Facing Instability with Engagement and Wisdom
It was my great pleasure to speak with Senior Vipassana Teacher Daniel Mayer of of the S.N. Goenka tradition about the current crisis in Myanmar. As someone who hails from a lineage connected to the Golden Land, who himself escaped a dictatorship in the case of Argentina, and who has advised students across Africa who have encountered various forms of instability in their own country, he certainly can speak from a place of experience.
In the following excerpt, I ask him how meditators concerned with social justice, and who have personal connections to Myanmar, should consider how they can engage with the unfolding situation. This is a very challenging topic to discuss, and I’m grateful that Daniel made time to consider these important questions seriously. I was also inspired to learn how Dhamma Giri responded to the problem occurring in their own community last year, and hope that other centers in this tradition can consider similar action at this time in how they may support the nonviolent movement in Myanmar.
I’m also interested to hear from others: how would you respond to this question from the place of your own practice?
“It is something that we unfortunately have to live with, and see how we can fit with what we understand, with what we know. And with what we can give.”
Question: “You have a wide population of Buddhist and meditative practitioners in Myanmar, of course, you also have people from different ethnic backgrounds, different religions. So there's great diversity. But in the protest movement, there also are many people taking taking part in the movement who are coming from this Dhamma background. There's monastics that are also involved. There's Dhamma teachers that are also involved. If you were in a country where you saw these great wrongs taking place that were affecting the lives and the freedoms and the rights of millions of people… and yet, you also were a very serious practitioner who understood these teachings of the Buddha to the best of your ability and applied them… then how to actively be involved in the world, with social justice, especially at a time when this window of freedom is closing, and affecting so many of one’s people, while at the same time holding these meditative principles in your mind as you go forth? How does a protester from this background find this intersection?”
Daniel Mayer: “I think the question is very well presented. And there is no right answer because every situation is different.
Let me just tell you yesterday, I was with a very interesting man. He was in a very high position in the Catholic Church. And he was telling me of how this new pope from Argentina did not defend his own people from the military dictatorship. On the other hand, I have just read a fantastic book from Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi how he expressed when the Pope went to Sri Lanka, and devalued Buddhism as something that has nothing to do with what it really is, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi replies to what this Pope Ratzinger has said.
To go back to your point, I think it is something that changes from moment to moment and from person to person. In some cases, you can put your body when there's shooting, you can put your body beside your son, they should shoot you first, and you can save your son if he's in the back.
And then other times, you can just run behind a tree and try to protect yourself. So there is really no one answer, there is a middle path. And there is a situation which when it happens, you act upon it, and when it's over, which it will be over, and all of a sudden, that's where you stand... either under this loka or in that loka.
And it is something that we unfortunately have to live with, and not make the best of it, but see how we can fit with what we understand, with what we know. And with what we can give.
Like I was in India until a few months ago, and there were poor people who didn't have anything because of this COVID thing, and they would go to the railway station in Igatpuri. And people would walk to the railway station to give them money, to give them food, and even at Dhamma Giri, they would make food packages and give it to those people who had nothing to eat or were mentally retarded or things like that.
So there is something that you can be part of. And there is something that just, all you can do is say, ‘May all beings be happy, may they all be liberated.’”