Transcript: Episode #283: Twelve Years in Burma

Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.

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Friedgard Lottermoser 0:04

Music. Well, I have several names, and when I became a Buddhist nun, which is an effort to lose yourself and reach Nirvana, instead of getting less names, I got more. So let's start so u ba Khin came to Europe, and my father was a German contact who looked after the whole group, and he was very much impressed about this strange person from the East. He came home to us and said, This is one of the miracles of the East, high ranking government officer who is also a saint. I got to know meditation after a few months in Burma, and we were supposed to be there six months, it became three and a half years, but I said more than 10 years. I went home to Germany only for six months. Very, very late. It changed my life, I must say, our first acquaintance with Burma as a country, it was simply wonderful and exciting.

1:09

May all beings be happy and May peace prevail in the World.

Kory Goldberg 2:00

Hi. So welcome everybody. I'm really excited to be here with my friend Joah to talk about the life of Friedgard Lottermoser. Joah has asked me to introduce this series of interviews and to help launch these conversations. And so Joah, I just want to thank you for having the foresight and taken the initiative to gather the life stories of Friedgard Lottermoser, who was also known as Anmar Khin by her Burmese friends, or by her ordination name, saminarie, a kin China. I met Friedgard about 20 years ago at Dhamma Giri, and had the good fortune to be a neighbor of hers for about a month or so in the residential quarters at the center, and she was such an intriguing storyteller with a formidable memory for detail, I'll never forget that I felt so privileged for All the stories that she shared and these interviews that that Joah has just conducted goes into such great detail and has really helped me relive so many of the old stories of her life and of U ba Kim. So I'm very, very fortunate and privileged to be here with Joah and to have listened to these these interviews, and so these interviews and other projects that will likely emerge from them will not only provide us with a biography of this extraordinary character so deeply steeped in the Dhamma, but will also offer us a unique and fuller picture of the meditation master Sayagyi U ba Khin and his foremost disciples who practiced with him at the International meditation center in Yangon during the 1950s and 60s. Sayagyi and his disciples, as most of the listeners here will know, have shaped the lives of millions of people today. The timing of these interviews with Friedgard is remarkable, as she passed away just a few months after they were completed. And I remember, Joah, you had shared with me her last message that she wrote to a group of Burmese friends, where she wrote, I was happy in Burma, and it changed my life. We are so fortunate that Friedgard trusted you, Joah, with her life changing stories in Burma, some of which we'll hear about in this first episode. So I just want to acknowledge that it's a real honor and privilege for me to be here with you today to launch. Launched this project detailing Friedgard reflections on history, culture, authoritarianism, civil disobedience and Vipassana meditation in modern Burma. Before we listen to this first interview, Joah, can you please help set the stage for what we're about to hear? Maybe just to begin, can you tell us a little bit about who she was and and how you got involved with her?

Host 5:26

Well, thank you, Kory for hosting this episode and having me on as a guest in this case, and thank you for that incredible introduction. I I got goosebumps, and I'm a bit emotional in how you've referenced her last words, and I'm getting a little bit choked up now, because I was also happy in Burma, and it also changed my life. And hers is quite a story to tell, and I was really honored to play some small part in being able to to get that story on record and to be able to hear from her, and now take the first step in bringing that story to the world at this point, to the inside Myanmar podcast. We've had well over 300 guests. We have something like 16 days of continuous interviews, if you listen to all of it. And yet nothing holds a candle to freed guard. She I tell people she was always something of my Moe be dick, something that I strove to want to hear from her. I first met free guard in 2016 when I was working on the meditators guide for Burma. And I had managed to through some extraordinary difficulty be able to make contact with her, because she was a very remote and hard person to be able to get in touch with. And we had, as I remember, eight hours of conversations, I think, one six hour conversation, one two hour conversation before I had the podcast, and as I took notes from those conversations, those those notes changed my life, hearing what she had to say blew my mind in every respect. And I didn't record it that was before the podcast program, but writing it down was remarkable, and from the day I got the podcast platform in 2019 she was the guest I wanted to have on, and I strove for years to again make contact with her, which, as a remote nun seeking liberation, was hard to do, and And it's not an exaggeration to say that I, I literally was sometimes in a kind of pain that with the thought that she might one day leave this world without her story being known in full, beyond what I had heard in those eight hours, and was driven To want to find some way to to to speak to her with her comfort level, of course, with the nature and philosophy of our platform is that people speak with their own agency and their own comfort level. There's no pushing, there's no gotcha moments, there's no deadlines, whatever conditions the guest sets we abide by. But I, I didn't want this remarkable woman to leave the world without her store of knowledge and experience being lost forever. And I would sometimes actually have pain, physical pain, thinking that this, this could happen one day. And amazingly, I was able to finally make contact with her last year again, and she agreed immediately to do this series of interviews, and realized that she had come across extraordinary figures at really remarkable times, and that her discussion and her exquisite memory of what she had lived through was knowledge that wasn't contained in the world, and that she felt a responsibility, a cautious responsibility, because with knowledge also comes danger, also comes a way of misunderstanding or disrupting knowledge. And so she was always very, very cautious and careful in what she told and how she told it. But she also realized there was a place for this knowledge, and she came to trust me as a conversation partner in being able to share this knowledge and have it respective and respected and maintained. In total, we recorded, I believe it's 25 hours of remote conversations and 10 hours of video conversations in Sri Lanka in March of this year. And all of these conversations were recorded with the condition that freed guard said there was only. One condition, and that was that none of this material could be published during her lifetime. And the reason for that is as she as you'll hear in these interviews, she was a student of Sayagyi U ba Khin, and in 1995 began to take courses under San Goenka, and took long courses, and came to feel that the long courses offered by S n Goenka were the closest equivalent to the meditation environment and practice, while not identical, the technique and the environment was the nearest similarity to what u ba Khin taught as anything in the world, and was very tremendously grateful that these centers and courses existed, and she knew that she was in the latter years of her life. And as mentioned, was striving for a better rebirth, or at minimum, and hopefully, some attainment or full liberation, and these long courses presented their her best chance of being able to reach these goals. And was concerned that her very honest recollections of certain parts of her early meditation journey under Sayagyi Ba Khin that certain things that she had witnessed or that she remembered or that she told would clash with the Goenka narrative and organization, and that she would be banned from doing further long courses. And so the reason that these talks were were held in the sort of confidentiality that she requested, and as mentioned on this platform, with our work in Burma, we deal regularly with certain levels of confidentiality, sometimes life or death situations and political, political matters individuals that have any number of conditions in order to talk to us. And we always abide by those, no matter what they are, no matter if we to what level we might understand them, we abide by them out of respect to the guest and her condition was that, in order to ensure that she was able to continue sitting long courses and not be on the record of saying something through her memory That would clash with or disrupt this narrative she wanted these conversations held in strict confidentiality until she passed which I was fine with. I at this point, I was simply a conversation partner and whether these conversations would eventually get out in five years or 10 years, hopefully as long as possible. I was in no rush to want to share them. I just felt enormous privilege in being able to sit across from her and hear them and know that every new minute of dialog that was recorded was another minute from her extraordinary life and experience and memory that was preserved, and I hope that we would have many more of these hours. And so the conversations went on like this, and you referenced how I was fortunate to have this project completed just in the time the short time before she sadly passed away. I am very fortunate that we got as many hours as we did. I wouldn't go so far to say that the project was completed. We had talks and plans of meeting regularly in Sri Lanka, continuing the remote recordings, and even in 35 hours of conversations, there were major parts of her life that we barely touched upon that were quite important. It's just a testament to how really unbelievably rich and full this life was. But we have what we have, and I feel so fortunate to have that. As listeners will begin with the 90 minutes that that follow here, and it's a transition for me in going from being a conversation partner, where my only role was to ask questions and to prompt and to explore, to listen, think and reflect, and now finding myself In this role of storyteller, where I'm now transitioning to taking what she said and wanting to share it with the world. And this has taken some time. I'm this is why we started in the first place, and I'm so amazed, really, that these conversations that our small group has been holding and cherishing for for these these months that then now be something public for everyone that's that's extraordinary, but it's also something of an emotional transition in in going from simply appreciating how wonderful these talks were to realizing this role and now trying to. To do my best, to play my part in sharing it to this wider world and doing right by, by what was said and what was learned, and bringing it out.

Kory Goldberg 15:11

Well, thanks for sharing that. Joah, that's that's really fascinating. And yes, you're right. The the interviews were not complete. They're far from complete. I think we got a lot of great material around her meditation practice and the tradition, but yeah, there was obviously lots of elements of her life that were left out, and especially she did have a role in helping reinstate the Bhikkhuni Sangha, although she herself never went beyond a seminary, I believe she did have a role in that movement, and I know that was Something that you were hoping to capture, and hopefully there's enough people who are in her life who are very close with her, who you'll be able to interview to get a broader picture of who this fantastic person was. Do you think you could just provide us a little bit of a general overview of who Friedgard was. Can you just tell us a little bit more about her life? So that will help us really help the listeners really have some context in which to locate these interviews.

