pagodas, joining in holiday spirit, drawn
into the lavish hospitality,gazing in
wonder at
the amazing creations in bamboo, tinsel and
paper of mythical creatures and figures,
enjoying all the fun of a mediaeval English
fair. Most of the pilgrimage is
sheer holiday and most of the pilgrims want
nothing more, but there is a deeper side, as
there was in the shrines and aisles of
Canterbury.
To see this deeper side you
must be humble enough to shed your shoes and stockings
and climb bare-foot the well-worn steps to the shrines
that cluster so higgledy-piggledy round the base of the
pagoda. There you will find the more devout, mostly
women, as in the Christian churches of the West,
kneeling with prayerful hands before an image of the
Buddha, asking maybe a husband or child or maybe
something more spiritual ; or perhaps a tired old man,
conscious that life is nearly over and that it is high
time to pay serious attention to deeper things, telling
his beads and finding refuge from a difficult,
perplexing world in the three unfailing sources of
refuge, the Buddha, the Law and the Church. If you have
an understanding Burmese friend with you he may
translate some of the prayers spoken aloud, and you will
discover a wide charity in the prayers for all living
beings divine and human, and in the generous sharing of
the merit gained by the worshipper's prayer. And next
door to this quiet shrine you will find a jostling
crowd, lighting candles and offering flowers or
gold-leaf at the shrine of one of the eight planets, for
every Burman knows from the initial letter of his name
on what day of the week he was born, and does what he
can to secure good luck from the stars. As ever,
religion and superstition, closely intertwined. Once
again the visitor will be puzzled and find it difficult
to evaluate the part which Buddhism plays in the lives
of the people.
|
The Burmese or Myanmar
people are almost
entirely Buddhists. They are followers of the Buddha, a
great Indian religious
 teacher
who lived in the sixth century before Christ. His clan
name was Gaudama, and he was the son of a small rajah in
Central India. He and his family were Hindus by
religion, brought up in the religion of the Upanishads
and of older religious literature and tradition. From an
early age Gaudama had been troubled by the amount of
suffering he saw around him, suffering connected with
birth, disease, old age, death, running the whole span
of man's life. Possibly too he was struck by the
contrast between the extravagance and luxury of his
court life and the squalor and poverty of the poor who
lived in the mud huts around. That grinding poverty of
the common people of India is still today the thing that
strikes and appalls the visitor from another country or
the thinking Indian who loves his fellow men. This
consciousness of universal suffering so worked in the
mind of the sensitive young yuvaraj that finally he left
his father's court, his wife and new-born child, to try
and discover for men a way of release from suffering. To
him suffering was the primary evil and he felt an
irresistible urge to discover its cause and so show men
how to escape from it. His search led him to sit under
the leading gurus or teachers of his day, to study the
various philosophical schools, to undergo every form of
asceticism. But in none of these did he find any answer
to his problem, and despairing of outside help he
decided to seek his goal by himself and within himself.
At last understanding came to him, as he sat in
meditation under the Bo tree at Buddha-gaya. From that
time on we know him no longer as Gaudama, but as the
Buddha, the Enlightened One, the One who knows. |
The Four Noble Truths
He summed up his discovery for
later disciples in the Four Noble Truths about Suffering.
The first was one that he had already recognized, that
suffering is general and co-terminus with life. Suffering is
involved in birth, sickness, decay, death, sorrow, in
separation from the people and things we like, in having to
live with people and things we dislike, in not getting what
we want : all is suffering.
The second is the origin of suffering. Suffering springs
from desire, craving, lust, attachment to people and things.
The third is the truth about the ceasing of suffering :
namely, to escape from suffering crush out desire and
craving, break all bonds of attachment.
And the fourth is the way to crush desire, by following the
eight-fold path of right belief, right aim, right speech,
right action, right livelihood, right effort, right
mindfulness, right contemplation.
Now there is no doubt that this is noble
Buddhism teaching of deep
insight into human nature, and if put into practice would
produce noble character both personal and national. It may
not rise to the heights of Christ's view of suffering as the
raw material for spiritual maturity and victory, nor is it
so far reaching in its discrimination as Christ's insistence
that evil is the primary thing to be avoided. rather than
suffering. But it does get down to the root of much human
suffering, and it is emphatically practical in its advice
how to eliminate desire.
