Chapter 16. Buddhicisation of Aung San Suu Kyi. From the book `Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy' by Gustaaf Houtman

Aung San Suu Kyi's views are understood through her own writings and the numerous interviews and biographies written on her. Her views on Burma differ depending on the audience addressed. It is difficult to determine exactly when she wrote sofile:///F:/My Webs/Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics/preface.htmme of her work, and sometimes it is not clear to what extent her statements, in particular when delivered and published in her absence, have perhaps been interfered with by others in translation or otherwise. Nevertheless, broadly speaking her communications on Burma may be divided into four main periods (1) the period up until the Shwedagon speech, (2) the campaign period from the Shwedagon speech until her house arrest, (3) the period of her house arrest, and (4) the period subsequent to her release.

Her output during the pre-Shwedagon period is dominated by academic and educational essays. Afterwards, the material is more varied in terms of campaign speeches, interviews, letters to newspapers and international bodies, party addresses and speeches at international gatherings abroad – usually delivered in her absence – on humanitarian and political issues confronting her, the NLD and the Burmese people as a whole in the context of a repressive regime. Naturally, the pre-Shwedagon speech literature has a more analytical and less engaging flavour when compared to the latter, which has an urgent and humanitarian quality.

There are many continuities between the two, such as the references to her father's thoughts as a benchmark, and the way her political engagement marks a shift in the way she portrays Burma in the English medium. For various reasons that I will set out below, what has taken place is what may be termed a ‘Buddhicisation’ of her discourse. By Buddhicisation, I mean a process that has existed in Burma since the advent of Buddhism. In one sense, it means attributing extra-Buddhist roles and characters such as Min Mahagiri (who became Sakka) to a Buddhist identity.[1] Here, however, I apply it more specifically to mean a particular circumstance in which a politician is pressed in the context of crisis politics into adopting a Buddhist stance. More specifically, this involves an adaptation to Burmese ideas about political life in terms of mental culture, the summum bonum of Buddhist practice. This occurred with all Burmese politicians to a greater or lesser extent.

Assessing the role of Buddhism

Some observers, in particular journalists such as Lintner[2] working to tight deadlines, with the political perspectives of the ethnic minorities, and no doubt recalling U Nu’s call for Buddhism as the State religion, have dismissed this shift out of hand as necessarily detrimental to Burmese politics. Other observers, on the other hand, including long-term observers of the political scene from a Burman perspective such as Steinberg,[3] have argued that Aung San Suu Kyi should involve Buddhism more in order to address the Burmese electorate. She ‘must speak to her own people through the Burmese cultural medium or see her internal legitimacy erode’. Citing the example of 11th century Mon King Manuha who was permitted to build a pagoda from his Pagan prison in which he had been placed under the Burmese king, he suggests that ‘King Manuha's actions remind us how to speak through culture to politics. Aung San Suu Kyi must speak to her own people, drawing upon the traditions and resources of her own society.’

This conflicting assessment of Aung San Suu Kyi's politics raises the perennial problem to what extent modern politicians are able to modernise Burmese politics without losing the support of the majority public. Furthermore, it also raises questions about the political analysts themselves. Evidently, in a predominantly Buddhist environment Buddhist concepts have to inform the country's politics at one level or another. To what extent are observers of the political scene able to detect the relevance of the Buddhist concepts and their implication for the country's politics when these do not enter into the English versions of their speeches?

(c) ILCAA 1999 - Gustaaf Houtman. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia & Africa Monograph Series 33, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999, ISBN 4-87297-748-3, p287/392

That there is much confusion on this matter is clear. For example, Mikio Oishi's Aung San Suu Kyi's Struggle: its principles and strategy, though drawing attention to Buddhism as the source, nevertheless mistakenly traces Aung San Suu Kyi's spiritual dimensions ultimately to Bhagavad Gita, to Karma Yoga and to Gandhi's concepts of satyagraha (grasping the truth) and ahimsa (non-violence).[4] Though she admired Gandhi and Tagore, and was well-aware of Burma's history of Indianization and shared colonial history with India, this does not remotely touch the core of Burmese sensibilities about her spirituality.

Below I will present evidence that Aung San Suu Kyi has indeed addressed the Burmese in terms of ‘the traditions and resources of her own society’, as have other senior NLD leaders. However, contrary to Steinberg, I do not believe it necessitates building a pagoda to engage the Burmese people in this way. If this were all it entailed to achieve legitimacy, then Ne Win would have attained legitimacy long ago. Indeed, Manuha's imprisonment experience has elicited a response in terms of higher forms of Buddhist mental culture. Also, contrary to Lintner, I do not find evidence that the way Buddhism is appealed to by Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD poses significant problems for the country. Finally, contrary to Oishii, there is little space here for Gandhian concepts of yoga.

