Burma Update – October 08
HOW I WISH
YOU ALL WERE HERE!
Although Burma has disappeared from the news the situation is far from being good. Many victims
of the cyclone Nargis are still struggling to get their lives together and the political situation is as
tight as before. Daw Virañani has continued to be active and compassionately organized many more
dānas to those in need. Here is a summary of what has been done during the past month.
In July, we had been offering support to three
nunneries near CMMC (Chanmyay Myaing
Meditation Centre) and SOM (Shwe Oo Min
Meditation Centre). As time was limited during
my one-week stay in Burma, we had no time to
find and contact all the other nunneries in the
area. In the meantime, Daw Virañani has
contacted several more nunneries which are
equally poor and depend on support. With the
remaining funds from your donations in Mai
and June, we offered 800’000 kyats to Sasana
Sukhacari Laputta Nunnery and 100’000 kyats
to Mettagonyei Nunnery, and we contributed
Daw Virañani with nuns from Sasana Sukhacari 43’500 kyats to an offering done by Walter
Laputta Nunnery Köchli and his friends to five nunneries in the
area. This dāna to the five nunneries was an offering of rice because the nuns have difficulties to get
enough support when they go into town to collect alms.
The donation to Mettagonyei Nunnery was given with the specific purpose to build a bridge that
replaces a thin wooden board over the creek.
Later Daw Virañani heard that there are
one thousand five hundred nunneries in
Mingaladon township! This was
actually confirmed by Daw Nilar who
said that ‘Mingaladon is a
nuns’village’! She said that most of the
villages she had been to in the delta
through Mahāgandhayon Monastery do
not have nunneries, though the bigger
towns in the delta may have ‘yeikthas’
(centres) for nuns. This partly explains
the high number of nunneries around
Yangon.
The new bridge leading to Mettagonyei Nunnery
Ma Uttamasingi and Ma Uttarasingi in the Sasana
Sukhacari Laputta Nunnery are two of the four
adult nuns. When Daw Virañani visited the
nunnery, she met with these two sisters and five
very young nuns, ranging from four years old to
ten years old. Four of them were orphans. In Daw
Virañani’s words, “When they chanted for us
(soooo beautifully!), the child who was not an
orphan began to weep - just quiet tears as she was
chanting. And the whole time she looked very sad.
I couldn’t help but wonder why the tears - and
what her life has been like. Also the father of the
two sisters was there, a quiet presence. The sisters
lost a brother and his family in the cyclone, and
Ma Uttamasingi hurt her back holding on to a tree.
But even with all the sad stories, the little place has
such a sweet feel, not at all heavy. Yes, life has
dealt these people some heavy blows - and they’re Two of the nuns at Sasana Sukhacari Laputta
very poor so their robes are threadbare, the roof Nunnery
leaks, and food is sometimes in short supply. But I neither heard nor felt the
least attitude of complaint. Life goes on! There’s a blackboard in the room
and each time I’ve been there, it’s had different lessons - today Pāḷi verb
conjugations in Roman and Myanmar letters, and the two times before it
was different English lessons.
When they received the eight lakhs we offered, the joy in the room was
palpable, and there were even some overt smiles to go with the happy eyes!
I’d brought some tamarind toffees for the kids, and they (like children
everywhere) found these much more interesting than the boring bundle of
In the class room at cash! But when the adults quietly put the candies away for later, there
Sasana Sukhacari wasn’t so much as a single sigh. It’s clear that these little ones have had to
Laputta Nunnery learn equanimity at an early age.”
With these offerings, the dāna-box was finally empty! Your generous donations have been
incredibly useful and the condition of many people’s life has been significantly improved. May you
rejoice in your goodness and generosity and derive much happiness and joy!
In an email to me, Daw Virañani wrote, “I struggle with the words, they seem to paint such a pale
picture of what it was like to be there in the midst of these beautiful women [nuns], and to see their
gratitude first-hand. If there’s one thing that brings up craving in all this, it’s the wish to give you as
vivid a feeling as I can - to bring you and everyone else through you into the picture. How I wish
you all were here - because I know you’d be so happy!”