In practice many Buddhists have held that the-Buddha
insisted on the elimination of all desire, good as well as
bad, and this has tended to make them passive, free from
that selfless burning desire to get rid of social evils and
to serve their fellow men. This is not seen in the Buddha,
for after he had become enlightened, after he had completely
repudiated selfishness and desire in himself and had thus
attained Nirvana (Nirvana), he deliberately chose to live
on in the world for the salvation of men.
Karma and Merit
We must not forget that the
Buddha was a Hindu, a Hindu reformer certainly, who perhaps
without intending it founded a new religion. Among the
doctrines taken over from Hinduism by Buddhists none were
more-strongly held than those of karma and transmigration.
The Buddha's emphasis on cause and effect was clearly-seen
in the four truths of suffering enunciated by him, and this
has been elaborated into a dominant principle in Buddhism.
Present suffering is thought to be caused by the demerit or
guilt inherited from a former existence, while present
happiness is the reward of virtue in former lives. Thus
one's present state is determined by the law of karma, and
nothing can prevent the relentless working out of this law.
In practice this tends to produce an attitude of fatalism,
which discourages Buddhists from making any whole-hearted
attempt to overcome misfortune or to indulge in
philanthropic work to any great extent. One who is a leper
or blind or a cripple is so because of his karma ; it is
both mistaken and useless to interfere. The accumulation of
guilt has to be worked off until the last farthing is paid,
and then there will be no rebirth in the world, but the
attainment of Nirvana. To Buddhists the Christian doctrine
of forgiveness seems not only impossible but immoral.
The accumulation of merit
becomes a chief concern to the Buddhist, and in Burma
the good deeds most productive of merit are those
connected with the support of the
 Buddhist religion.
Thus to build a monastery or pagoda or to feed the monks
is looked upon as much more efficacious than building a
hospital or feeding the hungry, with the result that
monasteries and pagodas are everywhere, but hospitals
almost only where government has put up the money or
Western missions have been at work.
So the doctrine of karma discourages a courageous attack
on social evils or personal misfortunes'it is
definitely nobler in the Buddhist mind to suffer the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, than to take
arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.
But let it be said that in recent years there has been
an increase in works of mercy and philanthropy, though
the balance is still heavily weighted in favor of the
more institutional forms of merit. And all through,
the accumulation of merit is far too often the main
motive of giving, together -with its advertisement on
foundation stones or dedicatory
brass plates. But there, in the West, the number of
people who feature in subscription lists as 'Anonymous'
is equally small.
Yet it needs to be said that the doctrine of karma looks
forward as well as backward, although this is not often
emphasized. For as much as the past determines the
present, the present is going to determine the future.
This should be an incentive to the Buddhist to a life of
effort and virtue, so that having bravely overcome the
handicap from past existences he may lay a foundation
for his next cycle of life.
It might be thought that a belief in karma and a
recurring series of lives in the world as animal or man
indicated a belief in personality. But this is not so.
It is not the same personal entity or soul that is
carried on from one life to the other, but only the
accumulation of demerit, the character that has been
built up ; just as a new candle is lit from one that is
about to go out, so the karma is handed on. There is no
self, for human existence is thought of as being
determined by the five khandhas or groups of body,
feeling, perception, mental activity, and consciousness
; when these are combined together in operation life
exists, when they disintegrate death takes place. This
lack of
 belief in a continuing personality in man, of a
controller of the five khandhas, of a being personally
responsible for the past and the fashioner of the
future, has not been an incentive to the development of
personality or for attempting great achievements. Yet
it does witness to the idea that the attainment of ideal
character is a matter of long and painful effort, for
which one short span of life is not enough. Even the
Buddha himself lived through five hundred and fifty
lives (and there is a jataka or birth story for each
one) before he attained to Buddha hood. Indeed one of
the early symbols of Buddhism was that of a wheel,
hinting of the long journey to be traveled and the
recurring lives to be lived before the perfection of
Nirvana can be attained. Mrs. Rhys Davids speaks of man
as a wayfarer on the long road of becoming, undergoing
change and growth until the process of becoming is
complete and man reaches the ideal and so enters his
Nirvana.
But the Myanmars or Burman
are seldom
logical, even in his religion, and his superstitious
belief in the ghosts of the dead suggests that the
doctrine of no-personality does not command very
deep obedience. For when a member of the household
dies the other members of the family will not go to
sleep while the corpse is in the house but sit up
with neighbors and friends playing games and talking
all through the night. Often a notice will be placed
on the grave warning the dead person not to return.
