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The Birth of Insight
Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw
By ERIK BRAUN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Copyright © 2013 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-00080-0
CHAPTER 1
The Best of Times and the Worst: Ledi Sayadaw's Formative Period
In 1869, U Nyanadaza, the young monk who would become Ledi Sayadaw, sat down in a pavilion at the entrance to Thanjaun (Sam kyon'"), a royal monastery in the capital of Mandalay. He had traveled many rugged miles from his village and endured many hardships to be there, in the hope of winning a spot in what was perhaps the most prestigious monastic institution in the land. It must have been a daunting scene: before him, Thanjaun's outer walls rose two stories high, enclosing over twenty buildings, many gilded and topped with multi-tiered roofs. As impressive as it must have been, the monastery formed only a small part of Mandalay's dazzling panorama. It sat near the king's ornate palace complex amid numerous large monasteries and mansions. The buildings so sparkled with gilt and semiprecious stones the city was said to resemble Amaravati, the heavenly capital of the god Indra's realm. Indeed, Mandalay was often called "the city of gems."
Alone at the entrance, Ledi began to chant the patimokkha, the monastic code that guides the life of the ordained. Admission to Thanjaun as a resident monk required a flawless recitation from memory.
In many ways, at the moment he sat there, it was the best possible time for an ambitious and scholarly monk to be in Mandalay: the sangha had an unprecedented level of support from the king; intellectual inquiry and literary production flourished in the capital among those scholar-monks who were expert at navigating the complex and immense Buddhist textual corpus, "the ocean of the pitakas," as the Burmese put it. Nearby, lay literati at the court were also commissioning, writing, and studying Buddhist texts on a variety of topics, including meditation, in fruitful collaboration with monastics. Yet it was also the worst time to be a young monk in the capital: the British had split Burma in two, taking control of its lower half and destabilizing the remnant that remained independent; greatly weakened, the king faced the possibility of a total loss of his country to a foreign power; and the sangha, unified since 1784, had splintered into contentious factions.
Ledi made it into Thanjaun. Once behind its walls, he gained a position from which he could observe and eventually participate in Burma's conflicted and precarious situation. His formative experiences during this time taught him how monks, the king, and lay courtiers used Buddhist learning, including learning about meditation, as a way to answer Burma's societal challenges. Ledi would depend upon these experiences to shape his own responses to the arrival of British colonial rule. In the process, he would formulate a vision of Buddhism for all Burmese that included the practice of insight meditation.
A Lineage of Learning
Almost a century before Ledi went to Mandalay, a group of monks, who came to be called the Thudhamma (Sudhamma), had gained the support of King Bodawpaya (ruled 1782–1819) and instituted a program of monastic reform that would mark Ledi's experiences at Thanjaun. The proximate cause of the reform was a debate over whether novice monks entering a village or formally appearing before the laity should cover both shoulders, as fully ordained monks did, or leave one shoulder bare. This was not a trivial matter, for upon it hinged the issue of whether monastic authority rested upon scripture alone or a blend of scripture and local custom. The Thudhamma monks maintained that scripture alone determined proper behavior, which led them to advocate that novice monks cover both shoulders. King Bodawpaya's decision to side with the Thudhamma monks did not introduce an entirely new valuation of textual authority—monks on both sides of the debate championed textual prowess—but it contributed to a culture in which monastic and court literati won power through the use of texts. This was especially so because the king required all monks to reordain in the Thudhamma lineage and hew to its particular textual focus.
Along with re-ordination came an effort to standardize the educational curriculum of monks throughout the country. This kingdom-wide regularization of the study and use of texts, though never completed, strengthened the ties between village monks and elites at the capital. King Bodawpaya also emulated these Thudhamma textual practices. In conjunction with growing political centralization and literacy among the Burmese populace, a focus on texts led to the rise of lay literati who used the mastery of texts as a means to prestige and power. This further cohered monastic and lay literary practices and would enable Ledi to tap into lay literati knowledge as well as monastic expertise. He also had a particularly strong connection to this literary ethos that went beyond his ordination into the Thudhamma lineage. His early monastic training took place in the heartland of the Thudhamma approach to Buddhism. He was born and raised in the center of the Lower Chindwin River Valley, where this movement began in the mid-eighteenth century. Furthermore, throughout the Konbaung Dynasty (1752–1885) the kings who ruled Burma and the most influential monastic and lay literary figures at the court emerged from this area.
