernacular

accompany each scene. I have been to at least two such reclining Buddhas, one

in middle Burma in the town of Moneywa (near where the internationally famous

19th century monk, Ledi Sayadaw, used to reside) and the other in the Mon State

in southwest Burma near the forest hermitage called Pha-Auk. One of the most

striking portrayals of scenes from the Buddha’s lifetime within the reclining

Buddha at Moneywa is the story of Angulimala’s encounter with the Buddha.

According to the story under the subheading of “The World” in the Dhammapada of the Pali canon and popularized through oral story-telling and many intermediate texts (albeit with slightly varying details) in Burma, Angulimala or

“Garland of Fingers” was a young man who was originally named Ahimsa (‘Non-

Violence’) by his parents. When Ahimsa became a student, he foolishly followed the commands of his deceitful teacher who wanted revenge against Ahimsa for he thought wrongly that Ahimsa was having an affair with his wife. The teacher promised that he would teach a priceless knowledge to Ahimsa after Ahimsa kills a thousand men or women. So, Ahimsa set out to the forest, the outskirts of the

town, and hurt and killed nearly a thousand people. In order to keep count and

later show proof of his killings to his teacher, Ahimsa cut off a finger from each

victim and put these in a garland around his neck. People who knew of him

became terrified. They began to call him “Angulimala” or a “Garland of Fingers.”

Upon reaching 999 thumbs, the exhausted Angulimala became determined to kill

the next person that came to sight. As he ran after his own mother in order to kill

her and complete his quota of one thousand, the Buddha arrived to dissuade

62 him. The Buddha was so successful that Angulimala became not only a monk

disciple but also practiced meditation and attained arahantship or full

enlightenment within a short time. Due to an initial lack of trust toward

Angulimala from the lay public, the Buddha provided Angulimala with the

following chant so that he could give it to expectant mothers and protect them

and their babies at childbirth: “`Oh, sister! Ever since I was reborn in this Noble

Birth [entry into monkhood], I do not remember intentionally taking the life of a

being. By this utterance of truth, may there be comfort to you and to the child in

your womb.’”2 To this day, this chant, found in the parittas, is memorized and used by expectant mothers of a wide variety of classes, statuses, and

educational backgrounds in Burma.

The life-like scene depicted about the story of Angulimala and explained

with small captions in the body of the reclining Buddha at Moneywa is dramatic

and memorable. Angulimala’s red, blood-drenched sword, blood dripping from

the fingers draped around his neck and naked chest, the staunchness of his

square shoulders, the readiness of his legs to run, the filth of his unshaven face,

and the tiresome expression in his eyes stand in marked contrast to the figure of

the Buddha standing in front of him. The Buddha stands still with a clean,

shaven face. His sloping shoulders are fully clothed in a long reddish-brown robe

(the kind most Burmese monks wear today). He had lucidity in his eyes and a

calmness and compassion in the gentle raising of his long, almost feminine,

palm. He gestures toward Angulimala to simply stop. This embodiment of the

Buddha’s exemplary ability to tame without punishing embodied within his very

63 “body” (the gigantic reclining Buddha) that was about to enter nibbana serves as

a powerful means of concretizing the ethical bases (the compassion, the non-

violence, the non-retaliatory stance) that can propel one forward in the path to

nibbana. Consequently, it serves to socialize a conscience of him. There were

adults talking, walking, and viewing this exhibit, some alongside their children.

Right next to the exhibit, there were also young people making and selling garlands of jasmines to offer to Buddha images in the hall. There were also other young people selling photographic memorabilia of the reclining Buddha and its exhibits inside.

Spiritualization of History in Burma, Even By the Modern Educated Class

Finally, in Burma, Buddha images and stupas and the narratives behind them also continue to link the origins of the country and its people to the Buddha.

The Burmese borrowed this practice of linking their land and people to the spiritual lineage of the Buddha from the traditional historiographies of Sri Lanka, a place from which they had received some of the earliest Theravada Buddhist missions in the 5th century A.D. (Sarkisyanz:3-4). However, in Burma, this

practice continues without much skepticism even among the modern educated

elite and often their belief in the country’s spiritual ties with the Buddha becomes

a basis of political debate about who in Burma are authentic heirs of the Buddha.

There are many places where the Buddha is said to have visited, marked, and

blessed during his lifetime. One such place, the site of the Shwe Set Taw

64 Pagoda (Sacred Golden Foot Pagoda) in middle Burma, has a giant footprint on

top of a hill. For countless generations, it is said to be the footprint of the

Buddha. The footprint is adorned with much gold and gems. Its sacred nature is

emphasized by the rule that one can look at it but not touch it. It is protected with

a fence. Also, Mandalay in Upper Burma, the city established by King Mindon in

1861 and served as the capital of the last two Burmese kingdoms, his and his

son Thibaw’s, has a giant standing Buddha that points to the city from the top of

Mandalay Hill. A sculpture of a kneeling monk disciple with palms clasped in a

show of respect is at the Buddha’s feet. The monk disciple is depicted as following with his eyes the direction toward which the Buddha is pointing. This edifice commemorating the Buddha was erected before Mindon began to build

Mandalay and is said to represent the Buddha’s prophecy that Mandalay was to

be a center for the propagation of the Buddhist religion.

One much revered Buddha image that has become at the center of recent political debates about which sectors of Burmese Buddhist society are actually conducting themselves ethically in a manner befitting of heirs to the Buddha’s

spiritual inheritance is the Maha Myat Muni Buddha figure. Originally cast in

metal, the Maha Myat Muni Buddha image is 12 feet and 7 inches tall but due to

layers of gold leaf pasted by devotees throughout the centuries, its body has

become irregular in outline and cloaked in one to two inches of gold leaves. It is

considered very sacred as according to legend the Gautama Buddha had posed

for this particular statue himself while teaching and meditating at Dhannavati

(now site of northern Arakan state that is in western Burma adjacent to

65 Bangladesh). According to legend, Sakka, the king of the nats or gods sculpted it, the Buddha approved of it, and the Buddha breathed onto the image saying that even though he would pass on into nibbana in his eightieth year, this image would live on for 5,000 years, the duration of the religion. The image took its place in the Burmese kingdom after King Bodawpaya conquered Arakan in 1784.

In 1996-97 during my research in Burma, the state-run newspapers had reported that thieves had dug a hole through the stomach of the Buddha image and had stolen precious gems that had originally been enshrined in it. Access to the image became limited as it had to be repaired. Yet, there was much gossip in the general public, even among the modern educated elite, including college students I knew, that they believed the corrupt military junta had stolen the gems themselves. They said that they believed the military junta’s theft from such a holy image would surely cause the sasana or the Buddhist religion to decline in the nation. The open wound in the statue’s abdomen was like a live wound for them.

Another Buddhist structure whose past is still continually linked to the

Buddha even by the modern educated elite is the 328 feet tall Shwedagon

“Golden Dagon” Pagoda that is located in the center of Rangoon. It can be seen from almost anywhere in Rangoon. As Sarkisyanz observed, even the most educated of Burma’s modern elite do not easily repudiate the legend that surrounds the history of the pagoda (Sarkisyanz:130). In my own field research,

I found this same phenomenon. In 1972, the Ministry of Information published an informational book about it, Shwedagon, in both English and Burmese

66 languages. A committee of historians and architects gathered to produce both books. While the English version was clearly meant more for foreign visitors to the pagoda and the Burmese version for the Burmese people, in both versions the writers adhered quite closely to the mythical legend that is well-known in

Burma. They deemed this to be an acceptable history of the pagoda and are reluctant to call it a myth or legend even though the Burmese version admits that much of the story has been transmitted orally and the English version states that

“the beginnings of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda reach beyond the period of recorded history (Ministry of Information 1972: 5).” In the “Development of the Pagoda” chapter in the English version, there is some pondering in the beginning that the story of the founding of the pagoda may have some mythical or legendary elements:

Any religious edifice of some antiquity arouses interest about its beginnings when was it built, who built it, and in what circumstances. When the edifice happens to be a wonderworking, wish-fulfilling shrine attractive of such religious sentiment and devotion as is represented by the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, then legend and tradition form an integral part of the story of its founding. [Ministry of Information:5]

However, in the paragraph immediately following this preface, the writers state that it is futile and unwise to question the authenticity: “Some might say that these beginnings [of the pagoda] reach too far beyond to be authentic. But who can effectively or beneficiently question the beliefs of devotion and faith?” The subsequent paragraphs dive right into describing details from the traditional story. The legendary narrative spans nine full pages, one-third of the entire chapter on its history (the rest is more about its recorded history, such as about different kings and leaders restoring and adding structures to the Pagoda). The

67 following are excerpts from the writers’ account of the traditional story regarding the origin of the Pagoda:

On the seventh morning after the Buddha had stayed at the foot of the linlun tree engaged in meditation after Enlightenment, the two brothers Taphussa and Bhallika…came by with five hundred carts. A nat (spirit) who in a previous existence had been the mother of the two brothers caused the carts to stop. Then though the oxen yoked to the five hundred carts pulled with great might they were unable to move them in the least. The two brothers thought that it must be the action of the spirits of the road, and so stirred themselves to make an offering to the spirits. Then the nat revealed itself and told them that the Bodhisat had now attained His Buddhahood and that He was residing at the foot of the linlun tree. If the two brothers desired to attain benefit for themselves they should approach the Buddha with the offerings and make obeisance and pay homage to Him. The two brothers were much rejoiced at these news and approached the Buddha with rice-cakes and honey-food. The Buddha considered how to accept the cakes which the two brothers had brought…The four guardians of the earth came down to earth and offered four bowls made of sapphires, but these bowls the Buddha would not accept. Four other bowls of common stone, the colour of brown peas were offered, and these the Buddha accepted...Then the Buddha accepted the brothers’ cakes in that bowl. When the Buddha finished the meal the two borthers worshipped the Buddha and the Buddha preached the Law. When the Buddha finished preaching the Law, the two brothers recited the formula for taking refuge. `I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Law.’ Then they worshipped the Buddha and said: `When we return to our own land, may the Lord give us something that we may worship as the Lord’s self while we live in our land.’ Then the Buddha stroked His head with His right hand and got eight Hairs and gave them to the merchants. When the brothers put the Hairs on their hands, the Hairs sent brilliant rays throughout the forests and the mountains; the earth trembled with a loud noise; the waves rose in the seas and oceans; Meru mountain bent its head in reverence; and the spirits acclaimed: `Well done, well done.’…The Buddha perceiving that the three preceding Buddhas had caused their possessions to be enshrined in a pagoda on Singuttara Hill in the country of these two brothers, bade them do likewise with His Hairs… Sakka, King of the nats [gods], created a ruby pinnacle and also a casket of emeralds. The Hairs were placed within the casket which was again placed within the structure…Sakka accompanied them for seven days, and when they reached the seas-shore they set sail in a golden ship created by Sakka…

68 On the way home the brothers lost two Hairs each to the human King Ajettha and the Naga Snake King… …[Upon reaching their land at Ukkalapa kingdom] the merchant brothers…fixed their minds at a distance and made their prayer: `O most glorious Lord Buddha. If it is true that we are the donors of the Hairs and that the Omniscient Buddha has vouchsafed us to enshrine the eight Hairs on the Singuttara Hill, let the missing four Hairs return so that we have the full eight Hairs.’ As soon as the asseveration was made the missing four Hairs returned and there were eight Hairs… The king [of Ukkalapa] opened the casket and looked and when he saw the eight Hairs he was full of faith… ...[With the help of Sakka, King of the nats or gods, the Hairs were enshrined in a cave that was then covered by a golden slab. On the golden slab, a golden pagoda was erected, and then superimposing that golden pagoda, a succession of pagodas were built using silver, tin, copper, lead, marble and iron bricks respectively, the proceeding one enclosing the one before.] [Ministry of Information:5-14]

This story can be found depicted by wood carvings between the pillars of one of the entrance gates to the Shwedagon Pagoda. As the story is at the Pagoda for any visitor to see, and the pagoda is a central place of pilgrimage in Burma for daily observances if one chose, for full moon days which are called uposatha

(sabbath) days, for Kason, the thrice-blessed water festival day in May in which the Buddha is known to be born, gained enlightenment, and passed away to enter into nibbana, Tazaungdine (in October), the festival of lights, and Tabaung

(in March), the very festival to commemorate the enshrinement of the Buddha’s hair relics at the Pagoda, the above story of origin also does not need much convincing. It is one with which almost all Burmese Buddhists are already familiar. At the end of their account of the above traditional story of origin, the writers do affirm its legendary nature: “This is the founding legend of the Shwe

Dagon Pagoda told with variations of detail by different writers (Ministry of

Information:14).” However, in the very next paragraph, they also assume the

69 truthfulness of the central tenets of the legend, that the Buddha’s hair relics are in

fact enshrined in the Pagoda and that the Buddha’s will brought them there:

It is a comfort to know that the sacred Hairs abide in the Pagoda and will continue to do so as long as the world endures. The comfort is strengthened by the assurance of the saint and writer Buddhaghosa [famous 5th Century Sinhalese monk and writer of the commentary on insight meditation, Vissudhi Magga] who said: ‘Then, in whatever place the Relics do not get worship and honour, they go, by the power of the Buddha’s will, to a place where they get worship and honour.’ [Ministry of Information:14]

In this way, the writers were affirming that the Burmese are spiritually worthy people fated to honor the Buddha’s relics.

In the Burmese version of the Shwedagon book, the same story as above

of the origins of the Shwedagon Pagoda is offered. In the Burmese version, the

writers were even less apologetic about the possibilities of mythical elements in the story. The “History” (‘Thamaing’) chapter in the Burmese version began directly with the words:

The Shwedagon Pagoda was established during the time of the Buddha. The hill upon which the stupa/cedi is built is called Singuttara. Those who established it were King Ukkalapa of and the citizens of Ukkalapa. Those who enshrined [the hair relics] within the stupa/cedi were Thapussa and Ballika, merchant brothers who brought over Gautama Buddha’s eight strands of hair from the Majima region (the area that is now India/Nepal)...[Ministry of Information 1975:20]

The reluctance of the modern educated Burmese writers to admit the mythical

nature of at least some of the elements in the story in both the Burmese and the

English versions of Shwedagon is indicative of the pervasive penchant for faith and devotional elements in Burma. It is clear that both the English and Burmese versions of the Shwedagon book were on the whole meant to be more educational and informative than touristic. The academicians had gathered to

70 produce both and both were very detail oriented. For instance, there are foldouts of extremely detailed architectural diagrams of the pagoda from a variety of angles in both versions, there are close up photographs of various buildings, places, and art work at the pagoda, and there are descriptions of the engineering, architecture, and management of the pagoda, including many statistics. Yet, despite all these details, there is also a lack of footnoting and/or specific references to textual sources. It is not surprising that even in Burmese school textbooks the Shwedagon Pagoda’s beginnings is dated to coincide with when the Buddha was alive, i.e., 2,500 years ago, without any reference to sources. The second grade Burmese Reader has on page 13 a black and white photographic print of the actual Shwedagon stupa/cedi and the surrounding buildings underneath. The brief exposition underneath does not include a narrative about the origins of the hair relics but does begin with the sentence,

“The Shwedagon Pagoda was built 2,500 years ago…”3 In the exposition, the pagoda is also idealized as a central symbol of the nation and a source of

Burmese people’s spirituality: “…All those who get to see and pay homage to the Shwedagon Pagoda experience a peace of mind.”4

71 Spiritualization of Biography

Burmese Buddhists’ tendency to trace, without much doubt of mythology,

Buddha images, pagodas, and the history of their land, cities, and nation to the

Buddha in the modern era is a continuation of their tradition of historiography to

trace practically everything that is central to their culture and people to the

Buddha, and this practice has served to heighten their “conscience collective” of

the Buddha. As Houtman explained, even though Western academicians since

the colonial days have considered the Burmese to have closer relations to China

in that they are thought racially to be of a more Mongoloid origin and their

vernacular is seen as being of the same family with the Tibetan language, the

Burmese tends to feel a closer historical and linguistic link (namely regarding Pali

terms in their language) to India because they are more concerned with the

spiritual continuity from the time of the Buddha (Houtman 1997:330). In fact, at

least one of the Burmese vernacular “historical chronicles,” Buddhavamsa, a biography of the Buddha, focuses on the events of his last life as the Buddha. It contains at the end an account of how his relics arrived in Rangoon’s

Shwedagon Pagoda.

Inspiring biographies are key elements in Burmese chroniclers’ attempts to trace the spiritual continuity of the nation to the Buddha. Yet, it is not the individual qualities of the subject, of course, but how he fits in the Buddha’s lineage and the general Buddhist world view that is highlighted. The aim of traditional historiography still practiced in Burma today is didactic. As Sarkisyanz

72 said, it is “to provide illustrations of the basic idea of Buddhism, the

Impermanence of all existence, the cyclical regularity and causality of endless

change… (Sarkisyanz :2).” Even in Rajavamsa or “History of Kings,” the

Burmese kings are traced back to the noble, Sakya lineage of the Buddha. Their

usual savagery, such as fratricide or looting and violent killings of whole

kingdoms are balanced by accounts of their acts of atonements, such as giving

generously to pagodas, and their rise and fall are viewed as manifestations of the

impermanence and cyclical regularity that characterizes worldly life (Sarkisyanz:

2-3). For example, the rajavamsa known specifically as the Glass Palace

Chronicle of the Kings of Burma is a primary source of Burmese history in public

schools. It was written in 1829 during the administration of King Bagyidaw and it

begins like this:

Here endeth the second part. And we shall presently relate the full history of the kings of Burma, originally descended from the noble Sun dynasty of the Sakiyans. We shall begin with the founding of Tagaung, their first city, and add, moreover, the record of the sacred relics, the establishment of the religion, and the lineage of divers founders and rulers of cities…(Tin and Luce 1960:1).”

In part through such “historical” accounts usually written by monks who were

sponsored by the court, the Burmese kings had been legitimated as links

between the Burmese people and the Buddha.

Yet, even more than kings, in the Buddha’s absence, it is the Buddha-like saintly monks who have been recognized as living symbols of the ways of being that were embodied by the Buddha. Burmese vamsa or vernacular “historical chronicles” like the Buddhavamsa also includes biographies and reverential qualities of the monk disciples the Buddha taught in his lifetime as the Buddha,

73 including famous monk disciples such as Sariputtara and Mogallena. In the

chronicle called the Buddha-sasana-vamsa, a history of the Buddhist

dispensation from India up to contemporary Burma is included in addition to a

biography of the Buddha. The various other sasana-vamsa, such as that of

“Sitgaing” or “Mandalay,” or the more recent Pathibati Sasanavamsa (History of

the [Vipassana] Practice) further give account of the history of Buddhism in

Burma by recounting the virtuous, saintly lives of various monks of Burma and

monastic lineages traced to and through them.

Recently, biographies about individual vipassana “insight” meditation masters have become popular, yet these, too, are part of the historical tradition of tracing Burmese Buddhist spirituality to the Buddha (Houtman 1997). The accounts portray these meditation masters as possessing the kammic fate to become the astounding persons that they are and also depict the exemplary manner in which they have strove to follow the ethical conduct and path to insight that was propounded by the Buddha. For example, such a biography of the

Mahasi Sayadaw, the internationally famous monk teacher already mentioned, was compiled in 1982 by one of his direct disciples, Sayadaw U Silananda. It was part of the Mahasi Patipatti Sasana Vamsa, a compilation of biographies of

meditation monk teachers in the Mahasi tradition, beginning with the Mahasi

Sayadaw and including his most direct monk disciples. It was also translated into

English. The Mahasi Sayadaw was a pioneer in many ways. His biographer

said that he was unique even among the saintly monks of Burma in the sense he

not only practiced meditation himself but also was the first to make it accessible

74 to the public and the international community on an unprecedented scale. In the

introduction to the biography, the Wetlat Masoyein Sayadaw U Theiktha wrote

the following about the Mahasi Sayadaw’s uniqueness:

The Great Buddhist history of ‘Mahasi Patipatti Sasana’ which occupies a place in the field of Buddha Sasana (Buddha’s dispensation) has been successfully implemented after over-coming various difficulties. In the realm of Buddha Sasana such a kind of history is absolutely necessary to be written and published. This kind of history cannot possibly come out if no such outstanding figure like the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw has emerged on the scene…[Venerable U Silananda 1982:M]

However, in the biography as a whole, the Mahasi Sayadaw is not so much

praised for how he is unique and talented even outside the Buddhist dispensation

but for how he best conforms to the model of the Gautama Buddha. Like the

Gautama Buddha and as opposed to lesser Buddhas like Paccaka Buddhas, he

not only practiced meditation to achieve salvation but taught it to others as well.

Even Sayadaw U Theiktha wrote later in his introduction,

Although [previous] Sayadawgyis had seriously practiced vipassana meditation in the manner of Paccaka Buddha sufficient for their own individual salvation without preaching the knowledge which they had achieved, they had not been able to contribute to the work of disseminating the dhamma world-wide for the benefit of the Buddhists in general, just as Mahasi Sayadaw had done. [Venerable U Silananda:N]

Also, in the body of the book, the compiler, Sayadaw U Silananda wrote about

the Mahasi Sayadaw in a eulogizing manner using the tropes of praise that are implemented for any saintly monk who is continuing the Buddha’s lineage. For instance, in describing the Sayadaw’s childhood, U Silananda wrote that the

Sayadaw’s original boyhood name coincided with the name of the wealthy donor who would later donate the land in Rangoon on which the Mahasi Meditation

Center was later built. He called it a “nimitta (Venerable U Silananda:8),” a

75 precursor of what the future would be due to one’s kammic fruits. He implied that since a young age or birth, the Mahasi Sayadaw was kammically fated to become the astounding monk he was currently. Elsewhere, the writer also includes how the perfect nature of the Mahasi Sayadaw’s physical features was recognized by the Sayadaw’s key lay sponsors: “In examining the Sayadaw’s physical complexion and body, Sir U Thwin found no anomalies or defects whatsoever…Sir U Thwin was also gratified at the sight of the prominent ears- broad and big. Regarding the eyes, they were found to be penetrating, sharp and alert (Venerable U Silananda:86, 87).” This interest in the lakkhana or physical features of persons as signs of spiritual perfections and kammic fates is a key element in the biography of the Buddha himself. In the Buddha-win or biography of him, he was recognized from infancy by learned Brahmins as possessing the physical characteristics of someone fated to become a Buddha.

Finally, the Mahasi Sayadaw’s voice, personality, and demeanor are described as having those saintly qualities once embodied by the Buddha:

Sayadaw possessed a tranquil mind with absolute calmness and serenity, which reflected the inner profound wisdom and samadhi (concentration)…When hearing the voice, the sound of preaching was mellow, modest and simple, yet audible, without any pretension, and exaggeration and without being flowery. On hearing the preaching of the Sayadaw, Sir U Thwin was highly pleased and therefore, mentally gave recognition to the Sayadaw as ‘This eminent teacher is the Saviour I have been searching for.’ [Venerable U Silananda:87]

The compiler/writer of the Mahasi Sayadaw’s biography, Sayadaw U Silananda, is a modern educated monk fluent in reading, writing, and speaking English. He was educated in missionary schools prior to entering the monkhood at the age of

76 18 and became in his 50s a much respected teacher of insight meditation to

Westerners in the United States and abroad. Therefore, one might expect a biography from him in a more Western sense with “facts” based on citations and references to interviews or to other texts. However, there are no footnotes or other citations in the biography. One also has no way of knowing for certain, for example, that he actually heard from Sir U Thwin himself about Sir U Thwin’s first encounter with the Mahasi Sayadaw. He does not state. Yet, the conscience of the Buddha he evokes through the biography of the monk is clear.

Such conscience of the Buddha remains so great in modern Burma that even biographies of lay meditation masters are often imbued with this conscience. So, a university rector (U Ko Lay of Mandalay University) who was writing the biography of his famous lay insight meditation teacher, U Ba Khin, also had to include in his text an account of how a Buddha-like monk validated and legitimated the lay master’s knowledge and paramitas (perfections)

(Houtman:315-316). U Ba Khin (1899-1971) was a high level civil servant.

Beginning in 1948, he was the accountant general of Burma in the newly independent Burma. Prior to that, he had been a clerk at the Office of the

Accountant-General under the British colonial government. He too can be considered in many ways unprecedented in the propagation of insight meditation as he not only helped to spread insight meditation among lay people by holding mass retreats as did the Mahasi Sayadaw, but also because of the following reasons: (1) he was a modern educated lay person (he was schooled in prestigious missionary schools in Rangoon, “Methodist” and “Saint Paul’s”), and

77 (2) he attempted to derive a scientifically proven means of gaining insight in the shortest time possible. According to his biographer, in 1951, he had set up the

“Accountant-General Vipassana Research Association” through which the loka datu suthethana ni (scientific method) was used to try to verify whether doing samadhi or concentration meditation as a precursor to the work of insight meditation could facilitate the process of gaining insight as described in the Pali canon (Ko Lay 1996:67). He and his association found that indeed this was the case. The biographer wrote that through their research, they were able to come up with a scientifically proven way to gain significant insight during a period of several days (Ko Lay:67). And in fact, ten days is the length of meditation retreats that came to be given by U Ba Khin and his pupils. Yet, despite such descriptions of his pioneering style and method in the teaching of insight meditation, U Ba Khin’s spiritual attainments were described in the traditional trope of “moral perfection” and “kammic fate” attached to Buddhist monks who are saints. Further, his spiritual attainments were legitimated by a detailed account of how he was quite fated to meet the Weibu Sayadaw, a nationally famous monk considered to be an arahant, and then praised and encouraged by the Sayadaw. According to the account, U Ba Khin was, back in 1941, diligently doing his duties as a civil servant accountant in charge of the train system. One day, he had to ride a train to Weibu town and for several days had to do work related tasks at a train station there. The biographer wrote in the following manner about U Ba Khin’s fatedness to meet the Weibu Sayadaw:

The hill with the Shwethalyaung (a giant, golden reclining Buddha) that was in front of the train station seemed to be beckoning the Great

78 Teacher. Immediately, he went up the hill with the train station assistant in order to pay homage to the Buddha. After paying obeisance to the Buddha, he looked around and was happy to see the fresh, green landscape around him. Directly north from the Shwethalyaung hill, he spotted a small, pointy hill with a tranquil little monastery below. [Ko Lay:63]

According to the account, U Ba Khin found out from his assistant that a much revered monk named the Weibu Sayadaw who was thought to be an arahant by the locals lived in that little monastery. So, U Ba Khin immediately wanted to go pay homage to the Sayadaw. The assistant adviced him that it would be better to go see the Sayadaw in the evening as they would have to first climb down from the hill and also because the Sayadaw probably did not accept visitors in the middle of the day. Thus, U Ba Khin and the assistant went back to the train station and ate lunch. Then, U Ba Khin meditated and “sent loving kindness to the (Weibu) Sayadaw, telling (the Sayadaw) mentally that he was coming to pay homage (Ko Lay:63).” At 3 p.m., they went to the monastery only to be told by two nuns there that they could not go to see the Sayadaw yet at this time and that they would have permission to see him at dawn during the early morning meal. The biographer underscored U Ba Khin’s incredible patience as well as faith and devotion: “[He] accepted the fact that he may not be able to see the Sayadaw. He asked only that he be shown the exact building where the

Sayadaw resided. He said that he would like to pay homage to the Sayadaw from the outside (Ko Lay:63).” As he was prostrating and said mentally, “’A lay devotee from Rangoon is paying homage to you, Sayadaw,’” the door suddenly opened and the Sayadaw’s face emerged. The Sayadaw asked, “’Why are you

79 paying homage, lay devotee?’” The biographer continued to give the following account:

Great Teacher: Because I wish to achieve the path and fruition of Enlightenment (maggaphala nyanissa). Sayadaw: If you want to achieve Nibbana, how do you get there? Great Teacher: Venerable Sir, one must go with Vipassana knowledge. Right now, too, I am practicing insight, Venerable Sir. Sayadaw: Great. Well done! Well done! How did you get this teaching (taya/dhamma)? [U Ba Khin explained that he had learned it in a seven day practice with his teacher, U Thet Kyi, and that he was continuing to practice.] [Sayadaw:] If that’s the case, you have Parami (the moral perfections). I was thinking that you had to work very hard meditating in the forest…You will have to impart the teachings you have acquired to other people. It is unpredictable when you will see this young man (the train station assistant) again. Show him how to practice while you are with him. Show him the method. As a lay person, wear white cloth. Teach the Dhamma. [Ko Lay:64]

With the above account of U Ba Khin’s encounter with and approval by the

Weibu Sayadaw, U Ba Khin’s biographer not only established U Ba Khin’s saintly qualities, such as patience, humility, and faith, but also linked him to the chain of more saintly figures, namely through the Weibu Sayadaw. In so doing, he established the biography of a modern lay master as a hagiography in Burma that evokes a conscience of the Buddha.

Reynolds had made the distinction between a sacred biography and a hagiography by stating that the former is primarily intended to showcase a figure that represents a new religious ideal or image while the latter tries to depict lesser religious figures and show how their attainments fit an ideal mould that has already been set or recognized by their religious community (Reynolds 1976).

As Houtman suggests, the athopati (“biographies”) of monks in Burma as well as

80 that of lay master U Ba Khin are less like sacred biographies and more like hagiographies in that only aspects of their lives that conform to the ideals already embodied by the Buddha are depicted in detail (Houtman:320). He wrote,

[Ko lay’s] biography has clearly spiritualized [as opposed to humanize] his subject. Ba Khin’s emotions and inner contradictions are not considered, and the master is portrayed in conventional terms of exaltation…[also] the author has suppressed relationships and episodes in the subject’s life insofar as these could possibly shed doubt on his sanctity. This leads to a life story skewed away from the formative family relationships and toward the spiritual lineage. [Houtman: 320,321].

Humanization of Monks’ Biography

It has been shown that in other Buddhist nations of South/Southeast Asia, too, such as Thailand, hagiographies exist, particularly of saintly monks

(Tambiah 1988). However, the ability for these to evoke a conscience of the

Buddha has a greater impact in Burma because in Burmese popular culture, the spiritualization of monks’ biographies is also balanced by a humanization of them. That is, on the one hand, hagiographies of the awe-inspiring, astounding ethical deeds and meditation practice of saintly monks sets ideals embodied by the Buddha. Yet on the other, there are, in Burma, also very popular movies and novels about monks that show their inner conflicts, strained relationships with their family, and the great amount of personal effort they must exert to be virtuous and keep their precepts even as they may be quite successful at it.

Through the work of one famous movie director/novelist in particular, U Thukha

(87 years old at the time of my research), both the Buddha-like qualities of monks and the tremendous work they do have been depicted throughout the 20th

81 century. Through his films and short stories, U Thukha had managed to help maintain among lay elites a high reverence for monks as well as a high aspiration to be like them. That is, he has been able to help keep alive a conscience of the

Buddha as something embodied by current, living, breathing human beings.

In a Buddhist society such as Burma where mendicancy is a part of the rules of conduct for those who are to embody one’s religious ideals (i.e., the monks), and cultural traditions have allowed not only permanent but also temporary entry into monkhood (as part of a rite of passage for males), the potential for a denigration of the monkhood is great. Lay supporters often question whether particular monks deserve their donations. Not all monks also fully know nor care to abide by the vinaya. However, U Thukha’s famous autobiographical short story, “One Meal that a Mother Gets to Eat,” explores how a young man learned the value of virtue only through the experience of becoming a monk and trying hard to keep to the precepts. In this story, the young man remembers that as a spoiled, only child of a doting single mother, he had frivolously spent his time as a temporary novice being naughty even though his mother had spent a fortune on his novitiation ceremony:

First, I would enter the ordination hall. I would put the monastery’s dog, along with other little novices, into the hall. Then, after closing the door, we would play ‘circus’ show with whips in our hands. As our robes fell out of place and we began to tire of waving our whips in the air, we would begin rolling marbles on the smooth concrete floor of the hall…At sunset, I got to rest drinking soft drinks that my mother came to offer to all the monks at the monastery. At night time, I got to fill the ocean of my stomach and the ‘Ganges’ intestine with the cake that my mother had secretly brought for me. [This breaks the precepts of a novice as novices must follow eight moral precepts which include not eating any solid foods after 12 noon until the dawn of the next day.] In actuality, some of the little

82 novices who were obediently following the rules of the monastery became corrupted in a big way after befriending me. How could my mother have benefited [gained merit] in any way from my ordination as a novice?...Relying on me, my mother invested as big as bodhi tree, but she probably did not receive (from me) benefits as big as a bodhi seed. I did not practice a whit of the manners, mental attitudes, and rules of conduct of a novice. All was wasteful and in vain.[Thukha 1994:209-211]

When he became older and was attempting to make a living as a writer in

Rangoon, the young man was asked by his childhood friends to ordain as a temporary monk with them back in their village. When asked, he recalled the above events of his novicehood well and decided that he would set right the wrongs he committed as a novice and a young boy, i.e., letting his mother waste her fortunes on him. His mother could not now sponsor his ordination as a monk as she had become very poor. Other donors had to sponsor him. However, to repay gratitude toward his mother, he decided to follow well the codes of conduct of monks. His monk-teacher also admonished him and the other temporary monks by invoking a conscience of the Buddha:

During the Buddha’s time, there was no tradition of becoming a monk for a limited amount of day. One had to intend to become one for the whole life. Well, you can’t depart from vinaya ethical codes just because you say you are a monk only temporarily…You see, if you’ve come to do something for the benefit, then it’s only good if there is benefit….Be fully aware not to let the Sakya family [lineage of the Buddha] become mean, base people. [Thukha:215]

The young man became determined to follow several of the dutins or strict, austere regimens that would curb greed, such as just having three sets of robes and partaking only the food that one receives on one’s alms rounds. However, in following such regimen, the young man also learned a special lesson: that one cannot easily set right one’s wrongs; even the highest virtues followed by monks

83 is sometimes not enough to right a wrong, so it is always better to try to do the

right thing from the beginning. As he went on his alms rounds with the other

monks and passed by his mother’s house, he could see the pain in her face as

she could not offer any alms do to her utter poverty. She could afford to offer alms to him alone, but not to the entire line of monks that were with him, and hence, she did not offer at all, much to her pain:

I remembered the proud, happy face of my mother when she had been striking a long drum with her hands while providing me the novice ordination ceremony. I also remembered the image of my mother now with a withered gaze now that I was a monk…This fact pierced right into my heart somewhere in a very painful way like a huge stump. The unshakable image of my mother gazing haunted me when I was practicing meditation and the austere regimens. [Thukha 216,217]

That night, he had the desire to offer alms he received to his mother: “`If right now I can feed to my mother this alms food that I have received in a pure, just way, it will be the best, most noble thing I can do…,’ I thought.” Shaking and trembling, he consulted with his monk-teacher to make sure that doing so would be in keeping with the vinaya codes. The monk teacher assured him that it was.

