Insight Myanmar

Maw Htin Aung, a Kachin Christian by birth, appeared to be a leader right for his time, the kind of progressive champion needed in Myanmar who could help move the country towards a promising future. Instead of this dream, however, a nightmare has unfolded instead.He studied public administration in the U.S., and when he returned to Myanmar in 2015, he delved into public policy reform, focusing on natural resources. He felt this was a key aspect of his country’s future. As most of Myanmar’s precious minerals and natural resources are found in ethnic territories, the military has historically endeavored to control those areas, which resulted in forced displacement and organized assaults on various ethnic communities. But he had real hopes that a more equitable system could potentially help end what is the longest running civil war in the world.In 2020, he thought he might be more influential as a legislative member and ran under the ticket of the Shan National League for Democracy. Although he felt the campaign went well, he ended up losing the election, but personally witnessed numerous accounts of voter fraud. He was in the process of taking legal steps to challenge the results when the February coup upended everything.Every day now is a nightmare. Still, Maw Htin Aung sees some optimism. He is moved by the unity and selflessness found throughout the movement, as well as by the courage demonstrated under the most dangerous and violent of circumstances. But he acknowledges the tremendous mental and emotional struggles, not to mention the PTSD, that weigh on the Burmese people now.To support the protest movement, please consider making a donation to the Better Burma non-profit. You may give by searching “Better Burma” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as by using credit card on their website.

While those outside of Myanmar following news of the protests have often heard updates about the importance of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), some may still not be clear about its inception and role in the wider protest movement. This episode’s guest, a trainer in public sector reform, educates us accordingly.Initially optimistic about the direction of the democratically elected government, her hopes came to a crashing halt on February 1st when the military illegally seized power. Right away, hundreds of civil servants stopped going to work, which ultimately led to the wider protest movement known as “CDM.” Our guest soon found herself thrust into an advisory role, with many of her former trainees asking for advice on what to do.She sought the help of several international lawyers, and passed that information on so those workers could make a more informed decision. At the same time, she also began getting a fund together from friends and supporters that could be used to support any civil servants who decided to join the movement.The movement’s success has put our guest in danger because of her involvement. After her home was broken into and searched, she went into hiding. To deal with the enormous her level of stress has been overwhelming, and her refuge in part has been a daily meditation practice according to the teachings of Ledi Sayadaw and Mogok Sayadaw. Although she didn’t have a meditation practice before the pandemic, she now finds that this provides much-needed stability to the mind.For those who are inspired to hear about the work our guest is leading, please make a donation on our site, and indicate you would like these funds to go towards her CDM effort.

Ashin Sarana is speaking out, and he’s prepared for the consequences. “I'm basically ready for everything,” the Czech monk tells us. “I'm ready that they will come and they will destroy property, I'm ready that they will arrest me, I'm ready that they will expel me. My donors are ready… By your very existence, you happen to be involved, whether you like it or not.”It was certainly not a light decision for a monk whose primary concern is teaching the Dhamma to followers and pursuing his own intensive meditation practice. In fact, he so rarely keeps up with worldly events that he references several years ago seeing pictures of Donald Trump and not knowing he was the U.S. president, and did not himself even know that a coup had occurred until a week into the event. But he realized he needed to better understand the daily news to make more informed decisions to protect those closest to him. For someone who was sometimes years behind current events, U Sarana now found himself reading the news for 7-8 hours a day, and the dark reality he was confronting left him feeling “suffocated.”U Sarana is also horrified to learn that some foreign practitioners buy into the argument that Buddhism can thrive no matter which rulers happen to be in power. He does not hold back his disgust on hearing that such a view is actually not that uncommon within the international meditator community. To him, that opinion “is a very clear display of lack of knowledge about history in Myanmar.”This is why he also has taken it upon himself to stay so informed at this moment, so that he doesn’t offer Dhamma advice that is so disconnected to the actual circumstances that he is no longer helping his followers.If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at www.insightmyanmar.org/donation.