Their origins in the Chindwin region allowed Thudhamma monks to further buttress their claim to authority by presenting their lineage as one that adhered to the strict practices of forest-dwelling (araññavasi) monks. In juxtaposition to town-dwelling (gamavasi) monks, forest monks were understood to live lives that cleaved more closely to the ideal of the homeless renunciant. It was not that the town-dwelling monk was considered illegitimate or subpar, but, as a rule, forest-monk status conferred added prestige and influence. For it was understood as a monastic lifestyle more rigorously devoted to spiritual pursuits (ideally, including meditation) and freer of the worldly temptations of cities and towns. This gave forest monks greater potency as sources of merit, which drew lay people, including kings, to them. It also gave such monks greater authority to innovate. In Burma and across the Theravada world, appealing to forest-monk status was a way to justify changes in practice and the assumption of an authoritative role in the sangha. At the start of the Thudhamma reformation, the group's peripheral location in the Chindwin Valley, relatively far from the capital, made their claim to be forest monks credible. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, they could hardly claim to be outsiders, as they were the only lineage of significance in Burma. Nonetheless, the trope of the forest monk remained a powerful one in the institutional memory of the group. Ledi would eventually return to the Lower Chindwin Valley to make his own claim to forest-monk status around the time of the arrival of the British.
Life at Thanjaun
Ledi picked Thanjaun because of the fame of the Thanjaun Sayadaw as a learned monk. His choice reflects his ambition, for it went against the usual practice in which a monk from outlying areas joined whatever monastery had a connection to his village. Even if the monastery's intellectual rigor drew Ledi in, however, the way learning and power dovetailed in Burmese Buddhism meant he also had joined an institution at the apex of the monastic hierarchy. The abbots of Thanjaun, appointed by the king, were some of the most powerful monks in the land. The current head, the third Thanjaun Sayadaw, had been a personal teacher of Mindon, was a favorite of the queens, and occupied a dominant position on the king's advisory council of monks, the Thudhamma Council. In addition, his teacher, the The-in Sayadaw (died 1846), had been the thathanabaing (sasana puin'), the head of all monks in Burma designated by the king. While Mindon had not tapped another head monk after the death of the preceding thathanabaing (the Maungdaung Sayadaw) in 1865, the Thanjaun Sayadaw's powerful positions and the patronage he received suggests that he had become the de facto head of monks in Burma.
Mere recitation of the patimokkha did not get Ledi access to the Thanjaun Sayadaw. Within the monastery, a monk had to prove himself to win good accommodations and the attention of the senior monks. At the start, Ledi was just a face in the crowd—an especially large crowd, in fact, as he entered the monastery at the start of the yearly rains retreat (va or vassa), when many monks had settled down at Thanjaun for the period. Because of this, Ledi's first sleeping place at the monastery was a spot of ground by a water pot, often soaking wet because of spills. All he had to sleep on was a scrap of leather hide and a rough cloth made from gourd, which he rolled up every day so other monks could use the space to collect water.
Such a humble beginning reported in Ledi's biographies accentuates his subsequent success. He knew he had to draw attention to himself as a serious scholar to escape the water pot. He applied himself with vigor to group lectures and personal study, and he made an effort to stand out from the crowd. For instance, when the monks at Thanjaun recited together, Ledi would speak very loudly. The abbot soon noticed the young monk:
Seeing the monk Nyanadaza, who was very brilliant and industrious, and who also had an intention to gain wisdom, he [the Thanjaun Sayadaw] called him into his presence and said:
Thanjaun Sayadaw: "By what monastic title are you called?"
Ledi: "I am called Nyanadaza, Venerable Sir."
Thanjaun Sayadaw: "Well, that distinguished name is noble!"
When the Thanjaun Sayadaw had spoken in this way, he called for the Salin Sayadaw, U Pandicca, who was a disciple very skilled in literature, and said to him: "Maung Salin, you should pay attention to this young monk and help with his teaching. Young monk, you attend the lessons of Maung Salin, and train with me too."
When the Thanjaun Sayadaw had said this, both the Salin Sayadaw and U Nyanadaza said together, "Yes, venerable sir."
By distinguishing himself, Ledi won further training with a monk "skilled in literature," and one who was powerful in his own right: the Salin Sayadaw also held a seat on the king's council.
What is notably lacking in the description of Ledi's life at Thanjaun is meditation as a practice, the prior claim of Thudhamma monks to forestmonk status notwithstanding. We will see later in the chapter that some monks had turned to meditation around this time, but they had done so as part of a movement that sought refuges for practice some miles from the capital in the hills across the Irrawaddy River above the village of Sagaing. In contrast, monks who remained at the center of prestige and power in Mandalay focused on scholarship.
The King and the Sangha
King Mindon had ruled Burma for thirteen years when Ledi arrived in Mandalay. He had ascended to his position in 1853, not long before the Second Anglo-Burmese War ended in the humiliating loss of the entirety of Lower Burma, just like the previous one fought with the British in 1824–26. Mindon sought to strengthen Burma in light of its precarious position, sandwiched between the direct or indirect imperial powers of the British and the French. Because he could not afford to risk open conflict, to prop up his authority he emphasized his role as the dhammaraja, the righteous ruler who supports and protects Buddhism. While Ferguson's statement that "Mindon basically tried to solve his nation's problems by becoming a better Buddhist" perhaps simplifies the situation too much, he did rely to an unprecedented extent on Buddhism. By doing so, he emphasized to his subjects, Ledi included, the links between the sangha and the state.
