Is Black Lives Matter Relevant in Burma?

Is the Black Lives Matter movement relevant in Burma? Very much so, as I learned to my dismay last year.

Yonie Le Xavier, an African-American vipassana meditator in the tradition of S.N. Goenka, fulfilled a lifelong dream by coming to the homeland of Goenka and his lineage. I furnish four rooms at a local monastery for the use of foreign pilgrims and meditators who pass through Yangon, and Yonie connected with me when he requested to stay at one.

Several days into his stay here, Yonie was seated in the monastery’s dining hall waiting to begin lunch, when a Burmese monk aggressively motioned for him to leave. Confused, Yonie stayed in place, until the monk further made his point by physically kicking him. At this, Yonie departed the hall, angry, hurt, and baffled by what has just taken place. A dedicated yogi who was considering cutting his dreadlocks and undertaking monastic ordination during this visit, this disturbing incident caused him to reconsider and ultimately cancel those plans.

Why did the monk angrily demand that Yonie leave the dining hall? Why did none of the other monks or novices, some of whom had become close with Yonie during his stay, do nothing? How could a lifelong monastic commit such an act?  And even after the fact, why did no Burmese associated with the monastery show outrage or shame upon hearing about this situation?

These are just some of the issues Yonie and I get into in our discussion. I was out of the country when the incident happened, and the moment I heard what transpired, something in my stomach dropped and the usual steady glow of Burma Dhamma began to flicker. Not that I was ever under the delusion that this was a perfect Golden Land—meditation reveals the manifestation of defilements in all of us worldings regardless of our cultural background—but I always harbored a kind of faith that a good-hearted meditator could land himself in this land of Dhamma and be embraced with humility and generosity. Indeed, I’ve rarely encountered anything other than such open-hearted support at Burmese monasteries, and that is something that Yonie had also experienced there, at least until that incident.

To back up for a moment and share some personal background… since the start of my endeavor to share stories of Buddhist meditation and culture, my guiding principle has fallen into a general category that I’ve tended to call “Burma Dhamma.” Indeed, this was the name of my first blog and Facebook page. From documentaries to books, pilgrimages to presentations, and now this very podcast, my work has always been located somewhere within this broad topic.  In keeping with that theme, those of you familiar with our podcast series know that my podcast team usually confines our guest list to practitioners who have a deep connection to Myanmar. However, we feel strongly that the current protest movement addressing systemic racism, police brutality, etc., demands our attention, and so we are creating a new series called “Race and Dhamma.” With the impetus of recent events and the growing appreciation of the Black Lives Matter movement, many people, as well as social and cultural institutions, are starting to seriously examine themselves for implicit bias and whether they may be unintentionally contributing to the perpetuation of social inequities. We hope that the current podcast series can be a platform for continuing to explore this perspective in the context of American Mindfulness and vipassana communities 

Interestingly, in the case of this upcoming podcast discussion with Yonie, the lines of “Burma Dhamma” and “Race and Dhamma” intersect, and so we are able to cover these overlapping narratives in this one single story.

Yonie’s dedication to the path of Dhamma is no less heart-felt or disciplined as mine or any other foreign meditators and monastics I know. And although we’ll probably never be able to answer all the above questions about the circumstances surrounding the assault, I am pretty sure about one thing, anyway: If Yonie were white, it’s very unlikely this would have happened.  Sadly, his abuse at the hands of that Burmese monk was almost certainly related to the color of his skin.

Prejudice towards those with darker skin is not just limited to the United States, and so speaking plainly about the existence of racism and highlighting the importance of Black Lives Matter everywhere, including Burma, is needed today. This is not an easy thing to do in Burmese culture however, where confrontation and direct conversation about delicate and uncomfortable topics is not the norm! But we are living in a moment that demands that we try to have those challenging conversations, outside of our comfort zone, and that is why Yonie and I talk about what happened to him in that Yangon monastery last year.

So please do not take “Black Lives Matter” as something that only needs to be asserted aloud in the United States, as if elsewhere this kind of prejudice and racism do not exist. Sadly, even in the Golden Land in this instance, a dark-skinned meditator was treated as less than his white-skinned counterparts. 

My full conversation with Yonie will be released later this week on the Insight Myanmar Podcast, and I want to especially encourage Burmese yogis to listen in and hear Yonie’s experience. While this may not be a usual or comfortable topic in Burmese discourse, we cannot hope to create positive change in our world—or our community— without hearing first-hand accounts of injustice, so we ourselves can feel the pain wrought by racism and prejudice, wherever and however they occur. I also hope to hear from some Burmese listeners, and would be very interested to hear their views on this situation once the podcast discussion is released.