Teacher of the Moon

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TeacherTeacher ofof thethe MoonMoon

The Life and Times of Sitagu Sayadaw

Draft 02/18/17

Bhikkhu Cintita Dinsmore Dr. Tin Nyunt 4 Teacher of the Moon

THIS IS AN UNAUTHORIZED DRAFT. PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE AT THIS TIME.

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A few years ago, Bhikkhu Cintita, sitting at his computer in Austin, Texas, happened to be on-line browsing new threads in a Theravada Buddhist forum, one of which concerned engaged Buddhism in the Theravada tradition and began with a posted question something like, “Why is there no engaged Buddhist of the stature of the Dalai Lama or of Thich Nhat Hanh in Theravada Bud- dhism?” Within minutes, someone posted, simply, “Sitagu Sayadaw!” Within minutes of this, the original poster asked, “Who is that?” And with that this book was conceived. Bhikkhu Cintita, given the name Cintita and ordained as a bhikkhu by the very same Sitagu Sayadaw in Myanmar in 2009, already wondered that his preceptor could be so renowned for his social work and activism as well as a great public speaker in Myanmar and throughout much of Asia, yet largely unknown among Buddhists in the West. Seeing this forum exchange the thought came into his head, “It is about time that there should be a biography of 6 Teacher of the Moon

Sitagu Sayadaw in English!” The idea was kicked around in Austin for some months when Dr. Tin Nyunt, a devout retired Burmese-born physician living in Austin, took it to heart. He began an effort to translate biographi- cal material that already existed in the Burmese language into a rough English that Bhikkhu Cintita could then turn into beautiful English prose adapted to the Western reader. Dr. Nyunt solicited the help of other Burmese translators living in America and began meticulous research into the life of Sitagu Sayadaw. At the same time Bhikkhu Cintita, while selecting and rewriting and reorga- nizing the material presented to him, was able to interview and solicit supplementary tales and data from a number of people close to Sitagu Sayadaw. The result of this effort is this draft to be presented to Sitagu Sayadaw on the occasion of his eightieth birthday in March of 2017, that he might read, require changes and additions and ulti- mately approve what will be a formally published work, that the West might know of this remarkable monk. Although Bhikkhu Cintita and Dr. Tin Nyunt are represented as primary authors, this effort is a product of many people, whom we wish properly to acknowledge and to thank here. Forgive us for anyone we have left anyone out. First, we have relied heavily on these previously published works on Sitagu Sayadaw:

• A Brief Biography of Dr. Ashin Nyanissara, ေေ၀၊ မင္းယု၊ယု၊ းယု၊၊ သီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရ ၏ ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရဆရာေေတာေယု၊ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ္ဥာဏိႆရင္းယု၊ယု၊ဥာဏိႆရရဘ၀ေစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ္အက်ဥ္း၊ဥက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရ ဥ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ ယု၊ း၊ အစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာယု၊စ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊င္ရာုင္းယု၊ာ သီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရ, ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရသီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာာသီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာနာေစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ပဖဲြ႕၊ျမန္မာ၊ခရစ္၂၀၁၀,အဖြေ႕၊ ေစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ မန္မာ၊ခရစ္၂၀၁၀၊၂၀၁၀,ာ၊ခရစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာယု၊၂၀၁၀, Min Yu Wai, 2010 • Some Sketches in the Biography of Sitagu Adhipadi Sayadawgyi, က္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရ ၏ ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ၀ေ ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာဓဇ၊အရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ္ဥာဏိႆရင္းယု၊ယု၊၊ေေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရာ၊သီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရဆရာေေတာေယု၊ၾက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရး၏ ဘ၀ပ ရ ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ ပအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ေတအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရဒသီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ၊သီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာမၻာုဒၶတကၠသိုလ္သုေတသနႏွင့္က်မ္းျပဳ႒ာန၊ဗုဒၶတကၠသိုလ္ဒၶတက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရ ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာလ္သုေတသနႏွင့္က်မ္းျပဳ႒ာန၊ယု၊သီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရေေတသီတဂူဆရာေတာ္ေဒါက္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရအျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာနႏေ္ဥာဏိႆရင္းယု၊ယု၊ုဒၶတကၠသိုလ္က်မ္းျပဳ႒ာန၊က္တာအရွင္ဥာဏိႆရမယု၊ းေစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာပဖဲြ႕၊ျမန္မာ၊ခရစ္၂၀၁၀,႒ာန၊ ခရစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊, အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာယု၊၂၀၁၄ compiled by Dr. Ashin Kavidhaja, Department of Research and Compilation, SIBA, 2014; Sitagu Dhamma Series 209 Preface 7

• Some Sketches in the Biography of Sitagu Sayadaw, [Burmese Script needed], edited by Indacariya, Ashin, Published by Department of Research and Compilation, SIBA, 1st Edition, 2004 • Buddhist Monks and Missionary Services: a Special Case Study of Sitagu Sayadaw on Missionary Services, by Dr. Mi Mi Khin, 2015, SIBA. Individuals who have made invaluable direct contributions to the contents of this book include: • Ashin Dr. Sondara, • Ashin Dr. Osadha, Sitagu Dhamma Vihara, Minnesota, USA. • Ashin Dr. Ariyadhamma, Sitagu Buddha Vihara, Austin, TX USA. • Ashin Dr. Aggadhamma, Sitagu Buddha Vihara, Austin, TX USA. • Ashin Dr. Saccanyana, Sitagu Buddha Vihara, Austin, TX USA. • Ashin Visuta, • Dr. Win Bo, Austin, TX, USA. • Happy and Barbara Heilmann, Nashville, TN, USA. 8 Teacher of the Moon Contents

Preface...... 5 Contents...... 9 Prologue...... 11 A boy from Thegon...... 17 Studies...... 29 Thegon Sayadaw...... 43 Thabaik Aing Sayadaw...... 53 Sitagu Sayadaw...... 67 Gift of water, gift of health...... 73 Exile...... 83 Returning home...... 101 Higher Education...... 111 Sandals on the ground...... 123 A natural disaster...... 133 Seeking peace...... 141 10 Teacher of the Moon Prologue

In an afternoon in February, 1993 a Myanmar airline flight from Bangkok arrived at the Yangon (Rangoon) International airport. Among the passengers was an unusually large party that included seven very venerable monks, a large number of Burmese laypeople and four young Americans, all of whom had awoken that morning in chilly Kathmandu after a long pilgrimage in India. At the center of this party was a fifty-five year-old Burmese monk named Thegon Sayadaw, sometimes known as Sitagu Sayadaw, who was about to step onto Burmese soil for the first time after over two years of self-imposed political exile, spent primarily in America. Sitagu Sayadaw had become a grave problem for the government of Myanmar (known until recently as Burma), but then an opportunity. A brutal military dictatorship had been in power for three decades and would remain in power for another two. Nonethe- less, the recent years 1988-1990 had presented a distinct but brief window of hope for the people of Myanmar, for after initial violent suppression of a pro-democracy movement, largely spear- headed by student demonstrators in 1988, the government had half-heartedly endorsed popular elections scheduled for 1990. However, to the dismay of the government, the opposition Na- tional League for Democracy (NLD) readily won with 81 percent of the vote. This was in spite of the strategic house arrest of its most well-known leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, clearly intended prevent this daughter of the founding father of post-colonial Burma from campaigning on behalf of the NLD. The mili- 12 Teacher of the Moon tary government's response to this outcome of the election had been direct: to nullify the results and to suppress dissent anew. For her tenacity and courage in the nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights, the Nobel Prize Committee had awarded Daw Aung San Suu Kyi the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, in absentia as she languished under house arrest. Sitagu Sayadaw had become a problem for the government when this great Buddhist orator gave a sermon immediately after the initial brutal suppression of the student demonstrations, in August of 1988. His famous talk was on the responsibilities of kings and it had, by suggesting these were also responsibilities of government, greatly offended the military leaders, as much as it had greatly inspired much of the opposition to that government. In fact, he had delivered this same talk many times, traveling throughout the country, and the BBC had picked up a recording and played it on one of its Burmese-language broadcasts, ensuring that his “subversive” discourse had been heard through all segments of society throughout the country. This monk with the golden voice had never been so popular before this controversial speech. For a time, because the government's conciliatory policies leading up to the elections of 1990, Sitagu Sayadaw was spared any unfortunate blowback from his speech, but that changed after the faux election. When it began arresting everybody who had had any role in the political opposition, Sitagu Sayadaw had expediently and quietly left the country into exile, most of which he had spent in Nashville, Tennessee. But now the leaders had invited to return.

Sitagu Sayadaw and his large entourage now stepped off the prop plane onto the tarmac, the devout lay people doting on the monks in accordance with Burmese custom, and began walking toward the terminal. The Americans were surprised at the size of the crowd on the tarmac, by all indications specifically to welcome Sitagu Sayadaw back to his homeland. As the distinguished monk proceeded toward the terminal building, people threw Prologue 13 white silk scarves on the ground in front of him, upon which he walked, calmly looking straight ahead, after which the women took the scarves up in turn and held them with joy.

Happy, his wife Barbara, Jennifer and Lee had come to know Sitagu Sayadaw in the last two years under modest circum- stances. The four of them had formed the core a small meditation group that met a the Nashville Buddhist temple, to which groups of Southeast Asian immigrants came, mostly Laotians and Cam- bodians. Sitagu Sayadaw had been in Nashville a few years earlier and had befriended Happy, but now he was back for an extended stay, to the great delight of the American meditators. He was larger in stature than most of the monks they had met, and his English was better. He seemed quite intelligent, abundantly friendly and very inquisitive. Happy would answer Sayadaw's many questions about America, as they study a map of the U.S. very carefully, Sayadaw pointing to this city or that state to enquire about the people there. He was curious to know everything about the people, the customs, the geography and the weather. Sitagu Sayadaw is indeed quite different from the normal West- ern idea of a Buddhist monk as being small, quiet, and removed from the hustle and bustle of the everyday world. He is rather large, powerful, with a strong voice and commanding manner, to- tally engaged with the world in his continual efforts to benefit others, whether in teaching the Buddha's Path to peace, harmony, and well-being, or in building hospitals and schools, or in relief efforts. Already well-known as a public speaker in Myanmar, he was quickly gaining some renown for his social service projects, having founded a hospital near his monastery in Sagaing Hills in central Myanmar, as well as initiating and organizing an ambi- tious project for providing running water to the thousands of residents of Sagaing Hills, who theretofore had had to walk down to the banks of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwaddy) River with bucket in hand. In the years to come he would engage in disaster relief, in the founding of many many more hospitals, in missionary work 14 Teacher of the Moon abroad, in founding and administering three of monastic universities, in opening a meditation center and in peace and reconcilia- tion after the beginning of the transition to democratic rule in Myanmar. He was truly the monk who got things done and people loved him for it. Rumors had been in circulation that the government had disposed of the famous monk two years before, for in 1990 he had simply disappeared from public view without a word in the government- censored press. The government was already faced with a public relations nightmare after the nullification of the election of 1990, and after the house arrest of this daughter of the beloved General Aung San, and after years of keeping a very resentful population in check. Moreover, there were still many devout Buddhists even among the political and military elite who missed the uplifting presence of the Sayadaw – if not the generals, then their wives. In this way, Sitagu Sayadaw had now become a opportunity for the government of Myanmar, that had now invited the beloved Sayadaw to return.

The itinerant group now entered the Yangon airport terminal to an incredible hubbub. Happy was astonished as the group made its way through the terminal, as seemingly almost everyone – other passengers, airport employees, airport security – dropped to their knees and bowed, palms and forehead touching the floor, at the feet of their friend and teacher as he passed. Even many of the soldiers bowed with their automatic rifles still on their backs. Soon, the Sayadaw and the Americans were whisked from the airport in a large van to the compound of a wealthy couple that had afforded Sitagu Sayadaw housing in the past. There they rested for the night, for Sayadaw's chef secretary and general manager and fellow plane passenger, U Han, had arranged for Sitagu Sayadaw to deliver a sermon the very next day after a some official events. The next day Sayadaw, followed by the wide-eyed group of Prologue 15

American disciples, found themselves in a long procession from the last of the official events to the legendary Mahaseindawgyi Monastery, where the sermon was to take place. The Americans were astonished to see literally thousands of people this time lined along both sides of the street with hands pressed together palm to palm in respectful greeting to the host of the Americans. Many of the elder Burmese ladies were so overjoyed to see him that they undid their long hair and, bowing with forehead on the ground, laid it on the path in front of him to walk on. But Sayadaw humbly said, “No, no, that is not necessary to do for me.” So instead, they showered the path in front of him with thousands of flowers, a path which had already been covered with the longest stretch of carpet Happy had ever seen,. Welcomed both by an oppressive military dictatorship and by the people that it oppressed, Sitagu Sayadaw knew he had to walk a thin line between the tireless compassionate action and advocacy on behalf of a suffering people that had already become the fabric of his life, and the good-will and cooperation of a brutal dictatorship that could shut down his efforts in an instant. The days that followed Sitagu Sayadaw's return to Myanmar were busy with many formal receptions, culminating in the great procession and ceremony at Kaba Aye Pagoda, where over one hundred monks were conferred honors by the government. Along the procession route leaving the ceremony, all the major social organizations in Myanmar had booths where their members could gather and share in the merits of making donations to the many monks as they passed by. These organizations included many military and political groups. As Sitagu Sayadaw approached one very large booth with his entourage, Happy couldn't help but notice that instead of greeting the leaders of this particular group, Sayadaw very noticeably looked away as they walked past, and that, equally curiously, the apparent leader of the group, in general's uniform, also looked 16 Teacher of the Moon away from Sitagu Sayadaw as he passed by. After they were a bit beyond the booth, Sayadaw turned back to Happy and explained, “Ah, Happy, that was S1, the leader of Secret Intelli- gence.” This was probably the most feared man in all of Myanmar beside the ostensibly retired dictator Ne Win himself. He was basically in charge of seeing that no one could pose any kind of threat to the dictatorship's absolute control. Sayadaw was very much in his sights, and Sayadaw felt equally suspicious of S1, General Khin Nyunt, since 1988 responsible for the arrest and torture of many thousands. Ironically, General Khin Nyunt would one day become a disciple of Sitagu Sayadaw and then play an early role in the process of liberalization that would one day restore democracy to Myanmar.

The Teacher of the Moon had returned to his homeland.

A boy from Thegon

In the ninth century, the Burman people had spread southward from the Himalayas down into these river valleys running from north to south bringing with them the now dominant language of Myanmar. But even before that, seven centuries earlier, the Pyu people, descendent from the same Tibeto-Burman roots, had made the same journey and had embraced the Buddhism already practiced by the indigenous Mon people, who, like the Khmer and the Vietnamese, had Austroasiatic roots. In fact, in the fifth to seventh centuries the Pyu capital city of Sri Ksetra in Lower Burma east of the Irrawaddy River was the seat of a sophisticated Buddhist culture, as evidenced by the gold parchment manuscripts unearthed near the site of Sri Ksetra. The Pyu King Duttabaung had erected eight military defensive outposts around the capital, each with a city wall, a gate and a moat and marked with conspicuous pagodas during the second Pyu dy- nasty. One of those outposts was in Thegon County in Bago State and was known as Tat City. Archaeological research has shown that Tat City was founded at almost the same time as the capital city: Each has the remains of the city walls, a moat, a hemispheri- cal stupa reminiscent of the famous Sanchi Pagoda in India, and several similar Buddha Statues. Little Maung San Thein, who would one day be known as Sitagu Sayadaw, was born in Padegon, in Thegon County, in British Burma, about seven miles from the ancient site of Tat City. He 18 Teacher of the Moon was born to U Maung Nyo and Daw Than Tin on the full moon day of the month of Tabaung, the final month of 1298 Burmese Era, which would have appeared as February 23, 1937 on the British calendars. He was born at the cusp of the cold season and the hot season, at the time of year when the monsoon winds that had been blowing over the cold Tibetan plateau in the far north, through the Himalayas and cooling the valleys of Burma that follow the course of the great rivers that carry melted Himalayan ice and snow south toward the Andaman Sea, suddenly shift to bring warm air from the south. He was born in the lunar month of Tabaung , when the panoramic landscape is renewed with bud- ding leaves to replace leaves recently fallen, when vegetation comes to life in valleys and mountains and when song birds return to the forests, rivers and streams, chirping gleefully to greet each new day, each a bit warmer than the preceding, when nights remain a bit cool, when, especially in moonlight, wisps of mist gave an ethereal feel to the air, when pagoda festivals are celebrated and when the harvest is gathered and people look forward to days of leisure. It was an auspicious time for little Maung San Thein come into the world. One day, Sitagu Sayadaw would take pride in the notable history of Thegon County. The iconographic designs of pagodas and statues at the famous Shwezigon Pagoda in Pagan were replicas of Sri Ksetra era design, and indeed similar sculptures have recovered around Tat City by archeologists. The Pāli inscriptions found at Sri Ksetra in the Prome District in Central Myanmar were from AD 400-700. The Shwezigon Pagoda built in the eleventh century at Pagan would serve as a model for some of Sitagu Sayadaw's own future construction projects. Maung San Thein was the eldest of five children. They lost their father to a stroke when Maung San Thein was but seven years old. When his father's body was placed into a coffin his knees were rigidly fixed in the flexed position in which he had died and had to be pressed down with a heavy grinding stone which his mother had been using for grinding thanakha, a bark out of which A boy from Thegon 19 a yellowish-white cosmetic and medicinal paste is produced which Burmese women and girls often apply to their faces, and which his father had used for grinding grain for making Indian flat bread. The death of the father brought severe financial hardship for Maung San Thein's family, such that his mother, Daw Than Tin, had to take on work as a manual laborer carrying rice at U Saw Mya Lay's rice mill. She enrolled Maung San Thein at first in the primary school in Padegon, but – unable to support all of her children – soon sent little Maung San Thein to her first cousin, San Thein's uncle, a monk named Ashin Indavamsa, who was the abbot of Thegon Monastery, about seven miles from Padegon. There were no laws in Burma governing formal adoption, but the boy's traditional birth certificate was turned over to his uncle and it was presumed that the monk would raise him, for young boys were often entrusted to monks in this way in Burma, and Sitagu Sayadaw himself would one day, as a monk, adopt two boys in similar fashion.

Ordination as a novice monk is extremely common among the Burmese. It is a kind of rite of passage, a requirement prior to manhood, through which a boy becomes, beyond a mere psy- chophysical being, a spiritual being. Typically it is a costly community affair in which the whole village participates. The boy is dressed in faux royal garb, paraded through the village, sometimes riding atop a horse or even upon an elephant. He then ex- changes his royal garb for monk's robes and alms bowl as a reen- actment of the Buddha-to-be's transition from leisure and wealth to the life of a wandering mendicant. After the ordination itself, the novice receives alms along with the presiding monks and then all of the village participants are fed sumptuously. A novice monk's ordination is also considered one of the greatest honors and a source of great merit for its sponsor, who provides the robes, alms bowl and other requisites of the new monk, as well as all the ceremonial props and a sumptuous meal for the 20 Teacher of the Moon neighbors. Although this honor is the prerogative of the parents of the novice to-be, Daw Than Tin, a widow so poor she could barely provide for her own meals, could not afford the expense of the ordination ceremony and all that that would entail, and so had to ceded this honor to a couple from the south side of Padegon Village. A novice monk receives a new name upon ordination, a name in the ancient Pali language of India, widely regarded as the language of the Buddha. And so, in the year 1952, Maung San Sein became Shin Jotika. Shin is the Burmese title for a novice and Jotika was the ancient name of a treasurer of the city of Rājagaha who later became an arahant, a fully awakened being, at the time of the Buddha. Shin Jotika's mother, though dejected that she had not been able provide for the festive occasion of her son's ordination, did not despair. She began saving money and within a year had enough to purchase new robes and requisites and requested a new ordination, on which occasion Shin Jotika was conferred a new name, the name Nyanissara, meaning “Lord of knowledge,” that he carries as his legal name to the present day. Shin Nyanissara along with three other novice monks – Shin Ja- gara, Shin Tayzania and Shin Tayza – had begun a rigorous life of study and practice under Shin Nyanissara's uncle, studying basic education, Burmese grammar, the Compendium of Buddhist philosophy and psychology, the monastic rules, the Kankha on overcoming doubt, the Pali scriptures and Burmese classical literature. The novice monks, young as they were, were also permitted some merriment during the intervals between lessons: “striking tip-cat, rolling marbles or sun dried clay balls, football, swim- ming, giving the parish dogs jaggery-ball relish. Shin Nyanissara enjoyed such physical activity after lessons and it provided a means to relax body and mind and interrupt the tedium of repeti- tive and persistent lessons and discipline. They also harvested and enjoyed the fruit of the many toddy A boy from Thegon 21 palms within the monastery walls, which were collected by tap- ping patiently on the lower trunk of the tree with a wooden sledge. Along with the palm fruits, frightened squirrels also came down from the trees only to be chased by the boys with the help of the parish dogs, as an exhilarating activity in the life of a monastic school boy. When they tired of chasing the squirrels the novice monks bathed in the pond at the back yard of a nearby monastery and helped the dogs to bathe as well. Since the squirrels would eat the apples, guava, plantains and mangoes and other edible fruits, the abbot was more than happy to see the pests chased away. Such was the blissful life for a young squirrel- hunter. A novice living in a monastery had a distinct advantage over a lay boy in a village: he would generally receive a better education. However, there came a time when the government suddenly opened up secondary schools, and as a result many novices quit the holy life, and many lay boys, particularly the older ones, quit coming to the monastery as well. Suddenly for a time there was no lay boy to carry the alms bowl for Abbot Ashin Indavamsa on daily rounds in the conventional way, so Shin Nyanissara began to change into lay clothes each day to fulfill that role as conven- tion dictated. In order to do this, he had to spend fifteen kyat (the unit of currency in Burma) for two pairs of shirt and longyi (a kind of skirt traditionally worn by men) with money that he earned by selling toddy fruits during the summer rainy season. As the only remaining senior novice and the eldest among the pupils at the monastery, he had to manage all of the various errands the abbot might have, to start the generator that illuminated our pagoda, and so on. The early fifties were the worst days of the civil war in Burma after Burma acquired independence in 1948. The communists, factions of the army and the Karen National Union were particularly prominent in armed struggle against the fledgling government, whose authority often barely extended beyond the capital of Ran- goon. Insurgent groups roamed the Pegu Mountains, fighting the 22 Teacher of the Moon national army, destroying railways, plundering villages and kid- napping villagers for ransom. Under many decades of British ex- ploitation, Burma had suffered the “divide and conquer” policies of colonial rule. After the Burma Road had become the supply route from India for the Chinese nationalists fighting the Japa- nese during World War II, the Japanese had invaded Burma with the help of the indigenous Burma Independence Army (BIA), which hoped that, with the help of the Japanese, Burma might achieve independence from Britain. The BIA had then suddenly switched sides to regain favor with the British as the British began to regain the upper hand over the Japanese. The shifting and conflicting allegiances of many ethnic and political groups in Burma had left the country fragmented by the time independence was finally achieved in 1948. Particularly after the assassination of its charismatic young leader, Bogyoke Aung San of the BIA, many of the ethnic groups had rebelled and were now in a state of civil war, which would last for decades, as the central government tried to implement a parliamentary democracy but could maintain substantial control only in the urban centers and in the immediately surrounding countryside. The Pyusawhtee, named after an ancient king known for his courage, were the local village defense guards assigned as sen- tries and patrols in Thegon. Additional policemen were hired, but, because the monastery was too far from the village, no guard was assigned there. Its residents learned to be vigilant after sunset, for they could hear gunshots every evening. Shin Nyanissara went one step further: he undertook the purchase of an old rifle with the intention of guarding the monastery. With the sponsorship of some prosperous mill owners, he bought the gun, after testing it, from a soldier for ten kyat, but with no bullets. After cleaning the dust and rust from the gun and its barrel, young Nyanissara picked up shells from around the village, molded lead bullets anew, poured gun-powder into the shells and set the bullets into the shells. On two occasions, spilled gun-powder was inadvertently ignited and burned Shin Nyanissara's mid- A boy from Thegon 23 dle finger, which left a life-long scar, and at the time gained for him commendation among the locals as a protector of the Sasana, the Buddhist tradition. Over fifty years later Ashin Nyanissara would reflect on the youthful foolishness of grabbing a rifle to act as a village guard. His proper job as a novice monk was not to guard the village against rebels with a rifle, but to guard his own mind against de- filements with the weaponry of Dhamma. Shin Nyanissara owed enormous gratitude to his uncle, his preceptor, teacher of both general education and Buddhist subjects, his mentor, the abbot of Thegon Monastery. He and his fellow novices learned to recite by heart in squatting position the eleven Parittas in the Pali language, the discourses of protection heard on ceremonial occasions, and read the Jataka stories of the previous lives of the Buddha-to-be. They learned to do's and don'ts of monastic life and practiced handwriting in the curly Burmese script. Rote memorization was the guiding principle of Burmese education, through repitition until all mistakes would be elimi- nated. This involved hours of recitation each day. During the boys' recitations the abbot would sit in a comfortable chair near the window with an open book in his lap, eyes closed in seeming reflection. Sometimes he would sit so quiet and still that the students would realized he had dosed off. At that point the boys would begin to whisper jokes, look around furtively, take out snacks they had stashed in their waist pockets, chew and suck on these happily, leave the room as if needing to go to the lavatory, all of this quite normal behavior for teenage boys throughout the world. However, with the gradual diminishing volume of the boys' recitations, as one by one the boys withdrew their attention, the abbot would suddenly wake up, notice the boys in varying degrees and manners of distraction and hit the floor a couple of times with his cane, upon which the boys would run back to their seats and resume their recitation anew, loudly albeit haphazardly. 24 Teacher of the Moon

As time passed, the senior novices, one after another, left the monastery and took up lay lives. Shin Jagara quit out of frustra- tion, slow in learning and frequent in admonishment by the abbot, took up his previous lay name, Saw Hlaing. Shin Tayzania and Shin Tayza each became romantically involved early in their novice careers and resumed their identities as Aung Nyein and Tin Hla. Meanwhile Shin Nyanissara pursued a variety of worldly interests in his spare time: fortune telling, astrology, remedies for mitigating the fulfillment of dire predictions, clock repair, and even making and selling charm bracelets. He would slip out of the monastery after 9 pm to sell the charm bracelets, often returning after midnight. The abbot caught him several times and reprimanded him for offending monastic discipline. Shin Nyanissara also seemed enjoy a degree of popularity among the teenage village girls, who were gradually developing into womanhood and whose attention the naturally charismatic Shin Nyanissara enjoyed. His friends who left the holy life had begun earning real money as clerical workers and had married beautiful village girls, and naturally Shin Nyanissara sometimes also considered following their example, particularly when he, as he would later describe it, “beheld maidens with the smile of an an- gel, alluring and tantalizing, carrying earthen water pots on their heads as they walked gracefully to the monastery well to fetch drinking water at dusk.” Almost every Burmese village has a communal well from which all villagers obtain water for drinking and washing, and at which people bathe loosely clothed in a way that preserves modesty. He would later admit to often coordinat- ing his own bath time at the well with the time maidens were likely to come to fetch water. He was indeed subject repeatedly to the infatuations to which boys in their late teens the world over are particularly susceptible. However, unlike most of his friends, he managed to keep his pas- sions under control, to remember his monastic vows and to for- bear. He discovered the great wisdom, upheld through monastic discipline, in overcoming one's deep emotions and frustrations on A boy from Thegon 25 behalf of the Sasana, which he imagined himself one day promoting and propagating in foreign lands. His three friends had all quit the holy life and gotten married, would have children and grandchildren and would all pass away in their sixties. Sitagu Sayadaw likes to point out that some plants produce flowers and that trees produce fruit, but that they do not do this for themselves, they do it for others, for plants do not eat their own flowers and trees do not eat their own fruit. Sitagu Sayadaw would one day recall that he had become a farmer at Thegon Monastery. He would have to work hard to cultivate what he considered to be at first an infertile field, but could later report, “People would later come to enjoy my bountiful flowers and fruit and I would be pleased when I would see the pleasure they derived from them. Bagyitaw Pongy [his uncle] trained me very well with almost all the necessities for my career, starting with literature, ethics and instruction on how to handle the many frustrations of life… I owe immeasurable gratitude to my teacher Bagyitaw Bhaddanta Ashin Indavamsa, who brought me up from the time I was little Maung San Thein, from which I was able to become Thegon Sayadaw, Thabaik Aing Saydaw and finally Sitagu Sayadaw. Without his compassion and guidance I might never have developed in the way I did.”