Mindon far outstripped his predecessors in his meritorious Buddhist deeds. Among them, the royal record of his reign lists building pagodas, monasteries, and rest houses; gilding pagodas; digging canals and wells; repairing water tanks and ponds; putting his sons into the monkhood; donating money to monks successful in exams; giving daily food to the sangha; freeing animals from death; and sponsoring cremations. One of Mindon's most notable acts was the placing of a new hti (a finial) on top of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon in 1871, deep in British-held Burma. Such an act was a means not just to legitimate his rule but also a way to maintain a sense of the unity of Burmese culture between royal Upper Burma and the British-controlled territory of Lower Burma.
Beyond his role as patron, the dhammaraja had another quintessential duty, to protect the sangha, especially from internal decline due to the slackening of monastic discipline. This was of great concern because monks, living in the most auspicious way possible through their adherence to the rules of discipline (the Vinaya) laid down by the Buddha, were the key source of merit (puñña), or good kamma, for the lay people who supported them. The purer the monk's fealty to the code of discipline, the greater the merit a lay person gained by giving to that monk. Just as Mindon surpassed prior kings in his patronage, he tried to enforce regulations on monks' behavior that were stricter than in previous kings' reigns, in order to insure good monastic discipline. On February 15, 1856, he sent out a royal order proscribing monks from such practices as farming, asking for money, attending puppet shows and boxing matches, engaging in alchemy, and having sex with women. To insure monastic adherence to his law, Mindon relied upon a system of ecclesiastical administration. The most important figure in this system was the thathanabaing, who was chosen by the king. The king also appointed the committee of eight monks called the Thudhamma Council to assist the thathanabaing. Outside of Mandalay, monks called gaing-oks (guin'" up') supervised districts and, under them, gaing-dauks (guin'" thauk') administered sub-districts. One of the key duties of these officials was to tally the numbers, location, and disciplinary fitness of the monastic population and report the findings back to Mandalay. Further, in Mandalay Mindon appointed two laymen to assist the thathanabaing, the mahadanwun (maha dan' wan', the officer of religious affairs, sometimes called the ecclesiastical censor) and the mahadansaye (maha dan' ca re", the clerk of religious affairs). These men were instructed to walk the streets of Mandalay in the morning and to apprehend any monks seen to be acting contrary to the Vinaya.
Mindon's efforts show how closely he involved himself in the affairs of the monkhood. But, though monks generally accepted that the king had a role in sangha purification, the extent of his control was a contentious matter. Ledi had entered an environment in Mandalay in which the sangha and the state were closely related, but hardly in lock-step. Members of the sangha could and did resist state control. For instance, many well-known monks, even some members of the Thudhamma Council, balked at Mindon's law of 1856, not because they objected to the prohibitions but because they disagreed with the king's claim to power over the sangha implied by the law. They argued that the Vinaya itself had a clear enumeration of all the rules that monks needed to follow. As noted at the start of the chapter, the Thanjaun Sayadaw was serving as a sort of tacit thathanabaing when Ledi arrived in Mandalay, but Mindon may have left the post officially vacant so that he could exercise his authority more directly over what could clearly be a resistant monastic community.
Beyond his efforts to control sangha behavior, Mindon took another step in 1859 that profoundly affected Burmese Buddhism. He recognized a monk, the Shwegyin Sayadaw, as the founder of a separate sect (nikaya) within the sangha distinct from the Thudhamma. Mindon apparently did so because he admired the Shwegyin Sayadaw's reform-minded views, and perhaps because he hoped to use the presence of another nikaya as a means to divide the sangha and so control it more easily. Yet, rather than making monks more tractable, Mindon's recognition of a new sect further atomized the sangha and made it even harder to control. Numerous sects formed during and after his reign, each claiming to adhere more purely to the Vinaya and often invoking the powerful model of the forest monk. This growth of factionalism was exacerbated by the situation in Lower Burma, where the British did not attempt any control over the sangha and so allowed dissenting groups a base of operation to draw Upper Burma into further feuding. Although he was the paragon of support for Buddhism, by splintering the sangha Mindon contributed to a growing sense among the Burmese that Buddhism was under grave threat.
When Ledi entered Thanjaun, he gained a clear vantage point on this dynamic and interdependent, but fractious, relationship between sangha and state. No doubt he had a sense of this relationship when he was back in his home village, but studying under teachers operating at the highest levels of the monastic hierarchy in close collaboration with the king offered him the chance for a more profound exposure to the complex relationship between the two.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Birth of Insight by ERIK BRAUN. Copyright © 2013 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS.
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