Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, described the lessons she had learned from her country’s Hsayadaws, its Buddhist holy teachers, in an article for a Japanese newspaper in 1996. One of them told her what it would be like to fight for democracy in Burma: “You will be attacked and reviled for engaging in honest politics, but you must persevere. Lay down an investment in dukkha [suffering] and you will gain sukha [bliss].”
Last week saw hundreds of Burma’s monks investing in dukkha as they confronted the nation’s military regime. At one point, a large crowd of them gathered outside Aung San Suu Kyi’s house in Yangon, where she has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest. She came to the gate in the pouring rain and was allowed to greet them. This single, poignant moment summed up all that was most extraordinary about the demonstrations, as well as what was most frightening to Burma’s military junta.
Within a few days, scores of monks were in jail, many had been beaten, and the trickle of reports emanating from the country indicated that monasteries had been ransacked as the military hunted down the last rebellious elements.
Reports in the New Light of Myanmar, the official newspaper, blamed a few bad seeds who had infiltrated the monastic orders for inciting the protests. Pro-democracy activists have admitted to taking cover in the monasteries to avoid being jailed. But these are footnotes in a much larger tussle in Burma over the use and practice of Buddhism, which became visible to the world during the past week.
This situation is heartbreaking – what courage these people have shown.