Even in the more sophisticated circles of government
service, when a man dies his name is published in
the official gazette and permission is given for him
to retire from government service. Once after taking
the funeral service of a Christian student who had
died, I was approached by his Buddhist
school-fellows and asked to put a notice on the
grave saying : `Maung Kyaw, take notice that your
name has this day been struck off the school
register, so please do not return.' But this may be
merely due to the survival of pre-Buddhist animist
ideas. A similar thought is seen in the reluctance
of Burmans to wake a sleeping person suddenly, lest
his spirit or 'butterfly' should fail to return in
time and so cause his death.
Is There a God'
Just as
Buddhism in Myanmar or
Burma, Ceylon and
Thailand or Siam denies the
existence of soul or self in man, so it denies the
existence of a Supreme Being, an Ideal Personality,
an Eternal God, and it claims that this was the
teaching of the Buddha. He certainly did not give
any definite teaching about God, nor did lie define
him as a person. But this evidence is purely
negative and at the most can only be cited as
showing that the Buddha was an agnostic. It is
possible that he did not regard the existence of God
as provable one way or the other, and so did not
regard it as of sufficient practical importance to
spend much time on it. He was certainly questioned
by
 disciples as to the
existence of a Supreme Being
and also as to the existence of the Ego. His reply
in each case was noncommittal, and this may suggest
that in those days when barren metaphysical argument
was so prevalent he did not want to commit himself
to an answer which would have been equally distorted
by both sides. His conception of God and the human
soul may have been so deep as to be well nigh
impossible to express in words. The view has been
put forward that the Buddha was silent on this
subject not because his idea of God was too small,
but because it was too great and could not be
intelligibly expressed, and so he did not wish to
restrict himself to a sharp definition of the Deity.
A consideration of his spiritual background and
environment will give weight to this claim that he
was not atheistic. It would be inevitable for one
brought up on the Upanishads and earlier religious
literature of Hinduism to believe in the existence
of Divine Spirit, the source of all our intellectual
powers and faculties as well as of all the powers of
nature, the great A tman immanent in the lesser,
finite atman of each man. To deny this would have
been the surest way of arousing the opposition of
every thinking religious Indian of his day, and we
know that the Buddha's message attracted many who
were sincerely seeking for reality. It is possible
that this atheistic development took place after the
Buddha's death and was one of the chief reasons for
the expulsion of Buddhism from India. For it is
strange that however strong Buddhism may be in
Judo-China, Ceylon and China, it has failed
completely in the land of its birth.
Whatever may be the truth about the Buddha and God,
there is no doubt that Buddhism in Myanmar or Burma is
atheistic. The three main articles of the Buddhist
creed are Dokkha, Aneissa, Anatta'all is suffering,
all is impermanent, there is no soul or self.
According to this creed there can be no God. To the
Burmese Buddhist it is not a case of weighing the
evidence and taking one side or the other ; to him
there is no question about it : the idea of God is
not only not reasonable but it is almost laughable.
That is his attitude in discussion and argument, but
in real life he is more vulnerable. For not a few of
them tend to put the Buddha in the place of God,
while to many belief in spirits is a far more real
thing than the absence of a Supreme Being. It would
seem that the great majority of people, like Nature,
abhor a vacuum, and if there is no God at the heart
of reality they look round for someone or something
to fill the vacant throne.
Shwethalyaung
reclining Buddha Statue. |
The Buddha himself did not claim to be divine. He
claimed to have found the way of escape from
suffering, to show men the road leading to Nirvana ;
he was a teacher and a guide, but not a savior. By
imitating his example they might become as he was,
but it was by their own effort and in their own
strength. When near death he is recorded to have
said to Ananda : 'Therefore, 0' Ananda, be ye lamps
unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves.
Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast
to the Dhamma as a lamp.' And his last words were :
`Decay is inherent in all component things.
Work out your salvation with diligence.
