Nationalizing Buddhism in Myanmar

"The influence of Buddhists in the society does not bother me, but some people want to go a step further. They want to bring Buddhism into the legal circle or they want to codify the influence of Buddhism into the society. I think that's where it becomes problematic."

So said politician Maw Htun Aung (Matthew Laphai) during the course of my interview with him last month.

I was curious to get Maw Htun Aung’s views on how he saw Myanmar's diverse population able to potentially come together and live harmoniously as a pluralistic society, since he was a progressive candidate educated in the US and keen on government reform. Being a Kachin Christian, his take on how it felt to live in a majority Buddhist country was of particular interest to me. This was his answer.

Maw Htun Aung's response articulates the need for a separation between Church and State (or as is the case here, Monastery and State), a position that may challenge some progressive Western meditators, for it was directly *because* of the conflation of religion and politics in the postwar era that many of the teachings that Western vipassana yogis follow were able to spread as they did in the first place.

U Nu, a Burmese statesman and politician, was central to this development in the 1950s, shortly after Burma gained its independence from Britain: from hoping that one member of every family in the nation would be a vipassana meditator, to having the state sponsor the Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha (and ensuing Mahasi mission, both at home and abroad to Thailand and Sri Lanka), to launching the 6th Buddhist Synod, to forming a committee to identify over 70 monks capable of teaching the Dhamma to the masses…the steps that U Nu’s government put into place allowed these teachings to gain traction. And, there was Sayagyi U Ba Khin as well, then a government minister himself, who created a Buddhist shrine in his very government office, where he also conducted meditation courses, and sponsored Dhamma talks.

So the same "codifying" of Buddhism into society that rightly makes the Christian Maw Htun Aung uncomfortable today, more than half a century ago contributed to the spread of Dhamma that continues to nurture so many western yogis.

So where to do we go from here? The answer probably depends on who you are and where you are sitting.