22.Aug.2013
There once was a King that wished so desperately to follow
the ways of the Buddha that he was exceedingly generous. He was willing to give
away everything that he had for the happiness of others. If a passing peasant
saw his diamond crown and wanted it, the King would freely remove the crown and
give it to the peasant as a gift. One day, a demon, wishing to bring bad will
to the King, demanded that the King kill his own children. The King thought
that to follow the Buddha, he must be willing to give up all his own happiness
for others, so he listened to the demon and killed his offspring. This is one
of the many stories I’ve heard over the last two days that demonstrate the
importance of the Buddhist tenet of finding the middle way. It’s strangely
apropos that everything I’ve seen recently has something to do with finding the
middle way because an acquaintance on facebook recently posted a status lauding
her ability to do nothing because of her generous parents, which sparked a
series of both harsh and supportive comments from friends. For me, the
combination of this facebook controversy and the series of local legends I’ve
heard here in Myanmar pushes me into an evaluative state of introspection. Am I
anywhere close to finding the middle way?
Wandering around the Ananda temple in old Bagan, I could
here the soothing sound of birds chirping outside while the peaceful yet
somehow watchful eyes of the Buddha stared down at me. I’m enjoying life. I
take advantage of my many blessings in life to experience new places, new
people, and new potential. Travel is my biggest weakness and my greatest
strength. I spend more time and money on travel than I probably should, but it
has been such a crucial part of my education and who I am that I can’t imagine
what my life would be like without it. So far in life, many would say I have
not worked much. Firstly, I believe it is far more accurate to say that I have
earned very few pay checks in my life because I have worked hard at studying,
volunteering, interning, building lasting relationships, and improving myself
step by step. Secondly, when I work, I am dedicated to it, and I always strive
for excellence and success. I have not, however, accepted the common American
viewpoint that the only way to be successful is to work yourself to death. I
cannot begin to count the number of teachers over my life that have told me,
“quality, not quantity.” This maxim does not apply solely to academics, rather
to life in general. Working too much leads to lower overall productivity and
reduced work product quality. The same is true for one’s downtime; doing
nothing will eventually reduce one’s quality of life in one form or another.
This journey has been a reward to myself for finishing my
LL.M. thesis, but in a matter of days, I have managed to learn and experience
so much. It is my hope that by putting these moments, these senses, these
lessons into words, I might be able to share my experiential wealth with others
in some sort of effort to find this elusive middle way.
Yesterday started with a walk through old Yangon. This was
the moment that I was first confronted with the decaying tropical grandeur of
British Rangoon. I kept waiting to see old English gentlemen turn the corner in
linen suits and white caps. We popped in to the old post office to find that
time had stood still in this Victorian masterpiece of handwritten bureaucracy.
Locals queued up at counter after counter making payments, getting papers
stamped, and getting things inspected and weighed before they were finally able
to slap a stamp on and drop it in one of the two red boxes at the main entrance
for outgoing mail. The old ceiling fans rocked back and forth, ready to tumble
from their weary fixtures at any moment. The stamped metal flooring had
withstood the test of time, that is, except for the crumbled rusted portions
covered with simple sheets of plywood through which I anticipated tumbling to
my death, or at least the death of whatever poor local I landed on top of, in
the blink of an eye.
From the post office, we continued on to the Strand Hotel,
where foreigners have come to waste away their days in Yangon since the 1940s.
The bar was a classic wood and marble affair with a beautiful pool table in the
corner. We paused for a drink and to soak up the atmosphere. I ordered a $7 USD
bottle of San Pellegrino that was large enough to share, and my guide was
excited to try both sparkling and Italian water for the first time.
We also walked along the riverfront, and visited a market
boat. These large vessels cruise up and down the river picking up people and
their goods to sell from township to township. The rusty old boat was packed
full of everything from vegetables to t-shirts and families living their lives
the only way they know how. A young baby was napping in a makeshift hammock of
fishing net hung from the ceiling, kittens roamed about hoping for some food
scraps, and women ground their Thanaka to protect their faces from the sun. We
visited a local temple before making our way to the National Museum.
Upon arrival at the National Museum, I was warmly welcomed
by the new Museum Director. He had been informed about my visit and was eager
to hear my feedback. The man knows the Myanmar history better than most, and he
has grand ambitions for a museum stuck with the burdens of poor funding and
government bureaucracy. He has only been with the Museum for a matter of
months, but it was clear he was already doing whatever he could to protect the
museum and its treasures from gradual decay and irrelevance. He left me to
explore the museum, but the assistant director soon came looking for me to
explain some of the exhibits I was looking at. The museum was quite large, and
the displays seemed to go on and on forever. One of the most important exhibits
is the Lion throne of Mandalay. The throne had been taken to India and later
England during the colonial period, something that Myanmar was still clearly
bitter about even after the throne was returned. The assistant director
explained to me that all of the other thrones were destroyed in fires, so I
told him that maybe the greed of the colonial powers had its benefits after
all. One hall of the museum shows the geographic origins and traditional
clothing of each of Myanmar’s 135 distinct ethnic groups. I was struck by the
story of one group’s tribal symbol; it was a bird that can grow very large, and
when the female mate dies, the male flies as high into the sky as he can before
freefalling to his death. I guess love is a complicated thing even in the
animal world.