Host 16:38

Yeah, so Friedgard was born in Nazi Germany, and sometime after the war ended, obviously growing up in a country that was really devastated by the war, and her father died. Soon after, her mother remarried, she had a stepfather, and her stepfather, when free guard was a girl, had some position where he became the European contact for a Burmese delegation that a Burmese state delegation that visited looking at government business in Europe, and he was in charge of organizing their trip. One member of this delegation was the government minister Sayagyi u ba Khin in the administration, and therein, a friendship was formed. A very close friendship was formed by her stepfather organizing the only time that u ba Khin ever left Burma. And so when he was looking for a new job, when Friedgard was 17, he ended up accepting employment at the Fritz Werner Corporation in Rangoon, as it was at the time, and they lived on the military compound. Fritz Werner was involved in making weapons, but also in many other types of goods as well, as she explains in this very episode, when she was 17 years old, she sat she visited Sayagyi u begin center, international Meditation Center, and her U ba Khin was desperately trying to recruit her stepfather to set a course because they were very close friends and to no avail. At the end, stepfather never joined, but Friedgard did, and she fell in love with the practice and ended up dedicating her life to her master, Sayagyi, and learning under him, and through this association, learning about Burmese Buddhism and Burma itself and the Burmese language. And so she lived in Burma from 1959 to 1972 one must remember that Ne Win launched a coup in 1962 and so it was extremely unusual for foreigners, especially Westerners, to be in Burma after 1962 and indeed, her whole family left, that she stayed behind. How she managed to stay is quite a story which she'll get into, and it's another testament of her resilience, stubbornness, in a way, determination to just keep knocking on doors until they open, and that's how she ended up with the life that she had she in This time, she learned Burmese language. She studied Burmese scholarship. She got degrees in Rangoon University and Mandalay University, and she not only continued her tutelage under Sayagyi Ba Khin and spending what would amount to years at IMC, I think it's actually an open question to compare the time that she spent at IMC and San Goenka himself. She certainly spent quite a long time at the center, as you start to realize the story she's telling, at one point sitting 100 days when the coup happened, partly out of safety and partly to practice, but she also became close to. Webu Sayadaw and tu Maha Gandhi and Sayadaw other extraordinary figures in Myanmar that very few foreigners have had contact with. She then left Burma in 1971 and at that time believed that she would never really properly meditate again, because this was a time in the world when if you wanted to practice Vipassana meditation, it was really rooted to geographical destinations to physical places. It's hard to imagine that today, but as she left Burma, the worldwide mindfulness movement was just taking off. Of course, Goenka, but also many of the other U begin teachers of Robert hover and Ruth Dennison and John Coleman, among others. And so she was at the ground floor of this Vipassana meditation movement when no one really knew what they were doing, but everyone was trying and being traveling around, trying to help these courses get off the ground, having correspondence letters with these emerging teachers, and as someone who had spent so much time in Burmese environments, not just brief touches or even extended touches, but really years and decades of life, she was able to impart her knowledge of these Burmese Buddhist sites meditation to help foster this growing mindfulness movement. So she was at the ground floor of what has now become an industry and a vocation and something that has really changed Western society in our lives. She was at the start of that. And then, of course, there's her scholarship. She became a bona fide scholar in her own right, and wrote extensively about in Burmese, the patana and and beyond that also, as you say, in promoting the Bhikkhuni order and gender equality in the Sangha. Sadly, these two topics are not topics we had the time in our 35 hours to go into in the kind of depth that I would have liked these were both next on the discussion list to be able to understand what she did in these fields. And that's something that we will, as you say, have to go to other people to learn about. And then when the 2021 coup happened in Myanmar, she was fervently on the side of the revolution, and in no uncertain terms, was a fierce advocate for Burmese freedom at all costs, someone who had come out of Nazi Germany, who had nearly been killed, and as she'll tell in one story, the 1962 ne wink who had seen countless friends and colleagues and monks and nuns that whose lives were were were lost in some way to the stupidity, as she calls it, the stupid, stupid brutality of these Burmese regimes. Over the years, she also saw this worldly battle of tyranny and freedom, and was very, very socially engaged on the side of freedom, and in spite of all of this. And so there's these extraordinary themes of scholarship, of gender equality in the sangha of the mindfulness revolution, kicking off this freedom versus tyranny. And then there was her experience in Burma. And when I try to tell someone what this story was in a snapshot. I usually say, Do you know the book and the movie Seven Years in Tibet? This is kind of like the Burmese version of Seven Years in Tibet. It's 11 years, 1213, years, whatever it is in Burma, but the part of her life where she's this, this young Western girl, all by herself, no family after the coup has left in these environments that no Westerner ever set foot in, that she's living in for years, for years upon years with Masters who had never met another Westerner having mastered the language and immersed herself in the meditation. And yet despite this, some of these topics of Burma, the political history of the growth of the mindfulness movement, of the Goenka tradition of gender equality, etc, in the Sangha, etc. Despite these, these themes which are so important to now, to societies and communities and to scholars, free guard is virtually an unknown person, and yet she has this tremendous memory of a life that you couldn't dream up, that was lived and somehow is unknown to everyone, to scholarship, to the Goenka tradition, to those who have cared about Burma and who have studied Burma, is a virtual unknown in every sector. And so this is, you hear me getting a little a little worked up about my, my affection and my, my feeling coming out for here. But this is, this is as brief as I can go and giving a bit of a snapshot.

Kory Goldberg 24:57

Thanks. Yeah, that that was, that was excellent. That was a great background to her life. And she, as you said, she really did have this tremendous memory. And so everything that you you just outlined, will be able to to hear directly from here in your conversations with her, the Listen, it'll be impossible for the listener not to recognize her, her vivid descriptions of the homes she stayed in, or the food she ate, the people she encountered at university or in elite social settings, or the meditation centers with Burmese military officials the expat community her her ability to to recount the smallest of details is truly wonderful and And we're really lucky to have this. So I think now, should we listen to the first episode?

Host 26:05

Let's do it.

Friedgard Lottermoser 26:12

Well, I have several names, and when I became a Buddhist nun, which is an effort to lose yourself and reach nibbana. Instead of getting less names, I got more. So let's start the name with which I was born is Friedgard, Lotter Moser Heinz lotterwood was my father. And I was born in 1942 in Germany, in Berlin, and my name would have been a boy and names of Helmut, but since I was a girl, my parents had to look for a name in a hurry. It was in the middle of World War Two, so they wanted a rare name, and one connected with peace. So they choose Friedgard, because Frieden and garden that is a area that a fenced area in which peace rules in the middle of World War Two. So I have been fried la Joah. I still am. It's still my passport name. But when I came to Burma at the age of 17 and a half. In 1900 59 the Burmese couldn't pronounce these names, and so they gave me a Burmese name, and that is Omar Khin, a Burmese name. And then I went to a monastery, and the monk said, Khin is not a layman, a name. You should call yourself Omar. That is a nun's name. And then many years later, in 2008 I really became a nun with a robe and with ordination as a seminary. And I choose this name akin China, because a kinsna means not nothing, having nothing, not clinging to anything. So as far as names, that is me,

Host 28:05

Well, thank you for introducing yourself and by whatever name you go by and we call you, it is an absolute honor and privilege to have you on here. In the many years since we've had a podcast platform, having the privilege to talk to you was at the very top of the list. We talked for many hours before I had a podcast. The conversation was not recorded. I took notes, and that went into a guidebook that I was writing for meditators coming to the country during the transition period, and myself and the small team I was working with were just so educated and inspired by what you were saying, and a drive to want to bring your story to more people. And so it's been a long journey. Here we are now for the start of what I hope is a series of conversations, and I'm just humbled and overjoyed that we have the chance to talk and to be able to bring your voice directly and adulterated to our listeners, who will also be able to learn from your voice and your stories. So let's start with that right away. You have a lot to share, but let's start with, as you say, 17 and a half years old, 1959, you went with your family to live in Rangoon, as it was called then. So can you take us there and describe what brought your family to Rangoon, what your initial impressions were, what your life was like, and those and just what it was like living in Rangoon in those days.

Friedgard Lottermoser 29:35

Well, I was born during the war. I born in Berlin, but I spent my early childhood in East Germany because that is my grandmother's home. And when I was 10 years so I was separated from both my parents from the age to five to 10, staying with the grandmother, and then I was taken to West Germany. So. And there was only my mother and my four sisters. My father was no longer there, and then my mother married again when I was 15, and when I went, when we went to Burma, they she was married already for two years, but she didn't have a home to live together with her new husband because he was an engineer, and his work had to be in big cities like Berlin or Frankfurt, because he was doing international engineering. And my mother was a medical doctor, and she had to stay in the town where her patients were. So they tried me various things to get together as a family in the same place, and that means my stepfather was looking for a new job, trying to get a salary that is high enough to support his wife and his newly acquired daughters. And so he got in touch with a firm, and that had business with Burma, and during the trial period, he had was given the task to look after a Burmese Government delegation that came to Germany. And in this Buddhist in this government delegation, there was Uber Khin. So U ba Khin came to Europe, and my father was a German contact who looked after the whole group, and he was very much impressed about this strange person from the East. He came home to us and said, This is one of the miracles of the East high ranking government officer who is also a saint. And then he was successful, and the firm employed him. And the first thing he was given is he was asked to go to Burma. So since there, it was an opportunity. He took the three younger children and my mother, but the two older ones, they were already university students. So we came to Burma as a family of five, father, mother and three daughters. But the people didn't know that proto Kerner is not our real father, it's only our stepfather. They were called us by his name. And at that time, in 1959 that was continuing to Germany, it was an absolute miracle. I was in school and had finished. I was in 12th standard. The school had more than 1000 pupils, and not one of them had been outside Europe. We were the only first ones, so we were full of expectations, and then we took a ship from Germany, a train to to Italy. In January in Italy, we took a ship through the Suez Canal to Bombay at that time. Now it's called Mumbai. And then we took a we stayed a few days there with Germans who worked for Siemens, and then we took a plane to Yangon. At that time, Rangoon in Burma. It was in the middle of, in the middle of, at the beginning of November, the ship took two weeks. And then I thought, Oh, this orient like, you know, 1001 Nights, colorful things, nice flowers. And when we come to stay in Burma, I looked outside and there were some trees full of dust, no flowers at all, because it was a wrong season. And then we were given a house, but that was not quite ready, because the previous person who worked for this firm had been a bachelor, and his family consisted of his dog. So now there came a family man with with five people in the family, and he had to create the rooms which in which we were to leave, and they were just a little late, so we stayed with some Germans who gave us a bed to sleep and so on. And then we lived in this beautiful, old Chinese palace that was built by English men during the colonial days. The ground floor was brick, the upstairs was a tower with three stories made of wood with stairs. And we had one neighbor who was a army man with his family. And it was on the shores of Lake India in in Rangoon, on a peninsula. It was a military compound there, but the military was quite far away, and it was just on the lake. It had, it had a boat, a boat house, we could use the boat. So my father's term was originally half a year. It was extended to three years, and he stayed in Burma with for three and a half years together with. Younger sisters and my mother and my elder sisters also came to visit for shorter periods, but I got to know meditation after a few months in Burma, and it was simply through the fact that my stepfather met Webu Khin in Germany, which led to our Rangoon, and we were supposed to be there six months. It became three and a half years, but I said more than 10 years. I went home to Germany only for six months. Very, very late. It changed my life, really.

Host 35:38

That's that's a great opening introduction to set the stage and understand the context of what brought you there and your initial life. Definitely want to go into more your meditation and your relationship with some of these great meditation teachers and figures that you would spend time with along the way before we get there, I wonder if you could just paint a picture of Rangoon at the time in Burma, as it was known then, in general, as you arrived in 59 you would stay for 10 years. These were very pivotal and tumultuous years after in the post independence era and a lot of infighting the parliamentary democracy period, as it's known, leading to the coup. There were a lot of things going on, Cold War as well. But just from the point of view of a teenager, as you were at the time, and someone in their early 20s, can you describe what it was like living and being as an expatriate in the country, in the city at that time.

