White monk in Asia: Rupert Arrowsmith

Rupert Arrowsmith (CNN.com, 10/14/13); Arthur Wynn, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Being a monk in Burma: Personal transformation in a changing country

[I must have done this before deep in the past.]

The first time I suggested shaving off all my hair and becoming a monk, nobody batted an eyelid. In Buddhist Burma, it is perfectly normal for people to go into monasteries or nunneries for temporary-ordination periods.

The monastic system is a revolving door open to all practitioners, and most of the country's 55 million Theravada Buddhists, whether rich or poor, go in and out of it several times during their lives.

Shwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon, Burma, housing the Buddha's hair relic under full moon (CNN)

 

What made the situation complicated was that I was a Westerner and it was 2002, a time when Burma, which is also known as Myanmar [after the former military dictatorship of Gen. Than Shwe renamed it to accord more with the local language than the colonial British had], was still a pariah state and branded an "outpost of tyranny" by the government of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

Foreigners then were viewed with suspicion, and arranging to enter the forest retreat of Chanmyay Yeiktha, one of the most traditional of the country's Buddhist monasteries, took some string-pulling. I eventually found myself shaved and saffron-robed and sitting in the little hut that would be my home for the next six weeks.

The traditional period for temporary ordination (monkhood) in Burma is only nine days, and I was wondering whether I had bitten off more than I could chew.

Ava Period monastery in Burma (CNN)

I slept on a pillowless wooden board, and my morning began at 3:30 am with an icy bucket shower and the scrape of a razor over chin and head. I then meditated with the other monks for two hours before a breakfast of rice and dhal -- a stew of pulses such as lentils and beans -- at dawn.

After that, it was back to the mediation hall until 10:30 am when the second and final meal of the day -- a giant lunch -- was served. We were permitted to take a nap through the heat of midday before meditating again until around 7:00 pm.

As an atheist/freethinker I became attracted to Buddhism in Burma because its monasteries have very little to do with ritual or theology. All of the emphasis is on practical techniques for uncovering the hidden workings of the mind.

If people want to know what makes them tick, the introspective meditative techniques learned in Buddhism offer a powerful alternative to the hourly fees and pharmaceutical drug prescriptions of Western psychiatry. But the process is difficult and it can only be faced alone [with a good guide and spiritual friends or kalyana mittas].

Noble silence is important as a preliminary to inner-silence. I was not allowed to speak to anyone in the monastery, even to exchange a greeting. When meditating I was encouraged to carefully observe every thought, every breath, every feeling (sensation and emotion).

Even at meals, I had to be aware or "mindful" of each tiny thing -- the intention to move my fork, the movements of my jaws, my [greedy or aversive] reactions to the flavors of the food. At the beginning all of this seemed virtually impossible, but after ten days of it my mind began to slow down and settle and get steady.

Now I was able to see not only my thoughts but also the subconscious feelings and desires that produced them. Soon I began to experience a feeling of serenity and mental clarity that I had not thought possible.

In 2002, international sanctions [because of the military coup and the dictatorship the junta of generals had set up] were hitting Burma's economy hard. Donations of food to the monasteries, though regular, were not large.

I regularly went out with a group of monks and novices on alms round to collect our daily food donated by the locals. We went barefoot, according to ancient custom, on the jungle trails, halting occasionally for villagers to drop handfuls of rice into our alms bowls, thereby making the merit of generosity for themselves.

On one alms round I felt bad when a poor farmer gave me a few peanuts from his lunchbox, and at the end of my stay I mentioned this to the abbot. "Don't be so egotistical," he rebuked me. "That man was not donating food to you personally." [People donate to the robe, which represents the enlightened Sangha or monastic community, which is a field of merit in the world so long as it exists, so long as there are enlightened practitioners existing in the world.] "He saw only a monk standing there.

"One day soon, your positions will be reversed. He will be the monk seeking self-knowledge, and you will be the donor who gives him food [to support his efforts towards enlightenment]. If you have more than he has, then you can give more to equal his gift of peanuts [which was all he had]."

And that is what makes the monastic system work so effectively in Burma. Among monks, there are no economic or class divisions. The identical saffron robes, the communal dining, and the head shaving are all there to emphasize the equality that exists between them.

But when temporary monks return to their lives outside the monastery, some are suddenly far more equal than others. So villagers donate a handful of rice, while city professionals donate breakfast and lunch for the entire monastery, or a water purification system, or even a new dining hall.

About 89% of Burma's population is Buddhist

Girl novice nun by golden dragon (CNN)

When I returned to Burma this year for my second 45-day stint as a monk, the ramped-up scale of these elite donations was very much in evidence. Since the reforms begun by President Thein Sein in 2011, the country's economy has grown at breakneck speed, and the Buddhist monasteries have grown along with it.

Chanmyay Yeiktha's forest retreat was three times larger than I remembered, and it is now surrounded by beautiful gardens of flowers and fruit trees. I looked in vain for my rickety wooden hut. I was instead shown to a well-built brick bungalow with a hardwood floor, a fan, a comfortable bed, and a Western-style bathroom with a shower.

There were spacious new meditation halls, a clinic, and a library. Every day saw visits by city donors bringing varied and nutritious meals for monks and novices and lay meditators of every social background. The population of the monastery also reflected Burma's new openness to the world.

Although I was still the only Westerner, I now found myself among monks from Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and China. One monk from the city of Guangzhou in Southern China turned out to be leaving the same day as me. After our disrobing ceremony, I asked him why he had traveled here.

"In China, we are not free to practice our religion," he told me. "All Chinese Buddhists want to come here. We think of Myanmar as a place of freedom." More