So, the next day, he went to his mother’s house. She was very happy just to see him. She even accepted the vow of eight precepts that he gave her. But when he offered the alms saying, “The food in this alms bowl is for monk the most noble, just, and clean donation received. For that reason, monk has come here with the wish to offer it to dear (lady) supporter,” she began to weep:

Although I was speaking with my gaze turned downward, my mother was looking directly at me. As she did so, her tears flowed… ‘Venerable Sir, did you think that it would be satisfying to feed your mother your alms food that you’ve received in accordance with the path of virtuous ones? For disciple (me), I not only am not glad, but am about to have my heart break. Venerable Sir may or may not realize this. I am

84 already unable to assuage myself of the fact that I cannot offer food to monk and the other monks on alms rounds. And here, Venerable Sir has come to offer me food that he has received on alms rounds in the town and village. Monk, please remember that it is the same as mentally torturing me…’ [Thukha:222]

The mother did, with reluctance and much pain, accept the alms. However, the young monk felt his own heart break and could get relief only through meditation practice:

As I heard the sound of my mother crying with sobs, I had to closely follow my vedana (feeling of pain) with sati (awareness). ‘Well this time let it be, but in the future, please don’t ever come to feed me a meal that I will have to eat with tears falling monk. Well, now monk can go. Monk can go.’ I had to embrace the hollow alms bowl and shaking, had to depart in front of my mother. [Thukha:222]

Thus, the young man learned that even at his highest embodiment of virtue, i.e., as a monk meditating and following well the vinaya, the wrongs that one had done in the past may catch up with one; the reverberations continue. Hence, it is always best to try to be right and virtuous from the beginning. The audience, too, learns that monks, even with their high spiritual strivings are only human. They have inner emotional conflicts and they may also have familial ties that are not completely severed in the emotional sense. Seeing monks as human beings who are trying to live a super-human life, one can also realize that one must admire their diligence.

In a popular film of his, “One Meal that a Monk Doesn’t Get to Eat,” U

Thukha also portrays more specifically how difficult a task it is for monks to try to keep their virtues as they must interact with and reciprocate (by providing the

Buddha’s teachings to) lay society without whom their livelihood is in jeopardy.

85 In it, a monk comes to a house on his daily alms rounds. The lay devotees there,

a man and his wife invite him in so that they can get alms for him from their kitchen. They have a pet goose in the same room as him. They love the pet

goose very much. Near the pet goose is also a very valuable and large piece of

ruby that is in their possession. While they are in the kitchen putting in alms for

the monk, their pet goose inadvertently swallows the ruby. The monk witnesses

this. When they return, they realize the ruby is gone and ask the monk if he knew where it was. The monk, keeping the moral precepts of abstaining from lying and abstaining from killing another living being, remains silent and stoic. He knows that if he speaks, it will be to state the truth and the truth will cause the couple to kill the goose. They would want to recover the ruby from the goose.

Yet, because he is silent, their feelings of reverence toward him quickly turn to suspicion, anger, and hate. They start to beat him. All his alms fall to the floor.

But their beating becomes so savage that they inadvertently hit their own pet goose. The goose dies. Only then, the monk let them know that the ruby is inside their goose, that the goose swallowed it. The couple is very apologetic and clasps their hands again in reverence of him. In the film, the dramatic swings in the demeanor and emotions of the couple, from reverence and calm to savagery and defiance, is contrasted well with that of the stable, calm, non- retaliatory, non-violent monk even in the midst of being savagely beaten.

Through such films and stories about monks in the midst of society,

U Thukha is able to remind lay Buddhists in Burma of the exemplary deeds of the

Buddha himself in the face of all kinds of obstacles.

86 As a lay novelist and film maker, U Thukha also has the poetic and literary license to write dialogues and provide examples that best addresses the experiences, thoughts, and questions of the general public in regards to

Buddhism. So, in his short story, “One Meal that a Monk Gets to Eat,” which he also turned into a film, a village monk described by the author as “humble, tamed, and worthy of respect” finds himself in the same zayat (resting place with a roof) with a layman during a pouring rain (Thukha:164). The layman begins a conversation with the monk and at one point tells the monk that lay persons must work very hard to put food on their table, yet for monks, food is usually ready for them as they go on their alms rounds and arrive at people’s houses. The monk educates the lay person by telling him about the strict vinaya rules with which monks must partake of every morsel of food provided by lay devotees. He explains that monks must be mindful of the following vows before eating: “I do not eat to develop external beauty, I do not eat to become big and strong, I do not eat for fun, but only to keep myself well (Thukha:198).” He expounds some of the rules that ask monks to be mindful of every sensation in every moment of their eating so that greed does not arise:

Before the food gets the opening of the mouth, one cannot open one’s mouth. No amount of fingers, five or even one, can be inserted inside the mouth as one puts food into one’s mouth. One cannot speak with food in one’s mouth…One cannot make slurping and sucking noises as one eats and drinks. One cannot lick one’s fingers as one eats…[Thukha:198,199]

To further illustrate these rules, he uses the analogy of a father, mother, and child who becomes stranded in the desert with no food and water (Thukha:200-

201). The child soon dies. For nutrition alone, the father and mother decides

87 that they must eat the flesh of their own dead child. However, they of course do

not eat with joy or with the desire to become big and strong or beautiful. In this

way, U Thukha’s films and stories helped to convey aspects of doctrinal

principals, including the vinaya rules of monks, that lay persons would be too shy

or inhibited to pose as questions to monks. By humanizing monks, his films and

stories have been very effective in helping to build a consciousness of the ethics

embodied by the Buddha.

Endnotes

1These quotes are found in Ranjini Obeyesekere and Gananath Obeyeskere, “The Tale of the Demoness Kali: A Discourse on Evil” in History of Relgions, 29 (4), University of Chicago, 1990, Pp. 318-334

2English translation found in Venerable U Silananda, Paritta Pali and Protective Verses, A Collection of Eleven Protective Suttas, The International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University, Ministry of Religious Affairs, Government of the Union of Myanmar, 2000, Pp. 63-66.

3Myanmar Phetsaa Dutiya Ten (Second Grade Burmese Reader), Burmese Government Department of Education, 1997,p.13.

4Myanmar Phetsaa Dutiya Ten (Second Grade Burmese Reader), Burmese Government Department of Education, 1997,p.14.

88 Chapter 2

‘Nibbana In This World’: A History of the Lay Elite

A prime reason why the faith, devotion, stories, and references to miracles that nurture a “collective conscience” of the Buddha can continue to thrive in Burma today is because it is not the Anglicized elite but more traditional intellectuals, including the current opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, who ended up being at the forefront of the independence movement and later ruled Burma. There are several causes for how the lay Buddhist elite came to power and had a huge influence over popular and intellectual culture in modern

Burma. That is the focus of this chapter.

Compared to neighboring colonized nations, namely Sri Lanka and India, which also gained independence in 1948, Burma was colonized for a relatively shorter time. Sri Lanka was a British colony since 1815. Prior to that, the coastal region came under Portuguese control after 1505 and Dutch control after 1658.

Similarly, parts of India came under Portuguese and Dutch control since the 16th century and began to be colonized by the British in 1774 (although with much fuller control after 1858). While Portuguese, French, and Italian adventurers and

Christian missionaries began coming to Burma beginning in the 16th century,

Burma did not come under any foreign administrative control until 1826 at the end of the first Anglo-Burmese War (1824-1826). And in 1826, only Arakan and

89 Tenasserim came under British rule. After the second Anglo-Burmese War of

1852, Pegu also became Britain’s possession. It was not until the end of the third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885 when the entire country, with Mandalay and the Konbaung Dynasty at its center, came under British control as their annexation to British India.

When the British finally wrested control of Burma’s center, the ideological crisis that ensued came rather suddenly. There was little time and cultural impetus for an elite class to arise who would give a quite completely modern interpretation of traditional classics, rites, and rituals. So, traditional ideals of polity and society, instead of becoming revised, propelled the independence movement and influenced the post-colonial state.

For the subjects and rulers in the Konbaung Dynasty, the last in a line of

Burmese Buddhists dynasties, the throne in Mandalay was symbolically the center of the earth and Mandalay was Mount Meru, a cosmic mountain that is the paradise of the past and future Buddha (Sarkisyanz:103). The very term

“Mandalay” is derived from the word “Mandala,” which means “hub of the universe.” The idea of postponing entry into nibbana until all living beings have been liberated from the suffering in samsara, the cycle of rebirth, is an idea quite fully developed by Northern (Mahayana) Buddhism. Influenced at least to some degree by these Hindic and Mahayana ideas of kingship and society, each successive king in Burma’s Theravada Buddhist’s kingdoms, beginning with

Anawratha (1044-1077 A.D.) in Pagan, aspired to identify themselves as

Bodhisattva (embryo Buddha) who would bring forth the perfect society

90 (Sarkisyanz:33-67). The ideal king for many of them in this sense was a

Buddhist king, King Ashoka of 3rd century A.D. India who led the Mauryan

Empire. Ashoka converted to Buddhism after much remorse about his violent conquest of the neighboring people, the Kalingas. He did many works of charity for those in his empire, and stated in his famous inscriptions that he implemented his welfare measures because he wanted the people to be able to live in accordance with the Dhamma. As he also promoted religious tolerance in his diverse empire, he did not refer directly to the Dhamma as the Buddha’s teachings. By Dhamma, he did mean an understanding of the causality law of moral norms, that wholesome deeds beget wholesome results and unwholesome deeds beget unwholesome results (Sarkisyanz:26-27). Ashoka had written in his

Pillar Edict VII,

On the roads I have had banyan trees planted, which will give shade to beasts and men, I have had mango-groves planted and I have had wells dug and rest houses built at every eight kos. And I have had many watering places made everywhere for the use of beasts and men. But this benefit is important, and indeed the world has enjoyed attention in many ways from former kings as well as from me. But I have done these things in order that my people might conform to the Dhamma.[Thapar 1997:265]

Without forced conversions, holy wars, or the establishment of a state church,

Ashoka tried to build a society that was so well-cared for that people might direct their attention to developing themselves morally. Like many Sri Lankan Buddhist kings, the Burmese Buddhist kings compared themselves to Ashoka, although much of their emulation was based in exemplary monastery and pagoda building.

Anawratha who conquered the Mons in lower Burma and then converted from

Mahayana to their Theravada Buddhism discouraged many Mahayana beliefs

91 and practices. To encourage Theravada Buddhism, he brought over Theravada

Buddhist monk teachers, including the famous Shin Arahan, and theTripitaka from the Mons to propagate Theravada Buddhism in his kingdom. In the building of pagodas and monasteries, too, in his kingdom of Pagan, caverns and other places of solitude were implemented to encourage meditation which is a central focus of Theravada Buddhist aspirations. However, instead of trying to realize nibbana immediately for himself in this life, Anawratha also believed himself to be a Bodhisattva who would bring about a perfect society before liberating himself.

In Burmese historiography, his conversion is compared to Ashoka’s. Other kings such as Sinphyushin (1774-1780) and Bodawphaya (1781-1819) also compared themselves similarly to Ashoka even though they were quite ruthless in their military conquests and also committed many fratricides. The way they atoned themselves usually was by the building of pagodas and monasteries. Focusing more on outwardly atonements and less on inner development, the lay ethos of

Theravada Buddhist kings did not always correspond to the ethics propounded by the Buddha. The monastic scholars who wrote much of the traditional historiography did at times appeal to the monarchs to be different when there was obvious failure. For example, the Sangharaja (thathanabaing or head of the monk order) during Bowdawpaya’s time, Nanabhivamsa, confronted

Bowdawpaya with Jataka narratives and other discourses from the Buddha on the ethics and duties of king (Sarkisyanz:7). Ashoka may have been closer to the Buddha’s ethics than most Burmese kings. Nevertheless, despite various kings’ failures to live up the ideal, this Bodhisattva and “Ashokan” lay ethos

92 regarding the importance of building social conditions so that others may attain nibbana and one may also attain nibbana at a future time has had a real impact on Burmese society, both in the colonial period and in independent Burma later.

Even in the midst of British colonization and perhaps in response to it,

King Mindon (1853-1878), the father of the last king, Thibaw, referred to Ashoka as his ancestor, assembled the Fifth Buddhist Synod in his kingdom at Mandalay and inscribed on stone tablets all of the Tripitaka in a monument that is known today in Burma as the “Greatest Book in the World.” In 1853, even the highest minister in Mindon’s court, the Magwe Min-gyi still clung to the view that the world was quite flat with Mount Meru, symbolically represented by Mandalay, at its center (Sarkisyanz:99). It was difficult for the high officials and the kings of the Konbaung Dynasty to perceive of Burma as one state in a system of many.

Prior to their loss of Mandalay, the Burmese had made the British take off their shoes upon entering the Mandalay palace and pay obeisance to the king and the throne. Yet, after the capture of Mandalay, despite attempts by the Burmese people to seize the throne, the throne was literally carried away by the British to a museum in Calcutta. Mindon’s son, King Thibaw, and his royal family were also led away into exile.

In her Freedom from Fear and Other Writings, Aung San Suu Kyi wrote that at least one traditional intellectual who was later to become famous as

Thakhin Ko Daw Hmaing witnessed as a young novice in Mandalay the somber removal of Thibaw and the royal family from their palace (Suu Kyi 1991:114).

The image had a great impact on him. A former monk and schooled in the

93 traditional monastic schools, he became as a lay person a popular and prolific newspaper writer, playwright, poet, and historian whose writings spoke of contemporary social and political concerns of the colonized Burmese people. He did not offer any philosophies but rather adapted the didactic role that scholars took in pre-colonial times, whereby they praised but often also advised and appealed to monarchs (Suu Kyi:117). With an approbating tone, he wrote, for instance, about the exploits of a dacoit who was successful at resisting arrest by the colonial police despite the latter’s desperate efforts. Later known in Burma as the “Tagore” of Burma, he was very unlike Rabindranath Tagore in that

Hmaing knew little or no English and was unfamiliar with English literature, yet he instigated much nationalistic politics with his writings. Thus, even some of the

Anglicized Burmese nationalist leaders at the Young Man’s Buddhist Association

(YMBA, established in 1906), which was modeled after the Young Man’s

Christian Association, looked up to him in their attempts to better understand traditional culture and the traditional classics. In the relatively brief time that they got to organize, the YMBA was unsuccessful in connecting and communicating with the masses. Yet, Hmaing nevertheless supported them, too. In his writings, he praised YMBA leader, May Oung’s wearing of the traditional

Burmese costume to attend an official British function. He also applauded when a YMBA delegation went over to London to represent Burma’s views (Suu

Kyi:117).

The nationalist leaders that the Burmese masses chose to follow were in the end traditional intellectuals like former monk Thakin Ko Daw Hmaing, not the

94 Anglicized, modern educated elite. Sarkisyanz summed up the difference between the Anglicized minority and the traditionalist majority of Burma during the colonial period and independence movement:

For the [Modern] Educated Class, the people’s Buddhism was largely but a religious means for their political ends of self-government, that is for a greater participation in government. For the traditionalist majority of the Burmese people, however, the independence struggle seems to have been mainly a political means for a religious goal of achieving a Buddhist state. [Sarkisyanz:135]

Saya San, for instance, was successful in instigating peasant revolts (1939-32), because he helped to extend traditional views of the advent of a Future Buddha who would restore a perfect society. He helped them to interpret the current ideological, economic, and political crises brought on by colonization as a sign of the decline of the world, a decline that was about to usher in a cyclical return to an ideal past. Political monks like U Ottama also came to have a tremendous following throughout Burma by emphasizing self-sacrifice as a Buddhist ethic of the boundless dissolution of the self so that one can be of service to others. U

Ottama narrated the Pancavudha Jataka in his speeches. In this story of one of the Buddha’s previous lives, the Buddha was a monkey king who laid out his body as a bridge so that other monkeys could walk across it and save themselves from those who were maliciously chasing them. Monks like U

Ottama were successful in the non-cooperation movements whereby they influenced monks to boycott the foreign government’s police, tax collectors, and courts. Thakhin Ko Daw Hmaing also supported these fellow traditional intellectuals by writing that according to canonical rules of conduct for monks,

95 monks were not to accept anything from people who were committing evil acts

(Sarkisyanz:133).

With Thakhin Ko Daw Hmaing’s influence, further generations of

traditionalist political leaders were produced in Burma who would eventually lead

Burma to independence and rule in the post-colonial era. One of them became

General Aung San, the father of current opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi,

who eventually won independence for Burma. General Aung San, along with the

other post-colonial leaders of Burma, including [(1949-1961) Prime-Minister] U

Nu, and [the first leader of current military junta] General Ne Win were all

schooled in the National Schools that Hmaing helped to establish as an

alternative to missionary and colonial government-administered schools.

Hmaing popularized Burma’s past by writing, for example, more simplified

versions of the Glass Palace Chronicle on the history of kings. His popularization

of Burma’s past contributed to the Movement for National Schools. This

movement was began in 1920 by Burmese students striking against the

University of Rangoon Act that was seen by the students as a way in which the

British were trying to restrict higher education to a privileged few. Hmaing was a professor of Burmese history and literature in one of the strikers’ main national colleges, a Shwegyitaik monastery in Rangoon. Although the National School movement collapsed in 1922, some of the National Schools were accepted by

British rule, continued, and became a breeding ground for anti-colonial

sentiment, nationalist pride, modern education divested of British colonial

96 interests, and most importantly, an appreciation of traditional classics and

historical traditions in the vernacular.

The consciousness of Burma’s past that was raised in these National

Schools also entailed the traditional penchant for faith and devotional aspects in

constructing knowledge. Hence, it was in these Nationalist Schools that pride

was again taken that the Shwedagon Pagoda was built exactly at the time of the

Buddha. As Sarkisyanz explained, “even such exaggerated claims encouraged

intellectual opposition to British domination (Sarkisyanz:130).”

Part of the reason for the rise in political power and influence of the

intellectuals at the Nationalist Schools was that their fluent and flowery use of the

Burmese vernacular and their faith in the traditional classics were an effective

means of connecting well with the masses. During the independence

movements of the early 20th century, the majority of the adult Burmese masses

(at least of the male population) were still products of traditional monastic

schools, the breeding ground for a fluent knowledge of the vernacular and the traditional classics. These traditional centers of education in Burma continued to thrive for lay pupils until the very end of the 19th century, despite much efforts

early on by missionaries since the 1600s to win students over and the colonial

government’s policies since the 1860s to dismantle these schools.

97 Resistance in the Colonial Era of Traditional Monastic Schools for Lay Persons

The monastic schools were difficult to dissolve for several reasons, and not just because they were the main educational institutions, regardless of class, status, and occupation since 12th century Pagan. Firstly, since the beginning, there was little impetus on the part of the British colonial government to want to dismantle them. Buddhist cultural practices in Burma were much less shocking to the British than infant marriage, sati (widow self-immolation), infanticide, sacrificial practices, and similar “offensive” customs they found in India. So, they did not feel a desperate need to “civilize” the natives in much the same way as they did in India, namely through education. The worst that was usually said of the Burmese by the Europeans in Burma then was about the wastefulness both materially and spiritually of what appeared to Europeans to be idol worshipping, the apparent “selfishness” of their religion which seemed to motivate giving alms rather than more obvious charity work (Bagshawe 1973:24), and the “weak and ignorant” mind that seemed to be represented in the endless memorization and recitations at monastic schools (see Bigandet 1912:302). Further, because monastic education had long provided universal access to education, at least to all males, and free of charge, the literacy rate in the vernacular was relatively high in Burma. So, even Bigandet, the French Catholic missionary priest who was highly critical of Buddhist monks and the nature of the education they provided wrote: “Owing to the gratuitous education given by Buddhist monks, there are very few men throughout the breadth and length of Burmah who are not

98 able to read and write (Bigandet:299).” Additionally, compared to India, Burma

was linguistically more homogenous, the Burmese language being spoken by

three-fourths of the population. The way the British viewed the cultural, linguistic,

and educational situations in Burma and India differently can be seen in the

differences between the views expressed in the Education Minute of Macaulay

in India (1835) and the letter by Sir Arthur Phayre (1864), Chief Commissioner of

British Burma, to the Home Department of the Secretary of the Government of

India . Macaulay’s Minute upheld the perspectives of those in the Committee of

Public Instruction of India who wanted to implement an educational system

dependent on English for higher learning. The view was that a native “class of

interpreters” was needed to help rule the Indian masses for the Indians needed

to be “civilized” in all ways, “tastes, opinions, morals, and intellect”:

We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language…(O)f all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be most useful to our native subjects… The languages of Western Europe civilized Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar… I feel…that it is impossible for us, with our means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect…1

Macaulay’s minute also reflected not only the relative lack of a vernacular literacy

in 19th century India, but also the important position that the English language had already begun to acquire as the tongue of an indigenous ruling class.

Phayre’s letter regarding Burma, on the other hand, did not focus as much

on the need to “civilize” the native. Its focus was more on how the vernacular

99 that was currently wide-spread in Burma and the traditional monastic schools already in place should be utilized in educating the native. He did not seem to understand, or rather, decided to ignore the fact that the traditional monastic schools taught much more than the three “R’s,” reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Its curriculum also included, even for lay pupils, traditional classics of the

Tripitaka and its many intermediate texts, both prose and verses, as well as astronomy, medicine, and sports. However, he did see that the monastic schools could be useful institutions in his government’s endeavor to educate the natives:

Of the inhabitants of British Burma three-fourths, or one million and a half belong to people whose mother tongue is Burmese. It is evident that in providing for the educational wants of the people we must first look to the requirements of the race. I shall now proceed to state what I consider should be done of them. The existing Natives Schools of Burma are the Buddhist Monasteries. The Monks are supported by the daily alms of the people. The fabrics are generally built by private individuals as works of religious merit. The Monasteries have no endowments. The Monks who inhabit them perform the priestly offices required by the laity and educate children. For their services they are supported by voluntary gifts and daily alms. There is scarcely a village in the whole country without one of these institutions. For the great mass of the pupils it may be said, that the education imparted does not go beyond instruction in reading and writing the vernacular language—that is Burmese, and the rudiments of Arithmetic. For those who intend to enter the Priesthood, of course, a higher degree of instruction is necessary which need not here be described. As a general rule, it may be stated that all instruction among the Burmese people is carried on in the Monasteries. There are a few private schools here and there, but they are exceptional. There is no other regular plan or system of schools which could be taken in hand and improved. I would not recommend that Government should set up Schools in the Villages as additional, or in opposition to the Monasteries, such a scheme would inevitably fail. [Kaung:88]

100 In recommending the use of traditional monastic schools for educating masses,

Phraye, had the colonialist’s interest at heart and their utilitarian goal of spreading limited resources as widely as possible by using manpower (the monks) that were already there. His scheme was also a means of befriending monks so that the colonial government could gradually steer monastic schools away from the Pali classics towards more modern, practical curricula (Bagshawe:

36). Nevertheless, his stated views also reflected the lack of any elite position for the English language among the Burmese, the continual wide-spread use of the

Burmese vernacular, and the still thriving influence of monastic schools in their transmission of the knowledge of the traditional classics and culture.

Phraye’s above plan to slowly and gradually bring monastic schools to dissolution was forestalled in its implementation because Phraye retired three months after recommending the plan. Hough, who had started the work after

Phraye, died while on a sick leave. And as the interim director, Street, had little faith in the proposal (Bagshawe:37). So, its implementation was not truly tried until Hordern came on the job in 1867, fourteen years after Pegu was annexed.

Yet, by that time, the monastic organization was too much in disarray for the colonial government to negotiate an educational plan with the monks. In many ways, this difficulty was the colonial government’s own doing. By that time, they had already caused the position of the Sangharaja or thathanabaing (traditional head of the monk order) to decline, so there was a lack of a centralized method of communicating with the monks (Bagshawe:41). In a pilot scheme, in order to win monks’ favor, Hordern and his staff offered a fairly large supply of printed

101 texts of Pali literature from the Tripitaka to monk-teachers at 31 monastic schools in Rangoon and neighboring Pegu (Bagshawe:43). The monks were free to use these texts for themselves and also to pass out to their students as learning tools. Afterward, the monks were handed the more secular texts to teach, such as geography. To assist the monks in the teaching of these modern subjects, four lay Burmese “circuit teachers” in all, two in each town, were hired with a sizable salary by the department to circulate from one monastic school to another assisting monks in the teaching of these books. Yet, the monks offered a passive resistance. On the one hand, Hordern found that there was no jealousy or opposition on the part of the monks in regard to the new system of education proposed. He wrote that the monks “gladly receive our books and express a wish for them (Bagshawe:44).” At the same time, he found that the department’s efforts were a “waste of time and labor” for the monks apparently did not enforce their pupils’ learning of these new subjects (Bagshawe:44). While the department’s lay teachers might spend hours going from one monastery to another to help teach a text, they often found that the pupil they requested to see had not yet shown up for the day (Bagshawe:43). Hordern quoted one prominent monk teacher telling him, “`Our instruction is religious, but if your pupils like to study secular subjects there is no objection (Bagshawe:44).’” Apparently, while the monks had a very tolerant attitude toward the newly proposed subjects, they considered these to be unnecessary, extra, and permissible only if they could spare the time. A British official in India, Sir Richard Temple, acutely observed how a tradition like monastic education in Burma that placed high importance on

102 inwardly reflection might perceive as trivial subject matters meant for the

“intensifying (of) the powers of observation, conducive to an accurate

apprehension of external matters (and) training the mind to search for what is beautiful and attractive.”2 And as might be expected, by 1870, Hordern’s

department was finding that when the new curriculum was taught at all, it was

circuit teachers who were originally sent to train the monks, rather than the

monks themselves, that were doing most or all of the instructions (Bagshawe:59).

Hence, Phraye’s plan to gradually sway monk-teachers toward more modern

disciplines and hence incorporate them into the larger school system of the colonial government failed, partly because the plan was implemented too late and partly because the monk-teachers were passively resisting.

In this way, the traditional monastic education for lay persons thrived long into the colonial era in the 19th century. Their marked decline was noticeable

only at the very turn of the century. Moreover, their decline was caused not so

much by the colonial government’s ability to impose a new world view or

ideology, but quite purely by bureaucratic measures. Citing a need to enforce

“efficiency” in learning, the British colonial government published the criteria for

the first four standards (grades 1-4) for all schools in the colony. Monastic

schools, like the other types of existing schools began to be registered,

inspected, and were required to meet government standards in curriculum and in performance. They were brought into a formal system for the first time. By 1867,

several hundred monastic schools began to be registered for the purposes of

inspection and control (Social Welfare Department 1959:9). At the same time,

103 the government began to focus on strengthening existing indigenous lay “house” schools that had traditionally co-existed with monastic schools but had been far fewer in numbers and in the number of students. They now saw that the lay schools could help modernize education in Burma in ways that monastic schools could not as these were neither headed by monks nor obligated to renounce financial incentives [vinaya codes do not permit monks to accept payments or wages]. In 1873-74, officials inspected 833 monastic schools and 95 lay “house” schools (out of a total of 4,250 indigenous schools) with 23,112 pupils. Only

3,585 of the pupils passed the standards the government set forth

(Bagshawe:86). Yet, as each year passed, recognized lay schools increased faster than monastic schools, and also, always produced a higher proportion of students passing government standards examinations (Bagshawe:87). Students were given financial and material rewards for passing examinations well. With such incentives and along with the knowledge that only government recognized credentials could help one get jobs now, many lay Burmese Buddhists began to flock to lay schools both indigenous (later called “vernacular” for teaching in the

Burmese language) and missionary schools (also called Anglo-Vernacular because much English but also some Burmese were taught). While the number of governmentally approved monastic schools fluctuated in the colonial era, there was a steady increase each year in the number of lay schools being registered by the government. In fact, by the end of the colonial era, there were many more lay schools being recognized by the government than there were monastic schools. The trend had been the reverse in the first years of the government’s

104 registry of schools as there were more monastic schools than lay schools. In

1874-75, the first year when the registry system was in operation, there were 939 recognized monastic schools as compared with 155 recognized lay schools. But by 1906, more lay schools began to be recognized than monastic schools. In

1906, the figures were 2,899 lay schools as compared to 2,369 monastic schools. Then each year after that, the number of recognized lay schools grew in proportion so that by 1927, there were 4,770 lay schools as compared to only

1,120 monastic schools in the government’s list of registered schools (Kaung:78-

79). By bureaucratically forcing a change in the way monastic schools operated, from decentralized yet singular in purpose to centralized and controlled yet fragmented in goals, the colonial government was finally successful at causing monastic schools to decline in status and enrollment by the very end of the 19th

century. As relatively higher paying jobs such as working in the colonial

government’s civil service bureaucracy as clerks and technical assistants also

required knowledge of modern disciplines and English as well, the monastic

schools lost much enrollment by then.

Nevertheless, as the downfall of the traditional monastic schools came

late in the colonial era, and also, the colonization of Burma was quite late to

begin with, the Burmese vernacular continued to be the main language of the

overwhelming majority of the country. So, the majority of the Burmese adults

and young adults in the early part of the 20th century were still quite traditional in

their world view and outlook. That is, they were unable to connect with the very

few elites who were Anglicized, educated in missionary schools, and held

105 technical, bureaucratic jobs. The nationalist leaders they decided to follow were not from that Anglicized class, but the traditional intellectuals who went to monastic schools and the Burmese Buddhist National Schools. For this reason,

Ashokan ideals of society and polity along with the faith, devotion, miracles, and stories that can nurture a conscience of the Buddha could be carried on into the post-colonial era in Burma by the ruling and intellectual elites. These traditional elites rose in influence beginning in the struggle for independence.

However, although there were such intellectual conditions carried over into the modern era in Burmese society for the personal implementation of the

Buddha’s ethics, the implementations, of course, could not always be realized.

As evidenced by many of the kings in Burma’s pre-colonial past, even with a

“collective conscience” of the Buddha in society, individuals may commit unwholesome acts such as kill others and in trying to atone for their wrongs (i.e., to balance their demerits with merits) their understanding of social-welfare may fall short of the Buddha’s ideals. Especially in modern Burma, what becomes important to examine when trying to determine the conditions most conducive for an intuitive development of Buddhist ethics is not just the informal socialization but the many forms of education, formal and non-formal as well, in which lay

Buddhists learn Buddhism. That is because since the decline of traditional monastic education for the laity, there has arisen many other forms of Buddhist education, including insight meditation retreats and courses on Buddhist yin kye hmu (civility). And these may be taught by monks, lay intellectual elites, or the state. The ability of these different educational settings in modern Burma to

106 nurture or discourage in individuals a conscience of the Buddha, the implementation of the ethics as embodied by the Buddha, is the subject of the next three chapters.

ENDNOTES

1Selections from Educational Records, Part 1, 1781-1839

2Minute by Sir Richard Temple, Bombay, India, September 6, 1878

107

Chapter 3

Buddhism as an Authoritarian Instrument

Beginning in the early decades of the 20th century, traditional monastic schools for lay persons, once the centers of learning of not only the Pali canon but also the Burmese language, traditional literary classics, arithmetic, and other worldly subjects, fell further into the background as places of education. Yet monks did continue to be trained in monastic schools all the way to the highest levels, earning Burma the fame in the 20th century of having a great number of internationally renowned monks learned in pariyatti (Tripitaka literature) as well as in pathibatti (meditation practice). For example, the Ledi Sayadaw, beginning in the late 19th century, became an internationally recognized prolific writer as well as a meditator who often retreated to the forest. Orientalists like Rhys

Davids regularly consulted him on topics related to the Abhidhamma, the third of the “Three Baskets” (Tripitaka), the most abstract part that deals directly with the metaphysics of mental and physical phenomena. The Mingun Sayadaw was famed for knowing by heart the entire Pali canon and he led the Sixth Buddhist

Synod held in Burma in 1954. That is, he led the sixth congregation of international Buddhist monk scholars since the Buddha’s passing away to review and cross-check the doctrinal alignment of each other’s knowledge. While

108 learning the Pali canon by heart was a necessary task in a doctrinal tradition that

was transmitted orally only until it was all written down on palm leaves during the

Fourth Synod, the feat of complete memorization is rare in the modern era.

Burma is the only country to have monks who can do this today and in Burma there are no more than five currently. Since the middle part of the 20th century,

Burmese monk teachers of insight meditation have also become quite popular both in the country and on a regional and international scale. Their missions are in almost every continent and foreigners flock to their meditation centers/monasteries in Burma.

With all this international attention as well as a conscience of the Buddha embodied in monk characters in movies, novels, and awe-inspiring monks’ lives as portrayed in hagiographies, there is still a high respect for monks and an aspiration to be like them in Burma. This does not translate to many people entering the monkhood permanently themselves, but the admiration is there.

Nash observed in the late 1950s that religious donations were a top priority in people’s financial expenditures. In a pattern that did not seem to suit the goals of economic “modernization,” the wealthier they became, they donated more (Nash

1965:160). Today, too, religious offerings include the lavish manner in which people continue to shin pyu (ordain their children as temporary novices), build

pagodas, and also offer monasteries and alms to monks. While the best of one’s

meals are still offered every morning to monks on their alms rounds even in

Rangoon, there are also huge alms giving ceremonies to monks on special

occasions, including life cycle ceremonies (e.g., novitiation, birthdays, weddings,

109 the opening of a new business, the entering of a new house, and death). In

urban areas, these lavish alms giving ceremonies are increasingly taking place at

meditation centers, as the traditional belief is that the higher the spiritual

attainment of the person receiving one’s donations, the higher one’s merits.

Still, while monks in Burma may be respected by the lay supporters in the

20th century for their of knowledge of the Tripitaka and/or of insight meditation,

and many (particularly monks of the Shwegyin sect) for also following closely the vinaya (doctrinal codes of conduct for monks), the esteem they held in pre-

colonial times as the primary educators of society has waned. The very

appellation traditionally attached to monks’ names in Burma, “Sayadaw,” means

Great/Royal Teacher. In the 20th century, the term is still used but no longer holds the same grandiose connotations. The introduction by the British colonial administration of a centralized, formal education system, based on an efficiency criterion and utilitarian model ensured the slow demise of the traditional monastic

school and the role of the monk as educator.

Hence, in post-colonial Burma that inherited the formal system of education from the colonial days, traditional monastic schools are no longer the main centers of Buddhist education. For this reason, monks, Buddhist lay intellectuals, and successive governments have tried to problem-solve how best to transmit Buddhism to future generations. While young persons still learn

Buddhism from “mi yo pha la” or family traditions, and through monks’ sermons given at religious ceremonies, these informal means have been recognized as insufficient. The Buddhist education programs that have been quite consciously

110 planned and implemented in the post-colonial era have been as different as are

the intentions and backgrounds of the educators and administrators involved.

In this chapter, I will focus on one, the revival of monastic schools for lay pupils by today’s military junta.

Authoritarian and Democratic Pedagogical Styles in Pre-Colonial Monastic Schools

Any references to “monastic schools for lay pupils” in Burma are likely to

conjure up for most Western scholars familiar at all with Burma studies the images portrayed of such schools by the colonial apparatus, particularly

European Christian missionaries of the 19th century. But a monolithic view of

monastic education based on their observations alone would be faulty. To

understand more fully the current military junta’s program of revival of monastic

schools for lay persons, what it sets out to do, what it can do, and what it cannot,

one must first comprehend the weakness and strengths of monastic schools in

the past.

