from Spring 2008 Turning Wheel

Giving Back to Burma

by Michele McDonald / Illustration by Jan Eldridge

     I started formal satipatthana vipassana (mindfulness) practice in 1975. The Asian teachers who influenced me in my early years of practice were Dipa Ma (who was from India and had practiced in Burma) and the Burmese meditation masters Mahasi Sayadaw and Tungpulu Sayadaw. From 1984 to 1991, I immersed myself in studies with Sayadaw U Pandita. I currently practice with several sayadaws in upper Burma.

     Back then, I had a fairly weak immune system, and I didn’t make my first visit to Burma until 1997. But pretty much from the moment I first sat down to do practice, I felt very connected to the Burmese Buddhist meditation tradition.

      Steve Smith, who was my partner at the time, had practiced in Burma for many years and studied extensively with Sayadaw U Pandita. In 1995, U Pandita invited Steve to practice in another sayadaw’s monastery in a part of upper Burma known as the spiritual heart of the country. Sayadaw asked Steve if he would help him teach a retreat for foreign students at his ancient monastery. This was an honor—Steve may have been the first Western layperson invited into Burma to help teach in this way.       During that time, Steve became friends with Aung San Suu Kyi. Just before the 1997 retreat, Steve was blacklisted from Burma because of this friendship. Quite suddenly, I found myself finally traveling to Asia to teach the foreign student retreat with this sayadaw. It was very radical for a Western woman to teach in a Burmese monastic community, but he welcomed me. Since then, I have returned almost every year to help guide this retreat.
      From the beginning of our involvement with the monastery and the people living in the surrounding village, it was clear that we needed to respond to the devastating conditions there. Steve and I have offered support through the MettaDana Project (www.vipassanahawaii.org/mettadana) for humanitarian aid projects, including building schools, and starting hospital programs and the first acupuncture training program in Burma. Our commitment to our friends in the community there is deep, and we’re in for the long term.

A Window of Opportunity
      This past winter, we had to cancel the annual retreat due to conditions inside Burma. Instead, I traveled to Thailand. I was sad to not see my friends inside Burma and see how the projects were going. But I was able to get a broader picture of what’s been going on inside and outside of Burma, and gain a better understanding of what’s needed to be of some help.
      I spoke with Generation 88 student activists who escaped from Burma and have been working for democracy for the past 20 years. I learned that the ethnic minorities in Burma, like the Shan and the Karen, have been under siege for 60 years. Their struggle has been just to survive and to help their people survive. They haven’t had the luxury of working out a strategy to change the government, or to even network with other minorities.
      When the student activists escaped in 1988, they did have a strategy to change the government. These activists have worked a long time to try to unify all the ethnic groups in order to build a stronger network. One man has been working for many years to unite the youth of the different ethnic minorities in the refugee camps or living near the border.
      On this visit, I felt the momentum and excitement that’s set in since the Saffron Revolution. There is a glimmer of hope that hasn’t been there before. Everyone feels it. There’s a sense that it’s possible to build a powerful alliance of many different people: monks, Generation 88 student activists, ethnic minorities, young people, journalists. The political will of the Burmese people is for national reconciliation, an end to military rule, and a peaceful transition to democracy. The people who have been doing this work since 1988 see a window of opportunity to change the government, and are calling more than ever for help from the international community.
       The Saffron Revolution started off an international outcry. Teenagers on their cell phones and brave Burmese journalists took most of the pictures, and the Internet helped the world see the brutality and struggle for survival that has been going on all these years. People may think things are OK now because we’re not seeing any pictures, but that’s only because the junta has shut down all journalists and the Internet. That doesn’t mean it’s not still horrible. There are people working with activists inside Burma to continue getting information and photos out to the world.
      Many of the people I met are also working on environmental issues. There is a connection between the decimation of teak forests, the logging, the natural gas from Burma flowing into Thailand, the burning of villages, and slave and child labor. What’s been happening in Burma is destruction of life in all forms.
      These activists are putting their spiritual life into action, and some of them are in a huge amount of danger. Most of the people I spoke with are willing to die for the truth. It’s so inspiring to witness people embodying this, not because that’s what they want to do with their lives, but because they’re at the right place at the right time and they’re stepping up. They are true bodhisattvas, willing to do whatever it takes to help their people.

