Transcript: Episode 13: Dhamma Diary, Empathy for the Executioners
Following is the full transcript for the discussion about being kidnapped in Shan State, which appeared on June 16, 2020. This transcript was made possible by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has not been checked by any human reader. Because of this, many of the words may not be accurate in this text. This is particularly true of speakers who have a stronger accent, as AI will make more mistakes interpreting and transcribing their words. For that reason, this transcript should not be cited in any article or document without checking the timestamp to confirm the exact words that the guest has really said.
Host 00:00
Hi there, and thanks for listening. If you're enjoying our podcast guests and have a recommendation of someone you think we should have on here, by all means, let us know. Whether it's a teacher, meditator, author or scholar, we welcome any suggestion of a potential guest whose voice and journey can be shared to the world. To offer up a name go to our website Insight myanmar.org that's Insight Myanmar one word i en si gh t m YA n ma r dot o RG and let us know who it is. But for now, sit back and enjoy the podcast that follows.
00:58
Ba ba ba KC. Ay, ay. ay. ay. ay.
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ay. ay. ay.
01:14
Ay Ay Lisa.
Zach 01:32
When I think about stories I could share from Myanmar or my experience. There's one that just immediately rises to mind. And, Joe, I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about.
Host 01:43
Yeah, I think so.
Zach 01:45
So yeah, essentially, it's what I have to say before I tell it that when it happened, I actually had hesitated to tell anyone because it's the type of story that could be taken wrong. It could be I didn't want to reflect badly on on on the other people involved and it could easily and I didn't want it to be sensationalized and negative and right and it's it's the type of story that it would be easy to make myself totally a victim and not have any compassion for for the other side of the story so, but let me just get right into it like essentially essentially, essentially I was surrounded by 40 men with weapons that were there to kill me it was basically a tribe in Myanmar. And, you know, it's interesting because we, we hear about tribes, you know, and then a lot of it's from like movies and television and novels and stuff like that and and, you know, some tribes you visit when you travel or, you know, that I visited are they kind of like that they they're kind of what we expect, you know, like, I mean, it's what's the word, you know? Kind of unreasonable expectations that their dress would be exotic and their ways would be very primitive or some and sometimes we get to villages and tribes and we look around and I've been disappointed before because they weren't like that, you know, I wanted like I wanted as a traveler an exotic experience and sometimes they're, you know, just looks like a normal village, but they do have a tribal identity. And this area I was in was like that. It seemed until until that happened, you know, like, and then then you hear you see smoke signals and hear drums and I'll never hear drums the same again. Those kinds of tribal drums because they were actually unbeknownst to my my companion and my partner at the time that I was wandering around with, I should say, like, I was a monk at the time. So there were two of us as monks. Right You were forced monk right forest monk, right. We were on what in Thai they called to Dong But they don't really have a word for that that I know of in Burmese, but basically wandering around and staying sometimes in monasteries, but but often in like, just in the forest or in caves or we were in a tribal area. And basically what we were doing was I had been to that area years before and I had seen this valley that had a big stream going through it, you know, and it's kind of a rarity, you know, so as a forest mark, I'm always I was always looking for places that had I mean, a cave is nice or some other but but the important thing is it has water because you need to you need to bathe and you need to clean, don't really need to cook but you know, in certain times you might need to boil water or something but, but basically having water in your body isn't essential. So one way or another, either there's either you can get it from the village or even bettors if it's so anyways, I always wanted as a monk to explore that area and see if there are any caves also and I'd come across someone who told me that there is there are caves somewhere along that you know if you go through that it's a really dramatic entrance to the valley it's like the kind of steep cliffs and it just cuts you know, that valley and it probably flows you know, I don't know where it goes on the other side, but I was interested in find that out too. But anyways, this was almost like a gorge, you know, so I knew there are villages nearby. So Oh, what a great place to to perhaps find a nice spot for a monk. So my, my forest monk companion and I went exploring this area. unbeknownst to us, it's it's a tribal area that's that's highly protected. You know, that tribe has an army and that's what we encountered. So essentially, these people They're Buddhists but they didn't believe we were monks. They thought we were spies. Hmm. And this and this all unfolded slowly over time. We didn't we didn't really know what was going on or what you know, like the first time we saw them, they were up on the cliffs above us throwing big rocks in the water. And they, they had certain colors on that were similar to what schoolchildren in Myanmar were. And so we thought they were just naughty teenagers just kind of causing a ruckus Yeah, I you know, and then we decided to head back we didn't we didn't want to go further down the valley. We were we had gone away into the, into this gorge and, and then encountered that and then we decided to head back on our own. But this this group, actually caught up to us. I mean, amazingly, how fast they they covered that terrain. First of all, that was awesome. Ready to sell they were. They were well versed and getting around their own territory, kind of wild terrain. But it was a group of men. And as it turned out, it was a group of tribal men actually sent out to intercept us. And so we were talking with them. Yeah, they were, I couldn't quite pick up what their tone was, you know, there were a couple guys that were kind of a little rough. None of them spoke English. Obviously. There were only there's only one kid who a teenager or young man who spoke Mila Burmese. And so
Host 07:42
in your companion was a Burmese monk who spoke That's right. Obviously fluent Burmese and some English was that right?
Zach 07:49
Yes, exactly. That's right. Just a little bit. Not much. We didn't we didn't really talk in English. I knew just enough for me. And he knew just enough English that when I couldn't fill something out with my Burmese he Could you could zero in on a few words,
Host 08:02
how far back Did you guys go? Like how? How, like, how long you've been planning the trip or what what were the dynamics. So you know, when you talk about like, a traveling companion and wild lands, the first thing I think you think of is like, Okay, well give me the character of these two guys and the relationship and where where they came from how they planned it to, you know, what's the context of of you to kind of solo travelers in a foreign wild land?
Zach 08:26
Right. Yeah, I'll get to that. I there's a couple other aspects I want to cover first. So this young man we were talking to, he was he did all the translating for us. And, you know, it seemed to go reasonably well, but it was kind of clear they didn't want us there and that they were there to kind of check us out you know, so you know, it seemed it seemed all right but you know, as we were walking away from that they were kind of actually one on was like shouting ash to go go, you know, and then and then yeah, it didn't. I had a feeling that that particular value was not we were not welcome there. That was clear. So we walked out and you know, I thought everything was fine yeah, so you were asking me about my travel companion. That's it. That's it. Like I said, interesting story in and of itself. We, uh, I'd set off actually alone You know, I lived in a bamboo hut in this remote monastery and in the mountains it's a great little monastery it didn't it's not really in a town and and there's it's hard to get to meaning there is a road but it's it's in the rainy season. You can you can hardly use the road at all and even in the best of times, it's not a road that cars can travel. So we don't get any visitors in cars. It's a probably a good two miles from the nearest kind of normal sized town. There's a small village about a mile away but but about, you know, I had to go two and a half miles on my arms round each way every morning along the train tracks so it's not far from the train tracks and down the valley. And so it's nice and remote. We don't get any car sounds we don't get any visitors of people coming in cars okay occasionally on a motorcycle, but basically motorcycle and foots the only way to get there. So, so that's where I was based. And, you know, I've gone on little excursions around that valley, the one that the train runs down. And by the way, my, my walks were pinned to pata in every morning were incredible.
Host 10:37
Kind of drowned. Yeah.
Zach 10:39
Yeah. My arms around the misty jungle walking along the train tracks, you know?
Host 10:44
Yes. Usually those pictures they turned out quite well. They definitely give a feel for it. And so like, it sounds like what you're saying to set the context is you you were already living pretty remote already. I mean, knowing knowing your story, knowing this story and also knowing your background. You were you were gone. For some time you were getting the most of the monk's life there, just support and guidance and training. And you had found this monastery, north of Yangon. And you were you were already pretty remote in a pretty beautiful natural place living with not that many other people. And this is all prior to your walk deeper into the wild.