Recently, Daw Nilar came to CMMC with the last batch of photos
from Shwe Lin Ban village on the East bank of the Yangon River, an
hour and a half’s drive from Yangon. With the donation in early July
that we offered to Mahāgandhayon Monastery in Yangon, a rice and
oil offering through Shwe Lin Ban Mahāgandhayon Monastery was
organised to over a hundred households. The dāna included an
offering of rice to the monastery and to a nunnery right across the At Shwe Lin Ban
Monastery
road. There are fifty nuns there, five adults and forty-five kids - forty of whom are orphans of the
cyclone! They have to go by bus into Yangon twice a week for alms, it takes two hours in either
direction. So the dāna was very appreciated!
She also had an update about a medicine-dāna from
August in the Dedaye district with money that we had
offered to Mahāgandhayon Monastery in Yangon.
The dāna ended up going to thirty-six villages!
Daw Nilar said that an earlier dāna through Mahā-
gandhayon Monastery was not only fertilizer that was
offered to the villagers but also seventy bags of seed
rice. Each farmer got one bag of seed rice. This means
that there will be food for next year! Daw Nilar wants
us to know that all the Dāna at Shwe Lin Ban Monastery, Mahāgandhayon
Sayadaws are sending us metta. the lush green paddy fields
With the funds all gone, we thought that this would be the end of our involvement of doing relief
work! As it turns out, this was just the beginning! In September, we got another generous dāna from
an Australian friend for the victims of the cyclone Nargis.
And more donations are pouring in from my friends and meditators in Switzerland/Europe where I
am currently teaching a number of meditation retreats. As Daw Virañani has gone into silent retreat
for a couple of months, we will suspend any relief work until I return to Burma at the end of
December. By then, I suspect, we will have another big chunk of dāna to be distributed!
After returning to Burma before vassa (the time of the three-month ‘rains-retreat’), Chanmyay
Myaing Sayadaw had gone to the delta a couple of times to offer relief in remote villages with dāna
from Malaysia. Inspired by that Daw Virañani spoke to Sayadaw about offering much needed
support to remote villages in the delta. Sayadaw immediately started to make telephone calls and in
a short time he had ‘found’ a couple of villages that had so far not received much help. Sayadaw
even offered Daw Virañani to come along for this dāna. This was a somewhat delicate issue
(foreigners are officially not allowed to go to the delta), but there were no hick-ups on that trip.
With the donation received from Australia, rice, oil, beans, onions, medicines, and candles were
bought and loaded on a truck. Daw Virañani wrote a beautiful and long email about the offering,
which was done on September 16. I will let her tell you all about:
“We left [CMMC] at 04.15 or so. It had been raining all night but
it had stopped, and as we drove we could see a setting full moon
through light hazy clouds. After an hour or so on a very bumpy dirt
road, the sky began to pale a little, and the green of the fresh paddy
began to show. There had been no check-points and no traffic - it
was very early! Sayadaw pointed towards the horizon on his side
of the car - and there was the Shwedagon [pagoda], glowing in the
far distance! That was the first of many "Wow!"s.
Soon after that, we crossed the Twante bridge and then arrived at
the town of Twante itself. There we had breakfast at the monastery
where U Suvira [one of the monks at CMMC] had lived for seven
years. The monastery is on a small hill above town, quite near the
Shwesandaw pagoda. Before Nargis, the monastery was deeply
shaded by huge old trees, but now there is a lot of sky - and fallen Shwedagon Pagoda
trees and branches: kitchen firewood for a long time!
We stayed after breakfast for a while, as they loaded the last of the rice into the truck (U Suvira had
sent most of it ahead the day before). It was long enough that we got to see all the monks and
novices head off on alms round. They went off in two directions, and so before-hand had formed
parallel lines facing opposite ways. First, they chanted a metta chant, then quietly filed out - and a
great choreographer could not come close to the effect. Oh! I got goose-bumps!
Then it was off to the jetty! So ‘our’ dāna expedition had by then grown to about twenty-five
people, filling a biggish boat! The group included: Chanmyay Myaing Sayadaw, U Suvira, the
Sayadaw and two nuns from the monastery in Twante, two other foreign yogis from CMMC,
Mimmi, Ma Thwet, the camera man, and about ten devotees of Chanmyay Myaing Sayadaw from
Twante.
