Episode #283: Twelve Years in Burma
“I was happy in Burma, and it changed my life.”
These are some of the last words of Friedgard Lottermoser, who sadly passed away in August 2024 at the age of 82. As listeners will learn, these words are also an very much an understatement. Friedgard was a transformational figure who lived in Burma from 1959 to 1971, a period of time when very few foreigners were allowed to even visit the country.
In some ways, Friedgard’s story is not so dissimilar to the famous Austrian mountaineer, Heinrich Harrer, whose story was captured in Seven Years in Tibet. He describes how he got rare permission to live for years in that very closed country, and how he became close to the Dalai Lama and embraced Tibetan culture. Yet unlike Harrer, Friedgard’s story has never been told before now, for reasons that will be explained below.
Friedgard certainly made the very most of her “Twelve Years in Burma,” as this and subsequent episodes will show. She practiced meditation under Sayagyi U Ba Khin and Webu Sayadaw, studied Buddhist scholarship with Maha Gandyone Sayadaw, and received degrees from universities in Rangoon and Mandalay. After leaving Burma, Friedgard became involved in the meditation movement just as it was taking root in the West, and regularly corresponded with and supported such figures as Ruth Dennison, John Coleman, and Robert Hover. Later in life, she became a passionate advocate for gender equality within the Sangha, hoping that a bhikkuni order could be re-established. And she ultimately became a strong advocate for democracy and human rights in Myanmar, believing that the resistance must do whatever it takes to overthrow the military after 2021 coup.
Last year, Friedgard agreed to open up about her remarkable life to Insight Myanmar Podcast, which ultimately became nearly 40 hours of conversation. However, her openness came with one condition: that the interviews not be published during her lifetime. She insisted on this condition because she had been attending long courses in the vipassana tradition of S.N. Goenka since 1995, was deeply grateful for the opportunity, and did not want to jeopardize her ability to continue to take them. Although she viewed Goenka more as a “Dhamma brother” than a “Dhamma teacher,” she felt his centers represented the nearest available equivalent to her time with U Ba Khin. Also, as Friedgard knew that she was nearing the end of her life, she wished to spend her remaining years seeking liberation. However, she was well aware that her personal recollections about the mission and even teachings of Sayagyi U Ba Khin contrasted somewhat with the narrative promoted by the Goenka Vipassana Organization, and was concerned that candid discussions on our platform might cause her to be blacklisted. For Friedgard, this was not just an idle fear: despite her background and experience, she had already been kept at arms’ length at some Goenka centers. But because she had found a welcoming reception at centers in Sri Lanka, she did not want to do anything that could put that in jeopardy. That’s why she would agree to speak with us only if we held off publishing these recordings until she had passed away.
It is a very special privilege to now, at long last, be able to start the process of bringing her voice to the greater public. At the same time, the release of this first episode is a bittersweet moment for our podcast team. We had hoped to have Friedgard with us for many more years yet. And we were looking forward to many more hours talking with her, as even these 40 hours of conversation were not nearly enough to cover the extraordinary depth and richness of her life.
Friedgard begins this first interview by revealing that she had three names: her given name means “freedom,” which must have represented something of an aspiration at the time, for she was born into Nazi Germany, in Berlin, in 1942. In Rangoon, she was given the Burmese name, Ohnmar Khin, but when she stayed at a monastery or meditation center, she was known as Daw Ohnmar (“Khin” mainly being used for men). Finally, when she ordained as a nun (sāmaṇerī), she was given the name Akiñcanā, meaning “having nothing, not clinging to anything.” For the purposes of this writing, we will refer to her as Friedgard. Her sharp wit and sense of humor is on full display from the start of the discussion, when she quips: “When I became a Buddhist nun, which is an effort to lose yourself and reach Nibbana, instead of getting less names, I got more!”
Friedgard’s father died in 1956 from a spinal injury, and her mother was left raising Friedgard and her four sisters. She remarried the following year; her new husband was an engineer. Needing to find a stable job to support his new family, he applied at Fritz Werner, a manufacturing corporation. As part of his trial period of employment, he was tasked with looking after a Burmese delegation that would be visiting Europe. Sayagyi U Ba Khin, who was then Burma’s Accountant General, was among those making the trip, and he and Friedgard’s stepfather immediately hit it off. She recalls: “He came home to us and said, ‘This is one of the miracles of the East! A high-ranking government officer who is also a saint.’” Moreover, her stepfather had so impressed the company that he was hired on the spot, with an offer to begin his new work in Rangoon.
