Becoming a Piece of Art through Meditation

“If you are living in the present without reacting, without anger, and without anything negative, sharing with loving-kindness and compassion, then you become a very beautiful piece of art yourself.”

Htein Lin’s artistic, political, and spiritual journey has taken on many different appearances over the course of his life. Swept up in the 1988 democracy movement, he spent years hiding in the jungle before eventually establishing himself as one of the premier artists in the country. But then in 1998, he was wrongfully imprisoned by the military regime, and spent years behind bars and facing abominable conditions. After being released, he found solace through the practice of vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka, which impacted his artistic vision along with providing him with some sense of inner peace.

The above quote, therefore, represents a kind of nexus of the various threads of Htein Lin’s life: he realizes how one can transform oneself into a beautiful piece of art through the gradual letting-go of greed, hatred and delusion. Throughout the course of our discussion, Htein Lin continued to come back to this point as a powerful reminder for the current generation now resisting the military coup, which points towards how one may continue to stand for democracy and human rights, while also seeking inner peace through meditation.

These are certainly inspiring words for one of any background to consider, but they are all the more profound given the current status of Htein Lin today. Shortly after the interview, the military regime arrested him and his wife, Vicky Bowman, the former British Ambassador to Myanmar. Htein Lin is once again thrust into a life behind bars, with little known of his safety. We hope that this store of past wisdom and resilience may come to his aid yet again, and that he will soon live once more in freedom and well-being, along with all other political prisoners who have been wrongfully incarcerated.