Kyawt Thiri Nyunt’s journey from Myanmar to the United States at age 19 was not just a physical one, but a cultural and psychological one as well. She had traveled to enroll in a small liberal arts college in California, having won a full merit scholarship. But then came the pressure of integrating into a new environment, on top of the anxiety to achieve, and so she did something she had never done before: she began therapy to explore the stress that was building up inside her.The therapy also uncovered deep-rooted trauma that she had been holding her entire life growing up under a military dictatorship. Unprocessed memories flooded out, including the associated emotions of anger and fear. Properly understanding—even honoring—the pervasiveness of this trauma is especially important at this moment, because without doing so, the Burmese protest movement simply cannot be properly appreciated. Once one truly understands how dark the days had been under past military rule, one realizes that no matter how aggressively the military chooses to respond in the days that come, the protesters have no choice but to keep on, as they will never accept a return to the past system. Kyawt explains how the mettā meditation that defines the practice of many Burmese Buddhists has so far contributed to the protests’ nonviolent nature, but that they are getting close to the breaking point.This is a time of real social change and upheaval in Myanmar, and it is impossible to know where this will ultimately go. Beyond worldly culture, these changes could also ultimately impact the shape of Burmese Buddhism as well, as with the people’s embrace of their newfound sense of agency, the Burmese people themselves are determining which members of the Saṅgha truly speak for them, and which do not have their interests in heart.If you are finding value in these shows, please consider sharing to friends and contacts so more can learn about what is currently happening in Myanmar.

At a time when corporations, countries, and individuals are speaking out, taking a moral stand, and considering action to support the Burmese people as state-sponsored terror grips their nation, what is the ethical responsibility of the vipassana organization of S.N. Goenka, who always reminded students of their “debt of gratitude” to the geographical region where their lineage hails from?To answer this question and many more, we turn to Daniel Mayer, the Coordinating Area Teacher (CAT) “to serve the Rest of Africa.” Daniel advises meditators to not stray towards one extreme or another. For those caught up in the heavy emotions of the current moment, he advises them to be patient with themselves and remember the wider context, saying, “I think in some cases, it can take a whole lifetime. But don't think that you are an exception. And don't think that what is happening now in a certain part of the world, is any different to what's happening, and happened in other parts of the world.”But he also warns against spiritual bypass. “I do feel that mettā should not be an excuse...[T]o say, it doesn't affect me just because I am not there, or I'm not part of it, or I don't agree… that is not really understanding what is our role as meditators.”Daniel describes how inspired he feels by how the Dhammic ideals of sīla, mettā, dāna, an appreciation of karma, and nonviolence are characteristic of the current protest movement. A note about our mission here at Insight Myanmar Podcast. While it usually takes us several weeks at minimum to produce an episode, we feel that the current moment demands a faster turn-around, and we managed to release this episode after just 36 hours. However, this can be challenging for a primarily volunteer organization, especially one with limited funds. We hope to continue bringing interviews on this topic with Buddhist practitioners, teachers, and scholars, but we need your support to do so. If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at www.insightmyanmar.org/donation.

A world-renowned expert on Burmese cuisine and author of the best-selling book Mandalay: Recipes and Tales from a Burmese Kitchen, Mi Mi Aye never imagined that one day she might become an activist. But as she has become increasingly invested in Myanmar’s current crisis, that is the role she has begun to take on.Having deep connections to the full range of Burma’s cuisine— running the gamut from humble street stalls to five-star dining— Mi Mi Aye was concerned when the pandemic broke a year ago, noting that the restaurant industry especially has been suffering. And although she feared that a sudden military takeover would only place a greater strain on this already reeling industry, Burmese cooks have not been idle. Many of them, along with food delivery workers, have been at the forefront of cooking and delivering food in mass quantities to the large numbers protesters taking to the streets each day, as well as to “Civil Disobedience Movement” employees who are refusing to return to their jobs as civil servants.Mi Mi Aye also reflects on the fear many Burmese—especially the older generation—have harbored because of Burma’s history of coups and political repression. She says, “Something I don’t really talk about is to be Burmese, especially if you’re of a certain age, is to be afraid, from bitter experience. It’s a low-level, visceral feeling most of the time, but sometimes, like now, it can be overwhelming. Because all the worst things you can imagine that could happen to you or your loved ones can happen and has happened, to you or to people you know, because of the Burmese military. Right now, I don’t even want to eat, let alone cook anything. There’s a reason Aung San Suu Kyi’s most famous book is called Freedom From Fear.”She notes how many younger Burmese followers have thanked her for these words, noting that their parents had always told them something similar, but growing up with greater personal freedoms, they never had quite understood their parents’ fears.A note about our mission here at Insight Myanmar Podcast. While it usually takes us several weeks at minimum to produce an episode, we feel that the current moment demands a faster turn-around, and we managed to release this episode after just 36 hours. However, this can be challenging for a primarily volunteer organization, especially one with limited funds. We hope to continue bringing interviews on this topic with Buddhist practitioners, teachers, and scholars, but we need your support to do so. If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at www.insightmyanmar.org/donation.