Friedgard Lottermoser 36:43

Okay, my stepfather had been to Pakistan twice as an engineer before he married my mother, and so he had shown taking pictures. He visited us. He showed us these pictures. He's he brought bought carpets from Pakistan and all that. And he had a certain experience on how to live in Asia, so he taught us what to expect in Rangoon. But of course, there's a difference, a big difference, between Pakistan and Burma, and we, my sister, younger sister and me, we were just full of expectations, and we knew nothing, but we just thought it was a great chance. And my experience is that I was there for two weeks, looking and I wasn't quite sure whether I was there or not. It was like a dream, but it was not at all what I expected. And it was silent. The whole environment, of course, normal life going on, but the general air, you know, compared to Germany. And then after two weeks, suddenly I opened my eyes. Oh, wonderful, wonderful, interesting. And the thing is, I had they, we were asked to go to university, and I was in 11th. I was in 12th standard. That is very close to high school final in Germany, which is after 13 degrees. But the university was actually not quite fitted, because the Burmese used the British system. So we were allowed at the university, but I lost some of the things, and it was at the end of the academic year. So the first experience was that I went to this university for pre medical and it was science, which was my weak subject, because I was a very good student. And so I thought, I'm weak in science. I should learn that so I will remove that wickedness. But I went there and it was all in English, and it was physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, for pre medical, compulsory English and compulsory Burmese. We got exception because we didn't know any Burmese, my sister and me. So my sister went there for one week. Then she said, I want to go home to Germany. I can understand what the teacher says. She's two years younger. Now, I didn't say I can't understand what the teacher says. I tried because my English was somewhat better, but I went there for two months, and particularly, I remember how we went into the laboratory, or the chemistry we had to do, titration, mixing an acid with a base, and it is a salt, or you take the salt and then you add it, and you have to weigh it, and all that. We did that every day, but I didn't really understand what I was doing there. And so after then, where there was a period of private study, so I tried very hard. I cut up one frog that was important, and when I cut the frog, I found that he was not dead. His heart was still beating. But anyhow, that's the only time I dissected any animal that was not quite dead. So then I passed the set for the examination. I failed in all subjects except English and botany. That was a devastating experience for me. So I was glad it was finished. And then I started to learn Burmese. At first, I learned from our drivers. We had several cars given by the military because we lived in the military compound, and it was very far to walk, even to the main road, which is Kaba Road in Rangoon. So we had these cars, and we had to in the morning, we had to discuss with our stepfather what we had to do and who would take which car. So I learned the Burmese from the from the servants first. And then I discovered there is a free class Burmese instruction at the Ramakrishna Mission in central Rangoon. So I went there and we learned the letters. And remember the first letters, they were all circles. And but during that time, I was getting very interested in this country, but not so much about Buddhism, but just the country itself. Yeah. But then, then it was my long holiday, and I had failed, so I was sort of not very happy, but so I enjoyed my my holidays very much, and I wanted to do something that would make me feel good. And then while we while I went to this class at Ramakrishna Mission in the month of March, I saw the video on the way back. It was getting dark. And then I remember that when we first came, oh, yes, I have forgotten that u ba Khin invited us to visit our his center soon after our arrival, even before we moved into our own quarters. That means it was the full moon of November, the Light Festival, the sound Dine, Light Festival, and we visit the center in the in the evening. And I thought it was a party, because we got my parents received a printed invitation on which was written to Dr Kerner and Mrs. Kerner and family invited on the occasion of the full moon light festival and so on. The two in yam Yang, 31 a international Meditation Center. I thought it was a party, so I dressed my party dress and my high heeled shoes, which I had just, just recently got, and I couldn't walk in it properly. And we went to the meditation center, which had a garden, and we had to climb the stairs and all that. And at that occasion, that was in November. On that occasion, my parents promised they would take the course, but my mother said, I have to learn more English. She was very weak in English. And so then afterwards, we got settled and rang on it was, we forgot about it. And then in no in March, after the experience, a disappointing experience at the University, I remembered it, and I said, Oh, should have gone full moon meditation course. And then I realized because they had told me when the courses are the first Friday and every month, and then I realized beginning of March, and today is Thursday, so tomorrow is Friday, and the meditation starts. So while I was in the car, I asked the driver, Moe Suu, do you remember where we went when we were new here, we went to this meditation center. Do you know where it is? And he said, Yes. So then I said, Can you find it? I want to go there before you take me home. So we were at a cocaine road just about Bahan, and then he went to the in yam Yang through these lanes. At that time, I didn't know how to go, but the driver knew. So then I came there, and I walked up. I was by myself, and walking up, it was already dark, but not early in the evening. And so I came and saw two people sitting there two ladies, and I said, Well, is it the meditation course starting tomorrow? Yes, I want to come. And then they looked at me, and they said, Yes, oh, yes, you can come. But can Are you coming alone? I said, Yes, can I not come alone? Then they said, Well, you better ask at home whether someone else from the family comes along with you. Apparently they thought I was quite young to come there by myself alone, which, of course, I didn't think I was very young, you know, like teenagers are. And so I finished this tomorrow. Vis. Start the meditation course. I went down. The driver took me home, and people were sitting at the suburb in our house with the tower on top, you know. And so I said, Oh yes. Well, I've been to this meditation center, and tomorrow the meditation is starting, and I want to go. And they asked me to please request you, whether any one of you wants to come along. And then my father said, Well, tomorrow, I have to work. And my younger sisters didn't know anything about it because they hadn't been on this invitation. My parents took away only me. And then my mother said, we made, promised it, and I think my English is still not very good, but it won't get any much better, because I'm not already here several months. So my mother decided she would come and next, next morning, we went in a hurry, quite unprepared, and we started with the meditation. Yeah, but I must say, our first acquaintance with Burma as a country, it was simply wonderful and exciting. And of course, there were many foreigners there, and my father had his previous acquaintance with the Indian Pakistani stuff. So in his business, he had to do with foreigners and with Burmese and his firm cooperated with the military. That is why we had were given quarters in the military compound.

It is was, in fact, very close to to weapons factory number one, which is of ka ba E. It is in the vicinity of what is nowadays the Inya Lake Hotel. At that time the India Lake Hotel was being built, and we called it the Russian gift hotel, because it's gifted by Russian but for the Germans, of course, it was a secret joke, because gift in German means poison. So if the German says a Russian gift hotel, it means in German, Russian poison. But when it was finished, it was named in Lake Hotel. Yes, so and I had, then, by the time I went to meditation, I had had the experience of attending the pre Medical College, which is in Yangon. It's a suburb of Rangoon. At that time, off pagoda road, there were some buildings which were, which were the living quarters staff men raised from institution called ubery union of Burma research. Well, they were doing some scientific research there. And later, when I continued with my Burmese studies, one of the young man who was employed there had a German wife, and my father engaged him to give me private Tun in Burmese language for quite a while after paying him, and they sent him a car. He came to our house, and every morning we had one war of Burmese. So we even came visited these hubery facilities, and they permitted us to paint some pots with which they were experimenting, Clay flower pots. And I know I painted one with gore. And my sister also came along, and they were given to us as gifts. And they were researching on what how to use rice bran in a better way for its nutritious content and whatever. Yeah, so it took me several years to enter into the understanding the Burmese and I had the feeling for several years, at least three years, that I was peeling like an onion, taking out one layer, what is below that, taking out another layer, what is below that, for several years, until I get the feeling that I know more or less what the Burmese society is like, and I could observe that my family members did not have this experience because they didn't mix with the Burmese to the same extent as I did. My younger sister went to the international school, so all her classmates were mostly not Burmese. They were other foreigners who his parents worked in Rangoon. My father was in his business world. And his business world were, they were either army officers or rich people. And at that time, the rich people in Rangoon were mostly Chinese or Indian. There are not many Burmese. And my mother, she was at home, of course. I. Did the shopping, she looked after the household, but then later, since she is a medical doctor, she found a hospital where she could work free of charge. So then she decided to go there a few days every week, and she started to learn Burmese, like what she has to ask the patient, do you have fever? Do we have some archaic and so on. I had to teach her by that time, it was after we were there one year. But the main thing that it was such a quiet society. You know, when you see the girls walking on the road, they would be gentle, they would be pretty. They would wear flowers in their hair, and particularly at the university, they had all very nice earrings and jewelry, necklace and so on. And I looked at the faces. I couldn't distinguish the faces. I didn't know who it is. I had to memorize the earrings, the girl wearing such and such earring that is so and so, because I wasn't used to the type of faith. But I went along. Well, I invited two of the university students to our house, even when I was still at this pre medical facility. But meditation made a long a big change to me, because I did well in the meditation, and they encouraged me. And then I went repeatedly, and they were all Burmese. I was the only foreigner there. Of course, the first course, I was together with my mother. But in the first meditation course, even on the first day, I had been the day before and on Thursday. And then when we came on Friday, we were given the house in which there were two people before, which later I discovered it is actually the house in which sometimes U ba Khin rested during lunch time, and where Mother Selma used to live with her companion on the female side, and was the only house that had attached bathroom, and they had emptied that because they had two foreign meditators, and there was a two beds with mosquito net, and there was a table and chairs for us to eat there. And when we had our first meal during the first meditation course, I looked around and I saw there are some more houses in which also women live or meditate, and one of these houses had a roof made of leaves. So I looked at these leaves, oh, I said, I said, Can I not live stay in that house, which is a roof of leaves? And I said it. And then they sort of, they talked a little bit about it. And then they said, Well, you want to stay with your mother, ask your mother. And my mother said, No, this is a nice house. I don't want to stay in that other house. So my mother stayed alone in this comfortable house with a bathroom, and I went into that house, which actually they were sleeping on the floor. And it was meant for many people, but actually it was empty at the time, because it was two the other one, they were meditating woman in this this one was the leaf roof. It was the lesser one. The other had corrugated iron roof. And I was alone there, and just because I wanted to leave there, they called another teenager who had already meditated to keep me company so I wouldn't be sleeping there alone. And then after on the same day, but a little later, there came a lady who attended the first meditation course. She was also, it was also her first course, I think it was yes, and she had a servant with her, and that is, she was a film actress and a society lady. Anyhow, I had my camping experience with in the house with the roof leaf with the leaves on, and my mother had her thing. And but, of course, we met, and it was, there was no formal No, no formal teaching. During the meditation course, we given the schedule. Start meditation, five o'clock, and then so on. Get up, light time, lunch time, breakfast time, lunch time, rest time. Then in the evening, there was a break, but the teaching was simply by asking, talking to the teacher and asking questions for these two foreigners, my mother and me and what that's the normal format. When U ba Khin taught foreigners, he didn't have many together, and if there were many, then it would be husband or advice or his preferences there in a group of C, including the sister in law and so on, not more than that. So the Burmese came in a group. So when I knew the center better, then and lube Khin was also busy after I had taken. Many, many courses I learned Burmese actually to understand what Uber Khin was teaching to the others when he was not speaking specifically to me. But what I remember about the General, General Burmese Rangoon environment is particularly we have my my parents used to take a lot of photographs. And there were so many Indians, different types, you know, these Ismaili Muslims, who the women wear two skirts and one skirt they put over their head. No, not like this. Sorry, they they were all there. But when the when the military seized power. Then they had anti foreign policy. So gradually these people disappeared. But it is it was only in 62 that the living took power.