To the contrary, the NLD have formulated their political problems in terms of widely known and popular Buddhist practices, and these in turn, point towards attempts to open up narrow self-interests and soften ethnic identity. The practices they appeal to have the broadest support among Buddhists and are furthermore extendible to an inter-ethnic and inter-religious environment.

Before the Shwedagon speech

During this period, Aung San Suu Kyi wrote four main essays addressing the biography of her father, Burma as a country, Burmese literature and the development of nationalism. These four essays were all collected together as the first part of her Freedom from fear first published in 1991, and translated into Burmese with a different set of essays in 1993.

The ideas of her father and Mahatma Gandhi play a central role in the essays. Crucial is her realisation that ‘actions without ideational content lose their potency as soon as the situation, which called for them, ceases to be valid’. In India, as her father pointed out, there were older leaders with strong ideologies such as Gandhi, a Nehru and a Tilak, but in Burma this was not the case, and he said ‘let anybody appear who can be like such a leader, who dares to be like such a leader. We are waiting.’ Her father's assassination and the lack of an enduring ideology that could capture the Burmese masses led to the military coup. She herself, when she lived in India with her mother and afterwards, read Gandhi's work.

This led Aung San Suu Kyi to later emphasize the ‘spiritual revolution’ in terms of Buddhist ideas, with the aim to conceptualize an enduring ideology on a political level that the Burmese were lacking.[5] Buddhism plays a role in these early writings insofar as Aung San Suu Kyi recognizes it as providing the spiritual side of the independence struggle.

Aung San Suu Kyi's campaigning period

The period during which Aung San Suu Kyi was able to campaign freely extended from her first speech to 20 July 1989, when she was placed under house arrest. At the end of August 1988 she still said that ‘a life of politics holds no attraction for me. At the moment, I serve as a kind of unifying force because of my father's name and because I am not interested in jostling for any kind of position.’ The military seized power on 18 September 1988 and Aung San Suu Kyi felt prompted to take a stance on a political platform. And so she co-founded the National League for Democracy (NLD) and became its General Secretary.

The speech at the Shwedagon Pagoda on 26 August 1988 marks a turning point for Aung San Suu Kyi. The Shwedagon Pagoda she herself had designated, quoting a Times journalist, as ‘the soul of the nation’. Her first rally was held at the Western Moat Entrance of the Shwedagon Pagoda on 26 August 1988, where she appealed for silence for the students who had fallen in the struggle for democracy, so as to ‘share the merit of their deeds among all of us’.[6] Sharing merit is a fine Buddhist concept, and her use in this context is innovative, for it implies (but does not explicitly state) that the democracy struggle encompasses work for the good of the Buddhist realm of the sasana. Her first lines in the Shwedagon speech addressed the uncertainty she thought the Burmese would feel about her marriage to a foreigner, reassuring the Burmese

The Shwedagon speech was a historic one, for her father gave his first AFPFL presidential address there and students sought refuge at the pagoda during the protests in the months prior to her speech. Estimates of her audience range from 500,000 to one million people.[7]

This initiated a golden campaigning period, and during the time between her first speech at Shwedagon and her house arrest nine months later, she estimates that she delivered one thousand addresses country-wide.[8] From this period onwards, the NLD organised its own celebrations of national days, and unless the regime forced people to attend its celebrations, people would by preference attend the NLD-organised celebrations. For example, Armed Forces Day on 27 March reverted in the NLD diary to the earlier Fascist Resistance Day, suggesting that the current army is fascist.[9] This became a major problem for the regime and national days ‘became an informal way of polling the people to see which party they supported’. Other new commemorated days were added to the NLD calender:

During her campaigns, she would often enter Buddhist temples and monasteries, pay her respects to respected monks, take the five precepts along with her supporters, and listen to the monk's preaching who would bless her. Sometimes she would then support their building activities by performing some symbolic tasks such as carrying building materials or expressing the wish to attain democracy. She would then proceed to ‘preach the tayà [of politics]’ [tra:ehaty\] from the heart. Her free-ranging speeches are very different from the regime officers who ‘announce’ [min\>Kæn\:eòpaqv\] from pre-scripted materials. Her preaching would normally end with the Buddhist blessing ‘May you be free from danger, and may you be happy in body and mind’.

Such spontaneous speaking poses a risk, of course. For example, in a speech on 3 December 1988 she spoke about the possibility of humans becoming Buddhas as an encouragement for people to emulate in the attempt to perfect themselves as follows:

The awkwardness of this passage gave the regime ammunition to criticise her, though it is the opinion of most that the regime overplayed their hand, for it was shrugged off by the Burmese in general as well-intentioned and not as sacrilegious in any way. Though in English this passage seems fine, in Burmese there are three problems with this statement. First, to say that [1] ‘the Buddha is an ordinary human being’ is not correct, for the Buddha is emancipated from human status through his Thirty Perfections (parami) as a bodhisattva [Bura: elac\:], and is nowhere referred to as ‘an ordinary human being’. Second, to say that [2] ‘the Buddha could try to become a Buddha in this way’ is not correct, for before he became a Buddha he was a bodhisattva and this is the term that should have been used for him at this stage. Third, to say that ‘even the Buddha could try to become the Buddha in this way, so also ordinary human beings can aspire to attain high nobility’ would imply that the Buddha was a lesser, not a greater being than human beings. In sum, Aung San Suu Kyi's statement here did not follow Burmese sensibilities concerning the stages of transformation towards Buddhahood, all of which deserve recognition and separation.