Exhausted from the daily protests and sleeping at a different monastery roof with fellow protesters every night for safety, his face darkened from being out under the hot sun all day, his voice hoarse from giving daily speeches, and his words crackling with emotion as he struggles to describe his horror at the loss of freedom and the innocents who have died… Chit Tun takes listeners to the front lines of the protest movement. Struggling at times to find the right words, his mind so harried that he sometimes loses his train of thought, and at various points not even able to pronounce sounds properly, this is a very personal portrait of the human toll the on-going military coup is taking.Chit Tun describes a day in the life of the protest movement. He notes that there is no one single leader, or even any group of leaders, and that his generation— Generation Z— realizes that each individual needs to take responsibility and be a leader in their own right. He also highlights the importance of non-violence, describing its roots in his Buddhist training at the monastery. This has certainly been put to the test during these protests, and at points in our talk emotion overtakes him, such as he describes his shock and fury first recounting how in Nay Pyi Daw, 19-year old protester Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing was shot through her helmet while protecting herself from a military water hose, and then later in Mandalay, 16-year old medical volunteer Wai Yan Tun was also shot in the head by a military sniper, while helping an injured protester an ambulance. Chit Tun was so enraged by this loss of innocent life that he described wanting to “burn down police stations,” yet his commitment to Buddhist principles reaffirmed his commitment to non-violence, evoking Michelle Obama’s famous refrain, “When they go low, we go high.”A note about our mission here at Insight Myanmar Podcast. While it usually takes us several weeks at minimum to produce an episode, we feel that the current moment demands a faster turn-around, and we managed to release this episode after just 36 hours. However, this can be challenging for a primarily volunteer organization, especially one with limited funds. We hope to continue bringing interviews on this topic with Buddhist practitioners, teachers, and scholars, but we need your support to do so. If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at www.insightmyanmar.org/donation.

In looking back at the turbulent recent history of her country, Sayalay Chandadhika, a Burmese Buddhist nun based in Germany, sees a never-ending spiral of destructive patterns that continue to produce the same disastrous results. How to disrupt this disturbing trend? In her words, the response is clear: “We need another method, and I cannot see another method rather than mettā.”Speaking to us from Germany, Sayalay Chandadhika affirms that mettā, or the practice of loving kindness, is not merely some optimistic or naïve way to engage with a difficult situation like Myanmar’s present circumstances, it is actually the very spirit we are seeing right now on display during the country’s daily protests. As an example, she describes a particularly tense standoff between protesters and police, which was defused by civilians offering the officers cool water on a hot day. She notes that this wasn’t merely a clever tactic to trick the police towards gaining some tactical advantage, rather it was a simple and generous action borne out of a mind trained in mettā.Through examples like these, Sayalay Chandadhika describes something truly stunning: a people whose lifelong spiritual practice of cultivating wholesome tendencies now finds itself facing the aggression of a professionally trained military with just those positive qualities of mind, like mettā, as their “weapon” of choice for self-defense. In her description, we can see how the non-violent struggle of the Burmese people today —in large part grounded in their Buddhist practice and identity—has firm connections with the Civil Rights Movement in America and Gandhi’s crusade in India.A note about our mission here at Insight Myanmar Podcast. While it usually takes us several weeks at minimum to produce an episode, we feel that the current moment demands a faster turn-around, and we are working to get out episodes now within just days. However, this can be challenging for a primarily volunteer organization, especially one with limited funds. We hope to continue bringing interviews on this topic, but we need your support to do so. If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at www.insightmyanmar.org/donation.

