Buddhism and Dictatorship

You can spend a week in Myanmar without once seeing a picture of General Than Shwe, leader of the country’s military junta. Myanmar emphatically fails to meet one’s expectations of military dictatorships. There is no cult of personality, no pomp, no parades. The soldiers you see look oily and malnourished in their ill-fitting uniforms. The junta has only adopted the drabbest and most claustrophobic trappings of dictatorship, like the snitch on every block, the enormous McMansions of the generals and their cronies, and the stilted, Soviet-style rhetoric of the government paper:

That the government is almost universally loathed by the Burmese you meet is not surprising. It provides its people with ‘no bread and no circuses’, as the writer Thein Myint-U puts it. The circus, the unifying ideology and glitz that the junta otherwise lacks, is to be found in Buddhism. Spend one week in Myanmar and you will see about 50,000 images of the Buddha (rough estimate), like this particularly smug example in a temple in Bagan:

Despite the country’s large Hindu, Muslim and Christian populations, it is Buddhism that permeates the culture. Take Shwedagon Paya, Myanmar’s holiest place and proudest monument, an enormous mountain of gold and jewels that towers above Yangon:

It's hard not to be shocked by the opulence of Shwedagon, compared to the poverty and misery that surrounds it. Yet the Burmese are deeply proud of it. A monk insisted on showing me around, pulling me over to a parapet to point out in a hushed voice the street leading up to the pagoda where the military shot down demonstrating monks in 2007, and then the next moment leading me over to the special viewing point where, at 6.30 in the evening, you can see a beam of green light shine through the enormous diamond that sits atop the pagoda, an expensive refractive effect that is meant to symbolise the beams of light that shone from the Buddha's head at the moment he attained enlightenment. This same monk was then pathetically grateful for the 2000 Kyat (2 dollars) that I gave him. Something very complicated is going on here.

Christopher Hitchens argues in God is Not Great that the West's high opinion of Buddhism is misguided, that the religion “despises the mind and the free individual,” and preaches submission and resignation. Hitchens consequently attributes the longevity of the military junta to the centrality of Buddhism to Burmese society. While this argument might have a grain of truth, it's ultimately a simplistic analysis of the complicated relationship between the state, the religion, and the Burmese people.

This little girl is all dressed up for the ceremony where she will become a monk. Her family look comfortably well-off, so she'll probably spend a few weeks with a shaven head, living in a monastery, walking the streets barefoot to beg food from shops and homes before school starts again and she can go back to normal. For hundreds and thousand of other Burmese, though, the priesthood is an escape from poverty and potential starvation. Poor children take advantage of the free monastic education the priesthood offers, and many adults who would otherwise be jobless remain in the priesthood for life. Where all state functions have disappeared except for those of coercion, control, and the provision of basic infrastructure, then Buddhism effectively becomes a de facto welfare state. Perhaps the junta realises this, and that’s why they’ve chosen to leave the structures of Buddhism in Burmese life intact. Maybe they learnt from the example of the Khmer Rouge, who, under the influence of hard-line Maoism, set about the wholesale dismantlement of Buddhism in Cambodia with disastrous results for Cambodian society. Or maybe they recognise that they have no genuine ideology of their own, and are merely cynically co-opting the country’s most powerful narrative.

Wikipedia says that the military's eagerness to align itself with Buddhism has become a joke - people say that Burmese TV has only two colours, green and yellow, referring to the green uniforms of the military and the yellow robes of the monks. Why, then, was the monk’s rebellion of 2007 so violently crushed? That the junta was prepared to shoot monks seems to have come as a profound shock to almost everybody in Burma. But in retrospect, how could it have done otherwise? With the National League for Democracy a spent force and the frontier insurgencies calming down, it’s only Buddhism that presents any serious counterbalance to the military’s power. Had the junta not shown their willingness to shoot monks, a ‘saffron revolution’ would have been a distinct possibility. 2007 was a message to Myanmar that Buddhism will be respected and celebrated only so long as it is in harmony with the aims of the regime.

And here perhaps Hitchens’ critique is apposite. There is a powerful theme of resistance and rebellion that runs through Christianity, through Judaism, and to a lesser extent through Islam (Hinduism I don’t know). Christians can look to Jesus and Pilate, Moses and Pharaoh, David and Goliath, and all the lesser martyrs for examples of the moral imperative to resist tyranny. Buddhists have only the Buddha, sitting contentedly, eyes closed, smiling to himself. Buddhism has no obvious lessons to teach a resistance, and perhaps that’s why the junta like it so much.

