The choice of Burmese

To the humble, courageous, “great ones” among us who exemplify how leadership is a choice, not a position.
-Stephen Covey in
The 8^th habit, devotion


1990 election was a real smart thinking of Burmese people. There is no emotional charge AT ALL for it. If it is the emotional charge, the military people will give the votes to BSP. Be aware that historically Daw Su was not the equal match for even U Ne Win who was also the main colleague of her father. Even the two greatest politicians of Burma independence struggles were defeated: U Nu (Fabian socialist), Thakin Soe (Founder of Burma communist party and the policy maker of Burma independent movements of AFPFL). Do you understand why Daw Su won? This is the choice of people to go on the market economy system rather than to be socialists or communists again as they think socialism and communism will no longer be appropriate for the contemporary trend of the trade system of the world. This is the economic incentive of the people to choice Daw Su as she could earn the greatest institutional support for reinvigoration of capitalistic system in Burma not like her counter parts.
-Burmakin’s critique on YTP’s statement, http://kadaung.iblogger.org/?p=238

As it happens, the view that Asian values are quintessentially authoritarian has tended to come, in Asia almost exclusively from spokesmen of those in power (sometimes supplemented- and reinforced – by Western statements demanding the people endorse what are seen as specifically “Western liberal values”). But foreign ministers, or government officials, or religious leaders, do not have a monopoly in interpreting local culture values. It is important to listen to the voices of dissent in each society. Aung San Su Kyi has no less legitimacy-indeed clearly has rather more – in interpreting what the Burmese want than have the military rulers of Myanmar, whose candidates she had defeated in open elections before being put in jail by defeated military junta.
-Amartya Sen in Development as freedom, P.247

A bitter taste of age

This dissonant age
leaves us zero, for our dignity is gone;
devils are dancing on the throne

The dead last of the new millennium planet
now is our country,
what a nasty age to be

They regale us with shameless jokes
Pigmen never pause in shooting fusillades
We, like the slaves are indentured to listen
for they have in holsters, their guns

Now is sticky with blood slime
This is once a road where the fighting peacocks ran
What a bad age so sickened

Yearling are born;
for the tiger beasts
they are always a feast
Fratricide prevails,
this is the age star bucks fade away

My entire house is falling
with such wicked conflagration;
need to inure myself
how I can be winking
that this dilapidation has never been seen

Like a faint-hearted turtle small
my little stealthy head is
hiding inside the ego shell,
Why I am so cowering to those rumbling knells

All of us
we find ourselves drowning
in the river of deprivation and starvation;
this is the age of Burma
we are now living

(Original writer: Kaung Kin Ko)

I am here because I have a purpose

(Nyo sent me her final term paper on the public administration course in Columbia University last three years ago. She won a score of 20/20 in this paper. Congratulation Nyo!! I am also happy to present your simple and abstruse thoughts in my blog. Even though it lasts three years, your thoughts seem to be still fresh for contemporary Burma)

Question

After your consultancy in Erewhon ends you fly home to take up your full-time dream position elsewhere. On the plane you are fortunate enough to be offered an upgrade to first class, and you find yourself chatting with your two seatmates, who turn out - to your astonishment - to be a multi-millionaire husband-and-wife couple whose foundation actually paid for your short-term position in Erewhon. The husband and wife start arguing about whether or not it is a good idea for them to push the Erewhon community group to take a rights-based approach to the problems faced by the Ruramin community. The husband says of course they should take a rights-based approach, but then it turns out that he's not entirely sure what he means by that other than a “moral” approach. The wife says that she thinks that the whole notion of human rights and development is 1) too vague to be useful, 2) an imposition of Northern culture on Southern communities, and 3) too political for a group that's trying to deal with basic development issues.

Then they both turn to you and ask your opinion. What do you say to this couple about whether or not you think it's a good idea for a community group like the one you worked with to take on a rights-based approach? (It’s fine either to give your honest opinion or instead to choose one side or the other and simply explore all of the arguments that support that position.) Please be sure to explain your reasoning and arguments either way.

Answer: A journey with Bill and Melinda Gates, my seat mates

Nyo: “Melinda, in my honest opinion, I will say it is a good idea to take on the rights-based approach. At a glance, it is true that the right-based approach seem to be vague to be useful. However, I believe if we are very technical in this approach, it will not be that ambiguous”

Bill: “I appreciate it because I am always a technical man. How you can be technical in rights-based approach?”