We rounded out the day with a surprise visit to the local
travel agency responsible for my tour and a walk around Chinatown. Since our
stop at the travel agency was unannounced, my guide decided to have some fun
with the manager and told him I was there to complain about how things had been
so far. The manager had fear in his eyes and a knot in his throat when he
turned to ask me how things have been since my arrival. There have been few
occasions in life where I have seen someone look so relieved as when I told him
everything was great. We talked about some of the changes happening in Myanmar,
and he expressed his excitement and concern for the rapid growth in tourism. He
could not have been happier about the steady increase in foreign visitors, but
he also feared what his life would become like as he took on more and more
work. As this young man with so much energy, excitement, and pride pushes
himself to keep up with the speed of change in this country, will he be able to
find the middle way?
Changes are clearly happening sector by sector here because
we also visited the antiquated train station. Another grand structure frozen in
time, I loved exploring the station and watching the smiling people prepare for
their long journeys on rickety trains that had been in use since the 1940s. My
guide was also eager to show me “the plastic shop.” It was a warehouse full of
everything plastic; I’m pretty sure this is where the spirits of plastic lawn
furniture end up after they die. Every hideous color of plastic furniture
imaginable towers around you like a forest of Chinese dyes and resin. I felt
ashamed for even thinking about the cheap tacky nature of the furniture when my
guide proudly said, “we come here for interior decorating; it’s the best most
people can afford.”
Before sunrise, we were back on the road to the airport to
catch my flight to Nyuang U. We did a quick drive by of “the Lady’s” house, the
affectionate term for Aung San Suu Kyi, the mention of whose name could have
gotten you arrested a few years ago. At the domestic air terminal, I finally
saw the Yangon airport I was expecting. It felt like visits to the Hickory
airport during my childhood back in North Carolina. Security was more for show
than prevention, at least when it came to foreigners. Passengers lined up with
their handwritten tickets to check their luggage and receive their handwritten
boarding pass complete with a sticker for the seat number, and a bright yellow
airline sticker for the passengers to wear to identify themselves. The little propeller plane hops from airport
to airport in Myanmar like a bus with wings. We swerved from side to side as we
powered down the runway, but I made it to Nyuang U, the gateway town to Bagan,
in one piece.
Old Bagan is amazing. Temple after temple dot the horizon as
far as the eye can see. The problem that I’ve had since I’ve been here is my
inability to say no to the people. In my long list of travels, I’ve learned to
quite efficiently give people the cold shoulder, but the people here are so
nice that I find it difficult to ignore them. One young girl asked me if I’d
like to by a small elephant family carved from stone. I smiled and told her,
“no, thank you,” but she kept following me. She introduced me to the mother
elephant, the father elephant, the brother, sister, and baby elephants. She
told me, “it’s ok, think about it, maybe later.” She followed me up the stairs
to the terrace, warning me to watch my head the
whole way. After snapping some
photos and before heading back down, she asked me again, “you want to buy
elephant family?” I asked her how much, to which she replied, “3,000 kyat,”
which is roughly $3 USD. Now, I could have said no, or I could have bargained
with her to save another dollar, but if my one dollar can help pay for her
family’s dinner, how can I in good conscience keep it for myself. I gave her
the money, and she ran down the stairs to get me a bag. On the way out of the
temple, the mother gave me an almost apologetic thank you that only served to
confirm the value of this small purchase to the family. If it had been a larger
purchase where I could have potentially saved myself at least $5 USD by
negotiating, I would have, but I couldn’t bring myself to quibble over cents
that mean so little to me and so much to that young girl. Unfortunately, a
dollar here and a dollar there add up eventually, and I might soon run out of
room for elephant families in my suitcase.
We ended the day watching the sunset from atop one of the
many temples (though one of the few tourists are allowed to climb), and my
guide explained to me some of the suffering the local people have gone through
over the decades. He was born in old Bagan, but his family was forcefully
relocated like many thousands of other families to new Bagan. I could see how
he still looked out over the plains of temples with a sense of longing and a
connection to his past. Things are relatively good in his life now, but
something will always be missing because his heart is at home somewhere that he
can no longer be.
I have things very good in life, and I have never had to
personally experience the kind of suffering that these people have powered
through. My hope is that just by being here, spending my money, hearing their
stories, and sharing them with others, I am somehow helping. My path may still
be considerably closer to the path of comfort and self-interest, but I try to
do my part, and I never take my blessings for granted. I haven’t yet found the
middle way, but I am not as far off as some people I know, and Buddha never
said that enlightenment came easy.
The next stop was one last pagoda. This particular pagoda
was relatively new though, and most of it had been built by various members of
the military government. Everything was a display of the virtuous and generous nature
of the generals. The sad thing about this site, however, was not the source of
its 
