Myanmar...

Aye Aye

Make sense of this: the most generous person I’ve met since living in Asia is a woman who is having her home, that was once her great-grandfather’s and is filled with 18^th century Pali texts and antiques that belong in some grand museum, confiscated by the Myanmar government so that it can be used as scrap wood for a new governmental project. Her name is Aye Aye. Like hundreds of other locals, she’s told she cannot live in her home in the town of Old Bagan, where her ancestors have lived for centuries, because it is a budding tourist destination. She must move to a tiny plot of land designated for her and her three children in New Bagan. The government has graciously given them permission to build a new home there. The most generous person I have met in Asia buried her husband a year ago after she was unable to go on paying for his treatment for stomach cancer because she was also having to fund her children’s education on the salary of a launderer. No free education. No affordable health care. No real property rights. But an authentic sense of contentment in every smile. How does that work?

Zaw fixing bike #1 with his adorable sisters
looking on and occasionally bringing supplies

Our trip to Myanmar gifted us with some of the most generous, welcoming and warm-hearted people I’ve ever met. We were first introduced to the geniality and graciousness of Myanmar by a tiny tattooed fellow named Zaw, who fed us “bat”, fixed our bicycles, taught me to shoot a sling-shot, sheltered us from the rain, guided us to a beautiful view from a secluded 10^th century temple, invited us to lunch in his picturesque village and its vibrant inhabitants, taught me to blow Myanmar “smoke rings” and showed me off in front of two competing villages at the start of a local soccer match. Zaw lives with his parents and four sisters in a one-room hut that shelters a pig and its stench in one corner, a rabbit on a chain in another, enough mosquitoes to give you shade from the sun (ask Lynn), and the lives of seven people. The room was a dark 8 by 8 feet. His sisters, Ti Ti Ah and Anh Li Munh were twice the age you would have guessed, but radiated joy, curiosity and kindness, warming us with tea when it began to rain, and giving me rocks and encouraging smiles when I failed with the slingshot.  

Look at the size of that thing

Just as we were to leave Zaw to get back on the right track that the guidebook had us on, Meredyth and I came down with flat tires. Zaw and his dogs were watching us off so we shamefully turned back in hope of rescue from the hero who had already done so much. Those popped tires were the greatest blessing we had on our trip. Naturally, Zaw offered up his services at the always-fair price of, “whatever you want to pay”. Our faulty tires led us into an authentic, human experience that left an immoveable smile on my face. We returned to our hotel having really seen the guts of a Burmese village and having felt the love of absolute strangers.

Think for a second of the image of a village…any village… Okay, now that is exactly what this village looked like. It was composed of wooden huts topped with palm leaves, old women smoking massive cigars, the sound of men sawing, oxen dithering about, the sound of children practicing English by yelling phrases like “this a hand”, smoke-filled kitchens, the smell of sugar cane and tobacco, adorable kids with fake guns hiding from the invaders, old men walking with long sticks, chicken chasing feed, cats chasing chickens, dogs chasing cats, people chasing dogs, the matriarch spinning thread, bicycles becoming one with the vines, and a stump of wood with an axe stuck in it. It was a village and we were the guests of honor. They appreciated our care and we appreciated theirs. It was glorious… as an icing on the cake I fell in love with Zaw’s sister’s friend. Nepalese women should look out – Burmese women are a close second for the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

Gong Shy... that's a plant-made
            bubble on his finger

Skipping over a few more kind souls including a fellow in Yangon who dropped everything he was doing one afternoon to take us around a temple, teaching us basic Buddhist rituals, uncovering myths of our astrological signs and leading us to a local market and a wonderful restaurant where he casually departed, asking for nothing, I come to the true love of my trip: Gong Shy. Maybe I was just overly sentimental during this journey, but I genuinely fell in love with these people; especially this one little boy whose amiable nature makes Mr. Rogers seem like Dennis Rodman.

Testing some "palm beer"

This boy had next to nothing. He couldn’t go to school because his parents couldn’t afford the books, pencils and uniform it would cost each month – not to mention the fact that they depended on him to help in the field. Like Ti Ti Ah and her sister, Gong Shy had golden tipped hair from malnutrition and told me he only ate one meal a day, which was a small dinner. He told me each heart wrenching reality with radiance that could make Gaddafi smile. I spent the afternoon doing what I do best: playing around like I’m a 10 year old with other 10 years olds. He led us from temple to temple, giving lessons on how to pray at each effigy of the Buddha. When he passed a Buddha without praying and I remembered, getting to my knees in mindfulness, he would say “good Billy, good Billy, you are good Buddha”. I don’t remember not smiling that afternoon. He taught us to blow bubbles using the sap of greenery. He led us into a local beer joint that was nothing more than a two-hut, dirt floor compound with strange buckets hanging from palm trees. It turns out the sap from a palm tree can be fermented and turned into a delightful beer-type thing. It actually tasted more like kombucha, but either way, it was just one more incredible side trip that made the place seem surreal.