Zach 11:23
Right? That's right. I had Well, I mean, my proclivity just as a, when I was a lay person, I was I was an outdoor guide, you know, I just love nature. So and then, you know, that part of the the sutas reading about the Buddha, you know, sleeping in the forest and all that, that seems sounded so appealing to me. So I always wanted to be if I was gonna be a monk, I definitely wanted to incorporate being in the forest and being in nature, you know, it seemed to have a precedent in history in Buddhism, so you know, so I yeah, I would seek out if I heard anyone that heard of forest monks I would try to you know seek out knowledge about that. But I was pretty I was pretty comfortable I mean, I don't know nearly as much about jungles as I know about mountains and deserts Not that I met expert at anything of those but you know, I'm pretty comfortable in mountains and pretty comfortable in the desert. But jungle jungle mountains, you know, there there's a lot of a lot of different stuff that you know, there's well where I live now there's there's elephants
12:31
in Thailand. Yeah,
Zach 12:32
that's new, you know. But you know, there's tigers and very venomous snakes and giant centipedes and all kinds of critters.
Host 12:42
So were there things you did to you know, you kind of got more and more remote you know, you were in Yangon in the city center for a while and then you went to this remote place, further remote place where there was there was less services and amenities and even support and and then you went deeper stem into this walk that we're going to get back to but did you do anything in the way of training? Like Did you? Did you read books? Did you look on internet? Did you talk to people? Did you kind of have experiments? Or or how did you? What did you do to get yourself ready for what you say was was a new natural environment that you weren't accustomed to from your previous experience? jungle?
Zach 13:22
Huh? That's a good question. I mean, there's one obvious answer. But I'm trying to think of other stuff I had met Boris monks, you know, and I tried to glean as much as I can from that. And yeah, what I've read as well, I try to get a feel and and also just the beauty of incorporating the practice while you're doing it. I mean, that goes, immediately becomes actually obvious how important practices to do that well, and maybe that sense will get fleshed out later in this through the story itself. But the obvious thing I did is I actually had spent two months in white banana chalk, which is in Thailand, in eastern Thailand. And that's a that's in the Thai forest tradition. And it's a specific monastery that Lumpur cha had made for foreigners you know with throwing Zhang cha yeah for yeah they call him Lupo here which means like grandfather so it just means teacher just just for information for people right right we say I don't cha like that's kind of what people know him as but Lupo means grandfather, so any, any monk here that's reached that kind of status so to speak of import and an age you know would be called Lumpur and I might not be saying that exactly right. But But anyways, he had set this up for foreign monks in this forest tradition and they there's this particular monk, Thai monk there doesn't speak any English but he knows herbs he knows like all that like traditional crafts, like making tooth sticks, you know, out of particular tree to brush your teeth, how to make those brooms that you see all over Asia, not not the soft ones for inside the house, but the bigger ones. Right great for sweeping outside, you know, and cleaning up leaves and all that. How to make bowl stands, how to hand stitch robes. And so by the way, every robe there that people wear comes from donated white cotton cloth and you mark it, cut it yourself. They do have sewing machines, but you're not allowed to use them until you've made an entire set of robes by hand by hand stitching.
Host 15:38
This is like a one stop shop for forest monk training. It sounds like
Zach 15:44
Yeah, absolutely. So I spent two months there at the time where so what happens in this? It's when you get into it and start doing these things, you actually start to understand the cycle of seasons. In the Buddhist world, in the Scriptures, why certain things come at certain times. So I was there just after the rains. And if you think about it, you're kind of hunkered down during the rains for three months. And then as that ends, there's Yeah, the catina ceremony and all that, which is about robe, you know, making a robe. But essentially, this is a time where you prepare to go out again, out of your mind, right? And right in the Buddhist time, that meant walking around, you know, a snake and there weren't monasteries for a while. But a lot of people would Yeah, take off and go to other monasteries, or they would or to, you know, to seek out other teachers or influence or whatever their whatever their path called for, or just go out into the forest again.
Host 16:46
Right. And we should mention for people listening to the west who haven't had time in Asia, for people in the West who are used to basically four seasons in Asia, where Southeast Asia we're talking about three talking about the rains, the hot season and what they call The cold season but it's actually just kind of like the sometimes temperate, not extremely hot, less, less hot, right. And just as in the West, we growing up in the West we have these strong associations with from sports, to holidays to political events to family, just as we have real strong connotations to what these four seasons mean, and what happens around these events in terms of you know, cultural and other things on the calendar. Just to flesh that out a little bit more. in Southeast Asia. These three seasons have very strong connotations in other ways, and especially in Buddhist countries, where the three seasons were basically as they were for the Buddha 2500 years ago, you're making a case for being a Buddhist monk living in the tradition of how the Buddha taught and feeling kind of the purpose and the activity and the movement of the seasons, and possibly reflecting on what they meant for the Buddha himself when he started to give his own set. teachings and that's also interesting because it fits into that category of things that you kind of have to come to that part of the world where he actually lived to get certain pieces of wisdom that are harder when they get exported much further. So anyway, just some context to provide as you go on tell me what you were learning from hunkering down and rains to then leaving for other seasons
Zach 18:25
Well, what you say is is true that that's in one sense that that there are these still these three seasons that are predominant in this culture that's the same as it was before it's it's it's right out to the rains it goes there's a kind of a mini hot season they don't call it season actually. But there's it gets hot again, but then it goes right into cool season. So it's basically rainy season cool season hot season. So right after the rains, they're doing this preparation, but the point I was trying to make is even more than that. It's not just they follow the same seasons, is that their forest monks still. So what's going on in modern Buddhism is most monks are not forcement So the cycles of activity are different, you know, it's not really good catina doesn't, the catina ceremony doesn't mean as much anymore. Because this isn't the time monks are preparing to go out because nobody goes out anymore afterwards. Yeah, they can travel more, but it's not the same as it was back then. Because this group was actually still forest monks and they did go out after and often just going off on a walk, you know, wherever instead or finding a place in the forest and just staying there in the mountains or wherever. Because they're still doing that then then the lot of what the Buddha was doing makes much more sense. And so this preparation time is what I was getting at but that isn't really needed by most modern monks. is still active there. It's not just remembered it's actually active so so everyone that needs robes is making robes. This is a weapon at shot at weapon on a chat. Right, right. And just
Host 20:02
to just to put a bookmark in what you said, for the listener, we're going to come back later because as you were describing that change from monks in the Buddhist day and monks in the modern age, that actually has a direct relation to some of the difficulties you had later in your story of how the monastic order changed and what you were doing, not fitting into the conception of a modern monk. So let's continue on the weapon and a shot and put a bookmark in there to return to.
