Episode #361: No Self, No Junta
RELEASE DATE: JULY 6, 2025
“I am Burmese. I feel like it is my duty and responsibility to speak about it.”
These words from Myet anchor her wide-ranging reflections on history, trauma, resistance, and care. Across the conversation, she moves between the personal and political, the philosophical and the practical, drawing connections between her upbringing under dictatorship and the spiritual practices that ground her today. With emotional insight, she challenges simplistic narratives, naming the pain that many in Myanmar carry, the limitations of Western understandings, and the deep structural changes that are still required for a more just future.
Myet describes growing up in Myanmar under military rule, where fear and silence were pervasive and political engagement was often seen as dangerous. Her parents, once active in the 1988 uprising, were traumatized by what they witnessed and became depoliticized. Myet’s own political awakening began through literature, particularly George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which offered a coded critique of authoritarianism. This was one of the first texts that helped her realize the scale of Myanmar’s dysfunction. From there, she became increasingly aware of the subtle control and surveillance embedded in the school system—how rote learning and nationalist propaganda discouraged independent thinking and kept people compliant.
After eventually leaving Myanmar and moving to the West, Myet experienced a significant shift in how she understood both herself and the world. She was shocked by how little most outsiders knew about her country. Even among progressive academic and activist circles, she found that people often couldn’t name basic facts about Myanmar’s history—including the 1988 uprising, the Rohingya genocide, or the role of the 2008 Constitution in entrenching military power. “We do not exist in the imagination of the world as a place of suffering,” she says, lamenting how some crises receive attention due to geopolitical importance while others, like Myanmar, are ignored.
She also came to realize how dominant Bamar narratives had shaped her worldview. Being part of the majority Bamar ethnic group gave her a kind of structural privilege that she hadn’t fully reckoned with while living in Myanmar. Now, with greater distance and perspective, she understands how deeply embedded Burmanization has marginalized non-Bamar communities. “Bamar privilege comes with a huge responsibility… and we are not taught to acknowledge it,” she says. She insists that confronting this truth is essential for real solidarity and justice.
Looking at the 2010–2020 democratic transition, she notes that rather than a real move toward democracy, the period was a carefully managed illusion orchestrated to satisfy foreign governments and investors. The military never gave up real control—it retained power over key ministries, embedded protections for itself in the constitution, and ensured that any civilian administration was hemmed in from all sides. She emphasizes that many ethnic communities were excluded from this so-called transition from the start, and that international excitement about “democracy” failed to account for the realities on the ground.
She contrasts this period with the nature of the post-2021 resistance, which she sees as fundamentally different from earlier generations. The movement today is younger, more decentralized, and increasingly led by those previously pushed to the margins—women, queer people, and ethnic minorities. These are individuals who were never fully included in the older political movements, and who are now forming new models of leadership and resistance. For Myet, this is a source of real hope.
Throughout the conversation, she stresses that care is not just an emotion but a political practice. “For me, the opposite of violence is not just peace. It’s care,” she says. This includes caring for each other in communities, caring for those suffering, and caring enough to listen deeply and act with integrity. For her, care shows up in how we hold space for pain, how we stay with discomfort, and how we prioritize healing as much as justice.
She also speaks candidly about the emotional toll that exile and diaspora life has taken. While she’s grateful to be safe, she often struggles with survivor guilt. “Sometimes I feel guilty, just to be secure,” she says. She reflects on the emotional rollercoaster of consuming news about Myanmar from afar—feeling momentary joy followed by despair, helplessness, and anger. She tries not to suppress these emotions, instead choosing to acknowledge them honestly as part of her practice. She sees this emotional work as intertwined with political engagement, not separate from it.
Myet is particularly critical of Western liberal frameworks that reduce Myanmar’s crisis to simplistic binaries of good vs. evil. She calls for more listening and humility from the international community—not grand solutions or declarations, but a willingness to sit with ambiguity, to take direction from those most affected, and to avoid centering the narrative on outsiders. Solidarity, she insists, must be relational, uncomfortable, and rooted in shared risk.
Spiritual practice is a foundational element of her worldview. Although she was raised in a Buddhist household, Myat’s connection to religion was not through ritual but through intensive meditation. She meditates daily, finding that breathwork and mindfulness help her manage anxiety and cultivate clarity. Her understanding of Buddhism has evolved over time, especially after being exposed to both traditional Burmese teachings and modern Western interpretations.
Among the Burmese teachers, she finds U Jotika especially compelling. She praises his ability to translate Buddhist ideas into accessible, psychologically relevant language, especially when it comes to emotions like anger. Unlike stricter monks, U Jotika embraces the messiness of being human and teaches from a place of compassion and inner understanding. Myet recounts his reflections on how even worry or stress can be forms of anger, and how recognizing this allows for greater peace and presence.
She also draws inspiration from spiritual thinkers like Eckhart Tolle. While his framework is not explicitly Buddhist, she sees strong overlaps in his focus on presence, impermanence, and the illusion of ego. Rather than see these as competing traditions, Myet integrates both, seeing them as complementary paths toward awareness and liberation. Her practice has also helped her navigate emotions like guilt and powerlessness, and she emphasizes that the goal of meditation is not perfection but presence—not achieving, but being.
As the conversation ends, she addresses the international community directly. She urges world leaders to understand that the stakes in Myanmar are not isolated. The junta’s alliances with global authoritarian powers like Russia make this more than a regional issue. “The world needs to care before it’s too late,” she says. Supporting Myanmar isn’t just about helping one country—it’s about defending democracy and shared humanity everywhere.
For Myet, real change will not come quickly or cleanly. It will be long, relational, intergenerational. And it must be rooted in honesty, humility, emotional resilience, and care.