The family took a train to Genoa, and then sailed 14 days to Rangoon. Friedgard couldn’t wait for her first taste of Asia. “I thought, ‘Oh, this Orient is like 1001 Nights, with colorful things and nice flowers!’” The family moved into a Chinese-style palace built by the British, housed on the military compound on the shores of Inya Lake. It was idyllic, and Friedgard fell in love with her new home. “I wasn't quite sure whether I was there or not. It was like a dream!” she exclaims.
After settling in, Friedgard enrolled as a student at the University of Rangoon. Her English was just good enough to follow along. At the same time, she was trying to learn Burmese, at first mainly by practicing with the household servants, and then through formal lessons, first at the Ramakrishna Mission, and then at the Burma American Institute.
Over the ensuing months and years, Friedgard would learn much about her new homeland—far more, in fact, than anyone else in her family. “I was feeling like an onion: Taking out one layer, what is below that, and taking out another layer, then what is below that, and for several years, until I get the feeling that I know more or less what the Burmese society is like,” she says. “My family members did not have this experience because they didn't mix with the Burmese to the same extent as I did.” And the more she learned, the richer her life became. “It was such a quiet society,” she recalls. “When you see the girls walking on the road, they would be gentle, and they would be pretty. They would wear flowers in their hair.” As one of the only foreign students, Friedgard quickly developed a slew of friends, mostly female. However, she admits that initially, she had a hard time distinguishing between the new facial features she encountered, and so would associate her classmates’ names with the earrings they wore!
Her first visit to U Ba Khin’s International Meditation Center (IMC) was during the month of November, to celebrate the Tazaungdaing festival. Also known as the Festival of Lights, it marks the end of the rainy season and the offering of new robes to monks, known as Kathein ceremonies. The festival involves religious and cultural activities, such as lighting oil lamps and almsgiving. Young Friedgard had no idea what the holiday event was for, let alone what to wear. “I thought it was a party!” she remembers. “So I dressed up with my party dress and my high heeled shoes, which I had just recently got, and I couldn't walk in it properly. We went to the meditation center, which had a garden, and I had to climb the stairs and all that.”
While the center was serving up bowls of mohinga, a traditional fish noodle soup, Friedgard was introduced to two individuals who would become quite significant in her life. The first was Daw Mya Sein, an extraordinary woman who traced her lineage back to Mon royalty, and whose grandparents had spearheaded Ledi Sayadaw’s mission to spread Buddhism to the West. Vipassana meditators today may remember her as the one who famously persuaded a young Goenka not to “run away” from his first course. The other was Daw Su Su, who was charged with looking after foreign students; she became one of Friedgard's closest Burmese friends. Much more is said about their relationship in later interviews.
The initial visit to the Tazaungdaing event at IMC sparked an interest Friedgard had in exploring meditation, which predated her arrival in Burma. She describes a Rudolf Steiner book that her parents kept under lock and key, which detailed the “experience of higher worlds” (which she says meant, in that context, the realm of God and Heaven). Raised as a devout Christian, Friedgard placed great importance on religious sacraments like baptism and the holy supper, hoping that these rites would lead to a profound transformation. Her family followed Anthroposophy, a movement based on Steiner’s thinking that promoted spiritual development, individual freedom, and a belief in the interconnectedness of humanity. In addition, Anthroposophy was a pacifist creed that supported the idea of unity across races and cultures. In almost every way, the movement was at odds with the Nazis' emphasis on authoritarianism, racial superiority, nationalism and aggressive militarism. As a result, the regime suppressed its activities, banning related organizations and educational institutions. Because of this, her older sisters were not able to be baptized, though Friedgard herself did get baptized when she was 11. She recalls being disappointed that it did not seem to make her into a saint, as she had expected before the ceremony. Similarly, after receiving the Eucharist for the first time, she anticipated transforming into a morally perfect person … but the effects didn’t last.