Zach 20:32
Yeah, that's right. That does totally play into some of the factors that actually got me in trouble later. So anyways, there is this I was talking about this Thai monk, he shows up every year right after the rains, and there's interesting stories I could tell about him too. He was actually an Abbot and ran away from his monastery because because he didn't want to be an Abbot. He wanted to be a forest monk, you know, but he has all of these skills. Like I said, I haven't even met All the things that he teaches weaving to make knitted, the ALMS bowl baskets, sorry, the cover for it, I didn't mean basket, the cover for that. And same, the same skill to make belts, you know. So, he teaches that kind of weaving he teaches stitching he teaches dyeing teaches teachers broom making, I mean and then who knows what else he knows he but he actually went back into the suitors and the and the vineya the texts and looking for any clues of how they did these things and then recreated I mean, he's an amazing person but he didn't want to he didn't want to be an avid so he ran he ran away. And one of the habits that weapon on a chat found him and invited him and And what he found is like overall, the foreign monks were the the most interested group. There are Thai monks that are interested in this is this these crafts as well. The foreign monks really wanted to learn, you know, like myself. So that's why he always comes to weapon on a chat to teach around this time to share what he knows so, so I went in there and soaked up all of this and I went away from weapon and chat with a set of white cotton rope cloth, the low not all three, I got the low robe and the upper inner upper robe finished and then so I learned how to stitch in. But I wanted to use Myanmar dye for the color. So I was going to I wanted to find something local and try that out. So but I learned other things too, you know, like, I mean, why pinata Chad's big enough where you can actually sleep outside and it's it's still natural enough where you're still in the forest, but there's walls so there's no tigers and stuff but there's still centipedes and and scorpions and, and ants. I found out I really, who runs the forest who rules the jungle So if you, if you, if you don't know how to work with ants, you're not going to go very well. So and, you know, there's a style, it's different in Thailand. But you know, maybe it's similar in Myanmar in some ways, but I didn't really tap into this, the way you learn things is really, they don't just give you a lesson and just kind of lay it all out for you, you, you, you observe, observing is a big part of it, you just watch what they do. And then you and then you try it yourself. And so even with chores, you know, you're they don't, they don't walk you through and hold you by the hand, you just have to kind of watch and jump in and try it. And you'll, it's a weird thing. It's a it's a really beautiful teaching because you kind of have to trust you don't get quite enough information to make you feel relaxed and secure. But if you can relax into that, not knowing you. It's like a risk, but you you take this risk, and it's like, you get just enough information. And there's a beautiful process unfold. For example, like you He, he'll undo your stitching that you did wrong. And he'll do it again right in front of you. And then he'll do it and you go back in and try your best, right? But through the process of trying your best, you know, you realize what you're starting to do better. And you also realize what you don't know. And the next time you go watch him because of that you're hyper focused on that part that you don't know. And you're watching, how does he do that? You know, I can do this better. And I understand this now. But there's still that part I don't understand. He makes it look so easy. And then next time you watch him do it, you'd like zero in on that point. And then you go back and try that. And it's like, there's this natural process where it just unfolds step by step rather than them writing a book or giving like a series, you know, like, it's not laid out like we do often in the West. It's a different style of learning. And it's really
Host 24:49
great sound sounds like a different cultural way of monastic training and monastic learning, even among the different Buddhist countries that are there that you learned when you take left me in Marta train here at weapon in a shot in Thailand.
Zach 25:03
That's right. And so even about the ants, you know, and no one comes out and say, Hey, the ants, this is how you deal with them, you know, you kind of live out there and there's different kind of ants and they have their own different characteristics and, and you gotta learn how to work with that and live with that, you know, you're living in their neighborhood. I mean, I could, I could spend a whole episode talking about all the stuff that happened at wappen on a chat. But yeah, let's do it back. Let's Well, let's do it another time. Yeah, yeah, I'll put I'll pull it back to my story. So, so here I am back in my my monastery in in Miramar in the mountains. And, you know, so I had some of these skills I had learned I had these and I just wanted to go out and try the walk about, you know, the, what they call to Dong in Thailand and Yeah, a little background on that, you know, it's like me and my does have. Well, I'll take it straight into your point, actually. Myanmar does have forest monks. But not that many. It's not quite the same as in Thailand, Thailand has she has a whole tradition and a tradition that has gained renown. And that has a different effect on people's. they're familiar with it. Because the top force monks in history like john, john Cha, john, I'm gonna say hi, john, these are all actually Loompa as well, grandfather's, a Maha Buddha, you know, there's several of them and, and they have a very good reputation for being good monks. They follow the discipline, they don't handle money as as referenced in this podcast, you know, that whole issue. These particular it's not all the monks in Thailand, this is just this group they're in they're very firm in their commitment to vineya for example, and so when you see monks walking on the road, you No, there's a kind of set of accoutrements they have like this, it looks like a giant umbrella. They keep it close when they're walking, but it has a big mosquito net. So that's what they they sit and sleep under when they're in the forest. But you can kind of recognize them quite quickly because of that, when they're walking, they have that rolled up on their back or over their shoulder. There's another you actually see statues here in Thailand with with a monk walking with that over their shoulder. So what whereas in in Myanmar, it's not so familiar, even though there's famous monks that that lived in the forest, like really in the forest without a monastery or anything, somehow it hasn't transferred into this kind of overall respect. As a matter of fact, as I found out as things unfolded, and I got myself into a into kind of the worst case scenario of something I'm about to say is, is that in Myanmar, even though they have that respect for for foreigners Famous forest monks, a lot of people's immediate response to seeing a monk outside of their monasteries, like where are you from? And the assumption often is like, if you don't have a monastery, you must not be a good monk. You must have been kicked out. Like it's not a monks get thrown at you. They can't disrobe you from being naughty, unless you break one of the four defeats right? killing a human being stealing something of value enough that would get you thrown in jail. telling a lie about your attainments or having any kind of sexual conduct with another person like actual sex of some sort. short of that if amongst just misbehaving at any degree, you can actually disrobe someone else those four things defeat you or you can choose to not be among these five ways and your monkhood. But there are recourses to throw people out. So Burmese people, they're not used to monks walking around. And if you say, you know, I can tell them where I ordain and stuff, but it's weird that I'm not there, because that's just not normal. And then there's this suspicion. You know, and I speculated on this, it's like, it's from, you know, it's intra Miramar and intermedium. I mean, meaning the Japanese and the British and these other forces coming into me, Mr. And, you know, they just the people from other places are just not welcome. in history, they've done bad things, you know, it's not been nice. And then it dropped me Mr. You know, between like the current or the, the the military government and a lot of the tribes there was horrible treatment. And so there's not like this. It's not true, like every regions, not the same, but there there is kind of this overlying distrust of people from somewhere else. So no matter where you were, I've been in Miramar in these kind of places, they'll come to check you out. And oftentimes that's amiibos if they get a reasonable feeling from you, then they'll you know, they'll they're okay with that that's actually part of the process I learned that the village headman and a few other people will come to to meet you and ask you what you're doing and you know if you have a reasonable story, and you know, it's good to be very polite this time, just tell them but but it is unusual. So so for example, I haven't even talked about how I met my, my traveling companion. Yeah, so I'm jumping ahead a bit. But we, after we set off on on this journey, we had gone a certain ways, and we were in kind of an agricultural area, but there's this little hill that wasn't plowed for agriculture. And it had you know, beautiful trees and stuff, you know, and just look like a nice place to rest on our on our walk. So we thought we'd read And drink some water there. And well turned out the reason they didn't cut that area is because that's where they burned people. It's actually a cremation ground. And we were practicing some do Tanga practices, these 13 austere practices and one of them is sleeping or staying in, in a what's called the charnel ground or are these types of places cemeteries these days? And so yeah, I mean, there were like, there's a couple schools on the ground it just kind of slowly. It wasn't just one or two, there's all these little mounds and it did. They're so old, some of it just didn't occur to me that, wow, there are a lot of mountains here. And wow, this is actually quite a big and very old place where they, they they take the remains of the body. I'm not sure what the process is. I'm not sure why those suppose those skulls were exposed, and other ones were mounds I don't know where the body is or what's left. It's in the mound itself. But but essentially The reason I'm telling this story is because that's where we were. So that's kind of a side note that we were we we actually decided