Two Worlds Collide
It was only yesterday I saw these photos, and yet my mind is still spinning as I attempt to understand them. How did this happen? What did they talk about? And, what does this even mean??? Since then, I’ve had a number of conversations with very different people about the significance of these images in order to process my own thoughts.
Spoiler alert, I don’t have any profound commentaries to dazzle anyone with at this time. I’m still processing it. And, there is still a lot of context I don’t quite understand yet.
Let’s pause here for a moment on that last point. I think it is very important that we properly understand the nuance and context of situations when we make judgments. This was at the heart of what the American monk Bhikkhu Cintita was getting when criticizing his preceptor, Sitagu Sayadaw. During our podcast interview, Bhikkhu Cintita indicated that while he was disappointed with Sitagu for any number of reasons, he was also dismayed to hear several inaccuracies and unfair assumptions among the blanket condemnation of Sitagu in the public narrative. Bhikkhu Cintita spoke forcefully and courageously against those actions of his preceptor he disagreed with, and because his criticisms were grounded in years of study and examination, there was so much of value to glean from his talk.
To peel back the curtains a little more, understanding this nuance is also what I’ve been attempting to do with Thabarwa Sayadaw’s highly disturbing comments. An interview conducted last year had to be shelved due to technical problems, and we will be connecting soon, where I will be directly confronting him about his rationale for saying such atrocious statements.
But to bring us back to the present moment… I know, a very Buddhist thing to say right!?
Let’s get first to some of the facts, or what we know of them. What we have here are a series of pictures depicting a meeting that took place this week between Wirathu and Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw. For the international audience, the former needs no introduction, for he is the hateful, misogynistic leader of the anti-Muslim 969 movement whose statements have very likely encouraged murder.
Who is the latter? Just the mere fact that so few foreigners would even know is an indication of the level of ignorance we have to wade through. He is one of the most revered Buddhist monks in contemporary Myanmar, a forest recluse who many believe to have reached Nibbana, also known as Nirvana, also known as enlightenment. Before we move on to the significance of him meeting with Wirathu, let’s take a moment to understand the background of Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw and just why he is so important within a Burmese Buddhist context.
I don’t know anywhere near his full biography, only what I have gleaned over the course of years in travels, books, and conversation. Probably it is quite limited, but let me start with what I do know.
I spent quite some time learning about the life of Webu Sayadaw and staying at his monasteries, and I was surprised when Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw came up in one conversation. I was more amazed to learn that the young Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw was actually inspired by Webu Sayadaw.
Now, who is Webu? He was a 20th century monk who was also believed to be a full “arahant,” or enlightened person. Some side history: Webu encouraged Sayagyi U Ba Khin to open his International Meditation Center in Yangon, which later hosted a young Indian student named S.N. Goenka. As many know, Goenka would later find a way to spread the Vipassanā meditation he learned in Burma around the world, and so in many ways, Webu can be seen as a key instigator in turning on the spigots to the worldwide mindfulness movement.
Anyway, back to Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw. As a young man, when he was pursuing pariyatti study, he met Webu Sayadaw, who encouraged him to practice ānāpāna. It was not exactly a chance meeting with Webu. The young Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw left his home in the forest and ventured to the urban University of Rangoon to hear a talk that Webu happened to be giving. Now, this was extremely rare in itself as Webu had not left his rural hut for nearly a decade at that point! In any case, before going to meet him, he decided he would try to offer Webu three spoonsful of jaggery, instead of the usual one. If Webu accepted all three, Maha Bodhi Myaing believed it would signal that he, himself, would be liberated from all suffering. Webu did accept all three from Maha Bodhi Myaing, which motivated the latter’s now-famous meditative efforts. He later studied with Webu for an undetermined amount of time in his early twenties.
Back to the initial encounter… Maha Bodhi Myaing respectfully declined to follow Webu’s advice at that moment, saying he could only do one thing at a time. Later he disrobed, and when he ordained again, he began to practice according to Webu’s initial ānāpāna instructions. To this day, he continues to consider Webu one of his great inspirations, and places his picture at whatever temporary abode he rests at.