GONG SHYYYYYYYY

He and I switched off who rode on the back and who pedaled his bicycle, but if we ever got too far ahead of the girls he would jump off, compassionately reminding me, “wait for megan. Wait for lynn. Wait for mereshoo (he never really caught on to meredyth’s name).” Then he would yell to them, “Lynn, Lynn. Come on. Lynn, come on!” It’s impossible to replicate the way he said it, but it brought up hysterical laughter each time. The next morning, at breakfast, I looked out on the road and there he was again. He was staring right back at me just waiting to take us on another joy ride (the literal meaning of the phrase).

And finally, Aye Aye – the saint who was in the process of losing everything, but doing so with optimism, compassion and courage. Like Zaw and Gong Shy, we met her in a temple. She guided us through a gorgeous 12^th Century temple where 4 massive Buddhas and a panoply of bats (yes, still studying for the GRE) look down on the visitors. She explained intricacies of the temple that the Dalai Lama would overlook and did so with the serenity and elegance of royalty. The tour ended with an invitation for lunch the next day in her home that was connected to a monastery. Naturally, we accepted because, at this point, we had come to realize that when people offer you something in Myanmar it is not because they want to take advantage of your or even that they want something in return, it is simply an offering.

Those are ancient Pali texts stuffed into there

When we arrived the next day in a simple, but beautiful one-room house that we had to crouch down to enter, the table was laid with 6 dishes filled with colorful local cuisine. See Meredyth’s blog if you want the proper adjectives to describe that meal – she’s an amazing writer. It was spectacular though. While we ate, she asked if Meredyth, Lynn or Megan had any earrings they were willing to trade because she had sold of her only pair of earrings years back to pay for her children’s school uniforms. When we all responded with sorrowful looks, she smiled and said, “there are more important things”. As the meal was coming to a close and we had learned all about her struggles, her “clever” son whom she clearly adores with all her heart, her late husband and her meeting with my new favorite person, Suu Kyi, she announced, “I’d like to give you something”. As if she had not given us enough already, she handed each of us a beautiful piece of hand made lacquer ware. It had been made by her clever son and she wanted it to be a token of her appreciation for us. What? She had given us everything – spiritual knowledge, her valuable time and delicious food – and she wanted to give us one more thing as a token of her appreciation. There is clearly something different about these people.

My trip to Myanmar evoked a number of different responses: indignation towards the government, admiration for the people, utter joy for each incredible moment and a great sense of equanimity. It was an incredible trip that proved to be a useful teaching point. My experience helped me understand a very important philosophical assertion in Buddhist philosophy. I’ll frame it the way I heard it in a dharma talk by the Burmese-trained teacher, Gil Fronsdal. It goes like this…

Fronsdal says that there are four main forms of attachment in Buddhism that are the source of suffering – first, is our attachment to comfort and pleasure; second is our attachment to our self image; third is the attachment to becoming; and the one that is most germane, fourth, is our attachment to our stories. This is often called attachment to views or opinions, but the stories works better because the term views and opinions make these things seem transitory and easy to discard, but the stories we tell ourselves are much more concrete and hard to shed. You can change from a Republican to Democrat (i’d recommend it), but you probably won’t change the story you tell yourself that someone wronged you and you deserve retribution, or the narrative that you are meant to be with that one woman for your entire life or you’ll die. These are really just opinions, but as these stories arise in our mind over and over again as discursive thoughts, they begin to seem less like stories we’re telling ourselves and more like reality.

The main purpose of Fronsdal’s talk is a plug for meditation. In meditation we are aware of our thinking so that when we start to replay a story in our minds [my boss is such an asshole for taking my stapler today and smiling the way he did. I wish I had says “blah blah blah”. I bet he doesn’t do that to Mary cause he love Mary and hates the guys in the office – Now I’m beginning to perceive the story I have created in my mind as reality], we recognize it as a story rather than letting it bounce around it our head until it finds a foothold in reality.

So, as I reflect on the utter joy radiating from the simple lives of Gong Shy, Zaw and Aye Aye, I wonder what stories they are or aren’t telling themselves that help them find joy amidst such destitution. Anyone got an idea? Either way, Myanmar has just moved into a close second place behind Bhutan as my favorite places on earth. It was an experience I will not soon forget.