to stay the night there. Because we can we could we had never done that before as a month so or not otherwise either. So yeah, we thought we we try that, you know sleeping the charnel grounds and just see what it's amazing when you actually try some of these things that that that are in this the tax you can start to see the benefits of things. Now for this is another side note, but for a lot of Asian cultures, they have a different relationship with ghosts than I do. So I don't I've never seen a ghost but that but there's a high high high level of fear around ghosts. So if you read on Josh's story about about sleeping in the cemetery, he was terrified, like in tears, you know, like with things actually starting to happen as well. So I slept right in between two of these mounds and I slept like a baby, you know, I just don't have that kind of cultural background. But anyways, so the reason I'm telling this is more connected to being checked out by by the village head, man. So that's where we were. So just laying some context there, not necessarily important to that part of the story, but but, you know, as expected, as can be expected, I learning that, you know, after a few hours, people starting to notice us and notice that we're actually kind of sticking around. And so, you know, as come dusk and stuff that the village headman did come to visit us, and he just kind of asked what we're doing and stuff we just told them. It just so happens that the companion I had was he's a, he's a side amin, he's the abbot of a small monastery. And some of the people from that village are actually we were not so far away some of the villagers Actually his disciples or his students? So yeah, so that's a normal thing. So this is this is just learning about how to come into other cultures. If you come alone, it's a surprise to them, you know, there's a bit of a risk there. And that's something I learned, right. So. So back to the main event, you know, like, that's what, that's one of the conditions was that they didn't know us. And people don't usually come into their territory like that. The other condition is it's a it's a tribe, a minority that that did not get along well with the government and they had their own militia. And so they were very protective. You know, and, and, you know, there are other operations that, you know, they were doing, they just don't really want other people to know about, you know, so they definitely don't know. I'd said before that they thought we were spies. Mm hmm. So this goes back to some of our other podcasts that that everything Everything arises due to causes and conditions. That was the interesting thing. So there I am, like it's getting dark and I'm in the middle of nowhere and the two of us are surrounded by 40 men and they all have a weapon they weren't rich so there weren't many guns there was only maybe I sought to there might have been like three guns. There were at least two I was pretty sure they weren't going to waste any bullets on me though it's expensive for there were a few machetes, which is a common tool used in daily life there for for making things from bamboo or just when you walk in to clear things out of the way. But most of them had either a sharp a sharpened stick, or a big piece of bamboo like like the size of a baseball bat and to kind of use like that so so these 40 guys roughly 40 guys all had some kind of weapon and they are all there to Yeah, I realized they were there to kill me. Those weapons were meant for the two of us, because they thought we were intruders. So another condition is in the history of Myanmar. There have been spies that that dressed as monks. Even in Thailand, actually, this is an interesting thing. And this is related to me, Mrs. Well, the reason they shave eyebrows in the monks is because of spies. That Burmese people were coming to Thailand as spies, and dressed as monks. So, so what they did that what Thai people did as a response, it has nothing to do with Buddhism history is totally to do with geopolitics and war. The It must have been the king actually ordered all the monks to shave their eyebrows. That way the spies in Thai spies in Myanmar when these spies that were monks in Thailand returned to me Mr. They would be identifiable by their shaved eyebrows. So hi, bye So yeah, so there's anyway, so that's one one piece to this puzzle of why these people, you know, why these Buddhists were about to kill two monks, is because they didn't think we were monks, they thought we were spies and there's a, there's a precedent for that in history. And there's a current, you know, there's a current reason because they're in conflict at the time, you know.
37:27
So,
Zach 37:29
as So the interesting thing is the, it'd be so easy to victimize, you know, but I it's also a good reflection of how the minds doing, you know, in meditation in general at this specific moment, but part of it's due to the speed things unfolded, you know, as I started to catch on more and more of the situation I was in, because at first I was just surrounded by 20 guys, and they didn't have any weapons. And so I didn't really catch what was going on at that time. But as things unfolded, I could See that? Oh, no, this is serious. And, and so I also started to look at our story. You know, it's just unusual, like, monks that they know of Don't do this. Right. And so, there's these monks saying that they're just doing, you know, but no one does that. So if I didn't have any identification, and you know, I could, I could see from their side, you know, the whole point I'm trying to make here at this point is like, I could see it from their conditions why they were actually I felt kind of bad for him that I put them in a in a bad position. Mm hmm. Because of their relationship in Myanmar with other you know, other groups like like the military for example, that they need to protect themselves and and spies is something that can happen so here, here I am. I'm putting put him in a bind because you know, it's kind of cruel to be a booty This monk spy because you really putting people intention with themselves, you know? So I realized the reason I felt kind of bad for him, it's like I put them in this bind, you know, because here we are in front of them dressed as monks and we were monks but like what do they do? You know, if, if they make a mistake here, you know, it's a problem. Like, if we're spies and they don't kill us or take care of us somehow, that's a danger to them. And if they, if they get it wrong, and we are monks and they kill us, I mean, that's horrible karma. I mean, it's horrible karma anyways, but, but they hold, you know, they'd hold real monks in reverence, you know, so they were hesitating, but it really put them in a I could really, I had this compassion for them at the time, like what and and I, you know, I felt like wow, I really, you know, I really made a blunder. Yeah, I, this isn't the way to go about it, you know. So I learned later that you know, the best way to introduce yourself. I mean, you kind of never know. And I walked into other areas that we didn't know, like, like when we were in that other area with the cemetery. They weren't they didn't have the same conditions they weren't in the same relationships with with the government, for example. And so they weren't as threatened or they didn't have as much to lose by by an intruder, that that may be there to mean them harm. They didn't have that kind of I was paranoid, a little too judgmental of a word. But you know that that concern and skepticism that keeps them safe, you know, that that other group didn't need that. So they come check us out the story seemed reasonable. It did help that there were some people that knew us. So that was kind of extra information that kind of supported our story. So yeah. Just remembering how it felt to start To sit. The interesting thing about my response, it's a nice reflection about how good the practice is going. And this was really a moment of facing death, and one of the signs of that was that the mind started to... and this is usually taken for granted, that we're always just projecting into the future, even if it's just a minute or an hour, or there's just a few thoughts that just kind of come through our thoughts stream about like, what I might have for dinner or what I'm going to do next. And it just became vividly clear that there wasn't going to be 'a next.' I mean, there's going to be a next moment, but it was highly probable that we were going to die. Just that thought alone, which is a such stark contrast to how that mind flow usually goes. I didn't really realize how much the mind interjects little bits of future and kind of takes that for granted to keep this kind of storyline going. Like, it was just so clear that this story was going to end... that time in a way was going to stop. It's interesting now in the Coronavirus, it's sickness and death might be on people's minds more than it normally is. And I think as uncomfortable as that is, for a Buddhist it is a nice time to reflect and at that time I had I got to face death and then see how the mind responds to it. And I was actually okay with it. I was a little sad that my family wouldn't know what happened. I had a trip scheduled home within like a week or two. And I was just gonna disappear in the mountains and I'm sure they're going to dispose of my body in such a way that wouldn't be easy to find, and so how long would it take for the news to get out that I was even out there wandering, and let alone never came back, so it would take a while. My family wasn't going to know the story, and that can cause them some distress. But for me my life actually ending as stark and as clear as that probability was I was okay with that. And there wasn't going to be a later evening. But I could see what I wasn't okay with is the pain I was going to have to go through to get to death, because you look at these guys with these big heavy bamboo bats and those things kind of caving my skull and is not necessarily going to be a very pleasant feeling, and will I be able to be equanimous with that sudden contrast, in feeling normal to all sudden feeling intense pain as I'm being stabbed and beaten to death. They weren't going to just shoot me in the head and be done with it. Actually the feeling guy, I never got this verified. But every able bodied man in the village was there. And everyone had a weapon. And I was thinking about why, you know, what, what's that? And because there's so just to be clear, there were no women there, there were no boys there. And there were no old men there. They were all the men of the village and actually two villages. So I didn't tell this story. But after we left that, that Valley, where we encountered that first group of tribe, they were still beating the drum sometimes and sending smoke signals and we were walking towards another village and that village came out, you know, other