So by that time, it was in March, 62 by so by that time, I had been in Burma already two years and a half. So it's not my first experience. And when we came that I think that care, caretaker government was still in place. And then there were elections, and new warned them. We were in Rangoon during that time. And so when unu reigned between these elections, I think they must have been in 1960 Yeah, and then before the he was the N took the power, that was the time, the last democratically elected Government of Burma. And I was already at the university. And then my eldest sisters had also come. So my eldest sister, she worked one year at agh Rangoon General Hospital, volunteering as a nurse. That was beneficial to her education. She had finished her the her training, but this was a practical thing she could use before earning money in Germany, and she enjoyed it immensely. She was very happy in Burma. She was determined to come back. And she got friends with some doctors at the university, which she invited at the hospital, that she invited to our home for social occasions, and we played with them. We did sketches and we did songs and all sorts. I think we even had a party then we could swim, because it was near the lake. And so one of the doctors He was friendly with was a Shan so he had other Shan friends. So there were actually two Shans that came often to our house, and when I was at the University, later, when I stayed in the hospital, I got to know some San women, female students. And if you know one San, you get to know lots. And so I also got to know Karens at the university, because the currents mostly were better in English, so they I could speak to them more easily. My first three friends at the university that was in Ba Si College in ti Dun, the intermediate number one, which I joined then in June 1960 after I had already done several meditation courses. And the first one, it was a Koran, an Anglo Burmese and a Chinese woman, three student friends. They were the first ones that I met regularly at the university. And then later a little I found out if I want to improve my Burmese. And in the Pali class, I took Pali because I wanted after meditation. I didn't want any science anymore. I wanted to know mostly about Burmese culture, but I didn't know the language. I only could speak of a few words and a few sentences, so I couldn't take compulsory Burmese. But they had offered in the field of Burmese culture, they could either take Burmese language or Pali in Burmese or Buddhism in Burmese. So I was at a loss, because I can't teach the subject that follow the subject that I taught in Burmese. And I found out that they had the possibility to teach Pali also in English. So I said, Can I take Pali in English? And then, because of that, they installed the English section for teaching, teaching Pali in English. I was the only student. And in the Burmese, yes, and in the Burmese section there were about 40 students. So after I had a few lessons, there was a boy from the Burmese section switching to the English section. So then we were two of us there for several years. I think he was only coming because there was a foreign woman, and he was interested in this girl. Anyhow, the interest was not me. Mature. So we sat side by side, side by side, and studied Bali. But in the case of Buddhism, they didn't have a teacher, so I couldn't take Buddhism, unfortunately. And so then, being at the university, I found out if I want to improve my Burmese had this private class in the Ramakrishna Mission. I didn't learn much. It was free, but they taught very little. There are lots of Indians living there, but the teacher didn't really you didn't learn very much. So later, I went to the Burma America Institute in Rangoon that had a good facility for learning Burmese, and they had a textbook, which at that time later, it was revised and published. It was written by an American scholar who by the name of Corning W, Corning, C, O, R, N, y, N, and it was typed cyclo side, you know, with wax mattresses and made into a book. Later it was printed, but that was a real good book for speaking Burmese. It used San scripture and the letters were not used, but it gave me good material, and also explanation of the grammar, yeah, okay. But then privately at the university, I got got to friends who were not so good in English, so I had to speak them mixed Burmese English, by and by, improved in this way. Yeah. But that is why, then, when the military cease power and 62 I was already a university student at at a university hostel, and that was simply because I didn't want, I wanted to leave my family because, well, after a while, the meditation said it was shown that the meditation and living in the military environment didn't really match much very well, because it's so close to this. And these soldiers used to come to our house also, but the I must say, the soldiers, that men I met in our home, that which were connected with the business my father did. Most of them were captains who were, some very connected with this number one factory. They were quite different from what I hear about the military nowadays. I remember that they were invited then, and they were offered drinks. And of course, my father, my stepfather, didn't drink much. He had a beer once in a while for lunch. And he said, In the tropics, I follow. He followed the good English colonial habit, alcohol only after sunset. So but he had, of course, to offer. And so when the Burmese soldiers came, some of them took alcohol, but many of them asked for a soft drink. I have told this to young people nowadays in Burma, they don't believe me, but it's true. It's true. And so when my stepfather, before he went to Burma, he said, of course, we deal with the military. But this military, they have already a weapons factory. Now they want to produce civilian goods, and they had to build this number one factory, weapons factory, in which Fritz Werner was also concerned. And then they had built BPI. And BPI is just a pharmaceutical Institute which makes medical things, and it's still existing. It's very successful, but they were finished. And when, when my stepfather came, they had a project opposite Pro, which is now BA, at a place called sin. We call it, of course, sin there because we didn't know, but in Burmese language, it means dead elephant. Sin elephant, they die. And it is mentioned in the Glass Palace Chronicle, because there is an old Burmese legend that the king chased an elephant, which was very dangerous, and then he finally killed it at that place. And quite close to is there's also a big pagoda on the mountain top, which, of course, we saw at the time. But when we went there, it was actually, it was like the dunes, they're like, it was on this on the edge of the irawad River, but so so much sand. It was a sand and this large pagoda, and I didn't know it was a historical pagoda at that time. It's not a pagoda, it's a buddha image, sending image, and it was established by the famous king Shin sin Putin. Sin Putin, that is the third monarch of the goenbaum dynasty, the second son of the founder. And he was a great warrior. He. He won everywhere.

And he made this Buddha image after he had come back from from Thailand. And I think he was the one who destroyed a UT. So then he arranged it, but it is just opposite prome, and at that time it was just nothing. But of course, now the factory is functioning, and I've recently read somewhere in the internet that Burma has 50 or 60 other weapons factories, so they don't even need to import ammunition, because they have enough in their own country. When the coup happened in March 1962 I was a hostel student in the University hostel with all women only, and it was locked after dark, and there was a roll call calling the names that all the women were there, and that's simply because they were all young, unmarried women far from home, and if there has no security, the parents wouldn't be allow them to stay there, in case some they would misbehave with some young men, you know, and it was locked. So in the morning, when this gate was open and there was a compound, and there came a lady who sold some things, that means flowers and some snacks. But the flowers were two kinds, one to put in your hair, like roses or jasmine strands, and then some other larger flowers that were meant to be offered to Buddha. And you could also get the newspaper. So on one certain day in March, I saw the newspaper in English, The Guardian, and it was writing that the government had changed overnight. That's it. And there was one person killed, according to the papers, that was the young son of saw shred Thai. And so that is the only thing we saw. Nothing about, no. And then, of course, when I had a problem later, I asked them. Asked at the meditation center, I said, Now we have a military government. And then during a new time, they had this movement to make Buddhist the state religion. No, and that also I asked. And apparently, amongst the Burmese, it wasn't clear that this making Buddhist the state religion would create such problems with the Christian minorities simply because they were not educated enough to see the country as a whole. But I had a lot of doubts, even though I was favorable to meditation and very enthusiastic about Buddhism, and I became a Buddhist during that time, also about one year after meditation. So it would be in 61 that was before the coup. But whether it should be the state religion, that's a different thing. So I didn't hear a single voice in Rangoon that it shouldn't be the state religion. So when the military power it was, of course, because they said it is because the minorities, starting with this Shan saw boss collected and they wanted to break up the union, because they had the clause in the Constitution that they were permitted that after 10 years of independence, and then they would break up. And so the army had to step in, and that's why they took it took at that time they took into prison most of the San so was, I think, almost all, and then all the members of parliament, without exception. So the last coup, they didn't take all okay, it doesn't, let's talk about those signs. But the general trend in the family, in the country, was, oh, well, if the if the lay government is civilian, government is so corrupt, and if they can't solve the problems of the countries because there are so many insurgents, then let's try. Maybe they give a good government. Because the government of the turkey, it caretaker government was good. The soldiers were honest and well meaning and not so corrupt as they became later. The corruption, I think, came in when they introduced the Burmese way to socialism, because that made everybody poor, and then you would try ba hoop and crook and so on. But in 62 it was different. It only came very gradual, gradually.

Host 1:09:39

I do want to ask you had mentioned before you took your first meditation course, that before you found your interest in Buddhism, you said that you were starting to become really fascinated by Burmese society and people, and getting really into it in ways that your family wasn't well.

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:09:57

I think simply I was. Young, and it was something strange, and I had lots of time, because I was in the phase where you get educated. My stepfather was also very interested in Burma, but he had to run his business, and then my mother had to do the household, and her profession is medicine. So then she started to treat patients.

Host 1:10:23

And then, after the 1962 coup, of course, Ne Win, kicked out all kinds of foreigners that were there, foreign companies, foreign schools, missionaries, etc. Yes. What happened to you and your family?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:10:35

Yeah, exactly. It. I would have had to leave the university in 1962 because the system was changed. It was at that time, and I got a scholarship from the Burmese government just before the coup. No, I applied for it under the new government, but the letter had that it had been granted came under the military government, and because the military government had given me a scholarship to study Pali in Burma, they couldn't throw me out of the university. I see, huh, normally, if I didn't get this scholarship, I would have to leave, because all the others, even the people were built were born in Burma, but who had an Indian passport and were university students, they all had to leave. And all these chance, and I really, I knew quite a lot of chance, particularly after becoming a hospital hostel student. I had this friend who was a Karen. Her parents lived in insane but she was a hostel student, just my neighbor, the female there were three female university hostels, Mala Hall and theory hall that were on near prom road, and the other one, Inya hall that was near Inya road on the other side of the university compound. So my current friend was in was in theory Hall. And in the same hostel there was a Shan friend, and she was friendly with them. And so through this chan friend, she from, and in our hostel there were two girls, both of them from Taung and then remotely related, because if they are so so that means they are related to some SOPA. Then they are all intermarried. You know the 3030 37 San principalities, right?

Host 1:12:31

So I just want to paint a picture for our audience to understand this context. It's 1962 you're halfway around the world, living in Burma. It's just been taken over by a military dictatorship that is going to get more corrupt and more brutal as the years and decades go on.

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:12:49

My father worked for Fritz Werner, and he stayed for half a year, and he was successful, so then they gave him the normal contract, which lasts three years. That was not planned when we first came there, but they did more and more business, particularly after the coup. Fritz Werner, did more business with the military than before, because kind of business was that well, the military started to throw out all the foreigners that started with the Roman Catholic missionaries and nationally in the schools, but they also throughout the British firms and any foreign firms or they, they forced them to make joint ventures with the with some Burmese people. And Fritz Werner was there and was was making the contact between the Burmese side and the foreign firm that had to leave, and they got paid for that. So that's what my father did many times. I don't know a certain percentage, but I don't know the details which, but all these well, it wrote Rowan company, where the foreigners bought their household goods. That's a shop in apartment store in downtown Rango, not so far from Suu pagoda road and other things. I mean, even BOC and all. There were lots of British, British firms, and not all of them had to leave. And other firms, like, for instance, my there was a Swedish med factory in Mandalay. The this later it became the father in law of my younger sister. But she met her husband at the age of 15 in Rango, and he was the same age at the same International School. So my father said to us privately, because even and Aung, they came to our house, sometimes I have never met them, because we were the children. I mean, these were important people, so we were not we asked to keep out of sight. So. But my father later told me that only when even put Aung Zi into prison, then he thought there's something fishy here.

Host 1:15:11

And so how long did your did your stepfather and your family stay after the coup?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:15:17

About a year?

Host 1:15:19

And how did your life change? How did the life of of your family and your friends and yourself change after 1962?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:15:27

I think not at all at the beginning, because, because I went into this university hostel before the coup, and it was very difficult to get into it, because it was over every room but two students, and the room was only 10 feet square, or something like this, you can just put, put in two beds, and then two small tables, and then there was a door and two small windows, so three people, it was actually impossible. You would have to have two courts for two, for three, to sleep in, and then very spare, but I managed after because I really wanted to leave home. I was very unhappy. It was too much trouble with my parents, my whole family, being against the meditation, you know, and I wasn't happy. And then u ba Khin also said, Well, this, you better stop meditation. That's too difficult. Khin came to visit us at this military compound. He were really, he really took trouble to get my father interested. He thought that he has to power on me. But my father was not responding at the time. But I think because he was just involved in in managing his new situation. No, that is why even I was going to tell you that u ba Khin gave bought the book birds of Burma for my father, a very expensive a very expensive present. Well, my father said, Well, you know, I went to town today to the SO and SO bookshop, I think other bookshop that was the biggest bookshop on Suu pagoda Road in that time. And there I saw met Uber Khin that he came back, and then he said, I looked at the at the book, book birds of Burma, because where we lived on in their lake, there were so many birds, and he liked to watch them in the morning, before, after getting up from his window. And then we did a swim in the lake. And only then they had breakfast. And then later, you know what Uber Khin met after he did after my father had left the shop because my father said, Well, this book is so expensive, I thought I shouldn't spend the money. And then u ba Khin had seen that my father was interested it and didn't buy it. And U ba Khin went it, bought it, and made him a present of it. That's so sweet.