It was during the 19th century that Burma became gradually under the

control of a colonial government, namely Britain, and hence, it was also a time when the missionaries were vying not only for converts, but also for the position of their missions in the government recognized school system. So, while the truth value of some of their interpretations of education at these schools may be

taken to heart, the lack of historicity and incompleteness of their observations must also be comprehended. Almost all the missionaries pointed to the practice

111 of rote memorization and recitations and portrayed these as signs of the dull

mindedness of the education and the laziness and ignorance of the monk

teachers. The French Catholic Bishop, Bigandet wrote,

The Talapoins (monks) being much addicted to sloth and indolence, the schools are undoubtedly miserably managed. The boys are often left to themselves without regular control or discipline. When a boy enters the monastery as a student, his teacher places into his hands a piece of blackened board, whereupon are written, the first letters of the alphabet. The poor lad has to repeat over and over the name of the letters, crying aloud with all the powers of his lungs. He is left for several weeks, at the same subject, until his instructor is satisfied that he knows his letters, so as to be able to spell correctly all the words of the language…Owing to the lack of order and method on the part of the teachers, boys spend a long time, sometimes one or two years, in mastering those difficulties, which, if properly explained, would much shorten the time usually devoted to such a study….[Bigandet:299-300].

Sangermano, an Italian priest, wrote,

The study of the Talapoins (monks) is however rather an exercise of the memory than of the understanding. They do not esteem the faculties of reasoning and discoursing, but only that of committing easily to memory; and he is esteemed the most learned man whose memory is most tenacious.[Sangermano 1893:181]

Also, Marks, a British chaplain, wrote,

His (the child’s) school equipment is of the simplest, consisting only of a paper spelling-book, from which he learns to shout out his lessons at the top of his voice. Everything is of the most primitive kind, but admirably adapted to his needs in his infancy and early boyhood. As he grows up, however, he wants something better, and the European who will take him in hand and continue his instruction at once commands his friendship (Marks 1917: 60-61).

The missionaries’ accounts have a narrow interpretation of monastic pedagogy as their focus is purely on the outward signs of rote memorization, and usually that of spelling only, not of literature.

112 While rote memorization cannot in and of itself develop reasoning skills, it

can, when coupled with dialogue and narratives clarify high order concepts.

Schwartz, in comparing the pedagogy of Burmese Buddhist monks with that of

Catholic priests in the Philippines, wrote that while the Buddhist monks clarified

high order concepts through synonyms and illustrative examples, the Catholic

priests did so through definitions and deductive logic (Schwartz 1975:81-83). He

focused on the instructions of 19th century Burmese Buddhist monk, Ledi

Sayadaw, an expert in Abhidhamma. He noted that Buddhist literary subjects

such as Abhidhamma, a subject learned in stages by lay and monk pupils when

they reached a slightly more advanced stage in monastic schools, involved

committing to memory and reciting many formulas. Yet, he noted, the Ledi

Sayadaw also provided the following narrative to explain one of the high order

concepts, “dukkha”:

For it is as the sick man who maintains life by austere dieting, but who, were he to partake of rich dishes, would die or suffer mortal pain. He is offered very savory flesh curries [but] though very fain to partake of them, is aware of the pains of disease and rejects them…Now he, if he were to partake of them, would be keenly sensible of their flavor while doing so, but afterwards he would die or suffer mortal pain. So that, whereas on the occasion of partaking…he has…pleasant sensation…, those sensations under the aspect of fear and peril, are nothing but dukkha. Thus from the standpoint of pleasant experience, pleasurable feeling is really pleasure only in the threefold classification of feeling. But under the aspect of insight into the Four Truths, by reason of fear and danger, such pleasure is for all beings nothing but ill. Hence it is that we can say: ‘The truth concerning ill, save in the sense of bodily or mental suffering, is not concerning that which is ill. [Schwartz:81]

In his narrative, the Ledi Sayadaw used synonyms for “dukkha” (suffering) i.e., ill, fear and peril, and also demonstrated “dukkha” through example, i.e., a sick man.

113 Thus, if the sick man were to eat foods that would harm him, he may like the

taste but will feel fear and peril. The synonym and example are used by the Ledi

Sayadaw to make the very nuanced point that “pleasure” is sometimes actually

“pain” disguised as pleasure. Further, in addition to such narratives, there is much possibility of dialogue between pupil and monk about what has been

learned. As Schwartz wrote, the relationship between Burmese Buddhist monks

and their pupils was also different from the relationship between Catholic priests

and their students in that there was more interaction: “In Burma, contacts were

frequent and highly personal. Reciprocal duties bound each to the other

(Schwartz:90).” And in fact, a homily, the Sigalovada that pupils learned in

traditional monastic schools included the following injunctions on reciprocal

duties between teachers and students:

In five ways should pupils minister to their teachers…: by rising [in salutation], by waiting upon them, by eagerness to learn, by personal service, and by attention when receiving their teaching. And in five ways do teachers thus minister to…love their pupil; they train him in that wherein he has been well trained; they make him hold fast that which is well held; they thoroughly instruct him in the lore of every act; they speak well of him among his friends and companions. They provide for his safety…[Schwartz:90]

Thus, while rote memorization in and of itself does not produce reasoning skills,

it can, along with narratives and dialogue help one to comprehend high order

concepts. Missionaries’ and also colonial administrators’ accounts of monastic

education usually honed in on the rote memorization and not much else. It is

entirely possible that there were monastic schools that just promoted rote

memorization and nothing else. It is also possible that many times the dialogues

114 between teacher and pupil did not foster much high order thinking. The missionaries were making their observations at a time when many monastic schools had begun to decline owing to colonial policies that steered students away from the monastic schools. Further, the organization of the Sangha was in disarray as the traditional head of the Sangha had been dissolved by the British.

So, the missionaries also needed to take into account the historical conditions.

Yet, what has been transmitted from their accounts is an ahistorical, monolithic perspective on monastic education.

However, 19th century missionaries’ accounts have had a high influence on how some Western scholars perceive monastic education and Buddhism. For instance, Spiro quoted their accounts at face value in his book on Buddhism and society in contemporary Burma (see Spiro:361,363). He wrote that the high veneration of the Sangha, the monk order, in Burma is often unwarranted and the bases for many neuroses. He described monks as having a “narcissism” and

“egocentrism” and stated that laymen often “suffer from their [monks’] egocentrism (Spiro:414).” He was making the point that a majority of monks were no different from lay persons in that being human they could not adhere to the actual path to nibbana; they were not even intellectually vigorous in their learning of the Pali canon. In reference to the prime reliance on rote memorization of texts in the few monastic schools in the village where he was doing research, he said: “Bigandet’s nineteenth century observations [about their lack of ‘intellectual vigor’], when stripped of their missionary bias, could have been made today (Spiro:363).” While he admitted that there were “notable

115 exceptions…not only in cities but in village monasteries, too (Spiro:365),” he generalized that monks contributed to laymen’s ambivalent, difficult to resolve feelings between unattainable ideals of their religion and almost everyone’s primordial impulses (Spiro:414). Spiro did not bother to understand monastic pedagogy historically or to examine the different kinds of monastic pedagogy in contemporary Burma that may shed light on how critical thinking skills may be developed even while faith is instilled. Perhaps with further explorations in this direction, his thesis that “Kammatic” and “Apotropaic” Buddhist practices in

Burma are irreconcilable with “Nibbanic Buddhism” would have been revised.

There is much evidence that while traditional monastic education in Burma may have prevented the growth of science in the Western sense, in terms of a curiosity about the external world or the manipulation of nature (Sarkisyanz:98), its highly literary approach was not devoid of critical thinking. In a single historical period, there have been varying pedagogical styles in the monastic schools. While all monastic education aimed to instill Buddhist faith, some of these methods promoted critical thinking while others did not. For example, the styles of teaching conveyed in the writings of two very famous monk-teachers from Burma’s literary past, Ashin Thilavamsa and Ashin Maharathathara from

Inwa (Ava) period of Burma, are almost polar opposites. They were born only twenty six years apart. The former was born in 1442, and the latter in 1468.

They are famous today for their sonema saas (homilies), both prose and verses.

Their homilies had been used in monastic schools. Some of their writings have been taught as part of Burmese literature in high school throughout post-colonial

116 Burma. Their didactic pithy verses have been published in popular anthologies of homilies. While Ashin Thilavamsa tended to focus on instilling in pupils the outward motions of Buddhist civility, primarily through speech and bodily conduct,

Ashin Maharathathara focused on the more inward qualities, namely mental factors. The tone of Ashin Thilavamsa’s homilies was more authoritarian, outlining the do’s and don’ts, while Ashin Maharathathara aimed at instilling critical thought. In Ashin Thilavamsa’s “Tilokahu Sone Ma Saa,” a collection of his pithy verses, the following are about how pupils should conduct themselves in learning:

When it’s time to study, don’t have a sad face, with wandering thoughts. Don’t study just temporarily with your text here but your face somewhere else. Don’t be talking and laughing. With continuous sound, make much noise [i.e., recite], when studying. Study well and have perfect pronunciation. When you write on palm-leaf books, too, make sure you write each word beautifully [Ashin Thilavamsa 1960: 4, 6]

Ashin Thilavamsa focused primarily on rote memory, recitation, and beautiful penmanship in learning. He did not emphasize the importance of asking questions, being inquisitive, or constructing one’s own understandings. On the other hand, Ashin Maharathathara in his poem, “Thu Si Pu Ba Sone Ma Saa,” wrote about the importance of talking, discussing, applying, researching, reasoning, and sharing one’s knowledge:

…Like a daring rooster, Scratching and bounding, be energetic and love what you study. Not discussing and participating, not expounding, Will only result in a waste of pages for palm leaf writing. Although one studies, how will someone worthy of honor Arise?

Someone who studies,

117 Must not avoid, any text he sees in sight, Like a cat eating a prawn crunches every bit of it Like the teeth of a saw, Like stone inscriptions So that knowledge is ready when you need it, learn it by heart and practice it. You must have an in-depth understanding At the tip of your tongue.

Like spinning a yarn, As soon as a thread appears, have no fright.

In speaking in the middle of a stage With mindfulness at all times, like a stone pillar Like a lion king, with no timidity Let the varying kinds of speech Quickly roll off your tongue gracefully making your speech suit Your audience with evidence to back up your claims…[Ashin Maharathathara 1960:22-23]

Ashin Maharathathara did not reject rote memorization. He stated in the above poem that “learning by heart” helped one to bolster one’s knowledge without having to look back into texts. Now it’s “at the tip of your tongue,” he says.

However, he also emphasized that the knowledge in texts must not only be memorized but also applied or “practiced” if one is to have an “in-depth” understanding. He emphasized “daringness” and curiosity in learning, i.e., one must be energetic like a “daring rooster scratching and bounding.” He also wrote when something of interest arises, one must not be frightened to examine it, i.e., “Like spinning a yarn, as soon as a thread appears,” one should incorporate it.

In this sense, Ashin Maharathathara appears as if he would have discussed the content of learning with his students, probed their curiosity, and encouraged them to ask questions and think critically. They would have been

118 comfortable to ask him questions and carry on a dialogue with him. His writings

suggest that he had a relationship with students that was based on trust rather

than scolding. In disciplining students, he appeared to have emphasized

reasoning as well as being mindful of what one is about to do or say. For instance, in “Lat Thit Toun Taa Sone Ma Saa,” he told students to speak nicely to each other, but he did not give a literal command, “speak nicely.” He gave them an analogy that they could think about, relate to, and form their own conclusions:

“So that each other’s words are not bitter in each other’s ears, be mindful. Let the words you speak be sweet like honey (Ashin Maharaththara:16).” Moreover, he told them to be “mindful,” “be with sati [awareness]” as one speaks, so that one could judge for oneself whether one’s words are sweet or bitter. He did not specify what words are sweet or bitter. He encouraged self-responsibility in constructing one’s knowledge. As his pupil, one might consider whether honey is sweet, and if so, will most everybody like honey? If the answer is “yes,” then one would consider that probably no one would want something bitter. As one speaks, then, one might try to gauge for oneself if what one says would actually sound “sweet” like honey in someone else’s ear.

Even in his admonishment about the importance of respecting authority figures to whom one owes gratitude--one’s parents, elders, and teachers--he does not boast about their perfection. Instead, he tells pupils that these figures may not be perfect. For this reason, he says one must be mindful as one repays them with gratitude.

One’s mother, father, elders, and others to whom one owes gratitude are like the immeasurably high Mount Meru [the Buddhist cosmic center of the

119 universe]. Consider them in your mind as if they are like the Buddha. Pay respect and provide them with whatever they need, clothes, food, and water. The things they may have said, both sweet and bitter, know how to forgive them. [Ashin Maharathathara:15]

With this, he tells pupils that one should be aware, be mindful of one’s desire to react to those imperfect things parents, teachers, and elders may have said while at the same time one reciprocates the gratitude owed to them. That is, while he writes that one should respect parents, teachers, and elders, he appeals to reason. He is clear that it is not because they are perfect, but because of the gratitude one owes to them.

Ashin Thilavamsa, on the other hand, gives no qualifications or reason when he tells students that that they should honor authority figures, namely their teacher and parents. He wrote, “Without blaming, respect the immeasurably great Triple Gems, mother, teacher, and monks…(Ashin Thilavamsa: 2).” He also focuses on the outwardly signs of respect: “You mustn’t walk upright, without bowing, when passing in front [of authority figures] (Ashin Thilavamsa:4).”

Judging from the tone and content of his homilies, it is unlikely that Ashin

Thilavamsa would have had a highly personal relationship with his students.

There appeared to be no possibilities for a continuous dialogue between them.

His preference in the method of discipline seems to be punishment and hitting.

He writes, “When you go to get water from the well, don’t be playing. If you play and take too long there you will get ‘sand dan, water dan’ [punishments involving having to unnecessarily carry water or sand] and your back will surely be struck

(Ashin Thilavamsa:4).”

120

The Buddha and Obedience to Authority

In the verse, Mangala Sutta (“Discourse on Blessings”), from the

Khudikanikaya of the Pali canon, which is usually the first Pali texts (with

vernacular translations) taught in traditional monastic schools after learning of the

Thinbongyi, Burmese spelling, the Buddha promoted faith and honor but he also

stressed the importance of critical insight. He did mention that it is a blessing to take care of one’s mother and father, “Matapitu upatthanam,” and to honor those who are worthy of honor, “Puja ca pujaneyyanam.” He also said that being humble, contented, and knowing gratitude are blessings: “Garavo ca nivato ca, santutthi katanuta.” However, the very first two blessings that set the tone for the

entire thirty-eight blessings contained in the verse are “Not to associate with

fools, To associate with the wise.”: “Asevana ca balanam, Panditannan ca

sevana.” Critical judgment is required of one at the very outset. The Buddha

does not specify who are “wise” and who are “foolish.” It is possible to deduce

that those people who are “wise” are those who follow most or all of the thirty- eight blessings, which include the following (they are not mutually exclusive but can correspond to people’s life stages): being well-learned, speaking wholesome words, taking care of one’s parents, working blamelessly and with clarity, giving generously, supporting one’s relatives, avoiding unwholesome acts through mind, body, and speech, abstaining from intoxicating drinks and drugs, meeting with those monks who have calmed their mental defilements, discussing the

121 Dhamma on suitable occasions, abstaining from self-indulgence, abstaining from sexual relations, seeing the Four Noble Truths, and realizing nibbana [i.e., practicing insight meditation to achieve wisdom and eventually nibbana] (see

Appendix). It can also be deduced that if one’s parents, teachers, and monks did not follow most or all of these blessings, they are probably foolish themselves.

Yet, if one disrespects them and/or not know the gratitude one owes them for the many things they have done, then one is also likely to be foolish, because respect and knowing gratitude are blessings.1 Hence, doctrinally, the Buddha’s teachings sets one responsible for much critical thinking needed to do the right thing. In many ways, Ashin Maharathathara’s pedagogy was geared toward encouraging one to develop such insight, while Ashin Thilavamsa was more focused on trying to tell one what to do.

As history indicates too, critical or independent thinking is not at all foreign to traditional monastic schools such that monks, trained and bred in monastic schools, have been at the forefront of political criticism and even activism in

Burma. For example, Ashin Nanabhivamsa, the sangharaja (traditional head of the Sangha) confronted King Bodawpaya (1718-1819) who likened himself to

Ashoka but was ruthlessly committing fratricides (Sarkisyanz:7). During the independence struggle from Britain, Sayadaw U Ottama led a non-violent, non- cooperation struggle against the colonial state apparatus, which included a boycott of the colonial police and tax collectors. Another, Sayadaw U Wisara, whose statue can be seen atop a pillar in a busy intersection near the

Shwedagon Pagoda, was also arrested during the independent struggle for

122 leading similar protests. He died during a hunger strike he waged in prison against the colonial administration’s orders for him to disrobe. Thakhin Ko Daw

Hmaing, a lay person who was formerly a monk trained in the monastic schools, was a renowned writer and leading political commentator against the British. He inspired much political activism during the struggle for independence. In the

1988 pro-democracy struggles against the current military regime, monks played an active role (Matthews 1993:413, 420-421). Their activism included a ritual boycott of the military and their families through thabeik hmauk (overturning of the alms bowl) or not accepting any offerings from them.

The Military Junta’s Pedagogical Preferences in their Monastic Schools for Lay Pupils

The current government’s rule is authoritarian. Through a military coup in

1962, they usurped power from U Nu, the prime minister of a parliamentary democracy. Beginning with General Ne Win’s one man’s rule, the military junta forcibly isolated the nation from the international world. The slogan they promoted was “Burmese Way to Socialism.” They quelled the mass, nation-wide pro-democracy protests in 1988 by massacring thousands of protestors (Lintner:

1990). In 1990, they held a mock national election after putting the main opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest. The generals at the top changed, but they are still part of the same military junta following Ne Win’s example.

123 The program by which they’ve revived monastic schools for the purposes

of teaching laity is also authoritarian in design. By 1987, the socialist economy of

Burma was in such chaos that Ne Win began opening up the country to a market

economy. By the 1990s, his protégés, now leading the country, embarked on a

“modernization” campaign and sought foreign capital, mainly in the form of tourism. Their objective in the revival of monastic education for lay persons is three-fold: (1) to present Burma as a vanguard of tradition, namely Buddhist

culture, so as to attract foreign capital, especially via tourism; (2) to develop

political stability by instilling social obedience in the young; and (3) to teach a

basic primary education in a cost-effective manner to poor children so that they

can be kept in school and out of the streets. Their first objective could be seen in

their advertisements in their English language paper, “The New Light of

Myanmar.” To coincide with their “Come Visit Myanmar (Burma)” campaign for

1996, they included many photo advertisements in a session entitled, “Come,

Visit Myanmar” that displayed pictures of “tradition.” There was a different

picture each day and they included monasteries and monks, coy young women

dressed in traditional costumes, traditional arts and musical instruments, and

staged scenes of traditional pastimes, like storytelling. For instance, a

photograph that showed a very elegant, traditional monastery from Mandalay

depicted two monks carrying alms bowls and walking toward its entrance. The

caption read, “Two monks return to the great monastery after an alms round.”2

Another was a photograph of an older woman crouching on a woven mat with her

elbows resting comfortably on a cushion in front with a book in her hands.3 She

124 was reading out loud. Four young children, two boys and two girls are shown sitting respectfully in front of her and gazing at her with interest and listening intently. There is a lacquer basket in the center of the mat between the children and the lady as if they had been sharing the traditional snack, laphat (tea salad) together. They are all sitting under a linlun or bodhi tree, the kind of tree under which the Buddha was enlightened. The caption reads: “Story time is a Myanmar traditional. Grandma gathers the young around her for folk tales.” In addition to these pictures, the rest of their newspapers, both the English and the Burmese, are usually filled with anti-opposition commentaries accusing leaders like Aung

San Suu Kyi as “traitors” of the nation and its traditions and as kyun (slaves) of foreign colonialists’ agenda, along with pictures of the top generals in their uniforms (but without their guns) offering alms and other materials to monks, officiating at Buddhist ceremonies and pagoda building, and opening monastic schools for lay pupils.

Their second and third objective, that of using monastic education as a means of instilling obedience and providing primary education to the poor, was communicated to me by the Deputy Minister of the Department of the

Propagation and Perpetuation of the Sasana (Buddhist Religion), a branch of the

Ministry of Religion, that was responsible for opening these monastic schools.

He said that the revival of monastic education for lay pupils was a way in which his government was molding saritta (character) and yin kyey aung lok (civilizing) the young people of the nation. By “civility,” he meant obedience. “The monks are already civilized so they can discipline the students,” he said. He added that

125 monks “do not discriminate [rich or poor children]; they have full metta (loving

kindness.” Referring to a Burmese proverb, “Alainma sa mma shi” (“Civility is

found in literature/texts”), he said that providing a primary education to poor

children who might otherwise not go to school will set them on the “right path.”

He explained that the government made some mistakes during the socialist era:

“In the socialist era, we were able to make people be strong mentally, but we did

not encourage in them a Buddhist civility.” He saw Buddhist “civility” as

something quite different from mental strength. He referred to the mass pro-

democracy demonstrations in 1988 with regret. He spoke of some young

people’s misconducts yet did not mention his own government’s massacring of

thousands of protestors:

A publication in 1993 by the Ministry of Religion regarding plans for the implementation of this monastic education program shows that the government viewed monastic schools’ primary role to be promoting obedience in young people:

In the history of education in Burma, from the time of Burma’s kings to today, monastic education has always been part of the nation’s education. The only difference has been in its rise and decline…It has helped the young people of Burma learn to respect their elders. It teaches them the garavo and nivato Dhamma [respectfulness and humbleness]….[Ministry of Religion 1993:4]

126 And, in fact, in Rangoon, at least, monastic schools are in urban and suburban

areas where the government can oversee children’s obedience to authority. The

government brings to the monasteries mostly rural poor children as boarders.

Some of them are orphans. Some of them are from hill tribe minorities who are neither Burman nor Buddhist but whose ethnic groups are in rebellion or under

threat of rebellion against the government.

Because the key intention of the government is to make these young

people obedient to authority, there is much force involved, both in the

implementation and teaching. First, the lay children are required to be there and

stay there. One monk told me that his students “cannot go outside the

compounds except to go on alms rounds with others (lay students accompany

novices) and only to go to the clinic with teachers.” The monks, too, were

coerced to be the main teachers and supervisors of the students. In many

cases, the monks and the schools were picked and designated by the

government with the help of their affiliate monks who head the Sasana Maha

Nayaka (Supreme Sangha Council), the organ that was formed in 1980 by the

military regime for a more centralized control of the Sangha. In the Ministry of

Religion’s 1993 “Plan” for monastic education for lay persons, their appeals to

the monk head of the Supreme Sangha Council are recorded. Their appeals

reveal the lack of volunteerism, and hence, the difficulty, and eventually the force

with which they have had to gather not only monk teachers, but also children and

parents who would finally agree to send their children to these schools. They

127 urged the head monk to help find not only monk teachers, but also enough

children and willing parents:

The monastic education program will not be successful without the following three needs fulfilled: (1) Monks with schools who would accept children into their school for educating them, (2) Parents who would be willing to send their children to the monastic schools, and (3) Children who want to learn at the monastic schools. [Ministry of Religion:76-77]

Thus, their monastic education program did not take place at a grassroots level,

but rather top down in almost every respect.

Because the implementation was authoritarian, so was the pedagogy.

The only forms of “Buddhist” education I found in many of these monastic

schools were basic daily ritual observances, such as prostrating in front of

Buddha images, giving offerings to the Buddha images, and rote memorization of

a few Buddhist chants, the meaning of which many of the students can neither

articulate nor understand. At one school, upon my visit, the monk-teacher forced

the students to recite some chants to me so that I might know that they were

learning. One of the long poems, the Burmese translation of the Mangala Sutta

(see Appendix), was recited by the five Padaung students who, despite their

shyness and accents, could recite it perfectly. Yet, they could not tell me the

meaning of any part of the poem, not even the first line: “Stay away from fools.”

Nevertheless, the monk-teacher, who was watching from behind continued to call their names, one after another, with the command, “Recite!” Even for the verse on “Sending Loving-kindness,” the monk yelled with a harsh tone, “Go ahead.

Send loving-kindness!” There was usually very little personal bond between the monk-teachers and their students for any kind of beneficial dialogue or for the

128 students to ask questions about the content of their learning. There was the

linguistic barrier in many cases as some of the students came from non-Burmese

speaking ethnic minority groups. In addition, the students were usually forced to

be in the program and so were the monks.

Additionally, as the government does not take responsibility for the cost of the schooling, the monk teachers were usually too pressed for time trying to figure out how to help raise enough money for students’ supplies and necessities. This monastic education program was handled not by the Ministry of

Education but by the Ministry of Religion, and hence, it was a religious affair that was supposed to inspire voluntary donations from the community. The government saw itself as under no obligation to pay for the materials. The

monks were mostly left on their own to raise money for the cost of feeding,

clothing, and buying books and pencils for the students. In some cases, the monk-teachers did not have to take on the additional responsibility of teaching primary education to the children as the children would leave during the day to study at a nearby government primary school. Yet, some had also to figure out how to teach primary subjects to the children as well as help raise enough money for lay teachers to come to their schools. Yet, to raise money or even announce the need without being asked goes against the ascetic rules of the vinaya they must live by. When they do announce, whatever respect they have among their lay communities can easily diminish. Also, teaching primary school subjects did not always align well with the codes of conduct for monks. Hence, many of the monks I met at the government-administered monastic schools were quite

129 flustered and pre-occupied. Under such stress, the kind of “civility” they taught was what the government would have preferred: fear and obedience to authority.

One told me about his pedagogical approach: “In the Buddha’s tradition, I ask them to memorize and recite. I lecture. If they don’t know it by heart, I strike them with a stick. I pull and twist their earlobes. I knock on their heads with my knuckles. There are some naughty ones in the group. Stubborn.” His lack of rapport with the students is obvious as he expressed much ethnocentrism:

They are also lazy. When they get bored, I have had to let them sing songs, and they sing `ee yo ai ya’ songs [making fun of their languages], not the quality songs like the Mangala Poem-turned song of U Thukha (the writer/director) or Ma Ma Aye (famous Dhamma singer), not French, not Chinese, not Burmese, not Indian, more ‘ee yo ai ya.’

Many of the monks had little time to perfect, much less do either of the two traditional duties of monks: pathibatti (meditate) or pariyatti (study and teach

Buddhist texts). The monk above had never been able to pass beyond the very first level of exams in literature for monks. In fact, they had little time and resources to be the “educators” of young people in any way. One of these monk teachers exclaimed to me, “They [the government] started this program. They should be the ones to take on the responsibility of making sure it can work out.”

In his school where he is to teach kindergarten to fourth grade, there are 122 students, 27 of whom are novices, 11 are young nuns, and the rest are lay students. None of the students are from Rangoon. All ate and slept at his compound. He explained that each month it cost at least 2,500 kyats to support each student and additionally there are often unexpected health costs when children got sick. He said that he is expected now by the government to help

130 teach beyond the 4th grade standard. He did not know how he would manage that. His students’ parents are very poor and usually drive three-wheeled bike taxis for a living. Much of his funds are from donations of people who happen to visit and drop by. He said that he has had to reluctantly advertise in the newspapers to announce his needs. Seeing such advertisements, people have brought bags of rice and other supplies. The unintended consequence of such

Buddhist education is that Buddhism is denigrated, not only in respect of its deep meaning, but also in respect of the role of the order of monks or Sangha. What the children received in these places was an authoritarian type of pedagogy exemplified by Ashin Thilavamsa of Burma’s past and without the benefits of a teacher like Ashin Thilavamsa who was well-learned in the Pali literature. They also lacked support from the surrounding community and state. Even as they prostrate to the Buddha several times a day, they cannot develop a conscience of the Buddha. They cannot develop a concept of his complete benevolence.

Authoritarian Agenda in the Government’s Schools in General

The government’s focus on instilling unquestioning obedience and a fear of authority in their newly revived monastic schools for the laity is part of their long-standing educational agenda at regular schools. Because lay teachers don’t usually have the time or the knowledge, a separate Buddhism course is not usually enforced in regular school. However, some Jataka tales are put into primary school Burmese Readers. They are carefully chosen, edited, and subtly

131 reinterpreted by the government to suit their agenda. They usually focus on the need for young people to respect authority figures such as one’s elders, parents, and teachers. In the fourth grade Burmese Reader, there is a Jataka tale,

“Suvannasamma,” that is quite popular in Burma, about a young man, the

Bodhisattva, who takes good care of his blind parents, two ascetic hermits, in the forest. His father was an outcast hunter. After being shot with poison arrows by a king, Suvanasamma regains life because of the power of truth spoken by his parents that he was a good, truthful, loyal son who cared for them very well. In its original version in the Pali canon (Cowell1990:38-52), the story has the potential to make one realize the deceitfulness and pride of political leaders. In the original version the young man was fetching water in the forest when a king hunting for deer spotted him and did not think that he was human. The king thought that he might be a god or a Naga (mythical serpent) and wanted to come closer to ask him. So, the king wounded him in order to disable him. Wounded, the young man asked to know the identity of his assailant, explaining that his flesh was worthless as food. The king, hearing no hate, vengeance, or blame in the young man’s voice, goes up to the young man to inquire who he was. The young man is very honest:

‘If I told him that I belonged to the gods or the Kinnaras, or that I was a Khattiya or of similar race, he would believe me; but one must only speak the truth,’ so he said: They called me Sama while I lived,--an outcast hunter’s son am I…’ [Cowell:44]

In contrast to the Bodhisattva, the king is dishonest and full of pride. Firstly, he introduces himself by calling attention to his marksmanship:

132 ‘I of the Kasis am the lord, King Piliyakkha named; and here, Leaving my throne for greed of flesh, I roam to hunt the forest deer. Skilled in the archer’s craft am I, stout is my heart nor given to change; No Naga can escape my shaft if once he comes within my range.’ [Cowell:44]

Next, he lies and tells Suvannasamma that he was aiming at deer but that

Suvannasamma disturbed his aim. He says that the deer saw Suvannasamma and fled in fright. He was implying that the shooting of Suvannasamma was an

accident provoked by the victim, Suvannasamma. The king says, “A deer had

come within my range, I thought that it my prize would be, but seeing thee it fled

in fright,--I had no angry thought for thee (Cowell:45).” Yet, in the government’s

version in the textbook, however, the entire portion about the deceit and pride of

king was omitted. Only the part when he felt much regret about his shooting

Suvannasamma was included. Moreover, in the government’s version, a respect and compassion for all life is downplayed as a virtue or as an important theme of

the story. In the government’s version, it is only the asseveration

Suvannasamma makes regarding his loyalty toward his parents and his parents’

reliance on him that motivates the king to regret his deeds and want to make

things right again. The government textbook quotes the wounded, dying

Suvannasamma as saying to the king:

‘King, because you shot me with the same poison arrows meant for deer, I am drowning in a pool of blood. Just look. Why did you shoot me? One may shoot a deer for its hide. One may shoot an elephant for its tusks. But for what reason do you shoot me? My parents only have enough food for about six days. If they don’t get water then they will surely die.’4

The text continues, “Then, the king became very regretful and promised to

provide for the two ascetic parents [of Suvannasamma].”5 In the version from the

133 Pali canon, however, Suvannasamma’s love of all life, including animals, and

their love of him is emphasized. In the original version, he does not say to the

king that it may be all right to shoot a deer or an elephant or any other animals.

That part is not there. The original version does say that what moved the king to regret what he had done and to do good again was Suvannasamma’s truthful statement that Suvannasamma loved all the animals in the forest and that their love for Suvannasamma, too, was complete:

‘Since my first years of thought began, as far as memory reaches back, No quiet deer or beast of prey has fled in fear to cross my track. Since I first donned my dress of bark and left behind my childish days No quiet deer or beast of prey has fled to see me cross their ways. Nay, the grim goblins are my friends, who roam with me this forest’s shade,-- Why should this deer then, as you say, at seeing me have fled afraid?’ [Cowell:45]

According to the original version, upon hearing the above, the king decided that he should now speak the truth:

When the king heard him, he thought to himself, ‘I have wounded this innocent being and told a lie, --I will now confess the truth.’ So, he said: ‘Sama, no deer behind thee there, why should I tell a needless lie? I was o’ercome by wrath and greed and shot that arrow,--it was I.’[Cowell:45]

Thus, the government textbook version of Suvannasamma Jataka Tale

emphasized only Suvannasamma’s respect and loyalty to authority figures,

namely his parents, downplayed the potential for deceit and pride in political

leaders, and de-emphasized the theme that respect for all life is a virtue.

The oral and written exercises that follow Buddhist stories like

Suvannasamma in the government textbooks also do not allow for questions,

134 criticisms, or inferential thinking. The teacher I observed teaching the above

story to her fourth graders in a government primary school followed the text

book’s guidelines for teachings. Hence, the questions she posed were not meant

to promote thinking as much as to remember parts of the story word by word.

For example, she asked the following questions right out of the book, “Who lived

near Mighasammadha River in a little hut [for ascetics]?,“ “How did the two

ascetics become blind?,” “Who shot Suvannasamma with an arrow?,” “What truth

statement did Palika [Suvannasamma’s mother] make?”5 She did not appear to

have had the habit of helping students to consider texts in the context of their own lives. The most she did in this regard was to ask questions requiring only

“yes” or “no” answers from the students. Moreover, they were more rhetorical questions to which she already knew how they would answer. So she asked.

“With truthful statements you can pray for what you want, couldn’t you?” “Yes,” the class replied in unison. Can you also thissa so (make asseverations)?”

“Yes,” the class replied in unison. “Of course you can,” she said. “Don’t you also want to say what is true?” “Yes,” they replied again in unison. The students’ only participation throughout the lesson was in taking turns reading parts of the text out loud to the whole class. And even for this, they did not volunteer. She called on them. The students did take much pride in these read alouds. When it was their turn, they would stand on their chair with the book in their hands and read from it with the loudest voice they could possibly project. In fact, one boy’s reading sounded like a loud, lulling chant even though he was reading prose. It was as if the main marker of success in mastering the story was in remembering

135 it word by word and in reciting it. While the universal ethic of “telling the truth” was affirmed by the teacher’s statements, it was the authoritarian nature of her pedagogy that helped to reinforce the other main message conveyed in the government’s version of the Jataka tale: that one should honor authority figures no matter what.

Only after I asked if the students can give examples of their own asseverations, she encouraged them to do so. Yet, even most of these truth statements reflected the habits of obedience and literal learning that students were used. It also showed that they didn’t really know the full meaning of a

“thissa sa kaa,” a truth statement or asseveration. The first two students begun by referring to sentences from the story only: “Because of a thissa sa kaa

Suvannasamma regained his life,” and “Because of a truth statement, the poison in the arrow abated.” So, their teacher intervened and asked the students to speak and about outside experiences. Then, one girl said, “U Hla prayed that he would win the lottery.” The teacher reminded them, “Use the word ‘truth statement.’” The girl revised her sentence, “U Hla made a truth statement that he would win the lottery.” The girl did not understand that according to the story one must have done some good deeds and then a truth statement can be made about these deeds for a particular event to happen. So, if U Hla wished to win the lottery, his truth statement must be about some deed he had previously done.

Yet, many other students spoke just like the girl. Many made the following statement, “I make the truth statement that I may pass my examinations.” Only later, when being asked about what deeds they had done in the past for which

136 they can make a truth statement so that the power of that truth can make their

wishes come true, the students began to mention such deeds. And much in line

with the values emphasized in the story they had just read in the text books, all

the deeds each child mentioned were about helping their parents, to help them

cook at home, wash the rice, fetch the water, help with their steel work, or help

sell their bottles of Pepsi. It was apparent that with the focus on examinations, a

word by word learning of texts, and an emphasis on obedience to authority in the

government school, perhaps faith in the magical aura of truth statements and the magical quality of the Bodhisattva who came back from life was instilled. But the development of critical and inferential thinking skills necessary to fully grasp the array of ethics conveyed in a Jataka story like Suvannasamma was almost nil.