Nyo: The first technical tool we can do for rights-based approach is monitoring and evaluation by the indicators. In adopting the rights based approach, the state has never to be retrogressive. Indicators that reflect the health status of the population, the responsiveness and equity of a health system can be strong evidence that the state is really taking steps.

Melinda: Nyo, in this sense, all the developing countries that have a poor score on your indicators seem to violate human rights.

Nyo: This is a very good question. We always need the baseline data for comparisons in our indicators analysis. I like to add what we are doing about the indicators is not only quantitative but we will also do a lot of qualitative. For example, we can collect the HIV prevalence rate from the voluntary counseling test (VCT) but we need to ask interview questions to CSWs how the health workers are treating them. Does the discrimination against CSWs in culture make them difficult for access to health care? I can give more examples if you like to listen.

Bill: Great, Nyo. Continue please.

Nyo: Another good example is from my homeland Burma where the children are regarded as not valuable according to the culture of Burmese society. So children are not nourished properly when the household economics is managed in their budget constraint. Adults are given more and better food because they are regarded as more worthy beings. The state party has to make sure that there is not such kind of unsound discriminatory practices in the society and has to make effective legislative measures for such kind of things.

Melinda: Yes. I know Burma and also I know that the third secretary general of UN, U Thant of Burma. I have ever read in the literature that U Thant’s greatest desire in his life is development of child literature in Burma. It seems to me that your society doesn’t take care a lot for your children.

Nyo: Another technical tool we can apply is the budget analysis. We can put this budget analysis into a framework to see whether the allocation of budget is really addressing the needs of the society. The principles of non-discrimination in resource allocation will be powerful influence if we adopt the rights-based approach that will be monitored by the principles of transparency and accountability

Melinda: Interesting, what else?

Nyo: We have technical principles to monitor whether or not the state is doing properly or not. For example, progressive realization, taking steps forward, never to retrogress, to use maximal available resources, legislative remedy measures for process rights that will bind the state party to build up capacity of the people for their entitlement as well as rights-holders for their obligation of fulfillment

Melinda: Marvelous, Nyo! But frankly speaking, the rights-based approach seems to me that the Northern culture is imposing its standards on the southern community.

Nyo: This is a question of cultural relativism in issue of human rights. However, the UDHR in its origin is contributed by scholars of different continents. Actually the culture is dynamic. We should remember America and Europe had to enlighten themselves many times before getting into this stage of democracy and good governance. Besides, I believe the UDHR, the most fundamental document of human rights reflects the fundamental spiritual value of human beings and it is not exclusively in the sense of Europe Individualism.

Bill: I like to listen to you how you can defend self-determination as exclusively Western culture or the fundamental value of all human beings.

Nyo: Of course, there is a great research which compared many identical fundamental values of human beings and they could testify that self-determination is not the Western exclusive model and fundamental model of all Darwinians.

Melinda: Nyo, I still think, the rights-approach is too political to be done.

Nyo: Melinda, political commitment is the most important point for the success and sustainability of the national programs and development cooperation. What we are doing as right-based approach is we are trying to nail down the political commitment of good governance. I acknowledge it is also a sensitive issue to use the language of rights. However, we can be well-talented players for maintaining the balance between the progressive realization of human rights and not sensitizing the issue. We can go in positive attitude that we really believe the government is a good one for political commitment to do our expected behavior of rights-based approach. We are not making a revolution by taking on rights-based approach. Instead we are doing constructive criticism for getting good from the government that we really believe as a good government.

Bill: I appreciate it very much. At first, I think human rights are just a moral approach.

In the hands of a talented player, it becomes a powerful tool for development.

Nyo: It is up to the person who knows how to apply it. Like the concept of Taoism in Chinese martial arts, even a foliate of leaf becomes a sharp sword if the expert knows how to use it.

Melinda: You, Asian people are so fantastic! I also saw in the movie of “Hero” (Not that of Mel Gibson but Jet Li’s hero), the person who reaches the top of the sword martial arts becomes a sword himself.

Nyo: Actually this is the same principle as Jonathan Livingstone Sea gull of Richard Bach. Both are saying the power of mind beyond practice. This can also be an exemplary of cross-cut of Asia and America Darwinians.

Bill: I think there are many cross-cuts of Asia and America values in this arena of globalization. In our Hollywood movie of “matrix revolution”, I find out that the philosophy behind the matrix uses principles of Sunyata (emptiness) of Buddhism.

