The All Burma Monks, Alliance, which had come to the fore in September, added a strong political slant. The four demands they issued were very specific: They wanted the government to apologize for harming monks, to rescind fuel price hikes, to release all political prisoners (including Aung San Suu Kyi), and to enter into a dialogue with the opposition that would lead to national reconciliation. With Rangoon’s monks in prison or in hiding, reports of the situation in Mandalay implied that there was still hope that these demands might yet be addressed.
Though tourists usually visit Mandalay’s famed monasteries, I doubted that it would be possible for me to do so during such tense times. Together with a Western friend, I planned a tour of the city that was intended to look as innocent as possible. In Mandalay, we met up with Aung Moe, a Burmese friend who worked as a tour guide. Aung Moe had an endearingly mellow manner and was always calm and collected, even in the sweltering heat of Mandalay. He agreed to take us to one of the monasteries as long as we promised to act like tourists and not ask any tricky questions; the monasteries were already rife with informers, he warned. The distrust and fear spreading through the lay population was equally virulent behind the monastery walls, perhaps even more so. There were “new” monks with recently shaved heads—military spies infiltrating the monastic order to weed out protest organizers and check for warning signs of future demonstrations. As a result, monks were no longer talking openly within the monasteries.
Aung Moe took us to a renowned teaching monastery, where several thousand young monks studied and memorized the Buddhist scriptures. A popular stop on the tourist trail, the monastery presented a peaceful idyll with airy hostels and learning halls set around leafy courtyards. I wandered around with my camera trying to look like a good tourist by taking photos of the picturesque scenes before me. In the open-air kitchen, a monk preparing the morning meal stood amid a cloud of smoke and steam as he stirred a humongous cauldron of
daal
over a wood fire. Two young monks sat under a frangipani tree with their heads bowed over palm-leaf manuscripts and the tree’s pungent white flowers scattered around them.
As we wandered through the grounds, a solitary monk unexpectedly approached us and mentioned that some seven hundred student monks had left the monastery in the previous days. Cautiously, we asked why they had left, and the monk replied that their parents were worried and had summoned them home. It was the rainy season and, according to monastic code, monks were supposed to remain in their monasteries and refrain from traveling during that time. When Aung Moe translated this, the monk gave a wry smile and explained that monastic discipline allows for monks to break their retreat during the reign of a bad or evil king.
The monk ended up speaking quite frankly with us and went on to say that monks from the monastery who had organized protests were now on the run. It was difficult to contact them for guidance, because almost all the monastery’s phone lines had been cut, and those that remained in use were being tapped.
Aung Moe ended up asking a question of his own. “I feel as if we have lost,” he said. “Is this true?” The monk shook his head vigorously. “It’s not true, and it’s still possible that this will continue,” he replied. “At the moment the monks here are considering what to do next. It is not an easy decision, because if we take action we know now that we will be arrested or killed. So we must think hard about the next step.”
Our conversation was short by necessity as we spoke in a public hallway, and the monk seemed intensely agitated throughout. When we said our good-byes, he expressed his frustration. “We have nothing to fight with,” he said. “We cannot fight with weapons. All we have is
Metta
[loving-kindness].”
The same emotion reverberated through almost all the conversations I had during that trip, the great sense of injustice inherent in the fact that being on the side that holds the moral high ground is not enough when the other side has guns and brute force. It was once said that a monk could fan his robes across a criminal and protect the wrongdoer from the wrath of a king. Now the monasteries were unable to offer any kind of sanctuary.
The hopeful rumors that Mandalay monks were holding out against the army turned out to be just that: rumors. We visited other monasteries and pagodas, but many had soldiers posted at the gates and no other monks were willing to speak openly with us. By the end of our short tour, Aung Moe was despondent. “It’s over for us,” he said. “There is talk that the people will rise up again, but how? They [the regime] know well how to keep the people down. They have a lot of practice in doing this.”