This lack of belief in a Supreme Being
and in an undying personality in men is
regarded by many friendly critics of
Buddhism as its greatest weakness.
|
Such a negative faith cannot supply a
satisfying purpose for life, nor any real incentive
to great achievement. Indeed life in the world is
regarded as unfortunate and evil, something to be
escaped from. The goal of Nirvana, too, seems
negative and unsatisfying, especially to Western
minds with their emphasis on activity. It is the
most difficult of all Buddhist concepts to
understand. Nirvana is at any rate the cessation of
selfish desire, emancipation from the three cardinal
evils of lawba, dawtha, mantha, 'lust, ill-will,
unreasoning stupidity ; it is the end of suffering,
the end of the weary recurring cycles of existence,
and so the Buddhist speaks of the Great Peace. It
must be something more than the peace of
nothingness, but it is difficult to think so without
a belief in personality. In one place the Scriptures
say : `the ceasing of becoming is Nirvana' ; you
have ceased to change and grow because you have
reached the goal, becoming and being are now one,
you have become that which you always aspired to be.
Is this its meaning '
The most positive concept of it has been suggested
by a modern Buddhist* who compares Nirvana with
eternal life as taught by Jesus, and says it is a
quality of life possible now, the kind of life the
Buddha had, free from self-centredness, lust, This
fits in with the possibility of attaining Nirvana
while still in the world, and also with the refusal
of the Buddha to dogmatise about what happens after
the death of a Buddha.
Dharma Teaching, Law,
Truth
There being no God in Buddhism in it is obvious that
there can be little in the way of worship or prayer.
It ought not to be necessary to state that Buddhists
do not worship the image of the Buddha. They sit and
fix their eyes on the Buddha's image to remind them
of that great compassionate teacher and the way of
salvation which he taught ; that practice is an aid
to meditation and concentration. Prayer too is not
addressed to anyone ; it is aspiration rather than
communion or petition. The nearest approach to
worship is found in the reverence which every
Buddhist renders to the Three Gems
I go for refuge to the Buddha.
I go for refuge to the Dhamma (Law).
I go for refuge to the Sangha (Brotherhood of
Monks).
We have already dealt fairly fully with the first
of these objects of reverence in our consideration
of the life and teaching of the Buddha. We have now
to consider the other two. The Dhamma is the body of
teaching handed down by the Buddha to his disciples.
On his deathbed, before attaining to the final
Nirvana, he told them that the Dhamma was to be
their light and guide, and that the fulfillment of
the Dhamma would be the highest way of reverencing
himself. 'Whosoever, Ananda, be he brother or
sister, lay brother or lay sister,'whosoever walks
uprightly with the Dhamma-he it is that truly
honors, reveres, respects, worships, and defers to
the Blessed One in the perfection of worship.'
Buddhists in Myanmar or Burma have tended to identify this
Teaching with the external law, written and
contained in the Ti-Pitaka, the three 'baskets' of
the Scriptures. These are : (I) Vinaya or
Discipline, containing the rules of life, intended
mainly for the monks. (2) The Sutta-Pitaka or
Discourses, including the four longer books'The
Dialogues of the Buddha, Further Dialogues of the
Buddha, Kindred Sayings, Gradual Sayings, and a
number of shorter ones of which the best known is
Dhammapada or Verses on Dhamma. To the ordinary
student of religion this collection is by far the
most interesting of the three, though it does not
make easy reading ; but patience will discover many
gems of thought and religious insight. There is a
good deal of repetition and a number of literary
devices, which point back to an oral tradition, when
the teaching was learnt by heart and handed down
from one generation of monks to the next. All the
main books in this section may be read in the
English translations published by the Pali Text
Society. (3) Abliidhanima, which describes the
processes of thought and psychology of Buddhism.
This is of a very metaphysical nature and makes more
difficult reading still. Strangely enough this is
the most popular of the three 'baskets' in Burma,
suggesting that Burmese Buddhists are more
interested in the metaphysical side than in the
ethical or religious aspects of their religion.
To the serious Buddhist the essence of the Teaching,
contained in the Scriptures, will consist of several
strands. There will be the insight of the Buddha
into the cause of suffering, and the way of release
in following the eightfold path ; there will be an
appreciation of the Law of Causation and its working
out in the law of karma'regarded from these aspects
Buddhism is certainly a `gnosis', a way of knowledge
and enlightenment. There will also be the ethical
teaching of the Buddha, summed up for the ordinary
man in the Five Great Commands, binding on every
Buddhist. These are :
1. To kill no living
thing.