Nyo: Of course, the matrix is also a human rights movie. Neo is not to be influenced by the violator’s power when he has enlightenment that delivers him from illusion. A Sudanese human rights activist, Professor Abdul from the Emory Law School, is one of the staunch supporters of this concept. The power of the violator is strong only when the victims think his power is tremendous. This is the same principle as Napoleon Hill’s saying “behavior reflection from environment creates your behavior”. This is what we are doing for in all our rights-based policy to convince people to realize that they have the power of the rule of law to restrict the arbitrary power of the state.

Melinda: I remember Oracle said to Neo in Matrix Revolution. “I am here because I have a purpose”. I am convinced now you rights-based men have a very good purpose

Nyo: Thanks. Melinda. I will remember “I am here because I have a purpose”.

Why your country has two names

Dear Ako (elder brother),

I hope you are fine and enjoying your loquacious discussions with Ko Moe, Ko Sein, Ko Han and other your philosophic friends in the teashops in Burma as usual. I safely arrived in the Connecticut School of the US on Sunday and now I am writing you from my computer cluster classroom.

Our teaching assistant for economics is a nice and down-to-earth India-born guy who is also a PhD student of political science in my university. As soon as he appeared in the class, he recognized me that I was the new student. “Are you the new student from Burma?” he asked me in his flamboyant voice. When I nodded my head, he asked me another question,” I couldn’t help asking this question. Why your country has two names?”

Actually, I didn’t know how to answer it. I replied in my natural thinking,” People who love their country call our land Burma”. However Mr. Nice Guy seemed not to be satisfied with my answer.

I think in the future, many people who are interested at our country will be asking me the similar question. I feel shy to myself why I have never thought of this kind of inquiry.

I would love to listen to you how I can answer this question in a thinking way.

Yours,

Nyimalay (little sister)

The Ganges will still be crying for its falling temples

When the half-hearted Burma's capitalism was drilling the country’s resources to the avaricious swallowing of Big Head, the communist China's road to capitalism has raised its people to unprecedented growth. For Confucius’ people, economics seems to be more important than politics. Actually, the non-genuine nature of Burma's capitalism has shut down itself from globalization and authentic trade liberalization. The investment climate became desiccated like the Arabia deserts. Before I studied here in America, by seeing China’s affluent society I innocently thought, what Burmese required from Big Brother was not Democracy but generous trade liberalization.

The lay man's thinking can probably be cleverer than the smart people in many cases. But we also need to go a little deeper for verifying our common sense. In “Global Inequality”, David Dollar warned me seriously that trade liberalization alone would not work for Burma. China, India, Uganda and Vietnam are doing well in economy catching up with free trade liberalization in this globalized arena. Mr. Dollar said that Burma can not be expected to happen the same because Burma doesn't possess strong institutional structures to support free trade and open economy. Thinking conversely, as long as there are weak institutions granting the big head unbridled power and privileges for its exploitation at the small head, Burma will still fall behind the rest of the world.

To much more surprise, maybe a beginning of harmony from discord, Thomas Pogge added that this was not the mutually exclusive fault of Burma from the rest of the world. Under the existing global rules, the design of the global institutional order itself was the CRITICAL cause for the development of the problems of the world poverty. He said even the most blatantly illegitimate regime like Burma military junta has full entitlement to sell the country’s resources abroad all in the name of the country’s people. Of course, the trouser people always referred themselves as Burmese. There is not even a small trace of institutional structures in this globalized world to hinder this kind of gravely unfair evils' imposture over the people.

Today, the world biggest communist China and the planet largest Democracy India were two big patrons of “Burmese” who always protect this fatherless child from so-called abuses of the Western dominance. Apparently China and India adopts this kind of foreign policy because these two economic men of Asia think Burma economic pie as the zero-sum game. They are afraid that their current economic pie from the military junta will be lost if the Western investment comes in. For me, Chinese and Indian people were short-sighted economists who knows only how to sell the volatile products: they want to do the business on the spot and want to get money outright never thinking for twists and turns in the long run. If Asoka forthwith pays his ruby, Mao will sell a dragon without delay.

In his so far immortal,” The World is Flat”, Thomas Friedman complacent his fellow Americans’ anxiety over growth of China. He said the more developed China is, the much bigger market size will be the US because now, the more developed China has more purchasing power to consume the US products. I would like Chinese and India leaders to see how the world has already become flattened and change their current “ruby at once and dragon at once” thoughts. According to the spatial correlation theory, the US’s biggest trade partner was the developed and its bordering Canada. I believe Friedman's theory is a universal and timelessly true principle to be applied everywhere in the world where people always want to see themselves as different and couldn't find out a harmony. Imagine the opulent spending tendency of Burmese and how much aggressive in business doing nature of native Indians and Chinese in Burma. The developed Burma in the long run will inevitably and dramatically expand Asoka and Qing Shi Huang’s market empires to many times the size of the current scopes who are pathetically trying to divide a small piece of cheese under the scorns and pointing fingers from many parts of the world.