A 1992 UNESCO report on education confirmed that education under the military regime has been too authoritarian and exam-focused. Especially in regard to primary curriculum, it said, “the primary curriculum is essentially subject-oriented, overemphasizing preparation for secondary education rather than the mastery of basic skills (such as literacy, numeracy, hygiene, thinking and reasoning skills) as its main objective (UNESCO 1992:11-12).” Also, even when vocational skills are taught in schools they come much too late, are not well-funded, and do not help students to acquire “problem-solving skills” or

“learning how to learn” skills (UNESCO: 15). UNESCO cites the above reasons as part of the reason for the high drop out rate. According to their figures, “1 out of 3 students who enter primary school completes the full primary cycle…,”

“…drop out rates average about 14 percent in the primary cycle…Yearly, dropout

137 rates for secondary school are even higher, averaging 17 per cent over the

combined middle and high school cycles (UNESCO: 1).”

Another way that the government attempts to instill an unquestioning

respect for authority is by promoting xenophobia through its Buddhist “civility”

programs. One such means has been by appointing lay motivational speakers

with the authority of having lived in the West and educated there to speak to

public school students about the superiority of Burmese Buddhist culture. For

this reason, Dr. Min Tin Mon, a famous, modern educated professor was

appointed to speak to public school students in Rangoon and in the Mon State,

two of the places in Burma where a Burmese Buddhist ethnic and national

identity are strong. With the legitimacy of his being Mon, the originators of the

Burmese heritage of Theravada Buddhism, and of having been educated in a

physics doctoral program in the United States, Dr. Min Tin Mon was the

Buddhist-modernist face of the national government. His mission was to embolden a Burmese Buddhist national and ethnic identity where the investment

was most promising. He explained his talent and his goals. He said that he had

an “advantage [over more traditional teachers like monks] in teaching Buddhism,

because I have more bahuthta (experiences learned) to share. I can talk more in

depth and in breadth about Buddhism in such as way that students will learn to

take pride in their national identity and guard it.” He was giving his speeches in

two middle schools in the Mon State when I followed, observed, and interviewed

him. In a white, taik pon ingyi and peso (traditional and formal costume for

Burmese men), he addressed a crowd of about five hundred students and

138 teachers in a large hall at each school. Like in a university lecture, he stood in

front of a podium the whole time and spoke into a microphone. The green and

white sign behind him boasted his name with the “Dr.” title. Throughout his hour-

long speeches, he stood in one place with a stern face as he spoke. His hands

were folded in the back most of the time but when he wanted to emphasize his

points, he would make huge gestures with hands in the air as if to let his hands

speak even louder than his words. With his amplified voiced, he appeared to be

very grandiose figure. In fact, without any pictures or images of the Buddha anywhere in the room, he was the only and main authority on Buddhism to honor in the room. In his speeches, he appeared at first to be presenting some very high ordered learning of Buddhism. He began by asking students a difficult to answer question, “What is most important for one’s development and growth?”

Many of them yelled out, “Character.” He explained that it was the mind:

“Consciousness--consciousness is the most important. It leads everything else.”

Giving this as reason, he said, “That’s why it’s important to have a wholesome

consciousness.” But then, he immediately began connecting a “wholesome consciousness” to Mon ethnic identity and Burmese national identity. “That’s our

Mon people’s character—we have a wholesome consciousness.” He used his own life story to give the example: “since I was a 5th grader, I had to work. My

father instructed me to.” Then, he went onto say that a wholesome

consciousness should lead one to follow the rules of the nation and thus create

peace in the Burmese nation: “Schools have rules. So does the larger nation.

There are laws in the larger nation that would bring peace to all the people in the

139 nation.” As he said this, he signified the larger nation by extending his arm outward. Using his index finger, he made the gesture of a huge circle surrounding him. And then, he pointed his finger at himself, and said, “So, the individual, too, needs to have inner discipline.” Then, he went on to tell several stories about his experiences as a student in the United States and how much his negative experiences with white Americans helped him to learn to take pride in his own Buddhist culture that possessed discipline and a wholesome consciousness. One such account was as follows:

I am short. They are tall--about 6 feet tall. They don’t know where Burma is. I said to them that it is in the largest continent in the world. They asked if there were elephants walking on cars in the city. They only have two kids in big homes because they say it’s expensive to raise kids. I told them that our kids are our Gems. One might say they are beautiful—had white skin, blue eyes, yellow hair. Although I said they were like ghosts. I said that ‘God’ created them only half-baked. We-Burmese—well, ‘God’ made us well-toasted. [At this point, there was a guffaw of laughs from the students that filled the room.] When it came to studies, they could not belittle me. I got a university fellowship and I went on to get my Ph.D.

He concluded the above account by saying that his love for the Burmese nation was too great to be lured by American money: “American companies offered me much money to work for them. I said, ‘But I love my country too much.’ I wanted to help Burma progress.” Then, he lightened the atmosphere with more humor:

“But of course, I missed my sweetheart, too.” Students laughed some more at this point. Then, he told them to open the books distributed to them so that they can recite with him the Buddhist text on “loving-kindness.” The entire hour was spent like this, alternating between his lectures and their reading of the Buddhist texts together. There was one moment of meditation at the end. It was not

140 insight meditation, however. He asked them to do a samadhi or concentration meditation in which they considered a virtue of the Buddha. Yet, even this was top-down. He did not meditate himself. He monitored the students from his podium. About five students burst out laughing trying to meditate. Quickly, Min

Tin Mon yelled at them. Through belittling of foreigners and self-examples that called attention more to his great accomplishments than to the Buddha’s ethics,

Min Tin Mon attempted to define Buddhism as primarily a national and ethnic identity. Even meditation for him was a representation of cultural pride. In creating xenophobia, he presents himself and other Burmese elders as the safer havens of refuge in the world. With negative portrayals of ignorant foreigners, he made it appear as if the harsh, paternalistic attitude of Min Tin Mon and the government officials was almost a necessity.

As regards to recollections of events from the Buddha’s life, Min Tin Mon, like the government, told stories in a way that would emphasize the importance of unquestioning obedience and awe of authority. One example is his use of the story of Angulimala, the hardened criminal who had killed many and then also tried to kill his own mother at the end. In his version, Min Tin Mon omitted events in the story that could help one to develop critical thinking skills. That is, he did not include the parts that encourage one to learn that one must not follow blindly authority figures, that one must be able to judge for oneself who is wise and who is not. He left out completely the beginning part of the story that mentioned that

Angulimala was being a student of a teacher, who, in deceit and anger, ordered

Angulimala to go and kill a thousand people. In his story, it was as if Angulimala

141 decided to kill on his own. Other parts he omitted were the Buddha explaining

about the importance of universal love to Angulimala after stopping Angulimala.

He also left out the part when after meeting with the Buddha Angulimala decided to follow the Buddha’s example and exert himself in insight meditation. The only

parts he mentioned were the brutal killing and the part that emphasized the

magical aura of the Buddha, that is, the part when Angulimala chased after the

Buddha who tried to intervene in his attempt to kill his mother. This is the way

Min Tin Mon ended his story: “Angulimala ran after the Buddha saying, ‘O stop!

Stop!’ Every time he thought he got close the Buddha, the Buddha was ahead of

him again. But the Buddha explained to Angulimala, ‘I have stopped, only you have not stopped.’” Without going into detail about how the Buddha then told

Angulimala that he, the Buddha, had stopped in the sense that he had given up killing all beings and established himself in universal love, Min Tin Mon emphasized only that Angulimala was in awe of the Buddha’s magical powers

and so stopped. And in fact, although the students from the audience whom I

later interviewed were delighted with this story and most said that they considered it to be the most memorable aspect of his talk, the lessons they said they had learned from this story were only that “the Buddha has dagou (magical

powers)” and that “one should honor one’s parents.” In line with the government’s authoritarian mode of teaching Buddhism, Min Tin Mon instilled faith in the magical aura of the Buddha and a pride in Buddhism as an ethnic and nationally identity. Yet, he did not develop nor embody through his own self- example a sense of the ethics once embodied by the Buddha.

142

Aims of Monastic Schools for Lay Persons Under U Nu

Intentions and aims of educators are important to consider when trying to

understand how much of a conscience of the Buddha can or might be developed by a particular Buddhist program. Beginning in the late 50s, U Nu (prime- minister from 1949-1961) also tried to revive monastic education for lay pupils.

Yet, he’d spoken in his speeches about an explicitly Ashokan ideal of leadership

(Sarkisyanz:212-214). His intentions and administration of the monastic

education program were quite different from that of today’s military junta. From,

early on, he saw the role of government as providing for the “welfare,” not

facilitating the “control,” of society. He opened a welfare state program in 1954,

calling it Pyi-daw-tha, “Pleasant Royal Country.” In 1959, this social welfare

department published aims and plans of U Nu’s administration for the revival of

monastic education for lay persons. In it, the social welfare committee which was

writing the report cited a major problem at that time in the nation: illiteracy.

According to their figures, out of 17 million people in the nation, 80 percent were

illiterate (Social Welfare Department 1959:15). Unlike in the current Religious

Ministry’s report on the state of education in Burma, the social welfare

department under U Nu seemed to have a sense of history. Unlike the former

whose main concern is to use monastic education as a means to teach social

obedience, the latter was focused on alleviating poverty and illiteracy. U Nu’s

social welfare department also explained the history of monastic education,

143 stating how the rise of modern disciplines and new requirements for jobs since the British colonial era caused a mass exodus of people from monastic schools to regular schools (Social Welfare Department:12). Finally, they recognized that some people have become so poor that they could not even afford to go to any school, not even monastic schools: “Some are so poor that they must have their children helping them [to make a living]. So, they cannot even send them to monastic schools (Social Welfare Department:12).” They outlined their program as a two-fold plan: “1. To help with the character-building of children, and 2. Not to bar any children of school age the opportunity from being able to learn, the government will cover all their expenses…(Social Welfare Department:14).” That is, they realized that historically monastic schools have also helped to build children’s character. However, unlike the current government who defines character or civility as obedience to authority, they wrote the following as the characters they wanted to help develop through their monastic education program: lack of criminal behavior, good samaritanship, and the desire to benefit others (Social Welfare Department:1). That is, their idea of civility entailed a consideration for the welfare of others and not simply a fear of authority.

Furthermore, and most importantly, unlike the current situation, their program was based on choice on the part of monks, children, and parents, a recognition of the vinaya the monks must follow, and complete financial support (as stated above) from the government. They wrote to monks: “If a monastic school, especially in a village with no government schools, has twenty or more students already, then if the monk-teacher wishes to participate [in our program] then you

144 may register with the Social Welfare Council (Social Welfare Department:19).”

They also wrote to monks that the primary school subjects that participant monks will teach could be according to the monk’s schedule in line with his vinaya: “In your schools, you are free to teach to your students these subjects at your own time so that the vinaya you keep is not interrupted (Social Welfare

Department:19).” Stating lessons from history, they wrote that they recognized that during the British era when the British were trying to use monastic schools for primary education, the British were insensitive to the codes of conduct of monks (Social Welfare Department:10).

I cannot ascertain if and how successful the monastic education program for lay persons was under U Nu for his administration had only a year or two to implement it. In 1960, U Nu won a re-election by a landslide. In 1961, U Nu’s power was swept away by U Ne Win’s military coup. However, I did find one quite successful, independently-ran monastic school that taught primary education (kindergarten to fourth grade) to lay pupils at the outskirts of the town

Pegu. It had been established since near the very end of U Nu’s time and had more or less survived through the past three decades. The current abbot monk- teacher there told me that the members of the current government have never come to visit the school. “They are not interested in us at all,” he said. Unlike the government’s schools, there were no forced conversions here. All the students were from Buddhist families, including the only ethnic minority students, four Shan and six Karen students. About thirty students were boarders as they were very poor orphans. The rest, about eighty in all were from the neighboring

145 community. They came during the day and left to return home after school ended at 4:00 p.m. Because there were no students here forced to come from far away, the community felt a connection with the students and tended to offer much more financial support than at the government’s monastic schools. All the lay teachers who helped the monk to teach different subjects were also graduates of this school. They had gone onto attend middle school, high school, and some beyond. One told me that he came back, because “the monk-teacher needed help. I also think that everything here is more orderly than at schools with just lay teachers.” Like the other lay teachers and like most of the current students, he was originally from the neighboring lay community and his family for generations have venerated the monks from this particular monastery. Another former student came back to help establish a garden in the back of the monastery where roses are planted now. Young students helped to pick the flowers. Lay adults helped with the selling end of it. Every month, through contracts with merchants from the city, the monastery was able to sell roses and make about 6,000 kyats each month to help with the monastery’s expenses.

Because of the help from the lay community as such, the abbot was freer to study, meditate, and teach primarily Buddhism to the students.

Visuals helped to establish symbolically for the students the union between the lay community and the monks. The history of the monk-teachers and the lay community helping each other is painted in murals on the classroom wall. These murals embody the ethics of generosity, loving-kindness, and the reciprocal relationship between monk teachers and lay persons that were

146 promoted by the Buddha. The story on the walls begins with the building of the

monastery. Lay men and women are shown talking to monks and carrying bricks

and mortar. Another picture showed lay persons making offerings of such

necessities as oil and salt to the monks. Another showed how the monks and lay

persons planted the rose garden together. As these murals of people helping each other and monks teaching people were displayed for students to see above several Buddha statues also displayed in their classrooms (not just in the monastery’s main building), students could get a sense of the utter benevolence of the Buddha and the efforts of his followers to follow some of his social ethics.

Further, as lay teachers and the students had a trusting, communal bond, even the orderliness of the students was less a product of teachers’ command than of their nurturing. As a habit, every morning, students paid homage to the

Buddha upon entering school grounds, they placed their slippers parallel to each other’s in an orderly manner on their classroom’s porch, and they placed their book bags on the desks. As a school rule, they also came well groomed, wearing oil in their hair and thanakha (traditional Burmese make-up that comes naturally as a yellowish powder from a special tree bark) on their cheeks. As they left their classrooms for home in the afternoons, students left with arms folded around their chest in a sign of respect. Even on my surprise visits, I noticed these behaviors and took particular note of the neatness in the way the children arranged their slippers on the porch. Yet I never heard a teacher, lay or monk, yell at their students to inculcate these or any other types of behavior.

Even when several students were shy to answer some of my interview questions,

147 the teachers did not order the students to obey me nor did they tell the child what

to say. For instance, I heard one teacher give only a gentle word of

encouragement to a child, “Just tell her what’s on your mind, son.” Unlike in the

government monastic and primary schools, the familiar terms, ‘son,’ or

`daughter,’ was used by the teachers here to refer to their young pupils.

Most importantly, the abbot, their main monk teacher’s calm and soft-

spoken demeanor exemplified the Buddha’s non-authoritarian ethics. He

explained that he wanted to instill in them “civility” but also he wanted them to be

able to enjoy learning it. One of the ways, he said, was by inviting guest

speakers from the community to come and speak about different professions and

the possibilities to which they can also aspire. He taught them ethics in a way

that did not appeal to faith alone but also to thinking and feeling. For instance,

he explained:

One time in the rain I saw a bunch of boys from our school near a pond. They were beating a frog with a stick and in fact I learned that they had already beaten it to death. Next day in school, I asked them to make frog noises and to jump around. I hit them a bit with a stick. I asked, ‘does it hurt?’ They said, ‘yes.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s how the frog felt, too.

The students’ respect for him and the other monks was apparent. Almost all the boy students told me they wanted to become monks when they grew up. Almost all the girl students told me they wanted to become nuns when they grew up.

This was in contrast to the students in the city’s schools, both government- administered monastic schools and regular government schools. In those schools no child mentioned that they wanted to become monks or nuns.

148

ENDNOTES

1According to Buddhist texts [explained in Buddha Yin Kye Hmu Achey Pyu Thin Ten, Ange Ten Thin Gan Saa (Beginning Level Course on Foundations of Buddhist Civility), Panditarama Shwetaungone Meditation Center, Rangoon, Burma, 1994, p. 79], there are “two kind of people who are rare”: 1. pubbakara--someone who does you a favor before you have done anything for them 2. katanuta katavedi--someone who knows the gratitude someone has bestowed upon them, and actually repays or reciprocates that gratitude

2”The New Light of Myanmar,” Rangoon, Burma, August 3, 1996, p. 2.

3”The New Light of Myanmar,” Rangoon, Burma,August 6, 1996, p. 2.

4Myanmar Phetsaa Sathutta Ten (Fourth Grade Burmese Reader), Burmese Government Department of Education, 1997, p, 110.

5Myanmar Phetsaa Sathutta Ten (Fourth Grade Burmese Reader), Burmese Government Department of Education, 1997, p. 110.

6Myanmar Phetsaa Sathutta Ten (Fourth Grade Burmese Reader), Burmese Government Department of Education, 1997, p. 110.

149

Chapter 4

Contemporary Lay Elites and Buddhist Education

A belief in supernormal powers, magic, and the existence of supernatural

beings is an integral part of the life of lay Buddhists in Burma. According to the

“Virtues of the Buddha,” a protective chant from the Pali canon which many

Burmese Buddhists recite daily or in times of danger, “Issi pisso Bhagava,

Arahan, Sammasambuddha, Vijjacarana sampanna, Sugato, Lokavidu, Anuttaro

purisa dammasrathi, Satthadeva manussanam, Buddho, Bhagava,” one of the

Buddha’s qualities when he lived as the Buddha was “Lokavidu,” “knowing

everything there is to know about the world,” and another one is “Bhagava,”

“fully endowed with glory, influence, powers, and the wholesome results of past

meritorious deeds.” In the commentary, Visuddhi Magga, which is about insight

meditation, the successive levels of different jhanas (levels of mental absorption) achieved in meditation practice are outlined. Some of these levels prior to enlightenment represent supernormal powers. In the Burmese language, these different powers are called “zan” (derived from the Pali “jhana”). While doctrinally it is conveyed that the Buddha discouraged the use of supernormal powers for worldly gains, stories from the canon that recount events from the Buddha’s life do portray him using his special set of supernormal powers to win over converts

150 and teach the Dhamma. So in order to get elders in his Sakya lineage to believe

in his Buddhahood and to listen to his message, he used his psychic powers and

performed the “Twin Miracle” in mid-air whereby he exuded fire and water at the

same time. He also used his power of omniscience to locate and help those in

need, such as Angulimala, a much popular figure in Burmese Buddhist folklore.

Finally, gods, demons, and other supernatural beings are ever present in the

Jatakas as in many other parts of the original doctrinal corpus because the theory of kamma ensures that supernatural beings are a part of the ethically bound cosmic order, the cycle of rebirths called samsara. Thus, even in a fourth grade school textbook in Burma, the power of Suvannasamma’s parents’ asseverations of his goodness, loyalty to his parents, and truthfulness are said to have motivated the nats, supernatural beings, to help bring him back to life upon being shot to death with a poisoned arrow. So, according to the textbook, when the shooter, King Pithiyakkha, asked Suvannasamma how he came back to life, the latter answered, “King, the nats help to heal those who are good to their mother, good to their father, and takes care of them. In the next life, too, such persons will reach the realm of the nats [i.e., the heavens].”1 And in Burma,

unlike in Sri Lanka, such text is taught and learned literally without any attempt at

literary analysis or deconstruction.

Tending to believe in magic, supernormal powers, and the existence of

supernatural beings, lay Burmese Buddhists differ only in how much they rely on

these for their worldly goals. Many people have a family nat shrine and a shrine

to the Buddha in their home, sometimes in the same room, although the Buddha

151 is placed in a higher, more venerated position for he alone had shown one the path to salvation. In Burma, there is a main pantheon of thirty-seven nats believed to have been regular people who became supernatural beings after tragic or violent deaths. For instance, Mahagiri Nat, “Lord of the Great

Mountain,” was a black smith from Tagaung who was burned to death by a king.

In many homes, people propitiate him with a green coconunt and a fan-like palm leaf next to it. The milk of the coconut is to help soothe his burns. In return, he gives protection and peace to everyone who lives in the home. Another popular spirit is a girl named Ma Hnai Galay. She was a princess who died of sadness.

She carries a flute, likes eggs a lot, and is considered helpful to children. An outside nat, an adult male guardian spirit named U Shin Gyi is popular with my mother’s side of the family whose roots are in the delta. U Shin Gyi is said to protect the sea.

Some lay persons do not have a nat shrine and only the Buddha image.

Still, others regularly attend Nat Pwes or propitiation ceremonies to different supernatural beings in their communities in order to wish for some worldly goals.

Usually, many vices are indulged at these ceremonies, such as drinking, smoking, and dancing intimately with strangers. Especially the nat medium is indulged with money, feasts, alcohol, and cigarettes. In a trance, he or she, in turn, spreads some kyat bills and coins into the audience who is full of delirious delight. Of the ones I had attended, one in my uncles’ neighborhood and one in a military housing area where a friend and her army officer husband lived, there were also many children. That friend, the wife of an army officer, was one of my

152 cousins’ friends at the Department of the Perpetuation and Propagation of the

Sasana. Although college educated, she and many of the other friends of my cousin at the DPPS had nat shrines in their houses and also attended Nat Pwes.

They also relied a lot on the supernormal powers of certain monks and wizards.

One of them rented a bus with like-minded pilgrims to go pay homage in the forests north of Rangoon to the Shwebawkyunn Sayadaw, a monk who was said to have much “zan” or supernormal powers. Later, I also found her reading about Sai Ba Ba, a Hindu from India, of whom she was in much awe.

One monk that almost every lay person in Rangoon popularly worshipped as an arahant (a fully enlightened person) with many supernormal powers, was an elderly ethnic Karen monk in eastern Burma near the Thai border, called the

Samana Sayadaw. His photographs were omnipresent in Rangoon, such as at home shrines near the Buddha statue, on the front windshield of taxis and other automobiles, and they were sold even on the steps of the Shwedagon Pagoda.

Known for his social welfare work such as taking care of orphans, people went frequently to pay homage to him all the way to his monastery in the Karen state.

Upon their return, they often shared stories about the powers he possessed, such as being in two places at once, having an effect on animals around him, and such.

Thus, because they are so prevalent in Burma, stories of supernatural beings, magic, and supernormal powers, including those of monks and the

Buddha, enter into lay discourses on Buddhism at the non-governmental lay

Buddhist organizations near the Shwedagon Pagoda. While Buddhism courses

153 by lay teachers for lay pupils often exist as Saturday courses in the Dhamma

Yones (Dhamma halls) built within different neighborhood communities, the courses at the lay Buddhist organizations near Shwedagon Pagoda are more popular in that they are taught by elite lay intellectuals, namely university professors who are versed in the Pali canon.

In these courses, the lay intellectuals neither edit nor deconstruct as mere literary tools the magic, gods, demons, and miracles that are found in the

Buddha’s discourses and stories of his lives. They, in fact, relish in these, take pride in these, and present these as fact. In fact, the professors I observed and interviewed were able to present these astounding details from the Buddhist texts and took pride that they were providing their students with much “bahuthuta” or “learned experiences of the Buddha’s teachings.” For instance, one professor of Burmese literature and a famous writer himself began teaching the Mangala

Sutta (Discourse on Blessings) to students at the lay organization, Mangala

Byuha (“Growth of Blessings”), by providing what he called a “history” of it.

Firstly, he affirmed the truth value of the Pali canon by emphasizing the strength of memory possessed by Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin, who was a recorder of all of the Buddha’s discourses and the events that motivated each:

Because Ananda’s memory was so astonishingly brilliant, he could transmit the Buddha’s teachings word by word so that the Buddha’s teachings could eventually be recorded at the Buddhist synods. So, the Buddha’s teachings can be transmitted intact up to today.

Then, he re-enacted dramatically as a one man’s show, the beginning part of the

Mangala Sutta in which a god came down from the heavens during a midnight hour to pay homage to the Buddha. In an awe-inspiring tone of voice, the god

154 asked the Buddha the true meaning of “Mangala” or “Blessings” as the other gods and people could not agree at the time. Putting his palm to his ears, the professor said that some thought a “Blessing” was being able to hear pleasant sounds. Pretending to glue his eyes to something that looked beautiful, he said,

“some thought a ‘Blessing’ was being able to see beautiful things.” Licking his mouth with his lips and making slurping sounds, he said that some thought a

“Blessing” was being able to taste delicious flavors. Pretending to smell, he said,

“some thought a ‘Blessing’ was being able to smell fragrant smells.” Touching the podium as if it were something pleasant, he said, “some thought a ‘Blessing’ was being able to touch luxurious things.” The professor emphasized how the god illuminated much light in the Jetavana monastery where the Buddha was residing. He told his lay pupils that the god coming to appeal to the Buddha was an important part of the Mangala Sutta. He told me that because he knew the text well, he was able to provide students with this necessary “history” of how and why such an important discourse on how to achieve prosperity and well- being was expounded by the Buddha.

A female instructor, the daughter of a famous lay Buddhist who founded the lay organization Metta Byuha (“Growth of Loving-Kindness”) and the nationally known Mya Yadana (“Emerald Gem”) magazine that they publish, also said at her organization, “Dhamma Byuha,” (“Growth of the Dhamma”), that she was able to provide her students with such a “history” of the Mangala Sutta. She also said that knowing the Pali texts, she is able to teach students about

“Blessings” in a way that was different from what most Burmese have accepted

155 as “Blessings” from “mi yo pha la” (traditions passed down from just mother and

father). She explained,

Most Burmese know ‘Mangala’ as being primarily 12 in number and what they consider ‘Mangala’ are ceremonies such as piercing ears for girls, celebration of moving into a new home, and such. Here, they learn the history of thirty-eight ‘Mangala’ that are true Blessings that the Buddha taught. From hearing stories, such as about the Buddha’s encounter with Angulimala, for example, they also learn to think for themselves which sorts of associations are wise or foolish, so that they really are blessed. 2

Knowing the Pali texts well and presenting these quite literally, yet in an

entertaining and visceral manner, the lay professors at the Buddhist

organizations are able to achieve two goals: (1) reinforce the faith and devotional

aspects of Burmese Buddhism in an entertaining manner, and (2) better clarify

the salvationist goals of the Buddha, including the notion that one can achieve

salvation only with one’s own effort and critical insight and not upon reliance on magic and supernatural powers. In teaching the Mangala poem, for example, the professor explained the deep meaning of each of the thirty-eight “Blessings,” beginning with the first two, “Not to associate with fools, To associate with the wise,” which refers to applying one’s critical judgment in making friends, up to the last three which refers to the mind of an arahant or someone fully enlightened through the practice of meditation, “Not letting the mind tremble, Not being sorrowful, Not craving.”

Yet, what they present is purely book knowledge without any practice of rituals or meditation. Their presentations are one-sided in that they are the only

participants and center of attention. Although many do tell stories from the

Buddha’s lives to illustrate their points, they often do so in a very dramatic,

156 evangelical style, as opposed to the self-effacing style of most monks and the

Buddha. Thus, they in effect separate faith and devotion from the path to critical insight, in an almost Cartesian manner. The kind of “faith” they instill is not easily conducive to the practice of meditation which requires calm, tranquility, and self- effacement. Given the loudness of their faith, they tend to separate faith from the path to insight. Most of their choice of insight meditation practice, when they meditated at all, is one that is quite divested of faith and devotion, that is, the meditation at the International Meditation Center where all the teachers are lay and the method was founded by a missionary school educated accountant general of Burma, U Ba Khin.

Obstacles to Insight at the Lay Buddhist Organizations: Uncomfortable Synthesis of Faith and Critical Thinking

The faith in the Buddha and his teachings that is instilled at these lay organizations is different from the loyalty to authority figures that are promoted at government-administered monastic and primary schools. They do help pupils to comprehend critically the significance of the ethics exemplified by the Buddha.

Students said that they were learning from the professors Buddhism that was beyond “mi yo pha la” (tradition handed down from just mother and father). “I no longer pay attention to worshipping nats. My parents always had a nat shrine at home. But I no longer pay attention to it,” one young woman told me. All concurred that they now had more faith in the law of kamma, that one gets the rewards and consequences of one’s own deeds. One young man said,

157 Our teachers here don’t tell us what to do. Rather, they let us know what are wholesome and unwholesome deeds and the consequences of these. So, they don’t say, ‘Don’t drink.’ They tell us that if you drink, your mind can become befuddled in this life, and in the next life, too, you may become insane. So, I know that it is futile to drink and then pay homage to the Buddha. The Buddha is not a savior. He cannot save one.

In their conversation with me, the students used analogies they had learned from the professors. One student said, “The Buddha is like someone pointing toward a pond. You can bathe in it, you can drink it, or you can avoid it all together. But it is up to you to choose. The Buddha won't punish and he does not discriminate.

You get the consequences of what you do.”

The students also said that Buddhist civility meant not only outwardly wholesome behavior but also wholesome speech and a wholesome state of mind. Another boy, who plays much sports, particularly thine or Burmese martial arts, said that the other day when he got hit hard by a ball on the street, he thought “it must be due to my kamma. The other week my martial arts team won, the other team lost, and I had been very happy about our win and their loss. I shouldn’t have been. It is so important to have kind thoughts. In school, too, you do your best and get high scores, but you must not harbor bad thoughts against anyone.”

The students also spoke about how “nuanced” the Buddha’s teachings were and how the professors have helped them to see this nuance. Another young man, a twenty-one year old medical school student said, “Before I came here, I thought ‘foolish persons’ one must stay away from were just people who held guns. Now, I realize that it is a more difficult task to distinguish a foolish person from wise person because there are many foolish persons disguised as

158 wise.” In addition to such beyond ‘mi you pha la’ or beyond-traditional thinking, it is also apparent that a completely traditional faith in the Buddha, including his supernormal power of omniscience is also reinforced at these lay institutions.

The same medical student said that he once asked a professor who was teaching him Abhidhamma why “if the Buddha was all-knowing how come he didn’t foresee the benefit of inventing television so he can spread his teachings better and we can see his teachings always? The professor answered, ‘Because the Buddha knew that we wouldn’t use television full-time for the learning of the

Dhamma [the Buddha’s teachings].”

Yet, despite such faith-building in the Buddha and his teachings, it is in the end, the charisma of these professors and the attention they unconsciously call to themselves with their dramatic gestures and grandiose voices, not the self- effacing Buddha that becomes the center of the students’ attraction and aspirations. Far from self-effacing, the speaker’s sensual appetites and/or “ego” identity are often indulged. For instance, in a presentation of the Ajatasattu

Jataka tale by one of the professors to illustrate the first two Mangala “Blessings” that one should associate with the wise and not with fools, there are numerous sexual innuendos and a nationalist fervor. In the story, a prince, Ajatasattu, associated with Devadetta, a cousin of the Buddha who was very jealous of the

Buddha and schemed to kill him. With Devadetta’s influence, Ajatasattu also schemed to kill his father, the king, whose throne he wanted. Listening to

Devadetta, the prince forcefully imprisoned his father, tied him with cuffs, cut the soles of his feet, rubbed salt into them, and left his father to die while he seized

159 the throne. The professor chose to highlight, enact, and build up much interest about the part when the queen, the wife of the king and mother of the prince, secretly hid food on different parts of her body to help nourish the king without her son’s notice. Pointing to his hair, he said, “She hid food in her hair, but she was found out, so, she hid food on her body.” Pretending to be the queen rubbing food all over her body in a sensual, massaging manner, he said, “She rubbed honey all over her body.” Pointing to his slippers, he added, “She even hid food in her slippers.” Some students giggled in delight. Some even guffawed. He continued, “The king was so hungry, he sucked, licked, and ate food from the nooks and crannies of her feet and slipper. If I were him, I’d like to suck it, too.” He licked his fingers and sucked. Students, both young men and young women, continued to laugh out loud. He did later emphasize on a more serious note that the king did pass away eventually and the prince became remorseful only too late when he had his own son and realized how much he loved his son. Now, the professor sucked his thumb to show that the prince learned from his mother, the queen, that his father’s metta or loving-kindness for his son was so great that when the prince was little and had a sore filled with puss, the king sucked it for him, even ingesting some of the puss. He concluded by stating moral causes and their consequences,

You see, Devadetta never practiced vipassana during the Buddha’s lifetime. He was practicing other kinds of meditations. So he never became an arahant [a fully enlightened person]. So, he helped Ajatasattu to kill the king in the same way he had tried to kill the Buddha. Ajatasattu, at the end of his life, did change, begin to support monks and practice vipassana. But he committed such demerit in killing his father that he went straight to hell anyway.

160 He then summarized the “Blessings” he was teaching in both Pali and in

Burmese, “Asevana ca balanam, not to associate with fools, panditananca sevana, to associate with the wise--these are the most important two ‘Blessings’ among the thirty-eight. If you have these two ‘Blessings,’ the other ‘Blessings’ may follow.” Finally, he gave an example from Burmese history to further this explanation of the “Blessings” and to build students’ faith in insight meditation practice, in monks, and in Theravada Buddhism. But in doing so, he used much ethnocentrism and nationalist sentiment about Burma being the destined place for a continuation of the Buddha’s spiritual lineage:

During king Anawratha’s time [king of first Burmese Buddhist kingdom, Pagan], there were lots of meditators, but they were mostly Mahayanists. So, they meditated but with plants growing between their legs. They only chanted. They were not wise. And then someone like Ashin Arahan [monk from the Theravada Buddhist Mon kingdom that Anawratha conquered] arose. He had no hair, had yellow robes on, and he carried an alms bowl. He was an oddity then much like monks are now in places like England. In England, they arrest our monks you know, if they appear as if they are begging with alms bowls. But Anawratha took him [Shin Arahan] in and invited him to his palace. Anawratha said to himself, ‘If he [Shin Arahan] sits down on the throne, he is from the Sammasambuddho [Buddha’s] lineage. If he does not, then he is not.’ Then, he saw that Shin Arahan did sit on the throne. So, if Anawratha hadn’t befriended Shin Arahan and paid respect to those like Shin Arahan who are worthy of respect, we would not have the growth and propagation of the sasana [Buddhist religion] that we have in Burma today.

So, what the above professor provided in teaching the first two “Blessings” of the

Mangala Sutta was an entertaining format to learn some of the ethics conveyed in the “Blessings,” yet with no modeling of the self-effacing, non-discriminating, universally loving demeanor and comportment of the Buddha who is the ultimate wise figure in the religion. There are some critical thinking encouraged in his

161 talk, and there are also faith elements embraced. Yet, faith and critical thinking

are not comfortably synthesized as the same part of whole. Neither his

nationalist fervor nor his sensual indulgence in his description of the queen in the

Jataka tale appears to be characteristics of the wise. At most, such behaviors may confuse the students in discerning who is wise and who is not. After all, he is their teacher.

Even in teaching a poem that directly refers to the importance of critical thinking in gaining one’s salvation, that is, “Thu si pu ba” by Ashin

Maharathathara, the professors do not comfortably synthesize faith with critical thinking for their audience. Much like a school teacher in the government’s classrooms, the instructor at Dhammabyuha provides the long definition of each term and line as she presents the poem and she is the only one talking throughout the whole hour. She asks questions but she answers them herself:

“Thu—Thuneya—listen as the teacher presents, Si—Sindera—think—how do you think? With your own critical judgment, Pu-Puseya,--ask questions—when should you ask questions—when you do not know something and want to inquire…” Because she is doing all the talking, asking, and answering, the ideal of thinking critically while learning is quite impossible, at least in the pupils’ session with her. Finally, she explains the end of the poem by saying that such critical thinking as conveyed in the poem is important not only for this life but also for one’s future lives. “It is important for one’s journey in samsara [the round of rebirths],” she said. It is as if the pupils are to have complete faith in her and her rendering of the text including her assertion that critical thinking is important for

162 not just this life but also subsequent lives, but at the same time they are asked to think critically. No means are given to students to test her claims.