Maha Bodhi Myaing would model his life after Webu in more ways than one. For example, he is one of just a very small handful of Burmese monks to attempt to follow the severe dhutaṅga rules, a set of 13 ascetic practices that include such points as eating one meal a day, sleeping under a tree, and not laying down to sleep. Other notable contemporary monks who have been known to follow this practice include Ashin Tissara, The Phyu Taw Ya Sayadaw, Win Sein Tawya Sayadaw, and Yaw Sayadaw.
For many years, like Webu, Maha Bodhi Myaing lived in strict privacy. In fact, his location was top secret. I mean this in the literal sense. There was always a hushed tone when his name came up and other meditators or monastics posed guesses as to where he could be. I heard a story about a French man seeing his photo some years ago and instantly feeling compelled to travel to Myanmar to meet with him. One of my very good friends, a European monk, did meet him deep in the forest on one occasion, and refers to this very brief encounter as one of the highlights of his entire time in robes.
Perhaps due to his mysterious life, there are numerous colorful anecdotes about Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw. For instance, he is said not to accept medicine, so once lost a toe to frostbite, likely in the Chin Hills. Another medical-related story involves an ultrasound examination. The doctor, finding nothing inside his stomach, reportedly declared, “This is the scan of a dead person.”
To share one personal anecdote, I became good friends with one of his disciples, Sayadaw U Vilāsagga, a monk with profound wisdom and humility. On one occasion several years ago, he indicated that he knew where his master was staying, and that he would permit a meeting with myself and other practitioners. Flights were quickly arranged from Japan, Thailand, and England, and a party convened at my house. I had to speak to several layers of attendants who were safeguarding his privacy, and unfortunately at the end, the final permission to meet was not granted.
Sometime last year, for reasons that have still not been explained to me, Maha Bodhi Myaing ventured out of his top secret hiding place and social media began sharing photos of him receiving visitors. Initially just a trickle, before long great caravans would go to see him, trying to take advantage of this brief moment of accessibility.
Well, that is a snapshot of what I know about Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw. But still, I can imagine many foreign, non-Buddhist readers at this point thinking, “… so what?” So let me attempt to bring his life more into context.
To do so, I’m going to try to bring 2500 years of Buddhist history into a single passage. A central tension in spread of Buddhism has been the divide between the forest and city monks. This can be seen across many countries in Buddhist Asia, and was beginning to manifest even in the Buddha’s own life. As monks needed to administer more to the wider lay community, they needed to be closer in proximity to them. However, over time, concerns were expressed that this made monks “softer”, and the comforts and convenience of urban life was in opposition to their renunciate spirit. Making the conscious decision as a monk to live a simpler, more rugged lifestyle therefore harkens back to the roots of the practice, and indicates that the monastic is quite serious about liberation from suffering in this very life. Such a living example warms the hearts of many believers, who wish to support his noble quest and make such a person an inspiration for their own lives.
Myanmar has never had anything quite like the Thai Forest Tradition, although there have certainly been many revered Burmese monks over the centuries who have sought out this kind of ascetic lifestyle, the Sagaing Hills being one favored destination. In the modern day, however, there appears to be less who eschew comfort and even safety to live and practice in this manner. Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw is one of the few, and it is notable that his first influence, Webu Sayadaw, was similarly such a recluse himself.
Therefore, seen in this context, Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw represents one of the purest and most ideal forms towards which a Buddhist monk can aspire. While his external journey has been one of hardship and sacrifice, his internal journey has inclined towards contemplating the root of human suffering and finding a way to become entirely free of it.
And it is this very truth which finds an awkward contrast in at least two directions: Wirathu, and the ugly hatemongering he promotes; and foreign journalists and activists, who don’t have the patience (and often not the interest) to understand and appreciate the deeper underpinnings of Burmese Buddhism.