Full ordination as a Buddhist monk, a bhikkhu, is permitted at twenty years of age, technically twenty years after conception. And so it was that at nineteen years and three months, after his birth, on the fourth day of the waxing moon, the month of Nayon, June 12, 1956, eight years after Burmese independence, Shin Nyanissara fully ordained and became Ashin Nyanissara, with the status of ngephu, “celibate since childhood,” since he had worn the monk's robes from early youth without interruption and without breaking any of the major rules of the fully ordained monk, even as a novice. His preceptor for full ordination was Venerable Ashin Dhammacakka of Kanlé Monatery in Tat Vil- lage. 26 Teacher of the Moon

Full ordination in Burma is a more quiet affair than novice ordination, largely a private action of the sangha, the local community of monks. It requires a lay sponsor, not necessarily a parent, to provided only the necessary eight requisites of a monk for full ordination: • lower robe (worn hanging from waist), • upper robe (worn over the shoulder), • outer robe (for cold weather) , • alms bowl (for collection food), • belt (to secure lower robe), • razor (for that dapper monk look), • sewing needle and thread (for repairs), and • water filter (to protect life living therein). However, in addition to these official requisites, his sponsor provided, as a bonus, the following (the future Sayadaw had an un- canny memory for such details): • Golden Butterfly brand robe woven in Holland, Poplin robe from U Thein's and Daw Pu Galon's Robe Shop, • Bangkok gold-colored bowl, • firm non-wrinkling robe that would produce a rub- bing sound (“shwan shwan ta-shwan”) as he would walk, • A1 brand pocket watch made in Switzerland from Maung Ko and Bros. Watch Shop, • Bandoola cotton and wool blanket, • woolen shawl with fringes on both sides, • Uniform metal box, A boy from Thegon 27

• leather box from Maung Khine and Bros. Co., • Parker 51 fountain pen, • Pathein umbrella, • one pair of Mandalay U Ba Ohn sandals. Shin Nyanissara's donor was a middle-class widow, barely able to afford these offerings. However, 1956 was an unusually auspicious year, reckoned as exactly year 2500 since the Buddha's parinibbana (full attainment of Nirvana at death), the midpoint in what was widely believed to be the predicted lifetime of the Sasana (the Buddhist movement), and a reminder that people should gain as many merits as possible in order to escape samsara while there was still time. Also, just two months before Shin Nyanissara's higher ordination, the great two-year long Sixth Buddhist Council had culminated in Rangoon to coincide with this 2500th anniversary, bringing together 2500 monks from many Buddhist countries. At this council the Burmese monk Mingun Sayadaw (U Vicittasarabhivamsa), then in his mid-forties, had demonstrated his ability to recite without error, from memory any passage a questioner might request from the entire forty volumes of the Pali Canon. Mingun Sayadaw quickly became the most famous monk in Burma, a per- sonage of national pride, and would even earn a place in the 1985 Guinness Book of World Records for possession of the world's greatest memory. One day, the young Nyanissara's and the older venerated retentive sayadaw's paths would cross in a very significant way. Ashin Nyanissara did not stay long as a monk in Kanlé Monastery, for his preceptor, Ashin Dhammacakka sent him to Dhammarakkhita Residence at the Chaukhtat-gyi Monastery in the metropolis of Rangoon within a month of his full ordination. U Vimala, a monk who had ordained earlier than Ashin Nyanis- sara at Kanlé Monastery, was already there in Chaukhtat-gyi Monastery. Ashin Nyanissara would later appreciate, only after 28 Teacher of the Moon he had become a renowned abbot himself, with enormous gratitude, why by his preceptor Ashin Dhammacakka wanted to send his newly ordained monks away so hastily: to secure for them the opportunity to study more deeply the Pali scriptures. Studies

Monastic academic studies in Burma focuses on the understanding and memorization of Buddhist texts in the Pali language, the ancient liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism. Progress in such studies is tracked through a series of examinations at different levels of difficulty generally conducted by the Ministry of Re- ligious Affairs. Examination questions require candidates to re- produce passages from memory and to analyze texts generally drawn from the Vinaya, Suttanta and Abhidhamma, the three "baskets" of canonical texts, and from their commentary. The three Pathamabyan examinations represent the lowest-level of difficulty. Dhammācariya examinations, held over nine days, represent mid-level difficulty, and those who pass are giving the monastic title of Dhammacariya ("Dhamma-teacher" in Pali and roughly equivalent to a Western master's degree). The highest- level examinations, which have only been held since 1948, require candidates to demonstrate rote memory and comprehension of the entire Pāli Canon and its relevant commentaries, sub-commentaries, and treatises. They are held at the Kaba Aye Pagoda's Mahapasana Cave in Rangoon. Mingun Sayadaw was the first candidate to pass this, but several other monks have passed these since. Ashin Nyanissara traveled by postal train, leaving Thegon at about 7:30 am. He carried all of his possessions in two boxes. He had hinted about the desirability of traveling first class to his sponsor's son, which would have made some sense given the amount of baggage he was carrying, but unfortunately the son 30 Teacher of the Moon had then asked his preceptor if that would be acceptable, where- upon his preceptor then admonished him, “Hẹy, Nyanissara, you just became a monk; you don’t want to look like you are living in grand style, with your four hundred Kyats money, your Bangkok robe, your Parker 51 fountain pen. You should walk humbly, eat humbly. The money should be saved. The assets have to be spent reasonably; you have to be careful about spending money: don’t spend money ex- travagantly.” U Vimala, with a friend, U Acara, met U Nyanissara at the Ran- goon Kun Chan St. Central Railway Station in bustling Rangoon, Burma's biggest metropolis. The environment in the big city was extraordinarily strange to the country bumpkin Ashin Nyanissara, but luckily U Vimala and now U Acara, more experienced in the ways of Rangoon, were there to offer guidance. The monks of Chaukhtat-gyi Monastery would leave the grounds individually each day to collect alms from the laity for lunch, but they were also allowed, all five hundred of them, a breakfast of rice gruel prepared at the monastery by a lay resident in a conventional role called using the Pali word kappiya, short for kappiya-karika (“one who makes legal”). In this case, the kappiya would leave the rice about 9 pm each evening simmering in a cauldron that was so huge that two men standing with outstretched arms on either side could barely touch hands. Then in the wee hours the kappiya would arise early from his slumber, bring the porridge once again to a boil, add some salt and serve it to the resident students. On one unforgettable morning in July, 1956, there arose a soft murmur among the students as they sipped the morning gruel. Soon the murmur turned rau- cous. At issue was whether the gruel contained pork or chicken. Comments arose such as, “It stinks,” “Hey, there are hairs in this slop,” Studies 31

“… and bones and teeth!” Soon the whole hall was in an uproar. The monk who oversaw the dining hall reprimanded the kappiya, “This is dog porridge, isn't it? Couldn't you have at least chopped the tail off, rather than throwing in the dog whole? Is this how you eat at home?” In fact, the Buddha had explicitly prohibited monks from eating dog meat altogether. Here is what seems to have happened, as Sayadaw-gyi would later recount: On this particular morning the kappiya had overslept and so had to add water to the soup and wood under the cauldron in utmost haste. But something untoward had also occurred during the night. Various dogs lived in the monastery who were as well informed as anyone about the schedule for the preparation and serving of meals and who were accordingly present for every opportunity for sustenance. They were present, for instance, at the garbage cans shortly after every meal because they knew something still edible was likely to be discarded there. The smarter dogs were always first in line. On this particular occasion, the kappiya had left the cauldron of gruel simmering as usual before retiring to bed. However, he had forgotten to place the heavy marble slab onto the lid as he normally did, knowing the dogs came into the kitchen in the night to lick the porridge at the edge of the cauldron. As a result the dogs found, on this wonderous evening, that they could push the lid away from the edge to gain a nutritious opportunity. To make matters worse, the kappiya had also forgotten to put his chair away, providing a stairway to a heavenly meal for the dogs. The first dog in line, presumably the smartest, for he would have been the one to discover this opportunity, had been pushed into the cauldron through the onrush of the dogs behind him, each trying to push to the front. 32 Teacher of the Moon

The dog porridge incident occurred just before Ashin Nyanissara relocated prior to the beginning of the rains retreat to Theingon Monastery, a sister monastery of Chaukhtat, where he hoped to quickly gain proficiency in his studies of the five Nikayas (Bud- dha's discourse collections) enabling a short-cut to the Dham- macariya (Dhamma teacher) degree. U Acara and U Vimala helped facilitate his acceptance and U Acara continued to help the newcomer and over time became U Nyanissara's most intimate friend. Now, in a big city like Rangoon there was no limit to the routes a monk might take for daily alms, so U Acara helped U Nyanissara establish a daily route, albeit in a rather assertive way. Monks are not actually allowed to beg, according to the monastic code, but only to walk past houses with alms bowl in hand and with robes worn in the formal way over both shoulders, thus providing lay families an opportunity to offer, without actually asking for an offering. Instead, U Acara lead U Nyanissara on an exploratory tour of the Tamwe and Kandawgalay/Ma-u-gon area, not in the morning, when alms must be obtained, but in the afternoon, nonetheless wearing robes in the formal manner over both shoulders but knocking on doors or pressing door-bells (in the richer houses) in order to solicit a promise of future daily alms. At some houses they were respectfully offered seats and drinking water, at others they met house-maids. They felt glad when they were accepted by the lay people in the various houses, but walked away with downcast eyes, blushing in embarrassment over their assertive strategy, when they were refused. The residents of a few houses did not even bother to open the door when they knocked. At one house, for instance, at 111th Street, Kandawgalay, an old man in a white T-shirt with grey hair, about seventy years of age, opened the door. The old man grilled the monks not al- lowing them inside, “What are you young monks doing here?” U Nyanissara, as the junior monk, remained silent and U Acara Studies 33 replied, “We came here to request that we might come for a daily visit to receive rice and curry. We hope you might be able to donate one scoop of rice and one container of curry each day for this monk.” He pointed to Ashin Nyanissara. The man replied, “There is no adult to make a decision here right now.” U Acara retorted in an accusatory tone, “You said there is no adult in the house, but you are already grey-haired. Who is older than you in this house?” Ashin Nyanissara was beginning to feel uncomfortable at this in- terchange unbefitting a monk, and was slowingly backing away to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. The old man yelled at them both, slamming the door, “Get out of here, you monks.” With that the monks took off, still wondering what the man had meant about the absence of an adult. They persisted with disheartened faces and spirit, but in the end received consent from twelve of the twenty houses they visited that day, which was more than adequate. Three of these would turn out to be exceedingly generous in their future daily donations, although young Nyanissara would have to take buses to get to these places in the first place. One of these was the house of U Tin Maung, the Director General for Exports and Commerce in Cereals, Legumes and Fruits, and his wife Daw Kyi Kyi. Ashin Nyanissara , having placed his alms bowl on the table, would be regularly offered a cup of coffee. Daw Kyi Kyi would then take his bowl and fill it with rice and an assortment of curries and return a very heavy bowl indeed. At another house he would also receive snacks, delicacies and fruits. Another future donor was an action movie star. Each day Ashin Nyanissara would return to the monastery and 34 Teacher of the Moon proudly share his bounty with monks who had sometimes received very meager offerings. Later, Ashin Nyanissara would come to realize that the reason he would return with abundant offerings and others with meager was not that he was doing something right and that they were doing something wrong, but quite the opposite. As he would later state, “I would come to recognize the fault of the greedy alms round, that is, going only to the houses where good alms food is given or where an intimate association existed with a donor family.” The prescribed monastic procedure is indeed to walk from house to house with no preference for one house over another. Appar- ently no one had taught him this in the the rural environment in which he was raised, so that he collected alms the wrong way for the entire three years he studied in Rangoon. A Karen monk, U Candobhasa, in contrast, who would return with particularly meager offerings, and who thereby became a prime recipient of Ashin Nyanissara's largess, would one day attain to one of the highest administrative positions in the monastic Sangha of Myanmar.

One of Ashin Nyanissara's great aspirations from this era was to travel and study abroad. An early impetus was an encounter with Shwedaung U Siha, a smart monk senior to our protagonist. U Siha had been invited, along with other three monks, under the auspices of some wealthy Indian-Burmese to go on a pilgrimage to India. Just before he left on his travels he flashed his passport at the younger monk, “Hey, U Nyanissara, I’m going on pilgrimage to India with this passport.” U Nyanissara was suddenly filled with a desire to go to India to study, which was renewed when later when he saw U Siha give someone a rosary he had brought back from India. U Nyanissara was also following, from a distance, the the travels of the monk Ashin Rewata Dhamma, who was living in Benares and who pe- Studies 35 riodically wrote articles that appeared in the Hantharwady Newspaper in Burma. He was especially impressed by his account of the history of the ancient Buddhist University at Na- landa, now in ruins, but which, over a thousand years ago, had attracted students from as far away as Central Asia, China and Ko- rea. Ashin Nyanissara was in the process of developing aspirations for travel abroad.

Ashin Nyanissara progressed quickly in his studies in the Pali scriptures in Rangoon. Theingon Monastery had already gained a reputation for producing exceptional students. After he had passed the elementary level exams in 1957 at Theingon monastery, he moved to Theinbyu monastery some distance away to continue with higher studies. After that he lost track of his buddies Ashin Acara and Ashin Vimala, and after some time learned that each had left the holy life. Ashin Nyanissara passed the intermediate level exams in 1958, and the higher level in 1959 at Theinbyu Monastery. He had already build a firm foundation in his training as a novice at the knee of his uncle, Bhaddanta Ashin Indavamsa, which now served him well. Nyanissara would run across one of his former friends before he left Rangoon. On his bus trips to the neighborhoods where his alms donors lived, he would generally pay a small fare for the trip generally on an overcrowded bus. On one occasion he boarded the “White Horse” bus from Biluma bazaar to Mayoe- sann Tamwe Round-about, an old Chevrolet bus that must have been used by American ground forces during World War II, whose gears had long been stripped and which demanded not only great skill on the part of the driver to shift from first to second to third, but also depended on a piece of wood permanently jammed against the the gear box. The assistant to the driver, wearing a patch over one eye and thin sun-glasses, was hollering: “C’mon, c’mon, all aboard, Kyaukmyaung-zaye fifteen pyas, Mayoesann Tamwe Round-about twenty pyas, Horse Rac- ing Stadium twenty five pyas.” 36 Teacher of the Moon

The assistant was not idle for a second, hollering energetically among the hustle and bustle of the embarking and disembarking passengers, “Please get on from the front and get off from the back door.” When Ashin Nyanissara had gotten onto the bus, the assistant, in the middle of his busy hollering, arranged for him to sit on the front seat, sending two passengers to the back, and explained, “Uzin, please set the alms bowl next to you. It is uncomfortable to keep it on your lap.” He added with joined palms, “Please hold tight; the bus is leaving.” As the bus negotiated the Tamwe Round-about, he even asked of the driver, “Master, please brake gently, so that the alms bowl on the front seat doesn't roll down.” Ashin Nyanissara wondered that the assistant was unduly cordial and respectful toward him. The assistant carried an old cloth bag slung across his chest and, behind his sun-glasses, Ashin Nyanis- sara could not make out his face clearly, but saw that he wore an eye patch. When Ashin Nyanissara told him he would get down at the Mayoesann Cinema Hall bus stop, the assistant told Ashin Nyanissara he already knew that Mayoesann Tamwe Round- about was his normal daily stop. Ashin Nyanissara was curious about this pious fellow with the sun-glasses who knew his daily route. When they had reached the aforesaid stop the assistant directed Ashin Nyanissara to get off by way of the front door instead of through the back door as required of the other passengers. At this point the assistant took hold of his alms bowl until the monk had stepped down. After Ashin Nyanissara had gotten off the bus the assistant returned the alms bowl, then pointed joined palms to- Studies 37 ward the monk. Aha! The face looked familiar to Ashin Nyanis- sara. He might just be U Acara from Chaukhtat-gyi Monastery! But U Acara was not blind in one eye. U Nyanissara asked, “Uh, are you U Acara?” The assistant got back onto the bus, moved to tears but with no reply. They had no time to chat, but just before the bus started to move, the monk waved to get his attention and asked, “Hey, U Acara, where is U Vimala? Is he in good health?” “Ko Htun Win lives in Goodliff, and works on the Red Horse bus line. He has two children.” This was the reply, delivered out the window as the bus sped away.

Independently of his Pali studies, Ashin Nyanissara became a book worm while living in Rangoon. U Acara had brought him to a book stall along the covered stair-ways leading to the south side of the Shwedagon Pagoda as a place to look for the text books recommended for the three levels of the Pali Pitaka courses, the Thiriyadana Book Stall of U Tin and Daw Nu Yin, which teamed with students and teachers alike. They had a thriving business, which was certainly to no small degree attributable to their charming niece, Ma Mya Kyi, who worked there, youthful, vi- brant, ebullient and obliging, with the social grace to allure cus- tomers. Ma Mya Kyi would corner the monks who came to the stall and would not let them stray elsewhere, giving them a seat with a big smile and even serving them cane juice with ice chips if they seemed hot or tired, or offering them “Liberty” cigarettes. Ashin Nyanissara would still know Ma Mya Kyi in her old age as a close benefactor. Ashin Nyanissara learned from her example the power of greeting with a smile and engaging in cheerful con- versation. Visiting brahmins had similarly admired the welcoming way the Buddha had greeted them on first encounter; monks can learn this lesson right there in the scriptures, Ashin Nyanis- 38 Teacher of the Moon sara would explain. Ashin Nyanissara got to know a monk from Rakhine State, Ashin Vajiranyana, who was extremely well read in Burmese classical literature, modern literature, history and politics and always had his nose in a book when the schedule permitted. There seemed to be almost no modern literature he had not read, and Ashin Nyanissara began to follow his example. They would frequent used book stalls and would read and discuss books on a variety of subjects. Ashin Nyanissara would later estimate that he had read about one thousand books in the two years he associated with the monk from Rakhine state, all the while studying for exams. Since the electric power was turned off at 9:00 each evening in Ashin Nyanissara's residence, after scripture recitation, Ashin Nyanissara and his friend U Saccavamsa would light candles and discuss classical literature sometimes until dawn. U Saccavansa would hurry to the dining hall for breakfast, then fall asleep afterwards and so miss most of the morning lectures, and then would ask Ashin Nyanissara to fill him in on what had been discussed. Ashin Nyanissara, Ashin Saccavansa and Ashin Vajiranyana began their careers as writers in their own right at this time, writing under candlelight. Ashin Vajiranyana wrote articles under the pen-name Sein Vajram, referring to the diamond thunderbolt of Sakka, king of the gods, and sent these to various magazines. Ashin Saccansa wrote military and romantic stories under the pen-name Captain Thet Tin, sending these to the same editors. None of their submissions was ever accepted. A fourth monk of literary interest was Ashin Nandamitta, who would enact fictional characters out loud during the nightly meetings and had even written a play which he performed one evening to the delight of the other monks. U Saccavansa was also obsessed with football. There was nothing scheduled in the evenings of uposatha days, the quarter-moon days set aside for lay people for religious observances. Ashin Nyanissara and U Saccavansa would walk to the Shwedegon Studies 39

Pagoda to pay homage, meditate and finger their mala beads, then afterwards drink cane juice by the Aung San Football Stadium. Sometimes they would enter the stadium for the last forty-five minutes of a game when the gates were unlocked and one could enter for free. Once they watched the Burmese team beat a Rus- sian team. According to the Vinaya, the monastic code of the Buddha, monastics are not allowed to attend shows, though this is a minor offense resolved by simple confession to another monk. There- fore, Ashin Nyanissara and U Saccavansa, after attending a football game, would simply confess to one another to be free from taints. One evening a more senior colleague of theirs, U Sopaka, ten years senior to the other two monks, happened to hear their mutual confession. “You two good-for-nothing monks, what are you confess- ing?” “Our offense was watching the football match, Bhante.” “You misguided monks, you don't understand the Vinaya rules of monastic discipline. It is good that you confess your offense, but the manner is wrong, because you both committed that offense together. Technically this a sabhaga apatti, a shared offense. You committed it together and so must each confess it to a third monk, someone … like me, for instance.” The two offenders were not thoroughly familiar with the sub- tleties of the Vinaya and the monastic rules. So individually they confessed to U Sopaka to put the minor offense to rest. They asked further about this “shared offense” thing and U Sopaka kindly explained it further, taking up a book, Commentary on Doubt, which, as he explained, had occupied him for seven years. Ashin Nyanissara noticed many notes written in the margins as he flipped through the book. The odd thing is that this monk had failed the advanced exam seven years in a row. This suggested to Ashin Nyanissara that the one who passes an examination sooner will generally not have learned the lessons as thoroughly as one 40 Teacher of the Moon who repeatedly failed. U Sopaka then asked for fifty pyas from each of the offending monks, to compensate for his precious time in giving the lesson and as an added punishment for watching the football game. Af- ter receiving this amount, U Sopaka jumped up, ran down from the second floor, and was out the door running toward the stalls at the nearby Biluma bizaar to buy a supply of betel chews. Returning, U Sopaka said, “I thank you guys for rescuing me from the withdrawal I was experiencing through lack of funds to buy betel for two days.” He unwrapped a plug of betel, popped it in his mouth and began to chew. So that was what the fifty pyas were really for. One of the monks joked with reference to the betel, “Nibbānassa paccayo hotu.” This is a Pali phrase meaning, “may this be a condition for attaining Nibbana,” frequently uttered after performing a meritorious deed, such as making an offering to a monk. U Sopaka broke into laughter. Ashin Nyanissara realized that those who failed exams became attuned to the subject matter in many ways.

In 1960, after completing his advanced exams in Rangoon, Ashin Nyanissara moved to Mandalay in Upper Burma to finish his studies for the Dhammacariya, “teacher of the Dhamma,” degree. There he reconnected with Ashin Nandamitta, one of his literary friends from Rangoon, who had preceded him in this move and who helped him secure living accommodations at Khimmakan Pali University. 1960 was the hundredth anniversary of the founding of Mandalay, the last royal city of Burma. Mandalay was a unique and extraordinary city in terms of the Sasana; Ashin Nyanissara would one day compare it to Oxford, which he had read about as a young monk, the one as a center of Sasana, the other as a center for scholarship. Studies 41

Mandalay had many renowned and accomplished Buddhist teachers in all directions from the former royal palace. Ashin Nyanis- sara spent his time hurrying from one monastery to another, with books and notebook in hand, from one class or sermon to another, hanging on every world of the renowned sayadaws. This mobility was possible because for most events at Khimmakan Pali Univer- sity attendance was not mandatory; there was no roll call, as there was Theingon Monastery in Rangoon. Most evenings Ashin Nyanissara was present for a talk given by one of Mahavijjodaya Sayadaw, Anicakhan Sayadaw or Tipitaka Mingun Sayadaw. We've met Mingun Sayadaw already, famed for memorizing the entire Pali Canon, the Tipitaka. Mahavijjodaya Sayadaw, aka Silananda Sayadaw, was a great scholar who would one day found a monastery in California. However, Ashin Nyanissara was particularly attracted to the distinct and effective manner of pre- sentation of Anicakhan Sayadaw, his splendid facility in translat- ing the scriptures into laymen's language and untangling knotty passages, bringing out the meaning with similes and metaphors. He could also make adept connections to western concepts in theology, philosophy, metaphysics and mythology, mixing this with humor and inspiration. Ashin Anicakhan would become and remain a profound influence on Ashin Nyanissara's development. Already in 1961 he passed the Dhammacariya exams and was conferred the title Sasanadhaja-dhammacariya. After finishing his degree in Mandalay, he participated briefly in building a new monastery, Hanthargiri Monastery, helping its founder, Sayadaw Nandavamsabhivamsa. Conditions there were very primitive while he lived there. For instance, there were no normal cups for preparing tea, so they had to use the inverted lid of an alms bowl as a pan, spread tea leaves into hot water, then use a spoon to drink the tea. 42 Teacher of the Moon Thegon Sayadaw

In an incident described in the Vinaya (Mv 8.26.1-8) the Buddha and Ānanda come upon a monk sick with dysentery, uncared for, lying in his own urine and feces. After he and Ānanda had personally cleaned the monk up, the Buddha admonished the other monks living nearby for not caring for the sick monk, famously proclaiming: “Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick.”