And he I still have the book now. Oh, wow, on my shelf. But of course, it came to me. After my father, stepfather passed away, it went to my mother. And when my mother passed away, it came to me. And now I have the birds of Burma that u ba Kys. And you must say that ba Khin was not a rich man all his, all his salary, went to support his family. He didn't even handle it. He only had. He only handled the pocket money. That was an extra thing. Goenka has described that how it was. And there's also a biography of U ba Khin written by his son in Burmese, which I have, and I, actually, I'm trying to translate it, but in the recent years, I didn't make progress. I got it in 2014 when it had nearly a newly appeared. It's now about 10 years. And then his son describes in detail how it was so even that Khin pocket money was managed by U ba Po. So even though U ba Khin was a lay person, he but he didn't touch money, almost like a monk, and that was on purpose.

Host 1:19:07

How did u ba Khin life change, if at all, after the 1962 coup, and what do you know about his relation with some of those leaders, Ne Win and Uno and some of the others?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:19:20

Do you know, of course, u ba Khin had retired when he was 65 years old, but he was immediately re employed. It was during the new era that his time and he was immediately re employed because he was capable, and he was given the task to look after some government departments that made a loss, suspicious of corruption. So in his earlier years under the new government, he was in charge of the San be which is selling the rice crop of the whole country, and he reformed it. Some of his close students were from that institute later, who became meditators, but then he also had a training institute for the people who were going to be auditors, because he was the accountant general. So there was a training institute for accountants. So some of his disciples, they went and took the courses, not because they want to learn accountants, but because it was taught by U ba Khin after they had done the meditation. So many of the disciples came to U ba Khin actually through his work, because he was their boss. And the meditation center did not belong to U ba Khin, or it was a private Buddhist Association Vipassana Research Association belonging to the accountant general office of Burma. And that is a initiative that unu instituted. He encouraged all the government offices to have Buddhist activities in their office prevalence as offices. So of this tenancy, u ba Khin took advantage, and he started in his office. And then they collected money. They they they were able to buy the land. It was in 1952 and then by the time I came there, it existed for eight years. By the time Goenka came, of course, it was earlier it, I think it was in 54 or 56 you have to look up goenkas life story during the during the six Buddhist Council, right? Yeah, and Goenka was connected with the six Buddhist Council, even though he was a Hindu, because he it was a nationwide effort, and everyone in the whole country was concerned. It met. And so even to have good connections to the new government, you had to join there. And he supplied the vegetarian food for the concert people. Because, you know, the his his group, is very good at making vegetarian food in the Burmese they they are not so good in vegetarian. They eat vegetarian only when they are actually doing meditation during the course, even U ba Khin center was not fully vegetarian. U ba Khin and his cross Circe, they ate meat when they were outside the course, even in the center, chicken and fish and so on. Only they avoided the large animals. It's a kind of reduced meat intake that is avoiding the four footed animals. No. But for us in Germany, it was quite, quite, quite weird when I started to become a vegetarian. Then my stepfather used to say, what if you become a vegetarian? I can understand, what is this, that you eat only this kind of meat and not that kind of meat? But I did nothing. I liked the meditation and I did everything that they did. So I didn't ask them for arguments, you know, because I wanted to do the Edit simply through the meditation. Of course, it's not that I'm stupid or I was actually quite a pious girl, even from childhood, because my grandmother read the Bible every day, and I always got best, top grades in religious studies when I was in school in Germany, and even after confirmation, I I served in the service. You know, the in the Christian group that my family belonged to after I was confirmed, they have the priest in the middle and to serve to mess dinner. There's, it's not Roman Catholic. It's a new group that was founded on the in the 1970s and influenced by the ruff Steiners friends and my parents joined there when they were students. And then underneath, it was not permitted, and so when it was revived, my family came to take this up again, and I happened to be confirmed at the age of 14 there, and I was baptized only at the age of 11, which I didn't know. I didn't know that I was not baptized, but I became a good Christian without baptism from childhood. And so religion was important to me, and that is why when I became a Buddhist at the age of 19, I didn't listen to my mother, because she was not the authority. My religious authority was my grandmother, and she was safely far away in East Germany, and I never dare tell her that I changed to Buddhism.

Host 1:24:42

So when you took that first course with U ba Khin, I think you were 1718, years old, did your Christian background come into conflict with what you were learning there?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:24:52

Yes, it did, but it is simply that meditation is convincing.

Host 1:24:58

Tell us about that first. Course, and your first impression of saya Jube Khin?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:25:03

Well, of course, I met Sayagyi u ba Khin when invited us for this Full Moon celebration where I went with my high heel schools and my party dress. But it was actually nothing like a party. It was just under the moon near the pagoda, with the pagoda lighted and tables and they served as Mohinga. You know that Mohinga is not vegetarian. It has fish in it, but it's a simple, traditional Burmese food, particularly in Rangoon. It's very favorite. And then there were some people coming to talk to us, and I remember two of them. They're both good in English. And one was Joah Mia San, and the other one was Jo Suu, and both were good meditators. And Dom Yes and is a famous, famous person. Also she spoke to the British Parliament for about German Burmese independence in the 1930s when she was a student in London, Dom yeshen, and she was a very close disciple of BA Kyaw elderly lady. And we also met them her at the she was a retired professor of history from Rangan University. And when we came there in the 1960s my mother and me, we attended a class on Burmese history in the British America Institute, which was taught by domia San, but I met her at the meditation center, and this first education at that first occasion.

Host 1:26:32

And so Suu I also remember, and I should, I should also just mention Dom, yes San, meditators in the tradition of Sn Goenka will be familiar with her, not by name, but correct me if I'm wrong. She's the one who, during Goenka first course, when it became too much for him and he wanted to run away and to leave. He famously tells the story in the 10 day discourse. She's the one who convinced him to stay. Is that not right?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:26:55

Yeah. And she is also the one her grandmother and her grandfather, they were the founding members of the first Buddhist missionary University to spread Buddhism to the West, headed by Lady Siao. Her grandparents.

Host 1:27:12

Oh, wow. Can you say more about that?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:27:15

Well, her grandfather was from Arakan, and he was a his a head a government position under the British during the colonial areas. You know that Arakan came to under British rule much earlier than the rest of the country. Just the coast Arakan and 10 assert and then the her mother is from Moe Maine, which is nowadays Moe, but in Burma, in early days, the British spelled it, M, O, U, L, M, E, I, N. But now it's, it's, it's spelled more like the Burmese financial, which is Moe Lam and that is the Mon country. So she has mon blood. Somebody called her a mon princess. But that, I think, cannot be right, because the monroyalty was removed long ago and they were all dead.

Host 1:28:07

And I think there's also this story about her, that when she would travel in airplanes.

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:28:12

Yeah, she went into the unconditioned state. That is, of course, several of U ba Khin disciples actually, not quite a lot of them there, even though the courses were small, but the people who attained the unconditioned state were quite, quite a good number. I have heard from a Goenka student, a German one, who had picked it up in India that Goenka is supposed to have said, u ba Khin never taught a dry cause, meaning, if they reach the unconditioned state, they would not be dry. They would have a brief experience of nibbana, it may be just a moment, and that would ensure that they would make an end to suffering in some time. At some time, yeah, while the others will meet Arimathea Buddha, the ones who do not, who do not experience this, I met Sayagyi u ba Khin. For one thing, my stepfather highly recommended him, and he was very enthusiastic. That's why my mother also went along with that, and my mother herself was not so interested in Buddhist meditation, because she already was fairly fixed to her Anthroposophical spiritual background. But and she was not so deep into religion. She was more interested in earning in medicine and and looking after her family. So she when we were teenagers, we saw our mother only on weekends. She was always busy, yeah. So in my case, I only thought this meditation must be wonderful because I had read a book by Rudolf. China on, how do I get experience of higher words? That is a book about meditation, and it's actually not permitted for teenagers, but my mother had it, and it was in her bedroom and it was locked, but I knew the key. And of course, I read everything I could get hold. So I also read that one. So I must say, I read it once, and now looking backwards, of course, much of it I don't remember, and some of it, I was mostly mystified, but I was interested. It was strange. So I don't know about meditation, that it is getting you in touch with experience that you don't have as a normal human being, and it's in the higher words that means God and Heaven, of course. So that, of course, because I was so interested, I was pious. I mean, I seriously believed in Jesus Christ and that he can save me. And I thought that the baptism is important, and all the sacraments are important. But I must say, I was 11 years when I received my baptism, and it to my disappointment, I wasn't a saint. After being baptized, I was more or less the same as I was before. Of course, the baby wouldn't know that, but I knew because I was already 11. We were baptized in West Germany because when I was born that was not permitted by the government. The this religion Sect was prohibited by the Nazis. So my younger sisters are all of them were not baptized, and we were baptized as a grown up. And the same thing happened when I was confirmed. I was said, Now I'm going to take the holy supper. You know, when you get get to the full fledged Christian service? I still remember how we've had because we got to take the tram from for one hour from our town to the place where the where the church was, and I was expecting that after the Holy supper, now I would be saintly, and I would be a good person and never do anything wrong. And it but it's lasted, say, about a month, and then afterwards, I was more or less back to my moral behavior as it was before. So that one thing that interested me about the Buddhist meditation is after the meditation, but during the meditation. Simply, I had the feeling that I understand nothing about meditation. And this is a teacher, an expert, highly respected by my step further and I don't know nothing, and he knows it. So I would do what he would tell me, I wouldn't enter into discussions with him. And he did not. He did not use the full formula that is now standard with Goenka, for instance, where you have to submit your life and so on and give it in the hands of the teacher, even though that was part of U ba Khin system. But in the case of foreigners, he adapted. He was quite flexible. You see, I have read in a book about Goenka that even U ba Khin permitted Goenka family to take first Hindu meditation before they came to to Buddhist meditation, which surprised me very much, but the others is simply that it doesn't fit into the ideal. Like, for instance, how can they say that he is the only, only disciple of Goenka, for for a person who has been there, and he knows that Uber Khin appointed more than one teacher to teach on his behalf. That's just wishful thinking. He must be that maybe the most well known one, and the one who has taught more courses, so the first course, so of course, u ba Khin style for authoritative but friendly, you know, jovial. And my mother in the in the facility with the attached bathroom, which were set for both of us and but I said, in the other one with the with the roof of leaves, we were given separate cells. My cell was the one on the left side of Mother Samus. There were eight cells upstairs. So the one was facing the Sri Lanka. That is where the Buddha image is. The one opposite is where Mother sama normally meditated. Then on the side that is not over Suu, there were three more cells. So my cell was the one that was in the middle of these, yes, so it was at the quarter, and the one between my cell and mother. Summer. So that's where my mother sit two cells. And of course, the inside is so very if u working sits in the middle room, there is a door with venetian blinds, and that can be closed and open. So we would, if he wants to interview the student while he's meditating, you would be in this shrine room and open that door, and otherwise we would meet in the Dhamma on the preaching hall where there were no people, except, for instance, at the time when we had our drink in the evening and so on. That would be a time where we can ask him questions. And I do remember my very first sitting, how he taught me, Anna Bana, and he was busy, he taught me. And she said, You sit there, cross legged in a comfortable position, and then you watch your breathing, breathing, breathing, watching, watching, but nothing else. Only watch.