Hence, the professors’ inserting of themselves and their authority into almost every part of their teaching focuses attention on themselves, even more than on monks and the Buddha. Because the professors are able to teach more from the Pali texts and in a way that students can enjoy with almost sensual delight, one student at Dhamma Byuhaa, even though he was already thirty-eight and probably about the same age as his teacher said, “I love my teacher more than I love my parents.” Even the student’s question about the need to invent televisions for the purposes of learning the Dhamma indicates that it is the entertainment rather than the audience participation value, the practical applicability, which is rendered important by their lay pupils.

Learning from the professors on at least a theoretical level that the

Buddha’s teachings are nuanced, the students conveyed that it is a very difficult task for them to put the Buddha’s teachings into practice. In fact, the young man who said that “it is always important to have kind thoughts” and not to “harbor bad thoughts about others” stereotyped girls and told me that since fourth grade, he did not like associating with girls. He said that he thought “girls gossip a lot and their potential to keep sila [moral conduct] was low” compared to that of boys. For this reason, he told me that female students would have more difficult time acting according to what they learned in these classes. Yet, when I asked how boys like him would fare, he did admit, “Well, that depends on the environment. After class, you spend sometimes four to six hours of your day with

163 other people. It depends on whether they’re helpful. If they are kind and gentle, one becomes kind and gentle. If they are not, then one has a difficult time being kind and gentle.” So, according to the young man, the students did not learn inward mechanisms for controlling their ethical conduct once outside of class.

He depended instead on his environment. Another said “bhavana” or meditation was difficult to do without “kindness, gentleness, and self-taming” on one’s part.

However, he said that he had only meditated for five or ten minutes when he was younger and was now postponing doing it because he “wanted to learn all he could of the Buddhist texts first” from the professors. Also, the young man who practices martial arts said that he knew the Buddha wouldn’t have approved of certain sports like thine (Burmese martial arts) very much because, “If others hurt you, that is not so much a problem. If you hurt others though the Buddha wouldn’t have approved of that.” But he explained that he could not help but love thine a lot although thine was quite violent. He explained that thine involved

“fighting not with hands but with sticks and swords; there are not one but ten persons coming at you with these sticks and swords also, so the object [although just pretend] is how to kill the other.” Another young man explained that although he admired monks, he would never be able to be one permanently because of the transgressions he would surely make in his moral conduct. He said that the

Buddha had perfected qualities such as patience and compassion and monks’ role was to try to emulate that:

I can’t tell you, for instance, that if someone were about to kill me, that I wouldn’t hurt them back. Say, they were coming at me with a knife. Most likely, I would try to defend myself, even if I have to kill them. The Buddha would not hurt them. He was perfectly patient and compassionate…So,

164 as a monk, I would surely commit so many transgressions that I would get to hell in my next life.

Given that the professors were skilled at teaching the theory but not the daily

application of the Buddha’s ethics, their lay students often sensed a significant

gap between what they felt they should do and what they were capable of doing.

One of the main reasons why Buddhism courses at lay meditation centers

do not provide students with sufficient conditions to act ethically is due to the

nature of their organization and scheduling. First of all, while there are life-size

Buddha images, and sometimes also images of venerated monks, in front of

these Dhamma classrooms, there are few rituals to reinforce a deep respect of

the Buddha and the Sangha who are the main ethical ideals in the religion.

There is a lack of ritual because there is no consistent cohort there. Students come voluntarily to these free Buddhism courses, usually for no longer than an hour each day and most cannot even stay long enough for an entire summer session to end. The courses are held during their summer holidays (February to

April) when they have relatively freer time. Yet, as most of the students are in their mid-teens to mid-twenties, they have many other obligations, such as work or attending what they call “tuitions,” that is, tutorial sessions to help supplement what they are learning in school so that they can do well in standard examinations. As one student explained, classes also dwindle in size by mid-

April when the Burmese New Year, Thagyan, begins:

When we started, there were two hundred students here. Yet as Thagyan approaches, many of the students become temporary monks or nuns, or enter meditation retreats [usually at the lay-led meditation centers]. Some begin many 'tuitions.' As for myself, I have to begin work now. I know that if I can stay longer, the course will probably be more effective.

165

Without a consistent cohort meeting over an extended period of time, there are

not many common rituals, and often, not even paying homage to the Buddha.

The classes are treated by the professors on an inconsistent come and go

basis, almost as in a movie theatre. There are usually free refreshments such as

cool drinks, pound cakes, and sometimes traditional noodle soups served by

personnel at the lay organizations and these offerings serve to underscore the

importance and respectability behind the students’ decisions to learn Buddhism.

Yet, not every student can usually stay for these refreshments. The

performance or participation in the Buddhism lectures is usually one sided with

the professor doing all the talking and re-enacting. The students, many of whom

the teachers do not even know by name, simply watch, take notes in their

personal notebooks, and enjoy. At least one professor of Educational

Psychology, who also teaches Buddhavamsa or the Buddha’s biography at

Mangala Byuuha, recognized the impact of the time constraint on the teaching and learning of Buddhism: “I come to teach the Buddha’s biography in twelve sessions only and for one hour each. So, I cannot plan any grand design.” He explained that he knew that in the end what was important was to teach meditation in a significant manner so that the Buddha’s ethics could actually be applied, something they could not do at the lay organizations: “One must first recognize one’s mental factors, judge if they are wholesome or unwholesome,

and then, if they are unwholesome, stop their occurrence.” He explained that

while book learning of the Buddha’s teachings and even psychotherapy might

help one to recognize mental factors and to judge whether they are wholesome

166 or not, only insight meditation can help one to stop unwholesome mental factors

as they arise.

Instrumental Rationality in the Practice of Meditation at Lay-Led Meditation Centers

Only one of about ten students that I randomly interviewed had ever

entered a meditation retreat and only for ten days at the lay-led International

Meditation Center (IMC) founded by U Ba Khin. Many of the teachers had not meditated either. Of those instructors who told me they had meditated had done so only at the International Meditation Center. There, the philosophy,

organization, and scheduling are such that while critical insight is gained through

vipassana meditation, that insight is not very much supported or motivated by

ethics as embodied by the Buddha. That is because the faith, devotion, stories,

and miracles, such as those usually relished at the Buddhism lessons of the lay

organizations, are usually left behind when meditators enter the International

Meditation Center. Any sort of conscience of the Buddha that may have been

evoked by previous pedagogy or popular culture is usually de-emphasized at the

IMC. That is because meditation practice at the IMC is based on what its

founders and followers called “scientific” principles. Its founder, U Ba Khin was a

lay man educated in a prestigious Christian missionary school in Rangoon, St.

Paul’s. He was born in 1899. He became a top civil servant, an accountant

general of Burma, in the1940s. In his office, he had set up a Vipassana

Research Institute for the purpose of “scientifically” determining a short cut for

167 gaining some vipassana insight. He wanted to know if practicing tranquility or

concentration meditation separately and prior to vipassana meditation would help

one to gain some vipassana insight more quickly. In his studies, he concluded

that a total of ten days for a meditation retreat was all that it would take for a yogi

or meditator to gain significant insight. In keeping with such scientific principles,

devotional rituals and story-telling of the Buddha’s lives were considered

irrelevant to the practice of gaining insight. After U Ba Khin passed away in

1971, one of his direct disciples, a Burma-born Indian businessman U Goenka,

has continued to spread his methods in Burma and internationally. In a

compilation of talks by Goenka, Goenka is quoted as saying that the Buddha was

even more scientific than the scientist: “…one must not be a scientist only of the

world outside. Like the Buddha, one should also be a scientist of the world

within, in order to experience truth directly (Hart 1982:87-33).”

U Goenka’s followers trace their spiritual lineage to a famous monk from

the 19th century, the Ledi Sayadaw, who had been an internationally renowned

consultant for Western Orientalists like Rhys Davids on the Abhidhamma. U Ba

Khin’s meditation teacher was a lay Burmese man named U Thet Kyi (1873-

1954). U Thet Kyi was, in turn, a follower, lay supporter, and pupil of the Ledi

Sayadaw (1846-1922). In fact, a young Chinese Burmese businessman, the manager of “Champion Rice,” a famous rice company in Rangoon, and a follower of U Goenka, provided me with biographies of both U Ba Khin and U Ba Khin’s teacher, U Thet Kyi. He traced for me the lineage of his teacher, U Goenka, to the Ledi Sayadaw. One day, at the former meditation center of U Thet Kyi at

168 Dala, which is now a branch of the Insight Meditation Center, a student of

Goenka from India came briefly to teach meditation to a small group of lay persons, including the rice businessman, myself, and some lady officials of the

Ministry of Religion. This meditation teacher asked the Ministry of Religion officials to help him find in Rangoon English versions of Dhamma books written

by the Ledi Sayadaw. He wanted to purchase these and take them back with

him to India. They asked if he was interested in other Dhamma books from

Rangoon. He said simply, “No.”

As evidenced by the recordings in his Dipanis, or questions and answers,

the Ledi Sayadaw had had to confront and answer questions from more

scientifically oriented Westerners such as “Why do you think the world is flat and

not round? (Ledi Sayadaw 1954:222). It is from such a tradition of answering to

science and defending one’s religion against science that U Ba Khin, and later, U

Goenka, derived their meditation methods. With an appeal to science, he, too,

had a large international following beginning in the 1940s. Now, U Goenka has

spread U Ba Khin’s insight meditation methods to India, the founding place of

Buddhism, and to many other parts of the world as well, including the West.

There are few Buddha images and devotional rituals at the Insight

Meditation Center. This is in keeping with the founders’ wish to humanize the

Buddha as much as possible so that he can be portrayed as a scientist. Goenka

is quoted in Hart’s book as saying the following about the Buddha:

Like all great teachers he became the subject of legends, but no matter what marvelous stories were told of his past existences or his miraculous powers, still all accounts agree that he never claimed to be divine or to be

169 divinely inspired. Whatever special qualities he had were pre-eminently human qualities that he had brought to perfection. [Hart:14]

At IMC’s branch in Dala,where I went for a one day retreat under the direction of

U Goenka’s lay disciple from India, we saw two huge Buddha images in the compound, both located in a central room at the end of a roofed corridor into which we had first entered from the outside. Apart from these and the two much smaller Buddha images in the meditation room, there were no reminders of the

Buddha, especially his past lives, anywhere in the compound. There were no paintings, murals and such. Also, neither the teacher nor the twelve students [all of the students were Burmese from Rangoon, except for myself who was a foreigner] bowed to the Buddha images. Instead, students admired the plaques near the Buddha images that said U Thet Kyi, the lay meditation teacher of U Ba

Khin, had donated these Buddha images. Several photographs and paintings of

U Thet Kyi were hung on the wall nearby.

Upon entering the meditation room, no homages were paid to the two golden miniature Buddha images in front. The teacher began to ask us to sit on the mats cross-legged with eyes closed and palms folded on the lap. He asked us to concentrate on the sensation of the breaths going in and out of our nostrils.

He sat on a mat facing all of us at the front of the room right next to the miniature

Buddha images. He also meditated as such. We did this for about an hour.

When we all left the room, no one bowed to the Buddha images.

We re-entered the room with the large Buddha images. We ate some snacks there while sitting on a mat. Then, we meditated again in the meditation room, for about another hour. The procedures were the same and with no

170 devotional rituals. At the end, we gathered in the dining hall and ate a meal together. Then, we left the center.

In the longer retreats at the International Meditation Centers in Rangoon, there are also little or no devotional rituals and Buddha images. Each retreat lasts ten days. There, instead of self-effacing, the lay teachers are quite a part of one’s day in that they plot much of one’s schedule of what to note and which day to note. For the first three days, one practices pure anapanna meditation, focusing on the sensations of the in and out of breath at one’s nostrils in order to first gain calm and tranquility. Beginning on the fourth day, lay teachers coach one through noting different parts of the body in a certain order. Goenka explained the need for this order. He is quoted as saying,

Because you are working to explore the entire reality of mind and matter. To do this you must develop the ability to feel what is happening in every part of the body; no part should remain blank. And you must also develop the ability to observe the entire range of sensations. This is how the Buddha described the practice: ‘Everywhere within the limits of the body one experiences sensation, wherever there is life within the body.’ If you allow the attention to move at random from one part to another, one sensation to another, naturally it will always be attracted to the areas in which there are stronger sensations. You will neglect certain parts of the body, and you will not learn how to observe subtler sensations. Your observation will remain partial, incomplete, superficial. Therefore, it is essential always to move the attention in order. [Hart:98]

Instead of letting the meditator figure out, through trial and error, what to note in case certain sensations appear too subtle, the lay teachers tell you. Hart quotes

Goenka saying,

The hindrances of craving, aversion, sluggishness, agitation, and doubt which impeded one’s progress during the practice of awareness of breathing may now reappear and gain such strength that it is altogether

171 impossible to maintain the awareness of sensation. Faced with this situation, one has no alternative but to revert to the practice of awareness of respiration in order once again to calm and sharpen the mind. [Hart:93]

Not having the freedom for trial and error, the task of self-examination that is promoted from the outset is in fact one that does not allow for exploration and discovery within meditation.

Focusing quite purely on sensations, the lay teachers’ meditation methods especially do not provide one with the freedom to note and recognize one’s feelings or consciousness other than to call these physical sensations as well.

Goenka is quoted as saying,

Observe any sensation that occurs. You cannot find which sensation is related to the emotion, so never try to do that; it is indulging in a futile effort. At a time when there is emotion in the mind, whatever sensation you experience physically has a relation to the emotion. Just observe the sensations and understand, ‘These sensations are impermanent, this emotion is impermanent, let me see how long it lasts.’ [Hart:128]

Not permitting meditators a means to recognize mental factors for what they are separate from physical phenomena, e.g., “angry,” “hateful,” and so forth, the ethical aspects of insight meditation practice is down-played. While Goenka does explain that ethical training is at the foundation of insight meditation practice

(Hart:57-69), he does not use either the Buddha’s example or the emotion filled stories of the Buddha’s past lives to motivate these ethics. Throughout Goenka’s talks, there are few stories told about the Buddha in his last life and none from his past lives. Most of Goenka’s examples are modern day analogies, such as doctors and patients (Hart:68-69) or generic analogies, such as swimming

(Hart:10-11). In fact, the whole process of meditation, the path to critical insight,

172 is framed not in the positive terms of the cultivation of wholesome mental states, including those conducive to ethical conduct, but in negative terms of the sterile sifting and dissecting away of illusions:

…You are here to perform an operation on your mind. An operation must be done in a hospital, in an operation theater protected from contamination. Here within the boundaries of the course, you can perform the operation without being disturbed by any outside influence. When the course is over the operation has ended and you are ready once again to face the world.[Hart:20]

While critical insight may be gained at the end, it is not one that was motivated by a conscience of the ethics embodied by the Buddha.

Of the Burmese persons who had meditated at IMC and liked it, the reasons they cited had nothing to do with their ability to cultivate ethics. Most said that they liked the “clarity” and “briefness” of it. For instance, one college professor said that he heard it would take a month or two to gain significant insight at monastic meditation centers but that here he found he gained much insight in ten days. For the meditators at the lay-led meditation centers, gaining insight was like gaining a certificate for a worldly achievement, the faster the better.

173 ENDNOTES

1Myanmar Phetsaa Sathutta Ten (Fourth Grade Burmese Reader), Burmese Government Department of Education, 1997, p. 111.

2Actually, she pronounced the Pali word “Mangala” as “Mingala” because the latter is the Burmese pronunciation. “Mingala” is used in many contexts in Burma as she explained. It is also used as a formal greeting.

174 Chapter 5

Meditation Monk Teachers and Buddhist Education

Like the lay Buddhist institutes near the Shwedagon Pagoda that teach a

Buddhist education, the Mahasi Meditation Center in Rangoon and its branches are not a property of the government. They are non-governmentally run by committees of lay devotees in consultation with the abbot monks. As such, unlike at government-administered monastic schools and the government primary schools, the authoritarian agenda of the state does not drive the transmission of Buddhism at these meditation centers.

As in the non-governmental lay organizations, authoritarian pedagogical styles did exist at Panditarama, the branch of the Mahasi Meditation Center where I practiced and studied meditation and observed a “Buddhist Civility” course. But the authoritarian pedagogical styles here are more a product of teachers’ conditioned habits. A number of monks who assisted the main monk- teachers in the “Buddhist Civility” program classrooms carried sticks. Some tapped pupils on the laps with the stick for falling asleep in class, a few raised their voices to discipline students, and almost always, students recited by heart stanzas from their texts while the main monk-teacher led and explained. Further,

I observed that as in all of the other Buddhist education settings, there were no

175 formal question and answer sessions, although here, students did get to present their knowledge in a creative manner through speeches at the closing ceremony.

What is unique about Buddhist education at the monastic meditation center in contrast with all the different kinds of Buddhist education programs in

Burma, however, was that the liminal nature of the entire one month course, the daily observances, the content and genres of texts taught, the synthesis of pariyatti (literary learning of Buddhist texts) and pathibatti (meditation practice), the continuous social bonds formed between peers and between teachers and students, and the variety of personalities among the twenty or so monks that ranged from calm and compassionate to calm and impersonal, offset the negative impacts of some authoritarian measures. Van Gennup theorized that there are three phases in rituals, (1) a rite of separation from the larger society,

(2) a rite of transition or a liminal state in which normal social rules are suspended, and (3) a re-birth or post-liminal phase in which participants are transitioned to a new status just prior to re-entry into the larger society (Van

Gennup 1960). Turner wrote, additionally, that in the liminal stage, there is usually a sense of “communitas,” an egalitarian bond between all participants

(Turner 1969). The Buddhist civility course at Panditarama contained all three phases of ritual because a continuous cohort assembled here as boarders and saw each other and the monk-teachers on a daily basis for the entire month.

Despite much honor that the young pupils were expected to bestow upon their monk-teachers, there was also a close, joking relationship between many of the monks and the students.

176 There were many ascetic rules that the students were expected to follow for they were in a sort of personal training. They were temporary novices and young nuns (8-18 years of age) fresh from lay society who were in a Buddhist civility course at a meditation center. They were vowing to keep eight precepts, including not eating after 12 noon and not harboring romantic thoughts or feelings. Being mindful of keeping the precepts was part of their pathibatti or meditation practice. Theoretically, keeping the precepts would help their insight meditation practice. While they had only two insight meditation sessions daily in a formal sitting position, they were encouraged to be mindful at all times.

However, the monk-teachers also knew that they were children. So, for example, sometimes when love letters secretly passed between the novices and the nuns, monk-teachers simply smiled and joked about it. As Obeyesekere has written about moral precepts in Buddhism, they lack the specificity and categorical imperative found in commandments: “In Christianity the violation of commandments, insofar as they are God’s own imperatives, leads to alienation from God, and, in principle at least, to a denial of salvation. This is not the case with the Buddhist precepts…(Obeyesekere 2002:140-141).” He wrote that because they lack specificity and categorical imperative, it was “impossible to fulfill any of the [Buddhist] precepts to the letter…the moral codes of the local community could be incorporated within the precepts and given Buddhist meaning (Obeyesekere 2002:141).” So, while teachers at Panditarama smiled at students’ imperfections, students also spent hours during breaks talking to each other about their teachers’ idiosyncrasies. Many monks used humor with

177 students during lessons and allowed students to talk back to them facetiously.

There was a sense of common bond between pupils and teachers.

On the whole, the students’ training, while taken very seriously by their

teachers, was also considered by them to be a gradual self-taming process.

Their assumption was that Buddhist civility must come from within over a period

of time and not forced upon their students. The philosophy of education stated to

me by the seventy-five year old abbot of the center, Sayadaw U Pandita, was one of nurturing children to be independent mentally. He liked gardening very much and used the analogy of nurturing plants:

A fruit has to be fully grown and ripe to be strong, to be resistant to diseases. Children, too, need nutrients to grow. But very often, people provide only for a child’s outer growth, giving them vitamins and minerals, but fail to provide for his/her inner growth--inner growth such as in the ability to resist another’s aggravation so that it does not become poison for oneself.

When compared to the other Buddhist education settings I have described thus far, it was neither force nor mere faith but rather gradual nurturing of insight that guided the Buddhist civility instilled in students at Panditarama. Noble silence, concentration, and mindfulness practice dominated many parts of the day.

These were also balanced by much story-telling, opportunities for dialogue, and free time thought to be appropriate for children. Throughout the day, students had long breaks after every meal, at bath time, and in the afternoon before and after story time. Students talked and played quite freely with each other, conversed informally with their teachers, received soft drinks in the afternoon, and watched Hollywood movies on video once a week. Often students were

178 laughing because they were having fun, and most cried when they had to leave the program.

Throughout the course, the nurturing tone of the program as a whole, including the transformation of the authoritarian style of some monks into more compassionate and friendly gestures as they got to know the students better, helped to instill in the students a conscience of the benevolent Buddha. The daily devotional rituals, chants, and stories dedicated to extolling his astounding virtues and ethical deeds also built a consciousness of him. Yet, more importantly and most uniquely, this faith in his ethics invigorated their daily work of insight meditation or mindfulness practice. Textual learning, namely in the form of stories and verses, devotional rituals, and meditation practice took place daily. Faith and the path to critical thinking were not separated but integrated as part of a whole. Usually the monks were able to model the Buddha’s self- effacing ethics in their tone of voice, behavior, and deportment. And at times when they didn’t, students could overlook their mistakes, for this one month liminal state that they were in together, living side by side, about five-hundred strong, was as much a humanization as an idealization of the salvation path of the Buddha. The nibbana ideal appeared brilliant enough that students wanted to reach it in a future time, but they also knew not to force the process for it was hard work, even for monks.

179 Opening Ceremonies: Rites of Separation, Detachment, and Self- Responsibility

Much seriousness and impersonal tone of teachers at the opening day

ceremonies conveyed to the students that they were embarking on an endeavor

that would require much effort, concentration, and development of insight on their

part. First, all shaved their hair to resemble their monk teachers and the nun

assistants. The shedding of the hair for monks and nuns, novices and young

nuns, alike, is a way of effacing a sense of self. It is a way of getting rid of those

egocentric markers that may interfere with the practice of concentration and

insight. While their heads are being shaved, they may chant the following in Pali and Burmese as a type of meditation on the impermanence of the body: “There are in this body; hair of the head, hairs of the body, nails, teeth, and skin which are unclean, abominable, filthy, lifeless, and unsubstantial.”

About a hundred girls came to the nuns’ quarters at the meditation center to have their heads shaved by the nuns, and about a hundred boys went to the monks’ quarter to have their heads shaved by the monks. Here, at the meditation center, many extravagant aspects of traditional novitiation ceremonies in Burma are bypassed. The traditional custom is that boys and young men ordain as novices for a few days through a lavish ceremony whereby the

Buddha’s renunciation of the world as Prince Siddhartha is re-enacted with rides on horsebacks, princely attires, royal umbrellas, and expensive feasts back at the

boys/young men’s homes. And by custom, most of the boys ordain simply for the

sake of transferring kammic merits to the parents. The boys usually have not

180 many goals or responsibilities other than the donning of the robe. At the meditation center, however, the boys, along with the girls entered right into the ascetic culture and the responsibilities of novices and yogis (i.e., meditators).

Most of the five-hundred students, because there were so many, had been encouraged to already shave their heads at home. At the nuns’ quarter where I observed the shaving, each of the nuns (some residents of the meditation center, both Burmese and Nepalese disciples of the monk abbot, and some recruited from nunneries) were very cooperative with each other, careful, precise, and meticulous in shampooing, holding, shaving, and washing the heads of each girl.

Without much commands passed between the nuns, each seemed to know when to help each other, such as in holding a cloth near the ground to catch the shaven “sacred” hair, when to shampoo, and when to wash a child’s hair. They were jovial with each other, yet they hardly spoke to the girls whose heads they were shaving. They maintained an impersonal distance.

After the young girls put on their nun costumes, peach/pinkish blouse and robe, saffron sarong, and a saffron shawl, a group of about twenty who had been brought here by their school teachers went up to the marbled rooftop of the main Dhamma Hall with their school teachers and nuns to pose for photographs with their new mentors, the nuns. The nuns, more used to the nun costume than they, were graceful and elegant in comparison. The nuns silently helped to straighten each girl’s shawl and sarong. It was a time when the school teachers symbolically passed the job of teaching and modeling to the nuns. The girls and their nun mentors, now quite indistinguishable in uniform and shaved heads,

181 were asked to pose by the teachers so that the golden spire of the Shwedagon

Pagoda in the near distance could be seen behind them as a sacred background.

Back in the Dhamma Hall, all the young nuns sat in the back, while they,

along with the boys in the front, received eight precepts from the monk-teachers.

Normally, lay Buddhists in Burma know that they should try to keep a basic

minimum of five precepts, and in the presence of monks at various life-cycle

ceremonies and alms giving as well, monks ritualistically provide them with the

five precepts in both Pali and in Burmese. That is, they receive in their devotional ritual toward the monks, a reminder of the five basic moral conducts

that they should try to maintain each day:

I abstain from killing any living beings. I abstain from taking what is not given. I abstain from sexual misconduct. I abstain from saying what is not true. I abstain from taking drinks and drugs that are intoxicating and cause forgetfulness.

As yogis (meditators), and/or novices and temporary nuns, however, the

students at Panditarama’s “Buddist Civility” course now took three additional

precepts:

I abstain from eating after noon. I abstain from dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, watching or listening to things which are not in accordance with the Buddha’s teachings, decorating myself with flowers, and wearing fragrant lotions, powders, or perfumes. I abstain from sleeping or staying on high, luxurious places.

Further, the third precept, “I abstain from sexual misconduct” is replaced by the

following: “I abstain from sexual conduct.” So, the boys and the girls took eight

182 precepts all together, including the precept to abstain from sexual relations both

mentally and physically.

Then, still in sitting, hand-clasped positions, they paid homage to the

Buddha image at front of the Dhamma Hall. As a monk teacher, Sayadaw U

Nyana led, they chanted in Pali, “Namo Tassa Bhagavato, Arahato,

Sammasambuddhassa” three times and also in Burmese translation, “I pay homage to that Venerable Buddha, Deserving of special reverence, Who knows by himself all there is to know in a correct manner.” Then, the students

prostrated as they paid obeisance to the golden, life-size Buddha image in front on a small stage and the several monk teachers near it. But of course, some were still talking to each other and looking around as there were many lay adults still in the room, including their parents, school teachers, and cameramen. In a stern tone, Sayadaw U Nyana spoke through the microphone at the podium in front to remind students that they were not at an ordinary place doing ordinary activities, but that they were at a meditation center to practice mindfulness:

“When you pay homage to the Buddha you mustn’t be looking here and there.

This is a meditation center.” The students paid more attention to the front.

The job of mentorship for the young boys was now ceremoniously passed on from their school teachers and parents to the monk-teachers. The boys with heads shaven were all dressed in school uniform still (white shirts and green longyis—tube-like garments for the lower body). They crouched on the floor of the Dhamma Hall with their hands clasped to their forehead, hands holding a roll of saffron robe, as they asked for formal permission to be mentored by the

183 monks: “Venerable sirs, would you be kind enough to accept this robe and out of

your compassion, initiate me, in order that I may realize nibbana, the perfect

emancipation from the entire cycle of sufferings?” The monks replied, “With

speech and conduct that is worthy of veneration, may you be fulfilled in moral

conduct, concentration, and wisdom.”

After, the boys, along with the young nuns, paid homage again to the

Buddha, Dhamma (the Buddha’s teachings), and Sangha (the order of monks),

monk-mentors and male relatives pulled aside each boy, row by row, in order to help them change into their saffron robes. The boys changed right there and the

tubing of their long green longyis obviated the need for a dressing room.

Once all the novices were in their robes, they joined the young nuns again. They sat on the floor and faced the front stage. They remained at the front of the room while the young nuns sat in the back. The side conversations between the children and between the adults suddenly subsided and all came to a hush as everyone in the room waited with hands clasped in a veneration position for the monk abbot, who is the head of the “Buddhist Civility” program.

The seventy-five year old monk abbot, Sayadawgyi U Pandita, bald, heavy set, and wearing small rectangular dark rimmed glasses on his roundish face walked from his monk quarter to the Dhamma hall in a slow but steady gait. Each step he took seemed to match exactly the length and pace of the previous one, as if all his movements were perfectly controlled by him. Holding a saffron colored fan to his chest, he wore a calm, expressionless face as he walked through the outside walkway and entered the Dhamma Hall. The lay persons at the doorway

184 and the walkway knelt before him and clasped their hands as he walked pass them. He sat cross-legged on the gilded throne that was set out for him at the front of the Dhamma Hall, not far from the Buddha image, on the slightly raised stage. Expressionless, he sat with his eyes gazing more downward than at any particular person. The large saffron colored cloth fan he held in front of him covered most of his body and was also camouflaged by his saffron colored robes.

In this calm and self-effacing manner, Sayadawgyi gave to the novices and young nuns the first welcoming speech and Dhamma talk of the whole course. It was a speech that very matter-of-factly outlined for the students his expectations for them throughout the course, namely, the practice of civility. It defined for the students what the Sayadawgyi’s interpretation of Buddhist “civility” meant. It seemed to require much effort, concentration, and mental self- responsibility. At the government affiliated Buddhist civility lesson, “civility” meant simply honoring authority. At the lay Buddhist organizations, “civility” referred to a more nuanced, wider range of ethical behaviors, not a blind respect for authority. It also referred to moral intentions. However, at the lay organizations, civility remained a book knowledge as its practice was not encouraged. Here, the monk abbot who seemed to be modeling his definition of civility appeared to be saying that the novices and young nuns should also try to practice civility from moment to moment throughout the program. “Making the effort to be mindful in all that you do—that’s civility,” he told them. “Control yourself in body, speech, and mind so that you are not an aggravation toward

185 others. That’s real civility. That’s what the Buddha promoted.” He gave some

specific examples of these self-effacing civilities, beginning with day to day

activities to higher ethics:

Making much noise with your slippers as you run across an area, shouting as you try to get someone’s attention, slamming the door behind you-- these sorts of things can mentally disturb another person. So, you mustn’t just consider what you want to do or what you want to say. If someone else is disturbed by what you say and do, then you are not tame…Especially taking someone else’s things unjustifiably, lying, slandering, yelling, speaking frivolously--these sorts of deeds disturb others, they are rough and disgusting and not free from blame and moral consequence.

Continuing to speak in terms of causes and effects, he said that it was important

to cultivate a clean, pure mind:

In thought, too, you mustn’t scheme to harm others, such as scheming to steal what belongs to others. When one’s mind is not clean and pure it is wild, rough, disgusting. If you try to live free from blame, then your mind is clean, pure, civil, tamed. When others look at you, too, they will see only someone that is lovable.

He distinguished his view of civility from that found in the government’s and some lay organizations’ discourses, by saying that genuine civility had nothing to do with national or ethnic identity. Instead, he elevated the definition of “civility” into a universal ethic: “What is meant by civility here is not the culture of a people. It is civility as promoted by the Buddha.” Finally, he was clear that the civility that would be taught at Panditarama was not going to be forced top-down. He said the desire and responsibility of being civil must come from each child in the program:

In order to be in this program, you must love and value the benefits that derive from being civil. If you do not have a love of these benefits or if you have no need to love them, then you needn’t join the program. You can

186 stay at home comfortably. If you decide to be here and in the program, however, you will need to start improving yourselves.

In this matter of fact, impersonal, and self-effacing tone, with an outline of the natural causes and effects of moral norms, the monk abbot opened the program.

Rude Awakenings

In the beginning of the program, there were some harsh realities. Some of the newcomers were restless because their parents or school teachers had brought them to the program although they had no intentions of being there. Or, if they had, they began to miss television and the other comforts of home. One young boy, a nine year old, now a novice in the program, had joined the program with his younger sister, who was now a young nun. They came into the program with about four of their cousins. While his sister and cousins were getting quite adjusted to the program in the first week, the boy threw a crying tantrum several days into the program near the nuns’ quarters where his aunty was visiting.

Sobbing loudly and trying to hold himself steady by leaning against the wall with one hand, he shouted out loud how much he did not like being at the program.

He said that he was “not having fun.” The lady who later asked me to come meditate at Panditarama, the former head nurse of the Rangoon General

Hospital, was there because she lived among the nuns as a volunteer at the meditation center. She took care of some of the medical needs of the children in the “Buddhist Civility” program. Now, she was trying to reason with the boy,

“Novice, so many children are enjoying the program. Are you not a bit ashamed

187 that you are the only one wanting to go home so badly?” The boy continued to cry loudly as his little sister calmly looked on while she sipped a cool drink. He shook and repeated, “Well, I am not having fun here!” The aunty remarked that her sister “spoiled” the boy, that he did nothing but “watch television” at home.

She refused to take him back to his home. So, the boy had no choice but to stop crying and stay.

A few of the monks, too, at the beginning were a bit authoritarian. I saw this in particular in the “beginning level” courses. Most of the students in these courses were newer and younger. Some were very bored and sleepy in the first week, especially because some of their monk-teachers began by asking them to recite, repeat, and memorize verses. For example, the young monk-teacher who taught Mangala Sutta (Discourse on Blessings) had a clean, clear, gentle voice, but in the first days he kept on asking his students to repeat the same stanzas,

Ashin Ananda’s introduction to the verse, over an over in Pali and in Burmese,

Evam me sutam…Thus I have heard. At one time the Blessed One was dwelling a the monastery of Anathapindika in Jeta’s Grove near the city of Savatthi. Then a certain deity in the late hours of the night with surpassing splendor, having illuminated the entire Jeta’s Grove, came to the Blessed One. Drawing near, the deity respectfully paid homage to the Blessed One and stood at a suitable place; standing there, the deity addressed the Blessed One in verse.

In addition to asking students to recite endlessly, he asked his own questions and answered them. Referring to the first two blessings, “Not to associate with fools, To associate with the wise,” he asked, “So, what are you to do?,” and answered, “be friends with the wise.” While many of the young nuns tried hard to follow and take notes in their journals, some of the young monks were either

188 dazed as they recited, falling asleep, or were mindlessly tossing their pencils into the air and catching them. So, the monk-teacher’s assistant monk was walking around the room with a stick and tapping on sleepy and dazed novices’ laps and shoulders to make them more alert.

The students also had to be more mindful now of their deportment in walking and mannerisms in eating. When classes were over, they were expected to walk out one row after another in single file silently and with their eyes cast downward only a few feet ahead of themselves. They were asked to be “mindful” of their movements. In this manner, they walked back to their dorms for breaks and baths or into the dining halls for eating.

