Reading about the events unfolding in Burma in the newspapers is enormously frustrating. It seems the billion professional news people reporting the story have all at once mastered the art of writing endlessly about “the monks” in a way that tells us nothing important about the monks. The story has been wrapped in an enormous Moab-colored robe that’s just so exotically mesmerizing editors go dizzy. “Look it’s a monk! Look it’s ten thousand monks! Soooo beautiful!”

That’s what I was searching for when the bull-headed Myanmar Milosevics went and pulled the plug on the internet. Frrzzzpp: no more digital communications from Burma. Sorry, ha-ha, you’re stuck with the New York Times!

Judith Simmer-Brown is a senior dharma teacher and twenty-seven-year faculty member in the Religious Studies department at Naropa University. She has deep ties with the region and has thankfully much to share on recent events. We spoke very briefly over the weekend.

JT: So I feel like we’re getting nothing really about the monks. We see the photos in the papers but the photos beg questions that go unanswered in the articles. They’re Buddhist. That much I know. They’re Theravada? Is that the, um, sect?

Judith Simmer-Brown: Theravada, yes, but sect is the wrong word. It’s a major form of Buddhism, more a school of thought, akin to Protestantism. It’s predominant throughout South-East Asia— in Sri Lanka, Thailand….

I agree there’s nothing good about this in the mainstream media. The thing to know, which has been partly touched upon, is that, in Theravada, the monastic tradition is precious; the monks are the precious treasure of the society. To support the monks is the best thing in life you can do as a layperson. The monastic tradition is just so central to the way of life, just something everyone experiences on some level. The people and the monks are bound together. In Thailand every young man takes temporary vows, for three months to a year…

We think Buddhism, though, in our popculture mind, and we think meditative not activist. The shorthand image is of people focused on otherworldly concerns… Politics and oil prices, of all things, it seems so hopelessly worldly.

That’s a misconception. Buddhists are not withdrawn from the world. On the contrary. That the monks have been relatively nonpolitical in the recent past is in fact a revealing anomaly in Burma. It speaks to the brutality of the regime. The monks have been given the message: “stay out of politics and you’ll be able to continue undisturbed.” It’s a pervasive and really oppressive message, especially given that in other Therevada countries there’s a great deal of civic engagement, a long tradition of engagement.

I can’t think— other than the iconic immolations during Vietnam— I can’t think of anything I’ve read about protests and so forth… what kind of engagement?

Just off the top of my head, well there are so many examples… In Thailand, for instance, monks have opposed deforestation very publicly, going out into the forests and ordaining trees… In Sri Lanka monks organize grassroots efforts in villages to alleviate the effects of poverty… There are many many examples of monastic engagement. Withdrawn is exactly wrong I would say.

You know in Burma, the monastics have also been coerced directly, threatened. The kidnap and murder of monks has been ratcheted up in recent months. That’s key to understanding things. The protests from that perspective, and the monks’ role in the protests, is no surprise. The people are so protective of the monks— their spiritual well being is wrapped up in care for the monks. People grab the monks on the street to shield them, place their bodies between the monks and the soldiers and police, shuttle them off in cabs.

The government will never enjoy the respect of the monastics. It’s unspeakable to abuse the monks, to have them tortured and murdered. The monks are the rival source of power. Soldiers have been infiltrating the monasteries, trying to shut it down from within. There are incredible stories… none of which are in the newspapers….

So how do you know what’s happening?

Oh email lists… I have relationships with people from research trips, longtime friends and so forth. The emails are full of terrible reports…

It is a nonviolent tradition of course but the government has sent infiltrators into the monasteries, young soldiers with shaved heads in robes, who then behave within the ranks in ways to incite, to provide a pretext for the authorities to crack down. It’s been eighteen years of crackdown, ever since Aung San Suu Kyi won the prime-ministerial election.

It’s unbelievable what happened, by the way. It was so political, such an open endorsement, call for change, when the monks walked past Aung San Suu Kyi’s home, where she’s of course been under house arrest. That was exactly what the junta didn’t want to happen. That wasn’t about oil prices. You know, it couldn’t be explained away, the monks’ open endorsement of a rival political figure— the rival political figure. Just unbelievable. The monks knowing the power and open politics of that action.

You know, I mentioned the young soldiers… that’s part of the story too, that in many ways this is a youth movement. If you look at the photos, the monks are young. Young men from the hinterlands become monks to get an education and to enter a way of life that is respected, that the society reveres. There’s a youth energy to what’s happening now…

——
John Tomasic is managing editor at Pop and Politics.Here’s Prof Simmer-Brown on consumer culture.