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 Copyright 2017, Bhikkhu Cintita (John Dinsmore) THIS IS AN UNAUTHORIZED DRAFT. PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE AT THIS TIME. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, under the following conditions: • Attribution – You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the au- thor or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). • Noncommercial – You may not use this work for commercial purposes. • No Derivative Works – You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. with the understanding that: • Waiver – Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. • Public Domain – Where the work or any of its elements is in the public do- main under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license. • Other Rights – In no way are any of the following rights affected by the li- cense: • Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright ex- ceptions and limitations; • The author's moral rights; • Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights. • Notice – For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the li- cense terms of this work. Publication Data. Bhikkhu Cintita (John Dinsmore, Ph.D.), 1949 - Teacher of the Moon: the Life and Times of Sitagu Sayadaw / Bhikkhu Cintita, Tin Nyunt. 1.Buddhism – Biography. © 2017. Preface 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 ၏ဘ၀ျဖစ္စဥ္အက်ဥ္း၊အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာဥယု၊ း၊ 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 laypeo- ple 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 oppor- tunity. 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 vio- lent suppression