Allowing to transform Burma into the model of Western democracy and foreign investment is indeed, a win-win situation for both countries and Burma. The world is still too young to be unstinted from barbarian self-interest, a vision to find harmony, and to seek a bonhomie of brotherhood and justice.

To cap, Burma has fallen a victim to the prisoner's dilemma from materialistic thinking of two Asia superpowers. These two Asia superpowers may probably envision themselves that they are so smart for their people. In reality, they are still the jungle men. When the jungle men see a hen, they try to kill at once and eat at once. They have never thought of the wise men's way of letting the hen alive so that those wise men can enjoy the chicken eggs forever.

"Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day", Lao Tsu, the Taoism founder of China, had ever said. "Teach a man how to fish, he will eat for the whole life", Lao Tsu had directed his Middle Land fellows a universal truth. Nevertheless, China has never been a country to accept Lao Tsu's idea of trying for living honestly with the nature. In India, Swami Sukhabodhananda said “One’s effort becomes divine when where one is able to convert his business into a temple and not a temple into a business”. The Ganges River will still be crying with silent tears for the coming temples converted into business as the world will still not be a divine.

Beseeching Buddha's delegate

Look Down, Fair Moon

LOOK down, fair moon, and bathe this scene;

Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple;

On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss'd wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.

Walt Whitman

Nothing in the universe to everything in the universe

Dear Ko Moe,

What I am arguing is when you are at the second level of epistemology, I think insight into the third level is not that very far for a mature western social scientist who has been thoroughly searching himself and the purpose of life. As I enlightened the third non-dual awareness in meditation at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, anybody who takes the shade of a tree or a quiet place can also enlighten in the same way because we can never underestimate the unleashed potential and infinite prospect of human beings.

Let's do it in logic. It has been so long straddling years to be believed that no Pyitt Sa Ka Bodhi enlightenment can appear during the live period of Buddha’s Sarsana. If this saying had been true, any enlightenment must have been derived exclusively pure from the teaching of Buddha. But if you review Tripitika, the eight jana practices are that of Hinduism and Buddha always encouraged people to practice these steps. Apparently as he was not the founder of Hinduism, he was a person who could merely encourage these practices that have been established over thousands of years before his enlightenment. In this sense, for many of the people, these practices are unavoidable stepping stones to Nirvana Enlightenment. When you complete the Eighth step of Hindu janas, the one you need is just to drop off your identity. According to my memory, there are also very few western philosophers who deny the existence of I. As if a tailor who has a very good eye in sewing could seam different portraits to be enlivened on a single backdrop, a Hindu philosopher who accepted the non-existence of I, being zealous in finding himself by his traditional religious jana practices will also get the enlightenment of Nirvana in Buddhism.

Assuming this hypothetical case. a Hindu philosopher who suspects the existence of I can practice these Jana steps and can ultimately get insight into enlightenment of emptiness. I would also like to suggest you to understand first the interconnectedness of Sila, Samadhi and Pynnya, three attributes for self-development in Theravada Buddhism.
The simple and conventional wisdom will interpret these three great pillars as morality, concentration and wisdom. My unconventional thinking will be helpful for completeness in understanding the chain reaction of these tripod elements.

(1) Sila = mind as free from defilement
(2) Samadi = justice not to be biased +
(3) Pynn Nya = Right Analytical Power.

Maybe you find it awful to new view in interpretation of Sila, Samadi and Pynn Nya. What I feel is when I become older, I get more sense of what Buddha actually mean by his Pali words. You can see without No.(2), No.(3)can't appear by luck. The Buddhist monks seem to be still confused Pynn Nya with enlightenment and Samadi with the last step of Magga Truth, Sama Samadi that is an end for the eightfold steps and also a mean to Nirvana but not the prerequisite like Samadi, an equilibrium state of mind to get to the right analytical power of wisdom. The rightfulness of the direction is the most critical part to push you on the way of Magga Truth. No matter, how intelligent and assertive you are in cleaning the jungle, if you are cleaning the wrong jungle, this is a waste of time.

