Bhikkhu Cintita

Author: bhikkhu cintita

  • Uposatha Day Teaching

    Noble Eightfold Path: Right Speech

    To bring the new reader up to date, the Noble Eightfold Path is the Buddha’s master checklist on the path to the perfection of character. The eight folds fall into three groups or trainings, the Wisdom Group, the Ethical Conduct Group and the Cultivation of Mind Group. In the past two posts I have described the Wisdom Group, and today I will begin the Ethical Conduct Group.

    On the Noble Eightfold Path we are acquiring skills, the skills to live a virtuous life. In analogy, a potter also needs certain skills. Among these are the actual actions to take in making a pot, for instance, shaping the pot on the potter’s wheel, adding an ornamental handle, firing, putting on the glaze, and there are skilled ways of doing these things and unskillful ways. These are like the Buddhist Ethical Conduct Group

    In the last episode we discussed Right Resolve. Right Resolve is the factor of Wisdom that gives the character its basic shape. It is a character of Virtue, that is, of Renunciation, of Goodwill and of Harmlessness. This is one’s resolve. Ethical Conduct, also called the training in Virtue or Morality, is the steps one takes in actually fashioning the shape of one’s character, through Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood.

    Under Right Speech one undertakes:

    • not to lies,
    • not to slander,
    • not to speak harshly and
    • not to chatter idly.

    These are stated as abstentions. This is typical in teachings on Buddhist Ethical Conduct, but instead, out of kindness and compassion one tells the truth when someone needs to know it, one speaks well of others, one uses kind words, and one observes Noble Silence otherwise..

    The Conduct Group presents in outline form a moral code. It should be understood that morality in Buddhism has a different foundation than morality in the Abrahamic religions, in which morality comes down from God, for instance, through the Ten Commandments given to Moses. In Buddhism morality is always a personal choice, it is a matter of vow. There is a recognition that one will continue to suffer and cause suffering for others to the extent that one’s character has yet to be perfected. But morality is not something imposed, but rather is a matter of personal commitment, and that is where the focus is, on one’s own actions, not on others’, which you cannot really control in any case. The world is not a battleground of Good and Evil, it is people doing what they can. Every person has the potential to be skillful or to be unskillful in conduct. If my resolve is to be a person of Renunciation, Goodwill and Harmlessness, then Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood are how I manifest this. In practice this is surprisingly effective in producing virtuous behavior even without God or Santa Claus watching one’s every move: Buddhist counties tend to have very low crime rates. In Burma I was impressed by how safe you and your possessions are. There is very little violent crime, for instance, providing you don’t get in the government’s way. It is relatively safe to leave a bicycle unlocked, and that in a desperately poor country with little police presence.

    It is important to appreciate how much emphasis he Buddha places on Right Speech: a lot. This is true in many of the Suttas and in the Vinaya, and this is probably why it comes as the very first in the Conduct Group. In is easy to think that speech is relatively harmless when compared to actions. We all know expressions like, “Sticks and Stones may Break my Bones but Words will Never Hurt me,” and “Actions Speak Louder than Words,” But consider that racism, sexism, nationalism and eventually war and ethnic cleansing are all driven by many acts of Wrong Speech. We use speech as vengeance, to turn one person or group against another, to deceive and manipulate, and get people to buy things. Lying in particular undermines our trust in each other, which a society requires to function. In this modern Communication Age Right Speech has become even more critical as it finds expression through so many media and the speech of each of us can easily reach mass audiences. Given a few advances in technology since the Buddha’s day, “Speech” now includes the written word, blogs, videos, radio broadcasts and maybe even pantomime. Speech can also be passive; watching talk shows generally constitutes being a party to idle chatter.

    Unfortunately Right Speech in the Communication Age seems to be rarer than it should be. Lies, often quite blatant, distortions and exaggeration, slander and character assassination, harsh speech and insult, frivolous chatter and gossip are matters of daily consumption. There is a simple principle if you want to live in an environment of Right Speech: Turn It Off!