2. Not to steal another's property.
3. Not to commit any sexual crime.
4. Not to speak what is untrue.
5. Not to drink intoxicating drinks.
The highly moral character of Buddhism is evident
from these five general commands. The first and the
last need some comment. Not only human life is
sacred, but all life,
 that of animals and insects as
well. This is a logical development of the belief in
re-incarnation, that long recurring cycle of lives
progressing from humble forms of life and lower
standards of character, to that final existence in
the world when all guilt has been purged away, the
debt of karma fully paid, and from which is no
return ; Nirvana has been reached. So theoretically
all life is equally sacred, that of an insect or
animal equally valuable with that of a man. But in
practice Burmese Buddhists fall short of that
ideal'as indeed the adherents of any religion fall
woefully short of their highest aspirations. Murder
and violent crimes are sadly prevalent'murder is so
common that a murder trial is dismissed in the
newspapers with a short paragraph ; it is not of
front-page value as in the West. The crime
statistics of Burma rival those of Chicago, so that
fearless critics of their Burmese friends have said
: 'Instead of exalting all life to the value of that
of a man the result has been to value the life of a
man no more than that of an animal or insect.' Yet
the devout monk will strain his water lest he
swallow a tiny insect, and the ordinary householder
will allow every pup born to live and will refuse to
put a pain-racked animal out of its misery.
The fifth command too is interesting in its complete
forbidding of the use of intoxicating liquor ; in
the case of strict Buddhists this extends to the use
of brandy for extreme cases of illness or
exhaustion. The strictness is probably due to a
practical understanding of human nature ; in the
East generally speaking, if a man drinks at all it
is not for fellowship or the stimulation of flagging
energy, but to get drunk, to forget his worries and
difficulties ; he has no idea of moderation. And in
that case abstinence is safer than temperance.
The ethical nature of Buddhism has been expressed in
another way : 'To abstain from evil ; to fulfill all
good ; to purify the heart' this is the teaching of
the Buddha.' To point out the failure of Buddhists
to live up to this high level is no valid criticism
of the standards of the Buddha, any more than the
confusion and failure of the West can be used as an
argument against the teaching of Christ. In both
cases it is a refusal to accept the highest
standards or a failure to find the spiritual power
necessary to put them into practice. If Christians
lived up to the teaching of Christ, and if Buddhists
put into practice the ethical teaching of the
Buddha, both West and East would be radically
different from what they are now.
A beautiful practice in Buddhism is meditation on
the four Brahinaviharas of inyitta (universal love
or goodwill), karuna (universal compassion),
nzudita (joy in the prosperity and happiness of
all), and upekkha (equanimity, indifference to the
ups-and-downs of life, non-attachment to the things
of this world). The object of this four-fold
meditation is not only to produce these four states
in oneself, but to radiate to all living beings
good-will, coin-passion, sympathetic joy, unshakable
poise.
In the Suttas there is a lovely description of the
whole duty of the Buddhist, and a version of this is
known and loved by every Burmese Buddhist. It is
called,
The Song Of Blessing
One night a spirit came to the Blessed One and
addressed him thus in verse :
Many devas and men have pondered on blessings,
Longing for goodly things. 0 tell me Thou the
greatest blessing.
The Lord replied :
Not to follow after fools, but to follow after the
wise ; The worship of the worshipful, this is the
greatest blessing.
To dwell in a pleasant spot, to have done good deeds
in former births,
To have set oneself in the right path, 'this is the
greatest blessing
Much learning and much science, and a discipline
well learned,
Yea, and a pleasant utterance, 'this is the greatest
blessing.
The support of mother and father, the cherishing of
child and wife,
To follow a peaceful livelihood, 'this is the
greatest blessing.
Giving alms, the righteous life, to cherish kith and
kin, And to do deeds that bring no blame, 'this is
the greatest blessing.
To cease and to abstain from sin, to shun
intoxicants ; And steadfastness in
righteousness, 'this is the greatest blessing.
Reverence, humility, content, and gratitude,
To hear the Law at proper times, 'this is the
greatest blessing.
Patience, the soft answer, the sight of those
controlled, And pious talk in season clue, 'this is
the greatest blessing.
Restraint, the holy life, discernment of the Noble
Truths, Of one's own self to know the Goal, this is
the greatest blessing.
A heart untouched by worldly things, a heart that is
not swayed. By sorrow, a heart passionless,
secure, that is the greatest blessing.
Invincible on every side, they go who do these
things On every side they go to bliss, 'theirs is the
greatest blessing.