Around that time a protest poster was being pasted anonymously onto monastery walls that seemed to sum up conditions, not just in Mandalay but throughout the country. The poster showed an image of the Buddha wrapped in chains and preaching to his disciple monks. “Run now, my sons,” says the Buddha. “I cannot protect you anymore, for I, too, am in chains.”
IT WAS A
curious coincidence that a film telling the story of Angulimala, a murderous villain of Buddhist legend, was showing in Rangoon throughout the month of September. A prominent movie billboard in the downtown area featured a gigantic image of the ferocious killer wearing a gory necklace of human fingers, each one still dripping with blood.
According to legend, Angulimala begins life as a young boy called Ahimsaka who is born into a wealthy family of high-cast Brahmins during the time of the Buddha. Ahimsaka is a clever and talented boy. At school, he outshines the other pupils, and they soon become jealous of him and plot his downfall. The pupils manage to turn the teacher against Ahimsaka and persuade him to set the boy a task that he will never be able to complete. The teacher gives Ahimsaka an outrageous mission; he tells the boy that he must kill one thousand people. The boy trusts his teacher and assumes that he has no choice but to fulfill the command. He begins to roam the forest and waylay unwary travelers. Each kill poisons his mind with hatred, and he grows up to become a diabolical and dangerous creature. To keep count of his victims, he chops a finger from each corpse and hangs it around his neck, taking on the moniker “Angulimala” (literally, “garland of fingers” in Pali).
As the crimes of Angulimala become known throughout the land, people live in fear that they may be his next victim. The king finally decides to capture Angulimala and put an end to all the killings so that travelers can pass safely across the land. As the king organizes his troops to raid the lair of the beast, Angulimala’s mother comes to realize that her son is the target of the king’s soldiers. Though he has become barbaric and cruel, her motherly instinct drives her into the forest to warn him of the impending ambush.
By that time, Angulimala has 999 fingers hanging around his neck and needs only one more digit to prove that he has completed the gruesome task he has worked so long on and sacrificed so much for. Angulimala waits eagerly in the forest for his next victim. When his mother arrives, Angulimala’s bloodlust is so great that he does not recognize her. As he charges toward his mother to kill her, the Buddha miraculously appears between mother and son. Angulimala turns his rage on the Buddha and starts to chase him. The Buddha walks at a sedate pace, but Angulimala is not able to catch him, even though he is running as fast as he can. Exhausted and maddened, he roars at the Buddha to stop. The Buddha replies calmly, I
have
stopped—it is
you
who has not stopped. The Buddha explains that he has stopped killing and harming other beings and that the time has come for Angulimala to do the same. Stunned by the Buddha’s words and the phenomenon he has just witnessed, the weary villain drops his weapons and bows down before the Buddha, renouncing his wicked ways.
Later, the king arrives at the monastery where the Buddha was residing, and the Buddha asks him what he would think if he was told that Angulimala had become a monk. Unable to imagine the slathering beast who wore human fingers around his neck transformed into a monk, the king says that if it were indeed true, he would pardon Angulimala of all his crimes. The Buddha then points to the meek form of Angulimala dressed in the robes of a monk. The astounded king marvels that such a task could have been accomplished with neither weapons nor force, and he kneels to pay his respects to the newly ordained monk.
And so Angulimala lives out his days in the monastic order. Villagers, remembering the fear and bloodshed he caused, throw stones at him as he goes about his daily alms round. Angulimala tolerates these attacks in silence, knowing that it is karmic penance for his sins.
THE SAME QUESTION
was being repeated over and over again: How could soldiers abuse and kill monks? How could Buddhists commit such unthinkable acts against their own clergy?
