Buddhism in Myanmar Burma Kharma Buddhist Monks

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.

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.

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.

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, more about Buddhism in Myanmar Tweet

Buddhism in Myanmar Burma, Buddhism religion, Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhism basics