Let’s start with the latter first. I imagine that even up to this point, many non-Buddhist readers have been challenged to get past such terms as “enlightenment”, “Nirvana”, “liberation from suffering,” and other words that reference a spiritual and perhaps religious path. This clashes not only with the intention to write as objectively and secularly as possible, but also confronts a Western faith in rationality. Such discomfort in the more esoteric and even magical elements of Burmese Buddhism is nothing new, and since the time of Ledi Sayadaw up through the export of SN Goenka’s vipassana mission, there has been a conscious effort to minimize or even remove these more mystical aspects, instead attempting to present Burmese Buddhism as a rational, scientific, logical practice that at its core examines the mind-body relationship. Yet there is almost no way of speaking about even the basics of Maha Bodhi Myaing’s life (to say nothing of the respect and reverence he commands) without mentioning the truth of these beliefs and accounts. And the discomfort for most Western writers to treat this aspect with the respect it deserves results in most simply ignoring it entirely. Hence the reason why most foreign readers had absolutely no clue who the bushy-eyed monk was before reading this post.
On the other hand, such foreign observers have no discomfort in calling Wirathu the face of Buddhist terror, as this is a kind of subject matter they are more than equipped to understand and sink their teeth into. And if Maha Bodhi Myaing can be a representative of the kind of ideal a monk should strive for, Wirathu is the near opposite: a monk who has all but forsaken his vinaya (monastic vows) to sow division and fear. By doing so, Wirathu has also been extraordinarily successful in single handedly taking a faith that, albeit through distorted lens, has been seen for decades as peaceful and even beautiful in the West. Now millions of people around the world have come to view Burmese Buddhism as hypocritical and hateful. So part of my own shock at witnessing this meeting was seeing these two world collide: the monk striving for the pinnacle of the purest ideal of renunciation meeting the monk who has perverted the faith to disastrous extents.
These two sets of awkward relationship certainly provide more than enough discomfort to go around. Foreign observers unwilling or unable to understand a figure like Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw (which I would venture make up about 99.9% of the collective) are missing a revered figure held by most Burmese Buddhists in the highest regard (which I would venture make up about 99.9% of the collective). By doing so, they pay homage to the meanest and nastiest developments of the monkhood, thus further widening the gap between the way the faith is experienced and followed in Myanmar, and what gets emphasized and how it has come to be characterized beyond. (I don’t in any way mean to suggest that the rise of Wirathu, 969, and Ma Ba Tha should not be covered by Western media. Only that the context of the wider community often gets ignored, for one reason or another.)
On the other hand, the growing discomfort of Burmese lay practitioners to call out the wrongdoings or impropriety of those in robes (a very complicated topic that would require a separate essay to go into) prevent much discourse or commentary about the very different way these two particular men are wearing their robes, as well as the deeper significance of the actual meeting.
And on a third hand, if one will, is the shifting fault lines of the Buddhism being practiced by Generation Z activists. This is perhaps nowhere better expressed than the recent interview with Chit Tun, a nonviolent protest leader who grew up in a monastery and became a PDF leader. He openly discusses his disgust at the behavior of senior monks, confesses that his Buddhist faith was manipulated by the military, and professes his wish to support a new country built on the foundation of freedom and fairness… significantly, not a Buddhist state. That being said, Chit Tun is clear that his adherence to the Buddha’s teachings have still not wavered. “I'm not blaming Buddhism,” he told me. “No, no, if you think that way, you are very narrow and you're very immature.” Yet for other young activists, they are very clearly beginning to “blame Buddhism,” and for many others, this deeper processing is far from over.
This circles back to the opening of the essay: why would such a wise and pure-hearted renunciate choose to meet with such a hateful pretender in robes? At present, there seems to be no clear answer to this yet. It appears that the meeting was sought by Wirathu, who traveled to Maha Bodhi Myaing’s forest abode for a visit. If this is so, then the ensuing photographs may be something of a propaganda ploy, an attempt for Wirathu to receive some validation through association. It has been suggested to me that it is not unlikely that someone as far away from the world as Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw has little clue who Wirathu even is, and simply meets any monk who calls upon him for a visit. But there is certainly more to learn from here.
In the end, it is hard to reconcile what a meeting actually means between the monk whose teacher is responsible for spreading meditation and mindfulness around the world, and the “monk” who is threatening to bring down Buddhism from within. I’m still trying to understand it myself, and this is as far as I’ve gotten thus far. I welcome further comments and reflections.