    Throughout this uposatha day, the day of the full moon, I suggest you pay attention to your speech and the speech of others. If you are like most people you will begin to catch yourself speaking badly of others, really for no productive reason and with a bit of anger or hatred, or at least as an reflection of the endless chatter of a very busy mind.

  • Uposatha Day Teaching

    Noble Eightfold Path: Right Resolve

    For new readers: Each quarter moon, on Uposatha Day, I am posting a short Buddhist teaching. The present posting is the third in the series on the Noble Eightfold Path, the Buddha’s master checklist for practice, the practice of perfecting character. We have been using the metaphor of the potter to describe the elements of this practice.

    Last week we considered the first element of the Eightfold Path, Right View. Right View is what we need to know about the mind and the world in order skillfully to craft our character, just as a potter needs to know certain things in order to skillfully craft a bowl. This week we consider the second element of the Eightfold Path, Right Resolve, also sometimes called Right Intention or Right Thought.. Right View and Right Resolve together form the Wisdom Group or Training in Wisdom within the Eightfold Path. The remaining six elements form the Training in Conduct and Training in Cultivation of Mind.

    A potter in crafting a bowl not only needs to know about clay and glaze and potter’s wheel, he also needs to have an idea of what he hopes to produce. This is Right Resolve. For the potter Right Resolve might be to make a bowls of exquisite elegance and beauty and at the same time of practical functionality. For the Buddhist Right Resolve is to craft a character of highest Virtue, one that embodies Renunciation, Good Will and Harmlessness. Right Resolve is in the Wisdom Group because it requires wise reflection to fully understand. Renunciation, Goodwill and Harmlessness are not, for most people, an obvious set of qualities to put here. For instance, you might think that the Perfected Character is wealthy, attractive, popular, fun-loving, sporty, and ever young, .. and, oh, enlightened. Or you’ve come to Buddhist practice because of inner pain; your resolve is to fix yourself. No doubt the reader has resolved to be this way or that way at various times—New Year’s Day is the traditional American occasion for this—and almost certainly it has not lead to satisfactory results. The Buddha advises us to resolve ourselves to live lives , and establish the virtues, of Renunciation, Good Will and Harmlessness as a step in his path. With a mind open to his every suggestion, we can see how that works out in our lives.

    Right Resolve in short means this:

    Make everything you do a Gift.

    Can you do this? This means you set out on the Buddha’s eightfold path as a Gift. It means you work and relax as a Gift. It means you watch the news as a Gift, you eat as a Gift. It means you choose your livelihood as a Gift. It means you meditate and develop Right View as a gift. This sounds saintly. Buddhism aims at nothing less, … but it also recognizes that few will quite get there, which is OK too. Nevertheless this is our constant resolve.

    Renunciation takes the “Me First” out of Gift giving. Any true Gift involves renunciation, otherwise it is not quite a Gift; otherwise I give it because I expect to get something in return. The full virtue of Renunciation is not easy to see: Our common sense tells us that happiness comes from grasping after things, but in fact it comes from letting go. This is one of the reasons we have monastics in Buddhism, professional renunciates, to remind us over and over that this is the case, to gently steer us in that direction. It is also completely cool, that that that which enables pure giving to others is also the greatest source of personal happiness. In other words giving is a Gift to yourself, and receiving a Gift is a Gift to another. You can’t get cooler than that. Once you fully recognize this, Right Resolve is not such a difficult thing to develop.

    Goodwill and Harmlessness, or loving-kindness and compassion, drive the act of Gift giving. With the “Me First” out of the equation the wish for the benefit of all and the recognition of the enormous suffering of the world extends without limit, even to those we once thought we did not like or were deserving of their pain. It is for all of them that we undertake to take the Noble Eightfold Path to the production of a character of exquisite elegance and beauty and at the same time of practical functionality.