Ashin Nyanissara liked to travel. After completion of his Dham- macariya degree, he and some of his brothers in the Dhamma undertook a tour of of the towns and cities of Shan State to the east of Mandalay. Staying in Namkham, the intrepid monks enjoyed the beauty of the landscape around the cities of Namkham and Namhsan as well as the surrounding forest of the Shan Plateau and the Namkham Valley, through which the Shweli River flows, originating near the border with China. Ashin Nyanissara was particularly fascinated to visit a hospital near the Chinese border sponsored by the Christian Mission Mountain Services and took careful note of the administration, the infrastructure and the architecture of the Hospital. He was surprised to find out that the Clinical Director was one Dr. Gor- don Seagrave, a Baptist born in Burma of American missionaries from Nashville, Tennessee, USA, and that the medical staff 44 Teacher of the Moon served the needs of mountainous areas of the region, serving even people from the Chinese side of the border. The Hospital was magnificent: It was fully staffed and supplied with up-to-date instruments and medications, and even offered free services to Buddhist monks and nuns. He had trained the nurses, primarily of Shan, Kayen and Kachin descent, – in fact spoke some of the regional languages, and had even translated the Bible into Karen – and trained local doctors and nurses for general surgery. He also promoted general health education and had set up a school for small children. Ashin Nyanissara experienced mixed feelings of shame and inspiration as he learned about this remote mountain hospital. This Baptist, Dr. Seagrace, had a big heart. When the group of young monks arrived at the hospital he welcomed them warmly, showing them around and explained the many accomplishments of the hospital and the Christian Mission. Ashin Nyanissara felt shame with the thought that there were virtually no hospitals built by Buddhists in a devout country supporting hundreds of thousands of monks, but instead this Christian Mission Hospital, as well as a Hindu Mission Hospital and the Kandawgalay Islamic Mission Hospital that he could think of. As it happened, Ashin Nyanissara sustained a hernia after returning from vacation in the Shan States as a result of the long trip during which the tour group was tossed this way and that inside the bus as the wheels navigated the bumps and dips of the road. And, as it happened, he was treated at the Gandhi Hospital, in the Botataung District of Rangoon, supported through the generosity of Ramakrishna Society, a Hindu Mission Hospital. Ashin Nyanissara was beginning to entertain thoughts of building a Buddhist hospital in Burma, thoughts that would one day reach abundant fruition. In fact, Ashin Nyanissara would soon have a second personal encounter with a hospital. He enjoyed smoking cigarettes, between the ages of twenty two and twenty five, particularly those produced of the Ludu Cigarette Company Ltd. owned by U Cho, Thegon Sayadaw 45 which were always packed in an aluminum container. As a result, in 1963, he would develop bronchitis, a severe cough with bloody phlegm while living at the Sangha University in Rangoon. His colleagues would take him, this time, to the Seventh Adventist Missionary Hospital located at Alanpya paya Street, Rangoon. There also happened to be a Buddhist Jivitadana Hospital at Ko Minn Ko Chinn Street, but it was really only a dispensary inside an old and worn out house with rudimentary services, hardly qualifying as a hospital. Ashin Nyanissara would ask himself once again, Why are there no hospitals built by Buddhists in a devout country supporting hundreds of thousands of monks?

Ashin Nyanissara was admitted to Kaba Aye Sangha University late in the same year, and went to register at the University after his discharge from Gandhi Hospital. Only thirty monks were allowed admittance into the University. He was twenty five years old when he was began his studies in 1962. This was immediately after the military had seized control of the country in March of 1962. Since independence the fledgling democracy under the leadership of U Nu had failed to unify the country, and the powerful military, who had taken power from the British in the first place, had been battling against various ethnic insurgencies ever since and had been asked, in 1958, briefly to form a caretaker government until central authority could be reestablished. Now, in 1962, the generals re-assumed that authority on their own and would establish a half century of brutal military rule under the leadership of General Ne Win, the president of the Revolutionary Council . Of immediate relevance to the young Ashin Nyanissara, this entailed reappointment of government officials to oversee Sasana and Sangha affairs. Things were in disarray as the new government was re-prioritizing and reconsidering the old relations and procedures. as weighty issues were worked out in reforming the country on “the Burmese Way to Socialism.” One of the issues at hand was that monks trained to propagate the Sasana, after learn- 46 Teacher of the Moon ing English and other subjects, frequently disrobed. This was a drain on the Sangha, and made the new government reluctant to grant accustomed privileges to those monks still in the Sangha. The new students acquired permission from the abbot of Chor- dwinngonn Monastery, located near the shore of Inya Lake, to reside there, but then students needed to ride a bus daily to attend courses, leaving little time for alms round. While attending the university, Ashin Nyanissara became friendly with a lecturer from the Department of History, U Soe Tint, MA. He attended his lectures two times per week, but also took walks with him on weekends to Jubann Islet on Inya Lake, where they could look westward toward “the Village of the Generals” and even spot the house of General Ne Win. After one year, in 1963, students and staff were given housing by the university, away from Inya Lake. During this period Ashin Nyanissara was introduced by his pro- fessors to two particular books in English, each of which would become important in the young monk's life, but in different ways. One was Pushing to the Front, published in 1894 by Orison Swett Marden, an American book in the early self-help genre, which promoted a combination of idealism, an attitude of “now or never,” persistence in the face of adversity, courage, wisdom, responsibility and the power of mind. It had already inspired the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and British Prime Minister William Gladstone. Professor U Pe Aung, who lectured on psychology on Saturdays, would make frequent references to passages of this book and it became Ashin Nyanis- sara's personal handbook. In fact, he translated it into Burmese in collaboration with Dr. Tin Hlaing that year under the Pali title Abhikkama, in order to help encourage young novices and younger brothers and sisters in situations of despair and desola- tion not to give up, but to persevere through difficulties toward their goals. For its 2009 edition, published by the Sitagu Interna- tional Buddhist Academy, he would write in the preface: “Instead of looking for a lost road perilous and difficult, Thegon Sayadaw 47

one is encouraged to pave a new way suitable for many. Instead of looking for a spring one is encouraged to drill a new well for the long term. Instead of looking for grass and greenery one is encouraged to create a beautiful garden and landscape.” The second book in English that Ashin Nyanissara studied ex- haustively was Jawaharlal Nehru,'s Letters from a Father to His Daughter, a compilation of letters by a future prime minister of India to a young girl who would also one day herself become prime minister of India, written while the former was imprisoned by the colonial government. Ashin Nyanissara and U Soe Tint spent many hours sitting face-to-face to discuss the fine points of English language usage found this book. The young monk was struck that Nehru, while sitting in jail, used to visualize a Buddha statue, with its eyes closed but with some kind of spiritual power looking out, and would gain inspiration to help him persevere. The program at Sangha University was a three-year course which Ashin Nyanissara passed with honors. Those who passed the final examination in March 1965 were supposed to receive a Buddha- desana diploma. However, the Revolutionary Council closed the university in that month and as a result Ashin Nyanissara received no actual certificate. As he later put it, in worldly terms, he had a coupon with no store in which to redeem it, he had won the lotto but lost the ticket. Nonetheless, he had completed his course of study just in time, had learned much about propagation of the Sasana and about implementing humanitarian projects, and had not given up the intention to devote himself to realizing these goals. Ashin Nyanissara, in short order, launched his first altruistic project, though it would be short-lived because of government interference. He collaborated with Sayadaw-gyi Kosalla in founding a primary school on the banks of the Ngawan River in the Ir- rawaddy Delta region. They called the school the Burma Bud- dhist Mission “College” (BMM). U Kosalla had learned English and had innovative ideas about education. They recruited primar- 48 Teacher of the Moon ily children of poor parents living in villages in the nearby Arakanese Mountains, fed them, provided them with clothing, altogether taking in about three hundred children and providing education up to the seventh grade level. They taught, in particular, the well-known Mangala Sutta, an early discourse of the Bud- dha on blessings, and they taught the life of the Buddha. They introduced the students to the Young Men's Buddhist Association (YMBA) and administered examinations. The “college” was a registered independent mission school, but the Revolutionary Military Government nationalized all independent schools and in 1967 turned BMM into a government primary school, forcing Ashin Nyanissara to leave. At this point, Ashin Nyanissara decided to return to upper Burma, to the Sagaing Hills near Mandalay. His intention in returning was to teach young monks in preparation for their various levels of exams. He also hoped to study under Anicakhan Sayadaw-gyi, who resided nearby and whose rhetorical skills had so impressed Ashin Nyanissara when he had been a student in Mandalay. Anicakhan Sayadaw-gyi U Pandita was born in 1899 and had been given the formal title Agga-maha-pandita (meaning roughly “super wise one”) by the president of Burma after the 1956 Sixth Buddhist Council, just before Ashin Nyanissara's ordination, because of the instrumental role he had played in that event. His name and his title were both “wise.” He was versed in Pali scriptures and could lecture or preach in English as well as Burmese. A knighted English gentleman and his Burmese wife, Sir Henry and Lady Perez, had donated his monastery in Sagaing Hills to him. He had traveled to Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Japan and the United States for missionary purposes. He was about to become Ashin Nyanissara's primary teacher. One day Ashin Nyanissara anxiously approached Anicakhan Monastery in order to pay respects to its eminent teacher. He prostrated himself at the feet of the distinguished monk and bowed three times in the customary way, remained seated on the floor, then humbly asked, Thegon Sayadaw 49

“Will the master accept me as your disciple? Will the master be my mentor?” Sayadaw-gyi glanced at the young monk, dark of com- plexion and stout of build, sloped of forehead, sharp of eye and prominent of nasal bridge, and asked in turn, “What is your name? Where do you come from? Where do you live? What subject do you wish to study?” To the last Ashin Nyanissara replied, “I wish to study the Visuddhimagga … in English.” The Vissuddhimagga is an enormously important and hefty work written by Venerable Buddhaghosa in fifth century Sri Lanka, systematizing many of the theoretical and practical teachings of the early scriptures and often considered definitive of Theravada Buddhism. The Pali work had been translated twice into English, once by the Burmese scholar U Pe Maung Tin, and once by the English monk Bhikkhu Nyanamoli. “How much English do you know?” “I've studied it to a tenth-grade level, Master.” Sayadaw-gyi grabbed a thin book from the table near his chair. “Take this book and read for me.” Ashin Nyanissara took the book, looked at the cover and rejoiced. The book was … Jawaharlal Nehru's Letters from a Father to His Daughter, the very book he used in his training with U Soe Tint while at Kaba Aye Sangha University in Rangoon, which had quickly become one of his own favorite books. He felt he had just been handed the answers before taking an exam. He began reading briskly without pause or error. Needless to say, he was accepted as a student of the famous sayadaw. Two other students studied the Visuddhimagga with Ashin Nyanissara: U Sumangala and U Thiainda. In an early lecture Sayadaw-gyi stated, 50 Teacher of the Moon

“After completing the Visuddhimagga, if one does not retreat into the forest, one will retreat back into the lay life.” Indeed all three would retreat, two into lay life and one into the forest. Ashin Nyanissara studied the Visuddhimagga for two years, and then undertook to assimilate thoroughly the Milinda- panha, the Questions of King Milinda. This work consists of a series of conversations with a Greek-speaking Bactrian King who converted to Buddhism in the second century BCE, and an awakened Buddhist monk concerning abstruse topics in philosophy, psychology and ethics. It considered ideal for developing skill in debate. One night during Ashin Nyanissara's studies under Anicakhan Sayadaw-gyi, at about 3:00 a.m. Ashin Nyanissara heard the frightened cry of a female voice from neighboring Myan Aung Monastery. He jumped up and hurried down to the place from whence the cry came to find a nun standing over a pile of fire- wood at a rice pot placed over a fire. The nun was squeezing her wrist and a cobra was present with its hood still wide open and its tongue flicking. When the snake saw the monk, it slid away down towards a nearby creek. He surmised that the nun had been bitten by the cobra while she was cooking the dawn meal for the Sangha. Sayadaw quickly tied her wrist firmly with a leather belt, then ran up to his room to fetch a penknife. He incised the area of bite, squeezed out the poisoned blood, sprinkled the wound with salt and squeezed lime juice over the area. He then grabbed her and carried her on his shoulder – putting variousVinaya rules respectfully aside concerning contact with members of the opposite gen- der – to Mango-Garden Harbor. After knocking the door of a nearby house where the horse-drawn cart driver lived, he asked for help to carry take to the Regional Hospital in Sagaing. In those days there were no motor cars in the valley, nor telephone, and most nights no electric power. When they arrived at the hospital it was already 4:30 AM and the physician, nurses and technicians were already happily aslumber and in need of awakening. Thegon Sayadaw 51

Luckily they had the the antidote to the venom ready at hand, so she was treated within three hours and would completely recover. Ashin Nyanissara was reminded once again of the poor state of medical care in Burma and how Sagaing Hills, in particular, was under-served. Had he taken the nun to the one clinic in Sagaing Hills they would have had no antidote for the venom. After four years of study with Anicakhan Sayadaw-gyi, Ashin Nyanissara returned to his home town of Thegon, in April of 1971, after paying homage to his master. Ashin Nyanissara had ample opportunity to preach in his home county, putting what he had learned of Sayadaw-gyi's methods to the test. He very much gladdened the hearts of his home-town laity who delighted in his teachings, and soon had earned the nickname of Thegon Sayadaw, the teacher of Thegon, which persists to this day alongside his better-known designation, Sitagu Sayadaw. 52 Teacher of the Moon Thabaik Aing Sayadaw

The forest tradition follows the Buddha's admonition that monks should live in seclusion, like a rhinoceros, free from the distrac- tions of towns and cities, and devoting most of their time to meditation. This is not a requirement for all monastics, since many monastics spend their hours studying, memorizing scriptures, teaching and providing pastoral and social services. It is however highly conducive to progress toward awakening. The forest tradition is often characterized by the thirteen dhutanga practices endorsed by the Buddha in early texts, though not all in one place, and in practice most often taken up selec- tively, with only some monks taking up all thirteen. Although austere, they fall short of the extreme ascetic practices of some non-Buddhist traditions that the Buddha regarded as ill-conceived. They are: 1. Wearing robes made up from discarded cloth (not accepting and wearing ready-made robes from householders), 2. Owning only three robes altogether (upper, lower and outer), 3. Eating only food collected on alms round (not accepting a full meal offered at a monastery or at a layman's house), 4. Not omitting any house while while seeking alms, 5. Eating only one meal a day, 54 Teacher of the Moon

6. Mixing together in one bowl all food to be eaten, 7. Refusing additional food after one is satisfied, 8. Not dwelling in a town or village but living in seclusion, 9. Living under a tree without the shelter of a roof, 10. Living sheltered only by a tent of robes, 11. Living in or by a charnel ground, graveyard or cremation site, 12. Being satisfied with any dwelling allotted as a sleeping place, and 13. Never lying down. The one student of the Visuddhimagga who did not retreat back into lay life retreated instead into the forest, perfectly consistently with Anicakhan Sayadaw's prediction. In June of 1971 Ashin Nyanissara traveled to the Shwe-U-Min Forest Monastery near the North Okkalpa Railway Station in Rangoon to meet with Dhammaduta Ashin Pannyajota, distinguished in his efforts for spreading the teachings of the Buddha. He had also been Ashin Nyanissara's fellow student for three years at Kaba Aye Sangha University. Ashin Pannyajota had retreated to the forest a number of years before Ashin Nyanissara and had lived in a number of forest monasteries while Ashin Nyanissara had continued his studies. He had come back temporarily to the less secluded forest monastery in Rangoon because he had become ill and knew he could get better medical treatment and nourishment there. After discussions with Ashin Pannyajota, Ashin Nyanissara decided to visit Thabaik Aing Forest Monastery in Mon State, to see for himself that it provided the seclusion and serenity conducive to meditation practice. Ashin Pannyajota and Ashin Nyanissara traveled by train to the town of Thaton accompanied by a lay supporter, U Pa, where they stayed for two nights at a lodge that U Pa had donated to the Sangha. Thaton happens to have the unique distinction as the site Thabaik Aing Sayadaw 55 from which Theravada Buddhism first gained a foothold in Burma, after a Mon bhikkhu from Thaton, Ashin Arahan, is said to have brought Theravada Buddhism to the court in Pagan during the reign of Anuruddha. Accordingly, the small group also visited some of the near-by sacred spaces, before continuing by car to Kyonka village in which three ethnic groups could be found: Mons, Burmans and Karens. From the village they continued along a trail deeper into the forest and began to hear the rush of water ahead, and finally reached a gorge in which water cascaded down the side with great force, colliding against rocks and boulders and churning up the water collecting below. The path was so narrow the party had to proceed single-file. During the time of the first Thabaik Aing Sayadaw-gyi U Kitti, pious men and women donors had regularly come to repair the path, often on Uposatha days, accompanied by a rather festive entourage coming to see the famous monk. Many believed that Thabaik Aing Sayadaw-gyi had been arahant with many supernormal powers. An abundance of lush vegetation flourished in the wet and warm conditions of one of the world's tropical rain forests. On the side of the path herbs and sprouting shrubs were over-shadowed by the narrow crowns of spindly saplings. Due to abundant rainfall, the vegetation was a deep green. Higher still, sturdy trees caught the full power of the tropical sun. Towering to heights of one hundred to one hundred fifty feet, these trees, more that fifty years old, created a ceiling over the green labyrinth of the ancient forest. Flying lemurs glided from one tree to another and black squirrels ran up and down the trees or hopped along the branches. As they proceeded along the trail the noise of another waterfall became louder and louder. The road was enveloped in shade except where the sun shot through gaps in the densely packed middle layers of the forest. They sometimes descended down to creeks or ascended the sides of hills, crossed bridges consisting of wooden planks with side railings donated by pious benefactors. They saw woodpeckers and fork-tailed drongos and they 56 Teacher of the Moon heard parrots. They finally reached a valley between rocky slopes after passing through highlands and creeks for about two miles. Although Thabaik Aing Monastery was secluded from villages, it is at an agreeable spot, a delightful woodland, a clear flowing creek emanating from a lake, the village of Kyonka just one and one-half miles away, close enough to provide access to alms for the meditating monk, and the kind of stillness conducive to meditation for the ascetic. On the downside, it was vulnerable to as- sault by bandits. On balance, the Buddha would have approved of such a setting. The monastery itself was just across a bridge under a dark green depth of canopy shrouded in a thin vaporous mist. A sign “Thabaik Aing Forest Monastery, Kyonka Village, Paung County, Thaton District” was posted on a tree. The one-story wooden building was about thirty by forty feet, with a galvanized roof and elevated upon concrete posts.. An open veranda about six feet wide girdled the main building except for two low stair-ways and around the altar room. A latrine and bath-room were detached from the main building. The name Thabaik Aing means alms-bowl pool. Near the monastery is a waterfall plunging down semi-circular cliffs with great momentum fed by various creeks and streams into a pool about twenty-five by fifteen feet. The pool is carved into solid rock formation that once, it was said, gave the appearance an alms bowl, though years of relentless erosion had apparently de- formed the alms-bowl shape. Fish and coral shrimp flourished in the pool. Sayadaw-gyi had apparently fed them, along with macaques and leaf monkeys, with left-overs from meals and had prohibited others from fishing there. Slightly up the slope of a small hill there was a small residence under renovation, and a small pagoda painted white with lime, underneath which the bone relics of the former Thabaik Aing Sayadaw were sanctified. Downhill from the pagoda a sign read “Cemetery.” Tahbaik Aing Sayadaw-gyi had practiced meditation and lived until his last breath, drenched by forty five rainy sea- Thabaik Aing Sayadaw 57 sons, in this building with holes in the roof, poorly protected from rain and wind, not to mention from leopards, tigers, cobras and vipers. So far, Ashin Pannyajota had spent two rains here. Two other monks were currently in residence: Ashin Vasava and Ashin Kelasa. Ashin Nyanissara asked Ashin Pannyajota about the cemetery. The latter explained that the old Sayadaw-gyi had asked that the corpses of two dayaka, U Po Sein and U Tun Pe Pu, be layed to rest at this site so that he might practice the charnel-ground- dweller’s dhutanga (practice no. 11 above). In fact, Sayadaw-gyi had practiced all thirteen dhutaṅga here. There were also two empty coffins inside the monastery, inscribed with the names of the deceased who had briefly occupied them before cremation, one of which had been another venerated sayadaw. The coffins now served as chests to store items donated to the monks, such as robes, soap, candles, sardine tins and condensed milk, as well as books and even the diary of the old Thabaik Aing Sayadaw-gyi. Ashin Nyanissara spent three days and two nights at the monastery in this initial exploratory visit. He was pleased with the solitude and looked forward to practicing here at length. He found the route to the nearest village and observed that the alms received by one monk would suffice for three, with fruits, vegeta- bles, home-baked pancakes, deserts and crispy chips in addition to the normal rice and condiments provided by the devout villagers. He determined to return soon, but for now he accompanied Ashin Pannyajota back to Shwe-U-Min Forest Monastery in Rangoon, where the latter would complete his recovery before returning to Thabaik Aing Forest Monastery. Ashin Nyanissara imagined that the place of the Buddha's awakening in Uruvela Forest on the banks of the Neranjara River might have been much like the sanctity and stillness of these delightful woodlands and clear-flowing waters of Thabaik Aing Forest Monastery. As it turned out Ashin Nyanissara did not return to the forest monastery until the following year, 1972, because of the need to tie up some loose ends in his studies with Anicakhan Sayadaw- 58 Teacher of the Moon gyi in Sagaing Hills, and in order to honor many invitations to lecture in his home town of Thegon, where his sermons had been so well received. When he finally did return to Thabaik Aing For- est Monastery, there were three monks already in residence. The first of these was Ashin Pannyajota, who had brought him here in the first place. The second was Ashin Acinna, who rigidly obeyed the Vinaya rules, the code of Buddhist monasticism, and who rig- orously practiced asceticism. Ashin Acinna would one day become one of Myanmar's most renowned meditation masters, and develop the nearby Pa Auk Forest Monastery into a flourishing meditation center, then go on to found branch monasteries in foreign lands. The third was Ashin Kelasa, who had been there the year before, who practiced all thirteen dhutangas during the rains retreat, and who scrupulously observed the Vinaya rules and who was solely devoted to practice, to the exclusion of study. This would be Ashin Nyanissara's home for the next three years. Thabaik Aing Sayadaw-gyi, in his day, used to wake up to walk into the village at 5:00 AM. He begged for daily alms from house to house at 5:30 and was back at the monastery at 7:00 am. He would eat his only meal of the day at 8:00 am. The only circum- stance in which Sayadaw-gyi would use fire was to dry his robes often drenched after returning from alms, for which he would light previously gathered fire sticks. Sayadaw-gyi allowed pious laity to pay homage after breakfast. He would then grant the precepts and deliver a dhamma talk for a short while only until 11:00 am, after which he would urge them to leave. He would practice walking meditation for some time after the laity had left, then at 12:00 PM shut the door of the monastery building and practice vipassana meditation. In the afternoon he would clean and sweep. Afterward he would bathe and go back into his dwelling to meditate until midnight. After midnight he would walk back and forth inside the building, applying mindfulness to all postures of the body. Then he would sleep for a little while to wake up before dawn and start the same routine all over again, for forty-five years. Thabaik Aing Sayadaw 59

There were many stories about Sayadaw-gyi, many of which attributed supernatural powers to him. Reportedly he was often seen on alms round in four distant places in a single morning, a geographical impossibility. When asked about this, he just grum- bled. At one time a Karen woman was kidnapped for ransom by insurgents who locked her in a room. Sayadaw-gyi is said to have gone to where the woman was locked up and to have released her, a deed which he attributed to his guardian spirits. Sometimes devotees would come from far away to show their respects, but he would not let them leave if his guardian spirits spotted any dangers on their route home, such as insurgents or robbers. The four current youthful inhabitants followed the late Sayadaw- gyi’s routines. They did not converse unnecessarily except concerning Dhamma matters before 5:00 am, at which time they left the monastery for alms. Otherwise they observed pin-drop silence, going for alms alone and eating their daily meal alone. Ashin Nyanissara read some sections of Sayadaw-gyi's old books and notes from time to time, kept in the coffin of the deceased sayadaw that stood in Ashin Nyanissara's room. He also studied for a couple of hours each afternoon, reading and memorizing discourses of the Buddha. Often it rained for many days in a row, swelling the streams and creeks. The rainy season, the time of the rains retreat from July to October is a most troublesome time, particularly for those following the practice of possessing only one set of three robes and for those who walk from house to house for alms. When it rained a lot, snakes would be driven out of their normal abodes and would climb up into the monastery buildings for shelter. They could be found on beams, joists, trusses and side rails, on the walls and ceilings, trying to dry off. The monks, for their part, slept on simple mats laid on the floor, vulnerable to their intrusions. Ashin Nyanissara kept a flash light on a rail along the wall where he could find it when he needed to go outside to urinate in the night. On one such occasion, fumbling for the flash light in the dark, he felt something slimy, clammy and soft. He also felt 60 Teacher of the Moon goose bumps forming in his back. Nonetheless, he managed to take hold of the flashlight, which revealed, when he switched it on, a viper laid out along the rail near the side of his bed, thank- fully sleeping soundly, but he also saw many other creeping and crawling things on the walls and ceilings. Ashin Nyanissara reflected how these creatures had sought sanc- tuary in this monastery because they were afraid of drifting downstream with the current, and how he too had sought sanctu- ary here through the Dhamma, because he was afraid of drifting downstream through samsara. This insight afforded him much relief and allowed him to return to his vipassana meditation with a relaxed mind. On another occasion a snake found its way onto the lap and the overlapping hands of U Kelasa while he was sitting asleep in accordance with dhutanga practice (no. 13). When he woke up around midnight, he felt something clammy and wiggly tickling his hands. He nervously pulled his left hand from underneath the right while steadying the right hand on which the creature was coiled. He reached for his flashlight and determined that it was, as he had feared, a viper. He called to Ashin Nyanissara faintly under the pounding rain, who assessed the situation and advised that he recite the Khandha Sutta, verses of kindness toward snakes and other creepy-crawlies that the Buddha claimed would protect against snake bites and that all monks have memorized. The viper seemed to fall happily asleep at this. Unfortunately snakes, who are so rarely treated with kindness, are unduly fond of the Khandha Sutta. The result is that they, while pacified, are not inclined to go away. U Kesala could see that there were also contented snakes on the wall railings. While U Kesala was reciting, Ashin Nyanissara opened the monastery doors wide, lit a candle near the door and asked U Kelasa quickly with one motion to throw the snake in his right palm through the door, which he did … successfully, shouting, “Go away, you harbinger of death.” Thabaik Aing Sayadaw 61

Some of the remaining snakes continued sleeping, others lazily looked up at the candlelight and flicked their little tongues. After a while the storm stopped and the snakes slowly departed. Ashin Nyanissara, once again, formulated a lesson from the incident, that if one could throw out that which one loves the way that snake was thrown out, one would be free from the lethal bites of passion, referring to the suffering we bring upon our- selves through all our worldly attachments. Those who meditate in the forest for a long time often report experiences outside of those of normal people. Once, Ashin Nyanis- sara was lying on his bed in the dark contemplating one of the four postures, aware of the body in the body, with his arms placed on his chest. Suddenly he felt someone grab his hands, massage them and kiss them. Ashin Nyanissara placed his arms back in their former position and the same thing happened again and then a third time. This would be somewhat surprising behavior if it was one of the other monks. He spoke out loud, “Why bother another's practice in the middle of the night?” A female voice answered, “I did not intend to bother you, master, but wanted to make you aware that I was here to guard you, master.” Asked who it was who was guarding him, the reply was, ”Medhavi, my master.” This was a Pali name meaning a wise or intelligent one. After one year, the other three monks had all moved to Acin For- est, leaving Ashin Nyanissara alone at Thabaik Aing Forest for the next two and a half years. There had been much illness among the monks during the last year, including malaria, which Ashin Nyanissara attributed to the persistent wetness of the environment and, as a consequence, to having to wear damp robes much of the time. The wetness, in turn, was at least partially due to the dense- 62 Teacher of the Moon ness of the forest canopy through which the sun could not pene- trate, leaving those below in perpetual shade. Ashin Nyanissara suggested to villagers that some trees be chopped down and that the wood thereby gained be used to renovate the monastery, which had fallen into disrepair. Now, Ashin Nyanissara understood that the laypeople would be afraid to chop down trees because they feared the wrath of the protective tree spirits that might well desecrate the monastery and harm the village. Belief in tree spirits (Burmese, nat) and specific qualities attributed to them have deep roots in animist Myanmar and southwest Asia, far pre-dating Buddhism, and they tend to be identified with the deities mentioned in early Buddhist lore. The tree spirits would have to be appeased. Accordingly, Ashin Nyanissara spent several nights meditating under each tree that he planned to chop down, to show respect and to develop kindness toward the spirits. Then he explained out loud to the tree spirit that would invisibly be occupying such a tree the merits of donating to the monastery, much as the human lay folks donated to the monks and to the monastery. He told of Anathapindika and Visakha from the Buddha's day, lay people who had become great donors to the Sasana and had attained “stream entry,” putting them on the fast track to awakening in future lives, from which they could not regress. He practiced metta, loving-kindness, suffusing metta in all directions. Finally, he recited the Mahasamaya Sutta, which mentions many Indian deities by name and is said to be very pleasing for tree spirits to listen to. After months of this, he finally asked the tree spirits to take a stand on the issue: “I ask that those of you who are not happy with the idea of chopping down these trees, please come now and extinguish the candles lighted around the pagoda! But those of you are agreeable and happy with the plan to chop down those trees, please let the candles burn and instead bring on a breeze with the sweet scent of jasmine and shake the bells and chimes hanging from the top of the pagoda with pleasant tones.” Thabaik Aing Sayadaw 63