Her past experiences with religion led her to wonder if Buddhist meditation might be able offer deeper insights and long-lasting change that her experience with traditional religion had not. “I had the feeling that I understood nothing about meditation, and [U Ba Khin] is a teacher, an expert, highly respected by my stepfather. And if I know nothing, and he knows it, then I would do what he was telling me, and I wouldn't enter into discussions with him.”
Friedgard enrolled in her first meditation course rather spontaneously. She remembers being in a car when U Ba Khin’s offer to attend a course suddenly came to mind—then and there, she asked her driver to take her to IMC. She learned that a course was planned for the next day, but the center administrator was concerned that she was just 17, and asked if a family member could attend with her. As her stepfather was busy and her sisters weren’t interested, her mother agreed to join, despite her poor English ability.
Because so few foreigners attended courses back then, the center planned to clear out its nicest building for them to stay in. But Friedgard had other ideas. Spotting a thatched hut, with leaves for a roof and bedrolls on the floor, she begged to sleep there instead, thinking it a much more authentic experience. She and her mother were also assigned meditation cells in the center’s pagoda. When U Ba Khin approached them, she found him “authoritative, but friendly.” She still remembers the very first meditation instruction she ever received from him, for anapana: “You sit there cross-legged in a comfortable position, and then you watch your breathing. Breathing, breathing; Watching watching… but nothing else! Only watch this.” Yet apparently Friedgard was practicing with too much vigor, as she was practically hyperventilating, and so Mother Sayama, U Ba Khin’s teaching assistant, approached her to indicate that she needed to breathe more softly, and more naturally. When U Ba Khin taught her vipassana meditation on the fourth day, he was impressed with her progress, although her mother needed further instruction. She remembers that they sat under the center’s Bodhi tree outside with Sayagyi, who gave them special attention.
At the end of the ten days, U Ba Khin told Friedgard that she had improved so much that she should consider staying for several more days of specialized instruction to further her progress. However, that conflicted with her stepfather’s birthday party, so Friedgard had to convince her mother to allow her to stay on. “Well, my stepfather will have another birthday next year,” she quips, recalling her rationale. “So I think I will continue with my meditation and see what the teacher thinks I can achieve in the next four days.” It was fortunate that she did, as she had a particular meditative experience, which she characterizes as being “very brief, but it made a lot of difference. You cannot describe it, because you have to have a witness; a person who can estimate what actually happens in the spiritual field.”
Friedgard shares how U Ba Khin would provide specific, tailored instructions based on the needs of the individual student. She explains that he drew his teachings mainly from the Visuddhimagga, a comprehensive manual written by Buddhaghosa in the 5th century that outlines the path to purification through ethics, meditation, and wisdom—although he did not use it as a step-by-step meditation manual.
In her particular case, U Ba Khin guided her through several “trials,” until she reached the third stage of Vipassana (which Goenka referred to bhanga, or a “free flow).” At that stage, one feels sensations arising and passing rapidly throughout the body, leading one to begin to understand the truth of impermanence. She relates that U Ba Khin insisted that meditators be shielded from outside influences during that experience because external contact can interfere with their progress by picking up impure outside forces. In fact, this notion of “purity”—in the sense of being shielded from unwholesome forces or marshaling wholesome ones—was front and center at IMC. She recalls one particular meditation session in which Mother Sayama, who was reputed to have psychic powers, remarked that Friedgard appeared even “purer” at that moment than other meditators who had far more experience than her, likely due to the progress she had just made on the previous course.
Friedgard then explains how U Ba Khin taught meditators beyond the bhanga stage, all the way to an experience of the unconditioned. She describes how meditation then becomes increasingly intense, with some describing a feeling of extreme heat like being in an oven, which then fades until the body feels very, very light. At that point, Sayagyi would intervene with special instructions, often assisted by Mother Sayama. She references the published diary of a foreign student at IMC, a Mr. Hislop, that similarly describes this experience.
This leads Friedgard to examine how Goenka’s mission ended up diverging somewhat from the IMC model. As Goenka established himself in India, he initially tried to teach students up until the unconditioned state; however, he was advised by U Ba Khin to stop, because the environment wasn't conducive. Additionally, he was told that the strength of his particular parami was in teaching many students at a beginning level, as opposed to Sayagyi, whose parami was to more selectively take fewer students to much deeper levels. After Goenka stopped teaching these practices, he would only vaguely refer to it as “taking a dip.” Friedgard adds that there are other ways to reach this state. “Definitely there are personalities like Minbu Sayadaw who achieve high states of development without any involvement of either U Ba Khin or Goenka,” she says. “I don't want to say that all the other meditation masters don't have achievement. I can only talk about this position.”