“We are already in the danger. So we don’t care anymore. The dawn won’t be that much darker than the midnight. And we are already in the midnight, so the darkness can’t be much worse. We are at the peak of the darkness.”These were the words of Inda Aung Soe as military tanks were rolling past at the start of our free-flowing and open interview, when asked if he felt safe talking to us from the chaotic streets of Yangon. Inda’s brave response echoes a resilience exemplified by the Burmese people during the shocking events of this month, and kicked off his description of the growing protest movement taking shape across the country. Having been a Buddhist monk himself for many years, Inda is able to reflect not just on the mood of lay protesters, but also at monasteries and among his monastic friends.Despite these harrowing experiences, Inda affirms a strong set of values that protesters have committed themselves to, in particular non-violence, refusing to cause harm to other beings even in the face of the military’s and their proxies’ aggressions. Inda notes that the military’s attempts to sow dissention among the Burmese people is failing in part because of this value.And according to Inda, commitment to non-violence is not the only thing the military has not understood about the current moment. He shares there is no single leader organizing the movement, so the military can’t stop it by hunting down specific activists, as they have done in the past. Instead, Inda describes an entire population that has stepped up as one to claim its basic freedoms and human rights. He and Zach share a laugh that the usually chaotic and disorganized Burmese society has somehow, overnight, formed itself into a plastic, integrated structure capable of quickly responding as a whole to the most sophisticated attacks—physical as well as psychological—from a professionally trained military.Inda closes by thanking the foreign community for its generosity and support during these difficult times, from both inside and outside the country. We also would like to encourage you to share it widely to help make Inda’s and the Burmese people’s struggles more widely known. The light in the Golden Land is still on, but faint and in danger of flaming out; it is happening in real time.A note about our mission here at Insight Myanmar Podcast. While it usually takes us several weeks at minimum to produce an episode, we feel that the current moment demands a faster turn-around. However, this can be challenging for a primarily volunteer organization, especially one with limited funds. We hope to continue bringing interviews on this urgent topic with Buddhist practitioners, teachers, and scholars, but we need your support to do so. If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at www.insightmyanmar.org/donation.

“The Dhamma is so central to this culture, and [yet] not understood by the people who write about this place in the media from overseas. So all those sorts of things get reported from a vacuum of understanding about how incredibly important it is, for this whole culture.”So says Daw Viranani, an American Buddhist nun based in Chan Myay Myaing Monastery in northern Yangon. We were able to talk with her just before a nationwide Internet black-out hit the country. Since the military coup on February 1st, Myanmar has been one of the trending topics and major stories across news networks and social media platforms. And yet, as Daw Viranani points out, the core Buddhist practice animating much of the country’s spiritual life is barely mentioned in foreign reporting, let alone understood. In this interview, we address the current situation, but avoid the usual angles of analyzing politics, history, or biographies of the major players. Instead, Daw Viranani brings a Buddhist perspective to bear on the current events. She shares the teachings that resonate with her in this difficult moment, and talks of the power of practicing mettā-bhavana, or loving-kindness meditation, and radiating these good wishes to all beings—even those we have difficult feelings towards.A note about our mission here at Insight Myanmar Podcast. While it usually takes us several weeks at minimum to produce an episode, we feel that the current moment demands a faster turn-around, and we managed to release this episode after just 36 hours. However, this can be challenging for a primarily volunteer organization, especially one with limited funds. We hope to continue bringing interviews on this topic with Buddhist practitioners, teachers, and scholars, but we need your support to do so. If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at www.insightmyanmar.org/donation.