Then again, Buddhism has been in Myanmar for a long time, and will still be in Myanmar long after the graves of the generals are forgotten. Perhaps this is Buddhism’s lesson for the people of Myanmar: Be patient.

Note: I don’t actually know anything about Buddhism, so if I’ve got something drastically wrong, please tell me in the comments.

-Pete

Magic

I was at the top of one of the temples of Bagan to watch the sun set over the plain, and I got to talking with a mule-cart driver who was there waiting for his passengers. I asked him if there were many snakes in Bagan, because I'd earlier seen one dead on the road (above). The mule driver said yes, many snake, but no problem. Why, I asked. He told me that when he was very young, he had been bitten by a snake. His parents had rushed him to the doctor, and he had survived. Afterwards, they took him to see a Buddhist master, who gave him a magical tattoo, some faint, spidery red lines between his shoulder-blades and on the tops of his wrists:




Now that he has them, he is immune from snakebite. He can't kill snakes, for to do so would break the spell, but they can't harm him and will even stop in their tracks if he so commands them. If, like me, you're petrified of snakes and considering getting one of these tattoos, be warned that after it's done the Buddhist master will demand that you put your hand into a box full of venomous snakes "so that you believe him". And his studio will probably look something like this inviting setup, spotted in the streets of Yangon:

How to make earmuffs in Myanmar

Every time I book a bus ticket in South-East Asia I ask hopefully if there's a TV on the bus, and every time the clerk laughs and says yes, yes there is. There's a deeply rooted cultural expectation here that entertainment should be provided on buses. This is usually karaoke or the local soap operas, played on skipping, pixellating video discs at such a high volume that the overhead speakers peak out every time someone screams, cackles, shrieks, bellows or hits a shrill crescendo, and Burmese entertainment features a lot of screams, cackles, shrieks, bellows and shrill crescendos. This plays constantly from the time you get on the bus to the time you disembark, with a brief and glorious period of respite between 12.30 and 4.30 a.m. Earplugs don't even touch it. After a particularly long and torturous ride from Yangon and Bangan, I decided to supplement my earplugs with earmuffs. Unfortunately, Nyaungshwe market didn't sell earmuffs, and I was forced to improvise. This, then, is how to create a pair of earmuffs from goods readily available in the average Burmese village.

First, take your crappy Burmese headphones:


Wrap the headband with wire, for strength and flexibility:


Remove the electronics:


Stuff the cavities with cotton wool:



Wrap the headband with tape, for style and comfort:


Problem solved!

More Redshirts

Another arm of the redshirt camp ends at the intersection of Th Phra Ram IV and Th Ratchadamri. This area has a more post-apocalyptic feel about it, perhaps because it's just after a thunderstorm and everything is sodden with rain:



Or because the area outside is swarming with cops in riot gear, there in response to the Redshirt's earlier threat to shut down the Chulalongkorn Hospital across the road:


These guys were dancing around the camp singing discordantly:



Followed at a distance by this old man, to whom everyone passing made a reverent wai. Around his neck is a collection of the Buddhist amulets that the Thais fervently collect:



This guy was rolling cigarettes and selling zip-lock bags of five. Note the hairy mole on his chin, a sign of good luck in South-East Asian culture:



The pimpingest redshirt bike around:


I'm off to Burma tomorrow, so probably won't get a chance to add to this blog for a while. Back on the 25th, stay tuned.

Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute and Snake Farm

The Institute is a WHO-affiliated organisation manufacturing antivenin. It's disappointingly professional in that all the public action takes place in an antiseptic, snake-proof booth:



This is in stark contrast to the last last snake farm I went to (in Ho Chi Minh City), where the handler's hands were lumpy and mangled from innumerable bites, and his snake-handling technique involved a lot of dodging and flailing about on the restaurant floor. In retrospect, he wasn't a very good snake handler. By comparison, the Institute's handlers still have all their fingers, and their snake-handling technique is cool and professional. They share a catching stick that's about a metre long with a slightly curved piece of wire sticking at a right-angle from the end. They use it to hook a cobra out of its plastic box, then they grab its tail with the other hand. They dangle it by the tail so its head and about two inches of its body rest on the ground, then they use the wire end of the stick to delicately press the cobra's head against the floor. They take the back of its head between the thumb and forefinger of the hand that holds the tail, let go of the stick, transfer the tail to the free hand, and voila; immobilised snake.



Next, they push the snake's fangs through clingfilm stretched over the mouth of a funnel and wait about a minute for it to expel all its venom, while their partner repeats the process:


Three snakes are milked in quick succession, and their venom poured into a beaker the size of a shot-glass:



This venom will, we are told, be distilled and then injected into horses, which will then produce the antivenom. The horses are unfortunately no longer kept on site, so I wasn't able to determine whether they are happy and healthy or mangled and dying, but I choose to believe the former.