    On this Uposatha Day, I suggest that you consider, first, What is it that brought me to Buddhist practice, that is, to walk the Noble Eightfold Path? and second, How is my practice a Gift to the World? Can the two answers be reconciled?

  • Uposatha Day Teaching

    Noble Eightfold Path, Right View

    In order to craft a ceramic object a potter needs to understand his materials and tools: the varieties of clay, how much water to add to the clay, how the clay behaves under pressure, what conditions will cause a pot to crack or explode in the kiln, what happens to clay at different baking temperatures, various types and properties of glaze, etc. In order to craft a life in the Dharma the Buddhist practitioner also must understand his materials and tools: the body, the mind, the nature of the world we are embedded in, how thoughts are triggered, how actions are triggered, how our habit patterns evolve.

    Right View is seeing things as they really are. It is not accepting an orthodox set of unexamined beliefs. This gives Buddhism one of its startling properties. The skilled potter has to work with the conditions at hand: he must not pretend he has clay when he is out of it, he must not pretend his clay is other than it is or that the temperature of his kiln is not five degrees above what the knob says. Pretending will lead to unanticipated results. So it is with the Buddhist practitioner. This gets Buddhism into trouble with the outside world, where it has gained a reputation as pessimistic, focusing on such things as suffering, on sickness, old age and death. The Buddha even recommended the practice of observing corpses in various stages of decay. These are all the things we prefer to turn away from, yet these are realities, and it is advisable not to fashion a life out of what is not real.

    This is not to say Buddhism has no doctrine. Buddhism provides many pointers and many observations that highlight particular things as they are and makes many statements about what you should discover there. Buddhism points to impermanence, suffering and absence of self as characteristics of existence and correlates suffering with clinging or aversion. Clinging and aversion arise from false views, particularly a false conception of the self, which then cannot keep pace with an ever-changing world. Tendencies to clinging, aversion, wrong view, and hence suffering are unskillful aspects of a personality that can be mitigated and eventually disappear altogether through skillful action in the present. Skillful action is related to the purity of one’s intentions. Buddhism also introduces the notion, often controversial in the West, that the process of shaping one’s life continues right past the end of this life an into another. These all become objects for contemplation and personal observation.

    In the beginning many Buddhist views are obscure and complex, and therefore not immediately verified in one’s own experience. Although verification in one’s own experience is always encouraged, i.e., blind faith is discouraged, and verification leads to greater confidence in Right View, it is important from the beginning that one be ready to accept Buddhist views with and open mind and an open heart, as working assumptions. Too much skepticism will inhibit coming to terms with the parts of things as they are that Buddhist doctrine points to. A degree of faith is necessary in this and in all aspects of life, because of the incessant gap between the little we know and the great deal that we need to know just to function in the world. Even in the training of a scientist one taught particular viewpoints, but then invited to challenge these viewpoints if they seem untenable. So it is in Buddhism. Right View comes right at the beginning of the Eightfold Path because we need to begin our practice within the framework of Buddhist understanding. However we never step beyond Right View as a critical concern for the Buddhist practitioner. Right View will deepen with the remaining practices of the Eightfold Path, and in fact deep penetrating insight into the way things are is often regarded as the culmination of the Eightfold Path.

    So far I’ve been presenting Right View as a doctrinal or conceptual understanding. That does not go far enough. First of all a conceptual understanding has a way of staying in our heads without really changing our attitudes and behaviors. Think of the physicist who during the day inhabits a world in which nothing is substantial, everything is strings or particles that can instantaneously disappear from one place and appear in another, then goes home to play with the kids and the dog as if it were not the same reality; nothing has carried over. Sometimes we experience an “Aha!” moment in which our already clear conceptual understanding moves into something deeper, a recognition that this really IS the Way Things Are. The word collectively had such a moment of insight when one of the astronauts in the Apollo 8 mission to orbit around the moon took a picture of a half-earth against a lunar foreground. We all knew what to expect, but what we viewed was surprising anyway, we were surprised that what we already knew really was true! Buddhism encourages this kind of deepening of insight.