Friedgard found other areas of difference in Goenka’s style of teaching, such as the “full surrender” that he requires of students, “where you have to submit your life and so on and give it in the hands of the teacher.” She notes that she would have never agreed to take that initial IMC course had U Ba Khin asked such a thing of her! She also calls into question how Goenka has positioned himself, and his organization, in relation to IMC. In exasperation, she asks rhetorically how Goenka and his followers could assert that he was the only true heir to U Ba Khin’s teaching, adding, “For a person who has been there, and knows that U Ba Khin appointed more than one teacher to teach on his behalf, that’s just wishful thinking!” In subsequent interviews, she adds that U Ba Khin neither required nor expected his six, non-Burmese teacher- appointees to conduct courses in a lockstep way, and empowered them to adapt as needed to context, culture and environment.
Returning to her own personal journey, Friedgard relates that U Ba Khin’s real hope was that in in teaching her, he could convince her stepfather (and good friend) to enroll in a meditation course. Once it became clear this was never going to happen, Friedgard sensed a decreased interest, and at one point he even urged her to simply give up meditation altogether. U Ba Khin felt that she couldn’t hope for much progress while continuing to live with a family who didn’t share her interest, and on a military compound to boot! But Friedgard’s commitment to her practice was such that instead, she decided to simply leave home. She took a room at Thiri Hall, a women’s dormitory at the University of Rangoon.
She was still living at here in 1962, when General Ne Win overthrew the democratically elected government, an event which initiated a tragic cycle of military-controlled regimes that persist to this day. Friedgard learned about the coup through an English newspaper, The Guardian. “So now we have a military government,” she remembers thinking at the time. It affected every part of her life, even her time at IMC. She recalls how her early years there were marked by a diversity of Indian, Muslim, Hindu practitioners, but “gradually these people disappeared.”
The coup also impacted her family, whose lives were intertwined with the military. As Fritz Werner was charged with helping to make small arms (along with producing a number of civilian goods, including pharmaceuticals), soldiers and higher ranking officers — including Ne Win and Aung Gyi—were frequent visitors to their home. Friedgard remembers them as polite gentlemen who consistently declined her stepfather’s offer of a cold beer. “I have told this to young people nowadays in Burma, and they don't believe me.” she says. “But it's true.” Of course, few people in 1962 had much inkling of the oppressive, tyrannical force that Ne Win’s army would become. Echoing the words of many at the time, Friedgard describes how some people didn’t think the coup was particularly worrisome when it happened. There was a feeling that “the civilian government is so corrupt, and if they can't solve the problems of the country, because there so many insurgents, then let's try [Ne Win],” she says. “The soldiers were honest and well meaning and not so corrupt as they became later. The corruption came in when they introduced the ‘Burmese Way to Socialism,’ because that made everybody poor! … But in 1962, it was different. It only came out very gradually.”
Miraculously, the coup (and even the subsequent forced closures of the university) did not prevent Friedgard from remaining in the country. Earlier, she had been granted a scholarship from the U Nu government to study Pali at Rangoon University. This scholarship provided her with unique protection, as students without such backing, including even those born in Burma but with foreign passports, were required to leave immediately. However, Friedgard’s stepfather was not so fortunate, as many foreign-owned businesses, schools, and other institutions were forcibly shut down or nationalized (including, famously, Goenka’s profitable sugar cane industry). Her stepfather was forced to negotiate new terms for Fritz Werner to be able to stay in Rangoon, but even with the new terms, it eventually became untenable, and he left within a year. The story of how Friedgard managed to stay on nine additional years in military-controlled Burma is a remarkable tale of twists and turns that she elaborates on in later interviews.
“I got to know meditation after a few months in Burma,” Friedgard says in closing. “And it was simply through the fact that my stepfather met U Ba Khin in Germany, which led to our stay Rangoon. We were supposed to be there six months, and it became three and a half years. But I stayed more than 10 years. It changed my life, really.”