Taking Responsibility
      How do we change things in a nonviolent, intelligent, peaceful way? This is an important question when we look at Burma, but it also applies to how change happens on so many other levels—in individuals, in communities, and in governments.
      What often gets passed off as equanimity in the spiritual world is really emotional cowardice or indifference masquerading as serenity. Discerning between equanimity and indifference can be difficult. It can seem like we are balanced, accepting things as they are, but actually we’re disconnected. The heart is closed off from pain, but we pretend that everything’s OK and we put our reaction in the shadows. This fake equanimity is what many people mistake for wisdom and mindfulness. Yet pretending to care when we lack the courage to connect is hurtful, at the least, and potentially very destructive.
      Many of us were raised to avoid conflict. We need to become interested enough in conflict so that we can grow by learning how to move through it. It’s easy to delude ourselves into thinking that we or others are connected, but what is often in place is a deep, unexamined desire for control over our experience. The gradual buildup of this indifference over time makes it increasingly difficult for healthy changes to take place. Yet there is a deeper spiritual need to be with the truth and to not be disconnected.
      It can be really interesting to explore this edge. We can feel overwhelmed by the suffering in this world and continue to bang our head against the wall of indifference, or we can understand that a willingness to play with that edge is what keeps our practice, people, and planet alive. This edge gets particularly interesting if we aspire to global responsibility. The U.N. has addressed this in terms of genocide in Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur and has said that if nations don’t take responsibility, then the international community is responsible to take care of the situation.
      It’s important to hold compassion for everybody in Burma, from the child soldiers all the way to the top generals. I’m sure most of them are afraid. But clearly, atrocities are happening and we cannot turn away from responding. Buddhists need to wake up to this in terms of the situation in Burma, as well as in Iraq and in so many other places, including the U.S.

Giving Back to Burma
      What I took away from talking with Burmese people in Thailand is a real urgency and encouragement for the rest of the world to get involved. The Burmese people are desperate for change. Many have put their lives on the line for the cause of freedom and democracy, and they deserve the full support of the international community.
      One aspect of this is education, so that people can understand what has been going on inside Burma. A central information center and source could provide a way for all the different groups to be able to hear what each of them is doing. This will support people to come together and create more pressure on the government to change.
      Urban areas in Burma are incredibly oppressed, but the rural areas have been under total siege. There’s been a complete breakdown of the health and education systems. Children are not getting inoculated; some are forced to become soldiers. Women are being raped, whole villages are being burned. There is an incredible loss of land, and a loss of dignity. The Thailand/Burma Border Consortium (www.tbbc.org) has done impressive research on the plight of the internally displaced people of Burma; it would be inspiring to bring some of these people to the West and have them speak.
       Sanctions are controversial but viable only if China, India, or Thailand participate. With or without sanctions, these countries need to feel international pressure so that they will call on the junta to change. If everyone in the world boycotted Chinese products, it would create great pressure. Our action has to be something that radical.
      I also heard a plea to get more stories about Burma into the mainstream media. We also need to get more humanitarian aid into Burma. The nonprofits that are working so hard in Thailand and Burma need recognition and support.
      It won’t be just one thing that turns the tide in Burma—all of this is necessary. If enough people keep the pressure on, things will change. We all have a part to play. If we listen to our hearts, we know what’s right to do. For me, I plan to sit next month. This annual sitting keeps me just enough in balance so that I can continue to work for freedom inwardly and outwardly.
      Mindfulness is now a significant part of mainstream Western culture, but the religious and cultural context from which these teachings emerged is often de-emphasized and many people aren’t aware of the role that Burma has played in the transmission of these teachings. Many of the pioneers of the mindfulness teachings in the West studied vipassana practice with Burmese teachers. When you consider how much people have benefited from mindfulness practice and how much we have been given, it’s important to understand that we have a responsibility to give back to the source. Our lineage is under attack. If we can connect with gratitude for the teachings, we will cultivate energy to work for change in Burma.

Michele McDonald has taught insight meditation for 27 years. Beyond her commitment to the Vipassana Hawai‘i Sangha, she has taught extensively throughout the U.S., and regularly teaches in Canada, Burma, and elsewhere around the world. Michele enjoys teaching retreats for beginners as well as experienced students, and developing meditation retreats for youth.