After not many moments a breeze arose, bringing the scent of jasmine and ringing the bells of the pagoda with pleasant tones, while the candles continued to burn. The sweet scent of jasmine became increasingly apparent and suddenly a tumultuous voice was heard, “SADHU” This means “well done” in the Pali language. Nonetheless, many of the laity were still nervous about chopping down trees. Fol- lowing Ashin Nyanissara's further advice, they began cautiously by clearing away thick twisting bushes, shrubs and hanging branches, not likely to offend even the grumpiest of tree spirits. They then erected a temporary carpenter's shed and a small tim- ber mill, and they brought in all the necessary tools for the project. When they began felling and milling trees one by one, no hint of danger was manifest. They took out about twenty trees in all and renovated the dilapidated monastery building with the wood. The work was completed by the full moon day of February, 1974. A water libation ceremony was held with the sharing of merits to all beings, especially to the tree spirits and mountain spirits in all eight directions. The village benefactors had not only renovated the monastery, but had also restored the pagoda and erected a sima, a consecrated space in which official actions of the Sangha, such as ordinations, could take place. Nyaunglunt Tawya Sayadaw, from the foot of the Bago Mountain Range to the west, known for his strict observance of Vinaya, came to Thabaik Aing Forest Monastery to supervise the consecration. Nyaunglunt Forest Sayadaw and Acin Forest Sayadaw, who also came for the consecration, and Ashin Nyanissara then lectured for seven days in the local village. A donor, U Thein Pe of Mudon, also offered to bring Nyaunglunt Forest Sayadaw to other venues in Mon State, to Mawlamyine and Mudon, in order to offer lectures. After Nyaunglunt Forest Sayadaw had left the area the same invitation was extended to Ashin Nyanissara. And 64 Teacher of the Moon so, Ashin Nyanissara became a local Dhamma lecturer even while living as a recluse at Thabaik Aing Forest Monastery. Be- cause his lectures were so popular and joyfully received, people began to call him Thabaik Aing Sayadaw, “teacher of Thabaik Aing.” One evening in which clouds almost completely covered the waxing moon, with the waterfall gushing as usual, Ashin Nyanis- sara was outside engaged in walking back and forth reciting the Brahmajala Sutta, when he noticed a dark figure approach the residence building. Ashin Nyanissara shouted, “Hey there, are you a man or spirit or a ghost? Why do you come to disturb my practice?” “I am a man, ashin phya.” “What kind of man?” “I am a robber, ashin phya.” “You fool, why do you come to me?” “I want money, master.” “Perhaps you don't know, I am a forest monk. A forest monk would not touch money in this thick forest. You fool, your idea is absolutely foolish.” “If you don't have any money, please give me something to eat, master.” Ashin Nyanissara generally saved left-over bananas and sticky rice enclosed in banana leaves to give to macaques and leaf monkeys and by chance no monkeys had visited that day. So Ashin Nyanissara gave that to the robber, who ate it nervously. Ashin Nyanissara felt sad for this robber and asked him if he needed anything else. The robber looked at the table and took the table clock, the flash light, the old ball pen and the Parker 51 fountain pen Ashin Nyanissara had been given at his ordination almost twenty years earlier, then left. He had no remorse in spite of Ashin Nyanissara's kindness. Thabaik Aing Sayadaw 65

The robber disappeared from underneath the limited moonlight, but after a while Ashin Nyanissara heard multiple voices in the dark. Ashin Nyanissara began to think that the robbers intended to kidnap him, take him hostage and ask for a ransom from his devotees. This kind of thing was a common occurrence. Ashin Nyanissara began to prepare himself for this possibility by pack- ing some necessities into his alms bowl: medications, soap, note books, favorite books for reading, outer robe. Ready for a trip, he then continued his walking and chanting until midnight, but nothing more was heard of the robbers. Some ten days after this incident the villagers reported seeing a dead body in the depths of the creek near the edge of the village. Ashin Nyanissara asked one of his helpers to find out about the corpse and determined that the description matched that of the robber to whom Ashin Nyanissara had offered bananas and sticky rice. They are not reported to have found a Parker 51 fountain pen. It is common in Myanmar for a monk to take on the role of guardian or foster parent of a boy, as uncle Ashin Indavamsa Sayadaw had adopted little Maung San Thein many years before. The monk is often in a better position to provide education and spiritual training than the parents and open up other opportunities for the boy. This arrangement is much like sending the boy to boarding school in the West, but less official. Ashin Nyanissara developed particular affection for two small boys from Kyonka Village and they for him while he was on retreat. They were Maung Soe Win and little Maung Myo, the latter only around five years old. Ashin Nyanissara would leave the forest monastery in 1975 but once he became settled in Sagaing Hills once again, he would invite these two boys to join him in Sagaing Hills, care for them and educate them. Both are very close to Ashin Nyanissara to this day. Maung Myo would ordain as a monk and one day be called Dr. Ashin Aggadhamma and even move to the first Sitagu monastery in America, where he would assist in the compilation of this very book. 66 Teacher of the Moon Sitagu Sayadaw

The Malun Rice Donation Association (MRDA) was founded in 1896 to provide rice for the monastic community in the Sagaing , Mingun and Minwun hill regions. In 1885 the British had an- nexed Upper Burma and deposed King Thibaw, whose government in Mandalay had generously supplemented the lay support of the monastic communities that had found a home in the surrounding area with the result that a large concentration of monastics lived near the former seat of the kingdom. The purpose of MRDA was to restore that support for the large monastic population in these regions by collecting rice donated all over the country, transporting it to Mandalay and then distributing it to the monasteries in these hill regions. The project has been highly successful and continues to this day. The MRDA also had a kind of outreach component that sponsored well-known sayadaws to offer Dhamma lectures to both monastics and lay people throughout the MRDA network. Ashin Nyanis- sara's teacher in Upper Burma, Anicakhan Sayadaw, to whom Ashin Nyanissara had been attracted for his oratorical skills, was a primary lecturer for MRDA. Alongside Anicakhan Sayadaw, the most renowned Mingun Sayadaw, remembered for his ability to recite the Pali scriptures at the Sixth Buddhist Council, was also an active lecturer under MRDA auspices. Mingun Sayadaw had kept busy since his remarkable achievement at the Sixth Buddhist Council in Buddhist education, but 68 Teacher of the Moon also in social service, renovating pagodas and monasteries, building roads and bridges and opening and maintaining in and around his home town of Mingun a hospital, primary schools and in providing electricity, for which he could easily raise funds in connection with his many public speaking engagements. As a public speaker he was known for his ability to convey teachings not otherwise readily accessible to the general public, presented step-by- step in a logical way, building up to an edifying conclusion. Naturally he could always rely on his remarkable ability to recall at will from a vast corpus of memorized scriptural material. In 1975 Ashin Nyanissara's teacher, Anicakhan Sayadaw, suffered a stroke and, upon hearing of this, Ashin Nyanissara immediately left Thabaik Aing Forest for Sagaing Hills. On arrival he prostrated himself before Sayadaw-gyi. Luckily the stroke seemed not so severe as he had feared and Sayadaw-gyi was recovering under the care of number of devotees. His was able to walk slowly without assistance, but his speech, so important for this master of oratory, had been effected. When he felt he had sufficiently recovered Anicakhan Sayadaw agreed to lecture once again for the Malun Rice Donation Association, for the first time since his stroke, in September 1975. After giving the precepts to the lay folks and lecturing for about fifteen minutes Anicakhan Sayada, still struggling with his articu- lation, appeared tired and suspended his lecture, turning to Ashin Nyanissara and saying, “You, Maung Nyanissara, please continue the sermon. You are assigned to shouldering my responsibilities, being worthy of this honor.” In this way, he ceded his lecturer's chair to the thirty-eight year old Thegon Sayadaw, aka Thabaik Aing Sayadaw. The topic that the elder Sayadaw-gyi had begun was the Suppavasa Sutta from the Anguttara Nikaya about the generosity of a lady devotee. Ashin Nyanissara completed the discussion of that topic in a manner that delighted the audience. And so it was that in this way Sitagu Sayadaw 69

Ashin Nyanissara became overnight an official lecturer for MRDA, alongside the famous Mingun Sayadaw. Anicakhan Sayadaw subsequently asked Ashin Nyanissara to move back to Sagaing from Thabaik Aing Forest, to occupy the lecturer's chair and not to expect his teacher to return to his former role. It now fell on Ashin Nyanissara to lecture for the Soci- ety in support of the holy recluses, nuns and novices from Sagaing, Mingun and the Minwun hills. He would lecture to the local monastics, which numbered about four thousand in Sagaing Hills alone during the rains retreat, and then travel throughout the country. Often Mingun Sayadaw and Ashin Nyanissara would lecture together, the famous older monk first then young Thabaik Aing Sayadaw afterwards. Ashin Nyanissara began lecturing almost daily, missing hardly any township. Rice donations in- creased through the joint efforts of Mingun Sayadaw and Ashin Nyanissara. Overnight Ashin Nyarissa was thrust into public prominence and would soon become renowned as one of Burma's great orators, whose words would move people and attract audiences of thousands of people. Rather than giving dry, scholarly Dhamma talks, he would become known for speaking directly to the people, explaining sometimes subtle Buddhist concepts in language they can understand, weaving in stories and humor and exhortations to better conduct and practice, and always bringing the long and winding discourse to a rousing conclusion. In his indefatigable effort to disseminate and explain the wonderful teachings of the Buddha, Sitagu Sayadaw would travel to every corner of Myan- mar, and one day pretty much to every corner of the world. His skill as public speaker would, at the same time, lead all of his other aspirations to fruition, for they would gain a wide body of material supporters. This simple act in which his teacher ceded his lecture seat to his pupil was the critical turning point in the young monk's life. Soon afterwards, Ashin Nyanissara would ask Mingun Sayadaw and the MRDA that a close friend, the highly awarded Ashin Mahosadha Pandita, who would one day be influ- 70 Teacher of the Moon ential in missionary work, also be added to the lecture circuit. Sagaing Masoeyein Sayadaw-gyi was a venerable monk who oversaw the Masoeyein system of monasteries, from which he obtained his nickname. One of these, the Lyawphyu monastery, on the steep eastern slope of Sagaing Hills looking down on the Irrawaddy River, was dilapidated to the point of being uninhabit- able and uninhabited. In 1977 the elderly sayadaw-gyi turned Lyawphyu over to Ashin Nyanissara that he might restore and renovate the monastery. The latter renamed the monastery Sad- hamma Sitagu Monastery. Sadhamma means “True Doctrine” in Pali. Sitagu means “arrival at a cold place” in Pali, an image that for the Burmese is understood as as a reference to the moon. Restoration began with the help of its first benefactors, U Thaung Tin, his wife Daw Than Nwe and her sister Daw Kyin Yi, while Ashin Nyanissara lived at the Pathama (First) Masoeyeing Monastery. Henceforth he was not only known as Thegon Sayadaw and as Thabaik Aing Sayadaw, but would also become known as Sitagu Sayadaw, “ The Teacher of the Moon.” Sitagu Sayadaw's mother and his sister had both become yogis, a common status in Myanmar assumed by lay practitioners who live with a high degree of commitment to Buddhist practice, particularly meditation practice. This status combines features of the lay life, for instance, having hair, with features of the monastic life, for instance, wearing certain clothing and observing celibacy. Sitagu Sayaday, always observant of the great debt that all of us have toward our parents, invited both yogis to come live in a seperate rest house down the hill from the main Sadhamma Sitagu Monastery, closer the the banks of the Irrawaddy, where they might practice meditation in a secure environment, properly secluded from the monks, and contribute to the life of the monastery. He also at this time published a book based on his lectures on the Lump of Foam Sutta, supplemented with detailed instructions on vipassana meditation. Life in the monastery was quiet and varied little from day to day. The monks would go out on alms rounds before breakfast, lined Sitagu Sayadaw 71 up by height with the elders in front and the youngest ones in the back of a perfect line. When breakfast was over, the monks would sweep the grounds of the monastery. The deciduous trees in Southeast Asia lose their leaves in the dry season on a daily basis and the leaves are quite large and solid. Sweeping leaves is a never-ending task that has to be done every day. Then, the young monks would go off to school or study in an educational monastery. In Sagaing Hills, this meant a walk up and down covered stone steps which connect each monastery among all the hillsides and above all is the big pagoda at the top of the hills called Ponnyashin. Sitagu Sayadaw eventually had about fifty novices and several full monks. He brought Maung Soe Win and Maung Myo from Kyonka Village near Thabaik Aing Forest to stay with him and raise them as sons. In his many lecture tours he was always on the lookout for new recruits from among the more promising novices at the various monasteries he would visit, often asking the local sayadaw, “How about that one over there? What is his story?” Ashin Sondara would later report that Sitagu Sayadaw spotted him as novice monk in the Irrawaddy Division, the delta region of lower Burma, as a suitable candidate for future recruitment at a young age and tracked him for a number of years before eventually bringing him to Sagaing. Naturally, this represented an excellent opportunity for a young novice, for their teacher would be extremely well trained in the teachings of the Buddha, would have a strong foundation in meditation and ascetic practice, would be a master at communicating this knowledge and would have no trouble making sure the material needs of the novice were satisfied. In fact, many of his young disciples would go on to great attainments themselves. Sitagu Sayadaw's speeches had the power to lift hearts in dark times and encourage feats of compassion and courage. He would one day describe the art of oratory, 72 Teacher of the Moon

“To become a great speaker, you must be a good listener first. A good listener means pious devotion to the great speakers who have come before. Secondly, you must be gifted in memorization. Thirdly, you must be an incredible composer of wonderful speeches. Lastly, you must plunge yourself into their text, listening for the turns of phrases and textual symmetries , the pauses and crescendos, the metaphors and tunes that have enable the greatest speeches to stand the test of time.” Gift of water, gift of health

Sagaing Hills, the abode of holy recluses, is often regarded as the glory of Myanmar and of the Sasana. The hills stand over the west bank of the Ayeyarwaddy River, the longest river in Myan- mar, flowing from north to south almost the whole length of the country. Nestled among the wooded hills are graceful pagodas, monasteries, nunneries and retreats of holy ascetics, a place of tranquility and beauty. There were hundreds of monasteries and nunneries, and several thousand monks and nuns residing in these sacred hills across the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay. People traveling by boat on the Irrawaddy River bow in veneration toward Sagaing Hills the moment they catch sight of the various pagodas and monasteries. The Sagaing Hills are neither very high nor very steep, but from their highest points one enjoys a view of Mandalay and Amarapura as well as the Shan Plateau in the distant east and the winding Irrawaddy River directly below. There are no wild beasts, such as tigers, nor serious epidemics, such as malaria, because the forest covering Sagaing Hills is sparse and dry. The area around Sagaing Hills is not fertile and cultivation is minimal. This is in contrast to most of Myanmar, much of which is covered with lush tropical jungle drenched under monsoon rains. Villages are not far from the Hills, so monks can easily collect alms. There are ancient pagodas that are being archaeologi- cally excavated beside new ones. Nonetheless, close up, Sagaing Hills appeared hot, very dry, and somewhat decrepit. Many ancient pagodas were falling into ruins -- just large mounds of earth with vegetation and trees growing 74 Teacher of the Moon out of them, and goats grazing on the weeds and rubbish. The only water supply for a typical monastery or temple was an old, cracked concrete pond which collected water during the rainy season and then provided the only "fresh" water for the eight months of hot, extremely dry weather. Otherwise, its inhabitants had to rely on daily trips down to the banks of the Ayeyawaddy to find water, carrying heavy buckets back up on shoulders and heads, or simply bathing on the shore. For years the fabled Sagaing Hills might have been gradually drying up. Of course there is a natural solution to this situation: install pumps at the banks of the Irrawaddy and pump the water uphill and let gravity carry it through pipes to where it is needed. Two such pumps were already in operation, initiatives of Icchasaya Sayadaw and Myan Aung Sayadaw, the latter, in fact, supplying Saddhamma Sitagu Monastery as well as others. But these provided water only to a small fraction of Sagaing Hills. Sitagu Sayadaw envisioned a network of pumps, water reservoirs and pipes that would provide running water to all of the monasteries and nunneries of Sagaing Hills at no cost to the consumer. The monks, nuns and lay supporters would have access to running water with the turn of faucet. Aside from the engineering challenge, funds would be required. Here a great advantage of being one of the county's eminent public speakers became manifest. The project began in 1980 and its realization would be celebrated in May of 1985, though pipes would still be laid for years to come. Sitagu Sayadaw launched a fund-raising lecture tour, making use of his existing lecture platform, selecting topics from the Buddha's discourses that had to do with offering water and an- nouncing that all donations anyone would care to make would be directed exclusively to the Sitagu Water Donation Project. Sitagu Sayadaw created two fund-raising organizations, one in Upper Burma and the other in Lower Burma, with twenty members in each. U Thaung Tin took responsibility as the president in Upper Burma and U Maung Maung Nyunt for Lower Burma. Gift of water, gift of health 75

For continuity of the operations he appointed the following four committees to be able to check and balance among themselves: a Sangha Advisory Board, an Executive Sangha Committee, a Kappiya-karaka (Monastic Steward) Staff Committee and a Devotees Counselor Board. He compiled and disseminated a large document entitled Sitagu Water Donation Project then asked for the input and opinions from the government and several avail- able engineers. Since this was a meritorious task it gained a great deal of collaboration toward the accomplishment of the project. In fact, a number of government ministers would actively supported the project. The primary engineer who dedicated his time and expertise was U Hla Pe, consultant for the city water supply. U Win Thein, an engineer who lived in Singapore, became devoted to the project after a visit from Sitagu Sayadaw, who brought with him the Sitagu Water Donation Project document Sitagu Sayadaw had compiled and who explained the benefits in detail. U Win Thein not only donated his time, but donated seven pumps himself. Before the pumps from Singapore arrived an old pump was borrowed from Myan Aung monastery. The contour of the Sagaing Hills would be surveyed to find the optimal layout for the network of pipes. The required daily water needs would be calculated, the capacity of the pumps, the electric power requirements. The recurring expenses were calculated for maintenance, both labor and funding. Land for installing pumps and building reservoir tanks were donated by various monasteries and, in fact, one of the pumps was located at Sudhamma Sitagu Monastery. The central reservoir tank of 300,000 gallons was situated atop Shin-pin Nan-kaing Hill, a second tank atop Kin- naya Hill, and altogether seventeen tanks, large and small, would be put to use. Forty miles of pipes would be laid. In the initial phase one hundred monasteries were served and in the end nine hundred monasteries. According to a 2008 census, fifteen thousand residents of Sagaing Hills benefited from a constant supply of safe running water. A project of this size is not complete in Myanmar without a 76 Teacher of the Moon pagoda to commemorate it. Accordingly the Thayambhu Pagoda was erected atop Kinnaya, modeled after a similarity named pagoda located in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. However, the Burmese pagoda was decorated with Burmese-style reliefs and provided a large interior shrine room with replicas of Buddha statues from fourteen countries from the second to the nineteenth centuries. Completed in 1985 CE, the pagoda is thirty-seven feet in height. The water supply system became operational in 1985 with five water pumps delivering more that one hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water a day to more than five hundred monasteries through twelve miles of pipe and seven reservoirs. Two decades later eleven thirty-horse-power pumps delivered five hundred thousand gallons of water a day to more than nine hundred monasteries through forty-seven miles of pipe and eleven reservoirs. Over this time Sagaing Hills gradually transformed itself from a sacred but slightly sleepy Buddhist center on its way to becoming an ancient archaeological site like Bagan, into a vi- brant, ever expanding Buddhist center of practice, teaching, training, and pilgrimage. It may truly be said that it is the holiest community in the world because, unlike Jerusalem or Varanasi or Mecca, which have more than their fair share of the profane along with the sacred, Sagaing Hills now has over a thousand monasteries, nunneries, meditation centers, and pagodas, and somewhere between twenty to thirty thousand monks and nuns. And virtually no lay people live there, other than those serving the monks and nuns. And although the Water Donation Project is probably not the only basis for this beautiful flowering of Bud- dhist culture, it is hard to imagine that it could have happened without the bountiful fresh water that Sayadaw's project provided.

In 1981, while the Water Donation Poject was well underway, Sitagu Sayadaw traveled to six Asian countries: Thailand, Singa- pore, Malaysia, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka on a trip donated by Gift of water, gift of health 77

U Ba Yi and Daw Than Myint, Burmese who lived in Dublin, Ire- land. In Sri Lanka and in Nepal he could speak in Burmese because translators were present. In the other countries he was forced to rely on his English in his lectures, which was challenging, so in English he tended to speak more briefly. In India he was finally able to visit Nalanda, which he had once read about with fascination in the travel log of Ashin Rewata Dhamma as a young student in Rangoon. Nalanda had long ago and for many centuries been the site of the greatest Buddhist monastic university in India, forerunners of Oxford and Harvard and not so different in size. Nalanda had also before that been the home town of the great monk Sariputta, the Buddha's foremost disciple in his own lifetime. In August, 1982 he traveled with Sayadaw-gyi U Thitthila to England, under the same sponsorship. The two sayadaws resided in a village for one month, accepting the breakfast and lunch donations of Ms. Eagleton, a devotee of the older monk, for one month, while Sitagu Sayadaw improved his English and learned the English way of life, conversing daily with Ms. Eagleton and receiving food donations from her. U Thitthila, now eighty-six years old, was eminent in world missionary work, had translated the Vibhanga chapter of the Abhidhamma into English during the many years he lived in England, and had become quite fluent in English and comfortable in teaching in English. Ashin Thitthila would live for another fifteen years and die at the age of 101. Af- ter a month with U Thitthila, Sitagu Sayadaw also traveled to Birmingham, in August of 1982, to stay with Dr. Ashin Rewata Dhamma himself for six months, who had by this time written many books. In January, 1983 Sitagu Sayadaw traveled to the USA to stay at a monastery in Silver Spring, Maryland, but decided he wanted to stay somewhere where there were no Burmese in order to develop fluency in spoken English more quickly. He decided on Nashville, Tennessee, where there was a monastery that had no monk at the time. This would be the first place overseas in which 78 Teacher of the Moon he experienced some success in gaining non-Burmese disciples. He moved into the monastery, aptly named the Buddhist Temple of Nashville, that had recently been established to serve the influx of Buddhist refugees from Southeast Asia, in what had been a hundred-year-old Baptist church in a poor and rough neighborhood in East Nashville, in which the cross had been replaced by an eight-spoked Dhamma wheel, but which was in serious disrepair, unheated with a leaky roof, and in which monks from Ther- avada Buddhist countries, such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambo- dia, Laos and Burma had at one time or another lived. One small room, maybe once the office of the church secretary, had been cleaned up, outfitted with bed and desk, and, most importantly, provided a small space heater to keep the room warm, to provide living quarters for the lone monk. Electricity had been shut off in the rest of the building. As would become his custom at each of his itinerant residences, Sitagu Sayadaw hung a large map on one wall, this one of the United States. The founder and donor of the Temple was a Burmese man with a Thai wife, U Win Myint, who was on the faculty at Tennessee State University in Nashville, and who ran the Temple with a Board of Directors that was instrumental in sponsoring, and getting green cards for, the occasionally resident monks and providing the food and requisites they needed to live from day to day at our Temple. A young American man who had become interested in Buddhism, “Happy” Heilman, began dropping by the temple about once a week and began meeting with his monk, who was “a very friendly, intelligent monk,” but otherwise not distinguished from other monks he had met here. After discussing Dhamma with Sitagu Sayadaw for about a half hour, Happy would go meditate in a large large, empty, very chilly room, and listen to the water dripping down through the leaky roof into buckets placed strate- gically around the floor. He would then return to the warm, cozy office, where Happy would answer Sayadaw's many questions about America. They would study together the U.S. map on Gift of water, gift of health 79

Sayadaw's wall very carefully, Sayadaw pointing to this city or that state to enquire about the people there. He was curious to know everything about the people, the customs, the geography and the weather. Sayadaw also took classes at Vanderbilt University, where a professor of religious studies, Dr. Charles Hambrick, allowed Sitagu Sayadaw to lecture on Dhamma when he taught about Buddhism. He continued his world tour alone near the end of 1983, traveling to big cities in the USA, and then to Canada, Japan, Australia, In- donesia, Singapore, Thailand and back to Burma in early 1984.

