Notes on Taunggyi
Shan State Buddhist University (SSBU), Phaya Phyu Quarter, Pannabodhi Street, Taunggyi, Shan State, Myanmar 06011
In May of 2023, I moved to Burma, living in Taunggyi with Diana for about a year. It was after I had a trip to Yangon and Diana had a trip to Kunming. We stayed in this Buddhist university as well as monastery to do academic Buddhism studies. The president of our school, Ven. Khammai Dhammasami founded the institution in 2014 after having a PhD from Oxford University and living abroad for 22 years. His vision was to reform traditional Theravāda Buddhist education where memorization by heart has long played a prominent role in learning. We had the privilege to study closely with this renowned monk, who used to live in his luggage before 2021, but now settled back at the university due to the ongoing civil war. Diana often describes Burma as a country where three groups of people live together but never talk: military soldiers, Buddhist monks, and the rest of others. Here in this monastery, she got the chance to secretly share food with monks.
Shan state borders my hometown Yunnan, but is much farther away from Diana’s city Yangon. Some classmates here speak multiple languages––Burmese, Shan, Wa, English, Chinese, and the traditional religious language Pali. We realized we were each living in the borderlands of one another. As Anzaldúa wrote, “Removed from that culture's center you glimpse the sea in which you've been immersed but to which you were oblivious, no longer seeing the world the way you were enculturated to see it.”⁴ Our time in the monastery was mostly peaceful, despite being surrounded by wars of varying scales. I noticed that our Sayadaw,⁵ Ven. K. Dhammasami––a devoted teacher who would louder his voice in excitement whenever students challenged him——spent much of his time mediating between the military government and local ethnic armies.
One night around 4 a.m., sounds of explosions woke me. I assumed it was fireworks from nearby villages, as often seen in China. Until Diana called, warning me to stay away from the window because there were gunshots from two armies fighting. The next day, a small troop came to our monastery with a donation of food–– an apology to the sangha. It is not unusual to have people with guns coming, as the monastery is a neutral zone. They always come with good food. I also noticed the soldiers on guard never ate. They stood under the sun until the well-dressed guests had left.
In Buddhism we were taught that “there is a middle way of practice for giving up vanity and negligence. It gives vision and knowledge, and leads to peace, direct knowledge, awakening, and extinguishment.”⁶ In Pali, the “middle way” is called magga, a word sounds almost like the English “mega”. Its grandness and efficiency are repeatedly emphasized in different suttas. “When I stood still, I went under. And when I swam, I was swept away. That’s how I crossed the flood neither standing nor swimming.”⁷ But the longer I lived in the land of the middle, the more I realized that the middle way was not a smooth path but a sharp, narrow crack.
“Take heed. On earth it is a time for care, it is a place for caution.
Behold the word; heed and guard it, and with it take your way of
life, your works. On earth we live, we travel along a mountain
peak. Over here there is an abyss, over there is an abyss. If thou
goest over here, or if thou goest over there, thou wilt fall in. Only
in the middle doth one go, doth one live.”⁸
—— Florentine Codex, Book 6, Chapter 19
In Nahuatl, “middle” is nepantla. This passage from the 16th Century records how Nahua mothers spoke to their daughters upon reaching maturity. Unlike magga, nepantla indicates that the middle is a path to walk with caution, and one can fall easily. This is the middle way that our Sayadaw walks, and a path that we are learning to tread.
4. Gloria E. Anzaldúa, This Bridge We Call Home. (Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2002), 549.
5. Sayadaw, a Burmese Buddhist title used to address monk with respect.
6. Dhammadāyāda Sutta, MN 3, Sutta Central.
7. Oghataraṇa Sutta, SN 1.1, Sutta Central.
8. Bernardino de Sahagún. Florentine Codex, 1577. Digital Florentine Codex.
5. Sayadaw, a Burmese Buddhist title used to address monk with respect.
6. Dhammadāyāda Sutta, MN 3, Sutta Central.
7. Oghataraṇa Sutta, SN 1.1, Sutta Central.
8. Bernardino de Sahagún. Florentine Codex, 1577. Digital Florentine Codex.
Notes on Taunggyi is a writing and print-making project yet to begin . Each print is based on sketches drawn in Shan state, accompanied by short texts reflecting on memories of living across different communities.