The first full day of our time in Burma we went to have breakfast with a thousand monks who live at the Mahaganayon Monastery in Amarapura, near Mandalay. The Monastery is quite lovely with many buildings under the shade of huge trees. It feels like a campus, which indeed is what it is, a place of Buddhist study, a peaceful place.
At about 11:00 every morning, the monks gather to have their last meal of the day. After this, they can only drink water, until they arise early the next morning. Visitors can watch as the monks have their meal in total silence. At least that’s how it is promoted on the tour circuit.
As it turns out, there’s nothing silent about it. Consider the logistics of rounding up 1400 monks and distributing food and other goods to each one. Every day this big production is hosted by a local family – feeding the monks is considered a way of making merit in the Buddhist practice, and in addition to food, the monks may each get a bar of soap, a new messenger bag, or some other necessity. Then add in the tourists. Busloads and busloads and busloads of them. There may have been 1000 monks congregating, but there were 2000 tourists, lining the entire length of the walkway along the dining hall, 15-deep, jostling for position around the perimeter of the building (breaching it in some hugely disrespectful manner in some cases), laughing and yacking and pointing cameras.
We were not amused. Although this young monk looks like he might be.
There are about 500,000 monks in Burma. There are about 500,000 soldiers. In 2007, almost 20 years after the military government trashed the results of a more or less free election and and ruled by iron fist ever since, the monks of Burma led the populace in peaceful demonstrations against the government over a period of weeks that September, and ultimately faced off against the soldiers who were finally ordered to put a stop to it.
It did not end well.
I remember watching the footage of the demonstrations and the reports coming out of Burma on BBC from our home in Manila, aghast at the sight of soldiers turning against monks. “They’re beating monks!” It was hard to believe this was happening and when I think of it now, having been there and seen how strong the Burmese attachment to Buddhism and the monks is, it seems even harder to imagine, except, it happened and looking for the “why” leads you into the power politics of the military dictatorship the Burmese lived under for so many years.
After putting up with the demonstrations for awhile, eventually the soldiers were ordered to surround and seal in the demonstrators, haul them into trucks, beat them, ransack monasteries, arrest monks and thousands of others and ultimately to murder not only this monk, but other people as well. Ordered by the military bosses who run everything and have been behaving with great brutality against its own people for decades, it was hardly a surprise, athough shocking nonetheless. Why does a country of 60 million with no enemies for neighbors need a military of 500,000 soldiers? To do battle with different ethnic groups in the north and to be in control and show it. And, I might add, the support of the beneficiaries of a military machine would be helpful to the Generals and cronies running things. These soldiers support, and are supported by, 500,000 Burmese families who depend on these jobs and benefits in a country where these same military bosses have deliberately impoverished their own people for 60 years now. Jobs are scarce, a soldier’s pay cheque sustains life, and once upon a time, in the time of General Aung Sun (The Lady’s father) the military was honorable.
Those brutal images filmed during the demonstrations came to the view of the rest of the world, via BBC and the like, as a result of the very brave actions of a handful of young men and women with video cameras, who risked their own lives and security to smuggle out these scenes of what was happening so the world could bear witness. At that time, there were very few foreign journalists on the scene as they were supposedly banned from the country, but one who was there, a Japanese reporter, was himself murdered at the scene. There is an award-winning documentary on this reporting called Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country that is well worth a watch. I got it from Amazon, but I’ve found that you can watch it here.
The monk culture in Burma was one of the many surprises I found during my time there. Other countries I’ve visited, like Laos and Thailand, also have their wats and temples and monasteries and monuments, and it is certainly a very common sight to see the monks in their distinctive robes, walking around the streets. Buddhism was certainly in evidence in those countries but Burma seemed different, somehow. There, it’s Buddhism squared, at least. I hear that in Bagan alone, a prime tourist destination, there are 14,000 temples within a 26 square mile area. How many in the country in total? Can’t find any source to guess for me, but just let me say that EVERYWHERE you turn in Burma there’s a temple. All men in Burma are required to spend time as a monk in a monastery, for at least a week. Some enter the monasteries as children (I call them the Bunny Monks) to receive an education. Others may stay for many years, before joining a secular life. I asked one of our guides how many of those 500,000 monks were “lifers”. About 10%, he thought. So, back to those Burmese soldiers, all of them, and their brothers and male relatives were, or will be, monks at some time In their lives. What I also found interesting were the Buddhist nuns. I had seen the odd nun elsewhere, but in Burma there were lots, in their very distinctive coral pink robes, also with shaven heads.
Unlike places like Cambodia’s Angor Wat temple complexes where the buildings are monuments of the past for the most part and foreign tourists are the main visitors, in Burma even most of the Big Daddy monumental temples still have a sense of being living places. As a foreign tourist, I go there to look at the architecture and art and history of these places, side by side with the local tourists who come to pray, make offerings and attend temple festivals. Supporting the temples and monasteries is obviously a key value. Here, despite widespread poverty, everyone donates cash. In collection boxes, on shrines, tucked into the limbs of statues, cash is everywhere. Gold is also everywhere. Gold leaf, gold plate, on top of temples, covering Buddha images, decorating altars. Everywhere.
You could say that the monk uprising of 2007 was a righteous one, in support of a population living under a repressive regime. But for the record, just because you are a Buddhist monk, doesn’t mean you’re not a shit. In the news in the last few weeks are disturbing reports of Buddhist-Muslim violence in various parts of the country. Crowds of Buddhists have been prowling neighborhoods, smashing property, burning mosques and Muslim-owned businesses and chasing Muslims from their homes. Dozens of people have been beaten or hacked to death and thousands and thousands of Muslims have fled their homes and neighborhoods. Reports are that a dawn massacre of 25 Muslims in the town of Meikhtila was led by a group of monks. During 3 days of pogrom in this town, where Muslims are seen as being more affluent than the local Buddhist population, security forces did little to intervene and stop the violence. A prominent Buddhist monk, U Wirathu, leads an anti-Muslim “nationalist” movement called “969” promoting and encouraging persecution of Muslims. Here’s what he has to say:
“With money, they become rich and marry Buddhist Burmese woman who convert to Islam, spreading their religion. Their businesses become bigger and they buy more land and houses, and that means fewer Buddhist shrines,” he said.
“And when they become rich, they build more mosques which, unlike our pagodas and monasteries, are not transparent,” he added. “They’re like enemy base stations for us. More mosques mean more enemy bases, so that is why we must prevent this.”
Does any of this sound familiar?