Sitagu Sayadaw had been thinking of founding a Buddhist hospital for many years, since he had visited Dr. Seagrace's hospital over twenty years before in Namkham in Shan State near China. His own experience as a hernia and then pulmonary patient in Rangoon and his late night rescue of a nun who had been bitten by a cobra all underscored his determination to do what he could to improve health care in Burma. In 1985 Col. Thuya Kyaw Zwar, President of the People's Council in Sagaing Division generously donated ten acres of land to Sitagu Sayadaw to build such a hospital, and the foundation stone was laid on a drizzly day in November of 1985. As with the Sitagu Water Donation Project, Sitagu Sayadaw as- sembled the range of experts that could inform how to proceed and to become engaged in many ways. He invited and consulted with six outstanding physicians and surgeons fro Mandalay and Sagaing to plan the hospital and its supporting infrastructure. He then created a mission statement and business plan. The cost for a 16-bed hospital with associated medications, equipment, tools, instrumentation, furniture, parking lot, etc. was computed. Sitagu Sayadaw proposed that the hospital be five times that big with sixteen divisions for monks, novices, nuns, laymen and lay- women. Not only did the consultants argue for a smaller size, but many of the elder sayadaws had doubts about how big an enter- 80 Teacher of the Moon prise Sitagu Sayadaw would be able to administer. Nonetheless, Sitagu Sayadaw insisted on this size and prevailed. Within a few years the consultants would advocate even greater expansion beyond the size Sitagu Sayadaw had insisted on at the beginning. Bulldozers began leveling the site where the building was to be erected. The site, to the west of Soom-Oo-Shin Pagoda, had dense native growth of spiny shubs and bushes. Inadvertently thirty-seven graves belonging to the neighboring Pineapple Grove Cemetery were excavated, some with fairly recent remains still only partially decomposed. Many of the monks, engineers, technicians and workers involved were spending the night at the site, camping in tents as the land was leveled and the foundation laid. There were reports during this period of frightening visits by invisible spirits, who lifted the heads or pulled the legs of those aslumber in tents, and who threw rocks at the tents. No doubt among the mischievous spirits were those of monks, and everyone knew they could not be expelled simply by reciting verses of protection in the standard way. Nonetheless, Gandayon Sayadaw devised a plan for removing the spirits that involved the donation of requisites to the Sangha, who would recite the Parittas and command the spirits to leave the site. The plan benefited from the availability of a truck, which would be used for transporting spirits. At the conclusion of the ceremony the spirits were invited to climb up into the truck and it was explained that they were to be taken to a new place to live. Although no one could actually see the spirits, it was observed that the tires flattened as the spirits climbed aboard before the truck embarked for the new cemetery. After that day no one was bothered by spirits again. Sitagu Sayadaw continued to lecture tirelessly throughout Burma during this period, providing much needed funding. The fifty-bed Sitagu Ayudana Hospital was ceremoniously opened in March 1990. Ayudana means “giving of long life” in Pali. Nonetheless, the project did not end there, but continue to develop. Twenty years later it would have one-hundred fifty beds, a modern labo- Gift of water, gift of health 81 ratory, a radiology unit, a dentistry office, an endoscopy clinic, and an eye-care unit. It would have eighty-three staff members, comprising doctors, nurses, technicians and others on staff, provide rountine medical, surgical, urological, gynecological, dental and eye-care services. Teams from abroad, particularly from the UK, the US, Malaysia, Singapore, Belgium and Germany, or from Mandalay or Rangoon, would routinely provide services on a volunteer basis, for a couple of weeks at a time to perform eye surgery or maxillofacial and plastic surgery and so on. Eye care, particularly treatment of causes of blindness (cataracts, glaucoma, etc.) would become something of a specialty. Sitagu Sayadaw would often be seen at the clinic visiting patients or talking with foreign volunteers, whom he treated with great honor and charm. Monks, nuns and the poor would always be given treatment at no cost to themselves, for diagnosis, treatment, hospital stay and meals or for medicine. Patients who could afford care themselves were asked to subsidize those who could not. Primarily the hospital would benefit from individual and group benefactors in both Burma and abroad. 82 Teacher of the Moon Exile

Burma had suffered under a brutal military regime since1962, which had isolated the country and run the economy into the ground, while many of the generals and an allied wealthy class had enriched themselves. At the same time, the generals por- trayed themselves as devout Buddhists, and many of them undoubtedly were, or at least their wives were. Sitagu Saydaw's growing fame led to many invitations to give Dhamma talks and conduct ceremonies for the rich and powerful, many of whom became admirers and supporters. This allowed him in turn to become an effective, within limits, moral voice where it most counted. The government had been known to act in often unpredictable ways. Things came to a head in 1988 after the regime had arbi- trarily demonetized higher denominations of currency the previous year, eliminating most of people's savings. In March student demonstrations were brutally suppressed with well over one hundred deaths. Then Daw Khin Kyi, the aged widow of General Aung San, the father of modern Burma, who had led the independence movement and been assassinated over forty years hence, had a stroke. Her daughter, who lived in England, married with children to an British Tibet scholar, flew to Burma to take care of her at the Rangoon General Hospital for an extended time. This was Ma Aung San Suu Kyi, who in three years would become the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize as a result of what was about to un- 84 Teacher of the Moon fold. On June 21 thousands of students meeting on the Rangoon Uni- versity campus undertook to march to the Institute of Medicine to join a political rally that was taking place there, right across the street from the Rangoon General Hospital. They were attacked by the army, again over one hundred died and many of the injured streamed into the hospital in which the mother was convalescing. Ma Aung San Suu Kyi had been following Burmese political affairs for years and had made many visits to see her mother, but this was the first time she experienced the regime's brutality first- hand. On August 8, 1988 (to be known henceforth as “8888”) the situation reached a boiling point. Demonstrations had been organized in Rangoon and also simultaneously in Mandalay, where fliers had been distributed the previous day inviting people to a rally outside the famous Mahamuni Pagoda. In Rangoon students took to the street and the regime responded with bullets. In Mandalay crowds of youths began appearing about ten in the morning, and were immediately attacked by soldiers who tried to run the crowds down with trucks, then opened fire, killing two demonstrators. This brought a huge influx of angry protesters joined by large numbers of monks. The confrontation then spread over the Ayeyarwaddy River into Sagaing. In fact the whole country was in an uproar. A twenty-three-year-old monk living at the Sud- hamma Sitagu Vihara in the nearby Sagaing Hills, Ashin Sondara, reports that he participated in the demonstrations in Sagaing, frustrated by the worsening poverty of his home village in spite of constant claims by the government of the steady rise of economic indicators. It happened that, only after Ashin Sondara had returned to the Sitagu monastery, the military fired on and killed many protesters and many people fled up into the Sagaing Hills where the monastery was located, many with bullet wounds. The next day U Sondara returned back to the streets of Sagaing where even larger crowds had gathered, but this time the military held back. The demonstrations would continue for two to three months Exile 85 in Sagaing but without the violent response of the military that had been witnessed the first day. Sitagu Sayadaw did not participate in demonstrations. As one of the most revered monks in the country his opportunity for effect- ing change was quite different: he would provide a moral voice. Following the violence in Mandalay and Sagaing he delivered the first of his lectures on the responsibilities of kings to a huge group gathered at the University of Mandalay. In delivering this talk, Sitagu Sayadaw specifically hoped raise funds to support three children newly orphaned by the brutal military response just witnessed, as well as to support his ongoing projects. He spoke roughly as follows: “My dear devotees and students of University of Man- dalay: tonight’s lecture has the purpose of raising funds for the three orphaned children, Maung Aung Myo Thant, Ma Phyu Phyu Thant and Ma Khin Hninzi, whose parents, U Win Htein and Daw Tin Win Kyi, were killed while fighting for human rights.” The children were six years, three years and six months old, respectively, at this time. The parents had joined the demonstration in Sagaing, where they lived, and both had died as a consequence. This had moved Sitagu Sayadaw to speak on this occasion. He continued, “We have now raised over twenty thousand kyats but would like fifty thousand or more to support these unfortunate children. We are going to open an account with their names and appoint trustees. Compassion with mind alone will not accomplish this; bodily action as well is called for from the students as well as from the general audience present here. This is also an opportunity to donate to the Sitagu Ayudana Hospital as well as to our water project.” With that he began his sermon: 86 Teacher of the Moon

“Tonight’s Dharma talk will concern the admonitory sermons preached by the Buddha to the ruling kings of various states during his time, which was much like it is in Burma, but for today it is appropriate to substitute word “government” for “ruling king.” The lecture for tonight will be on raj'-ovada, which means the duties, the princi- ples, the code of conduct or the rules for the kings. Those were admonished by the Buddha specifically to the kings: ten rules of conduct for the kings, dassa raja dhamma ” This talk was based on several Jataka Stories, tales from the previous lives of the Buddha, that dealt specifically with kings and their responsibilities. Four of these (Jataka #385, the Nandiyami- garā; Jataka #396, the Kukkujātaka; Jataka #415, the Kummās- apiṇḍijātaka; and Jataka #534, the Mahāhaṃsajātaka) list the same ten qualities that a good king must possess, and it is these qualities that Sitagu Sayadaw addressed in his discourse, beginning with the Pali name for each. “Danam, silam, paricarika, Ijjavan, maddavan, tapan, Akkodhan, avihimsa, khantica, avirodhanam. “Avirodhanam, non-obstruction, in Pali and its commentary, means the ruling kings not opposing the wish of the ministers, generals, citizens, monks, and so on. Vinaya is for the monks, precepts are for the laity and ruling kings have special rules. The moment any such rule is broken it becomes certain that some form of ominous consequence will ensue. The ruling king must not oppose or obstruct the intentions of his people. The Pali word 'avirodhanam' has also been translated as 'democracy.' When democracy dominates, a country will prosper and thrive. The word 'raja' [this is the Pali word for 'king'] is defined as 'pleasing the people’s hearts, making them happy, by rightful action and practices'. Not this government! I’ve been seeking for twenty-six years to discover something t be pleased about with this government. How would a king Exile 87

please the people?” Indeed, military rule had begin in 1962, twenty-six years earlier. “The king has to observe ten qualities of conduct, in Pali 'dassa raja-dhamma', and six qualities of a guiding patron who rules the country and supports the welfare of its citizens: forbearance, watchfulness, sensible judgment, compassion, diligence and finally discriminative wisdom. All of these work hand in hand with morality. In addition, a king has four obligations for honoring those worthy of honor: dana (sharing), gracious speech, blessing with general welfare and peace, treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself…” Finally, the king has to apply seven additional responsibilities: the king has to hold full and frequent public as- semblies; to meet together in accord and to disperse in accord and to carry out endeavors in accord; to do nothing not already established, to abrogate nothing that has been already enacted and to act in accordance with the ancient institutions as established in the former days. The king has to honor and esteem the wise and support the elders and to make it a point of duty to pay heed to their words. No women or girls belonging to their clans are to be detained by force or abduction. The king has to respect and follow what is right. The king has to rightfully protect the welfare of the monks dwelling in his city-states. In short the king has to abide by Democracy and practice the democracy …” At this, the audience responded in unison,“Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.” “The king has to practice the four brahmavihara [divine abidings]: “Metta [universal loving-kindness] has the power to overcome the evil force of hatred that otherwise leads to repre- hensible acts of violence and terrorism. Harmonious rela- 88 Teacher of the Moon

tions should be established with the people of different backgrounds and faiths. A king should cultivate boundless loving-kindness toward all living beings as a mother pro- tects her own child even at the risk of her own life. “Karuna [compassion] is the antidote for cruelty, which is responsible for many horrors and atrocities prevalent in the world today. “Mudita [sympathetic joy] is the most effective remedy for poisonous jealousy. “And upekkha [equanimity] can eliminate opposition and bias. The ruling kings should observe strictly these four sterling virtues that underlie democracy. “Dana, generosity, means sharing with the indigent, respectfully supporting the holy sangha, but the assets shared must not be at the expense nor through the ex- ploitation of the people.” Sayadaw continued by graphically explaining how King Vessan- tara in the last in Jataka stories made himself subject to exile on Mount Vamka for his gift, against the people’s wishes, of a white elephant to eight Brahmins from Kalinga, though the earth shook, and the skies were filled with thunder and lightening as the gods expressed their objection to this misappropration. Ven. Sayadaw interpreted this as “voice and dominion” of the people, on behalf of whom the king should rule. “People rule the king, the king does not rule the people. Do we have here democratic rule for the people? No! Here the situation is diametrically different.” “Sila, morality. The righteous king has every week to obey a minimum of five precepts: not killing, not stealing, not committing adultery, not lying – which is to be trans- parent and honest, rather than producing false data and hopes – and finally not intoxicating self with alcohol or drugs. Has the government ever obeyed the precepts on Exile 89

any occasion? Let alone every week.” Ven. Sayadaw then narrated another story from the Jatakas about the king Porisara, a drunkard and eater of human flesh, without morals and opposed to the will of the people. In the end he also was subject to exile by the people: “The brutality of the king was that of a fisherman or of a hunter. Here also a united population's wish prevailed, not the king’s. Avirodhanam, democracy! When the king was exiled he took only his royal sword and a pan, only a royal sword and a pan! He was also accompanied by his chef, but took no jewels, nor had he transfered his wealth to offshore bank accounts. “My devotees, what kind of king do you wish for? If you wish wrong you will get a worse and worse king: a abominable, detestable and execrable king. I will tell you a Hel- lenistic story from long long ago: “There was once a Greek island in the Mediterranean Sea by the name of Danconesia, ruled by a certain king. The king was hostile, disgusting and abominable, so much so that the citizens prayed every Saturday and Sunday for him to die soon. They got their wish, for ere long the king passed away and another king ascended the throne. “However, that second king hated his people; so hateful and detestable was he that the citizens prayed every Fri- day, Saturday, Sunday and Monday for the king to die, the sooner the better. They got their wish, for ere long the second king passed away and yet another king ascended the throne. “Alas! The third king was most cruel and horrible of all, like a terrorist, killing and massacring, an execrable king. At this juncture the citizens held a meeting in the church to ask themselves what they should pray for this time. It seemed to them that if the new king were to die another 90 Teacher of the Moon

even worse king would take his place. The consensus was to pray for the long life of the king, so that no worst king would ascend to the throne. “It happened that the new king, was among the crowd, incognito, and heard not their deliberations but rather their concluding prayers. Asking an elderly lady why they were not instead praying for the death of the king as soon as possible, the stealthy king was much surprised at the ex- planation for their wish. To everybody's astonishment he thereupon became a very compassionate king! So, my dear devotees, be careful in what you wish for. “Paricarika, liberality, means giving government employees a living wage, that they not have to offend the moral code, nor become ensnared in a life of crime, in accepting bribes, in blackmail, burglary, housebreaking, and so on. “Ijjavan, honesty. The king should not deceive his people nor mislead others for his personal gain. He should not tamper with data nor cook the books, nor deliberately deceive nor disseminate false information with the intention of cheating the people. He must be honest and see white as white and not as gray. “Maddavan, gentleness: The ruling king must be gentle in thought, speech and action toward the people, in domestic as well as diplomatic affairs. The ruling king has to control his temper by not speaking in anger or raising the voice, even though he may be angry and frustrated, to say nothing of committing hostile physical action. May my audience enjoy sympathetic and warm-hearted treatment by the government…” At this point the audience spoke once again as if with one voice, “Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.” “Tapan, self-control. The ruling king has to obey the Exile 91

moral precepts, to practice concentration and insight meditation regularly so as to be able to balance his mind, to develop equanimity and to learn to make decisions independently of temptation, desire, anger, fear and delu- sion. In contrast, the current situation in Myanmar is grievously distressing, marked by nothing but anguish. I will illustrate this with the story of three drunken travelers: “Once upon a time there were three intoxicated travelers rowing in a leaky rowboat along a wide river, ripples and waves rocking the boat this way and that. One traveler sat rowing on the front seat, intoxicated with marijuana and suffering from motion sickness. He imagined the rolling crests as an onslaught of pirates and, in fear, cried out, ‘Pirates! Pirates!’. “The second traveler sat rowing on the rear seat, drunk with toddy. He imagined, in his delirium, who knows what, but responded maniacally to the words of the first by shouting, ‘Charge! Charge!’. “The final traveler sat in the center, in an opium-induced stupor. After the shouting from the front and rear had persisted some time, he, half-asleep, without opening his eyes, softly asked, ‘What is going on, guys?’ After some time without reply, the opium-head in the middle curled himself up like a shrimp, and said softly to his colleagues, ‘Tell the damsels that this is their buddy Maung Maung’s boat’, for he was dreaming that he was being welcomed by celestial goddesses, all the while neglecting to bail out the water seeping into the boat ...” At this depiction of the dysfunction of the present government, an uproar of laughter from the delighted audience ensued. “Akkodhan, imperturbation, The ruling king should not be angry toward his people, just as the mother will not become angry at her baby even while it pokes or kicks her or 92 Teacher of the Moon

bites her nipple as it lies on her lap, just as the earth receives excrement without feeling hurt or resentful. A king is obligated to serve and guide the people and should not retaliate when the citizens express their annoyance at something. Rather, a king should wander the countryside and come to know the problems of the people, as in the days of old. Has our government the government come to know the problems of the people? “Avihimsa, nonviolence, is non-hurtfulness, absence of cruelty, mercy, compassion. The ruling king should not cause harm but always seek peace, applying boundless universal loving-kindness even to the worst offender! To- day’s world is full of unrest, misery, war and violence. Nations arm themselves to the teeth. The world yearns for universal loving-kindness, measureless compassion, sympathetic joy, great tolerance and right vision in order for all of us to live in this one world in perfect peace and harmony as brothers and sisters. The world certainly doesn’t need serial killers like King Porisara. “In contrast to the rule of a king, people govern themselves under a democratic constitution in many countries. The word 'democracy' comes from Greek 'demos' (people) and 'kratein' (rule), to mean 'ruled by the people', and so not by the king. The government is controlled by the people. What we see here is the reverse.” Sitagu Sayadaw then described several categories of government: direct democracy, representative democracy, parliamentary democracy as in Great Britain, constitutional or liberal democracy as in the USA, socialist democracy as in the Soviet Union and so on, and described how those administrations variously evolved. “Khantica, forbearance. The ruling king has to be patient and tolerant of the verbal and physical opposition by the people who might misunderstood the workings of the Exile 93

government. The word 'khanti' does not only mean to tol- erate the views and actions of the powerful, but also to re- frain from oppressing the powerless, to be upright, gracious in speech, kind in mood, devoid of arrogance and never harsh in rebuke. Everyone should cultivate these qualities.” Sitagu Sayadaw often makes use of English words to emphasize vital points, often in a clever way: “Achieving welfare for the nation demands the right people at the right time, not cowards, not drunkards not dreamers, but those able to wield the four ty's: morali-ty, quali-ty, royal-ty and uni-ty, at every level of decision making, if the country is to flourish. When cattle are passing by and if the old bull deviates from the path, they all deviate from the path, following his lead. Even though the people have morality, admirable qualities and unity, if the king has no royalty nor civility, the country will fall. The standard of democracy demands vigilant attention to the president, while the president strictly observes the constitution and the law. Democratic countries are happy with their elected leaders. Do you, my devotees, want democracy? Then row your boat with diligence. Don’t be a drunkard or dope-head like the front and rear oarsmen, nor a shirker like the opium smoker in the middle, but row your boat with steadfastness, keeping it ever afloat” With this the crowd responded, “Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.” In summary, the venerable sayadaw recited once again the names of the ten admirable qualities of ruling kings he had just described, in their original Pali:

“Danam silam paricarika Ijjavan maddavan tapan Akkodhan avihimsa khantica avirodhanam.”

94 Teacher of the Moon

During the next forty days he delivered this same talk, and only this talk, at every speaking venue. Some people were able to record this talk on their cassette recorders, to make copies and to distribute them further. It went viral and was picked up by the BBC who broadcast it on their Burmese language program, which could be heard in Burma. Meanwhile, in distant Rangoon, some representatives from the National League for Democracy (NLD), the disheartened opposition, approached Ma Aung Suu Kyi to ask if she would speak out in opposition to the dictatorship at a rally planned before the Shwedigon Pagoda. She consented tentatively, but first negotiated permission from the government in order to avoid bloodshed, making good use of her status as the daughter of the beloved late General Aung San. There was a lot of curiosity about Ma Suu Kyi prior to the rally. Of course many were eager to see in person the daughter of the revered founder of the nation. Many wondered if she could still speak Burmese after so many years abroad, or if she understood what had been going on in Burma. Her speech changed all that; she was from that time recognized as the leader of the Burmese opposition. This put the government in an awkward position, since they could not easily treat the daughter of their beloved general the way they treated the demonstrating students. Fortunately, after this difficult summer the government showed an unprecedented willingness to appease the opposition and promised fair and open elections, which were scheduled for May of 1990 (just after the opening of Ayudana Hospital). Although Sitagu Sayadaw had doubtlessly evoked the ire of some in the government and military through his talks on the responsibilities of kings, he continued to enjoy the respect and support of the pa- trons previously attracted to him. It was government strategy for the next two years to allow a quasi-democratic process to proceed, but systematically to inter- fere with the NLD campaign. One way this was achieved was to Exile 95 place Aung San Suu Kyi, who had remained in Burma to participate in the elections, under house arrest in her family home as election day approached. The government seems to have fully ex- pected to win the election, but in fact the opposition NLD received some 80 percent of the vote. As a consequence, the government … simply ignored these results. The Burmese consider anniversaries important. By August 8, 1990, the second anniversary of the student demonstrations in Rangoon, the government had made no moves toward convening a new parliament in accord with the result of the elections some months before. On this day, a few hundred monks in Mandalay decided to stage a demonstration of their own. Most monks throughout Myanmar go on alms round every day and devout householders take great joy in earning merit by plac- ing rice and condiments in the monks' bowls as they passed silently by. On this day the participating monks uniformly boy- cotted military households, simply by turning their bowls upside down so nothing could be placed in them as they passed by, a clear affront. Some Sitagu monks also participated in this practice, and Sitagu Sayadaw offered them no advice about this form of protest one way or the other. After two or three days of this the government responded with violence, beating monks, as well as lay people who came to express their solidarity, and, in fact, two monks and two laypeople were shot to death. As it was, the government response was mild compared to that of 1988. Violence against monks was almost unthinkable, and, in fact, members of the military were quite divided on the issue. As a result, public outcry ensued. The Sangha organizations an- nounced that, unless they received a public apology, they were going to continue their boycott indefinitely. Soon there were twenty thousand monks in Mandalay participating in the boycott, and another fifteen thousand in Yangon following the example of their northern brothers. In addition, many of these monks with- held the services monks can generally be called on to perform on behalf of householders, for instance, on the occasion of some- 96 Teacher of the Moon one's death, from military households. This must have felt like excommunication for the entire military. The response by the military was conflicted. Many monasteries were raided and many monks were arrested and imprisoned. A few monastic communities were disbanded completely and some monks received long prison sentences. On the other hand, many of the more devout military officers actually appeared at monasteries to pay respect to senior monks, bowed down before them and apologized for the violence committed by their brothers in arms. In the midst of this, Sitagu Sayadaw, through his connections, was warned of the danger of his own arrest, for many authorities were still angered by his famous lecture on the responsibilities of kings from two years before. He expediently took a commercial flight to India, without arousing suspicion, for this was by now an accustomed destination in his travels. Before this, he had put his good friend Ashin Mahosadha Pandita in charge of overseeing the fledgling Ayudana Hospital in his absence. He would have to wait for things to cool down. In fact, he ended up back to Nashville, where he stayed at a newly founded monastery.

The Nashville Buddhist Temple community was made up primarily of groups of Southeast Asian immigrants of different nationalities who were new to the U.S., and who were continuing to come in successive waves over the following decades. Most were Cambodians and Laotians. These were hard-working people who had to work several jobs at a time to make a living, learn English, master driving and life skills, and face a myriad of other hurdles besides trying to keep their religious and cultural heritage alive. These were typical of the diaspora that Sitagu Sayadaw would serve through his missionary work in the years to come. Quite a number of Americans were exploring alternative religious paths in Nashville, many of these came to Buddhism, some to Ti- betan and Zen Buddhist groups that were forming. Those at- Exile 97 tracted to Theravada and looking for connection to the Asian roots of Buddhism came to the Nashville Buddhist Temple. About eight of these had formed, by about 1986 or 1987, a meditation group that met once a week under the guidance of a Burmese monk, Saccavamsa Sayadaw, who also had also begun to teach them how to chant in Pali. Among these was Happy Heilman, who had occasionally visited Sitagu Sayadaw at the old temple a few years before, his wife Barbara, one Lee Olsen and one Jennifer Conn. Sitagu Sayadaw also began lecturing and teaching vipassana meditation to Americans who visited the monastery and soon had six devotees, in addition to his two Burmese donors, and with time many Burmese immigrants would come to see him from nearby cities. During this period Happy was converting an old garage into a meditation hall. He was an inexperienced electrician at the time, yet had undertaken to wire the main ceiling light so that it could be turned on or off by a switch at each doorway. Sayadaw would often wander by and sit at the back of the garage to just watch Happy work, or to read or to meditate. Happy was not aware that Sayadaw was even paying attention as he failed to get the switches to function correctly. Finally, Sayadaw got up, motioned to Happy, and quietly suggested that he attach two wires in a way he had not thought of. Happy did so, and all the switches worked as if they had been wired by a master electrician. Happy remem- bers thinking, “How can a monk, not versed in worldly things, and coming from a country which at that time had only the most rudimentary electrical service, so easily understand how to wire these switches without even really looking up at them or inspect- ing them?” And so he came to understand the full meaning of the Buddhist concept of “penetrating insight.” Happy's wife Barbara, for her part, observed that Sayadaw had a tremendous interest in the institutions of higher learning in Nash- ville, among them Vanderbilt University. He gave lectures at Vanderbilt on Buddhism, and he also studied the historical development of the University, meeting with a number of faculty 98 Teacher of the Moon members in various disciplines. Years later, it would become clear why the founding and administration of institutions of higher learning were so intriguing to Sayadaw: He would go on to establish, three large universities for monks and nuns, alongside the hospitals, clinics and other charitable endeavors he had already begun. He would base the organization of these projects on his understanding of successful administrative precedents, such as Vanderbilt University. The customs of Asian people were different from American ways, but many of the Americans began to acculturate. For example, Burmese men wear longyis, which are sarongs worn the Burmese way. So the male meditators, including Happy, began wearing a longyi whenever a group of Burmese people came to pay homage to Sayadaw, the better to fit in. They came to realize how symbi- otically interdependent the Sangha of monks and the community of lay followers were. The monks depended on the lay people for their material requisites and the lay people depended on the monks for their spiritual requisites, including teachings and instructions for practice. This is not to mention the social services provided by many monastics in Myanmar. During this extended stay, Sayadaw visited remote parts of the United States, wanting to see as much of this exotic land as possible, as many Burmese people invited him to come visit them in all parts of the country. They would drive down to Nashville to pick him up and take him on a long journey to stay with a Burmese family and give a talk to other Burmese families in that community. He always accepted an invitation without hesitation. Not one to spend exile waiting idly around, Sitagu Sayadaw began to explore the possibility of establishing a monastery in the States. In part he wanted a home-base for his travels to this part of the world and in part a locus for fund-raising in the West for his growing number projects in cash-starved Myanmar. Through discussions with his dear friend in Sagaing Ashin Mahosadha- Maha Pandita Sayadaw, he had begun to recognize the value of missionary activities in the West. Not only was there a growing Exile 99

Burmese diaspora, eager for the presence of monk and willing to cooperate in such an endeavor, but there was a growing interest in Buddhism among the ethnic Westerners. Sitagu Sayadaw's travels in the early months of 1992 took him to Houston, Texas, from where his sponsors suggested he might also want to visit Austin, the capital of Texas. A Burmese Austinite, Eric Mynn, got a call from Houston asking if could host a Burmese monk from Tennessee and he agreed to put the eminent monk up at his home for a few days. Another Burmese man, U Win Bo, agreed to make some time to act as a tour guide. U Win Bo had, in fact, met Sitagu Sayadaw some months before when he was staying with a Burmese friend in Ohio who had decided to drive down to Tennessee to visit the Burmese monk he was told lived there. U Win Bo had been living in the States long enough not to have any notion of how famous this monk had become back in Myanmar. Austin is a small city in the Texas Hill Country, a beautiful forested semi-arid area, in which many streams flow into the Col- orado River. Sitagu Sayadaw was quite impressed with Austin, for it reminded him of Sagaing Hills back home. U Win Bo, showing Sitagu Sayadaw the many of beauties of Austin from behind the wheel of his car, mentioned once casually that it would be nice if Austin had a Burmese monastery. Sitagu Sayadaw did not reply, but in fact had already been discussing that very possibility with the Burmese community in Houston, without yet reaching a decision. Later that year, Sitagu Sayadaw was back in Austin, this time staying at the house of U Win Bo, where he asked to meet with the few Burmese families in Austin as a group. He had clearly been doing his homework, for he proposed setting a non-profit religious organization in Texas to be called the Theravada Dhamma Society of America (TDSA). Discussions ensued around organization and officers were agreed upon for the fledgling society. Sitagu Sayadaw remained in Austin for about a month, hammering out the bylaws, designing a logo and a letter- 100 Teacher of the Moon head and finally overseeing the filing of the papers for incorpora- tion, which was granted on October 15, 1992. This time of residence in Austin also gave Sitagu Sayadaw a chance to familiarize himself with the area that would become the center of his missionary efforts. Although Sitagu Sayadaw would return to Myanmar that winter, he would include Austin in his international travels each year for the foreseeable future, each time advancing the development of TDSA one step further, encouraging application for federal tax exempt status, then state tax-exempt status and then to begin searching for a property on which to situate the monastery. He seemed somehow to be better informed about the formal steps necessary than the local officers, in those days before easy access to such information on the Internet. Returning home