Then he went off, and he apparently he left, because he went to office, and I started to sit in my cave and in that cell, and I said, that is how I practice anabana In my first attempt. Then after all, the door was opened, there was a woman there, I didn't know, and she didn't speak any Burmese, any English, but she put her finger on her mouth, and then she had this hard breathing, and she shook her head in her hand, and then she repeated to make very soft breathing. And that was Mother summer telling me that I was ventilating when I didn't even know the word of ventilation. So then I had to continue it in this quiet thing. And that was the first day first. And I did this for several days, not I think on day four, the normal day U ba kya gave me Vipassana. But I knew that he gave Vipassana to my mother later. And even before he gave it to her, he called two of us and he said, Well, I have already told you how to do the Vipassana meditation, but your mother's development is not so far gone yet. I want to teach her, but apparently there is some difficult and Please explain to her how you practice Vipassana meditation. And we were, we were standing under the body tree, our backs, leaning on the little railing there, and U ba Kyaw standing opposite. And I was sitting on the on this little wall that was there. And my mother also. And our two bare arms were matching, because we wearing short sleeve jackets, so my arm was touching my mother's arm and my body. I felt a niche very strongly, all in my body, but particularly in the arms. They were like Aung scrawling. Well, of course, the teacher is close by, so his influence is also there. So I said to my mother, well, you do the Vipassana, Anita, anitja, but when you get this slight feeling, the slight feeling, and then it becomes very prominent, like now I said, Because I could feel in my arm, and my mother had her arm, looked at me and said, I feel nothing, because it's her arm. No, so my arm, my mind, I could feel the change in the arm, but my mother wasn't that so you can't transfer the feeling of a nit to another person. So she was eventually given it a little later. And I think the that is, of course, my surmise her difficulty was that she was already influenced by the anthroposov, and that's a different teaching. So she had to practice a little more of concentration. And then I made good progress. And after the 10 days were over, VA, kn said, Well, if you say a few days longer, maybe three or four days next week, we have a special holiday, and it will be very good for your meditation, you will profit very greatly. So then my mother said, Oh no, but it is my husband's birthday. I want to be with him. And so she went back after 10 days, and I thought, Well, my stepfather will have another birthday next year, so I think I will continue with my meditation and see what the teacher thinks I can achieve in the next four days. So I stayed on. I. And during these specialties, I had this experience that they described. It was very brief, but it made a lot of difference, and it is so even that you cannot describe it because it's very you have to have a witness, actually, and a person who can can estimate what actually happens in the spiritual field, but Goenka tried to teach it at the beginning. I've heard that from other Indian disciples, and then he was instructed by the disciples of working and maybe working himself. I don't know not to do that in India, because the environment wasn't right. And so later on, he only talked about it very vaguely as the nib onic dip, and then sometimes in the long courses he's teaching now, he saw Kalam agmir As you practice, as you practice, naturally, you sometimes have an experience like that. But in U working case, it was more different because, because he amongst the more important, the more advanced students, even in the 10 day courses, in every course, there were a few, at least one or two or so so.

Host 1:41:16

Uber Khin would provide, like, specific guiding instructions in a case by case basis.

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:41:21

yes, and also protection in the mental field, right, right? Yeah, because his pyramid was to give to that. But some disciples who have themselves great paramy, they would go into it for long select lomire San and like Ruth Dennison, when she reached that stage, she was in there. She writes in her diary. I was in that state for one hour, they told me, but for me, it was just a moment. Now, of course, I can't talk about what Ruth Dennison experienced. I can only talk about my myself. Experience, sure, not so I had this very brief moment, and I don't remember about it, but it made a change. And they told me there are also side effects you can watch afterwards. And they I had to be told to notice it. That was your first course. That was my first course. But after, in the period then I was alone, after my mother had already left, and then, I don't know, 121, or two days more, and then I went home.

Host 1:42:33

So Sayagyi u ba Khin had personally after, after suggesting that you stay a few more days after the course, he had then given you personal instruction and guidance and protection on how to reach that state. Is that correct?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:42:49

Yeah, exactly. And I do know that we had to have many trials. And then he told me a procedure, and then he said, okay, but it didn't work, and we had to repeat it. I can tell you the inner experience of the development of Vipassana. You go according to the to go according to visuri Maga ba Khin didn't teach that stage by stage, but he referred to it because he often said, what I teach is exactly in agreement with the with the Vipassana and with the visi Maga, and you read it up when you first come to the stage of Vipassana. Now what Goenka talks about is the stage of bhanga that is free flow when you can hear, you can feel your whole body, and it's all changing everywhere. So that is actually the stage of achievement that Goenka tries to lead his students to because then they can fully understand that everything is impermanent and but it is not the end. I think in the in the, according to visuri manga, is the stage number three. I haven't got the thing by heart, no. And beyond that, you have to go and it becomes war. It becomes very hot. Some describe it as if they were in an oven of fire, and then all of a sudden they were out of it, very intense. But then beyond that, it fades also. It gets lighter and lighter and lighter and lighter. And your body, you are still a u a human being, but sort of your body feels very light, and in that case, you have to be protected, you from outside influences. Because anyone who can, who is not meditating on us, even a good meditator, who is not taking a course, and he is staying outside, and he comes from the center, and he reaches, he speaks to someone who's been there for a month. There's an interaction, no, and I remember the we did one session during that period, I think not during the event itself, but when there were several people sitting in the caves, and all the doors were open, was in the middle, and there. Someone who could watch and see that, and then they saw that I was more pure than the others, even though the others had more experience, because they had not recently taken a course.

Host 1:45:15

And they saw how did they see that?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:45:18

But the same, I can see it. I don't know what they see. Maybe this is mother Sayama, who's looking mostly, but she was not the only one who could see it. I cannot see. I can only feel. And I think u ba Khin, u ba Khin himself mostly went by feeling.

Host 1:45:37

So there was a sense, either from U ba Khin, or mother saya Ma, or some other developed practitioner, there was a sense that of purity and proximity to the state that was heightened enough that it brought U ba Khin into your cell to deliver the specialized guidance. Is that what happened? Yeah,

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:45:59

I think that he was able to connect to the story, to the store of parami, his he has developed in the upper world, his own parliament, if he concentrated, and then he was able to develop it, to contact it, and then distribute it. He would sit in the middle, and we would sit at in our own cells. There was no physical conduct, there was a distance, no.

Host 1:46:26

And he would give the guidance and protection, yes. In terms of time, I'm just curious, are we, are we looking at, like, approximately, like an hour of day of this guidance, or like five hours at a time, or five minutes? What are we talking about in terms of the specialized instruction, how long it would take for? Because obviously the inner experience of the meditation is different than how time works in the real world. So what kind of time was U begin giving for giving that specialized instruction?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:46:56

The procedures approaching it were very strict. Sometimes you had to take your food inside this cell even. And you know, because even if you move inside the meditation center, you there might be some influence from the outside, even inside the meditation center, uh huh.

Host 1:47:12

So you'd be in your cell all day.

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:47:15

No, not really at a certain time. The thing itself that he attended as a ceremony would not take long. It would be maybe less than half an hour.

Host 1:47:27

Less than half an hour in a single day of specialized instruction and protection.

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:47:36

Yeah, maybe even shorter, of course, if the disciple experiences for one hour, definitely, that would be altogether one and a half hour.

Host 1:47:44

And would you be, how would he know how the practitioner was responding to his guidance? Would the practitioner be speaking and describing what they were experienced? Or would u ba Khin be sensing on a deeper level?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:47:57

He would sense at a deeper level, there is a there is the diary of Mr. Hyslop, which has been printed by the disciples of disciples of mother siyama, where he his love describes how we ba Khin performed the surround money with his love several times, and it failed. He never achieved that state, but he describes it what his experience was his love, and that his love said at the moment when u ba Khin told him to concentrate at the heart center and let go of attachment. Then he instead of this, he felt something on his head, and he stroked his head, then u ba Khin said, Well, okay, let's start again, and then another occasion, this kind of thing. I don't know this is quite an interesting account, but to understand it fully, you must understand what actually happened. And this is nothing that any Goenka student would understand, because Goenka didn't do that.

Host 1:49:02

Didn't give specialized instruction. You mean, no, yeah,

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:49:05

No, at least not up to I've done only the 45 courses. But I think it the whole tendency. He was told not to do that because by Uber Khin, yeah.

Host 1:49:13

Why did u begin tell him that?

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:49:17

Because his Goenka spared me is different from Uber Khin, right? Goenka, spare me, is to teach lots of people, but at a lower level, he thought many people that Uber Khin would refuse. I mean, look at, look at courses, 500 and then three courses a month. And the spiritual power that Goenka builds up, like, for instance, when I was in Dhamma Giri said a few months, and then there was Goenka self course. Actually that was the course where he himself has to meditate. But then there were many witnesses. So it was a whole group. And nowadays it is more for. Intellectual curiosity because it's not being practiced except by people who are practicing themselves. I mean, because definitely they there are personalities like Webu Sayadaw who achieve high states of development without any involvement, of either UPA Khin or Goenka, and I don't want to say that all the other meditation masters don't have achievements. This is just different, and I can only talk about this tradition so with all the interested it, but it is not for the general public, really. No, because the vineyard rule, the Vinya rule, is the monks should not talk about it. They should talk only when they are about death and their other other monks asked them, Did you achieve anything when they can speak so back in U ba Kyaw even told all of us not to talk to about meditation, to non mediators at all. We've gone far away from that. But here I have to be careful also to whom I speak, because if there's somebody who just has a very little low opinion of me, he will just laugh, or he will think badly, or think I'm imagining this and that.

Host 1:51:23

So this is such a delicate topic, and so amazing to hear from you as well. And yet I know that we've already gone over our scheduled time. I know that you're we're running over into your meditation time. So I want to pause here so that you can, you can get to your own practice, and we'll pick this up in a future conversation. This has been so delightful to have this first session and conversation with you, and I look forward to many more. Thank you so much for spending this time.

Friedgard Lottermoser 1:51:53

Okay, well, in my case, of course, you know, I'm only one of quite a number of people, and the achievement is very little compared to what the real developed people achieved under kins guidance. So, so okay, it enough.

Kory Goldberg 1:52:13

So now that we've just heard this, this first interview, Joah, let's have a little conversation, I can ask you some questions about the interview. So, yeah, so what? After hearing again? I'm sure you've listened to this first interview many times, listened to the interview, read the transcript, and there's always something new that that that emerges. And so I'm just curious, what was the most surprising thing that you learned while conducting the interview? Were there any unexpected revelations or impressions or insights that really stood out for you?