To follow this noble life brings merit and helps a
man on his long pilgrimage to Nirvana. Perhaps the
acquisition of merit has become too dominating a
motive for living the highest life, and as has been
said earlier the most meritorious deeds are those
connected with the institutional side of Buddhism ;
yet in daily life you will find many a sign of
thoughtful charity often along the roadside you
will see a tiny miniature house, high on posts like
the living houses, built of wood, containing pots of
drinking water, daily replenished by some kindly
person for the refreshment of thirsty wayfarers ; or
in almost every village a zavat or rest house where
travelers may spread out their bedding rolls and
sleep under cover ; or a village well provided by
some villager who loves his fellow men. There are
very few homeless orphans in Burma ; if the parents
die a kindly neighbor will often adopt the children
; there is a whole section of traditional Buddhist
law dealing with the rights of adopted children.
Even the pariah dogs and birds are fed.
The spirit of toleration inculcated by Buddhism
flourishes in Myanmar or Burma. Where there is intolerance it
is due
not to religion, but to a sensitive nationalism,
which regards Buddhism as the religion of Burma and
therefore considers it unpatriotic of a Burman to
accept conversion to another religion. And it must
be said that sometimes missionaries in their
approach are neither tolerant nor tactful, failing
to appreciate the spiritual stature of the Buddha
and the goodness and beauty of much of the Buddhist
teaching.
A word perhaps needs to be said about the absence of
any caste or class distinctions in Burma. This is
due, I think, to the value and equality of all
living beings implicit in the Buddha's teaching,
although in his time caste distinctions in India had
not yet hardened into their later rigidity ; they
were there, but in their original purpose of
practical division of responsibility and labor. Nor
do we find the class distinctions so common in the
West. Burmans meet one another and people of other
races with a delightful absence of caste or class
consciousness, with no complexes of superiority or
inferiority.
So when the devout Buddhist begins his religious
exercises with his homage to the Three Gems, in
reverencing the second gem, the Dharma, he has in
mind some or all of the above ideas.
In recent years Mrs. Rhys Davids, following up the
principles of the higher and textual criticism which
have been brought to bear on the Christian
Scriptures, has attempted to get back behind
received writings and traditions to the original
message of the Buddha. To her mind the Dharma is not
an external code of teaching but more of an inner
principle, an inner light and guide approaching the
idea of conscience. She claims that originally this
was akin to the idea of Holy Spirit. The handful of
Burmese Buddhists who have read her recent books
will have nothing to do with this theory, yet
strangely enough Mrs. Rhys Davids has some support
of an historical basis, in the existence in Burma of
a sect of Buddhists who call themselves Paramats,
the name apparently meaning followers of the higher
way as compared with the Pinyats or adherents of the
Law. These Paramats believe in a Divine Wisdom,
somewhat akin to the Logos idea of the Stoics, and
later of Philo, with which men may enter into
communion by purification and meditation. They have
no use for monks or pagodas or external symbols ;
the highest form of life to them is that of the
hermit, who by fasting and prayer seeks to get into
mystical relationship with the ultimate reality.
Some of these hermits, independently of
Christianity, have conic to the conclusion that
there must be an Eternal God.
Decline In The Burmese
Sangha
In recent years the Brotherhood of Monks in Burma
has suffered a serious decline, both in the
reputation and respect in which it is held by the
laity and also in its influence on the moral and
spiritual life of the country. This is not entirely
due to internal causes. For in the days of the
Burmese Kings the Sangha was strictly controlled
through an archbishop or Thathanabaing appointed by
the King and responsible for the monastic discipline
throughout the country. With the annexation of Upper
Burma in 1886, the British Government with its
recognized principle of neutrality in religious
affairs, allowed this important office to lapse and
so since that time there has been no coordinating
or controlling nucleus in Burmese Buddhism. The
result has been that the discipline in individual
monasteries has depended entirely on the presiding
abbot : in some cases strict standards of moral life
and monastic discipline have been preserved, in
others there has been sad laxity in both those
spheres. In recent years monks have involved
themselves in politics, especially some of the
younger ones and have helped to stir up violent
nationalistic feeling. The monastery too has often
been looked upon as a sanctuary for Burmese
criminals and the ease with which a man may become a
novice has encouraged this. In Rangoon for example a
big block of monasteries in Godwin Road was often a
source of anxiety and trouble. There is obviously a
need of some official register of monks and a
stricter scrutiny of those who present themselves
for the novitiate. It has been suggested that in the
reconstruction of Burma after the war the ancient
office of Thathanabaing should be revived and that
he should be assisted by advisory bodies of trusted
monks and devout laymen. It is possible that
something more far-reaching than this is necessary
and that Buddhism should be made the state religion
of Burma with an annual grant for furthering truly
religious objects. In Siam the King is regarded as
the sole defender of the faith and many of the
monasteries are under his direct control and in
these a stricter rule of life is observed.