We were going to two places, about an hour and forty-five minute boat ride up the Twante Canal
from the town. As we began to leave it behind, the effect of the cyclone first showed by the many
yellow plastic roofs! But the pottery sheds and boat builders were obviously doing well - perhaps an
indirect effect of the storm!
As we chugged along we could see on both sides of the
canal many large downed trees overgrown with vines
and battered coconut palms. Everything was very green
and overgrown. Here and there were little bamboo
houses (or clusters of houses) built on stilts, near or even
over the water - with the only access being by boat.
Many were badly damaged or clearly repaired. There
was a wide range: mostly the houses were very humble,
but there was the occasional ‘rich village’ with modern
houses and concrete bridges over the side-streams.
People were fishing, and there were some planted areas
visible behind some of the houses: bananas or vegetables
growing on mounds above the high water table. Every so
often we’d see someone rowing a little boat with
produce or fish. I guessed going to either the market or
to a middleman with a motorboat!
After about five miles (there are mile markers) we came
People waiting at Tauku Monastery to a fork where the canal meets a bigger river and then
turned left into the quieter of the two forks. Then a while
later we arrived at our destination, Tauku village and monastery. We could see the monastery from
the canal, set back from the river. To get in, we passed it and then back-tracked a little way down an
aquatic driveway, which on the canal side had a pasture with water buffalo grazing quietly On the
inland side, there were lots of little bamboo houses with children peeking out the windows at us,
and waving!
The monastery had a reasonable jetty, actually another boat of intermediate
height between ours and the walk - so it was only a little scramble to get off
the boat. I was immediately given into the care of two village ladies who
took me very firmly by the elbow and escorted me through the throng of
people under a covered walk to the main building. Later, once it started
raining, I discovered why they were treating me like a fragile little old lady
- the concrete was very slippery!
Here the impressions began to come very fast and my memory is crowded
with quick images! The most immediate impression were the faces of the
Young lady
villagers, many thickly painted with thanaka [a natural ‘cream’ made from the bark of a tree]. There
was both shyness and great curiosity, and murmured comment that I was glad not to understand
(words get in the way sometimes)! The smiles needed no translation! These were simple villagers,
and very faithful - without the educated sophistication of city folk. As the monks and I were
escorted in, there were many people who were bowing as we went by.
The thickness of the crowd was not only on account of the dāna - it had been very windy and rainy
the night before and many had come to the monastery for protection, in fear of another cyclone! To
get there, everyone (except the people right next door) had to come by boat. I could really see how
the water is like a road for these people - much easier to navigate through than all the tangled
marshy vegetation!
I was led past a pavilion with a pagoda behind it, and
a big lotus pond. Then there was an older teak hall,
leaning precariously and missing much of its roof
and ahead the main building, concrete and
unscathed. Then we were led through the Dhamma
Hall (many more people!!!) and upstairs, where tables
had been prepared for lunch.
The Sayadaw was there to greet us, he made an
immediate and very big impression on me. The
mind (which had been going quickly from one
incoming new impression to another) just stopped.
Oooooooo, Dhamma! I felt Ma Thwet offering medicine to like dropping reverentially
at his feet and just being Tauku Sayadaw quiet. (I learned from
Mimmi only after we’d left that this Sayadaw is reputed to have great psychic powers.)
We offered lunch, then ate ourselves. It was the second meal since leaving CMMC, and we hadn’t
even offered anything yet! It was a feast, thanks in large part to Mimmi and U Suvira making all the
necessary arrangements to be sure these three foreign vegetarian lambs didn’t starve!
Then the main point of all this began. Downstairs, with the villagers sitting amidst the dāna - a big
pile of rice, and tables of medicines, candles, beans, oil and onions - we began the sharing of merit.
First the old Sayadaw and then Chanmyay Myaing Sayadaw leading the chanting.
By now (in Switzerland) it was
about when you’d have been
doing your morning sit before
breakfast. So I shared the merit
and sent lots of metta: first to
you, as our names were read
and then to all the donors,
wanting to bring everybody
into the room. The people’s
chanting was loud and hugely
heartfelt - wow - the hair on
the back of my neck stood up!