Host 1:52:58

I think every time I listen to this interview, something new. Did stand out? If you're asking the question, What stood out? The first time I was, I was fervently trying to remember what was in this particular interview, and what were the, you know, five incredible insights and stories that that happened in this number one, and not confusing them with others. If I remember correctly. I know the first kind of amazing anecdote that stands in the mind that I've just gone back and listened to this so many times over, because it's so lovely, is she's, I think one of the things we also have to say is that she's, in addition to all those incredible accolades that we've already given her, like, she's also really funny. Like, we have to, like, remember that, like, in addition to all the wonderful and amazing and important insights and stories that she tells, she also her sense of humor is it gets you every time you know the way that she's able to to put that humor in those real life situations. And I'm saying that because I'm referencing her first visit to IMC, of course, where there's a full moon, as she remembers, at a full moon party. And so she wears this 17 years old she wears this western gown. She just have this image of this, this young adolescent girl, first time in the tropics, hearing about a full moon and Rangoon under the pagoda, and going in this western gown and not realizing the religious and meditative aspects of of what the experience was. And that's just, I think that's a bit of a preview of what an honest Narrator she comes across as, and how and as she you go this journey with her, you you feel like you're watching over her shoulder, a girl who sometimes has good intentions, but is a bit naive and clumsy, and how she's trying to fulfill them, and, you know, missing certain cultural cues, but then trying to learn and do her best. And navigate as she moves on. It's just a tremendous objective feeling of who this person is and how she's telling the story. And that's just just part of it that her introduction to meditation comes in the form of before her first course, of course, but it comes in wearing the wrong clothes and going with the wrong intention to what's essentially a religious and kind of meditative festival and, and just the imagery that you get in your mind as she's telling this yarn is wonderful. And I think this is also the episode where she talks about the birds of Burma book and, and that just that just melted my heart, you know, just melted my heart just hearing this. And I think this is the first moment where someone as a someone who began meditation in the s n Goenka fupasana tradition, u ba Khin is just a figure held in reverence. And in that reverence, there sometimes isn't a an accounting for the full dimensional aspect of who this person is in flesh and blood, and to hear a story where he watches a close friend look at a book that he really wants to buy, but he can't because he doesn't have enough money, and then he goes back to the book shop to buy that book, gift it to his friend, who then cherishes it all his days of Burma sits on his veranda looking at this picture book and trying to match him to the birds. And then to cap it off, free guard says, and that book is right behind me. You know, it's and I'm just, I'm someone who I like the physical. I like me touching something and thinking, who has touched this before me, and where is, where is this physical thing actually been in the world? And to think that this book behind her is the very book that Sayagyi u ba Khin, you know, as a person, not a revered meditation teacher, but as a person, as a friend, as someone in the world, saw this book and went to buy it and gave it to his friend who then cherished it, and then free guard has it. That was also kind of a first indication that we're going to be treated to a different version of these familiar characters familiar to some of us. We're going to be treated to a different version of them than the usual stories that maybe we've heard so many times over.

Kory Goldberg 1:57:21

Yeah, for me too, I really appreciated how she humanizes Sayagyi u ba Khin, because many of us who practice in the Goenka tradition, we have u ba Khin on this very high pedestal and only see him in a very particular light. And now, I don't want to say she takes him off the pedestal. She's not doing that, but she certainly humanizes him and talks about him as if he was, you know, this really kind and wise, are there Big Brother or even parental figure? But in the many interviews, in her stories of him, she she really makes him out to be just a human being, a superb human being, but a human being. Yeah, nevertheless, and and also, it also touched me her sort of cultural faux pas when she arrives at the center in the dress or the height and the high heels. Or, there's another instance. It's not in this episode, but when she talks about when u ba Khin and some of his friends or disciples show up at her house and they're all in their bathing suits and try to get them to go swimming with them, another cultural faux pas. But it doesn't seem as if there was a lot of shame or judgment they make the these, cultural errors, but they're easily forgiven, and even after Friedgard goes to the center to this party and she's mistressed, and maybe she's saying the wrong things and not understanding the language, she is still nevertheless welcomed to Come for a course. And we have to understand, at the time, I don't know how easy it was to get into this, to these courses, it seemed, especially at that time, that most of the students who were going were the elites of Burmese society, whether in the realm of politics or business or maybe, you know a small number of foreigners, yet she was allowed to go, and it reveals also her spontaneity and adventure. So she quickly realized that she was wearing the wrong clothing. But rather than being embarrassed, she still went for. A course, the following course, and went along with her mom, with her mother. And when they were given the choicest of accommodation with, you know, private bedroom and attached bathroom, she insisted on taking the simplest accommodation. She keeps referring it to, like the hut or the cottage with the leaves on the roof and and in that room she, you know, she slept on the floor. And in a in a way, she's, in a sense, she's developing her party of renunciation, although she didn't actually have the language yet for that, for what she was doing, but it's there. And so I really appreciated that story as well.

Host 2:00:48

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that another thing that struck me as I was listening to this, I don't know how many times it's been, but I listened before this conversation. It's kind of like watching your favorite movie or TV show again, and, you know, kind of getting excited for all the scenes you remember and and then hearing new things or new connections you didn't you didn't quite know before, and even some foreshadowing knowing what's coming down the line. I think that one of the things that struck me, not a new insight, but something I just appreciated yet again, in hearing this is just the extraordinary fluidity of how she's able to move to progress throughout these stories that hit every mark as she's talking about leaving Germany and the actual travels to Burma and her Then suddenly she's subjectively inside a 17 year old head of describing what it was like to step on the ground in Rangoon and what what she thought it would be like and what it actually was. And then she's giving some historical lessons and telling us what Burma was at that time, and even going into some Burmese history and talking about her family relations and her home life and and going to university study and family, and then seamlessly, it's going back and forth between the world of meditation and Sayagyi Bucha and IMC, and getting into pretty dense Meditation theory and technique and practice and attainments and instructions in the middle of all this, just just flowing into that, and then flowing back out into her relations with her parents and her family again, and and going to school and and the classmates that she's meeting, and her memory of those classmates, the earrings that they wore, And the, you know, the things they did together, and so it's something that I really encourage listeners. If you find this interesting, it's worth the time to go back and listen again, the second or third time. I've again, I've spoken to so many guests on this platform, and I've, I've never spoken to someone who has who's so layered in how she talks that they're it's so dense, there's so much material in such a short period of time that even as you're listening as carefully as you can, you're just not quite catching all of the details that her mind is able to to hit upon and to capture and to put out there for us to grab onto. And sometimes the details are so fantastic and extraordinary and sometimes so deep that you find yourself reflecting on a story or a detail, and then five minutes go by and you realize you haven't quite been listening to that, because you've just been so caught on what she said five minutes ago. And you can imagine me as an interviewer when I'm doing this in real time and, and she's throwing, you know, layer upon layer upon layer in a period of five or 10 minutes. And I'm trying to list, you know, I'm trying to appreciate the new layers that are coming when my mind is reeling from something I just heard five minutes ago. And then I'm trying to figure out, you know, what question to ask her next to to keep on. I've, I've often said as a sitting from the host chair free guard is probably one of the most challenging set of interviews I've ever done, because there's so much layer in these talks, and you're trying to get the most out of the time that you have the the amount of processing that has to be done in real time, let alone, you know all of the RE listens you could have later, when you you you're not an active participant. You're just passively listening. The possibility and the potentiality of how you can respond in the moment is so infinite, and you're always afraid you're just you're missing something that's right there. And how many times did I listen on a real listen? Did I hear something I'd never heard in real time? Or someone would say to me, I was so amazed when she said this. And I said, Really, she said that I didn't even notice it. And of course, you know, this Corey, because we would have extensive conversations during these sessions where I would, I would kind of get kind of nerd out technically with you. And. And trying to tell you my struggles with figuring out, you know, how I have these real time conversations, because the level of processing and the layers were were just so much to take on in real time and to feel that I wasn't. Of course, I'm not going to get everything, but just to try to figure out, how do I do my very best to to hear as much as I can as we're going while also be present and responsive as this conversation partner.

Kory Goldberg 2:05:28

Absolutely. Interviewing such a complex being such a complex, 82 year old, being such as fritguard requires almost two different mindsets. On the one hand, you're trying to, as you said, you're trying to make sense of everything. You're trying to trying to gather as much data as possible, which will later be used for for interpretation and analysis and understanding. And that can get really overwhelming, especially in the moment. And then the other approach, when confronting such a person is to just sort of sit back and let go and let the experience unfold as it does. So there's always this this tension between trying to control and trying to, needing to let go. And I feel that's that's based on our conversations, that was attention that you're often worked with, yeah, yeah. So I'm curious, when we look at somebody like fritguard, she was this very she had this very unique German, intellectual, artistic, very Christian, but also theosophically influenced background. How do you think these different factors shaped her attraction to meditation and to Bucha?

Host 2:07:02

Wow, what a question. You know, I think the immediate answer I would give is just params is just that. And for those who don't know that Buddhist word, parames, it's, I guess, a simple way we can describe that as a kind of spiritual potentiality. Someone with param is would, with high params, would be naturally attracted to spiritual teachings, to liberation from suffering, to renunciation from worldly pleasures, and committing to walk on this noble path. And I think that anyone who takes steps towards this practice of meditation, I think is a sign of some paramy they've had that is bringing them towards wanting to in this life, wanting to learn this practice and to involve oneself in it. And I think that the param is that the free garden must have had to have found herself in, first of all, to have found herself in this extraordinary situation, and then to make the most of it, beyond the most of it, I think it's all a testament to just to a combination. I don't want to be deterministic or fatalistic, that she just had to sit back and let her, parmese, run the show. I think she her resilience and her hard work really shined through all these interviews. But you know, hard work and resilience aren't enough. You also you have to whether people call it luck or fate or destiny or, as we're saying, parmees, I think you have to have something that is going beyond the hard work and the resilience and is attracting and bringing you on these deeper levels. And interestingly, free guard said that Sayagyi Ba Khin told her, You have a very special party, and it will mature later in life. And she never knew what that was, and I started to suspect, and I even suggested this to her on some occasions. Do you think your part of me is that your story of your experiences will one day be told to the world, and it won't be lost, that that what happened to you and what you witnessed and what you knew, that that isn't known to the world, that these figures, these happenings, these this history, these stories, these persons, that your special part of me is that you are going to be the messenger that is going to keep this alive. And that's I'm getting a bit off track, and I'll come back to what you asked. But that's another thing that's been on my mind, is that another thing that's so remarkable about her story is it's not theory, it's not opinion, it's not hearsay. It's not what we think may have happened, or how we want to how we hear one dimensional stories, or this mythology and want to construct our own narratives out of them. This is a real person who was living in a real time and is telling us what i. Actually happened. It's not a theory, it's a fact. And sure, one can debate the veracity of her memory and and I'm sure that not that that as memory is there with her as well. There can be bias, and you can remember things differently. One can go there. But that aside, she's recounting actual experiences in with meditation instructions heard by these revered teachers. And so this is a an actual thing that we're interacting with, not a a theory or a memory of a memory, or a story that someone else told and again to say again. These, are not brief encounters that she was having. These were extended periods of years upon years with these figures in their own languages, as you say, a German intellectual, and someone coming from an intellectual objective tradition to bring that mindset and that sharpness into this context where she's interacting on local levels, living in the grass huts and speaking the language, wearing the dress, as she says in one interview, at one point, she had to her her dress, had her Burmese dress had a tear, and her mother started to stitch it, and she stopped her mother, because her mother was using German thread and said, I don't want even a stitch of of fabric in this dress that's not Burmese. I want it to be. I want every fabric of it, every every, every thread, to to be Burmese and Burmese only. So, so to come from that background and that that intellectual tradition, and to then live for so many years with these great masters and respecting these local traditions in these profound ways. Not a hippie who was traveling in India and happened to learn something for a matter of months or even over the course of a couple years, but again, sustained experience in a Burmese Buddhist environment with these teachers is astounding. And so I think, going back to your question, I think that the part of her parames is a big part of that answer is that the intangible, immeasurable aspect of attraction to these concepts and this practice, but I think it also gets at how unique her telling of this is, because she was able to alternate between these worlds. She was able, just as with seven years in Tibet you know, she's the main character, the Austrian, he doesn't become Tibetan. Free guard doesn't become Burmese. But when you're spending this much time in your language, the dress, the customs, the religion, the meditation, the practice, the environment, the food, etc, when all of that is being consumed and practiced at local levels and practiced that way for such extended periods, but yet the mind that has come into that environment is coming from different traditions, different understandings, different perspectives, you then have someone who can inhabit these two worlds in astounding ways, and being able to bring the reality of this Burmese Buddhist experience in ways that probably most Burmese Buddhist couldn't do, because they're, they're from that environment, they're from that tradition. It's, it's, they always say, if you want to know what what culture is, it's like asking a fish to explain the water. The fish can't explain water because what it's what it's around all the time. So free guard, with her extremely observant mind, who's integrating into these local environments so masterfully, is able to understand and explain these environments in such remarkable ways and float between, you know, the different communities and ways of thinking, to give us the explanation that we end up with.