    But Right View goes even deeper; eventually extending beyond the limits of conceptual understanding., the limits of what we can wrap actual words around. Consider that most of the knowledge of a good potter comes from actually working with the clay, it is in his fingers not in his head. An apprentice potter does well to listen carefully to his master, to remember what he says about the variety of clays, what happens to clay at different baking temperatures and so on. But the apprentice will continue to gain insight, often inexpressible insight, far beyond those instructions. So it is with the Buddhist practitioner. The genius of Zen Buddhism is that it has a language, partly poetic, partly conceptual, but also comfortable with the contradictions that arise between the concepts, that can accompany the Buddhist apprentice a bit further in gaining insight into how things really are.

    I suggest that, on this Uposatha Day, this day of the new moon, you do a little Web surfing. Follow some of the links I’ve put at the bottom of the Dhamma page and get an idea of the range of Buddhist teachings. These Upodatha Day postings are of course themselves intended as an entry into those teachings.

    For extra credit, consider this question: Do moon Buddhists have an Uposatha Day at the same time that Earth Buddhists do, if moon Buddhists use the phases of the Earth as the determinant? (Warning: trick answer)


  • Uposatha Day Teaching

    Noble Eightfold Path, Introduction

    Recall that every Uposatha Day, traditionally a day for connecting with Buddhist practice, I am posting a short teaching, and that today I begin a series of short teachings on the Noble Eightfold Path.

    Buddhism is about the Perfection of Character. The Noble Eightfold Path is the Buddha’s instructions or how to do this. According to the earliest accounts it was the very first thing the Buddha taught after attaining Enlightenment.

    Actually in declaring perfection of character as the function of the Noble Eightfold Path I am being a little vaguer than the Buddha. The Buddha, after unfolding the Eightfold Path then embedded it as the last of the Four Noble Truths: (1) There is suffering (dissatisfaction). (2) Suffering is caused by clinging. (3) This means there is a means to free ourselves from suffering. (4) The Noble Eightfold Path is that means. The Buddha was a master at matching his words to his audience. The problem is that most Westerners are initially perplexed by the Four Noble Truths and particularly have trouble finding any possible relevance of (4) to (1)-(3). For instance, (4) makes no mention of suffering or clinging. So let me try some different words.

    “Perfection of Character” is deliberately vague, but think of it as being a joyful and benevolent presence in the world. It is good to leave it vague at this point because our idea of what a perfected character is will change as we travel the highly introspective Eightfold Path. But let me now describe it as a kind of craft, the skill of living one’s life joyfully and benevolently. This provides apt analogies with other crafts.

    Take the craft of making pottery and imagine that you are with a group of people, each of which is given a big lump of clay and access to the tools of the craft, the potter’s wheel, a kiln and other tools. Chances are you will be able to craft something, an off-center plate, a snake with a frog and a mouse in different stages of digestion, a teapot whose lid does not fit, etc., but you will probably not be satisfied with the results. You might look around and cannot find anyone else who seems to have a better idea of what they are doing, so you get frustrated and look for distractions,  start a clay fights or so on. Someone might come in and sell you more or better clay as if that were the root of your dissatisfaction, but that just gives you more material to be dissatisfied about. If you are really lucky you will be near someone who happens to be skilled in this medium, providing a good example or even instructions. You will then improve your skills and produce more satisfying results. Your skills will be found (1) in what you understand, for instance, about the properties of clay, about your tools and about what are desirable results; (2) in what you do, for instance, the sequence of steps you have learned in the process and the technique for centering clay on the potter’s wheel; and (3) in what mental factors you bring to bear on the task, for instance, mindfulness and concentration (maybe you will have learned that you cannot watch TV while crafting an urn). Significantly, as you become more atuned to the medium and the task, your sense of what the perfect pot might be will become more refined.