Also, there was much concentration, patience, mindfulness, and self- responsibility practiced at meals everyday, once at dawn for breakfast, and the other about an hour before noon for lunch. Before entering the dining halls, the young nuns lined up silently in four different single-file lines, the shortest girls near the front and the tallest at the end. They held in their hands their own fork, spoon, and cup that they had brought from their dorm. In the dining hall, they took their places silently at long communal tables, spread out their square, saffron colored cloth mats on the floor, and sat cross-legged on these. They bowed to the Buddha statue at the front of the dining hall. Then, when all were ready, they, along with the monks, nun teachers, and the novices in the Dining

Hall sent “metta” or loving-kindness by clasping their palms, closing, their eyes, and chanting the following “Way to Send Loving-Kindness” verse that had been written by the Mahasi Sayadaw, the late teacher of the monk abbot:

189 All of us who have gathered here today, may we be well and peaceful. All the people living in the world today, may we be well and peaceful. All my noble teachers whose virtues are endless, may they be well and peaceful. My parents whose virtues are endless, may they be well and peaceful. All living beings in our meditation center, may they be well and peaceful. All living beings in our city, may they be well and peaceful. All living beings in our state, may they be well and peaceful. All the Sangha everywhere, may they be well and peaceful. All the donors and supporters, who supply food, medicine, clothes, and shelter (for all of us practicing Dhamma), may they be well and peaceful. All the bad kings (and leaders) everywhere, may they be well and happy. All the violent persons and deceivers everywhere, may they be well and peaceful. All the living beings in our world, may they be well and peaceful. All the living beings in the universe, may they be well and peaceful. All the living beings in the lowly abodes, may they be well and peaceful. All the people and celestial beings, may they be well and peaceful. All the living beings in the thirty-one abodes, may they be well and peaceful.

After the chant, the young nuns, along with the monks, nun teachers, and novices in the dining hall ate silently, one morsel at a time. The only sounds that could be heard in the room were the clanking of their metal forks and spoons on the metal surface of their plates and bowls. The young nuns also never asked for more than what was already served to them in their plates and bowls. After eating, they wiped clean their area at the table, some remembered to bow to the

Buddha once more, gathered their cups and utensils, and left the dining hall as silently as they came in. They headed for their dorms where they would wash their own cups and utensils and store them.

The novices, too, practiced similar concentration, mindfulness, patience, and self-responsibility in eating. The only difference was that every morning, prior to any classes and even prior the break of dawn, they would line up barefoot and with their alms bowls in hand, shortest to tallest at the gate of

190 Panditarama, along with many of their monk teachers. Silently and with their

eyes cast downward just several feet in front of them, they walked barefoot and

in single-file around the community surrounding the meditation center for their

alms. Like the nuns, they too had to be responsible for washing and cleaning

after themselves. They did not use forks and spoons for they were expected to

use their own hands to eat from their alms bowls back in the dining hall.

However, they carried their alms bowls with them back to their dorms to wash,

Both nuns and novices also learned several detailed ascetic codes of

conduct that pertained to both monks and novices, called the “75 Sekhiya

Dhamma,” or “75 Rules for Training of Conduct.”1 The novices, not so much the

young nuns, were expected to follow them. Yet, both learned them as Pali

chants with Burmese explanations. Included from the “75 Rules for Training of

Conduct” were the following from the Parimandala Vagga, rules related to dress:

1. Dressing with the inner robe hanging evenly around one 2. Dressing with the upper robe hanging evenly around one 3. Being properly clad when going into the villages [or community] 4. Being properly clad when sitting down in the villages [or community 5. Being well-controlled when going into the villages [or community] 6. Being well-controlled when sitting down in the villages [or community] 7. Going into the villages [or community] with eyes cast down 8. Sitting down in the villages [or community] with eyes cast down 9. Not lifting up one’s robes when going into the villages [or community] 10. Not lifting up one’s robes when sitting in the villages [or community]

From the Ujjhaghika Vagga, manners related to speech, they learned the following:

11. Not laughing loudly when going into the villages [or community] 12. Not laughing loudly when sitting in the villages [or community]

191 13. Making little noise when going into the villages [or community] 14. Making little noise when sitting in the villages [or community] 15. Not swaying the body when going into the villages [or community] 16. Not swaying the body when sitting in the villages [or community] 17. Not swaying the arms when going into the villages [or community] 18. Not swaying the arms when sitting in the villages [or community] 19. Not swaying the head when going into the villages [or community] 20. Not swaying the arms when sitting in the villages [or community]

From the Khambahkata Vagga or rules related to gait and body postures,

they learned the following:

21. Going into the villages [or community] without one’s arms akimbo 22. Sitting in the villages [or community] without one’s arms akimbo 23. Not covering the head when going into the villages [or community] 24. Not covering the head when sitting in the villages [or community] 25. Not walking on heels and toes when going into the villages [or community] 26. Not raising the knees with the upper robe clasped or wound around them when sitting in the villages [or community] 27. Attentively accepting almsfood 28. Being mindful of the bowl when accepting almsfood 29. Accepting only a proportionate amount of curry [proportionate to the rice] when accepting almsfood 30. Accepting almsfood only up to the inner ring of the bowl

Finally, from the Sakkacca Vagga and the Kabala Vagga, respectively, they learned the manners related to the partaking of meals:

31. Attentively eating almsfood 32. Being mindful of the bowl from which one eats almsfood 33. Eating almsfood in an orderly manner 34. Eating almsfood with a proportionate amount of curry [and rice] 35. Eating almsfood without pressing down on the top of the food 36. Not covering up the soup, curry, and condiments because one desires more 37. If not ill, not asking for food for oneself 38. Not looking at another’s bowl desiringly or enviously 39. In eating, not making food morsels too large 40. Making each morsel of food round for eating 41. Not opening the mouth until the morsel of food is brought close 42. Not putting one’s fingers into the mouth when eating 43. Not talking with the mouth full 44. Not tossing the morsels of food into the mouth when eating

192 45. Not breaking up morsels of food for eating 46. Not stuffing the cheeks when eating 47. Not shaking the hands about when eating 48. Not scattering grains of rice when eating 49. Not putting out one’s tongue when eating 50. Not smacking the lips when eating

Hence the rules for training of conduct that especially the novices had to try to follow and the young nuns must to some extent imitate as fellow meditators, now governed much of the mannerisms and deportments (i.e., walking, talking, eating) that they had otherwise taken for granted. Now, they had to be mindful with each step, each word, and each morsel. Unlike at the lay-led International

Meditation Center where one practiced insight only when one was sitting in the

Dhamma Hall in one’s dorm, here, awareness of one’s body, speech, and mind in at least some activities while living and moving among others was also an opportunity for insight. Here, being mindful included being able to consider one’s effect on others. That is, meditation at Panditarama was simultaneously ethics and insight oriented.

Liminal Stage: Rite of Transition, Pedagogical Support of Ethical Development in Practice of Insight

Yet, even with these initial shocks of monastic culture and impersonal explanations of the cause and effect laws of moral norms at the meditation center, there were, from the start also many compassionate gestures from the teachers along with admiring devotions from lay supporters. Since the first day, monk teachers and their nun assistants would wait outside the Dhamma Hall after each class ended, not only to encourage students to walk mindfully and in a

193 single file, but also to help individual novices and young nuns straighten robes that had crumpled or loosened while sitting, and to be pulled aside by pupils who needed to talk with them privately. I never witnessed any yelling from the teachers, especially at these quiet, tranquil times outside of class. There were only whispers of encouragement and gentle nudging.

Also, in getting to learn with Panditarama’s monk teachers who were highly respected throughout Rangoon for observing the vinaya and for their meditation practice, the novices and young nuns were greatly admired and supported by the surrounding lay community who were relatively wealthy.

Everyday, different donors brought many varieties of food for each meal.

Although the novices and nuns could not by rule ask for food, the food that was served to them was often abundant and included soup, rice, curry dishes, condiments, vegetables, fruits, and desserts such as ice-cream or gelatin. The donors sometimes included their own parents. But many times, donors were people they did not know. Almost every morning before dawn, some of the nuns watched from the marble top of the Dhamma Hall to venerate the young monks and their monk-teachers as they set off silently on barefoot on their alms rounds.

A few times I joined them and could see from atop how at least one member of almost every household in these nearby streets of the “Golden Valley” community came out with jugs of food and rice in hand to give to the monks and novices. Some families even came in their automobiles from afar just to catch up with the monks and novices and serve them. Usually, young lay boys who

194 volunteered at the meditation center had to accompany the monks and novices

to help carry the almsfood.

In the larger society, nuns hold a secondary status to monks. For the

same efforts, they are not as highly regarded as monks. Their status is

comparably better at Panditarama because the center is known for both textual

learning of Buddhism and meditation practice. Here, even the young nuns have lay persons clasping their hands in veneration of them as they entered the dining

hall each day.

Room for Trial and Error

The monk and nun teachers also gave students much freedom for

dialogue and interaction back at the dormitories at free time. In between pillow fights on beds, playing tag (sometimes right outside the dorm and sometimes jumping from bed to bed), they joked with their teachers (monks at the boys’ dorm and nuns at the girls’ dorm). For instance, one time I heard some monk- teachers and young novices laughing as the former asked the latter why they still carried combs around when they “no longer had any hair.” The novices had no answer but they laughed anyway.

The students also liked to chant together and discuss the many verses they were learning when they were at their dorms. As some young nuns explained, “I think in studying together like this, we understand more what we are learning. We also gain each other’s company.” As students came here not only

195 from different parts of Rangoon, but also from different parts of the country, students also gained insight into other people’s life experiences.

Finally, students shared and joked with each other about different monk- teachers’ personalities and styles. For example, many of the pupils began to call a popular monk who daily told Jataka and Dhammapada tales at three o’clock in the afternoon the “yo yo ye ye” or “melodrama” monk. They explained that he was their favorite for he always evoked emotion through his storytelling. One day, several of the young nuns were pretending to be him speaking through a microphone as almost all the monks did at the center. Yet, they passed the microphone across a pretend audience for responses, although it was something the monk had never done. “Sayadaw U Inda is like a talk show host,” they said.

“We really enjoy his talks.” They said that they liked how he told the stories of the Buddha’s lives in such a way that they felt they were participants. Although he had never formally asked them for responses in class, I often saw him informally explaining many points as students went up to him to ask questions after class.

Dialogue with monk teachers as well as the nun assistances about the content of students’ learning was encouraged at free time. In the center’s

“Buddhist Civility” textbook, too, such a dialogue is modeled in a conversation between the Buddha and a young man named Suba:

The young man named Suba approached the Lord Buddha and asked the Lord Buddha questions that he wanted answered:

‘Lord Buddha, in the world, people are alike in that they are all people. Yet, why are their fortunes so different?’

196 1. Some have a short life. Some have a long life. Why is that? 2. Some have many illnesses. Some are healthy. Why is that? 3. Some are ugly. Some are beautiful. Why is that? 4. Some have few followers and friends. Some have a lot of followers and friends. Why is that? 5. Some are very poor. Some are very wealthy. Why is that? 6. Some come from bad families. Some come from wonderful, noble families. Why is that? 7. Some have little education. Some are well-learned. Why is that?”

In this way, the young man Suba, asked about fourteen different points about which he was confused.

[The Lord Buddha Answered,]

Young man Suba, the only thing living beings truly own is Kamma (one’s deeds). They have to inherit the results of their Kamma. Kamma is the only root cause. Kamma is one’s only relative. Kamma is the only thing upon which one can rely. The law of Kamma is what determines how living beings are differentiated in their fortunes. Being miserable is the result of one’s own Kamma. Being happy and high in status, too, are the results of one’s Kamma. That is why…

1. If you kill other living beings, your life tends to be short. If you abstain from killing, your life tends to be long.

2. If you ill-treat others, then you may develop many diseases. If you do not ill-treat others, then you tend to be healthy.

3. If you have much hate or anger, then you tend to be ugly. If you are neither hateful nor angry but patient, then you tend to be beautiful.

4. If you are jealous of others, then you tend to have few friends. If you want only what is best for others and you are genuinely glad to see others succeed and be happy, then you will tend to have many friends.

5. If you are possessive and miserly and do not want to give, then you tend to become poor. If you give generously, then you tend to prosper and become wealthy.

6. If you are conceited, then you tend to come to exist in a bad family. If you humbly pay respect to those deserving of

197 respect, however, you tend to come to exist in a good, noble family.

7. If you do not inquire and investigate, then you tend to be dull in knowledge. If you inquire and investigate, however, you develop greatly in knowledge.

These 7 items, 14 in expanded format, are the wholesome and unwholesome results (kusala and akusala) of the deeds (kamma) living beings have themselves committed. In this way, the Lord Buddha responded…2

Through this modeling in the text of how a pupil posed questions to his teacher,

the Buddha, monks encouraged and partook of question and answers informally

at free time. In the same way that the Buddha tried to develop critical insight in

Suba by outlining for him the natural law of cause and effect of moral practice, so did they.

Back at their dormitories at free time, students also laughed about their own weaknesses. Once, I heard young nuns laughing about how “sleepy” they were when they got up daily at three o’clock in the morning at the meditation center to pay homage to the Buddha in the meditation hall. As quiet as the

Dining Hall, the Dhamma Hall, and the outdoor spaces between them were, the students’ dormitories drowned with the noise of the children playing, talking, and reciting.

198 A Balance of Pedagogical Styles

Most importantly, the variety of monks’ pedagogical styles they were

exposed to here over time, from calm but matter-of-fact impersonal style to calm

but compassionate styles, allowed them to perceive of Buddhist civility as a path

to insight and independent thinking that is bolstered at every step by a

conscience of the Buddha, both the ethics he practiced and the enlightenment he

strove toward. Monks like the abbot monk, Sayadawgyi U Pandita, with their

impersonal tone and withheld gazes, set the highest spiritual expectations of the

young monks and nuns. He placed all responsibility on their own efforts and

abilities to develop the wisdom to judge right from wrong. In his Dhamma talks,

he never told them what to do, but outlined for them the logical, natural laws of causes and effects of different moral norms, then asked pupils to choose wisely among them. He also stressed that insight meditation was ultimately the only way toward enlightenment.

A few of the verses that students learned in their text book at the meditation center outlined in written form some of these natural laws of cause and effect as conveyed by Sayadawgyi. One called “Verse on the Separation of

Deeds and their Results” was written by his late teacher, the Mahasi Sayadaw, and reads as follows:

Kill another, life shortens, if you don’t kill, life lengthens. Those who ill treat, hurt a lot, compassion’s healthy. Flame of hate grows, so ugly, tolerance is pretty. If you’re jealous, friends scatter, if you’re pleasant, friends gather. If you’re not giving, you’ll go poor, but if you give, you’ll be rich. If you’re not respectful, then you’ll be born into a family of ill-repute.

199 If you’re respectful, then you’ll be born into a reputable family. If you don’t inquire, then your wisdom’s blind. Investigate, then your wisdom’s grand. If you do bad deeds, receive bad, if good, reap goodness. Both good and bad, Kammic plan, you will have to bear.3

The Mahasi Sayadawgyi’s poem in Paditarama’s textbook reinforces

Sayadawgyi’s remarks by directly reminding students of their own responsibility in their moral fate and hence the need to cultivate wisdom or the ability to judge for oneself between wholesome and unwholesome deeds.

But then, at Panditarama, there were also monks like Sayadaw U Sasana, who were quite different from Sayadawgyi in that they were highly personable.

Sayadaw U Sasana almost always spoke to the students, even large crowds, by making eye contact. His voice was also very rich and sweet in tone and full of humor. He would reiterate the Sayadawgyi’s message on the importance of combining ethics with critical insight, yet he would do so by using many aesthetic and flowery analogies to which the students could immediately relate. One day, the students had been taught in their texts a poem on the “Virtues of Sila (Moral

Conduct)” that had also been written by the late Mahasi Sayadaw. In the poem, sila or moral conduct is likened to a fragrant flower that is appropriate to wear at all times:

The smell of Sila, spreads so fragrantly. Every time one wears Sila, one stands beautifully. Every time one keeps Sila, the hells are at bay, Noble Sila, reliable without doubt or dismay.4

Not long after, Sayadaw U Sasana gave the students a Dhamma talk that reinforced the above concept of the attractive and indispensability of sila by

200 painting yet another visceral analogy for it. In his melodious voice, he said, “Sila is the most beautiful thing in the world.” Looking at the young nuns in the back of the room, he said, “Back there, I see ‘silashins’ (‘nuns’ in the Burmese language but literally also means ‘those who practice moral conduct’).” He continued by turning to the novices in the front and said affectionately, “Novices are ‘silashins,’ too, do you know that?” The novices and the young nuns laughed out loud because the monk seemed to be saying that the boys were nuns. “Really.

Novices are ‘silashins,’ too, because they practice moral conduct,” he explained.

At this remark, the students became very attentive with interest. Then, he told them how indispensable moral conduct was in the gaining of insight. He used the analogies of moral conduct as the legs and insight as the eyes of a person.

“Without moral conduct, you may know a lot but you cannot get anywhere

[implying getting to nibbana one day].” And in reverse, he also said that insight was just as important as moral conduct: “If you have moral conduct but no insight, too, you will be able to move around, but without any direction because you cannot see where you are going.” Hence, while the impersonal style of monks, like the monk abbot himself, set very high standards of spiritual attainment for the students, namely a path to insight guided by ethics and ethics guided by insight, the more personable style of monks like Sayadaw U Sasana helped students to aspire to those standards by providing them with motivational supports based on humor, affection, aesthetics, and visceral analogies.

The monk popularly known by the pupils in the program as the “yo yo ye ye” or “melodrama” monk, Sayadaw U Inda helped students to aspire to

201 Sayadawygi’s standards by appealing to their sentiments. During the three o’clock hour in the afternoon everyday, he told stories of the Buddha’s lives from the Jatakas and the Dhammapada to all 500 students. This was the hour when they disassembled from their smaller classes--Beginning, Intermediate, and

Advanced levels--and reconvened as a large group to just listen to stories. Yet, while there were many students sitting together and so late in the afternoon,

Sayadaw U Inda almost always had all their attention. He stood very calm and still behind the podium and microphone in the self-effacing manner of all the monks at the meditation center. He also spoke very softly in a barely audible voice. It was the seriousness and dramatic pauses he used to tell the stories that evoked much sentiment even as he was addressing rational topics such as the need to develop sound judgment. His version of the Dhammapada tale,

Angulimala, for instance, was quite unlike the government’s version spoken by

Dr. Min Tin Mon at public schools in that it included more details of emotions and judgments, their causes and their effects. Min Tin Mon focused mainly on the magical abilities of the Buddha who, with his creation of an illusion, i.e., pretending to run when he was really stopping, stopped the awe-struck, hardened criminal Angulimala from killing people (and attempting to kill his own mother) and cutting off their fingers. Sayadaw U Inda showed how changes in one’s insight can cause moral transformations: goodness can easily turn bad and the bad can easily turn good again, all because of changes in one’s insight.

He started with the part about how Angulimala, “Garland of Fingers,” originally named Ahimsa, “Non-violence,” by his parents, began to err when he followed

202 too closely the teacher he loved so much. This teacher had become enraged with him and wanted to avenge him in a deceitful manner by persuading him to kill. The teacher came to hate Angulimala as a result of classmates’ slandering of Angulimala. The classmates slandered Angulimala also because of their own inability to contain an emotion: they were so jealous of his close relationship with the teacher. In Sayadaw U Inda’s telling of the part about how the crazed and murderous Angulimala finally turned his attention to chasing the Buddha, the monk emphasized the Buddha’s magical aura, but only in relation to the

Buddha’s enlightenment in the practice of insight meditation. With his calm, still posture and the barely audible voice, one could almost imagine that the monk was the Buddha as he spoke these lines of the Buddha to Angulimala who had yelled at the Buddha to stop: “I have stopped, only you have not stopped.”

Angulimala asked the Buddha, “Why do you say that you have stopped and I have not stopped?” The monk quoted the Buddha as replying, “I say that I have stopped, because I have given up killing all beings, I have given up ill-treating all beings, and because I have established myself in universal love, patience, and knowledge through reflection [insight meditation]. But you have not given up killing or ill-treating others and you are not yet established in universal love and patience. Hence, you are the one who has not stopped.” Unlike Min Tin Mon,

Sayadaw U Inda also included the part afterward when Angulimala decided to ordain as a monk, practiced insight meditation under the Buddha’s guidance, and finally attained arahantship. The monk also said that after Angulimala gained enlightenment, Angulimala gave back to society who still feared him by making a

203 truthful pronouncement about his change of heart so that pregnant women could have an easy labor. Through this story-telling, Sayadaw U Inda was able to demonstrate a chain of emotions, intentions, and their effects. The incredible amount of detail and strategic pauses he used to tell the story was apparent in the length of time it took to tell it. He took nearly the full hour while Min Tin Mon finished his version in less than fifteen minutes. In so doing, the monk teacher was able to underscore the fact that when based on insight, good intentions can overwhelm unwholesome deeds. Based on good intentions, too, insight can be developed. One could deduce from this story-telling that the development of insight was not contrary to but a part and parcel of social ethics.

As the good intentions of the monk teachers themselves became clearer to the young students as more than a week passed into the program, the students became more comfortable and interested, and the teachers, too, became more compassionate and democratic in general. So, the young monk who was teaching the Mangala Poem to the Beginning Level students still focused on recitation, yet, by this time, the students knew the poem better by heart, were more attentive, and were enjoying trying to perfect their tone in singing the poem so that it matched his more melodious and gentle cadence.

The Burmese refrain which is an elaboration of the Pali’s simpler, “This is the highest blessing,” reads “Only then we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world hey!” As the students sang the Burmese version, their tone was rough and loud on the word, “hey!” So, several times the monk imitated in good humor the aggressive way they had sang the refrain. Listening to themselves reflected in

204 his voice, the students laughed. He laughed too. “So, not like that, like this,” he said, and modeled a much more subtle and gentle singing of the verse with a sweet, subdued ending on the word “hey.” Through voice lessons, he seemed to be trying to embody for the students the compassion and benevolence of the

Buddha.

In the Intermediate Level class on the Mangala Sutta, the young monk teacher, Sayadaw U Nyannika, provided a supplementary riddle outlining the primary two Mangala Blessings, “Not associating with fools, Associating with the wise.” This riddle required more critical thinking on the part of students. Yet, even here, he also appealed to humor. The riddle he taught them to recite was the following:

Others don’t know That one is not good to know one doesn’t know either Such a person might be a fool Avoid him from faraway

Others don’t know That one is not good to know one knows Such a person might be sincere Please help him

Others know That one is good to know one does not know Such a person is asleep Please wake him

Others know That one is good to know one knows also Such a person is wise Please associate with this sort of person.

Through this poem, which was an elaboration of one written by the famous monk,

Ashin Maharathathara in the 15th century, the monk-teacher established for the

205 students an understanding that the task of distinguishing who is wise or foolish requires critical insight. Being “wise” or “foolish” is not always clear-cut but often nuanced. Yet, he also chose to teach them this poem when there was a novice literally sleeping and snoring in front of him. Instead of yelling at the sleeping novice, he looked on purpose at him while he taught the riddle out loud to the other novices and the young nuns. So, the other novices near the sleeping novice giggled, nudged the novice awake, and said jokingly, “Hey, he might be good to know, let’s wake him.” The monk smiled. He also made a further joke implicating himself:

These days, when young people decide to marry, they no longer consider whether their potential spouse is a good fit. Some young women, for example, put as much thought into securing a husband as in choosing a thamein (traditional tube-like lower garment of women, much like a sarong). I guess they figure their father is an old man and do not care who they bring home. [Smiling] Now, not that I would know these matters as a monk. [Lay] teachers have written about it and have told me.

At this remark, the students laughed and poked fun at him facetiously, “Oh, sure…..” He simply smiled and let them.

Through such easy going democratic gestures and the use of visceral and also aesthetic analogies, the less senior monk teachers were able to do both of the following: (1) venerate the ethics and insight practice embodied by the

Buddha, and (2) also humanize his path for the children as something attainable.

206 Promoting Universal Love toward All Sentient Beings

Even the Sayadawgyi, the monk abbot, during the course of the program

began to show a more outwardly compassionate side to himself. Near the end of the program, he held a fun gift giving ceremony for everyone at the meditation

center, including the student novices and young nuns, regular monks and nuns,

and the volunteer lay staff. Almost all the gifts were items donated by the lay to

the Sangha, including an enormous number of key chains, book markers, bags,

fans, umbrellas, and intermediate Buddhist texts [Buddhist books in the

vernacular]. Included in these gifts were also two quite large photographs of the

Sayadawgyi smiling contentedly at a small swallow that had landed at the tip of

his left index finger. The moment had been caught on camera by a lay devotee

who had donated the photographs to the Sayadawgyi. Now, he wanted to give

these to the children. He was all smiles at the ceremony as everyone in his

compound lined up in the open space between the Dining Hall, the Dhamma

Hall, and the monks’ quarters in anticipation to pull a number randomly out of a

jar. The item labeled with the same number that one pulled out from the jar

became one’s gift. There were a lot of “Oohs, Aahs,” and laughs even among

the monks. “Hey, don’t pull more than one number,” one of the monk teachers

was joking to one of their own. It was a ceremony that evoked much

“communitas.” Several children went up to admire the photograph of the

Sayadawgyi smiling at the bird. In the end, at least one of the large photographs

had been randomly picked by an adult. But later Sayadawgyi made sure to

207 distribute yet smaller versions of the same photograph to many of the children.

Through the ceremony and the photograph of him with the bird, the Sayadawgyi was promoting metta, non-discriminatory universal love.

By asking students to practice loving-kindness meditation prior to every formal insight meditation session, the loving-kindness sentiment was reinforced in the students as a moral inclination that supports insight meditation practice.

Another technique was to help students see their direct connection to sentient life in general. The monk teachers asked students to feel as an animal might. As

Sayadaw U Pandita told me,

Once, I saw that one of the novices (from the summer Buddhist civility class) was trying to aim slingshots at a bird that was flying around in the Dhamma Hall during break time. I quietly stopped him and asked, ‘Novice, why are you trying to shoot at the bird? If you were him and you were shot, how would you feel?’ ‘Painful,’ he answered. ‘Do you like pain? Do you like being in pain?’ I asked him. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Well, then, why not stop aiming at the poor bird,’ I told him. And so he did. You have to teach them like that, acquaint them a little by little with the fact that all living beings have feelings.

His monk disciples, too, achieved this goal with the students by telling them many Jataka stories in which the Buddha himself, like all people, used to be animals in the round of rebirths. They also told Jataka tales like Vessantara and

Suvannasamma in which people and animals reciprocated or were positively affected by each other’s loving kindness:

During King Vessantara’s rule, the Bodhisattva (the Buddha in his past life), was an ascetic (a hermit). Because of the strength of King Vessantara’s metta or loving-kindness, all the animals that existed within a forty mile radius were all kind and affectionate toward each other…

During the Bodhisattva’s life as Suvannasamma (a young man who lived with his blind, ascetic parents in the forest and took care of them well), the Bodhisattva practiced metta bhavana or loving-kindness

208 meditation repeatedly. For this reason, all the deer assisted the Bodhisattva. Even normally fierce animals, such as lions and tigers loved the Bodhisattva and were kind to him. Because of the strength of the Bodhisattva’s metta, all the deer, lions, and tigers, in the vicinity of the dwelling in which the Bodhisattva and his parents lived, also were affectionate, tender, and kind to each other.5

In helping students to comprehend the purity and non-discriminatory nature of

loving-kindness, the monk teachers emphasized that even living beings that one

could not see in the round of rebirths, such as spirits and ghosts, had feelings

and could be helped by one’s loving-kindness. One day, through sending loving-

kindness, they helped a young girl from the Buddhist civility class recover from what she and other children felt was a possession of her body from the restless

spirit of her favorite uncle, an alcoholic who had recently died at the young age of

thirty due to liver failure. The 13-year-old girl had been ill at ease for some time

at the summer program. She could not concentrate well during meditation. Right

when she sat down to practice insight meditation one afternoon, the girl’s eyes

rolled and she fainted briefly. Nun teachers went to her aid and escorted her to

the children’s’ sleeping quarters. When she awoke, she was speaking in a more

masculine voice and the voice said that it was her uncle who had died. The

monks were summoned by lay adult volunteers. When they came, they were

surrounded by the watchful eyes of many students who were on-lookers. The

monks chanted protective chants but also spoke directly to the persona of the girl

who claimed to be her uncle. With loving-kindness, one monk initiated a

conversation with the possessed persona, “We know you miss her. But, please

leave her be. She is studying hard here and learning to take care of herself.”

209 The voice spoke about a controversial political issue that was familiar to all, the government’s razing of cemeteries to build business buildings for foreign investors: “The government is tearing down the main cemetery in the city. Under a tree there is where I lived. But now, I have no where to go. So, I came here to see my beloved niece. I am lonely and want to take her with me.” As if she were the uncle, genuine tears rolled down the girl’s eyes. The monks promised that they would send loving-kindness and share merit with the ghost if he would leave his niece alone. As they sent loving-kindness and shared merits as such, the girl seemed to recover. She seemed to wake as from a deep sleep. Many of the children who were observing became convinced of the power of loving-kindness.

In a triumphant tone, they gossiped with each other about the ordeal that had just passed and the monks’ role in helping the spirit.

In helping students understand their connection to all sentient life and thereby helping them to cultivate a purer form of loving-kindness, i.e., wishing all creatures well without attachment so that they can take care of themselves happily, the monks at Panditarama also help to teach self-reliance to students, a necessary foundation of insight meditation practice. That is, the monks’ modeling of loving-kindness also seemed to affect the girl. She became more confident during and after her practices of meditation. I saw her sitting more consistently from then on. Upon her mother’s visit, she also asked her mother to arrange a merit sharing ceremony at home for her dead uncle who happened also to be her mother’s younger brother. Through the monks’ modeling of loving- kindness, the girl seemed, finally, to be learning to deal with his sudden death.

210 Severing her attachment to him, she seemed now to be taking charge and relying on herself more. Firstly, through her spirit possession, she was able to address a personal emotional crisis and a political issue of national importance that affected her. While not directly retaliating against the government’s handling of her beloved relative’s gravesite, her newly found confidence in herself through the

Buddhist civility and meditation practice might possibly help her one day to take a moral stance even at the national level. That is, while the girl will re-enter normal society after her practice of intensive insight meditation and keeping of the eight precepts at Panditarama, she is now better equipped with both an ethical sensibility and critical judgment skills because the path to insight at the meditation center was accompanied at every step by a conscience of the benevolence embodied in the Buddha. This benevolence was mainly exemplified by the main teachers at the center, the monk teachers who are considered to be sons of the Buddha.

Some Texts as Devotions to the Buddha

The format of Panditarama Buddhist civility texts also motivates a conscience of the Buddha. They do not merely list as lay versions of the texts often do, but glorify the Buddha’s qualities as an astounding, virtuous example of a human being, who, through his own efforts at moral perfection, concentration, and insight meditation, gained full enlightenment and liberation from the round of rebirths. Lay texts, both governmental and non-governmentally affiliated, tend to

211 list the Buddha’s virtues as definitions in Burmese of the Pali texts. At

Panditarama, the Buddha’s virtues are elaborated as a devotional chant with alternating Pali and Burmese. Every evening, just prior to insight meditation and just after loving-kindness meditation, the following “Pathibatti Pujanakara” (“The

Practice of Paying Homage”) is chanted by all of the five hundred students in the

Dhamma Hall:

Buddho so bhagava bodhaya dhammam deseti.

So bhagava-The Lord Buddha, our genuine source of reliance, buddho-having realized the Four Noble Truths in detail, bodhaya-wanting all of us living beings to realize as he did, dhammam-the Four Noble Truths, deseti-set forth His compassion and wisdom and expounded. (Tan bhagavantan-To that Lord Buddha, ahan-I, a pupil of the Lord Buddha, vandami-respectfully put my hands together, and with high regard, pay homage to Him.)

Danto so bhagava damathaya dhammam deseti.

So bhagava-The Lord Buddha, our genuine source of reliance, danto-already tamed and emancipated from all mental defilements in action, speech, and thought, dhamathaya-wanting all of us living beings to also be tamed and emancipated from all mental defilements, deseti-set forth His compassion and wisdom and expounded, dhammam-the correct teachings that tame. (Tan bhagavantan-To that Lord Buddha, ahan-I, a pupil of the Lord Buddha, vandami-respectfully put my hands together, and with high regard, pay homage to Him.)

Santo so bhagava samathaya dhammam deseti.

So bhagava-The Lord Buddha, our genuine source of reliance, santo-freed of lust and other such restlessness and so, stilled, calmed, and pacified, samathaya-wanting all of us living beings to also be still, calm, and peaceful, deseti-set forth His compassion and wisdom and expounded, dhammam-the correct teachings that instill peace. (Tan bhagavantan-To that Lord Buddha, ahan-I, a pupil of the Lord Buddha, vandami-respectfully put my hands together, and with high regard, pay homage to Him.)

Tinno so bhagava taranaya dhammam deseti.

212

So bhagava-The Lord Buddha, our genuine source of reliance, tinno-who have successfully swam across the sea that is samsara, the round of rebirths, and already reached the safe bank (Nibbana), taranaya-wanting all of us living beings to also reach that bank to safety, deseti-set forth His compassion and wisdom and expounded, dhammam- the correct teachings that help one to successfully reach that bank. (Tan bhagavantan-To that Lord Buddha, ahan-I, a pupil of the Lord Buddha, vandami-respectfully put my hands together, and with high regard, pay homage to Him.)

Parinibbuto so bhagava parinibbanaya dhammam seseti.

So bhagava-The Lord Buddha, our genuine source of reliance, parinibbuto-freed of all mental defilements and already calmed in everyway, parinibbanaya-wanting all of us living beings to also be freed of all mental defilements and calmed in everyway, deseti-set forth His compassion and wisdom and expounded, dhammam-the correct teachings that calm all mental defilements. (Tan bhagavantan-To that Lord Buddha, ahan-I, a pupil of the Lord Buddha, vandami-respectfully put my hands together, and with high regard, pay homage to Him.)6

In using translations of the virtues of the Buddha in such detail and in the form of a chant, the monks at Panditarama try to expand the repertoire of popular usage in Burma of the Pali version of the Buddha’s virtues. Usually, ordinary lay persons and the pupils at the government-administered monastic schools use the

Pali version only and as a protective chant whose meaning they do not know.

The virtues are now used in the Panditarama texts as powerful reminders to oneself that one’s own moral intentions and efforts may lead to extraordinarily beneficial results, as they did for the Buddha. In extolling these qualities of the

Buddha and not just listing them for their theoretical value, the monks also veer from lay teachers at non-governmental organizations as they try to inspire practice directly through the text. With the homage on their lips, the students bow down to the golden bronze image of the Buddha deep in meditation which is

213 at the front of the Dhamma Hall. With this reminder of the Buddha’s efforts at meditation and all the positive benefits he reaped, they begin one of their two formal twenty minute insight meditation sessions (i.e., in the sitting posture) of the day.

Humanization of the Buddha’s Path

A conscience of the Buddha is able to guide the practice of insight at the

Buddhist civility course in Paditarama because the monks help to embody the

Buddha’s benevolence, and the texts and devotional rituals remind one of the

Buddha’s extraordinary virtues. Also, lay guests invited by the monk abbot come to remind students of the admirable yet fallible quality of the path the monks try to follow. That is, some of the lay guest speakers come to tell the students that the virtues of monks are not some result of a magical overnight success, but a training and an ethic that is hard work. And being that virtue is work that has much room for trial, error, and change, it is a path accessible to all human beings who are willing to try, including children. For instance, U Thukha, the famous director and writer whose films and short stories have many Buddhist themes and admirable monk characters, had been invited to come give a talk to the students during the afternoon “guest speaker” session in the Dhamma Hall. He first humbled himself and publicly recognized the boys and girls for their hard work as novices and nuns already practicing mindfulness. The eighty-five year old man addressed himself as “ta bei daw” (pupil) in the same way that other lay

214 persons would address any monks or nuns. He told them that he was not here

to preach to them as they probably knew more than he about the Buddha’s path.