Kory Goldberg 2:13:50

You mentioned parami here, and we do that. You know, most listeners might know that there are 10 paramies, and there's two that we really see stick out based on on what you said. There's the power me of truth. Satya. And so here we we see, we hear her speaking the truth of her experience, her observations, what she saw, what she heard, what she felt. So that's that's really interesting. But this hard work and resilience and determination, this is also another parami, the paramie of edit Tun, and one thing that really exemplified this for me is when she shared how she learned Burmese. Not so much because she wanted to learn more about Burmese culture, because she but she really wanted to know what u ba Khin was teaching to others. And I found that fascinating, when somebody will learn a language just to understand the words of one person in particular. So, you know, I said that she had really humanized U ba Khin, but at the same time, she really did idolize him. So we did hear a lot about her first course at the International Medicine meditation center. Do you want to share what you made of her description of this first course, and also the way u ba Khin facilitated his courses?

Host 2:15:31

Yeah, I think you know, again, you have this, this navigation through everything from the physical environment to the teachers to the food, to the to the meditation experience, the technical instructions, the the inner reality and how the teachers are working with that inner reality. You have all of this together in one package, which, as a as a listener, almost makes you feel like a traveler that you can you can travel through different parts of what she's telling and determine where you want to explore and where you want to rest and where you want to reflect and and also this interaction between the foreigners and the Burmese who are running it, and very few foreigners pass through there. I think it's remarkable hearing her experience with her mother and and going with her mother, and she and her, her mother's different experience, and going through the meditation, and then, of course, it's um, you know, I think for an insider who practices meditation and know these, knows these figures, I think things just kind of pop out in startling ways that, if I remember correctly in because all these 35 hours run together, but if I remember correctly, it's mother Sayama that is guiding her through Anapana. Am I correct in that?

Kory Goldberg 2:16:51

Yeah. I mean, it's not clear whether she was guiding her or she was correcting her, because it seemed that u ba Khin would give private instruction, personal instruction, and special protection to each student, unlike what we're used to in the Goenka centers, where there's, you know, u ba Khin had instructed goenkaji To teach large numbers of people, even people who U ba Khin himself had refused. So in this environment of impersonal instruction, from what I remember, u ba Kim gave her very basic Anapana instruction, and then left the center and went to work, and she was in her cell, and maybe she didn't understand the instruction, or maybe something was going on. But she was breathing very hard, almost as if she was ventilating, and she was in the cell just next to mother saya Ma's. So mother saya ma came out of her cell and knocked on the door of fritguard cell and using sign language because saya ma didn't speak English, was getting her to breathe gently, to Breathe calmly, rather than deep, long, hard breaths. And so that was we can say maybe, you know, maybe u ba Khin was the first teacher, and saya Ma was, like, maybe her first tutor.

Host 2:18:21

I think so, yeah, I think, I think that's correct. And I think for a meditator in this tradition who knows these names, to just kind of in the middle of a story out of nowhere, seemingly mother sayaw walks into a room and starts demonstrating how to how to do the Anapana correctly. It's just kind of like, whoa what you know, turn left, you see this person, turn right, you see this person, and then have this conversation. And then I think, I believe it was also this first episode where she talks about her friendship with the woman that Goenka tells in his story on the 10 day discourses, that when Goenka wanted to leave the course, because it was too difficult, this woman convinced him to stay. And just another kind of figure in there, I know this also happened to be the figure that can an anecdote about her was that she was able to go into the unconditioned state when she was in airplanes, just these fantasmical stories that are coming seemingly out of nowhere from names that are recognizable, but as you've said, not not humanized, because those details haven't been there before. And freed guard is the protagonist in this narrative going forward that is revolving around this young in her own self described term, somewhat naive, well intentioned young, adolescent westerner who is at the middle of this astounding narrative, and giving us these descriptions of these amazing events and people and stories and kind of personalities and side sides of them. And that leads us to this particular meditation course. Course, where she it culminates, and again, as I remember correctly with in this particular episode, that she is that there's a sense that she's making some serious progress at the end of the course, and U ba Khin comes to give her some specialized instructions to unique to her to where she's at in the meditation to be able to progress profoundly, which, of course, is something that I think as meditators in the Goenka tradition, we hear about these stories happening at IMC. There's the story that there was never a dry course at IMC. They're very different from how we experience the 10 day courses, or even long courses and the Goenka the Goenka centers today, and so to hear about how these courses progressed and and how different teachers were interacting with students and giving instructions in certain ways, to to have it unfold in the course of a story, not just a single anecdote. That's what I'm trying to get it not just I think there are anecdotes that have survived outside of free guard, of particular profound moments that where someone has has written a letter or a journal entry that is told of something profound. But this is altogether different of hearing someone, in their own words, describe the experience of a course unfolding gradually, and you're moving from grass huts to, you know, the food, to the possibility of real attainment, and so you you can really feel what it must have been like to be on that course when you know, all the surroundings that are happening, and the one day after the other unfolding, and then this experience happening. So it's very much situated into into something physical and real, rather than just a kind of marvelous anecdote that's there floating, that feels kind of, or to me, has felt less connected than and more kind of questions around what it meant and what happened than hearing free guards story at the end of the course, told in the context of the entire course, experience and relations with those teachers?

Kory Goldberg 2:22:11

Yeah, I think this is the power of her skill in telling stories. She's not just sharing a story of some far off place, but she's actually bringing you there with her. So you're sitting in the meditation hall or the preaching Hall while U ba Khin is giving a discourse and answering questions, or you're sitting in the cell just next to her, breathing heavily, as you know, my mother, Saya, Ma, and you know, exits her meditative state to come and nudge nudge you along with her. And so you're you really feel as if you're part of the story. And for me, that's really the sign of a great storyteller. And maybe it's because I've listened to these and I've read a lot about this history, and I've read a lot about these characters, but these characters are always from very descriptive perspectives, so it's really nice to hear her talking about them from an experiential perspective, not just really from this first person perspective. And then maybe because these characters have been in my mind for so long, I feel like I'm I'm right there next to her, yeah, so that's, one thing that I really felt after this first episode. In fact, all the episodes. But really after this first episode, I'm just curious, how do you feel coming out of that first episode back then, after you've experienced after you conducted that first interview, do you recall how you felt?

Host 2:24:01

Yeah, I, I would, I would wager that my feeling at the time was one of tremendous appreciation of a certain kind of treasure that I had happened to to capture, like Amber, you know, that was, that was frozen, that would be preserved in this world at some moment, which happens to be this moment that anyone is listening to it. And I think I felt anxious, because I knew how much more there was left to uncover and left to discuss and not know how long that faucet would stay on. And this wasn't just a health matter, it was also a matter of her willingness and trust going forward, and what she would tell in her time away and meditation, there was actually quite a degree of anxiety for the first, I would say, five to seven episodes, because I just I knew that it. Stop at any moment for any reason. And I knew how much there was to catalog, and it took a number of hours until I started to feel that even though I was I was greedy, which is the other emotion to put out there, greedy to want to just keep freezing more moments in amber, because every one of them this is a should explain and unpack this. She She is telling knowledge and information and experiences that are wholly unavailable anywhere else. What she doesn't tell will never be known to the world. It will, it will. I think it would be safe to say that these would be stories or insights or reflections that simply will not come to us ever again. And so there, honestly, speaking, there was a bit of anxiety in and responsibility and feeling and navigating this comfort as a conversation partner and flowing in the rapport with this responsibility to want to bring out this information and preserve it and keep it and and have it safe in the world that that if it didn't come from her, it just simply might not come and people would be left to their own mythology and and and assumptions and magical Thinking and however one wanted to think rather than some verified source that was that had lived through this and was telling us a real version of what she remembered and witnessed. And so after this first episode, I did feel that mix of of tremendous appreciation, you know, warmth, chuckling at some of these incredible stories, feeling affection and melting at some of the other kinds of things that she would say, and then feeling anxiety of you know, probably as soon as this, this recording logged off, and we were just talking offline before we ended the call. I'm sure the first thing I said was, so what's the next time? What's the next appointment that we have to meet? Just feeling this, this mix of of what it was like to be next to someone of that stature, who had lived this life and who was trusting me with this story and trying to bring this story out.

Kory Goldberg 2:27:31

It sounds like you had a lot of weight to carry, to carry this almost sacred duty or responsibility to share Friedgard rich history with the world.

Host 2:27:46

I think so. And I think that you know, just as I started to feel that this special parme that u ba Kyaw had referenced, that Friedgard had was the special parmee that she would be the last surviving messenger of a lost time that no one else had access to and no one ever would again after her. Just as she was charged with this, some of the people that were close to me started to wonder if part of my mission in life was to be her medium, and if so, that's an extraordinary, humbling and privileged role to be worthy of possessing in this life that that I was there to play some role in gaining her trust and doing right by her, and being this conversation partner, to engage and ask the right questions, to both in the meditation sphere and the Burma sphere, to be able to get out this information in the proper and compelling way. So it was, yes, it was very much a sacred duty of a kind that, again, I've had, we've had over 300 guests on this platform, and they've all been marvelous and important, wonderful conversations I've had with those guests that have changed my life, that have made me cry, things that have been said that I've never forgotten, that I quote, you know, every other week, that have been so powerful, and yet there was a nature of a sacred duty with free guard that I've that came before we actually had the chance of having the conversation, and then occurred over the duration of our talk that I've just never felt anything that can be comparable to any other conversation I've had with any other guest.

Kory Goldberg 2:29:36

Wow. Well said, well, said, Well, Said, I think this is a good place to close this conversation, and I really look forward to hearing the next episode and seeing what comes out of that.

Host 2:29:53

Thank you, and I really thank you for stepping in and taking this, this hosting role and being. There to prompt me. I knew I didn't quite have it in me to prompt myself on my experience being with her, and I really appreciate you taking that other side of the host chair.

Kory Goldberg 2:30:11

Yeah, my pleasure. And again, thank you for asking me it was a real privilege and honor to be here with you to kick off this series,

Host 2:30:31

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