    What we do in Buddhism is the same as what the potter does, except it is our characters, our lives that we are shaping. Uninstructed and without a good example you don’t have a clear idea what to do with this lump of life. You try different things and end up distracted. The Buddha once described good spiritual friends (kalyanamitta) as the “Whole of the spiritual life.” From them you learn that life is a matter of skill and we begin to pick up the skill involved. Notice how normative this all is. Before we talk about skill we are already assuming that there is such thing as a Right Result and a Wrong Result, that there is a Right Way to do things and a Wrong Way. This is not the way many people in the West think of Buddhism (“You’re just being like dualistic, man.”) In fact Buddhism is profoundly ethical at every stage, but ethics is not a matter of some invisible forces of Good and Evil, it is a matter of what is skillful (kusala) and unskillful(akusala) and those are within yourself and trainable. The Master List of skills in the Buddhist path is the Noble Eightfold Path:

    1. Right View,
    2. Right Intention,
    3. Right Action,
    4. Right Speech,
    5. Right Livelihood,
    6. Right Effort,
    7. RightMindfulness and
    8. Right Concentration.

    In each case “Right” expresses the normative nature of a skill.  And, as for the potter, these skills fall in three main groups; these define what we call the Three Trainings. First, Wisdom (pannya) is what the Buddhist practioner understands, and it consists of
    Right View and Right Intention. Second, Conduct (sila) is what the Buddhist does, and it consists of Right Action, Right Speech and Right Livelihood. Third, Cultivation of Mind is the set of mental factors brought to bear in life’s tasks, and it consists of Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.

    I suggest that, on this Uposatha Day, this day of the last quarter moon, you reflect on this lump of life before you. What is its shape and what shape would you like to give it? What do you know about the nature of character, what forces are at play? How do you conduct your life, beneficially for yourself and others? Where is your mind at, is it unwieldy, scattered, or is it a precise instrument ready to fulfil its purpose. What would it take to craft something exquisite of your life?

  • Uposatha Dhamma

    Uposatha, a Pali word,  is often translated as “Sabbath.” In Buddhist lands this traditionally follows the phases of the moon such that every time the moon is either full, empty (new), or half way in between (first or last quarter) we get an uposatha day. That is pretty cool in itself, but wait til you hear what Uposatha days are for! Anyway, they are generally seven days apart but sometimes six or eight.

    Uposatha days are normally in Asia times for special Buddhist observances. Lay people will often spend the day at a monastery communing with monks or nuns, meditating, chanting,generally listening to a Dharma talk, offering to the Buddha or to the Sangha, and will also take eight or so monastic-style precepts for the day. Monks and nuns recite the Patimokkha every other Uposatha day, on full and new moon days, the hundreds of rules that they follow every day. This is pretty cool, but wait til you hear what you get to do on Uposatha days! Anyway, in Burma Uposatha days are like weekends; people do not have to go to work so that they are free for Buddhist observances.

    On Uposatha days I am going to start making a regular posting to this blog, called Uposatha Dhamma. Each of these short postings will briefly discuss some aspect of Buddhist practice that you can touch in your daily life. These will not be essays (most of this site is devoted to essays), but enough words to inspire reflection throughout the week. And discussion… you are invited to post comments with questions, elaborations, personal experiences, and so on. And who are you? You are either a neophyte or a master. Starting simple, I hope the discussion then acquires some depth.

    I intend to start with the folds of the Noble Eightfold Path (Right View, Right Intention, Right Action, Right Speech, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness. Right Concentration). In the future we might take up the Refuges (Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha), the Brahmaviharas (Lovingkindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity), and so on. Like walking on a misty day, you should quickly find yourself saturated with the Buddha’s teaching, … except maybe in a year, it will take longer than a day.

    For each of the topics I thought I would find some short optional reading, on-line. Here is the first text: The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi. I’ll try not to depend on the text too strictly.