He said that he simply wanted to be in their presence because he sensed that

they had trained themselves to be very “yin kyey” (“civil”) in accordance with the

Buddha’s teachings. Likening himself to animals and the boys and girls to the

wise, he said,

Remember Myauk Pho Lein, the monkey who was very famous about ten years ago for dancing so well in Jataka plays? Well, even Shwe Man Tin Maung (famous Jataka play actor of the century) could not compete with him. The monkey learned to dance so well. And then there is my little parrot at home. Whenever the vendor selling steamed peas and nan bread passes outside chanting ‘peas and bread, nice and warm,’ he would also repeat, ‘peas and bread, nice and warm.’ So, I figured, if animals can be taught to imitate people so easily, then why wouldn’t I become more civilized being with you?

After praising the boys and the girls for their work as such, U Thukha introduced

them to the real life actor who played the mindful, non-violent monk in his well-

known movie, “One Meal that a Monk Does Not Get to Eat.” He tried to

humanize the role of monks in this manner, emphasizing both how difficult it is for

anyone to seriously take on the monk role and how at the same time anyone can,

if they are mindful and try to seriously live as a monk. “And here is the real life

actor who played that monk,” he told the boys and girls. The young actor, in his

late twenties, early thirties was now dressed in ordinary lay clothes, had hair, and

looked handsome. The actor also addressed himself as “ta bei daw” (pupil) and said to the novices and young nuns that prior to acting in the film, he was not a

trained actor and that he also didn’t know as well as he thought he did the work

215 of moral conduct in which monks tried to immerse themselves each day. He said,

I had told U Thukha, ‘Uncle, I can’t act.’ But he got me to act in the film by saying, ‘It’s all right. You have good looks.’ So, I thought, well that part is true, so I gave in. [The students laughed.] But it was very difficult to act as a monk. In the part when the husband and wife found out that their ruby was missing and became suspicious that the monk had taken it, they hit him. So, I was sitting with my alms bowl getting hit. I was quite scared. Several times, I didn’t know what to do. So, the alms bowl was swept away onto the floor several times. We had to have several takes. Only later, I found that I had to be simply aware of my fear and be mindful of the alms bowl in my hands. Then, the alms bowl did not fly away. I am grateful that without knowing very much before I have been able to help teach the Dhamma to viewers. I have learned to respect and venerate the moral training of monks very much.

By recounting his experiences as such as an actor trying to act as a monk who was working hard to be mindful while living and moving among ordinary people,

U Thukha’s actor reminded the students of the admirable, yet very human, trial and error nature of the Buddha’s path. He said he had to have “several takes.”

The students’ attention was glued to the actor as he told this tale. He gave them the impression that being mindful was a path accessible to them also even as they lived and moved in the world.

The monk who was introducing U Thukha, U Nyana, assured the students that lay persons too can practice and spread the Dhamma well in society. He said to U Thukha, “We are thankful to you that even in your old age, you are spreading the Dhamma. Most importantly, you know how to value practices that bring forth peace. I am certain that you have been sowing the seeds of Dhamma for our country.”

216 Closing Ceremony—Taking Home a Conscience of the Buddha

The students’ speeches to their teachers and peers at the closing

ceremony, their interviews with me, and the questionnaires they filled out for me

indicated that many would carry home with them both the ethics and critical

insight they learned to develop with the Buddha as the ideal at the meditation

center. One young nun gave the following speech that demonstrated how much

she appreciated learning a sense of self-responsibility and critical judgment skills in everything, including moral affairs:

[With hands clasped and using the respectful title of ‘phaya’ or ‘Buddha’ to address her teachers and her peers at the end of almost every sentence]

At 3 o’clock in the morning, we woke up everyday to pay homage to the Buddha, to meditate, then to eat our breakfast. At home at this time, we nuns and novices would still have been dreaming, not thinking at all about waking up. [The other young nuns and novices giggled upon hearing this] Here, we received the opportunity to do much kusala [good merits]. We learned to take care of ourselves. Often, we are used to being taken care of at home. Our mothers and fathers would love to say that one day we would become a great teacher or engineer. They would never want to brag one day that they have raised a fool, a delinquent or criminal. So, even parents’ love for one is not unconditional. For this reason, we must learn to take care of ourselves. I have learned to appreciate insight meditation…If all the novices and young nuns here would continue with their inner development [through insight meditation practice], then we can help our country to be a wonderful place.

A novice told everyone through his speech how much he wanted lay persons to

also try to live by the ethics and mindfulness practice exemplified by monks and

fully embodied by the Buddha. He said that the very reason he came to learn

Buddhism at the center was to become as “tame” as his lay teacher who also learned at the center’s Buddhist civility program many years back:

217 I had asked my teacher, `How do you walk without making any sounds? How do you sit and stand so mindfully? How did you learn?’ She had told me that long ago when she was young she went to Panditarama’s Buddhist civility class. She encouraged me to sign up as a novice. So, I did. When I arrived to register, a monk kindly asked me, `Pupil, what is your name? How old are you?’

He said that he had not been disappointed by what he had been able to learn.

In an interview with me, a female student emphasized how the monks at

Panditarama helped to embody a conscience of the Buddha by saying that she had learned to venerated monks since she had come to learn here: “Near where

I live, I tend to come across just regular monks. Since I have been here, I have gained more respect for monks because the monks here dress tidily and they follow the vinaya well. Also, unlike some teachers at school, they do not sometimes try to waste time. They work hard in teaching us at all times.”

In the questionnaires that students filled out for me, too, an overwhelming majority indicated that they appreciated both a development of a conscience of

the Buddha and the practice of insight. The top two activities they enjoyed most

while at the center’s Buddhist civility program were the practice of insight

meditation and learning about the Buddha’s astounding deeds in his many lives

during the story hour. Of the 90 students that I got to randomly survey across

age and levels, 47 indicated that the activity they enjoyed the most in the

program was insight meditation. Thirty-one said that the activity they enjoyed the

most was learning about the Buddha’s lives during the “Buddha’s History” hour

[instead of calling it “story” hour, they called it “history” hour, indicating that they

fully had faith in the truth value of these tales.] Twenty liked learning the texts

the best, 8 enjoyed the devotional rituals best, paying homage to the Buddha, 8

218 enjoyed miscellaneous activities such as watching T.V. or learning poems the best, 7 said that they liked everything, 5 liked going on the alms round the best, 4 enjoyed the chores of cleaning, and 5 enjoyed listening to the monk abbot’s

Dhamma talks the best. Of the 90 total, only 5 students put down meditation as something they liked the least and none put down learning about the Buddha’s lives as something they liked the least. As to the reasons why they liked insight meditation, most said that they liked it because it helped one to gain a “clarity” of mind, the skill of “critical judgment,” and the “ability to control” mental states and moral intentions. Those who said that they enjoyed learning about the Buddha’s lives the best said that it is because they gained much “bahuthuta” (experiences worth learning).

Thus, it seems that at the “Buddhist Civility” course at Panditarama, the monk teachers had the highest of expectations of students in terms of moral and mental development, but also provided the students with the pedagogical support and means to walk the path of the Buddha at every step. The support included self-example, modeling, dialogue, and rituals that evoked egalitarianism and a sense of community.

Insight Meditation at Panditarama: “A Chariot to Nibbana with a Conscience as its Back Rest”

It is with the conscience of the Buddha developed at the Buddhist civility course at Panditarama that many of the students from the program continue to meditate at Panditarama on other school holidays. Unlike at the International

219 Meditation Center that is headed by lay teachers where there is a ten day limit, at

Panditarama, the meditation retreats are year-round and on-going (except during

February when there is the Buddhist Civility program). One can enter any time and exit any time, although a minimum of a month to two months is encouraged.

Here, ethics is intertwined with the practice. Self-responsibility is encouraged in noting objects of meditation. That is, unlike at the lay-led meditation centers, the monk-teachers do not coach one through noting a certain order of body parts and do not tell one to observe sensation alone. They say that in vipassana, which means “penetrating an object [of meditation] thoroughly,” one notes with the right aim and effort whatever is most prominent at any given moment. These objects may include physical sensations, but also feelings, consciousness, and other mental phenomena.

Unlike the lay teachers who do not usually refer to texts from the Pali canon for instructions on meditation, the meditation monk teachers refer constantly to the Maha Satipatthana Sutta or “The Great Discourse on the

Foundations of Mindfulness.” Citing this discourse, the monks point out that there are four foundations of mindfulness in the practice of vipassana meditation, namely, mindfulness of the material body and its earth, water, fire, and air elements; mindfulness of vedana (feelings of pain, pleasure, or indifference); mindfulness of consciousness, bare awareness of objects, which is always

“colored” by and arise with mental factors such as greed, hatred/anger, delusion, faith, and wisdom; and mindfulness of other mental objects which include the

Five Hindrances in meditation, i.e, sense-desire, ill will, sloth and torpor,

220 restlessness and remorse, and doubt, the Five Aggregates of Clinging, and the twelve sense-bases. In Four Foundations of Mindfulness, an exposition that is based on the Great Discourse and subsequent commentaries, including one written by his own teacher, the Mahasi Sayadaw, Sayadawgyi U Pandita’s colleague, Sayadaw U Silananda, wrote that vipassana is very distinct from samatha or concentration meditation. In vipassana, one is not to concentrate on one object at the expense of all else. He wrote:

When it is said that you contemplate on the origination and the arising or on the dissolution and the falling, you are not attached to or clinging to anything. This means vipassana is not samatha. In this sutta [The Great Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness], every object of meditation is directed toward vipassana, although in the early stages, it can be samatha meditation. When you practice vipassana meditation, you keep your awareness on the breath and also everything that comes to you through the six sense doors at the present moment. When you see something, you become aware of it. When you hear something, you do the same. When you think of something or there are distractions or stray thoughts, you become aware of them too. This is the difference between samatha and vipassana meditation. In the former you keep your awareness only on the meditation object and ignore everything else. In the latter, you keep your awareness on everything that is present, everything that comes to you at the present moment. [Venerable U Silananda 1990:38]

So, the “vipassana” meditation that is taught by the meditation monks involves mindfulness of all that arises inside of oneself, not only physical, but also mental phenomena. Because one is responsible for cultivating awareness of the objects that arise, self-realization, trial and error, and the ethics of patience and non- greed that go with these are encouraged by the monks. Also, under their instruction, self-reflection on one’s own conduct, motives, and mental states becomes possible. Because one is able to become aware of mental factors such

221 as lobha (greed), dosa (hate/anger), and moha (delusion) while they arise, one

can also curb them. In contrast to the lay teachers whose stated primary goal is

to help meditators achieve insight, monks make explicit the ethical aim of insight

meditation. The Mahasi Sayadaw himself wrote in his book, Practical Insight

Meditation, “The aim of this practice and its greatest benefit is release from greed, hatred, and delusion, which are the roots of all evil and suffering

(Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw 1979:10).”

Because their view of the goal of insight meditation is not only insight but

also a maturity of moral development, the monk teachers try to foster self-

responsibility in meditators. They efface themselves as much as possible while

instructing meditators. The monk-teacher listens to one’s reports of noting and

observations daily. Yet, they do not insert themselves in one’s meditation other

than to motivate and guide one to note more accurately. As in the teaching of

the Buddhist civility course, they use their own self-effacement to encourage pupils to eliminate self-indulgence or egocentrism. When Sayadawgyi U Pandita teaches insight meditation, for example, he reminds students to cultivate a conscience of the Buddha and self-effacements like those practiced by the

Buddha. He asks them to focus on the “Four Protections” for a few minutes before every sitting meditation. They include the following: (1) reflect on the virtues or qualities of the Buddha, (2) send loving-kindness to all living beings, (3) reflect on the impermanent, filthy, and rotten nature of all of one’s thirty-two body parts [including, hair, nail etc.] in order to protect against sensual desires, and

(4) reflect on the impermanent nature of one’s life, the inevitability and

222 unpredictability of death in order to remind one of the urgency of the practice.

This advice to focus on the “Four Protections” prior to insight meditation is also found in the Mahasi Sayadaw’s writings on meditation instruction:

First, devote yourself to the Buddha by sincerely appreciating his nine chief qualities in this way: Truly the Buddha is holy, fully enlightened, perfect in knowledge and conduct, a welfarer, world-knower, the incomparable leader of men to be tamed, teacher of gods and mankind, the awakened and exalted one. Second, reflect upon all sentient beings as the receivers of your loving-kindness and identify yourself with all sentient beings without distinction, thus: May I be free from enmity, disease and grief… As I am, so also may my parents, preceptors, teachers, intimates, indifferent and inimical beings be free from enmity, disease and grief. May they be released from suffering. Third, reflect upon the repulsive nature of the body to assist you in diminishing the unwholesome attachment that so many people have for the body. Dwell upon some of its impurities, such as stomach, intestines, phlegm, pus, blood. Ponder these impurities so that the absurd fondness of the body may be eliminated. The fourth protection for your psychological benefit is to reflect on the phenomenon of ever-approaching death. Buddhist teachings stress that life is uncertain, but death is certain, life is precarious, but death is sure. Life has death as its goal. There is birth, disease, suffering, old age, and eventual death. These are all aspects of the process of existence. [Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw:10,11]

By encouraging meditators to focus on the “Four Protections” prior to insight meditation, the monk teachers make clear that the path to insight is one guided by an ethical conscience.

Unlike in the lay meditation centers where the path to insight is likened to a surgical “operation” whereby illusions are slowly dissected away, insight meditation is presented by Sayadawgyi as a “cultivation” of positive mental states. Whereas the lay meditation teachers prefer analogies from science, examples from contemporary life, and only use stories of the Buddha’s life when

223 they are devoid of gods and demons and miracle, Sayadawgyi uses many

analogies and stories from the Buddha’s many lives, especially those that include

gods, demons, and miracles. Even in his collection of talks to a white American

audience, one finds these examples. He likened insight meditation to a “chariot”

traveling toward nibbana and told the story of the Buddha motivating a deva or

god to practice insight meditation. Using the story, he also emphasized that this

chariot, this vehicle to nibbana requires the moral “conscience” of the driver:

Finding the Buddha in Jeta Grove, the deva approached him and asked for help. The Buddha, impressed by this commitment to practice, gave the following instructions: O deva, straight is the path you have trodden. It will lead you to that safe haven, free from fear, which is your goal. You shall ride in a chariot that is perfectly silent. Its two wheels are mental and physical effort. Conscience is its back rest. Mindfulness is the armor that surrounds this chariot, and right view is the charioteer. Anyone, woman or man, possessing such a chariot and driving it well, shall have no doubt of reaching nibbana (Venerable U Pandita 1993: 215).

Through such as analogies and stories, Sayadawgyi establishes that an ethical

conscience is integral to the development of insight; that the Buddha realized the

ultimate path to liberation as even the gods must ask him; that the path is non-

discriminatory and universal and anyone can “drive” on it if they were well

equipped with the proper vehicle and drove “well.”

Unlike the students at the lay Buddhist organizations who sometimes

meditated under lay teachers at the International Meditation Center and said that

their ability to act ethically often depended on the quality of their social environment outside of class, Sayadawgyi’s students often spoke of how they were able to control their unwholesome mental states as these occurred

224 wherever in their daily lives. One of his students from the Buddhist Civility program who later came back to continue meditating under him during other school holidays was a twenty-one year old young woman. She told me that since the development of her meditation practice at Panditarama, she no longer put people down for being different. For example, she said that she works with many

Christians and Muslims at her work and they are often curious about what she does at the meditation center, but she does not try to dissuade them from their beliefs such as a belief in a creator or sacrifices. She also said that she had become an independent thinker, relying on her own judgments developed from insight meditation, even in times of panic. For example, she said that she recently got into a terrible car accident and cut herself quite badly on the face above the eyes:

In the beginning [at the scene of the accident], I was a bit worried not only about my physical well being but also about my looks. But as soon as I noticed this worry, I noted it. The worry subsided and I was able to wait patiently as help arrived. At that moment of noting, I realized that this was what I could rely on--my remembrance of the Buddha and my own ability to be mindful. Even my parents cannot be relied upon in such times of need. The Buddha and the Dhamma—that’s all one can rely upon. And the Buddha is not a blesser or creator so you have to ultimately rely upon your ability to follow what he taught. But his path is universal. It does not discriminate. Anyone can practice it. That is why there is no need for me to defend Buddhism to my Christian or Muslim friends.

Sarkisyanz criticized many Western scholars on Buddhism, such as Weber, who saw in the Buddhist path to salvation selfishness. He summed up the integral nature of a social ethics and the development of insight in Theravada Buddhism in the following excerpt:

225 Theravada Buddhism has not accepted doctrines of vicarious salvation or salvation by Grace. Its quest is concerned with the self-salvation of what is otherwise called the individual. Therefore his Buddhist quest has been again and again described as selfish, ignoring its basic presupposition: the non-reality of the self. This Buddhist self-salvation can only be accomplished through realization that the self is illusion; the allegedly egoistic Nirvana can only be sought through insight into the illusory nature of the ego! This insight is to result from a consciousness of one’s identity with all beings, animals and men, friends and enemies, the virtuous and the vicious. To this consciousness of universal identity the quest for deliverance contains the wish for the happiness of all beings, the awakening of Universal Love [Mettabhavana]…Because universal compassion is considered a stage in self-salvation, Max Weber saw fit to conclude that an emotion of human love could not spring from Buddhism. But he overlooked that if Nirvana is a state beyond universal compassion, it is only because by reaching it the consciousness of individuality has been overcome (Sarkisyanz:38-39).

As I have shown, the meditation monk teachers at Panditarama have tried to teach insight meditation so that an ethical and moral awareness guides every step and every day of one’s practice, even as one lives and moves in the world.

Attempting their best to follow the Buddha’s example, the monks at Panditarama tries to help the young students become motivated to practice insight meditation, benefit from it, and become morally self-responsible in the process.

While during adult meditation retreats the meditators practice more fulltime, the same practices as in the “Buddhist Civility” course apply: much self- responsibility in meditation, devotional rituals, mindfulness practice in daily activities, including eating, and a development of a conscience of the Buddha through story-telling of his astounding deeds and virtues, guide daily meditation practice. The following section is an account of my own one-month long meditation practice at Panditarama just prior to the beginning of the “Buddhist

Civility” course.

226

Meditating Ethnographer

At the start, I had a very difficult time meditating at Panditarama for I was

not initially socialized in its “Buddhist Civility “ course. Having grown up in the

United States since a young age, I was also not socialized with a consciousness

or conscience of the Buddha to the same extent as people in Burma. Also, as an academician, I found it difficult to surrender the tools of critical thinking to which I was accustomed. It was only through my cultivation of faith in the Buddha, the monks, and the path to insight they represented that I ended up persevering in the meditation retreat and began to see inside myself new knowledge. By the end of the one month, I was beginning to see in my body the three principles upon which Buddhism is founded, ie.,1) dukkha, that suffering exists everywhere and 2) anicca, that all things are subject to change, and 3) anatta, that there is no self. During sitting meditation, I became aware of pain at many places in my body, from throbbing aches on the back of my shoulders to gnawing pressure on my lower back, to incredibly sharp, prickly pains in my legs. I saw that I had no control over the pain. I could not wish it to occur. I could not wish it to disappear.

I saw that the pain came and went by itself. At any given area, pain was not one opaque fixture but always made up of fine points that sometimes decreased or increased. If I focused on one area of pain long enough with the right aim and effort and noted it, I found that pain was elemental rather than personal. Pain was not so much “me.” “I” was not in pain. Rather, pain was a dynamic of heat,

227 cold, wind, fluidity, hardness, and softness. Whenever I realized these elements as I noted pain, I found my patience grew. I could bear the pain. I was able to refocus on the primary object of my meditation, the rising and falling movements of my abdomen which are a natural outcome of my breathing. Hence, by the end of my month-long participation in the meditation retreat, I was beginning to learn the nature of suffering and how to live with it. If nothing else, I was able to bear physical pain better, with more patience.

There were about fifty others meditating at the same time with me at the center. Like me, some were robed as nuns or monks. Others wore the traditional uniform of yogis or meditators, a white top, a brown tube-like garment, much like a sarong, and a brown shawl. With uniforms, all of us were effacing our identities to a certain extent.

We were also engaging in activities that departed from our daily routines.

We awoke at three o’clock in the morning, did loving-kindness meditation in the

Dhamma Hall, did some sitting meditation, had breakfast, then alternated between sitting and walking meditation for the rest of the day until nine o’clock at night, with the exception of one more mealtime before noon, a break for bath, and a brief reporting session with the monk instructor.

As for myself, I felt far from my daily life as “researcher” to which I was becoming accustomed. For many months I had been more of an outsider observing the ways Buddhist culture was transmitted in Burma, but I was now becoming a full-fledged participant. Previously, I would awake around eight in

228 the morning at my aunt’s and uncle’s house, flag down a taxi at the street corner,

and go off to interview officials, educators, and other informants at the Ministry of

Religion, schools, monasteries, or the Teachers’ College. Some days, I went to

observe religious ceremonies, both private and state-ran, or attended Dhamma

talks (Buddhist sermons) for adults and Buddhist civility classes for young

people. In all cases, I took notes. On returning to my aunt’s and uncle’s home in

the evenings, I reflected on my data. I planned my future research activities.

Yet, now, participating in a month-long meditation retreat, I found I had no choice but to surrender all the methods of reflection on which I had been trained.

First, silence rather than talk was considered noble during the retreat. As

such, interviews were not an option for me. In order to maximize concentration

and the ability to be mindful of one’s mind and body, meditators for the most part

kept a strict silence twenty-four hours a day. Even meals were eaten in silence.

Yet, no one really walked around enforcing these rules, so while most meditators

followed them, some did not. The only “interviews” were those conducted for a

few minutes daily by the meditation monk teacher with each of the meditators.

These interviews strictly pertained to the meditators’ practice of meditation, their

progress, and difficulties. In turn, the monk teacher provided guidance regarding

the practice. Hence, unlike the student and researcher that I was used to being, I

found I could not be inquisitive through talk.

Second, we were discouraged from any form of reading and writing during

the retreat, as these activities, too, may disrupt one’s mindfulness. My habit of recording with words my experiences was now interrupted.

229 ‘Practice, practice, practice,’ was the message. Yet, as I observed the many Burmese meditators around me, I felt for the first time in my life wild and recalcitrant. I was skeptical of the practice. They had faith. I wanted to ask questions. They had none. While my eyes wandered in hopes of making eye contacts, they steadfastly looked downward just a few feet ahead of themselves as instructed by the monk teacher. While I moved at a usual pace, they did everything in very slow motion as instructed for they were trying hard to maintain mindfulness of the slightest movements of their bodies. As I was watching one particular young woman put on her slippers after emerging from the Dhamma

Hall, I found she had divided this process into multiple steps so that she could note each movement: seeing the slippers, walking toward the slippers, reaching for the slippers, picking up the slippers, placing them on the floor, lifting the right foot, placing the right foot in the slippers, lifting the left foot, placing the left foot in the slippers …All together, she took nearly five minutes. And indeed, the monk- teacher had told us, “In meditation, it is ideal to imitate the movements of those who are ill and infirm.” As hard as I tried to do the same, this sort of meekness was completely foreign to the pace to which my body was used. Moreover, I felt a great desire to talk and to write about my observations of other meditators.

In my daily “interviews” with the monk-teacher, I became more and more aware of an arrogance I did not know I had. Prior to my entering the meditation retreat, I had been treated much like a celebrity in Burmese society. Relatives, government officials, educators, and other associates publically praised my credentials. Yet, the monk teacher treated me as he would any other meditator.

230 He saw past my history, education, and background and expected from me no

more, no less than what he expected from all meditators, that is, mindfulness of

my mind and body’s moment to moment states. Yet, I found I was not able to be

mindful even as I turned the door knob to enter his quarters for the interview. “I

can tell just how mindful a yogi is from the way they turn the door knob and enter

the room. Your noting mind is not in your movements,” he often reprimanded

me. Under his tutelage, I noticed for the first time my arrogance as I was

confronted with something in which I was not only incompetent, but also saw no

simple ways to improve myself. I felt a sense of humiliation and anger initially. I

was finding that all my years of education were useless in developing me as a

meditator. I found that, in fact, many of the Burmese meditators, some without even as much as a high school education were more skilled than me in being mindful. I saw them do everything slowly and with moment to moment awareness. As I waited for my turn each day, I also got to hear many of the

Burmese meditators’ interviews with the monk teacher. Many of their reports resembled in tone that of the following Burmese meditator who had just entered her practice:

Sayadaw, I noted, `rising.’ There was stiffness, pressure. I noted `falling.’ There was looseness. I was able to note rising and falling successively as such for several times. Then, there was great pain (she pointed toward her right knee)—very, very sharp pain. I almost couldn’t stand it. It was such a great pain (the sudden scowl on her face seemed to relive that pain). Yet, I noted that pain. I kept noting, ‘pain, pain, pain…’ At first, the pain became sharper. Yet, later, it decreased…

Like many other Burmese meditators, this meditator’s report was visceral,

sequential, and spontaneous. The monk-teacher was satisfied with her progress

231 and said simply, “Good, continue practicing like that.” Through meditation, she was able to see clearly the different constituents that made up her physicall body, for instance, wind and earth elements, i.e., stiffness, pressure, in the rising and falling movement of her abdomen.

With such first-hand knowledge that they were but a collection of mental

(e.g., the noting mind) and physical phenomena manifest as elements one would find in anything else in nature, many Burmese meditators seemed to feel liberated. I saw tears of joy on many of their faces as they expressed gratitude toward the monk-teacher. One young woman said to the monk-teacher just before returning home, “Such knowledge would never have been possible while being at home. I am so grateful to you.” I, on the other hand, kept seeing a “self” image, that is, a whole “me” walking, breathing, turning door knobs, eating, sitting, standing, and going through the motions. Not being mindful of the sensations in my body well enough, my reports were unclear and often summarized instead of sequential. So, several times the monk teacher asked,

“After you noted ‘pain, pain,’ what did you see?” Each time, I was unable to give an answer, because my body did not remember. In my actual meditation, my mind had drifted to other objects, mainly thoughts, and I had not bothered to note this wandering. So, very often, I found myself conjecturing what I might have experienced while noting “pain, pain.” Yet, he could see through my deception.

He replied, “Don’t tell me what you think you saw. Tell me what you actually saw. When your meditation becomes clearer, so will your reports.” While almost all the Burmese meditators could report by heart because they remembered

232 viscerally what they observed in meditation, I always had to rely on my written

notes. “You write way too much. It is not necessary if you are more mindful.

You have to remember that you are not doing that kind of learning here (referring to my university education),” the monk teacher told me. Instead of feeling liberated, I felt wild, untamed, and “self” imposing. It was this inability to see past my “self” that compounded my realization that I was arrogant.

The monk-teacher further pointed out my arrogance by stating that all I needed to do to be more mindful was to “make an effort.” He was letting me know that being mindful or not mindful was more a choice than an innate skill. I also began to realize that I was choosing to observe everyone else but myself.

Through his unrelenting treatment of me as any other meditator whose sole job

was to be mindful, I did eventually begin to make more effort to concentrate when

noting the rising and falling of my abdomen and whatever else arose or

predominated in my mind and body as I sat, walked, bathed, and ate.

Finally, through repeated efforts, I started to feel in the middle of my

second week that I was making progress. So did the monk teacher. My report

was the following:

I noted rising. There was stiffness and coolness. I noted falling. There was looseness. I was able to note rising and falling for several minutes. Then, I heard something. So, I noted, ‘hearing, hearing.’ I returned to noting rising and falling. After several more minutes of noting rising and falling, I felt a sharp pain on my upper left shoulder. I noted it. It decreased a bit. But then I started to feel pain on my back, too. I noted that pain. It was difficult to bear. My mind wandered. I noted, ‘wandering.’ Then, I was able to return to the throbbing pain on my back to note it. I noted a long time. I wanted it to go away. I saw that the pain intensified. ‘Very painful, very painful,’ I noted. After a while, with the pain, I started to feel lonely. I noted, ‘feel lonely, lonely.’ I felt like the pain was inevitable and there was very little I could do about it.

233

The monk-teacher responded, “Very good. With this one sitting, you have

developed a great deal.”

In my third week, as I noted pain, I noticed that sometimes it was dull and

sometimes sharp, it sometimes increased or decreased, and sometimes it rolled

like air, gave off heat, then cooled so that at times I actually felt relief. Being able

to note pain, I was able to bear it more patiently. I was able to return to noting

my primary object, the rising and falling of my abdomen more easily. By my last

week, I was able to sit longer, about an hour straight, doing sitting meditation. I

even begun to feel piti (joy) in being mindful. Several times, I saw lights and

noted “seeing, seeing.” Once, I got chills, and so I noted, “cold, cold.”

By the end of my month-long insight meditation retreat, I felt I had gained much new knowledge from adopting an approach to learning that previously was quite foreign to me. Instead of looking outside of myself for answers, I had looked inside of me. Instead of beginning with a hypothesis, I was able to generalize truths from specifics that I saw in my body. Instead of relying on writing and talking to reflect on one’s findings, I relied on silence and concentration. Instead of relying on my book knowledge, I saw myself as a practitioner like any other practitioner who would learn from doing. Instead of expecting a lineal progression of activities, I learned to place didactic value in repetition, trial, and error. Lastly, but most importantly, instead of questioning, criticizing, or rebelling against the teacher’s premises at every turn, I also learned to cultivate some faith in his instructions.

234 Furthermore, I was finding that the knowledge gained from this newly found approached to learning was beneficial in a very moral sense. The monk teacher, in his impersonal, self-effacing tone, had encouraged me to be not self- indulgent in the practice. Moreover, sending loving-kindness to living beings four times daily (morning, evening, and at the meals), paying homage to the Buddha with a remembrance of his virtues twice daily, and hearing Dhamma talks every evening about the Buddha’s self-less deeds, helped motivate me to curb my self- indulgences. So, it helped me to make some wise choices in life, choices, however simple, that would not harm myself and others. For instance, having realized better the nature of pain, I was now more reluctant than ever to rely on drugs and medication to relieve symptoms such as headaches or muscle aches.

I note and am mindful of the pain instead. I now have a bit more forbearance for pain in general, both physical and emotional. I am more capable of being patient and am less likely to react out of greed and anger. Such results were quite impossible to have achieved without the meekness and humility that was required of me in insight meditation.

The most liberating and assuring aspect of the knowledge gained through my insight meditation retreat is that ultimately the moral component was not top down. The goodness of patience and forbearance were never extolled by the monk throughout the meditation retreat although in our devotion rituals and

Dhamma talks, we were reminded of the Buddha’s benevolence. The monk- teacher simply kept guiding me to meditate with the right effort and aim. While in other contexts I had read and heard widely about the three fundamental

235 principles of Buddhism, i.e., that suffering exists everywhere, all things change, and there is no self, my theoretical knowledge was never able to transform me in the way my practice of meditation now had. Because now I was beginning to realize these truths of Buddhism within my mind and body, I knew intuitively the value of forbearance and patience. In having begun to successfully tame myself with patience, I felt contented, liberated, and empowered.

Role of the Meditation Monk Teachers Is Significant for One’s Enlightenment

My ability to know the fundamentals of Buddhism in such a practical sense was largely due to the meditation monk teacher’s example. He was not a teacher in the sense of someone delivering a lecture or expounding a principle.

He was more like a technical expert who led by example. My monk teacher,

Kyaukten Sayadaw (a senior assistant to the head monk, Sayadaw U Pandita,) had had many years of insight meditation experience. At the retreat, while guiding meditators like myself, he constantly practiced mindfulness. He made little or no eye contact with any of the meditators. He was not interested in us personally. He did not reflect much on our histories but only on our practice at hand. When we reported, he sat on his seat with his eyes cast downward or closed and he seemed to be noting that he was hearing. When he gave advice, too, his comments were brief, concise, and focused on getting us to be mindful.

Moreover, with his shaved head and saffron colored robes, he, too, had effaced many of his personal, identity markers. Following strictly his vinaya or disciplines for monks, he tended not to intervene too much in our practice of meditation in

236 the Dhamma Hall or elsewhere in the meditation center. Once in a while he

walked by in the Dhamma Hall to help guide our walking meditation. Yet, mostly,

he kept to himself and his own practice. The Dhamma interview was the only

forum in which he usually permitted himself to give instructions. Hence, his presence throughout my meditation retreat was barely perceptible. This helped me to be self-responsible in my efforts to be mindful. I felt free to experiment

genuinely with my body as my laboratory.

Most importantly, his impersonal, focused, and self-effacing style helped

me to see and shed many forms of arrogance in myself that I had never before known I had. He was not at all impressed with my credentials. Sensing my arrogance, he consciously and strategically chose not to easily praise me, even in my meditation practice. Once, a well-meaning lay assistant to the monks, who once was a former head nurse at Rangoon General Hospital, told the monk- teacher in front of me, “Sayadaw, you know, this young woman is very capable.

She is intelligent. I have asked her about her practice. From one day to the next, she seems to be progressing quickly.” The monk teacher quietly reprimanded her, “Dagamagyi (lay supporter), one should not say such things.” Through being tamed himself, the monk teacher helped me to tame myself.

In the several years following my return to the United States, I continued

to meditate in month-long retreats in San Jose, California with meditation monks

from the same Mahasi tradition, including Kyaukten Sayadaw’s teacher, the

monk abbot, Sayadawgyi U Pandita. Throughout each retreat, I have been able to curb my wandering mind and my sense of “self” importance. In becoming

237 tamed as such, I have been able to focus on objects of my meditation. I have

developed a shame and a fear of losing a sense of freedom that comes with

being mindful. For instance, now, I do not wish to hear others’ chatter while I am

meditating. I also do not want to talk. I keep my eyes downward and am less

curious about what others are doing or not doing.

Meditating under the guidance of Sayadaw U Pandita and the other monk

teachers’ tutelage in San Jose, I gained much confidence in my ability to affect

positive change in my immediate world. Firstly, my faith in the power of moral

intentions grew because I could see more clearly causes and effects between

mental and physical phenomena. In meditation, I saw that when I harbored

negative thoughts and negligently did not note these, negative consequences occurred in my body. When I harbored positive thoughts, positive consequences occurred in my body. For instance, when I worried and was not mindful enough to note it, sometimes pain surged and was overwhelming. When I was greedy and wanted the pain to go away, the pain intensified. Only when I noted my greed as “Want to make pain go away,” “Want to make pain go away,” then my greed or urgency subsided. As my greed disappeared, I could note the pain more objectively. I saw that it was made up of smaller constituents, elements of

nature. As I observed these elements and noted their sensations with patience, I felt peace. There was softness and lightness in the rising and falling of my abdomen. In my most recent meditation retreat, just this past summer, I also

realized that one mental state can cause subsequent mental states to occur. I

238 am better able to see clearly mental phenomena now. As my thoughts wandered toward my job status this summer (for I had been laid off) and I failed to note

“wandering,” I saw that I started to worry about my job. When I failed to note

“worry,” “worry,” I found that worry transformed into jealousy, jealousy toward my co-workers who luckily did not get picked randomly like myself to be laid-off during the budget cuts. Finally, I noted “jealousy,” “jealousy,” and the jealousy subsided. A desire to be glad for my co-workers arose/ I noted this desire. I felt at peace. I noted that feeling. By the end of my retreat, with mainly positive thoughts now, I found I actually got my job back. Hence, my faith in the power of my moral intentions to affect change developed greatly. In other words, I came to accept first-hand the law of cause and effect in Buddhism, namely the law of kamma, that negative moral intentions cause negative consequences and positive moral intentions cause positive consequences.

