Burmese monks are shown the limits of their moral authority

October 23, International Herald Tribute
- Choe Sang-Hun

Mandalay, Myanmar: As the lunchtime gong chimed through a tree-shaded
monastery, several hundred monks in burgundy robes lined up, all holding
alms bowls.

It is a common scene in Myanmar, where 1 out of every 100 people, many of
them still children, are monks. But the lunch line at the Mahagandhayon
Monastery here, the country's largest, used to be much longer.

"We usually have 1,400 monks here," said a bespectacled senior monk.
"Because of the situation, parents took 1,000 of them home."

For decades, two powerful institutions have shaped Burmese life: the
500,000-member Buddhist clergy, which commands a moral authority over the
population, and Senior General Than Shwe's junta, whose 450,000-strong
military keeps the population in check with intimidation.

Their uneasy coexistence shattered last month. After scattered protests
erupted against sharp fuel price increases in August, thousands of monks
took to the streets to protest the junta's economic mismanagement and
political repression, and the military responded with batons and bullets.

The guns have prevailed over mantras, at least for now.

As of Oct. 6, the government said it had detained 533 monks, of whom 398
were released after sorting out what it called "real monks" from "bogus
ones." Four monks suspected of instigating the demonstrations were still
being sought. Monks and dissidents contend that a much higher number were
detained.

"They had the monks kneel down, with their hands on the back of their
heads," said the deputy head of a monastery in Yangon, the country's
largest city. "Anyone who raised his head was beaten."

He said that at Ngwe Kyayan, the largest monastery in Yangon, soldiers
took away food and donation boxes, and even beat the abbot and vandalized
images of the Buddha, as some of its 300 monks fought back.

He said the monks had been demonstrating to protest the economic
deprivation of ordinary Burmese. "It's a terrible situation," he said.
"Monks took to the streets to draw attention to this problem, pleading for
loving kindness. But our government is worse than Hitler's Nazis. They
have no respect for religion. I wonder how long it will take to heal this
wound."

When it was all over, The New Light of Myanmar, a government-run
English-language newspaper, said this month, "monks had been defrocked
during interrogation," so they could be questioned as ordinary lay people,
and then "ordained and sent back to their monasteries." In interviews,
monks denounced this process, saying the military had no authority to
defrock or ordain monks.

The junta also employed divide-and-rule tactics, by persuading the
state-sanctioned Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, which oversees the Buddhist
clergy here, to accept its donations and to order monks to stop protesting
or face punishment.

"Some of these senior monks are bribed by the regime," said an editor at a
Yangon magazine. "They have accepted so many good things in life - cars,
televisions, big houses, telephones and mobile phones - that they simply
have to listen to the regime."

At the Mahagandhayon Monastery here in Mandalay, soldiers had pulled back
after cordoning off the temple for weeks. But their trucks continued to
lurk in back alleys near the compound, as rumors circulated that if the
monks rose up again, it would probably be in this city, the nation's
second-largest. About 20,000 of its million residents are monks, one of
the highest concentrations in the country.

Young men from across the country come here to train as monks, and they
have grown increasingly passionate about the poverty and injustice their
nation has suffered under the military government.

The fear was still palpable at Mahagandhayon, where monks chanted mantras
over their last meal of the day, a late-morning lunch of vegetable soup,
eggplant, rice and a special treat from a donor - instant noodles. But the
monks were clearly still reluctant to discuss the military's crushing of
the demonstrations less than a month ago.

"They are afraid of guns," the bespectacled senior monk said, making a
shooting gesture, before vanishing into the dining hall.

Long before the protests erupted, monks were keenly aware of people's
suffering. When they went out to receive alms, said the senior monk in
Yangon, they saw "no happiness in people's faces, people whose minds are
preoccupied with finding food and surviving one day at a time."

But the military's use of force against the monks has unsettled
fundamental Burmese values.

"To Burmese, monks are like sons of the Buddha," said Maung Aye, a taxi
driver, as he drove around Yangon's 2,000-year-old Sule Pagoda, which is
said to enshrine a hair of the Buddha and was a focal point of the
protests and their suppression last month.

One man, a 37-year-old shop owner in Yangon, said his 5-year-old son, who
like most Burmese children has been raised with Buddhist beliefs in karma,
had cried out: "I don't want to become a soldier. If I have to kill a
monk, the worst thing will happen to me in my next life."

At a Yangon temple, sitting before a golden Buddha figure encircled by
blinking electric lights, two middle-aged monks spoke with resignation and
anger.

"We learned a lesson from 1988," one monk said, referring to the
large-scale pro-democracy uprising that the military put down, leaving
hundreds, perhaps thousands, dead. "If it changes nothing and only gets
worse, why risk our lives? Why try, if nothing happens?"

The other monk said: "We would like to love our government. We tried but
couldn't. We want to like to go out and demonstrate again, but we know
they are out there with their guns."

The Buddhist Lent, which lasts three months, into late October, is a time
when monks focus on studying scriptures and refrain from leaving their
monasteries, except for early-morning outings to collect alms. The fact
that monks ventured out in protest during this period was widely seen here
as a sign of just how angry they were. But now many monasteries in Yangon
are deserted, after raids by the military drove thousands of monks to
flee.

In towns across Myanmar, dawn has traditionally seen the ritual of monks
filing down streets seeking alms and lay people gaining merit by donating
rice and other food. Families take pride in "adopting" monks, providing
them with food, clothing, books and other goods for a few months or years,
depending on their finances.

As poverty has worsened in Myanmar, however, the alms processions have
increasingly turned into a sad exchange of apologies for having to beg and
for being unable to give. Now, with the monks scattered, the alms lines
have dwindled in big cities like Yangon and Mandalay.

For centuries, whoever seized power in this country sought legitimacy by
lavishing money on pagodas and monasteries. When the democracy leader Aung
San Suu Kyi called for a "second struggle for national independence" in
1988, she chose Yangon's gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda as the site at which
to deliver her watershed speech.

Thus when monks marched in September to the home where she is kept under
house arrest, the act was a moral reproof to the government.

But the monks themselves are not immune to criticism. Although senior
clerics are elected by monks and revered by lay people, "they form a small
closed society which doesn't know anything about the community at large,"
the magazine editor said. "Some of them do not know how poor people live
in a small village."

One of the many titles the government bestows on the senior monks is
Bhaddanta. Some lay people call these privileged monks "Bhaddanta Toyota"
or "Bhaddanta Toshiba."

Other lay people defended the aging clerics who have taken gifts from the
government. These monks, they said, are under moral obligation to accept
donations, and fear that confrontation could cost more lives.

Still, witnesses reported piles of rice donated by the government but left
uncollected at the gates of some monasteries, a rebuff of the government's
effort to placate the clergy.

Dissidents said many of the monks who led the protests belonged to two
unauthorized organizations: the Young Monks Union of Burma and United
Front of Monks.

At Mahagandhayon in Mandalay, the monks were going about their daily
routine. Droning sounds of scriptures being recited filled the monastery.
Stray dogs, which came to share leftover alms with child beggars, dozed on
the ground.

The senior monk said he hoped that the rest of the students would return
in a month or so. One young monk who had remained through the events of
the past month said: "Please go out and tell the world what really has
happened in this country."

He added, "I am scared just talking to you about this."