    The teachings will be what, as far as anyone can tell, original teachings of the Buddha. The two great inspirations in my own Buddhist career have been the Buddha and Thirteenth Century Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dogen. Of the two, the Buddha is clearly the more approachable, and the more systematic. Dogen can be quite inspiring and profound but also more than a bit obscure. I will also steer clear of Nagarjuna, the Mahayana Sutras and the Abhidharma. Just straight Buddha.

    I invite people to comment freely, starting with this post. What would you like from this blog? (As of now there are only nine subscribers, so the comments may be sparse for a while. Subscribe!)

  • Interview in the Austin American Statesman

    www.statesman.com
    When I visited with Venerable Cintita recently, I was eager to hear about his experience in Myanmar where he was ordained as a bhikkhu, or monk, last year. I’d known Cintita for years as Kojin, a priest … (more)

  • Announcing New Web Site

    I would like to officially announce my New Web Site as a home for various essays, some of which are reworked from postings from Burma to the present blog. It will also provide space for discussion and its own blog. Some of you have probably visited an earlier version of the site.

    Please note that this site is still under construction. I hope to add a substantial number of essays now in progress by the end of 2010. Please subscribe to the blog to receive announcements about new additions as they happen.

    The central theme of this site is the birth of Buddhism in America. I am an American monk and a self-appointed midwife in the birthing process. Karl Marx was once asked what the role revolutionary was, given his view of the inevitability of future social history. He explained that it is that of a midwife: the birth is inevitable, but it is good to have a midwife to make sure things go smoothly. I don’t know how positively Marx would value the birth of Buddhism in a Western land, but the analogy is apt in the present context. We are still engaged in the birthing process, I am as thrilled as any to be a part of this historical event, but I often fear the birth is not going smoothly. We certainly want to see a happy, healthy bouncing baby, and not to end up with one that is deformed, crippled or traumatized. I hope the essays you will find here will contribute in some small way to ensuring that the birth proceeds smoothly.

    Let me explain what I have in mind. I have organized the essays into the following sections, each with a specific function that I will state here:

    Monastic Life. I place this before the next, introductory, section in order to stress its critical importance, rarely appreciated on this side of the Pacific. The future of the monastic Sangha will be the key determinant of the future of Buddhism in America. It is similar in importance to getting the head properly positioned in the birthing process; once the head goes through, everything else generally proceeds generally without much problem.

    Buddhism in America. These essays assess and advise the process of giving birth to Buddhism in America. The challenge is to retain the integrity of the Buddha’s project while adapting it and making it relevant to the American cultural context. An important part of this is to save Buddhism from the American propensity for tinkering.

    Topics in the Dharma. These essays take up various aspect of Buddhist philosophy and practice. I see my role here as that of an interpreter, as that of making understandable and relevant to the Westerner teachings that evolved in quite foreign environments in the context of unfamiliar word views. Often this involves a new spin on traditional teachings.

    Life in the Dusty World. This serves as a counterpart to the first section, that on Monastic Life. It is for the vast numbers of Buddha’s disciples who will bring their practice and the values they represent to bear on the mundane everyday world. My hope is that profundity of Buddhist teachings and practice have a strong and lasting transformative impact for the benefit of the broader American society.

    Venerable Cintita. I have deliberately tried to assume a very personal perspective in these pages, a perspective already natural to the blog which I established for friends and relatives before my year of living adventurously in Burma and which is the precursor for these pages. Even as a monastic seeks solitude, his or her life becomes public and even as a monastic trains in no-self he or she serves as an example, hopefully an inspiration, to others. That is why we are required to distinguish ourselves with our fluffy robes and bald heads. This section is largely biographical, and also provides a point of contact for the projects and activities I invite others to participate in.

  • Still in Minnesota


    I may be in Minnesota until June! Recall that in the last episode I left Austin 13 days after returning from Burma in order to fill in for the resident monk, Ashin Nayaka, at the Burmese temple in Maplewood, MN. I would stay here about one month until Ashin Mahasadda Pandita Sayadaw of Baltimore, a senior monk, could replace me after his trip to Europe. Unfortunately the latter has suffered a stroke before leaving to Europe. So I have agreed to remain here as long as I am needed.

