Episode #139: The Overturned Alms Bowl
Bhikkhuni Vimala was in a long meditation retreat when the military illegally seized power in February 2021, so didn’t learn about what happened until three months later. Feeling helpless and frustrated, the Buddhist nun found inspiration from the famous picture of young Buddhist monks at Mandalay’s Mya Taung Monastery, who appeared with their mouths covered by tape to express the sudden loss of their right to free speech. [The Venerable Bhikkhuni Vimala identifies as gender nonconforming, and will be referred to by the pronouns they, them, and their.]
Looking for a way to express their solidarity, Bhikkhuni Vimala landed on the idea of encouraging their monastic friends abroad to take a picture with their alms bowl overturned. “If you overturn the alms bowl, you refuse food from a specific group of lay supporters. And that can only be done if they are not behaving correctly.” In traditional Buddhist countries, it symbolizes a monk or nun’s disagreement with the donors' actions and can be performed when they have egregiously broken their precepts.
Although those foreign monastics weren’t physically in Myanmar to accept (or reject) alms from the Burmese military, the photos served as a symbol of their condemnation. This was especially important to Bhikkhuni Vimala, who noted that Burmese monastics could face arrest and torture for making such a statement. “There's other monastics in the whole world that are behind you!” Bhikkhuni Vimala explains as the campaign’s messaging to those in Myanmar, “even though you might not have much contact with them.”
Although the campaign had humble ambitions, it received an immediate, if unexpected boost, from the likes of noted monks such as Bhikkhu Bodhi, who sent in an image of himself with an overturned alms bowl, and Bhikkhu Analayo, who submitted a picture with the three fingers raised. Then it began to expand beyond the Theravada tradition, as monastics from Zen and Tibetan lineages also showed their support. Ultimately, their work gained so much momentum that it was covered by Democratic Voice of Burma, and they created a Facebook page called Saṅgha 4 Myanmar to begin capturing the various images that monastics from around the world were sending in.
This was all extremely gratifying for Bhikkhuni Vimala, who began learning meditation in the vipassana tradition of SN Goenka, an Indian teacher who trained in a Burmese lineage. Wishing to go further into the practice, they traveled to Burma, ordaining as a thilashin under The Phyu Taw Ya Sayadaw, a Buddhist monk who had stepped down as an Assistant Teacher in the Goenka system to start his own monastery. “Just being there and sitting there and feeling this compassion, that was something very new to me… it was very different from all the Goenka courses I've done before,” they recall.
But that year, 2008—just after the Saffron Revolution, and with Cyclone Nargis around the corner— was an unusual time not only in Burmese society, but also in monasteries. Bhikkhu Vimala uses an assortment of adjectives to describe it: “Strange, alive, tense, fearful.” Offering up one example, they recall a monk offering some rather odd advice: “If you want to go into samādhi, into deeper concentration and deeper meditation, you should not talk about the government, and you should not talk about the generals.”
Bhikkhuni Vimala also struggled to reconcile the vast spiritual wisdom of their teachers and the bottomless generosity of their donors on the one hand, with the abject brutality of the generals on the other. “How could a military regime take hold of such a country?” they ask rhetorically. “Because people don't protest too much, actually. They are very, very, very, very kind and loving. They don't want to do something that might hurt another person. And it might sound a bit strange, but I think the Buddha never taught pacifism.”
Ultimately, Bhikkhuni Vimala was unable to get their visa extended, and so returned for a visit to Europe. But just five days before they were ready to board a flight heading back to the Golden Land, they were diagnosed with cancer, and after recovering, ended up ordaining again in Germany as a bhikkhuni, an option that wasn’t available in Myanmar.
Looking back on their Myanmar experience, Bhikkhuni Vimala is able to reflect on their initial impressions. What stands out now is the unequal treatment of nuns. In fact, since becoming an ordained bhikkhuni, they were effectively blacklisted from setting foot in the country again. Nuns are frequently less supported than monks, which brings up a rather unusual memory for Bhikkhuni Vimala. They recall how the wife of a senior military figure had been denied in her attempt to make offerings to monks, and so the military man pleaded to “at least get [his wife] some merit by giving to the Western nuns. And we did accept it actually, because it was very clear that he was suffering and that he so wanted to make some good merit. And so, this whole thing isn't so black and white.” Expanding on how nuanced Bhikkhuni Vimala found some situations while in Myanmar, they share another example. A senior official in the prison system became a student of The Phyu Taw Ya Sayadaw, and as a result, the abbot accepted an offer of virtually unlimited free labor for the monastery grounds in the form of a chain gang of 50 convicts.
And they also realize how careful one must be to navigate the political minefield that is Myanmar regarding one’s speech and actions, something that many Westerners, including monastics, take for granted. Bhikkhuni Vimala says, for example, “Even just a simple action like turning over the alms bowl… could get you in prisons or even killed! So I suspect that is one of the reasons why there's a lot of silence now. Maybe monastics are saying like, ‘Oh, the only thing we can do is turn to the Dhamma, turn inside ourselves, and just work on this meditation, our practice, and try influencing in that way, in some way.’ Of course, there's also others that are very nationalistic, and that are more on the forefront and might come more in the news, but I certainly refuse to believe that it's the majority of the [Burmese] Sangha.”
On the subject of Engaged Buddhism, Bhikkhuni Vimala feels first and foremost, that it is essential for the practitioner to continue gaining inner wisdom through insight practice. “You have to find the truth within yourself,” they say. “But while doing so, you notice greater compassion for other people. This is what's often called ‘compassion in action.’ You also feel this need to help other people out of suffering.” With that as a baseline, Bhikkhuni Vimala continues regarding the situation in Myanmar specifically, “I think it's really important to help our fellow people in Myanmar. Because how can [people] sit quietly on a cushion and meditate, and pretend that all these things are not going on? That doesn't work! You have to have some environment where it's safe, where you can practice. And so that's where ‘compassion in action’ comes in. I think it is very important to help people to come to a place where they can practice the Buddhist teachings, and make sure that as Buddha's teachings also live on.”