A recent view of Maha Bodhi Myaing Sayadaw and his current forest abode. For many years the forest recluse's whereabouts were kept a highly classified secret that only a select few had access to. Now, he seems to be allowing a small trickle of visitors to see him in his temporary home, and meditators who take the pilgrimage are beginning to share their auspicious encounters with the venerable.
We intend the upcoming Burma Dhamma podcast to give not only voice to the people and practitioners of the Golden Land, but also the actual sounds of Burmese monasteries, virtually bringing the listener into this rarified environment as much as possible! So today our intrepid sound engineer, Ko Thar Nge, spent the morning at a Burmese monastery getting just the right sound of the wooden hammer striking the "own maung," the ubiquitous wooden noise-maker that every Burmese monastery must have to call monks together. These ambient sounds of Burmese monastic life will be featured between interviews and discussion, bringing the listener closer to the experience of practice and renunciation.
This week is another packed schedule of interviews-- Alan Clements, Ashin Chanda, and U Sarana have all confirmed. Three interesting guests with much to share about their own life and practice of Dhamma in Myanmar.
Of the interviews already completed, we are nearing a release date, and hope to have them out in the next week. Stay tuned for more to come!
What a talk! Thabarwa Sayadaw made a surprise stop by our recording studio at midnight and we talked till almost 4 a.m. Still, there was so much to discuss that we only reached halfway through our topics, so we hope to continue our talk later this month.
The majority of our conversation focussed on the origin story of Sayadaw himself as well as the development of the Thabarwa center and mission. He discussed his difficulties in being from a family of Chinese immigrants in Yangon and his early interest in education and business. While wildly successful in a time in Myanmar when almost no entrepreneurial activity was taking place, it led to a severely imbalanced mind that became dominated by greed and anger, causing him to make several key poor business decisions. Concerned about his deteriorating mental state, this led to an interest in meditation, and he spent several years studying intensively at such centers as Mogok, Thae Inngu, Goenka, U Ba Khin, and Mahasi.
He became a proper teacher in his own right at the time that massive societal and political transformations were underway in Myanmar, and he discusses openly how the the upheaval of his country put his entire center and mission in an existential crisis, not knowing if they were going to be shut down from one month to the next. Ultimately, the advent of a free press by 2014 finally allowed independent journalists to share more widely what his unique meditation center was trying to accomplish, and the resulting stability led to steady growth and today, international renown.
Thank you to Thabarwa Sayadaw and so many close to him that helped make time in his busy schedule. Sayadaw had just flown from the UK on December 31st, and had spent the prior several days driving from one event to the other throughout Yangon, as well as side trips to Hpa An and Mandalay, and is leaving today to Vietnam. So we were really privileged to have access to so much of his time.
What a great talk with Ashin Sarana yesterday! We started by learning about his earliest interest in Buddhism and spirituality. Who would have thought that an early fascination with magic and Chinese action movies were the entryway for this Czech monk into the Dhamma. U Sarana went on to describe his (mostly unsuccessful) search for a Buddhist friend in his youth, and his eventual decision to leave his girlfriend in Europe for novice ordination in Sri Lanka followed by a three year degree in Buddhist studies. Now almost a decade in Myanmar, he came just as the internet became available in a country just beginning to open up, and while Facebook was exploding. He joined the social network initially only to make Burmese friends, as a way of practicing his written Burmese ability, and from there began to use the online platform as a way to answer wide-ranging questions on Burmese culture and history, meditation practice, and the Pali scriptures. This unwittingly led to a controversial incident last month in which he found himself the center of attention in his role to speak out against monks touching money, and U Sarana discusses this matter in detail on the podcast. He also mentions a number of other wide-ranging activities, such as his translation of 20 hours of Dhamma talks of Sayagyi U Ba Khin which were recently unearthed, his creation of two picto-dictionaries for English/Burmese/Singhalese/Czech, his upcoming video Dhamma series, his assistance on the Shwe Lan Ga Lay meditator's guide, his new meditation monastery, his search throughout rural Myanmar for a true arahant, and much, much more.
We are finalizing our podcast feed and hope that it will be live in the next few days! Stay posted for more information.
We can only continue to manage the technical costs of producing our Burma Dhamma podcast with the generous support of meditators who find this information valuable. If you'd like to support our mission, please consider leaving a donation at paypal.me/insightmyanmar or https://www.patreon.com/insightmyanmar
Some humor from the user dmcdonald5227, who obviously had his mind running during his recent experience on a Goenka Vipassana course, and captions this picture with this line: "Just finished my 2nd 10 day retreat. Here are some memes to that popped up during my sit."