I thought, well, no need to
bring Ariya here, she can
probably hear this in Europe!!!
The sharing of merit at Tauku Monastery
After that, the happy work began - and he next few hours are a blur
- a rush of scooping rice, dipping oil, handing out medicines,
beans, onions, or candles. There was a man at the door calling each
person/household in by name, and they went from station to
station: rice, medicines, candles, beans, onions, oil, then back out
the door. All very orderly. I noticed that many people came with
new pots, and later we found out these pots had been offered
earlier by other donors…but
that there’s not much food Scooping rice
to go in them! So now, at least for a little while, the pots can
be put to good use!
The offering itself (like at CMMC) was done as fast as
possible, because there were a lot of people to distribute to!
So there wasn’t much chance for anyone to do much more
than move quickly from on place to another. But after
offering for some time, I took a break and went outside to
meet people, camera in hand. That’s when I could really
connect and see the happiness and gratitude that everyone
was feeling. By then it was raining hard (the blessing had
started once we began to offer food!), but no-one seemed to
care. The atmosphere wasn’t jubilant, of course, but quietly
happy.
Pumping and pouring oil
Oh, Ariya, I think you would have loved seeing some of the little girls - real bright sparks! But I
couldn’t help wondering about them in particular. Their lives seem unimaginable to me in so many
ways, and so very different from my situation at that age. Will life always be a struggle, as it clearly
is for their parents? Would they get married as teenagers and live here in poverty their entire lives,
struggling to raise a family until they died at the ripe old age of sixty or so? Sombre thoughts amidst
a happy day!
It was such a treat to take pictures of people, then to show
them the results immediately. It’s the sort of thing that needs
no language! Of course the kids were the least shy, but even
the grannies got over their reserve when they saw the
pictures! One delightful older lady did a little princess
parody, teasing herself by patting her hair and saying coyly
"Hla deeee…" [beautiful]. We all laughed with her in
delight. I was amazed at the agility and strength of these
people. They were managing to navigate the slick concrete
with bags on their heads containing the four viss of rice, two
viss of beans and a viss of onions!
All too soon it was time to leave. So then we all skied down
the wet concrete to the boat, and went to the second
monastery in Ngaw Pyaw Zu village. This was the only sad
part of the day for me. The rain kept us all in the boat as the
rice and oil were taken in, and then we chugged off as the
Sayadaw at that place waved from the shore from under his Mimmi with two kids,
umbrella. We left and off we went down the river in a light people waiting for their turn
rain, which had pretty much stopped by the time we got back to Twante.
By then it was about 4 pm, and as we drove towards Yangon, the fields were the most amazing
emerald green! Soon after leaving Twante, there’s a cluster of pagodas you can see from the road,
and I asked about these. “Very old,” I was told. I said that I’d be lovely to see them someday - and
no sooner said than done: so we went! It was a bit of an adventure, through a little village with a
corpse on display - a standard village funeral. The pagodas were beautiful but decaying. It was
touching: a vivid reminder of change, and how even big impressive things have their own life-
spans. There wasn’t so much to see as to imagine: the hey-day of these places when there were
palaces, towns, and many devotees. Anicca [impermanence]. Someday the Shwedagon pagoda will
be like this.”
For me, Daw Virañani has done a beautiful ‘word-painting’ with everything and everybody
becoming very lively and lucid. I hope it is as clear and vivacious to all of you who have never been
to Burma!
The offerings in Tauku village went to 101 households with a population of 495 people, and to 193
households in Ngaw Pyaw Zu village with a population of 965 people.
A happy recipient at Tauku Monastery
Dāna is a beautiful practice: it not only brings immeasurable benefits by beautifying our heart and
lifting our spirits but it also brings uncountable benefits and much needed support to other living
beings.
May all the merit that has been accumulated through our combined efforts contribute to the
happiness and welfare of all sentient beings!
With metta
Ariya Ñani
1 viss = 1.6 kg
1180 kyats = 1 US$ (subject to frequent change!)
