It is terrible tragedy that the Chinese Communist Party oppresses the Tibetan people while the Burmese junta oppresses the monks of Burma. As an American Buddhist, I look to some of the monastary meditation centers in Burma as world treasures that should not be subject to such harshness and injustice. The culture of Tibet is also a world treasure, but it is being diluted and washed away by a tide of Chinese immigrants with no interest in Tibetan culture. Yet the Dalai Lama rightly continues to oppose the Party. The strength of Buddhism is in its unwavering dedication to peace and harmony, not just for oneself, but even for those that oppress us. I personally feel that the Buddhist practice of Metta (loving-kindness) meditation would go much further to loosen the grip of these oppressors than any kind of direct confrontation. I hope that next time, the monks of Burma organize huge meditation retreats instead of taking to the streets. Then, the Burmese junta would see the real value and strength of those that they would disrobe.
‘I Wanted Democracy’
He was jailed and forced out of his traditional robes after Burmese soldiers arrested him during the junta's crackdown. A monk's tale.
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It was momentum, not militancy, that got the 26-year-old monk to join his Buddhist brethren massing on the streets of Rangoon. He left his monastery on the first day of the September protests and was soon marching near the famed Shwedagon Pagoda, confronting Burmese soldiers who barred him and others from climbing the shrine's stairs. He dropped out pretty quickly, though, when the Sangha, the state council of Buddhist monks, ordered the monks to stand down.
But he was back a week later, driven this time by "a feeling of injustice," he recalls in an interview with NEWSWEEK. "I'm a normal monk. I'm not a political monk. I am not well, not that strong. I have bone tuberculosis. But I participated because I wanted democracy, I wanted justice, and I wanted to show solidarity with people. Also, the protests had grown to thousands of people and I could not resist."
But the monk, who couldn't be named because of the dangers of his situation, never felt any euphoria, any sense that Burma would be changed forever by the crowds that took to the streets before the junta crackdown. "The truth is, I did not feel joy. I knew the military had everything and had this sense nothing would change."
Within two days he was in jail, arrested by soldiers in a roundup of about 100 monks from his monastery and others, tossed into a military truck and hauled off to a government technical institute doubling as a detention center. He was held for 19 days, including two inside infamous Insein Prison, and interrogated eight times by soldiers bent on finding out his role in the popular uprising.
"I returned to my monastery on the 25th of September. The front entrance was closed, so I had to climb over the fence in the back. I took a bath, went to bed, woke up as usual on the 26th, went out to the streets and went on an alms run. The next day, around four in the morning, about 300 soldiers surrounded the monastery and took us away," he says.
The troops treated him roughly but did not beat him, although they did slap some other monks, the youngest of whom was a 12-year-old novice. "The soldiers beat and kicked lay people. We were mainly asked, 'Who is the leader? Who's the organizer?' The typical questions were, 'Did you participate in protest? Why? Who is the leading monk in these protests? Who are overseers when they are marching?'"
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