houses to see us when we entered their village. And we were actually trying to make it to this monastery, we had heard that there's this nine year old, pretty well renowned, not famous, but in that area, he was highly revered this old monk, you know, this Abbot, and we were trying to make it his monastery. And they just gave us a bunch of reasons not to go. And it was very clear that whether those reasons were true or not that we were not going to be allowed to pass. You know, this is where the feeling started to shift a little bit. So we turned around. And at that time, we had about 15 or 20 of you know, we had all I didn't realize it then but all of those men from the village followed us. So we were walking, and we wanted to try to make it back to this monastery where we had some interaction. We didn't sleep there, but we were friendly with with the abbot there, and he knew us so we were just going to go ahead, you know, it was getting dark. So we just thought we'd change plans and Go back. And they're following us. And then a certain point along the way, when we came to that stream again, the the men we had encountered before plus a few more were there too. So now we had the able bodied man of two, two villages there. And I could see along the way that every once in a while one of them would kind of duck off into the bushes and, and cut off a branch and start whittling it into what I saw here was like a sharp object, like a, you know, it's something you could stab someone with in it. So, the way it unfolded was slowly slowly, you know, I didn't pick up I think my companion picked up on it much earlier than I did, you know, with the smoke signals and the drums and, and I just didn't, didn't make the connections, you know, until, you know, but slowly, slowly, it was dawning on me that like, No, these guys there's something wrong here. And so when we stopped and we were met by that other group, that's where we stopped and it was just as it was getting dark and I could see everyone had a weapon. I'm like, Okay, this is it. Like, this is what we're here and just the whole situation started to dawn on me and so but like I said, a great time to reflect on the mind. And, you know, my my companion and I were reflecting later that had we not, he has an incredible mind. So even the pain part that I was talking about before, wasn't a concern to him. He was okay with all of it. And he was cool throughout the whole thing speaking in Burmese to that the one young man that that spoke Burmese and translating for everyone. And he had some strategy and stuff but he was he was relaxed enough to joke around it's not quite the right demeanor he had but he was Could be light with people and laugh at times, you know. And he was just very light with them and very relaxed. And there was a point actually when I was standing outside the group, you know, so he was surrounded by about maybe 30 people and he was just sitting down cross legged, and I was away from standing outside now surrounded by about 10 people. And I didn't tell the story but one of my flip flops was broken so I was actually walking barefoot on one foot and only had one flip flop on. So even if I was, even if I was dumb enough to run, I wouldn't have been able to get very far and these guys were in excellent shape anyways and knew the place where I wouldn't have had that chance anyways. And on top of that, I was only wearing one flip flops so I didn't stand a chance. It would have been dumb though it it was clear to me enough that if we did something like run, we would be dead. That would be It's like, they're thinking about whether to kill us or not. Are these guys really monks? Are they spies and they had already leaned on, I mean, to come to that point where we're surrounded by 40 guys, and each of them actually has a weapon. And sometimes they're being quite aggressive towards us somewhat. So the guy with the gun would like, you know, get right in her face and are not an interface. We look straight at us and show us the gun. Like just to see what how we would react. It was very clear to me that they were leaning towards us being spies. You know, I think their hunch was we were spying and I think they were they were there ready to kill us. That was the feeling that just enough doubt though. What I'm trying to say is like, in a group of 40 guys, that's imagine how they must have felt, you know, I they all knew what they needed to do, but that doesn't mean it would be easy. You know, I was going to make this point earlier, I had a feeling that everyone needs to participate in a tribal kind of way. So So shooting me with wouldn't be enough I think I had this feeling I never got this verified, but everyone would need to have a hand in it as a tribe. So it's 100% a collective decision. It's kind of like your vote, your participation was your, your agreement to to take this action as a tribe and no one could later then say, like, Hey, I think that was a bad idea. You know, so, I can't like I said, I can't verify but that's the vibe I had, you know, and so this was going to be like, not just one person shooting me but it's gonna be like 40 people, like, like, just beating the crap out of my body and telling that stabbing beating you know, I'd be lucky to get a blow that would make me pass out at least you know, until I was dead, but But yeah, the mind of my friend. He was very calm. Anyways, I was back to the part of the store. I was outside of the circle and I realized like, Wow, my friend I want to talk about him a little bit in a minute. But my friend is really central in this. And really, I'm the one that's central to the reason that he's here. And I'd like to explain that later. But but there was a moment when standing outside I wasn't there because I was afraid. But I realized that I really should be in the center with him and I wasn't so there was, I was not quite clear why I was over there. But I actually made this conscious choice to like, accept the likely consequences of this evening and accepted in such a way that you know, I'm in I'm with him at the very least I'm with him in the center of everything. So I went and sat down next to him cross legged. So this these two marks sitting cross legged and our demeanor I was actually even though I was afraid of a painful dying I was just wondering how my last month mind moments would be in this life, you know, because there's an understanding in Buddhism that some people have at least that your last mind moment decides the first moment of your next life. And so if it's a strong reaction and aversion to pain, that might not be a great next mind to start with. So yeah, I wasn't I wasn't quite confident in that particular scenario that my mind would still be good and so yeah, I keep missing this point trying to getting near to it in this group in the feeling that they have anxiety they might be having that they're gonna have to make a decision to actually kill someone. All it takes in the group that size is it to start you know it one trigger, one trigger so out of 40 It only takes one person to initiate beating or stabbing or attacking would be a better word. Once that starts amongst 40 people that are that anxious and kind of know what they're there to do. I don't think there's any turning back from that. It just triggers the crowd and and it's over. So at any given time throughout this whole process, which is probably like a half an hour of talking to these guys, at any minute, any moment, if we had triggered even one of them, we would have been time. So that's back to the running running would have been such an event. You know, they would have been sure that we're guilty and we're running, you know, to get away because that we know we're wrong or we're caught, that would just show that that would be the type of thing that would show them that they had, in fact, caught two spies. They would have no problem getting rid of us. But our demeanor, like I said was was not like that. And so his demeanor, of being light with them and even laughing at times with them. You know, and continue to talk to them very commonly. And basically, it served us really well that we recall them because we were acting like monks might act in this case, they asked us to open up our bowls, which is how we were carrying a lot of our things inside the bowl. It's just another tip. I learned when at different stages of learning how to be a forest monk how to do this so, so but we did three commonly, you know, we weren't like anxious and panicked and trying to please or talk them out of things we just like, we actually took cloths out and put them down in a very mindful way and then and then just didn't just dump the bowl and say their look, you know, and kind of anxious way to prove ourselves we just kind of slowly and in a very neat way, unpacked our bowls in front of them so they could just put I just put everything on display on this cloth. So they could see everything. So it wasn't just that they could see that we didn't have any spy equipment. I guess James Bond would have stuff that look like monk stuff but we actually would be spy equipment but but but I think they could see that we just had what kind of what you would expect someone walking around to have you know flashlight I had a flashlight or torch and and you know there's there's just this kind of basic stuff you need like soap and toothpaste and a toothbrush and razor to to shave just the normal stuff that the monks are allowed. But the confidence didn't just come from seeing what we had. I think that but also our demeanor and and and we realized the next day that had we reacted any differently we would have been Ted. And we could both kind of imagine we talked about this we could imagine being with certain people that would have panicked in that moment of facing death and if either one of us had done that We would have been 10. And we were both, we were both sure of that. And so our practice saved us. But it's interesting like, because one thing I reflect upon is like, I have old issues in me that that I hate being misunderstood. Here's this case where I'm about to die being misunderstood, but that didn't bother me. It didn't bother me. And I was asking myself why and there's a different condition. It was that it unfolded slowly and gave me enough time to understand their conditions helped him if it had surprised me, I know I'd still have the capacity to react to being misunderstood and if that had happened, it could have been a totally different outcome. So apparently, is I do have some development in myself that that helped me be comfortable with death. I think that's true anyways, as far as being misunderstood, it was really just the idea unfolded slowly. And I was kind of thinking I had some space to think about things from their side. And that helped. So it's not like in every single condition, I would have felt compassion for them. But and so I think that's interesting. Yeah, I'm