BUDDHA IN BURMA continued: 1 | 2 | 3

BICYCLES AND BICYCLE-DRAWN RICKSHAWS clutter the streets of Mandalay. Young men in longhis (sarong-style skirts) pedal us through the city, practicing their English. This city was the last capital of Burma before the British took over, and its Burmese-ness thoroughly charms us.

Mahamuni Paya, the Great Sage Pagoda, was built in the late 1700s. A chubby, grinning monk greets us at the gate to serve as our guide. Like many of the Burmese we meet, he learned to speak English by listening to lessons broadcast by Voice of America.

As he leads us through the complex, we pass a palm reader’s stall. Obviously accustomed to the whims of foreigners, the monk sits patiently while the woman inks our hands and presses them to paper, then translates our readings before continuing his tour. (I can look forward to having two children, owning a business, and dying at age 68 – I’m shooting for the middle one.)

In another building glass cabinets line one wall, each filled with oblong books of Buddhist text written in the extinct Pali language, which has been kept alive in Buddhist monasteries through the centuries. In a display case sit tiny glass bottles with unidentifiable contents resembling everything from poppy seeds to tiny pebbles. The monk points to each bottle. “Meat of Buddha, bones of Buddha,” he says, continuing to name other supposed Buddha bits.

The centerpiece of the temple complex is a 13-foot bronze buddha atop a tall platform. Thanks to years of pilgrims pressing gold leaf onto the image, it appears deformed, puffy – Buddha with elephantiasis. As we enter the temple, we see men busily applying gold leaf onto the image while worshippers meditate or mill about below. We approach the platform until we reach a thin velvet rope and a sign: ‘No Women Beyond This Point.’


“You must wait here,” says the smiling monk, who motions for Paula and me to sit on the floor with several meditating women. We sit and watch as the monk leads Ken up onto the platform, chatting animatedly.

An elderly woman near me holds up a matchbook-sized gold leaf, and a man carrying a pole topped with a small wooden block approaches. She presses the gold leaf onto the block, and he carries it to the platform for one of the men to remove it and place it on the buddha.

This is the first of several times that we will encounter this aspect of Burmese Buddhism. It seems that women are further down the Nirvanic scale than men, although in all other aspects of Burmese society women appear to enjoy nearly equal status. However, I am accustomed to an egalitarian, Westernized Buddhism, and I feel not only inferior, but also a bit miffed at missing out on the fun.

Later, we wander through the vendor stalls along the stairways, admiring the teakwood buddhas and beaten brass gongs. A boombox blares a familiar melody, although the words are in Burmese -- it is "Take Me Home, Country Roads."

ABOUT SIXTY MILES SOUTHEAST of Mandalay lies Inle Lake, an 11-mile-long lake surrounded by mountains. Thatched houses on stilts dot the edges of the lake. Motorized long boats flit over the calm surface, ferrying passengers from one end of the lake to the other. Fisherman row boats using one leg wrapped around the oar, stopping occasionally to lower their nets.

We hike 13 miles through the mountains east of the lake along winding steep paths. “Shortcut!” our guide proudly announces, plunging headlong through bushes and weeds along an invisible path. When we pass through clusters of houses, barefoot children run out to greet us. “Hello!” “Goodbye!” they shout. On all of our village treks, we inspire giggles in youngsters and wide smiles and chatter among the adults. Unused to being such a source of amusement, we finally ask our guide if the villagers think we look funny. Is it our light complexions, hair and eyes? “Yes,” he says. “But also because you wear short pants and big shoes.”

Along the path is a large cave that houses a cigar-smoking monk. He apparently never leaves the cave except to tend a small vegetable garden outside. We remove our shoes and walk past the monk’s platform to move gingerly down damp, slippery stone stairs, our flashlight beams swallowed by the darkness. It smells of batshit and prehistoric dampness – like the center of the earth. At the bottom of the stairs, the cave separates into several small grottoes, a single buddha resting in each one. A candle sits before each small image, its flame penetrating the darkness.

From Inle Lake, we hire a car and guides to take us to Pindaya, a small town 58 miles northwest of Inle Lake. Mr. Robert, a 50-ish, striking bald man, wears jeans and high-topped Converses. His nephew, Win, is a 21-year-old with a fondness for betel nut, a mild intoxicant favored by Southeast Asians that adds an unpleasant bloody tinge to the teeth.

In one of the mountains overlooking the small town and lake of Pindaya are the Pindaya Caves. Legend has it that seven princesses who were bathing in the lake sought refuge in the cave during a storm and were imprisoned there by a giant spider.

Win leads us to the two-story building covering the entrance to the caves, where a sign informs us that “Foot Wearing is Prohibited”. We remove our shoes and board a glass elevator that ascends slowly to the second level. The Pindaya Cave consists of a labyrinth of large rooms filled with 8,000 buddhas, some hundreds of years old, made of bronze, gold, stone, and other materials. They line ledges along the walls and perch on rocks throughout the cave. The linoleum-lined walkway is deceptively slick, and electric lights illuminate the rooms (and keep giant spiders at bay.) Win occasionally prostrates before an image as we watch with the awkwardness of tourists in a sacred place.

AFTER LEAVING THE CAVE, Mr. Robert and Win lead us into the nearby hills to spend the night in a villager’s home. It has rained all morning, and we trudge up a muddy, gutted road barely fit for an oxcart. The family speaks no English, and our Burmese has never progressed beyond “hello” and “thank you”. The gray-haired grandmother, her head bound in a turban, lives with her pregnant daughter, her son-in-law and their three children, with several other family members living nearby.

We enter the main house by a stairway of bamboo poles. In the large living area of the cottage, there is no furniture, only straw mats on the floor and a small firepit. On one wall of the room is a two-tiered altar, decorated with glass vases of colorful flowers, a small golden shrine and an oil lantern.

There is no electricity, no water, no gas. The family works by candlelight, tying handfuls of slender, leek-like vegetables into bundles for next day’s market. Before going to sleep and again upon rising, Mr. Robert kneels and prays before the altar, as does the grandmother of the house. I lay nearby beneath damp musty blankets, feeling like an intruder. I also feel something like envy – what would it be like to have such faith, to have a spiritual practice as integral to my daily life as eating and sleeping?

AFTER TWO WEEKS OF THE BEAUTY of Burma and its people, our last days in Yangon snapped us harshly back into reality. After unexpectedly attending a National League for Democracy meeting, which included NLD leader Aung San Suu Kye, we were followed by two government employees. Paula, who left a day before we did, was pulled aside by an immigration officer at the airport and searched. Her film, tapes and books were confiscated. Ken and I escaped her fate, allowing us to share our precious photos of “The Lady” with Burmese refugees here in Los Angeles.

But I miss Burma – I missed it as soon as we boarded the plane to Calcutta. Even our last nervewracking days in Yangon could not erase the serenity and beauty I had found in this troubled country, nor the kindness of its people, whose faith shines in its government’s long shadow.

LISA KELLY is a West Virginia native who has lived in Los Angeles for 10 years. Since moving there, she has been involved in the Tibet support movement as a volunteer and occasional board member for Los Angeles Friends of Tibet. She is currently a special education teacher and also works as a writer/editor for Captive Daughters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the sex trafficking of girls. She does not claim to be a Buddhist, but she has met the Dalai Lama twice. Not that he would remember.

FOR A MORE DETAILED ACCOUNT of the trip described above, as well as more photos, visit www.elevenshadows.com/travels/burma.htm
To learn more about the situation in Burma, as well as how to support the Burmese democracy movement, please go to the next page for excerpts from a U.S. government human rights report on the country.

PAGE 3: Government-ordered Buddhism