My standing is to see these 3 marble stones as pre-requirements of a lay man (Puthujana). Samadi as the second pillar of three attributes of self-development (pre-requirements) can't be the ultimate Upika to shake off everything at the doorstep of the Nirvana. Remember that the ten perfection practices of Buddha are like institutional fulfillment for the gaps of the former by the latter for the former’s incoherency in the direction of a Bodhisattva's path. I think the term Bodhisattva is also more appropriate in this respect because ten perfection practices are not to be exclusively fulfilled by Buddha and belong to all the worldly creatures who are searching for enlightenment of himself and others.

Continue analyzing. Number(2) also can't appear by luck by number(1) because free from defilement means the pain that makes your mind regressed by fear (Baya Agati)and also free from the pleasure that makes your mind regressed by love and happiness (Sandar Agati). It is a deep insight to elaborate why Buddha stressed Sila very much because Sila itself is the start of this middle way. (Please keep all these emails because when our rotten bodies get older, maybe I can't produce them again: that is why Buddha said the basic of men's prosperity is a good friend. Without the help of a good friend at the level of this philosophy, I can't get insight by my intrinsic capacity: You know the whales is happy only in the Great Ocean) And some Mahayanists who can't think enough the real philosophy of Sila try to justify pleasure practices (I remember what you said by tasting sexual practices to find the enlightenment, I don't remember the names of these branches) if you merely have the enough right view and great compassion to save the world.

If you can see the series of Sila, Samdhi and Pynn Nya, you can easily conclude this
tripartite can't be excluded from each other. I suggest that the referred Mahayanists can't get this merely right view without pre-fulfillment of the justice equilibrium.

It may probably be very difficult to get this insight of morality and justification because even Ven. Janaka Bivonta said it is his first priority to urge people to have a good heart. This may be true in the way for dealing and enduring the problems of society but not in the way to Nirvana at the spiritual level of our struggle for liberation. If we say a good heart as the initial key to everything, our religion is not different from Jesus and Mohammed because they also have superbly good hearts for the people.

You can also see compassion as the pleasure and wisdom as pain. Because it is very painful to get a better level of wisdom because you always have to quarrel with the pre-existing dog in your body (remember Philosopher Shwe Mya Ta of Min Thein Kha).
You will probably be surprised to see that when pleasure is trying to accept everything, wisdom is trying to reject everything. And Buddha said there is a middle way and for which Sila is a pre-requriement and Samadhi is the initial entry level into the right view that is the supra-pynn nya derived from your rightly directed analytical power based on samadi (equilibrium of non-biasedness). That is why Buddha never says Sama Sila among the steps of the eightfold pathway because Sila is the pre-requirement and not a constituent on the way to nirvana. The monks are confused by interpreting Sama Vasa,Sama Kammana and Sama Arjiva as the Sama Sila and try to adulterate these inalienable eight "processing" steps as being identical with 3 "pre-requirements".

Let's continue the hypothetical case. If we assume just non-identity and no difference as the way to see the emptiness, we can easily see that this Hindu Philosopher who has already enlightened the nirvana can still think that this is still not the nirvana and this nirvana is still just an illusion created by Saturn to diversify him. He will further seek to combine with God he trust and this becomes his decisive real enlightenment. That is why, nothing in the universe is apparently one of the highest steps and manifestations of matter the God create is the ultimate step in Hinduism. By this hypothetical case, I will frankly like to alert both Theravadist and Mahayanists for the fact that the Annattha principle in imperfect epistemic catching of an enthusiastic practitioner could be a just a jana step in Hinduism. Quite paradoxical and ironical, we try to practice Buddha’s meditation but unfortunately we used to end with a makeshift enlightenment of Hinduism.

Apparently the practitioner in Hinduism is rather easy to be adept in swapping to and fro from non-identity to diversity (Nothing in the universe to everything in the universe), (worm's eye to bird’s eye) than much more subtle and seemingly untouchable Vipassana practitioner. According to Buddha, these enlightenments in Hinduism are very good but so far not great enough to be acclaimed as ultimate truth because you can't reach the real emptiness by seeing emptiness as nothing is in the universe.

Let's see my logic again. If non-identity and no difference is the right view, we have to accept that a Hindu, a Christian or Siddartha can reach the emptiness we refer in our epistemology. But if non-identity is still not the right view, we can hold that only in our Magga way, we can get enlightenment. Because the middle way referred by Buddha for justification is "never ever" present in any philosophy or any religion. Some Christians or Muslim scholars can argue Buddhists easily that they are also non-identity religions because they believe nothing exists other than the One. I think this logic and example is enough to prove that the middle way is more important than Anatta principle that both Mahayanists and Theravadists assume themselves as the best and only invincible the One philosophy in the world.

Trying for unbiased justification,
Burmakin