    Ashin Ariyadamma, the abbot of the Sitagu Buddhist Vihara in Austin, is here for a week. He came up in order to ordain a young Burmese man as a monk. The picture I’ve attached is from the ordination. An ordination requires five monks; the three monks in the foreground are from the local Karen monastery. Punnananda, as the new monk is called, has ordained for a one week. Temporary ordination is very common in Burma and Thailand.

    For those of you in Austin, on Saturday, April 17, and interview with me is supposed to appear in the Austin American Statesman. Eileen Flynn conducted the interview during my short 13 days in Austin.

  • Cintita’s Ordination, March 10, 2009.

  • Burmese Government

    When Myanmar makes the international news it almost invariably is in the context of government oppression. In September, 2007, it was the Saffron Revolution, the brutally suppressed monks’ uprising. This last year it was the implications of John Yettaw’s intrusion into Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest. While I was in Myanmar I followed a deliberate decision to be mum about political affairs, including discussion in this blog in order not to get anyone in trouble. Email is undoubtedly monitored by the government. Now that I am back, let me report what I observed.

    Before going to Myanmar I informed myself of the political situation in Myanmar, about the nearly 50-year-old military dictatorship, about the landslide victory of the opposition in the 1990 election, the results of which the regime simply ignored, about the courage of Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of the “George Washington” of Burma and leader of the opposition, about the huge network of government-employed spies reporting conversations of common citizens, about the continual insurrection in the ethnic states. I had expectations before I arrived in Myanmar of endless identity checks in which passports, visas and other personal documents are scrutinized with gestapo-like attention, of huge posters proclaiming the merits of government policy. What I found was quite different.

    The government is not as ubiquitous as I anticipated, in fact it keeps a very low profile. There are no posters praising the governments ideology or accomplishments, I think because it has neither. The military is rather reclusive and has simply given up trying to sell itself to the people. You see some soldiers and police in uniform in Yangon, hardly any in upper Burma, that is, in Mandalay or Sagaing..

    In many ways security, for instance, at the airport, is rather haphazard. When our pilgrimage group entered the country at the Yangon airport. I expected an ordeal as we moved with the other disembarking passengers toward customs with luggage bloated with many things we were conveying to Myanmar on behalf of friends and associates. To my surprise a little man in what I would later recognize as traditional Burmese (civilian) garb waved us to the side where we passed through a gate and bypassed customs with our copious luggage altogether. Most of the time I was in Myanmar I did not have a passport in hand, because I was waiting for months for each of two visa extensions. But that is OK, a xerox of your passport including your last now expired visa was all the documentation anyone ever required at a checkpoint, and usually that was not checked. To make sure, a letter from a well-known Buddhist sayadaw seemed to bestow permission to do whatever it is one is doing.

    Another way in which the government is almost completely invisible is in the scarcity of social services. I never heard the siren of an ambulance, of a fire truck or of a police car. I never saw anyone stopped by a policeman for a traffic violation; drivers seem to follow the honor system, which they seemed to do honorably, as far as I could see. I don’t know how a crime would be reported or investigated. I never saw a traffic accident, but I would imagine that people would put the injured in taxis or horse carriages then look, perhaps in vain, for a doctor or a health clinic. The government schools to the extent they exist at all are reportedly very bad and many children have no opportunity for education. It seems monasteries provide most of the education in Myanmar, but cannot keep up with the need. There are private schools for those with resources. Health care is very sparse, with many infections diseases in circulation, such as malaria and typhoid. The government is simply out to lunch, a neocon’s dream.