not trying to say that my mind is totally free from from that particular condition. And it's just amazing to me, even as I'm telling the story now, just how how, I mean, how the Buddha emphasizes causes and conditions. There's no things that are here. Everything that's here is because of the causes and conditions we now hear. That's a poll It was like how prevalent panic is because it's not about Oh, I almost died and I have this kind of terrific, horrific story to tell. It's almost terrific. It doesn't, didn't obviously I'm here talking about it didn't end didn't end in death. But really, the The demeanor and the demeanor of my companion, you know, I'd like to the way I met him is so fascinating. He lives just a two hour walk behind my little monastery. But it's overage and it's out of the valley I'm in. So it's not just in another side Valley, another part of my Valley it's actually in a whole other Valley. And I just had never I don't know why but I just never wandered over that way. And so the first time I went wandering on this longer trip, you know, I'd taken shorter excursions before you know, I had my I had my handmade robes and I had my my role on my back. I kind of made up my own style because because Burmese don't have one and I didn't I wanted to modify what I learned in Thailand to kind of suit what I had in Myanmar and, and so I set off with a walking stick and my flip flops and just just what I had on my back, you know, to go on this journey, but not long into the actually stay in a cave that night, but the next day I had made it over the ridge, the cave was actually up on the ridge and beautiful spot. Very quiet. No water though. So I had to go to the monastery that was not too far away in the village for alms round, of course, and for for water. The next day I cross, I crossed the ridge and the first thing I saw, was this stunning, tall, sharp, like, you know, pointy. Just picture espeak Wow, that's, that's a beautiful mountain. And then, you know, I didn't know I had no aim as far as location. So I could, anytime I came to a junction I could just feel into it or for whatever condition arose at that time, decide which way to go. But seeing that mountain was a condition and so I say, Hey, I'm just going to go towards that mountain. walk that way and there's a beautiful village at the foot of the mountain. You know, there's different types of banyan trees but Myanmar has these banyan trees. They have super thick trunks and they spread out. The tree spreads out incredibly wide. And the shape of it is more wide than tall. And some of the branches that the the trunk actually isn't very tall. It goes up just a little bit, this kind of stubby trunk and then the, the branches that come off of that are often thicker than then trees, normal trees, I mean, huge, massive and it's like and these branches that are so thick. They spread out so far. It's like they gotta be heavy. It's like the wood has been the tree has been incredibly strong. That's what it actually looks like. A giant stocky, but beautiful. They're just beautiful trees. They're just had this, but I always wonder how those trees those particular branches don't don't break. They're just they gotta be so heavy that they could go out for like 100 feet in each direction. Yeah, maybe something like that 6080 hundred feet like, and they could be, they could be a meter thick themselves, you know, at the base of the branch, you know? And yeah, anyway, so right, right when you come to the town, there's one of these giant trees. And so I just had this really, things are just unfolding kind of nicely, you know, and but it was getting kind of late and I asked, I asked the locals if there's any caves nearby and there was actually one at the base of this mountain. Turned out. It was pretty crappy as far as caves go, you know, no water sources really close to the road and kind of dusty and it was more like an alcove. It wasn't an actual cave. It's an alcove, but you know, that's fine. It'll do for a night. And it was surprising the the villagers were quite, quite friendly. They're quite inviting, you know, they were very welcoming. And they kind of knew monks rules to some degree, I could see that they had some good influence. And so some villagers even came to the alcove and brought me water, which they knew I needed. And they brought me sweets, which, I mean, I think the sweets had milk in them. So that's against vineya. But But candy in general, like sugar isn't. So they actually, were thinking they were abiding by my rules by offering me these candies, you know that something I can actually snack I could have in the afternoon. So it's very true, very beautiful and generous gift, you know, to walk a little ways out of the village and bring that to me. So I went out alms round the next day in that village, and there were people kind of showing me a route. I could go on there, you know, so I had a kid kind of pointing here and there But some of the villagers that had come the day before with the water and the sweets, actually, they told me that there was actually monks. I mean, it was a really steep mountain. So I didn't even know if there was a way up. But not only was there a way up, there was actually a monastery up there. And there were these two monks actually teaching Vipassana up there, they could see clearly, now there was a forest monk, they could see I was sitting cross legged, I was meditating and, and, and so they told me that there's these two monks teaching capacity up on the mat. It's like, wow, what good fortune, you know, when you kind of step out into your hero's journey, so to speak, and I stepped out on this wandering, to kind of encounter things that I mean, who knows, maybe, maybe it would be sometimes things sound good, and they're not necessary, but at least at the moment, this sounded great. Like, wow, what a great fit, you know, so great. And the next morning, sure enough, when I got a different look at the steep mountain, I could see that There were actually a temple on the top, you know, not not a monastery, but there were there was like a Buddha statue and a shrine, you know, and you know, a little pagoda you know, you can see it from all around. And sure enough, of course, there's a path going up there so, so after alms round after I packed up my stuff and rolled it all up and put it on my back, and I just set off to meet these, these these guys. So these two monks were actually turned out to be power monks. And they would teach they actually, who are they teaching, you know, they're actually there's a whole set of nuns out there some really young girls all the way up to some older ones. The youngest ones weren't learning meditation, and some of the oldest ones were taking care of the young ones, but the rest of them were, were actually that's all they're doing is listening to discourses and meditating and under these two months, instruction Actually, one of them was more responsible for discourses, the other one's more responsible for teaching guiding meditation. It's pretty phenomenal. I mean, for lots of reasons. So the setup, the place they would all meet for teaching was on a saddle. And on the saddle from one side, it just goes up a gentle slope to a kind of a hill. And that's the side the nuns are stayed on. They didn't stay anywhere near each other when they slept. So they stayed on one side and you go up the saddle goes very steeply up to the top of the peak, and it's up that way that the monks had a couple huts including an extra for me so so they were very welcoming. Yeah, but of course, checking me out first to see what kind of monk I was, and they could see they, you know, and we could talk a bit I spoke just enough for me. You know, I was very interested in they're very passionate so that they that they were doing that and they could see her had background and knowledge and information and meditation. And they learn, you know, later we were talking about that scripture and practice and everything. So I, I had some party and party party so, so basically, they, they, they were very welcoming to me. And they told me later that they're not welcoming to everyone because they, they just want they want people that are serious about being monks, both party and party party. So I made the cut. So So I stayed with them, I was only gonna stay with them, like, you know, I'd say a couple days, you know, when I'm drawing with them and just kind of, you know, it was part of my journey I wanted to there's no hurry. I wanted to kind of learn about how they're living what they were doing. I mean, it's a whole story unto itself, you know, and it's nice to have some serious companions nearby, you know, I mean, I so I kind of told him where I lived and how close it actually was. And so here I am actually like staying on this beautiful mountain that I had saw a couple days ago like talking to and have new companions that are like Good monks, and doing an enormous thing. So what I said is interesting, you know, itself, the fact that there's teaching nuns, it's not everywhere in Myanmar that that nuns get that kind of attention. I mean, oftentimes the ones you see in pink are actually they serve the monastery, often in very physical ways, like, like cooking and cleaning. Right. So that's more often the case that that people focus. I mean, it does happen to me more when I'm talking about it, like in pork, for example, and other places, but it's, those are more few and far between. But here's a place where they're actually focusing on teaching nuns, and I just thought that was a really beautiful gesture. And another thing I think this is unique and you wouldn't know it at first, but like, according to the Burmese Council, the eight and 10 precept nuns that are there are not allowed to go on alms round daily. I think they're limited to once a week. But up on that map With the support, there wasn't any water on that mountain unless it rains, they had ways of collecting rainwater. But the locals are actually so supportive of these people, the monks and the nuns being there and what they were doing that they carry water up every day for drinking and cooking plates and it's steep. I mean, like going back to the shape of this mountain, it looks like I mean, it's really steep and sharp, like Fang, like, you know, but in eautiful kind of way. So, so when I talk about hauling water up there, water is heavy, and it's steep you know, these guys the village actually worked quite hard to to support their monastics and and there's no other way to do it. The point I'm trying to make here is there's no other way to do it then for the nuns to go they go and daily alms rounds. And so that's so if you don't know the context, that's like so odd. You know, that's what monks monastics should be doing. But no, it's a rarity that that they actually everyday into the village just like mine And I have my own feelings about that, you know, my own personal