It is easy to imagine that the government had a public relations nightmare trying to justify the nullification of the results of the recent elections. Contributing to the disgruntle, Sitagu Sayadaw's absence did not go unnoticed. People missed seeing him on the Dhamma talk circuit and began asking what had happened to him. Naturally his sudden disappearance from Myanmar sparked rumors that Sitagu Sayadaw had either been disposed of by the government or put secretly into prison. In addition he still had many donors and supporters in the highest levels of power who asked the same questions. Discussions began in government circles about the famous monk, about whether and how to bring him back. At one point, it was reported, some official suggested that he be invited back, but only under the condition that he disrobe. Mingun Sayadaw, clearly the most renowned monk in Myanmar at this time, seems to have been consulted, for he is reported to have said that he himself would also disrobe if Sitagu Sayadaw were forced to disrobe. That put a quick end to that suggestion. It was in the end decided that Sitagu Sayadaw would be invited to return, that he would, in fact, also be treated with great honor by the government, eager to gain some scrap of popular approval, and that he would even be granted a special honorary monastic title. This could only benefit the regime's badly tarnished image. Around this time Ashin Sondara, Sitagu Sayadaw's young disci- 102 Teacher of the Moon ple, had a personal talk with the elderly Mingun Sayadaw. The latter was often criticized as a staunch supporter of the government, even named by some “Senior General Mingun Sayadaw.” Ashin Sondara discovered that privately Mingun Sayadaw was in fact sharply critical the government, but the elder advised the young monk that if one ceases to be friends with someone because they are foolish, that person will just become more foolish, whereas if you continue to be friends, you still have some opportunity to correct their foolishness. In short, through alienation one sacrifices influence. This is the difference between political partisanship, in which a monk has no business, and the moral voice for which a monk has indeed been responsible since the days of the Buddha. Sitagu Sayadaw had been implementing the same philosophy, just a bit more daringly. The cost is that one's intentions are thereby put into doubt by all parties. Unfortunately, the great Mingun Sayadaw would pass away just before Sitagu Sayadaw would return home. Before returning to Myanmar, Sitagu Sayadaw undertook yet another pilgrimage to India, and he invited people from both Amer- ica and Myanmar to join him, including some of the members of the American meditation group in Nashville, twenty-six laypeople and six Burmese monks, in the winter of 1992 - 1993. The Americans were Happy and Barbara, and Jennifer, later to be joined by Lee. The pilgrimage actually began in Sri Lanka, and from there went to India, to the Goenka Vipassana Center, Dhammagiri, in Igat- puri, India. Sitagu Sayadaw knew the famous Indian meditation teacher Goenka and also Dr. Panth, who headed the Vipassana Research Center at Dhammagiri. The monks sat a meditation course given in Burmese. Goenka was not teaching the course this time, but he gave Dhamma talks on video every evening. The ten-day course in English was already full, with 400 meditators. It was an excellent beginning to the pilgrimage. They kept Noble Silence during the course and received great benefit. Returning home 103

After the meditation course, they embarked on five weeks of travel from one site to another in both India and Nepal, staying in Burmese monasteries each evening and in a Burmese nunnery in Kathmandu. There were a few monasteries in which only one monk had lived for many years by himself. These were quite small and decrepit and certainly the abbot was glad to have Sayadaw and his pilgrims stay there. The Burmese women who had joined the party were able to cook two proper Burmese meals for the six monks every day during the entire trip. A pilgrimage is a journey of spiritual significance for Burmese Buddhists. Typically, if fortunate enough to go, they visit at least four important shrines in India and Nepal: where the Buddha was born (Lumbini), where he was enlightened (Bodhgaya), where he gave his first teaching (Sarnath) and where he attained Mahaparinibbana, or passed away (Kushinara). This group started its pilgrimage at the caves of Ellora and Ajanta, then moved on to the magnificent grounds and the pagoda of Sanchi. Each place was a stop that the Burmese pilgrims knew and loved. Sayadaw would provide the historical and geographical commentary in Burmese. On occasion, they boarded the bus and drove all day, just to come to a fallow field where nothing remained. This would be a place where King Ashoka had once set up a pillar, or where the remains of an ancient earthen stupa were hardly visible, but Sayadaw wanted the others to see the location nonetheless. The very revered old monk, Sagaing Masoeyein Sayadaw, the donor of the Sadhamma Sitagu Vihara, was also present and recited many stories during our interminable rides on the bus. The Burmese would laugh very heartily at the anecdotes, leaving the Americans perplexed. When passengers needed a toilet stop, the bus driver would stop the bus, and someone would rouse them with “bush, bush,” so that men would head in one direction into the bush, women going in the other direction. They usually stopped at truck stops for the noon meal, when the 104 Teacher of the Moon women would take over the lunch preparations for the monks and the Indian truckers would stare at them. All the provisions for lunch had been freshly prepared early in the morning before their departure, packed in baskets and loaded on top of the bus. Many spices, chilies and fish sauces were brought from Burma. Sitagu Sayadaw was in a relaxed mood after the itinerant group had visited the Uruvela Forest and the Neranjanra River where Sujata had offered rice milk to Buddha-to-be to nourish him after he had firmly decided that he would sit down and not get up until he had attained awakening. The forest was full of little children who roamed that place and who had swarmed around the bus begging for change. There were so many children it was like a mob. But amidst all chaos Sayadaw saw a way to connect with one child and her baby goat as he boarded our bus. Barbara took a picture in which Sayadaw was smiling at a little Indian girl and holding a wee little goat he had taken from her, in a gentle, teasing manner. She was overcome, but Sayadaw was only teasing her. Chuckling, he handed her baby goat back to her, and she smiled hugely. One of the last stops the pilgrims made was in Kushinara (Kushi- nagara), where the Buddha passed away and was cremated. The Burmese pilgrims had brought many things with them from Myanmar, one of which was tens of yards of fabric, the deep ma- roon color of Burmese monks' robes, with bright golden stars and borders. After arriving at the distinctive building that housed the large reclining Buddha statue representing Lord Buddha's Parinibbana, the pilgrims began unfolding this huge piece of beautiful material and wrapping the image in it. They were re- dressing the Buddha in the most devout and concentrated manner imaginable, as if they were dressing the actual Buddha who had just passed into Parinibbana. This took quite some time, as the statue is very large and the process was carried out with the utmost reverence and devotion. When this was finally completed, everyone lined up along one side of the statue, palms together, in reverent respect, with Returning home 105

Sayadaw at the Buddha's head. He began by chanting, and then speaking, and alternately chanting and speaking. As Sayadaw's resonant, melodious voice filled the room, tears began streaming down everyone's cheeks, and it became apparent for those that could not understand a word of the Burmese or Pali that he was delivering a eulogy. Before he was finished, some people were openly sobbing, although the mood was not so much one of sad- ness as just being deeply moved by the life of Lord Buddha that had ended here almost twenty-five hundred years ago.

After completing this long pilgrimage, the group flew from Kath- mandu to Bangkok and then to Yangon. In Bangkok, the Ameri- cans were joined by Lee Olson of the Nashville meditation group. The Americans had never seen a homecoming such as this one and their connection to Burma was strengthened by the joy and love of these people for Sitagu Sayadaw. The party, including Sitagu Sayadaw and the American disciples, were taken to the private compound of two of Sayadaw's biggest supporters, U Aung Myint and Daw Mar Ni. This was a lifestyle we had never seen before, with several homes for extended family, children, grandchildren, cooks, servants, employees, and even a state of the art recording and video studio, for Daw Mar Ni was a very famous Burmese singer. At this time, Burma was ranked by the U.N. as one of the poorest countries in the world, but it seemed to the Americans that they had been dropped into a fairy- tale kingdom. Of course, they knew better, but the contrast between the world they had come from, the world they found themselves in, and the world that they knew lay just outside of the compound, could not have been greater. Sayadaw and other revered monks were to be given honorific awards from the Burmese Government at Kaba Aye pagoda in Yangon within days of his arrival. This is at the site where the Sixth Buddhist Council had convened from 1954 to 1956, ending the year the nineteen-year-old Nyanissara had ordained. Prepara- tions for this event took place in the compound of Sitagu 106 Teacher of the Moon

Sayadaw's supporters. The Americans were all coming from very ordinary lives in a very ordinary city, Nashville, Tennessee, and now they were being treated like princes and princesses from some magical kingdom. Lee, Patrick, and Happy were all fitted for traditional ceremonial hats called kombons, as well as beautiful longyis of silk and golden thread, and even ceremonial slippers. But it was for the women, Barbara and Jennifer, that all the stops were pulled out. Hairdressers and cosmetologists were brought in to make them look like visiting royalty, and they were dressed in traditional Burmese attire of the highest fashion. And then the jewels were brought out! Rubies, emeralds, and diamonds; necklaces, earrings, bracelets, pendants – this was a Barbara that her hus- band, Happy, had not only never seen, but never even imagined. And all this was for a ceremony in which military leaders were presenting prestigious awards to Buddhist monks for their excel- lence in spiritual achievement. Next to the pagoda was the Maha Pasana Cave, a replica of the cave in India where the first Buddhist synod took place after the Buddha died. On the outside the building resembled a huge cave, and inside was a cavernous auditorium where many monks gathered for the awards ceremony. The Awards Ceremony day began with a long procession into the Kaba Aye by all the monks who were receiving awards, and their attendants. Instead of a few notable monks, there seemed to be well over one hundred senior and estimable monks. Although this seemed to the Americans like an unending line of monks, when you consider that there are hundreds of thousands of monks in Burma, this was actually a very select and distinguished group. Some seemed to be quite young to be so distinguished, while others were over one hundred years old. Some seemed to be very well-known and from very large and important monasteries, while others looked as though they had just come out of solitary meditation in some distant forest. After the monks had all been seated in the front of the arena inside the cave, political leaders and military leaders, often the Returning home 107 same, were seated with their wives, and then the upper echelons of Burmese society, which included the rather incredulous Ameri- cans. Sitting there behind the generals and their wives, Happy was struck by the thought that if he wanted to get his fifteen minutes of fame, all he had to do was stand up and shout, "Free Aung San Suu Kyi!" Not only would it have made world news, the foreign influences would have been thrown out of the country, Sayadaw might well have had to flee the country anew, and his principle followers could have been locked up. Needless to say, Happy had no desire whatsoever to sacrifice all this to get his fifteen minutes of fame. Since there were so many monks, the awards presentations went on for a long time. Sitagu Sayadaw received the award for great Dhamma teacher, the title Mahādhammakathika Bahujanahitad- hara (great preacher of the Dhamma for the benefit of the masses). When the ceremony had finally concluded, the real show was only about to begin. Burmese custom holds that such a gathering of venerables can provide an unmatched opportunity for the pious citizens to gain merit by making donations to these monks. So all the monks, followed by their attendants, began to proceed three times around the Kaba Aye Pagoda, with both sides of the proces- sional lined with eager Buddhist citizens and Buddhist social organizations. The Americans followed right behind Sayadaw carrying very large empty bowls, often three feet in diameter, which the faithful stuffed with money, foodstuffs, and anything else deemed suitable for a distinguished monk. The volume of these donations was so great that their huge bowls would be filled with Burmese kyat within ten minutes, but out of nowhere another assistant would appear from this huge throng of people to take their filled donation bowls and replace the with empty ones. This went on literally for hours. Unfortunately, Lee had become very ill from something he had eaten earlier, and although he bravely tried to keep up with the 108 Teacher of the Moon others, he often had to sit off to the side. He had become ill during the awards ceremony and was sitting outside on the steps when Sayadaw came out. Sayadaw looked down at him, and with a sad but compassionate look asked, “Mr. Lee, why are you green?” At this even Lee had to smile. This often happens to foreign visitors to Myanmar. Of course, being the only foreigners in the procession, the four from Nashville were the objects of great attention and curiosity. So along with this huge rush of thousands of people and thousands and thousands of donations as they followed behind Sayadaw, and found themselves to also be great celebrities themselves. This mostly entailed smiling and smiling and smiling and repeating the few Burmese words they knew over and over to the continual delight of the Burmese lining the path until their mouths were sore. For them it was all worth it to see the delight in people's eyes to see and meet Sitagu Sayadaw's American disciples. When the Americans finally returned to their little building in the family compound at the end of what was surely one of the most amazing days of their lives, they could see the shining golden dome of the Shwedagon Pagoda off in the distance. Collapsing onto their beds, Happy could not help but wonder if maybe they had all just been reincarnated as Burmese. Maybe one does not have to die to be reborn; that maybe one could be reborn in this very lifetime.

Sayadaw next returned to Sagaing with his party including the Americans, returning to the Sadhamma Sitagu Vihara after being gone for nearly two years. Happy noticed as they entered the monastery English words under a large archway in large, block letters spanning the curve of the archway, that read, “DO NOT MISS THIS PLEASANT VERY MOMENT,” Returning home 109 in what he recognized as Sitagu Sayadaw's endearing style of English, understandable but not quite standard. Among the Americans, Lee had gone back to his job in the U.S. but three remained settled into the residences for guests, and began to get ac- quainted with the monks. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh brought two American natives back to his English homeland, where they created a sensation in the royal court. Sitagu Sayadaw had brought four American natives to his homeland four centuries later, where they created a sensation at his evening preachings. The Burmese people, in an isolated land, were very curious about them, and watched them very closely. They, in turn, felt compelled always to be on their best behavior, so as to reflect well on their teacher as well as on their nation. At that time, Sitagu Sayadaw's preachings often lasted from two to three hours, and were often held in large, very simple monasteries or public arenas. Often the floors were earthen, or sometimes wooden; very seldom were they carpeted. The American students were always ceremoniously seated right up front, where everyone in the large crowds could see them. Being on best behavior meant sitting motionless, cross-legged on the hard floor through the entire sermon. Sometimes this became excruciating, and the mind would start to worry, “Will he ever finish?” But after several such occasions, a pattern began to emerge. After what often seemed like many hours, Sayadaw would say something that caused everyone to laugh hardily, then all would look right at the Americans, and shortly afterward, the sermon would come to a close. The first time this happened, as a soon as possible after the sermon had finished, Happy rushed up to Sayadaw and asked, “What did you say about us that caused everyone to laugh so much.” Sayadaw replied, 110 Teacher of the Moon

“I told them I was about to finish, and when everyone got up, please don't look at my students because their longyi might fall off!” Jennifer would remain in Myanmar for eighteen months, while Happy and Barbara returned after two. Jennifer would ordain for a time as a nun and be named Sayalay Jhanapabbha. She would transcribe and compile in English Sitagu Sayadaw's recorded teachings on the Mangala (Blessings) Sutta to produce a published book that has since become very popular in three editions. Higher Education

The Ayudana Hospital in Sagaing Hills is staffed by five medical doctors and seventy employees on salary. It is also supported by specialists and consultants from Mandalay and Yangon who donate their services. Furthermore, teams of physicians and surgeons from abroad come each year on a rotating basis each your during a six month period beginning with the end of the rainy season. They come from places like Britain, America, Gerrmany, Belgium, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and India, and are recruited through Sitagu Sayadaw's international contacts and his enormous aptitude for persuasion. Each visitor is treated like a foreign dignitary, where possible greeted and given much personal attention by Sitagu Sayadaw himself and housed and fed as comfortably as possible. In addition to salaries for the non-volunteer staff, there are monthly costs for medications, purchase and maintenance of medical equipment, meals for patients and staff, electricity, vehi- cles for transportation of incoming and outgoing volunteers and transportation of patients – the hospital even has an ambulance., The facilities are kept clean and a garden with trees, shrubs and flowering plants was maintained, which along with a pagoda on the property was conducive to the peace and well-being of patients and staff. A sliding scale allows some of the costs to be recovered by the patients themselves, but most of the funding comes from the gen- 112 Teacher of the Moon erosity of donors, and the ability of Sitagu Sayadaw to communicate the needs of the hospital and to inspire financial donations alongside the contributions of many domestic and international doctors and other personal in the form of time and services. Monks and nuns are offered free services through donations of devotees who had established the Sasanika Financial Fund for this purpose. Free services are also extended to clergy of all other faiths: priests, ministers, swamis and imams. The scope of services provided by the hospital includes general medicine, psychiatry, general surgery, orthopedics, urology, gyne- cology, ear-nose-and-throat, facial-maxillary surgery, dental, oph- thalmology, gastro-intestinal diagnosis and skin infections. The staff has maintained a consistent attitude of hospitality and cour- tesy. Eye care has been a particular priority, in part because of the cost effectiveness in treating the most common causes of blindness in Burma: (1) The inflammation caused by the trachoma virus, which causes the eye lashes to be drawn inward to sweep over the eye during blinking, common in the dry zones of Burma, (2) cataracts, treatable surgically within a single day, and, of course, (3) glaucoma. Sitagu Sayadaw established the Sitagu Special Eye Care Program in 1992 with donations from Burmese families living in the USA, in the UK and in Hong Kong and guidance from Dr. San Aye in the US and Dr. Thein Myint in the UK. Within nine years of operation over two thousand patients had recovered their vision at Ayudana Hospital in Sagaing Hills. When Sitagu Sayadaw undertook the enormous effort to bring start-up donations, ongoing operational funding, coordination of expertise, coordination of volunteer services from around the world and the infrastructure these entailed, many criticized Sitagu Sayadaw as unrealistic and as spreading himself too thin. Keep in mind that he was still overseeing the ongoing operation of the water distribution system in Sagaing Hills and lecturing and teaching incessantly, now often abroad. Higher Education 113

Nonetheless, he had discovered a model for establishing new hospitals that worked well and that could be replicated, such that this became routine for the Sitagu organization, no longer requiring the years of planning, organizing and fund raising that the initial Sitagu Ayudana required. In a typical case, the Sitagu organization provides a building and modern medical equipment and supplies and turns the management and staffing to the local community, often asking the government to help provide medical personnel. Often the hospital staff will then request additional support services from Sitagu Sayadaw, such as assigning one of Sayadaw's network of visiting international medical teams to the local hospital for a yearly visit in order to perform surgeries. This network of teams has continued to grow as enthusiastic members of such teams return to their home countries and tell colleagues of their uplifting experience. Sitagu Sayadaw has as of this writing founded over thirty hospitals, as of this writing, throughout Myanmar, in every state and division, including seventeen centers specializing in eye diseases. These have been established without regard to ethnicity, religious preference or political situation. Sitagu hospitals serve Muslim and Christian populations as well as Buddhist, and Kachin, Kayan, Shan, Rakhine and other ethnic populations as well as Burman. In fact, quite remarkabley Sitagu Sayadaw has been quite persistent in establishing services in war zones, areas of civil war in which ethnic populations are or have been in revolt against the central Myanmar government for decades. The most recent is in Kachin state, the one remaining area of conflict as of this writing. Because he does not discriminate nor take sides politically, but works tirelessly for the welfare of all people, he has gained much of the same respect and freedom of movement among these ethnic populations as he has among the Burman and within the outgoing military government that these groups have opposed. At the opening of hospital in Mon State in August of 2010, donated by a single family at a cost of $500,000 (US dollars), 114 Teacher of the Moon

Sitagu Sayadaw explained: “There are two kinds of donations. The first is religious and the second is humanitarian. Building pagodas, and monasteries for the Sasana are religious donations. These currently far exceeded the humanitarian donations for the social welfare, for hospitals, for schools, for homes for the aged and so on. The Burmese have it all wrong. “Years ago, when I visited Namkham in Northern Shan State, there was no government hospital, but there was a hospital opened and supported by Christian Mission for Mountain Ranges. When I visited the hospital I noticed Buddhist monks and nuns were served free of charge. This was a touching experience for me, mixed with feelings of shame and anguish. “I realized that building mission hospitals with pure intentions for the well-being of the common people would also serve to promoting the Sasana. With this in mind I've endeavored almost non-stop and without rest for three to four decades to see that such institutions were founded. The results have exceeded my expectations.”

Even in the years of military dictatorship Sitagu Sayadaw was remarkably free from interference in his many projects, though it undoubtedly required a kind of balancing act. When the future Ashin Cintita, one of the compilers of this book, first arrived at the Yangon International Airport in February, 2009, as a layperson accompanying several Sitagu monks led by Sitagu Sayadaw's close associate Ashin Mahosaddha Pandita, he was rather appre- hensive about the massive amount of baggage the group was carrying, most of it entrusted to them by, and to be delivered to, third parties. He imagined that customs under a brutal military regime would not be pleasant and he had no idea what contraband they might be carrying. Sure enough, disembarked passengers in Yan- gon were backing up as uniformed officers rummaged painstak- ingly through the contents of the bags of those who preceded Higher Education 115 them. However, every bag this party was bringing had been clearly marked with the word “Sitagu” in both Burmese and English, even the future U Cintita's own bag according to prior instruction. To his astonishment, even before their group reached the line of customs-challenged passengers, an elderly man, whom he would later know well as U Han, lawyer to Sitagu Sayadaw, collected all their passports and returned them stamped forthwith. He then led the Sitagu group through a side door directly out into the street, bypassing customs altogether. He did not know it at the time, but medical equipment and supplies and whatever else was needed for Sayadaw's projects were similarly flowing into the country unimpeded and unpilfered. He also later noticed that as the group traveled through the countryside, where most travelers are burdened by military checkpoints or by toll gates simply placed on dirt roads, if they happened to be in one of the Sitagu cars, clearly identified with the word “Sitagu” along the top edge of the windshield, they would simply be waved through. It was as if the Sitagu organization was a separate government, enjoying privileges of diplomatic immunity, or else operating under the principle, “You leave us alone and we will leave you alone.” Part of the reason this worked was undoubtedly the deference accorded to the monastic community in general. For instance, as Ashin Cintita noticed, now as a monk, if a bus went through a military checkpoint, everybody was required to get out, stand in line and present their identifying documents in turn to military personnel, that is, everybody except for monks, who would stay aboard the bus, where a soldier would come to them deferentially to inspect their documents. All the more deference was accorded to Sitagu Sayadaw, who in the popular imagination was like a king of monks, or like a god, who spoke with a golden voice and who cared so tirelessly for the needs of others. This situation was undoubtedly possible because Sitagu Sayadaw 116 Teacher of the Moon had his own devotees in the highest echelons. Although the indi- rect and thinly veiled criticism of government policy that continued to characterize his talks must have vexed many, and the success of his many projects while government efforts spectacularly failed must have vexed others, the battle between pro-Sitagu and anti-Sitagu factions among the powerful in Myanmar had already been decided in 1992 in favor of Sayadaw. Moreover, ceremonial functions were important in government and privately among wealthy donors to pagodas and monasteries, whether out of devotion or out of the wish to cultivate the appearance of devotion, and almost no one could preside over ceremonial functions with as much competence as Sitagu Sayadaw. They relied on him as they feared his influence.

