Episode 6: Ashin Sarana
Care to guess what the two earliest influences were that motivated U Sarana, one of the most well-known foreign monks in Myanmar today, towards taking robes? Well, one was the 1978 kung-fu classic The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, and the other was a Czech translation of the mysterious 1934 Alice Bailey classic, A Treatise on White Magic: Or the Way of the Disciple. While he admired the monk’s peaceful response to violent aggression in the film, the book had an even more profound effect, causing him to want to dedicate himself to the study of magic. It was not “parlor magic” or slight-of-hand tricks that he was interested in; he wanted to gain real magic and psychic powers!
The first part of our talk is about his early life. Born and raised in a lower middle-class Czech family in the town of Pilsen, U Sarana developed an early interest in Catholicism until he became captivated by that book about psychic powers. And as he read more on those topics, he decided that the best way to work towards this goal included a vegetarian diet and entry into the Buddhist monkhood. So during his teenage years, he swore off all meat and fish and began to look for Buddhist instructors… yet on his own, he was not able to locate even one practicing Buddhist in his country.
Eventually, things began to fall into place. He was able to contact a Zen monastery who, in turn, introduced him to a Theravadin monk, who finally connected him with several disciples living and teaching there in the Czech Republic. U Sarana attended their retreats, and his Buddhist contacts began to multiply. The first part of his spiritual journey was coming full circle: That early interest in magic had led to him to desire developing powers like flight, invisibility, etc., which led him to pursue Buddhist thought and practice to achieve that aim, but as he studied Buddhism more deeply, he realized that the greatest magic trick of all was coming out of greed, anger, and delusion.
Although by this point he was hoping to ordain as soon as possible, his Buddhist teachers advised him to finish his schooling first. So he went back to school, but his life got a bit complicated: he fell in love! And to complicate matters even further, he had acquired a part-time job selling cable TV door-to-door, which netted him a tidy profit. Plus his father was encouraging him to look into attending Oxford or Cambridge university in England. In other words, on his way towards monkhood, he suddenly found himself in-love, financially well-off, and exploring the possibility of higher education abroad. Yet he realized that pursuing such a life would mean working hard to support a family and maintain success in his professional life…and then, well, dying! He wondered, why not work just as hard in order to instead attain a state of enlightenment and everlasting peace?
But as his mind inclined once again towards monkhood, he did not know how to practically disentangle himself from the householder life. So he said he made a request to “the gods” to help him, which came in the form of a punctured air mattress. His girlfriend, none too pleased at no longer having a bed to sleep on, went to stay at her mother’s, and U Sarana took that opportunity to plan a trip to Sri Lanka with a friend. However, his girlfriend had never meant her time away as a complete break-up, and scared of losing him, agreed to allow him a three-month trial period to explore the prospect of a Buddhist life. So U Sarana went to Sri Lanka, and he found that it indeed was what he was looking for. He ended his relationship and secured written permission from his father to take robes, becoming a novice monk and a student at the Buddhist and Pāḷi University. Jump to about four years later, in 2012; with degree in hand, he decided to go to Burma to seek full bhikkhu ordination. He devoted himself to studying the Burmese language, and joined Facebook to practice his new language skills online.
From here our talk takes a new turn and we spend the duration of the podcast discussing some rather dire consequences that arose from that seemingly innocent decision to learn Burmese via Facebook. Eventually he developed quite a large following, as Facebook was by then growing astronomically in Myanmar, becoming the main form of communication in a country that until recently did not even have cell phones. With foresight and technical savvy, he used this social media tool to respond to questions about meditation and Buddhist study. So far, so good.
But last year, he responded to a question about monks handling money by advising his lay followers not to donate to monastics' hands, which would be transgressing of their rules, and even went a step further by compiling a list of monasteries where monks diligently follow the Buddha’s teaching in this regard. “According to a story in the Pali scriptures, a monk who touches money is useless,” he remarked, not mincing words, “He is not a monk. He is worse than Devadatta,” he added, referencing the Buddha’s cousin who tried to split the Saṅgha. U Sarana believes that a very large majority of Burmese monks do, in fact, touch money, willingly putting him squarely in the minority on such a sensitive topic. As you can imagine, his remarks caused quite a stir, resulting in his being taken to monastic court. In conducting his defense, he provided appropriate scriptural references to back his assertions, and in the end was allowed to continue to teach the Dhamma as long as he was careful in future talks to always give specific citations when quoting the Buddha’s teachings.
While that experience was certainly not an easy thing to go through, it had enabled him to find and connect with a number of Burmese monasteries where the traditional, textural Vinaya code is still closely adhered to, and he is now in close collaboration with them to better educate both lays as well as monastics about the importance of this rule, and how fundamental it is in the Buddha’s teachings. He also hopes that the government will take a more active role in reforming the Saṅgha to ensure that this rule is better followed going forward.
Later, Zach and Joah discuss the interview of their longtime friend, and how much they enjoyed hearing the circumstances that led to him wearing robes. Joah discusses the role that Facebook has come to play in Myanmar, and how U Sarana’s use of that social media platform to excoriate the many Burmese monks who touch money led to a “perfect storm” that dominated discussions on everyone’s feed and became something of a viral sensation. They also explore the continuing consequences of U Sarana’s decision, as he failed to get ahead of the narrative that formed, of a foreigner openly and directly challenging Burmese cultural and monastic norms; and even though later facts have contradicted this initial narrative, it has been difficult to dispel all the inaccuracies. After touching on the controversy of monks touching money, Joah and Zach talk about their interest in seeing how things develop with U Sarana and his concern about ensuring that vinaya is well-maintained in Myanmar, following his recent collaboration with communities who already do. Finally, Zach questions who ultimately should take responsibility for following this precept—the Saṅgha, or lay society.