Episode 13: Dhamma Diary, Empathy for the Executioners
Following in the tradition of monks during the Buddha's time, one day Zach Hessler, at that time known as Bhikkhu Obhasa, set out on foot to wander among the mountains and villages of Upper Myanmar. But he could not have imagined what would happen next. The subsequent series of events is the subject matter of this very special edition of this episode’s “Myanmar Dhamma Diaries” series from Insight Myanmar Podcast.
U Obhasa ordained under Sayadaw U Tejaniya of the Shwe Oo Min tradition temporarily in 2014 , and then again in 2015 with no ending date in mind. That same year, he was given permission by Sayadaw U Tejaniya to leave the more urban Yangon monastery where he had been residing, and take up the life of a forest monk in a hut in upper Myanmar. His hut was in a peaceful place, and he was the only foreigner there; the road was over two miles away, so sounds did not penetrate to his forest abode and visitors could only arrive by motorbike or on foot. During the Rainy Season, it was totally inaccessible, and his morning alms rounds, following the train tracks for a couple of miles, were moments of pure beauty and reflection.
After living in the forests and mountains for a couple of years, he wanted to learn more about being a forest monk, and so traveled to Wat Pah Nanachat, the Thai monastery established by Ajahn Chah. At this Thai monastery, U Obhasa found that teachings were imparted through a different cultural lens than he was used to; guidance about duties and protocols were typically not given explicitly, but rather learned indirectly, through observation. A key instructor for U Obhasa was an elder Thai who had formerly been an abbot, who left his monastery in order to follow his inclinations to be a forest monk. He wanted to model his own monastic life as closely as possible to the lives of the Buddha’s disciples, and so he went deep into the Suttas and Vinaya to try to glean insights as to how various practical tasks were done over two thousand years ago. Although he did not speak any English, he devoted several months each year volunteering his time to help guide foreign monks in what he had learned of these forest monastic skills and crafts. And he had so much to offer: he had taught himself how to dye and stitch robes, make brooms, find appropriate twigs to clean his teeth, knit alms bowl covers and belts, and much more.
Having spent his monastic life in Myanmar up to that point, U Obhasa noted significant differences in the forest monk culture between the two countries. For example in Myanmar, individual forest monks are scattered across the country, without a really distinguishable “forest monk culture.” Conversely, in Thailand, there is a long-established forest monk tradition; forest monks can be recognized on sight by the ubiquitous large umbrella-nets that they carried to protect against mosquitoes when sleeping or meditating, and statues depicting this imagery can be found throughout the country.
After his extended stay at Wat Pah Nanachat, U Obhasa returned to his small bamboo hut in Upper Myanmar. Now, inspired by the wandering monks in the Buddhist scriptures, along with his life-long love of and experience in nature, and equipped with the forest lessons he’d learned in Thailand, he felt moved to follow his own natural inclinations and wander farther afield. He had ventured out on short excursions before, but he wanted to wander for longer periods, and without schedules or destinations. So, packing lightly, he set out on his journey…
His first night was spent in a cave on the ridgeline above his monastery. The next day, he noticed a beautiful, sharp peak rising like a fang above one end of the valley, and felt drawn to it immediately. As he got closer, he saw an enormous banyan tree protectively shading a beautiful village set against the foot of this peak; U Obhasa felt his trip was unfolding wonderfully. The next day, he became intrigued by what he now realized was a pagoda spire arising from a temple at the very top of that peak. Finding a route up, he was amazed to discover a makeshift bamboo monastery and two Pa Auk monks teaching vipassana meditation to a collection of nuns! In a country where women with spiritual aspirations are not able to become full bhikkhunis and part of the formal Saṅgha, but can only be accepted as ten-precept sayalays, seeing this care for them filled U Obhasa’s heart. So supportive were the villagers that they hand-carried water all the way to the top every day, as there was no natural water source there outside of the Rainy Season. He stayed there a few days, amid a glow of mutual respect and rapport.
To his surprise and delight, when U Obhasa went to take his leave, the Sayadaw declared he would set aside his current responsibilities and join him. Everything was unfolding in ways U Obhasa could never have imagined. Even better, this monastic had spent many years as a forest monk, having followed the ascetic dhutaṅga practices before ultimately establishing this monastery. Zach welcomed his new companion and saw himself as an apprentice. Along their way, they heard of a well-regarded, 90-year old monk in the area, and wished to seek him out and pay respects.
They headed out in that direction, and had traveled for several days, when they decided to take a side trip to a small gorge along the way. There, they were suddenly stopped by several men who made it clear that they were forbidden to go further. They had entered land that belonged to one of Myanmar’s many tribal peoples. and perhaps an area where opium poppies might be cultivated. They complied and reversed course.
But the situation only grew more ominous. They saw smoke signals going up and heard the sound of drums, likely the men from the gorge alerting the neighboring village of their presence. U Obhasa and the Sayadaw continued on in their original direction, but were stopped again at the next village. So they reversed course yet again, with all the able-bodied men from that village following them. As they approached that gorge, the group following them were joined by the group of men from the gorge. Men were ducking in and out of the trees, some sharpening sticks and holding long, bamboo rods, and in a couple of cases, guns and machetes. Eventually they found themselves surrounded by about forty men brandishing weapons. It certainly did not look good.