Through meditation, I also began to realize the illusion of “self” and images. In my mind’s eye as I meditated, I saw an image of my physical body distort and fracture, much like in a Picasso painting. For instance, an image of my head was below my neck and one of my arms was missing. I noted “seeing,”

“seeing.” I felt there was nothing essential about my “self.” I noted that feeling.

In later meditations, as I noted the gentle, spinning air that was the rising and falling movement of my abdomen, I saw an image of my self spinning in it and breaking down in pieces. I noted “seeing,” “seeing.” I felt I had no self, that it was an illusion. I noted that feeling. I felt free. I noted, “Feel free,” “Feel free.”

My mind wandered to other people I had seen recently, such as a fellow

239 meditator or the monk teacher. Their images, too, one by one, spun in my mind’s eye and broke down into fragments. I felt there was no one figure I could truly rely upon. They too were without essence. I noted that feeling. I felt free. I noted, “Feel free,” “Feel free.” As such, by the end of my last meditation retreat, I felt genuinely that the only thing in the world I could rely upon with predictable consequences were, not my self image, not friends, not teachers, not bosses, not parents, but my moral intentions. I felt very empowered with this knowledge.

ENDNOTES

1(Almost all are included in) Buddha Yin Kye Hmu Achey Pyu Thin Ten, Akyii Ten Thin Gan Saa (Advanced Level Course on Buddhist Civility), Panditarama Shwetaungone Meditation Center, Rangoon, Burma, 1994, Pp. 24-30.

(Also, English translations are found in) Sao Htun Hmat Win, The Initiation of Novicehood and the Ordination Of Monkhood in the Burmese Buddhist Culture, Department of Religious Affairs, Rangoon, Burma, 1986, Pp. 142-150.

2Buddha Yin Kye Hmu Achey Pyu Thin Ten, Alet Ten Thin Gan Saa (Intermediate Level Course on Foundations of Buddhist Civility), Panditarama Shwetaungone Meditation Center, Rangoon, Burma, 1994, Pp. 75-77.

3Buddha Yin Kye Hmu Achey Pyu Thin Ten, Ange Ten Thin Gan Saa, Beginning Level Course on Foundations of Buddhist Civility)Panditarama Shwetaungone Meditation Center, Rangoon, Burma, 1994, p. 45.

4Buddha Yin Kye Hmu Achey Pyu Thin Ten, Ange Ten Thin Gan Saa (Beginning Level Course on Foundations of Buddhist Civility), Panditarama Shwetaungone Meditation Center, Rangoon, Burma, 1994, p. 16.

5Buddha Yin Kye Hmu Achey Pyu Thin Ten, Alet Ten Thin Gan Saa (Intermediate Level Course on Foundations of Buddhist Civility), Panditarama Shwetaungone Meditation Center, Rangoon, Burma, 1994, Pp. 92.

240 6Buddha Yin Kye hUm Achey Pyu Thin Ten, Phaya Shikho (Course on Foundations of Buddhist Civility, Paying Homage to the Buddha), Panditarama Shwetaungone Meditation Center, Rangoon, Burma, 1994, Pp. 3-6.

241 Conclusion

Insight Meditation as Sublimation and Political Praxis: The Example of Aung San Suu Kyi

An aspect of Spiro’s study on Buddhism and society in Burma that I have

found useful is his effort to understand some commonalities in the human

condition by studying how difficult it is for a people to overcome certain basic

human fallibilities even as the ultimate goal of their religion asks them to do so.

Like Obeyesekere, I believe that anthropology will become too methodologically

flawed and have little to offer in terms of human understanding if our primary goal

is to present the “native’s point of view (Obeyesekere 1990).” Not only do the limited linguistic abilities of most of us prevent us from fully knowing the native’s

point of view, but our understanding of the “native’s point of view” is also

inevitably colored by our own cultural and theoretical lenses which, being

unaware, we often do not make explicit (Obeyesekere 1990:219). Since the

1960s, there has been a positive thrust in anthropology to go beyond purely thick

ethnographic description to a more comparative approach in which elements that

on the surface appear “exotic” in our studies can become springboards to

unsettle the theoretical and cultural assumptions we hold in the West (Marcus and Fisher 1986). However, as Obeyesekere cautioned, any initiation of the task of thick description without an explicit nomological framework, a “metatheory,” runs the danger of making oneself believe that our theoretical, cultural, and personal biases do not already spill into our fieldwork from the start. Without

242 such an explicit nomological framework, too, anthropologists will have little to learn from each other’s works. He stated,

[The anthropologist] cannot produce a viable dialogue with his colleagues…one seems to lack a common language to carry on a debate and one is left with the puzzlement that purely ad hoc interpretation seems to have taken over…You need concepts that could effect a bridge across cultures; megaconcepts can do this, but metatheories can fulfill this task more effectively…they can combine thick description with nomological adequacy and deductive order, and simultaneously facilitate communication with colleagues. [Obeyesekere 1990:257-258]

What I appreciate about Spiro’s study is his explicitness from the start in stating his theoretical perspective on religion and society:

In my view, which informed this entire research project, religious ideas are not so much used to think about, or classify, with, as to live by. That is, they are used to provide hopes, to satisfy wishes, to resolve conflict, to cope with tragedy, to rationalize failure, to find meaning in suffering. In short, religious ideas deal with the very guts of life, not with its bland surface. This instrumental conception of ideas (a conception which is derived from Dewey, Freud, and Weber) is abundantly supported, I believe, by the vicissitudes of the Buddhist ideas examined in the following chapters. [Spiro:6]

Like Spiro, I, too, am inclined to believe that much of religious experience occur at an unconscious, existential level, in the way persons try to negotiate the sufferings and joys of their own daily lives with their knowledge of religious ideas.

However, as a Buddhist of Burmese origin who is also an academician in the

West, I also believe that a conscious, systematic rendering of Buddhist ideas and symbols and how these resonate with the rest of society (and even humanity), is not the monopoly of the Western theorist. Through my research work, I have realized that a thick description into how different sectors of Burmese Buddhist society try to consciously transmit Buddhism is also needed. This helps the

243 ethnographer to revise epistemological biases of his or her own theoretical

perspective.

For instance, in Spiro’s analysis, he concluded that most Burmese had in

fact departed with their religion’s salvation goal of nibbana for more worldly

“Buddhist” goals as their human nature, like any one else’s in the world, could not

cope with the stringent, otherworldly path to nibbana. Greatly influenced by

Freudian psychoanalysis, he wrote that their primal human drives, including a

libido shaped mostly in child rearing (Spiro: 72, 133-135), is often thwarted by the

highest ideals of their religion, and hence, continually the Burmese Buddhist

individual initiates a more indulging “Buddhist” goal to try to maintain a more or

less healthy self. However, a look into the educational settings for teaching

Buddhism in contemporary Burma, including the meditation centers that were

already beginning to thrive in the 1960s when Spiro did his field work, indicate

that at least some Buddhist educators see Buddhism also as a theory and a

practice of confronting and slowly taming, rather than thwarting or barring, the

most basic human desires, including an attachment to pleasures. That is, while

almost all Buddhist educators uniformly call their Buddhist lessons paths to “yin-

kye-hmu” or civility, their means for going about this task of “civilizing” the

populace are different and with varying outcomes. While punitive approaches

are abundant in some, the more nurturing approaches are abundant in others.

The meditation monk teachers in my study, for the most part, saw real or

“de ghe” Buddhist “civility” as one in which the person is gradually and consciously “de-civilized,” i.e., freed from attachment to all things that civilization

244 normally takes for granted, including family, nation, and the self. This de-

civilization comes from within and while a conscience of the Buddha motivates

this process of gradual realization of the non-existence of conceptual categories,

including the self, the person has to see it to believe it through the practice of

insight meditation. When motivated by a conscience of the Buddha’s

benevolence, this process of gradual realization of no-self also motivates moral

action in the world for one has become less self-ish through the process. And it

is this self-less mode of being in the world that the meditation monk teachers at

Panditarama call genuine “civility.”

As Spiro’s anthropological monograph, Buddhism and Society: A Great

Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes, has been the last anthropological

monograph and a primary authority on Buddhism and Burma in the last thirty years, I find I must address its psychoanalytic methodology. In stating that most

Burmese could not aspire to the ideal of nibbana in Buddhism, often settled for

more self-indulgent paths, and sometimes suffered neuroses a result of this

incredible gulf between ideal and reality, Spiro assumed that the conflict between

the free will of the “id” and the highly critical nature of the “superego” is a given in

the Burmese Buddhist setting. I conclude that it is not. The extent to which it

may be a reality at all there does depend on how Buddhism is differentially

inculcated. As Obeyesekere has written, the idea that an “ego” must reign at the end of a “cure” in psychoanalysis is little different from the Western obsession, derived from the enlightenment, of the primacy of a reflective consciousness:

Freud destroyed the primacy of consciousness, only to reassert in his later years, the primacy of the ego. On the one hand he asserted that the ego

245 is a helpless creature serving three masters, but he also took for granted in almost Cartesian fashion its indubitablity. [Obeyesekere 1990:353]

If anything, my study indicates that a study of Theravada Buddhist societies and

how they attempt to transmit Buddhism in modernity can help to revise

psychoanalytic theory in the West. Both can deal with a form of “de-civilization”

process of the individual. In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud had written

how “civilization” with its rules and restrictions are the prime cause of suffering as

it sets ideals toward which people’s primal realities cannot acclimate (Freud

1930). However, for him the solution was psychoanalysis whereby the “id” or

one’s primal urges can first be exhumed and then indulged to the extent that a more rational “ego” or concept of self can reign and the suffering person can reach a mid-way resolution between primal urges and an idealized self, the

“superego.” For the meditation monk teachers in my study, it is not

psychoanalysis but a gradual nurturing into the practice of insight meditation that is the solution to one’s problems of “civilization.” Through insight meditation that is motivated by a conscience of the Buddha, one’s primal urges, such as greed, anger, hate, and pride can be recognized, judged, and then transformed into more positive mental states. That is because these urges are not seen as extensions of the “self” (which is realized as non-existent) but as conditioned phenomena in and of themselves. Perhaps psychoanalytic theory can articulate with the practice of insight meditation. However, the subject of my thesis has been that insight meditation, the Theravada Buddhist “de-civilization” process, can help to revise the bases of Western psychoanalytic theory.

246 Firstly, as Obeyesekere maintained, and I have shown with my analyses

of stories, ritual, and art in the various Buddhist educational settings and in larger

Burma, the conscience of the Buddha does not entail the same connotations of

guilt and need for self-punishment that the image of the God and Father entail in

Judeo-Christian cultures. Also, as I observed in the meditation centers with

monk teachers, this conscience of the Buddha is very much alive in much

learning and practice of meditation in Burma. I show, in fact, that the kind of

existential crisis that Spiro perceived, the great emotional conflict between the

needs of individuals attached to worldly pleasures and the otherworldly striving of

their salvation goals, is less an issue among Burmese Buddhists than what Spiro

observed and what I initially assumed. So, while it is important to explicitly recognize our nomothetic framework upon entering field work and doing our ethnography, it is also equally important to pay attention to how the people we study also, debate, theorize, and formulate similar concerns about the human condition. In turn, we can let our theories be revised and become more rigorous by their work. Klima’s, Funeral Casino, a study of how Buddhist meditations on

death helped to sensitize rather than desensitize Thai people’s knowledge of the

pain and suffering of others is one example of how an ethnographer’s theoretical

pre-conceptions became transformed (Klima 2002). That is, the ethnographer,

coming from a Western humanist perspective, believed from the outset that

images of death were mere sensationalist tools of the state and commercial

interests. However, through a thick description of Buddhist meditations on death,

he was also able to show how such meditation, in recalling rather than forgetting

247 the ugliness of death, became one essence of the political resistance against the state that wants to forget ordinary citizens who died for its causes. Klima’s thesis was a study on how various Thai people theorized and systematically practiced to address the same concerns he had, that is death. Through his study of the discursive practices of Thai people, he was able to revise some of the bases of his own theoretical slant. I believe that my thesis on a variety of forms of

Buddhist education in Burma, including insight meditation practice, have also been a step in that direction.

Famous Shwegyin Monks in Burma: Ethical Conscience and Insight Development for the Masses as Political Praxis

As I have shown in the previous chapter, insight meditation as taught by the meditation monk teachers of Panditarama Mediation center is a form of personal sublimation, a process of transforming negative or unwholesome mental states into more positive and wholesome ones. It is also a form of political praxis. Sayadawgyi U Pandita comes from a line of monks of the Shwegyin sect whose quite strict following of the vinaya and an emphasis on combining pariyatti

(literary learning of Buddhist texts) with pathibatti (meditation practice) have become a political praxis in and of itself. In his biography and also in an interview with me, the Sayadawgyi said that he is most influenced by the late

Mahasi Sayadaw and the Mahagandayone Sayadaw (Ashin Zanakabivamsa).

These monks have been famous in Burma for making mindfulness practice or insight meditation relevant in the modern era for the common lay person living

248 and moving in the world. The Mahasi Sayadaw, Sayadaw U Pandita’s direct teacher, was the first monk to write a compendium for ordinary lay persons of how to practice insight meditation. The Mahaghandayone Sayadaw of

Amarapura near Mandalay de-emphasized rote learning of Buddhist texts for a more dialogic approach. He also tried to promote a visceral knowledge of the

Buddha’s teachings among lay persons. His stated philosophy in the transmission of Buddhism was that learning the Tripitaka, the Pali canon, was insufficient in the practice of the Buddha’s teachings, for the Tripitaka was not necessarily the same thing as Buddhist civility, which entailed ethical endeavors.

He said, “Many monks in Burma today are advanced in their knowledge of the

Tipitaka. Yet, many are not civil. They have little interest in ethical development or helping communities. Many monks from my old village went over to Mandalay for an education (in the Tripitaka), but they came back copying urban slangs and they do not want to teach character education to the children (Ashin

Zanakabivamsa 1979:65-66).” Moreover, he placed much of the responsibility of

Buddhist civility on governments’ own ethics: “Leaders in the government must know right from wrong and then they must fix the wrongs. If not, for certain, the so-called Tripitaka scholars will be quite blind.” He did his part by writing many intermediate texts of the Pali cannon for young novices, lay adults, and lay children, such as the Practice of Abhidhamma, which tried to explain the metaphysics of mental factors through many stories from the Buddha’s lives as well as analogies from contemporary life. As his successor monk abbot said,

“The Mahagandayone Sayadaw wrote Buddhist texts with the goal that people

249 can understand and practice, even without the need of a teacher.” The Practice

of Abhidamma was a text used by Sayadaw U Pandita to teach the advanced

students in his Buddhist civility course. Other prose, stories, poems, and verses

of both the Mahasi Sayadaw and the Mahaghandayone Sayadaw imbue the

Buddhist civility textbooks compiled by Sayadaw U Pandita and his monk disciples to use to teach to the students at their “Buddhist Civility” program.

Moreover, he tried to continue the strict adherence to the vinaya code that both monks promoted among their monk disciples. This was a practice that assured a monk-teacher/lay-pupil relationship that is imbued with much respect on the part

of lay pupils. In other words, the Mahagandayone Sayadaw and the Mahasi

Sayadaw, and now, their disciple, Sayadaw U Pandita, through their own political

praxis, have helped to prevent in modern Burma, the Cartesian dualism, the

Western Orientalist efforts to dismantle Buddhist faith from the path to critical

insight.

Meditation Monk Teachers’ Influence on Today’s Opposition Movement in Burma: Personal and Political Transformations

U Nu’s government in the 50s enlisted the help of the Mahagandayone

Sayadaw in coming up with Buddhist civility curricula for beginning, intermediate,

and advanced lay students. Today, the opposition leader in Burma, Aung San

Suu Kyi, has associated with Sayadaw U Pandita for her own spiritual

development and to form a vision of an ethical society that she would like to see

realized in Burma. This vision she has of an ethical society is very similar to the

250 Ashokan ideals pronounced by many kings of Burma’s past and U Nu as well.

She articulated these Ashokan ideals in modern form in the following speech to the students at the Buddhist Civility Course in Panditarama in the year following my own research at the meditation center:

I come to you, novices and young nuns, because I feel that being older, I have some experiences to share. But you have much more virtues than me. You are very lucky. I didn’t get such a chance [to participate in a Buddhist civility course] when I was young. There were no such courses. When I was young, I just learned from my mother’s and father’s family traditions. For example, my grandmother did tell us Jataka tales nightly. These tales contain the Mangala Blessings. However, I didn’t’ know exactly all the Mangala Blessings, what they are explicitly, until now when I am much older. And only in my forties did I begin to know how to meditate. Six years ago when I was under house arrest, I had a chance to meet Sayadawgyi. He influenced me to meditate. Buddhism has a lot to do with social welfare. Some people think that if one does not kill, the benefits will only be reaped in a future life. That is not true. Anyone knows, for instance that when one wants to harm another, even one’s face, for instance looks angry right away. For someone like me who lives in the world and is responsible for the welfare of many others--for anyone really who lives and moves in the world---it is especially important to meditate. Before embarking on a line of action, instead of thinking only of the outcome, one must first be able to ask oneself, ‘Is it the right thing to do?’ Buddhism is not about parading ceremonies. It is about what you are inside. When I first meditated, it seemed so difficult. But then, I remembered a text that I had once read by Ashin Zanakabivamsa [the Mahaghandayone Sayadaw]. He had said that when meditating, even when it first seems so trying, one must keep on going in order to develop. So, I continued and found that I liked meditating. I admire King Ashoka who is to this day respected all over the world. For example, H.G. Wells wrote that he was the best king ever…When he converted to Buddhism, he changed from ruling by the sword to ruling with the Dhamma only. Conquering oneself as such is more difficult than conquering others. I know from my experience. Political leaders can kill, hurt, and ‘conquer’ others. However, if they have no control over themselves, if they have not conquered themselves, then they can be of no service to anyone. In actuality, if one lives blamelessly and stands by the truth, no one can hurt one. They may hurt or destroy your body but they cannot interfere with your mind. It is easy for leaders to feel comfortable in their positions and begin to abuse their power. But

251 Ashoka checked himself. From experience, I know that as someone who is alone a lot that one can thing all kinds of things. So, it is important to meditate.

According to her talk above, Aung San Suu Kyi felt that insight meditation and

Buddhist civility courses such as Sayadaw U Pandita’s were indispensable in

building an ethical polity and society in present day Burma. Indirectly criticizing

the current government, the military junta, who tend not to meditate but try to

atone their unwholesome deeds through outwardly shows of piety, such as

building of temples and parading the Buddha’s tooth relics, she said that

Buddhism is about “inner development” and not the “parading of ceremonies.”

Referring to Ashokan ideals of non-violent leadership, she said that self-conquest

in meditation can translate to self-less working for the welfare and benefit of

one’s society. In speaking to the young students at the Buddhist Civility course

at Panditarama, she was sowing the seeds of a Buddhist social welfare state she

had envisioned for Burma.

Aung San Suu Kyi stepped into the political scene in Burma rather unexpectedly in the late 1980s. She had returned to Burma from England where

she had been living for most of her adult life with a husband and children. She

was returning in the 1980s to Burma to take care of her ailing mother, the widow

of the martyred leader of Burma’s independence struggle against Britain, General

Aung San. Aung San had been assassinated by a jealous faction early in the

post-independence era and did not get to rule Burma. Yet, through the

generations, heroic legends of Aung San had lived on in Burma in lore and in

textbooks. He is also on Burma’s kyat bills, his statues are ubiquitous at

252 monastic colleges, schools, parks, and universities alike, and his photos are

hung in government offices to this day. He is considered to be the “father” of the

post-colonial Burmese nation. Aung San Suu Kyi was only four years old when

he died. She left for India and then England for her studies since here late teens.

So, when she returned to Burma, she had no intentions of becoming a political leader. It was only to take care of her ailing mother. But during the pro-

democracy struggles that reached their zenith in 1988 and the military’s violent

efforts to stifle them, Aung San Suu Kyi came to the fore as an opposition voice.

She was quickly considered an opposition leader by the masses as the popularity

of her father’s legacy continued to reign.

Since her entry into the national politics of Burma, however, Aung San

Suu Kyi has had to undergo many hardships, including house arrest for long

periods of time, the loss and torture of many of her colleagues and followers,

separation from her sons and husband in England [her husband later died of

cancer and she could not freely go to England for his funeral], and constant

propaganda by the government to slander her character. Through all this time,

she has held steadfast to her non-violent Ashokan ideals and found in insight

meditation a way to transform negative thoughts and feelings into what she

interprets as morally positive actions for Burmese society.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s political and personal transformations in Burma,

could, in many ways be interpreted as a manifestation of the Theravada Buddhist

sublimation of primal needs. She returned to Burma where the father she hardly

knows is absent but idealized. She had returned to take care of her mother. She

253 is disturbed by the new, self-appointed “fathers” of the country, the generals of

the current military junta, who pay honor to her father in name but don’t seem to rule in his spirit. She is without a comfortable father figure. She finds in the

meditation monk teachers, those who, through self-example, embody the ethics

and insightfulness of the Buddha, a kind of “second” father, one that helps her to

transform spiritually for the welfare of others.

In Burmese culture and Buddhist cultures in general, there is a motif of

children’s’ uncomfortable relationship with their fathers. Hence, parricides are

pervasive in historical chronicles about kings and in stories of the Buddha’s past

lives too (Obeyesekere 1990: 143-163). Yet, there is also in Buddhist cultures

and in Burma in particular, an overwhelming motif of the opposite, children’s

quite comfortable relationship with the mother and descriptions of the

overwhelming metta or loving-kindness of the mother for her child. So, in the

telling and re-telling of the Jataka tale, Suvannasamma, in Burmese society, in

the government textbooks, at Panditarama meditation center, in television plays, and on temple frescoes, it is the overwhelming love with which Suvannasamma’s mother speaks of him that brings him back to life. Her loving and truthful words make him alive again after he has been killed by a poisoned arrow. The father’s asseveration of his love for Suvannasamma is hardly ever made explicit. It is the mother’s asseveration that is important. In U Thuka’s popular, autobiographical

short stories and films about his relationship with his mother, the father figure is

always absent [he never knew his father in real life]. While there is much guilt

and remorse toward his treatment of his mother in these tales, he is usually

254 ultimately comforted by her undying love for him. So, in his film, “The Heart that

Talks,” a young man kills his mother because he has been told that his mother’s heart will save the life of his sweetheart wife. As he carries his mother’s beating heart in his hands for his wife, he accidentally stumbles and drops the heart. The heart talks to him, “Son, are you okay? Are you hurt?” He realizes that he has done a grave mistake in killing his mother but only because he understood that his mother’s love for him is unconditional and endless. With U Thukha’s influence, there is now a Mothers’ Day celebrated in Burma. Yet, I do not know of a Fathers’ Day there. While I was in Burma, a best selling pop music album was one in which all the songs were dedicated by the singer to his mother. They were all about a mother’s love and the album’s name was “Mother.” Yet, there were no comparable albums for fathers. Finally, in the legend of the origin of the

Shwedagon Pagoda of Rangoon, it is a goddess who used to be in a past life the mother of the two traveling merchants from Burma who stopped their carts out of maternal love and encouraged them to pay homage to the Buddha. As

Obeyesekere wrote of Buddhist literary cultures, much of the uncomfortable relationship between child and father becomes remorse that is transformed into an ethically motivating and beneficial relationship with the Buddha (Obeyeskere

1990:148-156).” The Buddha is like a “surrogate parent (Obeyeskere

1990:155).” Because he has in him both the stereotypically maternal qualities of compassion and unconditional love and the stereotypically paternal qualities of impersonal detachment from one and encouragement of self-responsibility, the relationship with the Buddha is fulfilling in all ways. It can motivate positive

255 personal transformations. Obeyesekere explained that in pre-Buddhist legends of parricide in the Indian region, there is no remorse mentioned (Obeyeskere

1990:148). Only in the Buddhist stories, parricide takes on an ethical import, there is remorse, and the remorse is transformed into a positive, ethical action.

So, in the Ajatasattu Jataka tale in which Prince Ajatasattu killed his father, King

Bimbasara, for the throne, Ajatasattu began to have much remorse upon realizing at the birth of his own son that his father probably also loved him. It is upon his meeting with the Buddha that Ajatasattu began to transform his remorse into an ethical path of insight meditation. Ajatasattu gained a conscience of the

Buddha as he lived in the time of the Buddha and met him. Aung San Suu Kyi had a conscience of the Buddha because she associated with monks who helped to instill this conscience in her through stories of his life and through their own self-example.

The top members of the current military government, however, have had little opportunities to build a conscience of the Buddha within themselves.

Becoming comfortable with power, they have become uncomfortable with the

“father” figure of General Aung San whom their predecessor, U Nu, had once honored as a Buddhist martyr (Sarkisyanz:218-219). So, the only “father” figure that they had truly adopted had been their leader and the direct mentor of many of them, the dictator and leader of the 1961 military coup, General U Ne Win.

Being a military dictator, his style of management had been one that is quite punishing rather than nurturing. In this milieu, Aung San Suu Kyi whom the military junta abhors is seen by them as an illegitimate child. In the office of the

256 deputy minister of the Department of the Propagation and Perpetuation of the

Sasana (the Buddhist Religion), for example, both the photographs of Aung San

and U Ne Win hung on the wall. However, the deputy minister told me the

following about Aung San Suu Kyi:

We would love to kick her out of our country. It is only in honor of her father that we keep her here as we do. You see, it is like trying to hit a dog with a stone. We are afraid that we might miss the dog and hit the Buddha instead [he was pointing at Aung San’s photo when he said, ‘the Buddha’].

Given that it is the punishing father, Ne Win, with whom they have a more comfortable relationship, their pedagogical style is also one that is very punitive, forceful, and xenophobic. One day, the deputy minister ordered me not to have

anything to do with Aung San Suu Kyi:

One thing I must say, though, is don’t go see her. She is giving her usual, frivolous speeches from her fence. There is only trouble for people who go to listen to her. You are not like her, you see. You are civilized. She has no civility. Bred in foreign lands, she has adopted all their culture. She is slave to their wants. But we Burmese don’t need to imitate Westerners. Lately, they’ve been trying to market their beers here. I wrote a newspaper column the other day saying that we Burmese have our own brand of beer, the toddy palm beer that we make. We don’t need Budweiser or Heineken.

Because of their need for control that has never been sublimated, their

philosophy and practice of education is authoritarian in general. That is why neither a conscience of the Buddha nor critical thinking skills have flourished in their educational settings, even when Buddhism is a key subject taught.

At the Panditarama meditation center, however, where monk-teachers teach both Buddhist civility courses and insight meditation practice, the unique blending of pariyatti (literary learning of Buddhist texts) with pathibatti

257 (mindfulness practice and insight meditation) has been able to produce critical

subjectivities with a conscience of the Buddha as its base. These monks help to

refine the “conscience collective” of the Buddha in the larger society, i.e, a

shared consciousness of the Buddha’s magical aura and a conscience of his

exemplary deeds, into a practical, ethical “conscience” of the individual. Already,

young students at Panditarama were saying that the insights they have gained

there can help toward building the welfare of their nation. In this way, a political praxis, and not only a sublimation of negative mental states, has been achieved at the monks’ meditation center. Recently, Matthews stated that political opposition to the current military junta who consider themselves to be ‘Buddhist’

will certainly continue to be in the form of Buddhism (Mathews 1990:423). My

research confirms this.

The following, Sayadaw U Pandita’s confrontation with some lady officials

of the Ministry of Religion is just one superficial example of such resistance:

One afternoon, two high level woman officials from the Ministry of Religion who had been escorting me to the government assisted monastic schools for impoverished children, decided to pay a visit to the Sayadaw’s meditation center. They came to take part in the Kathina ceremony (offering of robes to monks at the end of the rainy season). As I was with them, they decided to bring me along. It was the first time that I met the Sayadaw. The two women entered his quarters with me to introduce me to him as a `Ph.D. student from America who had come to the Ministry of Religion to write a dissertation about the government assisted monastic schools programs.’ Immediately, Sayadaw U Pandita criticized their parading of me and the ill-intention of their monastic schools programs. `One can have all the Ph.D.’s in the world and still not know genuine education,’ he stated. Referring to me, he said, `If you want to see education that is truly beneficial, come here and observe the Buddhist civility course in the summer.’ Then, referring to the two lady officials, he asked, `Dagamagyi’s [lay devotees], why do you come here so often to participate in this or that ceremony, yet never bother to meditate?’ `We are so busy, Sayadaw. We only do what our higher ups tell us,’ one of

258 them replied humbly, although she was a high official at the Ministry of Religion. He replied, `How shameful it is that you work at the Ministry of Religion, specifically at the Department of the Progagation of the Sasana (the Buddhist Religion), and yet none of you officials meditate. Don’t you ask your superiors about the irony of that?’ The Sayadaw was insinuating what most Burmese citizens already knew yet only bother to say in private, i.e., that although the government officials show outwardly manifestations of being Buddhist, they seemed rather hypocritical morally as they ruled the country with a steadfast and tyrannical grip. The two officials made some apologies for their lack of meditation practice and then departed.

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265

Appendix

Mangala Poem in Pali Verses with English Translations* *Also see (Venerable U Silananda 2000)

and

Mangala Poem in Burmese Verses Translated Into English

The 38 Blessings

1. Asevana ca balanam Not to associate with fools,

2. Panditanan ca sevana To associate with the wise,

3. Puja ca pujaneyyanam, To honor those who are worthy of honor, Etam mangala muttamam. This is the highest blessing.

Burmese Poem If they are fools, you stay away, don’t rely on them okay?

To the wise, you go take refuge, stay near them and learn from them.

Pay respect to the Triple Gems, parents and teachers, too, okay?

These are three ways to relate that give peace now and always.

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

266

4. Patirupadesavaso ca, To live in a suitable place,

5. Pubbe ca katapunnata, To have done meritorious deeds in the past, 6. Attasammapanidhi ca, And to keep one’s mind and body in a Etam mangala proper way,

muttamam. This is the highest blessing.

Burmese Poem To make merits, learn, and make a living, in a good place always stay.

Be sure to do good deeds now for wholesome results in future days.

Take care of your mind and body, do not let them deviate

These are three ways to live that give prosperity now and always

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

267

7, 8. Bahusaccan ca sippan To be well-learned, to be skilled in a craft, ca, To know well the codes of moral 9. Vinayo ca susikkhito, conduct,

10. Subhasita ca ya vaca, To speak wholesomely,

Etam Mangala This is the highest blessing.

muttamam.

Burmese Poem Know all there is that’s important to know.

Be someone who’s well-learned.

For making a living and building a household, learn a craft and know it well.

Know the codes of conduct of a human being,

And learn to speak sweetly, politely, and truthfully.

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

268

11, 12. Matapitu upatthanam, Taking care of one’s mother, taking care of one’s father, 13. Puttadarassa Supporting one’s spouse and sangaho, child,

14. Anakula ca kammanta Working blamelessly and with clarity, Etam mangala This is the highest blessing. muttamam.

Burmese Poem For the endless ways parents have cared for you, repay them the best you can, too.

When you have your own family,

Support your spouse and child dutifully, too.

Don’t neglect work, work blamelessly and with clarity.

These are three ways of taking care that give comfort now and always.

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

269

15, 16. Danan ca Giving generously, being wholesome in dhammacariya ca, action, speech, and thought,

17. Natakanan ca sangaho, Supporting one’s relatives,

18. Anavajjani kammani, Making a living that is blameless, Etam mangala This is the highest blessing. muttamam.

Burmese Poem May you give with a generous heart.

Be wholesome in what you say, do, and think

Don’t neglect your relatives,

But support them as part of your duty to kin.

Pure deeds for the good of others, may you carry them out now and always.

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

270

19. Ariti virati papa Avoiding unwholesome acts through the mind, body, and speech. 20. Maccapana ca sanyamo Abstaining from intoxicating drinks 21. Appamado ca dhammesu and drugs,

Etam mangala muttamam. Not being forgetful or negligent to do good deeds,

This is the highest blessing.

Burmese Poem Being mindful, avoid unwholesome deeds even before they begin.

When you’re tempted to do bad things, don’t violate, restrain yourself especially.

Don’t imbibe drugs and alcohol.

These will certainly cause you to err.

May you not forget Dhamma and be mindful of all you do, say, and hear.

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

271

22, 23. Garavo ca nivato ca, Paying respect to those who are worthy of honor, being humble, 24, 25. Santuthi ca katannuta, Being contented, knowing 26. Kalena gratitude,

Dhammassavanam, Listening to the Dhamma on suitable occasions, Etam mangala muttamam. This is the highest blessing.

Burmese Poem Pay respect to those older and higher in status than one.

Don’t be arrogant, conceited, or boastful.

Always stay grounded with humility.

Don’t indulge in wants and cravings.

Be contented with what you’ve got.

Regularly listen to Dhamma talks as Dhamma benefits you now and always.

Only then, you have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

272

27, 28. Khanti ca sovacassata, Being patient, being easily disciplined, 29. Samananan ca Meeting with those monks who have dassanam, calmed their mental defilements,

30. Kalena Discussing the Dhamma on suitable occasions, Dhammasakaccha, This is the highest blessing. Etam mangala muttamam.

Burmese Poem To be free from enmity

as you live and move everyday,

control your mind, cultivate patience.

When being admonished about causes and effects,

be someone who’s easily disciplined.

Meet with monks who are noble,

Discuss the Dhamma, the correct, true nature of things,

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

273

31, 32. Tapo ca brahmacariyan Practice that consumes unwholesome states, ca, abstaining from sexual relations,

33. Ariyasaccana Realizing the Four Noble Truths, dassanam,

34. Nibbana-sacchikiriya Reaching Nibbana,

ca, This is the highest blessing. Etam mangala muttamam.

Burmese Poem Don’t indulge in worldly pleasures

Keeping in mind the Sublime Mental States

(loving kindness, compassion, joy for others and equanimity), abstain from sexual relations,

Exert effort to realize the Four Noble Truths.

You can be freed from suffering, be enlightened, and approach Nibbana.

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessings for the world, hey!

274

35. Phutthassa When encountering the ways of the mundane world, lokadhammehi,

36. Cittam yassa na Not letting the mind tremble,

kampati, Not being sorrowful, not craving, 37, 38. Asokam virajam

khemam, This is the highest blessing. Etam mangala muttamam.

Burmese Poem A natural part of life are happiness and misery.

Everyone always encounter these.

The good and the bad, they come in pairs, and are always taking turns you see.

When you’re confronted with the good and the bad, don’t tremble, don’t quiver, keep your mind still.

Control your sorrow and craving, too.

Then, you will attain peace.

Only then, we have Buddhism’s blessing for the world, hey!

275

Burmese Poem continued Those who practice and wear the thirty-eight

Gain in prosperity, well-ness, and grace

Are free from danger and loved by many

They will be peaceful in mind and body

And will succeed in all they think, do, and say

That’s why, wear them, don them, the flowers of Mangala, hey!

276