Episode #121: A Vipassanā Journey (Bonus Shorts)
While many couples choose to spend their honeymoon at an exotic beach getaway or at some luxurious resort, Steve Jarand and Kati Schweitzer elected to spend part of theirs fulfilling an aspiration they both shared: meditating in Myanmar.
As both were meditators in the vipassana tradition of S.N. Goenka—a Burmese citizen of Indian heritage who trained in a Burmese lineage—the 2016 trip was something of a spiritual homecoming for them. Recalling their experiences during this visit, positive adjectives began flowing from their mouths: wonderful, lovely, gentle, friendly, happy, open, cute, generous.
The trip also impacted, and at times challenged, their spiritual path. For example, Steve was initially uncertain how to take in Buddhist sites, such as pagodas and statues, recalling how it was “a little bit of a shock to see how external it was, compared to how internal we're trained to always look towards [in the Goenka tradition].” But eventually, as the weeks turned into months, he began to appreciate Burmese Buddhist culture on its own terms, and realized that “it's much more rich and complex than just what I had known about the practice! You can go back and forth from one to the other, and they can enrich each other, this outside and inside.”
From the start, Kati appreciated how interwoven the practice was in daily life throughout Myanmar. Where finding a place to sit daily meditation was challenging when traveling in other countries, in Myanmar she was delighted to be able to sit almost anywhere, anytime. And with a basic understanding of Pāḷi, from which some Burmese words are derived, they found an ability to communicate at a basic level about practice. “They're even playing [Buddhist] chantings on the bus, rather than music!” Steve recalls.
There was also much joy to remember from the trip, particularly the way they always found their Burmese friends quick to smile. And when their laughter was combined with generosity, Kati and Steve were particularly moved, the memories were especially precious. Kati remembers one incident where she was staying at an old monastery in the countryside and had to shower Burmese-style, which meant in public, and without undressing. But as she didn’t have a change of clothes, she was unsure what to do. “Suddenly came a girl with cloth to make longyis from and said I could pick one!” While a group went off to prepare the new clothing, other women came around to help wash Kati’s hair, with everyone giggling throughout. “It was just very lovely,” Kati says. “They integrated me in their daily, intimidate routine. It felt like I'm a little bit part of it. And it still makes me smile when I think of it.”
Beyond this simple joy in daily life, they also found much meaning while staying longer in monastic environments. “There was this feeling of why we were there in Myanmar,” Steve notes, “it being in the soil and in the roots, of looking at simplifying your life and mind, rather than always chasing more and more. So to be in the presence of those people on several occasions, it was really grounding each time.”
Both were also deeply affected by the constant generosity. Yet it was not just the mere act of giving that impressed them, but the feeling of humility and selflessness behind it, something they found missing from their home countries of Canada and Germany. With the memory of this kindness in mind, they speak to the wider practitioner community about how important it is to support the people of Myanmar during these very dark days, since the military coup, and find a way to reciprocate.
Steve and Kati found that the lessons from Myanmar stayed with them long after the trip. Seeing the ease with which the Dhamma is integrated into daily life, Steve notes how he was able to “release some of the self-imposed rigidity” in future vipassana courses. In some ways Kati had the opposite lesson, as she was stunned to see how naturally Burmese students adapted to the strict discipline on meditation courses. “It was crazy!” she recalls. “I always felt like a slacker because like ten minutes before the gong, they were in front of the Dhamma Hall! And I'm the last one coming in, just like a minute before the group sitting. So on courses later on, when I sat in Europe, I was like, ‘I should be a little more Myanmar about this!’”