Besides their sudden arrival into that forbidden area which might have been the site of illicit activity, the biggest factor complicating the villagers’ suspicions and concerns was political and historical in nature. Myanmar is a country filled with diverse ethnicities, and has a very difficult and fraught history of mistrust and suspicion between groups, and frequent government violence against the minority tribes, in particular, this one. U Obhasa, as a Westerner, and his companion, as an ethnic Burmese, were thus seen as government agents of some kind. That suspicion would not be historically out of line for that part of Burma even for monks, as Southeast Asian history is replete with stories of spies donning monks robes for this or that nefarious purpose. (In fact, to this day, Thai monks shave their eyebrows, a centuries-old custom that developed out of a need to distinguish between Thai and Burmese “monks” who were actually spies. Compounding the situation was the presence of a Westerner, which is not a common occurrence there. And although there are individual Burmese forest monks, it is not a universally respected tradition, and a monk without a monastery can be an indication that he is a bad monk.)
None of the villagers spoke a word of English, and the only one who even spoke Burmese was just a teenager. Through his translation, the two monastics were thoroughly interrogated and then eventually asked to show everything they were carrying. Sitting calmly and surrounded by around 40 men with weapons hovering over them, the two proceeded to empty their bowls, calmly taking the contents out one thing at a time. U Obhasa felt for sure that if either had shown the slightest nervousness, defensiveness, or anxiety, the next breath might have been their last. By instead being mindful, they were acting exactly like monks should act. (Well, it also probably helped that there were no James Bond-type devices in their possession.)
Still, U Obhasa knew he was on shaky ground, and in fact assessed the odds as being strongly in favor of them not surviving. He could understand that the villagers, given the circumstances, had no reason to believe their story. So tense was the situation that he felt that it would only take a single villager to make an initial thrust, and like a burning ember on dry grass, the situation would explode into violence. With the inevitability of death feeling ever closer by the minute, it became clear to U Obhasa that the very notion of “the future,” usually just taken for granted as an immutable fact of life, was no more than a concept of the mind, a fascinating insight amidst the turmoil surrounding him.
U Obhasa had never faced his impending death so acutely before, and so was not sure how he would react when such a situation came. So he was delighted to realize that he was actually ok with it, even though he felt some sadness that his family would never find out what became of him. But he found that while he was at peace with his imminent death, he was more troubled by the manner in which it would likely come. This would be no quick execution, he expected, but quite possibly a steady and gruesome death, when he would remain conscious even as skin was torn open or bones were crushed. He knew that if that indeed was his karma, he likely would not be able to remain fully equanimous in light of the severe pain he would have to endure; and realizing this, he was concerned what the last mind moment might bring, given how important this mental state was according to Buddhist belief in how it shaped rebirth into the next life.
And for someone who admits that being misunderstood is one of his most significant disturbances in life, the irony was inescapable: there was a good chance that he was about to be murdered because of a basic misunderstanding about his presence there, and who he actually was. And yet strangely enough… U Obhasa found himself somehow ok with that in this moment. Partly this was because the situation had unfolded gradually enough that he was able to understand and even empathize with the perception of the villagers. He notes that the Buddha has often stressed the importance of understanding causes and conditions, and here was a community, suspicious of outsiders, unaccustomed to wandering monks, fraught with a hostile and painful history, unfamiliar with foreigners, possibly involved in some illegal activity in order to sustain their village, and now quite likely having to consider this awful decision: If these two were in fact spies and were released, it would bring dire ramifications to their way of life and the security of their families; but on the other hand, if U Obhasa and his companion were really monks, and were killed, the karmic repercussions could doom these Buddhist villagers for countless lives to come. It was a terrible decision having to pit worldly concerns with family and community safety and survival against the spiritual aim of gaining liberation from samsara. If anything, U Obhasa felt compassion for the villagers and the quandary he had unintentionally placed them in.
Reflecting on all this brought out a sense of compassion to U Obhasa, deepening his understanding of conditionality, and he realized how much else in his past few days of wandering could be understood in this manner— the causes and conditions that attracted him to that jagged peak, the causes and conditions that kept the mind projecting, or the causes and conditions that prevented those nuns on the hill from becoming full bhikkhunis in Myanmar.
Fortunately, the two were released in the end. But as one might expect, the inner Dhamma reflections from such a close brush with death continued on. U Obhasa began thinking deeply about the Vinaya, the monastic code laid down by the Buddha 2,500 years ago, and he realized that the brilliance of this discipline makes so much more sense when placed in context. Why, he wondered, would the Buddha have ever recommended that his monks venture out knowing that there might well be significant danger, and likely even more so back in those days than today because of the prevalence of wild animals and dacoits? Because, U Obhasa began to understand, the practice becomes more alive when facing such unpredictability. The practice literally becomes do or die in those moments. However, to survive such acute conditions, serious mental training is needed to cultivate a stable, calm and steady mind, and not caught up in narratives, whether others’ or one’s own. This is also why it was advised that monks require a full five years of monastic training before going out into the world. Once that basic training is completed, facing the challenges and difficulties that can arise during these wanderings following the discipline and with a calm and steady mind becomes more possible, and thus increases one’s saddhā, or faith, in the Dhamma. These vivid experiences with the rawness and unpredictability of life are much less likely if one stays within the safe confines of a monastery.
As another example, Zach notes that with a sedentary life spent at a monastery, the daily availability of food is taken for granted, whereas when wandering afield, a much more primal uncertainty arises in not knowing how much—or even if—food will be offered from one day to the next. A forest monk’s life requires a deep acceptance of the reality of the moment, and the anxiety that may spring from it, which to Zach connects the practitioner directly with the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. And one remarkable lesson from this adventure is the realization that even in the modern era, such an experience is still possible in this part of the world. Indeed, a Western monk can travel to Asia in the 21st century and begin a journey that parallels those stories that the Suttas recorded so long ago. In this way, the meaning and significance of the Suttas come alive to aid and support us on our journey along the path.
Zach, upon reflecting as to how this ancient admonition to leave our comfort zones may be still applicable even to modern lay practitioners, closes with a question for himself and any practitioner listening: What am I doing that is making the mind complacent and how can I shake things up?