Most people reasoned that the soldiers could not have been Buddhist; they must have been Christian soldiers recruited from Chin State in the northwest who did not have the same reverence toward Buddhist monks. Some said the soldiers were high on amphetamines—witnesses who had seen them at close range noted that their eyes were bloodshot. One man was convinced that the soldiers had recently been released from a military lockup and told that if they followed orders during the operation they would be freed. Another had a source in the military who informed him that they were part of an orphan brigade the generals had been grooming for just such an occasion—a ruthless band of killers raised from childhood with no ties to family or community.
For Buddhist soldiers, the order to attack a monk must have gone against every grain of their spiritual upbringing. The
Tatmadaw
, however, trains its soldiers to follow orders without question or hesitation. The willingness expected of a soldier is encapsulated in the Burmese expression that a cup must be filled with water even if it is cracked or broken. As a Burmese man explained it to me, “If a commanding officer says, ‘Get me a cup of water,’ the soldier must fulfill the order, whether or not the cup is broken. There are no excuses.”
The
New Light of Myanmar
printed its own creative explanation for the attack on monks; according to the state newspaper, they weren’t real monks. The “unrest” was blamed on rogue monks who had been manipulated by student leaders from 1988, the National League for Democracy, and others. One article listed the evidence found during a monastery raid in Rangoon. It was a long list that attempted to cover every offense a monk could possibly commit against the religious order. Among the incriminating artifacts were the following: four pornographic photographs and ten condoms (sex); eighteen swords, thirteen catapults, six wooden rods, and one ax (violence); thirty booklets featuring football match fixtures (gambling); and transcripts of NLD speeches and one book of antigovernment poetry (political involvement). Included at the end of the list, presumably for good measure, were one Nazi headband and two U.S. headbands.
I discussed the article with a Buddhist scholar who spent much of his life in monastery libraries deciphering the Pali scriptures. He scoffed at this clumsy attempt to discredit the monks. He pointed out that one of the five greatest sins a Buddhist can commit is to attempt to destroy the monastic order. “The penalty for this sin is to suffer in the eighth chamber of hell for a period that will last eons and eons,” said the scholar, going on to describe what Burmese Buddhists believe to be the lowest and most frightening layer of the cosmos. “There are many tortures that those condemned to the eighth chamber must endure. They will be fried alive in hot oil like fritters. They will be eaten bite by bite by dogs and bees. They will have no food and so will have to eat each other.”
The authorities, apparently undeterred by the miserable end that awaited them, busied themselves with organizing mass rallies across the country in support of the regime. They were huge gatherings that, in some cases, boasted an attendance of over a hundred thousand people. Such large crowds were nothing new in Burma; just the usual rent-a-crowd that had been bribed or bullied into attendance. Aung Moe, who had helped me in Mandalay, described how local authorities and policemen had come to his house a few days before one such rally to demand that two members of his household attend the event. If they didn’t show up, the family would have to pay a fine of K3,000 (the equivalent of just under US$3.00 and considerably more than an average daily wage in Burma). Aung Moe could afford to buy his freedom, but there were thousands of people around Burma who couldn’t. Like puppets, they marched through the streets and assembled at sports stadiums to raise their fists and wave placards that read “Don’t Destroy Peaceful Conditions,” “Support the Government’s Measures,” and “Oppose External Interference.”
As the regime wrenched the narrative of events into a plot that better suited the generals, I noticed that the people I met with were closing in on themselves. I visited a poet who told me he rarely left his apartment. Most of his fellow writers were lying low, he said, afraid to convene in tea shops and talk and debate as they used to, because government spies were being extra vigilant. Trapped and isolated inside his own home, he had no outlet for the anger he felt. “We just have to put it away inside, and we end up feeling constricted here,” he said, thumping his chest to indicate his heart. “On the outside, we have no choice but to keep talking, making jokes, and laughing.”
Unable to express himself in any other way, he wrote poems and distributed them anonymously among trusted colleagues. The poems were bleak streams of consciousness that held no offers of hope, as the following verse shows:
Imagination, dead lost, dead imagination.
Depression, dead depression.
Core, dead core.
Meditation on death.
Buddha, dead Buddha.