It must not be thought that this unhappy state is
completely acquiesced in, for many monks and leading
laymen deplore it and there have been efforts to
remedy it. Only a year or two ago a bill was to have
been presented to the Legislative Council by a
leading Buddhist to provide some control of the Sangha but was withdrawn at the last moment as the
mover was violently threatened while on the way to
the Council Chamber.
And in every generation there have been monks of
outstanding piety and learning. Twenty-five years
ago the saintly Ledi
Sayadaw became a great
spiritual force in the life of the people, and in
many a town in Lower Burma his teaching is still
remembered and practiced. In recent years there has
been the Monyin Sayadaw who has organized a powerful
Buddhist centre near Monywa
wherever he goes, crowds flock to hear him for he
speaks simply and directly to the moral needs of the
people, and where this is so there will always be
plenty of people eager to listen and learn. After
the Burma Rebellion in 1931 many Buddhist monks
toured the affected areas preaching peace and
goodwill, and in the rehabilitation of Burma after
this war the monks will have a still greater part to
play.
But it must be admitted that there is a real doubt
as to whether or not a country like Myanmar or Burma can
support as many as 100,000 monks. Economically such
a large number is a serious drain on the country,
and it is to be questioned whether it is morally
healthy for so many men in the prime of life not to
be doing some really creative work. In the Christian
monasteries of the Middle Ages, under the influence
of S. Benedict and his order, the twin principles of
work and prayer were accepted, and from the
monasteries there came out not only religion and
learning but much practical inspiration for the
development of agriculture and industry. If the
Buddhist rule could be modified to include manual
labor what a difference it would make to the
thinking and life of the people generally ; possibly
with the spiritual aristocracy doing manual work the
rising generation would come to see that manual work
was at least as praiseworthy and valuable as a
routine job in a government office, which seems to
be the extent of ambition at present.
To pursue the high moral life laid down by the
Buddha, to point men ever to the rooting out of all
selfishness, to live worthy of the great reverence
in which they are held by the people'these are no
mean aims for the monks of Burma, and their
achievement in any degree would augur a spiritual
and moral revival among the people of Burma, already
one of the most friendly and loveable races in the
world.
We may close our study of the monks with words taken
from the Buddha's charge when he sent them out on
their mission : 'Go ye, 0 Bhikkhus, and wander forth
for the gain of the many, for the welfare of the
many, in compassion for the world, for the good, for
the gain, for the welfare of gods and men. Proclaim,
0 Bhikkhus, the Doctrine glorious, preach ye a life
of holiness, perfect and pure.'
Belief In Spirits
All the indigenous races of Myanmar or Burma have come from the
mountainous regions of the Tibetan and Chinese
borders, pressing down the great river valleys
towards the fertile land of the south, where nature
is generous and life easy. Before they settled in
Central or Southern Myanmar or Burma the Burmese people were
animists as the hill tribes still are to-day. They
worshipped the spirit of the spring or river, the
tree spirit or nat of the great banyan tree, they
propitiated the spirits of nature and those
responsible for sickness and disease, and they
feared the spirits of the dead. Much of this still
survives to-day in spite of the fact that Buddhism
is the accepted religion of the country.
The word nat may have two meanings in Myanmar or Burmese. It
may refer to the devas, the spiritual beings who
inhabit the six Buddhist heavens in which virtuous
people are rewarded with happiness after a good life
on the earth. These beings display great solicitude
for the pious state and welfare of mankind, but you
need not bother about them too much for they will
not do you any harm.
Secondly, the word nat may refer to the spirits of
nature, the spirits of the air, the forest, the
water, the household nat, the nat of the village.
These are generally, though not always, regarded as
malevolent ; they may do you either good or harm,
and so they must be propitiated by regular
offerings. There is a nat-sin or shrine for the
local spirits in each village ; in most homes a
cokernut decorated in red cloth is hung up for the
guardian nat of the home ; at every big banyan tree
there will be a shrine for the tree-spirit at which
gold leaf, candles, flowers will be offered. All
these spirits are to be feared because of their
potentiality for doing harm.
