To Burma With Love
I was familiar with Inga’s fundraising drive the weeks before her interview, as I had assisted her in acquiring the proper information from Myo Myo and then getting out the word on this platform so that more yogis could donate. It was a great story, and I was hoping she would agree to talk about it for the podcast! She did, and it made me happy more people could learn about not only her effort, but also her experience in the Golden Land and how the Dhamma lessons hung with her, even long after she returned. Her observations on monastic life were quite heart-warming.
“People who live in monasteries, that’s their job to meditate, to send loving kindness to the world, to bless other people. So there is a symbiosis of some sort of in society, and it works!”
“Three or four years ago I went to Burma. That was part of my path in vipassana. I wanted to see the land which kept the tradition going for so many years. I wanted to experience the meditation centers there, I wanted to find other monasteries and just to see how people are living there, how monks are living there.
So I went there with two of my other friends and we met Myo Myo. That's the name of this man in Yangon, where he was our guide for a couple of days. And he seemed like a very kind and intelligent person. As I learned later, he was an orphan, I believe since the age of nine. And since then, he lived in different monasteries.
One of the interesting thing about the monasteries in Burma is that they are basically like a summer camp for kids. It's an interesting social structure-- kids are just there, like monasteries are not something closed from society. The monastery is a part of society. Kids and lay people are coming there and meditators also, and things are just happening in monasteries there. So this part of society which is somewhat responsible for your spiritual being, and the laypeople, they support monasteries because there is a structure that the people who work, they work and make money. People who live in monasteries, that's their job to meditate, to send loving kindness to the world, to bless other people. So there is a symbiosis of some sort of in society, and it works!
It seems like all monasteries were doing pretty well when I was there. And I had the immense pleasure of visiting this country and visiting a few places in fact, to this day especially one place near Mandalay, it's still in my heart. When I practice loving kindness, I almost always remember that place.
So back to Myo Myo, we had a great time he helped us, and now recently he was texting me through Facebook and trying to tell that due to Coronavirus, monks have a lack of food. Myanmar is still one of the places where monks go out every single day with their bowls to collect food for their day. They don't have a bank account. They don't store too much of things. They live day-by-day and they completely depend on the surrounding. So right now due to Coronavirus, everything is shut down, they cannot go out, they cannot beg for food, lay people cannot come in and bring their food. And suddenly we're in this weird situation where their life is basically stopped. And they're not prepared for that.
Myo Myo actually never asked for me anything before. His call to me was somewhat of an equivalent to a monk coming to my door with his bowl. And I thought actually in some way even honored because of that and of course, I thought 'what can I do?' Right now, since I'm a manager at the vipassana center, my stipend is not that large. Of course, I can donate some amount, but I thought, you know, is that going to be enough? So I decided, you know, why not to give that merit to more people, since actually in the tradition it's not even so much for the monks that they receive food, of course, they do receive food and they are grateful. But it's also for people who give them food. They receive a merit for that.
So I thought maybe my friends also want to get merits, why to deprive them from that? And so I made this little GoFundMe campaign where everybody can donate as much as we can, actually, which was pretty successful. I was surprised how many people were so kind. And of course, I have a lot of meditators who, in my friend list, which were pretty active in this campaign, but even not meditators! I was happy to see that people have such an open mind, especially since probably many Westerners don't exactly understand that concept of day-to-day living.
Even myself, I didn't understand that well, because when I wanted to transfer money, I asked the monastery has a bank account, and Myo Myo started laughing. He said, 'No, of course we don't how would we? I don't have account also, like I've never done that before it's just right now this type of situation happened.'
So it is a concept which is somewhat foreign for us Westerners. And maybe a lot of people would think, well, 'what kind of cause is that?' But I'm happy that a lot of people actually did understand… And I hope somehow it will become better for the monasteries in Myanmar.
And it seems like a great opportunity for all of us who perhaps are not exposed to this kind of merit giving to the monks. To be able to participate and donate even from far away. That's probably a good part for our global living these days and having information and accessibility to things through internet. And again, I feel fortunate that this possibility came my way and made it beneficial to givers and receivers. May all be happy!”