feelings is I wish there was an order of none still, you know, and I think there can be I'm not of the camp that thinks that it can, it can no longer be established. And, you know, there's a bunch of reasons for that I won't go into here and that's a whole nother topic, but, but it just did make me very happy that these nuns were actually getting to live much more like full nuns than then is otherwise possible. And again, this back to conditions, right, it's like, there would be no other way to function for them. They couldn't pull this off easily any other way. And so everyone just accepted that this is what we're going to do here. It was happening so it's great. Okay, here's the surprising part though. So you know, I'm ready to go the next day. And to my surprise, the Seattle he had about I think 10 or 11 Vasa is how you count the number of years invested The rains retreat so you count the number of rains retreat. Great. So if you become a monk actually right before rains retreat and after three months you already have one Vasa even though you haven't been a monk for a year but that's how they count he had about 11 but numbers you know numbers don't mean everything. What's impressive about this gentleman this this monastic banteay was he was you never know what you're going to find when you set out on these journeys. But here's a monk that actually just like the walk banana chat monks, has the knowledge of how how to live like the type of monk I, you know, he, he established all the stuff on the mountain he's, and he was actually a do tongue among these 13 aesthetic practices. He He's done them all, including like the rags robe, like his outer robe was actually a rag robe. So that's one of the Tanga practices is you were only robes made from rags discarded cloth that you found. And so I mean, I was surprised and he didn't just he didn't boast about it. He didn't tell me this I just kind of saw as time went on that he was following all three of the monks there were following the one meal a day practice. But he was following like many of them, including I think, the most difficult one. Some of them aren't available like I said that the cemetery one if there's no cemetery and you can't always follow all 13 and you don't need to you like the way you work with that. That's a whole nother story. But the way you work with Tanga is just to help you somehow so there's a reason and a purpose and a benefit to each one of them. But he was actually following what I think is for me, the most difficult one is the sitter's practice, which means they never lie down and so are our entire time walking around together. He when we pick to spot in the forest, he, he would just spread out his sitting cloth, he would look for, he had a different eye for things. So he would look for like a rock that had an incline to it or a tree that had a nice incline, the type of place you'd like to sit down but lean back against in a way that would be comfortable for your back. And interestingly, in the Buddhist time, the Buddha did allow for a back board, you know, that is one of the allowable items amongst can have not that I don't think forest monk would carry that around with him. But in a monster you were allowed to have, you know, sitting all the time, you can lean against something. And I had a new appreciation for the scissors practice because one of the benefits I never saw before until I saw it, not just from a monk, because you could do that in a monastery, but living in the forest. It's like you don't have to care. I mean, I carried a mat you know, and you know, talk asleep on the ground with it. Without getting dirty and my mat has to be much bigger than his sitting clock. And I had carried a rain tarp that's big enough to cover me when I'm sleeping, which is again, much bigger than it would need to just have a poncho or something or an umbrella. If you were just sitting all the time, you just, I mean, when I was a backpacker, and mountain near when I was, you know, a lay person, you know, I was really into like packing small and light, you know, and so the same ideas carry over to forest monk, it's ideal if you're not having to lug all this stuff around with you. And as someone doing the sitter's practice actually doesn't have to carry extra stuff for sleeping. Because they just like they just sit back and go to sleep sitting down. So it's like, Wow, that's great, you know, so that I just kind of knew it. I never did try it. But I had this at least new inspiration and appreciation of it. But more than anything so so here's this here's this monk that was very familiar with with living in the forest. had lots of tips again, they just kind of unfold like kind of in the highway, you know, he didn't like sit down and teach me all these things you just watch and learn and, and d'Italia practices. He knew how to do them all, you know and had done and had done them so it's not like he just was knowledgeable of it. He it was in him so it was just so surprising that he just basically he's the size CIO, he was only responsible for teaching the discourses in the Dhamma. But he basically just left the monastery to the other guy and just were with me, which was a phenomenal decision in of itself. But he was also just such a great companion in so many ways of of me, apprenticing the the the forest monk life, which again is in in Thailand's a lot easier to access because they have a very well known and very identified defined for us tradition. There are four smokes in Menard. mimar but you kind of stumble across them or like I was doing here this is kind of how you other than you know like there is mahabodhi mowing site which is a famous forest monk in Miramar, but he's hard to encounter anyways but but yeah, so it's hard to get any you can't just go somewhere and find formal training in forest box. So I had this great I was apprentice and I had someone to show me We had a great mind too. So you could see that his practice was quite well developed. And example exemplified by like both of us not panicking when we were encountering impending death. No other way to put it but but like I said he even he even wasn't afraid of the dying part the pain and he felt quite relaxed that his mind could handle the beating on the way to death as well. And so that was very impressive. One thing I've kind of talked about this already, but one thing is really clear to me is, again, just how some of the vineya that amongst don't always make sense. And I realize it's because some of the, I mean, a lot of it makes a lot of sense, but some of it is out of context. And when you start living, forest monk life, you don't have to practice to do Tonga. I mean, one of them would be do Tonga because you're actually sleeping in the forest without a monastery. So you're sleeping. You're sleeping away from the village. So that is one of the do Tongass but what I realized is a lot of the stuff that monks were required to do makes a lot more sense when you're actually living that way. And until you live that way, you don't necessarily see it. So, one of the things that specifically is like, why did the Buddha recommend that monks go out? Now, if you read the sutras, the stories are full of examples of encounters with danger, the quotes they call them in India, which are like robbers and thieves and murderers and murderers and, and there's also the wild animals and the snakes and tigers and, you know, it was perhaps even more so at the time. There were definitely areas that were known to be dangerous from robbers and thieves and killers and so there's stealing and murdering and all kinds of stuff. And and the wild animals were at least as much present than because, you know, humans hadn't, you know, population growth hadn't encroached so much into wild spaces. So why did the Buddha recommend they go out? You know, they could stay safe in monasteries and just meditate What? Why wasn't that the recommendation? When I faced this situation and actually in in more minor ways, other situations that I've encountered as a forest monk, the practice comes more alive in a way that it doesn't otherwise. I mean at a point of like, being that close to triggering people like us, like assaulting us and killing us. Your practices literally do or die. And, and if you really can, and I think it's probably dangerous to do this before you've established at least some basic level of stability in the Dhamma as a practice, like the mind has a place to Go where it can become calm, or stay there and steady and kind of stepped back from not getting caught up in the narrative or whatever it might be or whatever are practices that that that is stabilized, you know, and this is another reason why, you know, monks are required, you know, they're supposed to be required to stay with a teacher under teaching for five years. It's called dependency until they become independent. But what it does like, no matter the situation where and I can, I can only imagine this with wild animals because I haven't encountered that in the forest yet. Other than like giant centipedes. Your practice is paramount. And if you really are established in the practice it just it it. It really strengthens your faith your Sangha in Dhamma itself. How to how to explain it, all of these situations. It's like I think I just wonder how many times you could actually go through a near death experience. And the mind would start to, because it experienced it so many times, and it's in those moments, moves towards the Dhamma, automatically. And it's clear that the Dhamma is actually what's getting you out of this, this confidence that like, if you stick with the Dhamma, it doesn't really matter what happens, even if you did die. So it's not about like, I as as an ego got out of being killed, it's like, it doesn't matter. It just becomes clear and clear, even from one strong episode like this. And then a bunch of smaller ones. I can imagine having a life of occasionally encountering such danger and difficulty that using the Dhamma applied Dhamma in those particular moments, what it does to my faith in the Dhamma we didn't really need to get involved in The narrative of these people, we didn't need to fight against it or try to be clever in any ways. The space that we had in our minds because we were relaxed and practicing in the moment, allowed us to see it their story and have compassion for one. But just to see that, like, really, you don't need the narrative so much, you just need to stick with the Dhamma and the Dhamma like, no matter what it's like, what, what? It's the strength of everything. So really, I could just see how how these encounters themselves plays such a role in strengthening knowledge Do you rely on Dhamma at those times, that event itself really gives a boost to Dhamma almost like if you're playing a video game and you you hit a booster, I'll send you you know, so all the sudden your Dharma boosts up. So, it just in hindsight, or