    The government’s and military’s relationship to Buddhism is particularly interesting. The Saffron Revolution gave the impression of a government at war with the Buddhists. In fact the generals are themselves Buddhists for the most part. Monks are actually treated with quite a lot of respect at military check-points. When a bus passes through such, generally everyone must get off the bus and pass single-file through a gate and show their identification. The exception is the monks, who are allowed to remain on the bus; an officer will come into the bus to inspect their papers, and actually often neglects to even do this. On a couple of occasions some of us were riding in a car that was clearly marked as belonging to the famous Sitagu monastic organization and we were just waived through. When visiting Buddhist sites sometimes pictures will be on display of very pious-looking military officers in full uniform from previous visits, often sitting on the floor at the feet of some sayadaw.

    At the same time there is a pervasive sense of fear and anger toward the government. The fear is reflected in how rarely anyone mentions the government or politics at all, the anger in how caustic their comments are when they do. Having heard that the government employs many people to spy on their associates, even monks, I never tried to encourage people to speak about politics. When they did it was always when they were among family members or alone with me; I don’t suppose I fit anyone’s profile as a government spy. Burmese are an astoundingly even-tempered people, but they seem to be incapable of mentioning the government without turning red in the face. An elderly man once implored me to do whatever I can to get the United States to intervene on behalf of the Burmese people, and entertained the hope of some great Asian war spilling over onto Burmese territory and removing the existing government. Another woman who I had encountered frequently who knew almost no English told me in plain English, “They are killers.” Her brother in law, who I also knew, had been arrested for political activities and had spend 3 ½ years in jail. The most common complaint about the government was that it just does not care about the people. I began to imagine the government as something like a dangerous snake living in the sofa, something that could be very quiet for long periods of time, then suddenly strike when you least expect it. The abruptness of government actions applies not only to physical violence, such as the violence against monks in 2007, but to many changes in policy over the years, for instance, making it illegal to teach English at one point, since reversed, declaring all currency in certain denominations void, making all new currency in denominations divisible by 9 for numerological reasons, and most recently building a new showcase capital city, Naypyidaw, in a remote area at enormous expense.

    Much of the international criticism of the Myanmar government concerns the conduct of wars against the ethnic states of Myanmar, about which people in the ethnically Burmese areas of Myanmar have little direct experience. Our mostly American pilgrimage group was once refused permission to continue in the direction we were traveling by car at a military check-point because we were venturing too close to an area of insurrection. Here in Minnesota there is a large ethnic Karen population, and I have had the opportunity to talk with some of them about their experiences.. The Karen State is the area of greatest insurrection at present. The tactics of the Burmese military remind me of those of the American military in the Vietnam war, including destruction of villages and crops and indiscriminant laying of landmines, forcing villagers to flee into the forest or across the border into Thailand. Karens, as citizens of Myanmar, are permitted to travel in Myanmar, but if they are stopped at a military checkpoint even in the middle of the country, many are routinely drafted into the army on the spot. The villagers are often used to perform labor for the army without pay.

    So, what is the government for? Outside of the “Unity of the Union of Myanmar,” it seems never to try to justify its existence. In fact, it is a kind of mafia, with no goal beyond personal enrichment of an elite group of military officers. These officers extract money from the general economy through taxation, through tolls and fees and through other means. They then involve themselves in a variety of business deals and enterprises, including opium production, but also running hotels, an airline and other businesses in competition with the general economy. And often they give generously to Buddhist causes or start new projects. Like the mafia, the government uses various methods of coercion to give their enterprises an edge. Rumors abound. For instance, there have been a series of arson in Yangon of marketplaces which everyone seems to know are perpetrated by the government in order to clear land for some enterprise, I never understood what kind. Apparently at the most recent, the government fire department showed up (as I say, I never saw evidence that there was such a thing), proceeded to stand by, then when people tried to douse the fire themselves turned their fire hoses on the people to prevent this. Ironically they seem to use such heavy-handed tactics in gaining merit through the Dhamma. I heard of one incident in which some generals founded a Buddhist university then hired (apparently no one dares refuse a job offer from the government) the principle staff from an existing non-government Buddhist university.