Primary education in Myanmar is to this day in a dismal state of underdevelopment, largely because of decades of neglect by the government, comparable to the neglect of public health, that began with military rule. Myanmar does, on the other hand, have a reasonable rate of literacy, at about ninety percent. One of the early arbitrary decisions of the military government was to inhibit the learning of English as a second language and to halt English- language instruction at universities. This lead to a decline in Eng- lish-language proficiency that is quite strikingly poor for a former British colony, and contributed to the isolation of Burma from the international scholarly community. The state of education in Myanmar has been, nevertheless, somewhat alleviated by the presence of many monastery schools. Re- call that Ashin Nyanissara's very first public project, until the government took it away from him and his collaborator, was the Burma Missionary College set up in the Irrawaddy Delta region that taught about three hundred children up to the seventh grade level, primarily children of poor parents living in villages in the nearby Arakanese Mountains. Since then Sitagu Sayadaw had been educating monastics and novices at the Sadhamma Sitagu Monastery in Sagaing Hills. Higher Education 117

After attaining higher degrees in Buddhist studies, monastic scholars in Myanmar tended to be under-qualified in comparison with scholars of other lands, and would have little opportunity for further advancement after completing their Dhammacariya courses. Although monastics were well drilled in the Pali scriptures, they generally had little knowledge of humanities and science, which would have rounded out their monastic education. There was a university in Sagaing where the scholars had to study tipitaka, but their students were still not up to international standards. In order to stand shoulder to shoulder with western scholars they would have to keep abreast of of current research and to be not only conversant with Buddhist Scriptures but also with English as the international language and with the basics of philosophy, science, theology and ethics. Luckily the government had begun to address the problem with respect to monastic education in founding Sangha universities in Yangon and Mandalay in 1986. There was also some talk of founding an international Buddhist university that would be suitable for foreign students as well. Sitagu Sayadaw had begun with studying how Christian leaders planned and built universities, particularly during his residence in Nashville, and acquired several books on planning, constructing, funding and maintaining such institutions. He broke ground for the Sitagu International Buddhist Academy ceremonially in May of 1994, the foundation was laid with ceremonially bejeweled brick in January 1995, and the university was opened in 1996 with the offering of diploma courses. The first BA courses would start in 2004. Twenty acres of land had been acquired across the road from, and to the west of, the Ayudana Hospital in Sagaing Hills, on the south side of the road to the Soom-OoPonnya-Shin Pagoda. Nu- merous buildings were laid out in a large rectangle, including reception, library, missionary department, VIP reception, computer center, monks' quarters, language lab, seminar hall, dining hall, various departments and lecture halls, a publishing house, a meeting hall and administrative offices and quarters (the latter at the 118 Teacher of the Moon four corners of the rectangle). Outside the rectangle running the full length parallel to one side, was a guest house, primarily for foreign visitors. In 2009 a magnificent convocation hall and sima in the form of a pagoda was completed. The future Bhikkhu Cintita arrived in Sagaing Hills just before the completion of the pagoda and just before the Second Annual Conference of Theravada Buddhist Universities, which was scheduled to take place immediately after its completion. Actually, Bhikkhu Cintita would ordain as Bhikkhu Cintita immediately after the conference. When Bhikkhu Cintita arrived, Sitagu Sayadaw was occupied with the final stages of the completion of convocation center. Its completion was urgent because it would house the plenary sessions of the conference. Oodles of workers and craftspeople were hard at work on the inevitably time-consuming finishing touches of adding molding and various ornamental objects, painting, hanging doors and such, as Sitagu Sayadaw stood about issuing instructions, making decisions and sometimes changing decisions already made. At first glance, with the discernment of the son of a building contractor, Bhikkhu Cintita determined, “They'll never make it!” Yet miraculously, going right to the wire, right before his eyes, the center was completed just hours before the flood of monks, nuns and scholars from all over the Buddhist world arrived. That could never have happened in America, he thought. The conference was arranged like many of the academic conferences Bhikkhu Cintita had been involved in, as also a former academic. It had plenary sessions, and then simultaneous subsessions on topics from Pāḷi language, Vinaya and Abhidhamma to En- gaged Buddhism and the current state of Buddhism in many Bud- dhist-minority lands such as America. He was glad that the conference highlighted a couple of highly distinguished Burmese scholar-nuns, since nuns tend to be neglected in the Theravada countries, though he would come to appreciate that that is not Higher Education 119 true in Sitagu Sayadaw’s circles. He also met many interesting people, such as Ven. Bud- dharakkhita of Uganda, Ven. Nandisena of Mexico, monks of In- dia, some dangerously outspoken Burmese dissidents, many Thai and Sinhalese monks, mixed in with those of northern Mahayana lands. He was also delighted to meet for the first time some of Sitagu Sayadaw's long-time American disciples Happy, Lee and Jennifer, all there after many previous visits, as well as a teacher from America, Paula, who spoke Burmese and had been living in Yangon for many years, and Professor Patrick Franke from Louisville, Kentuky, who specialized in the history of Buddhism in Myanmar, spoke Burmese and could read ancient Buddhist texts in that language. Living at the academy were about eighty monks, virtually all Burmese, but also an American monk, U Sopaka, who had ordained some two years earlier and was a polyglot and formerly known as a TV actor in Singapore, where his knowledge of Chi- nese allowed him to play “the white guy.” Also present was the Sinhalese-American monk Bhante “G.” Gunaratana, author of the runaway classic on meditation Mindfulness in Plain English. Ten years Sitagu Sayadaw's senior, Bhante G. was treated with great reverence by all. As a representative of the government, General Thein Sein, made a brief ceremonial appearance, a man who in two years would, after taking off his uniform, become the president of Myanmar. The conference was as professionally run as any international conference Bhikkhu Cintita had witnessed. English was the dominant language and the quality of the presentations he attended met the highest standards. The excitement among the many scholars and students was palpable. As with other international conferences, entertainment was also built into the schedule, particularly music and dance from Nepal and Thailand. Cameras clicked continuously, and Paula got a particularly insightful shot, not of the lovely young Thai women performing traditional dances, but of a number of young Burmese monks who had pro- 120 Teacher of the Moon duced an array of little cameras or cell phones to take snapshots of the captivating dancers, who could challenge even the most firmly held of young monastic vows. Bhikkhu Cintita spent several months at SIBA in 2010 and came to appreciate Sitagu Sayadaw's scope and vision in initiating this project. The academy was constituted to be international in the sense of offering all coursework in English, encouraging students from all lands to participate, providing modern facilities and accommodations, offering rigorous alternative courses of study, awarding advanced degrees for completion of these courses of study or for defense of a dissertation. U Cintita noticed almost everywhere he stayed in Myanmar that electric power was highly unreliable, blackouts would roll through every day, remaining for hours at a time. Thinking back on the Second Annual Conference of Theravada Buddhist Uni- versities how lucky we were that there was not a blackout during that period, since the microphones, video display and even the lighting inside the convocation hall, which, like all pagodas, had no windows. Then one day when taking a walk, he discovered the answer: to large gasoline powered generators behind a wall at the edge of the monastery, shut down most of the time. He began noticing that this arrangement was common in Myanmar, even in wealthy people's houses. The power grid was a vexing problem; many were not connected to the grid at all. In spite of this, the government continuously praised itself for making rapid progress in this area in the government and government-censured newspa- pers, even while nothing seemed to improve. Sitagu Sayadaw once joked that one must take care when picking up a newspaper, for they are so full of electricity one can easily get an electric shock. The Sitagu Buddhist International Academy was Buddhist in that it was itself a monastery, housing about eighty monks, and primarily aimed at educating monastics, with both monks and nuns from nearby monasteries in Sagaing Hills rounding out the attendance at about two-hundred and fifty students. Just as Nalanda Higher Education 121

University in ancient times had accepted students from as far away as Central Asia, China and Korea, Sitagu International Buddhist Academy has hosted scholars from Germany, England, America, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea and many other places. Nonetheless, the scope and vision is only gradually being fully realized. Almost all students and teachers at any one time are Burmese and exhibit many of the deficiencies of the Burmese education system in general, including poor knowledge of Eng- lish, even among the instructors. As a result, classes typically began with the instructor speaking in English, but then shifted into Burmese within a few minutes. When a speaker from abroad would visit and offer a lecture, always in English, Sitagu Sayadaw would convene all students and instructors in the con- vention hall for this event, and encourage them to prepare questions in English ahead of time. Unfortunately, many of the students understood little of these lectures. Nevertheless, Bhikkhu Cintita undertook to offer English instruction during his resi- dency and found the students extremely eager and diligent. Sitagu Sayadaw began to encourage his disciples of greatest scholarly achievement to pursue graduate work abroad. Although a number have studied in America, most have studied at universities in India for advanced degrees, because attendance at universities is less expensive in India, while academic standards are high and English is commonly the medium of instruction.. Sev- eral Sitagu monks have attained PhDs from Indian universities, greatly enhancing the level of scholarship at SIBA. The model of the Sitagu International Buddhist Academy in Sagaing Hills was replicated in Yangon and in Mandalay Hills, opening in 2007 and 2009 respectively. In spite of his promotion of advanced scholarship, Sitagu Sayadaw had himself never pursued advanced studies at an internationally recognized university. The breadth of his knowledge was based on his innate curiosity and willingness to delve deeply 122 Teacher of the Moon into what interested him or what would be useful for his goals. But he had not actually written research papers and defended a dissertation under an academic mentor. It is difficult to imagine his having the time to do this. Yet he was all the while encouraging and supporting others, particularly his young monastic disciples, to do exactly this, primarily at universities in India. Luckily academic institutions have long recognized that there are occasionally people of high scholarly acheivement who are nonetheless trained, often self-trained, outside of normal channels and Accordingly, they will recognize their merits through honorary degrees such as an honorary doctorate. In 2003 Yangon Univer- sity conferred upon Sitagu Sayadaw an honorary doctorate of literature degree. In 2008 Mahamakut Buddhist University in Bankok, Thailand conferred an hororary Ph.D. And the newly re- vitalized Nalanda University in India did the same later that same year.

Sitagu Sayadaw often describes his approach to getting things done as dependent on what he calls in English “the 4-M strategy,” where 4-M stands for Mind Power + Man Power + Money Power + Material Power. Mind Power, he explains, comprises patience, persever- ance, courage, promptness, comprehension, cleverness, energy and investigation. Man Power involves soliciting the help of the experts: professionals, technicians, artists, sculptors, architects, engineers, computer specialists, video programmers, authors, poets, singers, musicians, those whose skills are relevant to the project at hand. Money Power involves a donor base, crucial for the initiating and sustaining projects. Material Power comprises the hardware, equipment and building supplies necessary for building what the project calls for.

Sandals on the ground

Texas was in the wild west of the Buddhist world, a land where barely a handful Burmese pioneers from the heartland of the Bud- dhism on the other side of the globe had settled, determined to build a monastery on its rocky soil. Austin, Texas, in particular, had the ideal demographics for Buddhist missionary work. Stud- ies indicate that American “convert” Buddhists are for the most part well-off financially, liberal or progressive politically and extremely well educated. Austin fits this profile exactly, as the capital city of Texas, the site of one of the biggest university cam- puses in the country, a major center for the high tech industry and one of the most educated cities in America. Sitagu Sayadaw dedicated the summer of 1995 to the fledgling enterprise in Austin. A house was leased for that period as a residence for Sitagu Sayadaw. He and the local community published a newsletter, explored the area further and began looking for property. They found a wonderful four-acre lot in the town of Bastrop, about thirty miles east of Austin. Bastrop is at a higher elevation than Austin, a bit cooler in the Summer and covered primarily by pine forest, as was the lot in question, a peaceful site on the gentle incline of a hill. Sitagu Sayadaw was very pleased with the site. It happened that the small Burmese group had stopped at a gro- cery on their way to view the site in order to procure something to drink, at which a woman was giving children coming and going helium filled balloons, for reasons that remain obscure. See- 124 Teacher of the Moon ing a large Theravada monk in burgundy robes emerge from a car in the parking lot must have momentarily confused her, for she also handed Sitagu Sayadaw a balloon as he passed by. Gratefully accepting the balloon, he carried it back to the car and, after the small party had reached the lot and re-emerged from the car, carried it to a clearing and could be heard ceremonially chanting something in Pali. He then released the balloon. However, the wind carried the balloon past a tree in which the string became entangled, halting the balloon's ascent. “That's a bad sign,” he told the others. Indeed, after Sitagu Sayadaw had returned to Myanmar, U Win Bo returned to the lot in Bastrop and discovered some prohibitive issues. First, the lot had no electricity, water or phone lines. More importantly, it was under the auspices of a homeowners' association that imposed strict requirements on what could be build on this lot. Bastrop is in rural Texas, not as cosmopolitan as Austin or Houston, and so he could anticipate great reluctance to accept a Buddhist monastery into their neighborhood. TDSA would have to look elsewhere for its home. Instrumental in the establishment of a Sitagu presence in Austin was Dr. Tin Than Myint, who worked at the veterans hospital in distant Big Springs, Texas, but who had family connections to Austin and counted as a close disciple of the Sayadaw. After the founding of the Theravada Dhamma Society of America during Sitagu Sayadaw's visit, Dr. Tin Than Myint would often stop by the house of U Win Bo in Austin on Sundays and the two of them would drive around with a realtor in search of suitable property. A sixteen-acre lot at 9001 Honeycomb Dr. just southwest of Austin, that they viewed early in 1996, had an old shed for keeping horses, a small rabbit warren, a dilapidated mobile home, as well as a well as a source of water and both phone and electric lines. The lot was covered with oak and cedar trees and thick un- derbrush, teaming with wildlife, from deer and foxes to wild tur- keys and rattlesnakes. Dr. Myint was particularly impressed with the lot and TDSA decided to make and offer. The asking prices Sandals on the ground 125 was $85,000, TDSA had $50,000 in the bank, but Dr. Myint would loan TDSA an additional $15,000 and the owner would agree to finance the rest. And so the deal was closed. A work team from the Burmese community started showing up each weekend to make the mobile home habitable, to repair the well, to replace the toilet, carpets and wallpaper, to fix the plumb- ing and to repair the small decks at the front and rear of the mobile home. The unused shed was demolished and old furniture hauled away. The local community began almost immediately to host festival events on the grounds. In the summer of 1998, Sitagu Sayadaw organized a sima ceremony for the monastery. A sima is a consecrated area in which monks can legally perform certain ceremonies, such as the ordination of a new monk. A sima ceremony has to be done strictly by the book and an expert on such ceremonies, the famous Burmese missionary monk Ashin Silananda from Daly City, Cali- fornia was asked to lead the ceremony. Silananda had been a prominent scholar and teacher in Mandalay during Sitagu Sayadaw's student days there. Eighteen Buddhist monks were invited to Austin for the ceremony, most of them put up in nearby hotels. The sima ground was marked with chalk powder as a rec- tangular shape and was then subdivided into smaller rectangles. Each monk had to recite Pali stanzas to convert it into a block of sima ground. It took two days to conduct the ceremony. After the ceremony, the locations were staked to make sure the sima grounds could be recognized after the chalk powder has dissi- pated. For many years a monastic procedure could be performed on field where the sima had been marked out simply by laying a blanket out picnic-style and performing the requisite rites. At some point a pre-built gazebo was placed over the sima so that these procedures could be performed under a roof. The monks would crowd into the gazebo, their heads appearing over the top of the railing like apples and oranges over the brim of a bowl of fruit. One day a massive pagoda would be built directly on the 126 Teacher of the Moon site of the sima and monastic procedures performed inside the pagoda, with no need to consecrate the pagoda. There were many visiting monks who resided at the monastery from time to time. In 1999, Sitau Sayadaw sent his disciple monk U Osaddha, to reside at the Sitagu Vihara monastery in Austin. After that various improvements were made, including bringing in a city water line and building a bath house and four small cabins in which yogis, meditators, might dwell. The cabins were named after the Four Heavenly Abodes: Metta (Kindness ), Karuna (Compassion), Mudita (Joy in the Good-fortune of Oth- ers) and Uppekkha (Equanimity ). Various monks lived in the mobile home over the years. In March 2000, Sitagu Sayadaw asked his good friend Ashin Ma- hosadha Pandita to come to Sitagu Buddhist Vihara in Austin, TX to conduct missionary work. At Sitagu Buddhist Vihara he started a Sunday meditation class for all nationalities, and taught Bud- dhism to young adults and children. He also gave Dhamma talks occasionally. Almost from the beginning a small number of non-Burmese Americans found a welcoming spiritual home at the vihara. In 2004 an American Zen priest from the Austin Zen Center, Kojin John Dinsmore, came to visit for the first time, and found four Burmese monks living in a mobile home in a forest, with a pagoda sitting in the middle of a field and four small cabins hidden by trees. He met Ashin Mahosadha at that time as well as another monk, Ashin Punnobhasa, who spoke remarkably good English. It turned out that Ashin Punnobhasa was writing a dissertation on the famous second-century Indian philosopher-monk Nagarjuna, a topic of an upcoming seminar at the Austin Zen Center in which Punnobhasa participated. In 2005, another close disciple of Sitagu Sayadaw, Ashin Ariyad- hamma, came to Austin, assigned by Sayadaw to serve as abbot, a position he would still hold as of this writing. Kojin had monastic aspirations that were not fulfilled in the Japanese “married priest” Sandals on the ground 127 tradition to which he belonged and was exploring alternatives, and had many talks with Ariyadhamma about monastic practice and Vinaya. In fact, in 2008 he made what remains in the West as very rare step in his life, that of full bhikkhu ordination. He made this decision while he was visiting Abhayagiri Monastery in northern Califonia, a monastery in the Thai tradition inhabited by ten American, British and Canadian monks and one westernized Vietnamese. He realized that what it took to make this monumen- tal decision was to see westerners living as monks in harmony; before that it had seemed that only an Asian could live in this way. Early the following year Kojin found himself in Myanmar with Ashin Mahosadha, Ashin Ariyadhamma and a small delegation from Austin with the intention to ordain there and remain for a year before returning to Austin. In fact, it was determined that he would have the honor of the very first ordination in the newly constructed convocation hall and that Sitagu Sayadaw, whom he had never met, was to be his preceptor. Just before the ordination, Sitagu Sayadaw summoned Kojin, for he had to come up with a Buddhist name in the Pali language. He started by inquiring, “I'll think of name for you. I’ll give you a little name. In my experience, if someone has little name they do great things, big name ... little things. Hmmm. How long you think about or- daining as Theravada monk?” “Um, for about four years.” “Four years, long time. 'Seindita'! It means, ‘Good Thinker’. In International Pāḷi pronounced 'Cintita'. ” In 2010, about the time U Cintita returned to Austin, Sitagu Sayadaw began implementing his plan to develop the Sitagu Buddha Vihara, which was still rather primitive, as a meditation center. In the next couple of years a replica of the famous 128 Teacher of the Moon

Shwezigon Pagoda was built, along with an office building, a Dhamma or lecture hall, a dining hall and a library. In addition, the number of cabins for yogis and monks would increase to thirty-six, most of them larger than each of the early four heavenly abodes, many with their own bathroom facilities, including a row of five brick buildings specifically donated for Sangha habi- tation. Shwezigon Pagoda is one of the wonders of the eleventh century Bagan Civilization from the era of King Anuruddha and of his son King Kyansitthar that exhibits an amazing interior brickwork foundation and an exquisite exterior décor of Tuyin Mountain sandstone. The Shwezigon Pagoda, Austin, Texas is a one-third- scaled replica of the original Shwezigon Pagoda, yet still impos- ing all the way up to the top of its 65-foot-high metal umbrella. Whereas the original pagoda is a closed solid dome Sitagu Shwezigon Pagoda maintains the original exterior look but has three entrances, northern, western and southern and a hollow interior. Where the east entrance should be, a two-ton pure white marble statue stands five feet tall. This is the largest of twenty- nine interior statues. Twenty-four of these standing in small niches, each two-foot high and carefully hand-crafted on site under the close supervision of Burmese traditional architect and sculptor Tampawaddy U Win Maung and a team of Burmese arti- sans. The twenty-four small statues of Buddha represent different countries and different eras in which Buddhism has taken root and flourished. The main statue is flanked on the east wall and flanked by four lacquer statues, all brought from Burma. U Win Maung lived on site for ten months, designed the buildings and directed an American crew of masons in constructing the graceful pagoda. One day when Sitagu Sayadaw was visiting the site, a devotee living in San Antonio offered to donate a three- foot hand-carved panel to the monastery. The donor was an Ital- ian man named Luigi who was married to a Burmese woman who, forty years earlier, as a diplomat had bought the panel from a young artist and craftsman in Mandalay. He had sent a picture Sandals on the ground 129 for Sitagu Sayadaw's inspection. As Sitagu Sayadaw summoned U Win Maung to look at the photo with him. Looking over Sayadaw's shoulder, U Win Maung exclaimed, “Hey, I made that!” Indeed, Luigi and U Win Maung had met all those years ago. A pagoda is a kind of Buddhist theme park and generally is sur- rounded by a plaza so that people can walk around it and view it from all directions. Children love running around pagodas. They are at the same time a sacred space, used on formal occasions, for chanting, meditating and conducting various ceremonies. Stair- ways lead from four directions onto the 81-foot square plaza, which is enclosed in a masonry railing on which alternating ce- ment castings of a lotus, a bodhi tree, a Dhamma wheel and a stupa represent the four great events of the Buddha's long life: birth, awakening, teaching and death. At each stairway sit two Asoka-style lions. Adjoining Sitagu Shwezigon Pagoda stands tall the Grand Dhamma Hall with its traditional Burmese stepped Zetawun roof. The traditional height of the layered roof has been scaled down so as not to obstruct the panoramic vista of and thereby not to compete with the elegance of the adjacent Sitagu Shwezigon Pagoda. At the southern top of the Grand Dhamma hall the customary multi-tiered roof pavilion pleases discerning eyes and inquisitive minds. The gold-leaf lacquer statue in the Dhamma hall is a rare example of Bagan style in that it depicts the Buddha sitting in a chair during the rains retreat in Palilayakka Forest. The ornamental backdrop is carved teak, crafted according to Bagan style. Murals despict the life of the Buddha. On the very top of the pavilion the gold-plated umbrella replica from the Bagan era was topped by the auspicious vessel, rather than the more common ornament with fascia artwork from the Ava and Kungbaung eras. Sitagu Sayadaw traveled to Austin at various times during the construction phase to perform traditional ceremonies, one to en- 130 Teacher of the Moon shrine Buddha relics, obtained from sources in Burma, India and Nepal, and another for the Diamond Bud (sein phue daw) Ceremony, to place the vane (hngetmyatnadaw) into the metal umbrella (shwehtidaw) at the very top of the pagoda to signify its completion. Hundreds of people came to the monastery for each of these events. The American contractor even agreed to wear traditional Burmese formal garb for the occasion, and to participate in a long procession in which the vane was carried to the pagoda. In Myanmar ceremonially installing the vane would involve climbing a very high bamboo scaffold to reach the top, but in America this was accomplished with the help of a large cherry picker, a kind of crane with a bucket on the end which can lift a person to unprecedented heights. It had been used by the masons to build, ornament and paint the outer dome. Sitagu Sayadaw climbed into the bucket with two assistants and they began their ascent. Sitagu Sayadaw carried a wireless microphone and so could be heard chanting by the crowd of ever tinier people below. Looking out he could see over the trees and over hills to survey the far reaches of the the Oak Hill area of southwest Austin, as if scanning a map.

Residing sayadaws regularly lecture and teach meditation and Buddhist philosophy in English and Burmese. For much of the time there has been a children's program on Sunday mornings. Ashin Cintita has been able to teach beginning Dhamma classes to American students, and lead a reading and discussion group fo- cused on the early discourses of the Buddha. Aside from the monastic chanting schedule, which lay folks are invited to join, public meditation occurs Saturday mornings and Sunday evenings. Generally one or two people are at the monastery on private retreat at any one time, for which a program of meditation and instruction is observed. The library is well used and growing rapidly; people can check out books and read them at home. Four monks are permanently in residence at this writing. Ethnic Burmese, Westerners, Thais, Sri Lankans and Latin Americans Sandals on the ground 131 are all common among the many visitors. Neighbors are fond of walking the grounds and often bring visiting friends to view the pagoda. Many families from Austin and the surrounding areas offer alms food to the monks on a rotating basis. Because donations are so abundant extra food is delivered to the Mary House, a Catholic Workers organization in Austin, for distribution to the homeless. The monks often appear at public events and university events, often as speakers. Fundraising for various causes, particularly for relief effort in Myanmar and other Asian nations where Sitagu Sayadaw has contacts. The monks also accept frequent requests to visit people's homes on special occasions, for instance for memorials or house warm- ings. These requests have come from Sri Lankan families as well as Burmese. The monastery is host to several festival events each year, the largest of which is Thingyan, the Water Festival on the occasion of the Burmese New Year, at which traditional Burmese music and dancing is performed. In 2015 a second monk from Austin followed in Ashin Cintita's footsteps. This was Lundrob Timothy Saddler, a London-born nurse who already had a lower ordination in a Tibetan school, but requested ordination as a Theravada monk. Ashin Ariyadhamma and Sitagu Sayadaw agreed that as a requirement he should first spend six months in a meditation center in Myanmar before or- daining. He ordained as Ashin Dhammananda and returned to the USA in early 2016. As of this writing a third future monk from Austin is about to follow, Carlos from South America. 132 Teacher of the Moon A natural disaster

On May 2, 2008, Cyclone Nargis, which had consolidated itself in the Bay of Bengal over the last few days, made landfall in the Irrawaddy Division of Mayanmar with 105 mph winds, as one of the strongest cyclones in recorded history and the second deadli- est. Although authorities in India had warned the Burmese government two days earlier of the threat of a devastating storm, most residents of the region were completely unprepared. The devastation resulted not only from the intense rain and wind, but from a tsunami-like storm surge that flooded the low-lying delta region then swept many victims out into the ocean. The cyclone took at least 146,000 lives, including a presumed 56,000 whose bodies have never been found, though the death toll is not entirely certain, with estimates ranging much higher than that. The damage reached as far as Yangon, where the roof of Aung San Suu Kyi's family home was damaged, while she languished under house arrest. Sitagu Sayadaw was in Australia when he heard of the crisis. Within a couple of days he was back in Myanmar organizing a relief effort. He established a operations center at Kunnthee Gyaung Monastery in Bagu, 75 miles southwest of Yangon, by May 9 and recruited two hundred monks to travel into the effected area, in four groups of fifty monks each, each group assigned to a separate area to begin to assess material needs such as food, water, medicine, shelter and to communicate these back to 134 Teacher of the Moon the headquarters set up at the Sitagu center in Yangon. Within a week after the disaster, the Sitagu organization had established emergency relief centers and clinics in Ka Don Ka Ni, Amar, Set San and Kunthi Chaung, which were among the worst-hit villages in the delta. The survivors must have almost envied the dead, for there was little left of their homes, nor of their crops. Many were severely injured and in pain with infected wounds, many had lost loved ones, often entire families. They found themselves exposed to the elements with nothing to eat and no source of clean water, only destitution all around. Indeed, the injured and destitute began mi- grating in great numbers to the monasteries in search of shelter and aid, paddling or walking for miles, carrying injured, infirm and elderly, for there was scant government presence in the area. An interview with Sitagu Sayadaw in the Irrawaddy quoted him about his first visit the area, “When I saw my own people and monks suffering terri- bly, I felt like my heart was being stabbed by hundreds of nee- dles.” He visited villages from Bogalay to Amar, then crossed the river to Kadonkani then went back to Bogalay, visiting villages on the other side of the river. Returning to Yangon, Sitagu Sayadaw organized an effort to purchase and warehouse supplies at the Sitagu center in Yangon, to solicit donations to purchase what else was needed, then to trans- port all these material goods by truck into the Delta region, where they could be delivered, generally by offloading onto boats, to where they were needed. He also arranged for medical relief, which by now had become his specialty. All of this would require soliciting aid through his established and familiar channels and even by expanding these networks. A number of other prominent monks, including Mizzima Gon Yi Sayadaw and Dhamma Sedi Sayadaw from Mandalay State were meanwhile organizing similar efforts. A group of monks, physicians and volunteers from A natural disaster 135

Shwe Nyawa Monastery in Yangon began traveling around La- putta Township in a two-tiered ship outfitted with medical equipment and supplies in order to assist sick and injured cyclone victims and perform religious rites for the deceased. Monks were serving the people. The New York Times provided an account of the situation: A forty-five year-old woman, Thi Dar, who, with tears welling in her eyes pressed her hands together in respect before the first monk she saw at the Sitagu clinic near Bo- gale and told her story. The eight other members of her family had been killed in the cyclone. She no longer had anyone to talk with and felt suicidal. A day or two before, word had reached her village that a monk had opened a clinic six miles upriver. So on Thursday, she had gotten up early and caught the first boat. “In my entire life, I have never seen a hospital, so I came to the monk. I don’t know where the government office is. I can’t buy anything in the market because I lost everything to the cyclone.” Nay Lin, 36, a volunteer doctor at the clinic, said, “Our patients suffer from infected wounds, abdominal pains and vomiting. They also need counseling for mental trauma, anxiety and depression.” Another woman, thirty-eight year-old Kyi Than, said she traveled fifteen miles by boat to Sitagu Sayadaw’s camp. “Our village monk died during the storm. Monks are like parents to us. The government wants us to shut up, but monks listen to us.” Unfortunately, many of the monasteries had been destroyed in the cyclone, and many of the monks had died, but monks were flowing into the area and the Sitagu organization began bringing aid to a total of 1,344 monasteries so that they might serve the communities more effectively, aptly including metal sheets for repair- ing roofs and cash for purchasing in what remained of the local economy. The organization also donated cash and various neces- 136 Teacher of the Moon sities, including food, medicine, clothing, mosquito nets and cooking utensils, to refugees in nine-hundred villages in six coun- ties. More than three-hundred trucks were used to distribute the supplies from the Sitagu center in Yangon. Each day truckloads of rice, beans, onions, clothes, tarpaulins and cooking utensils, donated from all over Myanmar, would arrive at the center, and shortly after dawn each morning, a convoy of trucks or a barge on the Yangon River would depart for the Delta region, loaded with relief supplies and volunteers. With funds supplied by domestic and international donors, the center also provided $150,000 in cash and medical equipment – from operation beds to ultrasound and ECG machine – to three government hospitals. This program required funding and medical aid both domestic and foreign. In the following months Sitagu Sayadaw would travel widely and speak publicly on behalf of the victims. Ad- dressing about three thousand people at the Tawya Burmese monastery, for instance, seated both inside the monastery’s main building and outside on the ground in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, home of tens of thousands of Burmese, Sitagu Sayadaw spoke, as reported in the Irrawaddy, “How did you feel when you heard that people were homeless, that monks had lost their monasteries and had nowhere to stay? Over one-hundred thirty thousand people were killed and two point four million suffered badly. How did you feel? If you felt concerned and afraid for them, that’s good. It means you have compassion.” Then he added: “That’s good, but it’s not good enough. If you lack compassion, you will be an irresponsible person. But compassion in mind and in words alone won’t help the refugees in the cyclone- affected area. Such compassion won’t bring food to people in need.” A natural disaster 137