There are also powerful spirits connected with
certain localities, the spirits of people who in
past generations have met with a violent end and are
now believed to roam around the scene of their death
seeking whom they may devour. The early legends in
Burmese vernacular histories deal largely with this
type of nats. Some of the most popular festivals,
though centering round the pagodas, are in origin nat
festivals. In 1856 at the founding of Mindon's new
capital of Mandalay, pregnant women were buried
alive under the posts of the main gates, the idea
being that their spirits would haunt the place and
do harm to any who came against it with evil intent.
Among the Karens and Kachins animism plays a more
powerful part than among the Burmans, but even among
the latter the nats are to be reckoned with in
everyday life, so much so that it has been claimed
that animism is the real religion of Myanmar or Burma and that
Buddhism is only a veneer.
Anawrahta, the founder-patron of Burmese
or Mynmar Buddhism,
realized how difficult it would be to detach his
people from their old beliefs and practices, for in
the great Shwe Dagon Pagoda at Bagan, he enshrined
images of the thirty-seven nats, saying, 'If they
will not come for the new religion, they must come
for the old'.
It should be understood that this worship of the
spirits is quite contrary to Buddhism ; it is
tolerated rather than permitted. Its existence side
by side with Buddhism is thoroughly illogical, but
then the Burman is illogical in more ways than one :
as a Buddhist he confesses that `all is suffering'
but in practice he is a gay, pleasure-loving,
happy-go-lucky fellow. Perhaps too Buddhism may
satisfy him as a philosophy of life and as an outlet
for social activity, but it is cold and impersonal,
whereas his contact with the nats is more satisfying
to that inner, religious sense of dependence and
need.
This belief in spirits is accompanied by a natural
faith in omens. There are all kinds of auspicious
and inauspicious omens, certain days on which it is
unlucky to commence a journey or undertake a new
project. And inevitably there are plenty of experts,
who profess to be able to interpret the signs or
foretell the auspicious days. These be-din say as,
astrologers, ponnas, will for an appropriate fee
tell your horoscope or advise you as to lucky days,
or tell you the whereabouts of a lost person or
piece of property. Superstitious practices, relics
of primitive magic, love potions, still survive and
are well patronised. The best monks frown on all
this, urging their people to protect themselves by
reciting the usual religious formula or verses of
the Scriptures, against which the wills of the nats
etc. are harmless. But superstition and the desire
to know the future are so far too strong even for
the disapproval of the monks, who have perforce to
tolerate what they would fain banish.
Myanmar or Burmese
Festivals
Mention has already been made of the festivals,
which are more of the nature of great social
holidays. Many of these are the patronal festivals
of pagodas, some are even nat festivals, not all of
them have any connection with Buddhism. The New Year
Feast or
Thingyan known to Western people as the
Water Festival is almost the only festival that is
observed universally throughout Burma. This takes
place early in April and celebrates the annual visit
of the Thagya-min or King of the Devas to inaugurate
the new year. The exact day is fixed each year by
the astrologers who profess to have intimate
knowledge of his plans, and who also announce
whether he will stay on the earth for three days or
four. Early on the first day crowds repair to the
monastery with pots of fresh clear water which are
respectfully offered to the monks, then the images
at the pagoda are ceremonially washed. After that
the festival becomes one joyous holiday and water is
sprinkled or more often thrown over anybody and
everybody, the idea behind it being friendliness
and cleansing. In former times there was a deeper
thought to the festival '
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children would
not fail to visit their parents and
sprinkling them with a few drops of water
would ask pardon for their negligence's of
the past year ; a similar thought would lurk
behind the offering of water to the monks ;
officials and employers would receive visits
from their juniors and would be sprinkled
with water symbolic of blessing, good-will
and respect. But in modern times the
festival tends to degenerate into a
rollicking time especially for the younger
folk, with buckets, hose-pipes, squirts,
stirrup pumps all brought into play, with
trams, trains, buses, motor-cars as the
favorite targets so that on these festival
days it is risky to go out unless you are
prepared for repeated soakings. But among
the Burmans themselves it is all carried on
with friendliness and enjoyment, and no one
minds getting soaked, for the hot weather
has already arrived and there is no fear of
catching cold. |
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