A time for giving back

I’ve been exploring and writing about Burmese meditative traditions, historic Buddhist sites, hidden monasteries, biographies of renowned Sayadaws, and other such matters for over a decade. Before the military coup, it was a true pleasure to bring such knowledge and access to foreign practitioners who wished to travel to Myanmar to develop on a spiritual path, and I can’t count how many thousands of yogis I’ve interacted with over the years, and how many hundreds I’ve physically led around various sites. The desire to help such practitioners led to furnishing four rooms at a Yangon monastery where any pilgrim or meditator could stay free of charge whenever they passed through.

The most extraordinary generosity I’ve ever witnessed in my life came in the form of these monasteries and nunneries offering virtually unlimited support to any foreign yogi who wished to stay. They were put up and given food and shelter without question, and provided for in other ways as well. Can you imagine any other country where a spiritual aspirant is given this kind of unconditional support by total strangers?

In many cases, the generosity went even beyond this. I’ve seen entire kutis (living huts) built from scratch so foreign yogis or monastics could have better living conditions, with the invitation that the meditator remain there for life (!) to continue the practice. For those choosing the contemplative life, there is no other society I know of in the world which would even consider providing such tremendous support!

Now, of course, it is a different story. Buddhist monasteries have been burnt to the ground by the military, and others have been overtaken as staging bases to carry out operations. Monks have been stripped naked, beaten, arrested, and even killed. Nuns have been beaten by armed soldiers until they could no longer stand. Refugees whose entire villages have been burned to ash have taken to monasteries for shelter, and monks providing support to these families have been punished as a result. All over the country, monks and nuns are going hungry for literally the first time in memory.

Better Burma has received substantial, overwhelming support from a wide number of Western practitioners who are giving back at this most critical time. And for this we cannot find the appropriate words to express our gratitude!

And yet, other foreign yogis have requested this platform to be “less political,” and to go back to talking about meditative traditions and inspiring anecdotes, asking us to ignore the terrible reality that so many of these monasteries and nunneries are facing today. An Orientialist streak wishing to exotify the people and the practice always been easy to find in Western practitioners, and this tendency has never been as ugly or selfish—not to mention against all spiritual values—as it is today, when some yogis wish to highlight their meditative experience while willfully ignoring the current plight of those Burmese who provided it.

In 2022, Burmese monks and nuns are barely surviving. Their lives are not safe, their buildings are being used for other purposes, and their lay supporters can no longer care for them. If you are a foreign meditator who has benefited in the past from the generosity they have provided, they need you now like they never have before.

Please take this moment to act on whatever gratitude you have experienced based on your time spent in Burmese monasteries and nunneries, or meditation centers derived from Burmese teachings.