Similarly, he broadcast the needs of the victims throughout the country and internationally to encourage compassion for the victims and donations for their aid, receiving contributions in the end came from the USA, Germany and Australia as well and not only from Buddhist, but also from many Christian, Hindu and Muslim NGOs. Meanwhile, what was particularly striking was the absence of government aid. Scarcely eight months earlier the government had brutally suppressed the demonstrations known in the West as the “Saffron Revolution,” in which monks took to the streets by the tens of thousands chanting a song of loving-kindness, that the government might learn concern for the people. The killing, im- prisonment and disappearance of members of the beloved Sangha acting on behalf the people had shocked the nation. Now what concern the government might have learned, or what it might do to regain some respect and confidence from the people, was put to the test: The government response was, in fact, slow and inadequate. With many national governments and NGOs anxious to bring aid to the region, the government was refusing to grant visas to foreign aid workers or to provide access to the effected region. On May 9, a week after landfall, the Myanmar government declared that they would accept international aid in the form of food and medicine or cash, but would let no foreign aid workers in. They then allowed aid workers from ASEAN countries, who began arriving on May 21, then after a direct appeal from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, agreed to allow aid workers from all nations, though ships and helicopters were prohibited. By way of example, one of the international organizations that asked to enter the country shortly after the disaster was the Aloha Medical Mission in Honolulu, Hawaii, whose primary mission is to provide free medical care for the needy in Hawaii and throughout the Pacific region. Aloha had already provided volunteers to work at the Sitagu Ayadana Hospital in Sagaing in 2006 and 2007. Its members pay their own way in such endeavors, includ- 138 Teacher of the Moon ing transportation and expenses, and take medical supplies and equipment for missions. They purchased medicines and supplies for Myanmar through fundraising efforts and a donation from the Burma Association of Hawaii, headed by Tin Myaing Thein, an immigrant from Myanmar. As with all international aid groups and United Nations workers, visas were initially denied to the Aloha Medical Mission. How- ever, after Sitagu Sayadaw declared his sponsorship of a two- week mission the Myanmar embassy agreed to issue visas. To their credit, the Myanmar Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not charge visa fees for the group, and the last visas arrived one day before the twenty-two-member group left Honolulu for Myanmar, its Hawaiian membership supplemented by medical staff from Washington, Oregon and California, in order to work through one of the clinics that Sitagu Sayadaw had set up in the Delta region. Of more concern to the government than aiding the devastated population was losing face. The government stopped keeping tally of the number of casualties when it had become too shock- ingly high. The Associated Press reported that much of the aid that did arrive was misrepresented to the recipients as coming from the Myanmar government itself. The press was restricted from entering many of the most effected areas, but plenty of photo ops were provided of generals handing over aid to victims of the disaster. In a number of cases victims who had arrived at refugee camps or at monasteries were sent back empty-handed to whence they had come, lest they be photographed. As part of the initial recovery effort, Sitagu Sayadaw was able to channel to the region sixty thousand bags of rice; five hundred truckloads of clothing, food, drinking water, medications and cooking utensils; a quarter million sheets of corrugated zinc roof- ing; maintenance and repair of the Kadonkani Drinking Water Factory; medical supplies for twelve local hospitals; construction of a high school, three middle schools and seventeen primary schools; and the reconstruction and restoration of a number of damaged pagodas and construction of a new monastery. He was A natural disaster 139 able to provide equipment and instruments for four government hospitals, as well as renovate fifteen hospitals and many schools. His group was also able to restore three artesian wells, some pumps and reservoir tanks, one hundred homes and one a village dispensary The devastation of Nargis also provided the conditions for future disaster by destroying many trees and the loss of the barrier reef, ensuring incursions of waves, floods and landslides. Another catastrophic incident occurred on October 22, 2010 when Cy- clone Giri hit the Rakhine coast, west of where Cyclone Nargis had hit. In this case, the government was much better prepared and had actually evacuated the village most impacted. One hundred fifty-seven people died and seventy thousand people were made homeless. 140 Teacher of the Moon Seeking peace

In October of 2011, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi arrived at the Sitagu monastery in Yangon to pay respects for the first time to Sitagu Sayadaw. After the customary three prostrations to the senior monk, the two met in private behind closed doors. The following day a very deferential government minister showed up to pay respects, apparently to determine what the two of them had talked about the previous day. After the customary three prostrations to the senior monk, the two of them also met. By this time, the political situation in Myanmar had experienced a seismic shift in the direction toward democracy, and that shift continues to define Burmese political and social life as of this writing. In 2009, with the retirement of General Than Shwe, the strong man of Myanmar, the military had drafted a new constitution for Myanmar and had promised new elections of a civilian government in to take place in November of 2010 and this time the government kept its promise. This was not a cause of jubilation because the constitution was “rigged,” guaranteeing the military an unelected segment of the parliament and ultimate veto power over many laws the parliament might pass. Moreover, on a pretense, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest sentence was extended so that she could not campaign in the election. Her party, the NLD, accordingly had decided to boycott the election, with the results of continued domination by the military. One week after the elections Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest. 142 Teacher of the Moon

General Thein Sein, very much a member of the inner circle in the Than Shwe regime and almost certainly the latter's appointed choice, became president, but not before taking off his uniform, for this was to be a civilian government at least in appearance. We've met General Thein Sein before, at the Buddhist conference at the Sitagu International Buddhist Academy the previous year. However, U Thein Sein was about to surprise everyone, and this would be a cause of jubilation. He was, in fact, not typical of the generals: he lacked their arrogance, was mild-mannered, quiet and sensitive. He had been the first of the generals to visit the Ir- rawaddy Delta after Cyclone Nargis and had personally appealed to General Than Shwe to better facilitate relief efforts. And he would prove himself in other ways to be of even better stuff. Although Sitagu Sayadaw was about to be drawn further into political affairs, he would continue to do this in a non-partisan, non- divisive way, acting only as a moral voice founded on the Bud- dha's wisdom. Ashin Visuta, a young monk who was actively helping Sayadaw at this time to time arrange international engagements, had had the opportunity to ask Saydaw about the proper role of a monk with regard to politics as the two of them returned from a trip to Sri Lanka. Whereas in Myanmar monks cannot vote, monks in Sri Lanka can not only vote but a few of them even hold seats in parliament. Sitagu Sayadaw expressed disagreement with the situation in Sri Lanka and approval for the policy in Myanmar that monks not vote, nor campaign. Nonethe- less, a monk does have an obligation to be a moral voice for those who will listen. This principle might best be illustrated by the example of Gandhi, who, by never seeking nor accepted political office, could be a consistent moral voice, rarely having to compromise his princi- ples for political expediency. Likewise, a monk should always be willing to point out suffering and the social and economic causes of suffering, but should never sacrifice his influence over one political faction by siding with the opposing faction. Whereas war, for instance, might be an option for the politician, for the monk to Seeking peace 143 advocate war would be unthinkable, for to do so would be to overstep the bounds of what it is to be a monk. Sitagu Sayadaw has met privately with Aung San Suu Kyi on a number of occasions, generally behind closed doors, never issuing a joint statement or political comments of any kind in public. He has also met with President Thein Sein. More importantly and to his great credit, the president was willing to meet frequently with Daw Suu Kyi for advice. He began a process of rapid political reform, in spite of internal opposition within the pro-military party. In May of 2012, he waned that hardliners who are not sup- portive of reform will be left behind. He released many political prisoners, reached out to ethnic insurgents, initiated debate about legalizing unions, eased government censorship, launched a program to fight corruption in government, suspended an unpopular Chinese sponsored damn project, and set up the conditions for fair parliamentary elections in 2012 and 2015.. Daw Suu Kyi and the NLD finally accepted the conditions of the constitution before the 2012 parliamentary by-elections at which NLD received almost all seats up for election, including the one she ran for. Shortly after this, she began traveling abroad for the first time since 1988; before this she would have been shut out of the country had she done so. That year she traveled to Oslo in order finally to deliver her acceptance speech for the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, and traveled to Washington, DC, where she received the congressional medal of honor and met with President Obama. In December, 2013 Aung San Suu Kyi attended a two-day conference in Quatar called WISH, World Innovation Summit on Health, at which she gave a keynote address. Because of his important role in promoting state of the art health care in Myanmar, she had invited Sitagu Sayadaw to accompany her as an observer. He in turn invited his young assistant Ashin Visuta to accompany him. As lunch time loomed the first day, Sitagu Sayadaw and U Visuta began considering their limited options for seeking alms. Aung San Suu Kyi, as a recognized VIP, had been given a room 144 Teacher of the Moon in which a buffet lunch had been set up, and so naturally offered her place at the table to the eminent monk and his squire, since, for the Burmese, a layperson always tries to sit at a lower position than a monk, particularly than such an eminent monk, and will not sit at the same table. So she took her place with her plate on the floor with a number of others in the Burmese delegation, where most Burmese are accustomed to sit in any case. This was all normal according to ancient Burmese custom, in which even the one-time Burmese king would defer to monks. However, for Qatari security officers and hotel staff who looked in on the Burmese party this was hardly normal behavior. They concluded that this hungry elderly monk must be a very exalted person indeed and, probably imagining they had made a huge faux pas, began giving him the treatment accorded to VIP standards. It also happened that a number of Burmese guest workers living in Myanmar and some visiting dignitaries had gathered in front of the hotel anxious to see one or the other of the two famous Burmese attendees and had communicated a request for an audience, hopeful that one or the other might deliver a talk. It happened that a religious event would normally have required applying for permission from the government one month in advance. However, in view of Sitagu Sayadaw's newly gained VIP status, the authorities agreed to wave the requirements for permission. As a result Sitagu Sayadaw and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi delivered talks back-to-back, she speaking first on politics and he speaking last on Buddhism, in the hotel to about one-hundred fifty Burmese nationals. The year before the November, 2015 election, Thein Sein's pro- military party had begun to woo Sitagu Sayadaw, concerned that he was becoming too close to the leader of their political opposition. Ministers of friendly disposition began to drop in on Sitagu Sayadaw, often offering favors such as help with foreign travel, or even domestic travel to many of the remote locations that Sayadaw visited for speaking or for arranging public services. Seeking peace 145

However, no partisan endorsement was forthcoming from him one way or the other. Once, another prominent monk was understood in a talk to have stated that Sitagu Sayadaw had said that he felt Aung San Suu Kyi should become president. To affirm the veracity of this report, Aung San Suu Kyi's office tried to reach Sayadawgyi to verify this statement, emailing Ashin Visuta. Visuta phoned Sitagu Sayadaw and was told that, no, the latter had definitely never made such a statement. NLD won the 2015 elections by a landslide, enough to enjoy full control of both houses of parliament and thereby to select the president. Unfortunately, one of the ways the constitution had been rigged was by disqualifying Daw Suu Kyi from becoming president as someone with children who are foreign citizens. NLD's U Htin Kyaw accordingly became president with herself as the power behind the throne, in March of 2016. Shortly after the election, President Thein Sein particiapted in a conference that Sitagu Sayadaw had organized, the World Buddhist Peace Conference. On that occasion Sitagu Sayaday recommended U Thein Sein begin his retirement as a monk. And so, in April of 2016 U Thein Sein ordained temporarily, living as a monk for one week. As a moral voice, Sitagu Sayadaw mixes well with powerful fig- ures as well as with the meek, can be extremely persuasive, but also gentle, humorous and engaging. Aside from leaders in Myanmar he has met with the likes of Pope Benedict, President Barak Obama, the Dalai Lama and others. The American Charge D'Affairs (there was no ambassador during the years of economic sanctions), Larry Dinger, visited Sitagu Sayadaw at the Yangon Sitagu Center early in 2010 when one of the authors (Ashin Cintita) happened to be present. Sitagu was, as usual, both magnanimous and chummy and, to ensure a continued relation- ship, invited “Larry” to his birthday celebration in Sagaing Hills for the following month. At the initial meeting, Mr. Dinger was careful to make clear, 146 Teacher of the Moon

“If you ever need help with visas, don't call me. It is han- dled in a different department.” Sitagu Sayadaw's birthday is a big event in Sagaing Hills. The Burmese celebrate birthdays the opposite of how we do in the west, not as an opportunity for receiving gifts, but of giving gifts to the Sangha. Sitagu Sayadaw on this occasion invites vast hordes of monastics to the Sitagu International Buddhist Acad- emy – one thousand monks and one thousand nuns – as fields of merit and even more lay people as planters of seeds of merit. The monastics run a gauntlet of gift-givers, each accompanied by a lay “kappiya” who holds a plastic bag to receive soap, pencils, towels, books, tooth paste, and even cash. Sitagu Sayadaw each year is the last to run the gauntlet, but, because he is considered a particularly fertile field of merit, donors reserve a particularly large amount of soap, etc. for him, requiring two “kappiyas” holding plastic bags. In this particular year his two “kappiyas” were the American Charge D'affairs Larry Dinger, and the Pak- istani ambassador to Myanmar. At the end of Mr. Dinger's second encounter with Sitagu Sayadaw, he was careful to make clear, “If you ever need help with visas, just call me.”

It is a difficult process to transition from a brutal corrupt military dictatorship to a well-functioning prosperous democracy in any land. For years the government had kept a lid on many of the internal tensions of the country, but at the same time had failed to ever subdue ethnic insurgencies. As people exercised their newly gained right of free speech and press, other tensions re-emerged, often legacies of colonial divide-and-conquer and unconstrained immigration policies. Moreover, the new government, under U Thein Sein or Daw Suu Kyi, have yet to gain significant control over the military, which has its own agenda and often engages in divisive tactics. Nonetheless, the government has made significant progress where the military had failed for many decades, in negotiating an end to almost all of the various civil wars. Seeking peace 147

One of the tensions that has been particularly vexing involves the small Muslim population of Myanmar, and particularly in coastal Rakhine State, which borders Bangladesh, where large percentage of the inhabitants belong to an ethnic group many call Rohi- gya and others call Bengali. These are a Muslim people of cultur- ally and linguistically Indic descent who speak a language close to Chittagonian, spoken just over the border in Bangladesh. The Burmese government has for many decades officially considered the members of this group to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh – so they are called Bengalis – but there is evidence that many of the families have lived in Myanmar as a distinct ethnicity since colonial or precolonial times – so they are called Ro- hingya. The truth is certainly somewhere in between. In any case there has been long-term tension between the Rakhine people and the Rohingya/Bengalis for a complex variety of historical, political, social, cultural and linguistic reasons and an ongoing disdain for the rights of the Rohingya/Bengalis under the military regime. On May, 2012, violence between the Rohingya/Bengalis broke out, reportedly sparked by a crime committed by a group of Ro- hingya men, that resulted in escalating mob violence on both sides. Soon Rohigya mobs were burning down Rakhine houses in Rohingya-majority areas and Rakhine mobs burning down Ro- hingya houses. The police and military intervention clearly fa- vored the Rakhine and there are reports that the police and military may have incited some of the violence against the Ro- hingya/Bengalis or at least failed to protect them when it did arise. In the end hundreds of lives were lost and over one-hundred thousand Rohingya/Bengalis streamed into refugee camps to escape the violence, where many now live in Apartheid-like conditions, and with many fleeing the country. It came as a shock to almost everybody that the situation in Rakhine State seems to have sparked to a number of incidents of mob violence in central Myanmar between Burmese and Muslim groups. This was surprising because the Muslims in these areas 148 Teacher of the Moon had been integrated into the broader society for many decades, generally spoke excellent Burmese, tended to be prosperous and had lived at peace with their neighbors. Nonetheless, an ongoing ethnic conflict in Rakhine State had generalized itself as a religious conflict. What's more, Buddhist monks seem to have played a role in encouraging this violence, although, once again, there also seems to be evidence that the military had a hand in pre-planning some of the riots. The single monk most commonly implicated in the press in these incidents is U Wirathu, whose face would appear on the cover of Time Magazine's Asia Edition for June 20, 2013 under the cap- tion “The Face of Buddhist Terror.” The pages inside quoted him as stating, referring to Muslims, “You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” and “If we are weak our land will become Muslim.” U Wirathu had been already been arrested by the military government as a relatively young monk in 2003 for distributing anti- Muslim pamphlets and given a twenty-year prison sentence. Sitagu Sayadaw first met him in prison. Sayadawgyi has great sympathy for criminals, regarding them as all capable of reform. Accordingly, he has visited prisons in Yangon, Mandalay, Bam- maw, Kathar, Myingyan and Myitkyinar once a year, arranging for Dhamma teachings, meditation and food offerings, even arranging for eye surgery in isolated cases. Apparently, U Wirathu, a Pali scholar of some reputation, though those who have met him describe him as not altogether sound mentally, developed a deep respect for this older monk. Then, in 2012 he was released from prison in a general amnesty for political prisoners and returned to his role as abbot of Masoyein Monastery in Mandalay, in which he was responsible for the education of, and had much influence over, many monks. U Wirathu quickly renewed his divisive anti-Muslim speech, but primarily under the broader umbrella of Burmese-Buddhist na- Seeking peace 149 tionalism, which is centered around the protection of Buddhism and Burmese national identity from adverse influences, in some ways a throwback to the colonial age when these things really were under pressure from an unsympathetic colonial power. U Wirathu became an early promoter and a big influence in a new monastic organization, Ma Ba Tha (An acronym for Protection of Tradition and Religion, sometimes translated as Patriotic Association of Myanmar). Ma Ba Tha was engaged in many be- nign or beneficial activities, including many initiatives for spreading Buddhism, such as very popular Buddhist Sunday schools and other educational activities, and advocating the rights of local populations when threatened by foreign development projects. Yet it has housed from its beginning a distinctive viru- lently anti-Muslim wing of which U Wirathu was its most vocal figure. Adherents of this movement uniformly claim to be non-violent. In fact, violence or advocating violence is strictly prohibited for monastics and can easily lead to required disrobing. U Wirathu has also traveled the country giving sermons that demonize Mus- lims and urge Burmese Buddhists to take action against a per- ceived Islamic threat, generally by boycotting of Muslim busi- nesses or supporting laws that restrict rights of minority religions. He propagates the narrative that Islam is inimical to Buddhist val- ues, particularly with respect to the treatment of women, that Muslim men were on a campaign to marry Buddhist women specifically for the purpose of converting them to Islam by force, that they attracted them with money (in one variation, money supplied through Saudi oil funds), and of course that Muslims would eventually overwhelm the Buddhists numerically (they in fact represent 4 % of the population and that percentage seems to have held constant for decades). For a monk to make such divisive statements has special implica- tions, for people in Myanmar take what monks say seriously and rarely contradict what they might say. Moreover, U Wirathu, as a teacher and abbot, had many disciples to further propagate his 150 Teacher of the Moon message. By far most monks find U Wirathu's message un-Bud- dhist, but generally take great care in addressing this as a matter of Sangha, not a public matter, to be resolved by monastic proto- col. Ma Ba Tha itself, since it was an organization within the Sangha, could potentially become a forum for resolving this issue in which senior monks have enormous influence. By 2013 Sitagu Sayadaw, along with many other monks, had begun speaking in response to the anti-Muslim campaign, in fact, talking privately with U Wirathu, albeit unsuccessfully. He was concerned about the hateful tone of much of what anti-Muslim monks were presenting as Dhamma, and about the responses of an ill-informed populace to wild rumors, which tended to precede specific instances of mob violence. A committee was set up in Mandalay to fact-check such rumors and to educate the public to counter this climate of fear. For instance, the rumor widely disseminated in Mandalay that someone had been splashed with acid in Pyin Oo Lwin, some hours distant. In this case they checked with local clinics in Pyin Oo Lwin, found no report of treatment for acid burn during that period and made this known in Man- dalay. It also distributed twenty thousand pamphlets with a statement signed by many monks in opposition to any violence. On October 1-2, 2013 Sitagu Sayadaw hosted at the Sitagu Acad- emy in Yangon a conference on interfaith security and co-existence that was convened by Al Haj U Aye Lwin of the Islamic Centre of Myanmar. Unfortunately, on the very first day of the meeting and for four days thereafter there were reports of new violence in Thandwe Township, Rakhine State, in which Rakhine mobs had burned down two mosques and about seventy homes and had left five Muslim Kamans dead (The Kamans are a separate ethnic group than the Rohingya/Bengali). The two organizers of the meeting decided publicly in the midst of the meeting to travel together to the affected region, to assess the situation and to speak jointly to Muslim and Buddhist groups about the respec- tive obligation of the adherents of both of their faiths not to resort to violence. Seeking peace 151

On October 7, the first day of their trip, they addressed a Bud- dhist gathering at the Thandwe town hall, as reported by Al Haj U Aye Lwin, at which Sitagu Sayadaw cited traditional Jataka stories and warned the audience of the karmic consequences for those who believe rumors and cautioned that there are people with hidden agendas intent on inciting violence. He implored those present to live peacefully with the Muslims who have a different faith but live on the same soil. The Muslim cleric then spoke of the beauty of unity in diversity of which the people of Myanmar have always been proud, and warned about those who hijack religion for political purposes. The following day they convened about one hundred fifty Mus- lim elders, to which the sayadaw spoke of the importance of moral character and wisdom in establishing peaceful co-existence in the face of those who would use religion as a political tool. The Muslim cleric then spoke of the Islamic concept of human- ism, acceptance and respect and of the Q'uranic injunction to re- pel the misdeed done by the enemy with a good deed to the per- petrator so that one who harbors hatred will become an intimate friend. One of the things they discovered is that, right before the out- break of violence, agitators had played anti-Muslim sermons and songs through a loudspeaker at the town hall with the consent of the city officials. The two peacemakers then traveled to nearby Thapyu Kyain, a Kaman Muslim fishing village, by army helicopter, where violence had also broken out. Sitagu Sayadaw committed to renovating the school there and to building a health clinic. Indeed, this clinic would be completed in 2015. In the last days of 2014, Sitagu Sayadaw continued his efforts to promote understanding between the Muslim and Buddhist faiths by accepting an invitation of the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization of the Iranian government to attend a meeting on Buddhist-Islamic relations. Sitagu Sayadaw delivered a keynote 152 Teacher of the Moon speech on regarding multilateral dialogue between Buddhism and Islam. After morning secession, Sitagu Sayadawgyi was interviewed by several Iranian Television Networks. In January of 2016, Sayadaw convened the three-day World Bud- dhist Peace Conference at the Sitagu International Buddhist Academy. Some seven-hundred people were invited to the conference, representing an array of faiths from about fifty countries worldwide. Messages of support were received by the event’s organizers from the United Nations refugee agency, the office of the European Union in Burma, the US Embassy and Prime Min- ister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh. President Thein Sein offered the keynote address. A main focus was on sharing experiences among experts from conflict-torn countries where religion and racial differences have exacerbated tensions. The conference was also intended to repair the international image of Burma’s Bud- dhists, tarnished by extremist elements like the “face of Buddhist terror.” In contrast to these events, Sitagu Sayadaw was asked to give the keynote address at a conference of Ma Ba Tha in July 2015. Al- though Sayadaw was continuing to talk with individual members of Ma Ba Tha, as a whole the group was becoming increasingly dominated by its more radical and divisive elements, who were by now successfully lobbying for anti-Muslim legislation and some of whom had affiliated themselves with the pro-military party in the campaign leading to the upcoming elections. Its mod- erates were dropping out, discouraged. Sayadaw considered boycotting the meeting himself and even conducted a poll of his most senior disciples to garner their opinion, an unusual measure for the generally very decisive monk. The poll turned out two to one in favor of boycott. Nonetheless, Sayadaw decided to accept the invitation, but to stage a walkout after his talk, accompanied by Sitagu monks that would accompany him. He arrived to a huge gathering, in the tens of thousands. He presented a very objective account of how he viewed Buddhist-Muslim relations in Myan- mar, then impressed on the monks present that they had no busi- Seeking peace 153 ness involving themselves in partisan politics and that their role as monks must be to promote peace and understanding. Then … he and his entourage walked out. The radicals in Ma Ba Tha were, at this time, riding a wave of influence in national politics. Ma Ba Tha activists had lobbied the parliament to pass four legislative measures on tradition and religion, which they had written and that last of which President Thein Sein would sign into law on August 31, 2015. Interna- tional rights organizations have criticized these bills as threats the religious rights of Muslims: The Interfaith Marriage Bill requires a Buddhist woman and a non-Buddhist man wanting to marry to apply for permission from local authorities. The Religious Con- version Bill mandates that someone seeking to convert submit an application and be interviewed by a township registration board to allow it to ascertain whether 'the person truly believes in the said religion'. The Monogamy Bill prohibits polygamy and infi- delity. And the Population Control Bill gives the state the discre- tion to designate areas, based on socio-economic indicators, where women would have to wait three years between pregnan- cies. Moreover, likely in response to the political influence of Ma Ba Tha, the NLD had decided not to run any candidates for parliamentary seats who were Muslim. Nonetheless, a year later Ma Ba Tha fortunes were ebbing. Daw Suu Kyi's party and leadership had come to power. The State Sangha Council had distanced itself from Ma Ba Tha, though not entirely dissolved it, which would have been within its authority. Many prominent monks were describing it as divisive and politi- cized fringe group, a malign influence, a detriment to the reputation of Burmese Buddhism abroad. Legal complaints were being lodged at group members. Most importantly, many monks recognized that Ma Ba Tha was creating a schism in the Sangha, one of the gravest offenses according to Buddha's teachings, akin to murdering one's own parents. A number of moderate monks have complained that they had received threatening phone calls, even death threats, from Ma Ba Tha affiliates. 154 Teacher of the Moon

These are challenging but hopeful times in Myanmar politics, times that will require the engagement of the wisest, the most compassionate, the most equanimous, the most capable among monastics and laypeople, citizens and government servants. Al- though Myanmar is experiencing the full range of pitfalls other nations have experienced in their great transitions, there is much to be optimistic about. Myanmar is a land known for the devotion and generosity of its people. Moreover, consider that some of the world's most awe-inspiring leaders are right there in Myanmar: wise, compassionate, equanimous and engaged. The Teacher of the Moon is one of the treasures of his homeland.

A draft of this book is being presented to Sitagu Sayadawdyi on the occasion of his eightieth birthday on March 2017. Sayadaw is often urged by his supporters, “Sayadaw, now that you are 80 years old, you should slow down and take more rest, so that you will live many more years.” To this he typically replies, “So, if I slow down and take rest, how many more years will I live?” Hearing no precise answer, he then adds, “So, if I 'retire' and take rest, surely I will pass away at some point, as do all things. And if I do not take rest, also surely I will eventually pass away. When is never certain. So why should I not continue to work, as there is still much to do for the welfare of all beings.”

Draft 02/18/17

For a pdf go to sitagu.org/shortlinks/moon/ Seeking peace 155