A Brazilian in Burma
The following essay submission is from Emanuel Flores, a meditator from the vipassana tradition of S.N. Goenka who visited Myanmar before the pandemic.
“Living such a simple, quiet, unburdened life, having so much time to study and practice the Dhamma made me incredibly happy, content, and helped me to grow a lot.”
“I arrived in Myanmar on the 12th of October of 2019. As the plane approached Yangon, I remember feeling stunned while seeing the simple little rural buildings and the shining, glimmering pagodas scattered all around. A land where real superhuman meditation masters lived, and still live, and I was about to land on it.
My first sight at the airport was a big group of small novices, child monks. They were sitting there waiting for something.
Another early memory is being taught how to say good night in Burmese ("kaung doh nya bah") by a Burmese staffer of the Brazilian embassy, and how joyfully he taught me that.
A little while later, I recall sitting a ten-day course at Dhamma Joti and being amazed by the fact that three bhikkhus (monks) were also participating. They seemed very “light”.
At the end, I told my good friend Jim how inspired I felt by them, and that I’d like to experience that way of living if that was possible.
Mrs. Snow is the person who introduced me to Jim. She was a Burmese lay practitioner now turned into a nun who met Goenkaji and organized huge donations to the sangha (community of monks and nuns) of the country.
She also introduced me to the monk who would become my teacher, preceptor and friend. His name is Venerable Paññādhikālaṅkāra.
But before being allowed to stay at his monastery I had to wait for his recommendation letter in Bangkok, in order to issue my meditation visa.
Over there, I came across a very smiley and generous man called Compol. We first met at a monastery that I liked to visit to meditate. There he addressed me in perfect English. He is an English teacher. During that time I still had many doubts concerning ordination and he really helped me with words that I remember to this day. He said: “If you don’t like it you can quit. You don’t need to compromise for your whole life.” Seeing monkhood as an experience, not a lifelong compromise helped me to feel much more comfortable with that idea.
On my return to Burma I sat another ten-day retreat, this time at IMC (International Meditation Center). I then spent Christmas with my uncle and his wife who were living in Yangon at the time and arrived at the monastery on the 26th of December of the same year, 2019.
I was first ordained samanera (novice), one or two days after arriving at the monastery. Bhikkhu (monk) ordination came around 20 days later.
I remember my teacher giving me very simple recommendations. He said I could sit to meditate whenever I was free, and that I should strive to memorize the precepts in English as well as in Pali. Alright, this was not that simple, but there was plenty of time and mental space to do it.
The ‘monastery’ was actually what they call a kyaung, or a Buddhist education center where monks and novices would live to study and practice the Dhamma. At the beginning we were 4 monks, 3 novices and some lay followers who stayed there for some time. During my stay, many members of my teacher's family stayed there too, including his parents and two sisters. They all helped at the kyaung according to their abilities. People came and went, but we were never so many that it stopped feeling like a family.
Living such a simple, quiet, unburdened life, having so much time to study and practice the Dhamma made me incredibly happy, content, and helped me to grow a lot.
Of course it was not a picnic as the conditions were sometimes rough and the impurities in my mind came to surface. But usually calm prevailed, even amidst the sometimes noisy background of the novices’ study or play.