(Interesting side-note gleaned from Wikipedia: antivenom production is increasingly shifting away from the use of horses, as enough people are allergic to horses to make the potential for reaction a problem. Sheep are apparently more hypoallergenic.)

With the Redshirts

First you see some cops in riot gear, eating ice-cream in the shade. Then you see more, lined up along the pavement beside haphazard rolls of razor wire. Then you start to hear amplified voices. Then you come to the barricades, ugly piles of tires, sharpened bamboo and red flags:






You don't grasp the size of the encampment from the pictures on the news, or from the glimpses you get of the barricades as you pass through the city. It's vast. You can walk for hours under the skytrain overpass, where thousands of protesters are sleeping through the heat of the day on their colourful woven mats, and thousands of stalls are selling red t-shirts (I bought 2), pho, fried chicken, DVDs, sunglasses, ice-cream, and the red foot-shaped novelty clappers that have been repurposed as one of the symbols of the movement:











Signage:







Grim Thais gather around the TVs set up on tables along the way showing grainy cell-phone footage of last week's clashes:


Elsewhere, stalls display pictures of red-shirts with their heads blown apart, or their shirts lifted to show angry welts on their torsos, beside a picture of the rubber bullet that inflicted it:



The epicentre of the protest is the intersection in front of the Louis Vutton store. Speakers harangue the government non-stop from a makeshift stage, their words broadcast throughout the entire protest area on truck-mounted loudspeakers:





Thaksin might claim to have no hand in these protests, but someone is paying for the ranks of portaloos, the acres of electrical cable, the sunshades, the hundreds of speakers, and the generators needed to power them, and it's not the barefoot peasants sleeping under the overpass.

Clearing these miles of streets would be a nightmare, and the government knows it. The redshirts are daring them to try it; the government will do almost anything to avoid it. The question is whose patience and whose money will give out first.

Muay Thai at Lumpinee

Lumpinee Stadium is a round tin shed off Rama IV Road in Bangkok, and the most prestigious Muay Thai venue in the world. The pamphlet they give to farang(foreigners) has pictures of Steven Seagal, Nicholas Cage and Jean-Claude Van Damme sitting ringside, looking like sex tourists. Ringside is expensive; it's for Thai bigwigs and farang like me. I got sat behind some wooden benches with signs saying 'reserved for press', occupied by reptilian old men who turn around at intervals to signal back to the third class stands behind them where the gambling takes place. Every signal ignites a flurry of yelling and signaling from the gamblers. It looks like the Dow trading floor, and what goes on there is equally incomprehensible. Nothing is written down, no money comes out until the bout is over, and yet everything seems to run smoothly and nobody gets stabbed. A bigwig:



The form guide:


The betting floor:




The fighters enter the ring in a rope head-dress, a garland of flowers, and a cape emblazoned with the name of their stable. The trainer takes their cape off and hangs it beside the ring. Some of the fighters look as young as 12. Their polyester shorts balloon around them, and the trainers roll up the elastic waistband so they don't fall down during the fight. The fighters do a ceremonial dance, then walk slowly around the ring, holding their foreheads to each corner post in turn, closing their eyes and whispering a prayer.



The fight starts slowly, with the fighters circling each other, swaying back forth, cocking their knees to test the reflexes of the other. Hits start landing. At first blood the referee stops the fight, and someone from the wounded fighter's corner jumps into the ring to ineffectually dab at the wound with a towel before the fight resumes. The referee is more physically involved than in UFC or boxing, jumping in to physically grapple the fighters apart from their clinches, emerging with his face smeared with their blood and sweat. Art shot:




By the third round, the pattern of the fight is usually established. The losing fighter keeps going in for the clinch, the dominant fighter keeps pushing back, trying to make space to land a punch or a knee to the ribs. One 14-year-old kid, his face cut in a half-dozen places, keeps trying to kick and every time his foot is caught by his opponent who throws him down on his back and tries to land a kick to his face before the referee can jump in and stand over him. Every hit draws an appreciative roar from the crowd, especially from the fighter's crew:



When the final bell goes, there never seems to be a need to consult the three silent judges in their boxes around the ring. The referee raises the winning fighter's arm and places both fighters' garlands around his neck. He is photographed, fists up, and then whisked back to the dressing room, to be feted by his team and to pose for pictures with idiot farang:



More pictures. The view from 3rd class:


The judge's box:


The guy who checks the gloves:


The timekeeper's station:



In the corner:


Team Victory:




Next post: Redshirts.