in retrospect, it becomes very clear why the Buddha would have really inclined people to suggest that people, the monks, and nuns or nuns, it's a little different companionship wise, but to go out, knowing that there's these dangers, it's not that you go looking for danger. He wasn't trying to put monks in dangerous way. I mean, that becomes clear too. So it's not that extreme. It's a middle path. But the other extreme is to kind of hunker down in a monastery for the rest of your life in order to avoid those dangers. I mean, there might be other reasons for hunkering down in a monastery, but that middle line like yeah, there's, there's these monasteries and yeah, there's this incredible opportunity when you just kind of put yourself out there. So I talked about this major event of being threatened with violent death at the hands of 40 people and a minor one. I mentioned these minor ones as well. A minor one is when you When you stay in a monastery for a long time, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with this, but I think you'll see the advantage of leaving. When you stay a long time in a monastery, for example, when you go on alms rounds, whether you notice it or not, the mind can relax because the mind knows it's going to get food every day. There's this real primal thing of Am I going to survive? You know, that's part of the dama makeup of who we are, and how we are as human beings. And there's this assuredness of food basically, you know, there's exceptions in the Buddhist time of famines and stuff, but but by and large, most years and most days, you go out, you'll get plenty of food. I mean, if you got plenty of food yesterday, there's every reason the mind can relax and, and think that today is going to be fine. When you step away from what you know, and go to unfamiliar places, and places perhaps where their monks aren't necessarily going around and establishing any precedent for you. You're walking into an Unknown at a real primal and basic level, will I get enough food? Or will I get any food? Hmm. And it so happened one of the villages they weren't used to alms round. They had a system where every day the monks would come, come to the monastery. I'm sorry, the villagers would come to the monastery with food and feed the monks right there. There were no arms around. That village didn't really understand Armstrongs. And we did. We did play this card, right. We did go to the abbot of that monastery to let them know we had slept in the forest, which he thought was kind of very odd. And we because we could have, he would have given us a room to stay in his monastery without question. And then the next night, we also went to sleep in the forest, which he thought was odd. He had offered us a room but but we told him we were there. We asked him. I think we actually got a tip from someone. That's what we should do. But we went to the abbot and asked him for permission to go on arms round in his village. Essentially That was the right way to go. So even if the villagers didn't understand what we were doing, which they didn't, which I'll tell in a minute, at least the abbot was behind, you know, he, you know, he had given us the nod. So that was all gonna be okay. But when we actually went around arms round, people didn't know what we wanted. And we weren't getting any arms, any food at all for quite a while, and then one family saw us and they went in and they gave us a little bit of chives, they actually gave us money. And you know, neither one of us accepts money. So, so we we, you know, we politely declined, the money they gave us are trying to give us and they said, Well, what, what is it you you want? And we said, Oh, we do this every morning to gather food and it just hadn't occurred to them or anyone else. It was only when other people kind of saw that. That we were accepting food that some other houses gave us food. But really, that would have been a hard village to go on on every day because we weren't hardly getting any homes. We're getting enough rice but we are actually it would have been hard to sustain life for a long long time. in that village if that continued like, I think one day there was some mostly was playing rice and like I think we got a couple bags of potato chips or potato crisps some people call and and maybe one curry and that's it like for other than rice. We were crunching up potato chips to put in to mix into the rice. And that was our meal for that day. That's a nice diamond experience. How is the mind responding to this? Is it starting to worry about sustenance you know Is it is it at are not isn't accepting the reality. So it's really interesting to see the mind and again, it connects me directly to the Buddhist teachings. Like, it's not that things are outdated in history, like everything that I'm talking about can still be done. In the modern times, it's just not being done. I'm talking about like, going out away from your monastery and going around to either other monasteries or into the forest. I start to connect with the stories that are in the sutras because they still happen. Like, for example, there's a suit that gives different environments, you know, whether you're in the forest with a particular teacher or in a monastery, or this or this or this, and it's like, is the practice going well, and are you getting enough food on your alms round? What the suta boils down to is if the practice is going well, don't leave. Normally, he says don't stay anywhere too long. But this is like the exception. If you're practicing is going well stay and stay no matter whether the food is seems like it's enough or not, like don't interrupt good practice for anything. And on the other hand, whether the food is good or not, if the food is great, so it means like you're actually getting well taken care of, but the practice isn't really going anywhere, leave at once. So that part about being somewhere and I wasn't so much focused on my practice, but there are these events where were amongst the arms are not necessarily going very well. And so I actually have an actual experience that ties me into that story, so that it becomes more alive again. And that happens with that's just one example. There's a lots of I won't give more but there's when you actually start living the life that is suggested and recommended by the Buddha. it directly connected me to, to the stories being told, it boosted faith, it strengthened the Dhamma and it brought the teachings more into the present. And so there's just, I mean, how many benefits came from this one? one event I just stepped out once and, and that's why you could I could tell the story as if it's this horrific, terrifying story. Like, wow, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do that again. I'm never going to leave my monastery. Yeah, I mean, I the mind, certain minds could conclude that way. But where my mind conclude is just the opposite. Like, wow, this was really valuable even though it nearly cost me my life. Eventually, I think one could get so skilled with that movement. And I think again, changing environments really keeps it alive and kind of shakes the mind up in good ways, you know, so it doesn't come become complacent.
1:29:50
This
Zach 1:29:52
skill of being able to just stay in the heart of dumb all the time and let the stories just kind of unfold around you. It doesn't really matter what they are. You just kind of With a dominant lead, let everything else take its course. Just I saw, I saw that I developed that just a little bit. And that the opportunity, if I had continued would would, would only unfold more of that. So, yeah, so that's, so that's why I like to tell the story and have a bit of time because because there's there's just so many benefits to it. There's so much beauty to the story and, and just being able to see the mind and develop in the Dhamma and and relate to the Buddha. Like I said, it's just the experience was just it's it's the top experience. Like I said in the beginning, this is the story to tell. Yeah.
Host 1:30:40
Yeah. Right. It's great to have the time to be able to flesh these stories out. And thanks for doing it this time.
Zach 1:30:46
Yeah, welcome. You know, I'd like the way in some of the podcasts we've done before that you know, Alan and others have brought up and we have brought up in the dialogue that we have after how much causes and condition missions are at play, and we can see them. And it's nice that that several practitioners highlight that, you know, it's such an important piece to see, you know. And so this story is kind of my my contribution to feel that how important conditions are. So actually, anytime I hear on a on an interview that people start referencing conditionality, like, it connects me to what they're saying to because of these types of experiences. Mm hmm.
Host 1:31:28
Yeah, right. And some of those other podcasts we do, we're not able to have the time to be able to respond with what even when there are similar stories such as this to be able to flesh them out in the limited time that we have. So it's great to take the time here and then later on in podcast will be able to, you know, refer to points of this, assuming listeners are able to check in at the different episodes.
Zach 1:31:51
Right? Yeah, well, it was interesting reliving the story in real time again. So yeah, that's, that's my story. Haven't one last thought regarding all this, like, that arose while you were speaking. Like, if this is something the Buddha recommended, how could we and I'll leave it more as a question. What am I doing that's making the mind complacent, you know, and how am I shaking things up going out of my comfort zone or just trying new things are? How could that be kind of a parallel to that suggestion of the Buddha that actually in the spirit of is actually following the Buddha's recommendation to, to kind of get out there. Yeah, that's my final thought.
Host 1:32:34
This podcast is made by Dharma practitioners for Dhamma practitioners. Let me take a moment to tell you about our team who all bring technical skills along with their dedication to the Dhamma to this work. One sound engineer Martin combs is a composer and producer living in the Netherlands. The other darnay is a local Burmese sound engineer, who also helped us set up our recording studio. Zach Kessler is a Forest monk who lived in Myanmar that helps with content and Ken pranskey uses his considerable skills and editing to help with our scripted content. As for me, I've been exploring how the Buddhist teachings are carried out in Myanmar for the last decade. We are very fortunate as well, because to cut our costs as low as possible to allow us to produce as many episodes as we can at this quality level. Some members of our team are willing to work on this project as volunteers and others take only a very small fraction of their usual salary. 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