The military regime attempted to attack Aung San Suu Kyi's reference. However, its members are not renowned for their sophistication in Buddhist ideas, and they distorted this into a supposedly sacrilegious statement that ‘any human being can become a Buddha in this life’ [J1].[11] Since women are not able to attain Buddhahood in their life as a woman, such a statement would run counter to received orthodoxy. This accusation was of course never rendered believable with the Burmese public, she was supported by Burmese monks.[12] But the accusations persisted, and Saw Maung claimed that on the 68th anniversary of National Day (3 December 1988) she had said that ‘Human beings are not even as faithful as dogs’.[13] By the time of his 1991 crisis with the Sangha military boycott, however, he presented this somewhat differently, claiming she had said that ‘Buddha was an ordinary man. Dog is more loyal than man.’[14] ‘Dogs are more loyal than man’[15] is a common Burmese saying, and there was no such direct relationship made in her speech between the status of dog and Buddhahood.

She responded to the SLORC's attacks on her reference to Buddhism at a later press conference on 26 June 1989 saying that intentional attacks on her were ‘childish and mean’ [Kel:Sn\Sn\eAak\tn\:k¥k¥], and that she intended to say that human beings who were intent on becoming Buddhas could do so. She then challenged the SLORC, ‘how about abiding by at least the two precepts, namely killing and lying’. She recommended keeping the five.

Another example of an awkward expression was at an international press conference on 26 June 1989, when she said that she would go and take care of Burmese soldiers at the front line fighting with the Karen, which conveys an ambiguous message to the ethnic minorities.

On another occasion, she said that she would place garlands around the necks of soldiers at the front. Such statements, though intended to demonstrate her own commitment to the army as an inheritance from her father, nevertheless can be used to legitimize the army's activities in exterminating Karen opposition rather than coming to terms with it democratically.

In response to criticisms of her affiliation with a foreign husband, in a speech in January 1989 in Thabaung Myo, Irawaddy Division, she said her husband agreed to release her from her family responsibilities so that she could dedicate her life to the struggle for democracy in her country [A1]. Before that, just after her mother's funeral, she said she permitted her husband to remarry. This emotionally affected her, and the Burmese who were present at the announcements viewed her situation with great empathy. This loneliness was, of course, to carry a particular significance for her practice of mental culture during the period of her house arrest.

Many of her speeches became available as videos and were translated into other ethnic languages, and many felt that she was able to reach out to the ethnic minority groups in the way that her father had done.

Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest

Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest for six years between 20 July 1989 and 11 July 1995. Though there were times when she was able to arrange interviews and receive visitors, the period between July 1990 and May 1992 involved almost no contact with the outside world. During this two-year period, contact with her family and friends was cut, and her mail and telephone conversations were intercepted.

On a personal level, the pressure on her family life and this long period of house arrest spurred her to reflect on her ambivalent position. During this period, she completed the essay ‘In quest for democracy’, and finished writing the essays ‘Freedom from fear’ and ‘The true meaning of Boh’.

Her essay ‘Towards a true refuge’, though not explicit, may be interpreted as an analysis of the causes and sufferings of refugee status in terms of the three ‘refuges’ in Buddhism. ‘Refugee’ in Burmese means ‘one who has to bear suffering’ (dukkha-the). Suffering is a central and extremely elaborate concept in Buddhism. In this essay, she is preoccupied not just with the particular problems faced by refugees but also,

in the broadest of Buddhist relational terms, with the global conditions that give rise for refugees to leave their homes. She suggests that catastrophes ‘have small beginnings’ which are ‘barely discernible from the private … Calamities that are not the result of purely natural phenomena usually have their origins in common human failings’. We guard against germs, but ‘more attention should be paid to correcting “common” attitudes and values which pose a far more lethal threat to humankind’.[16] These arguments so far are not dissimilar to the idea that disasters happen as the result of impure mental states (see App. I.2).

‘Material yardsticks’ alone are insufficient as a measure of human well-being. The concept ‘poverty’ (hsinye) in Burmese also means discomfort of mind. To be poor ‘is to suffer from a paucity of those mental and spiritual, as well as material, resources which make a human being feel fulfilled and give life a meaning beyond mere existence’. Conversely, ‘rich’ (chantha) in Burmese also means rich in mental and spiritual resources.

In this essay, Aung San Suu Kyi identifies a number of mental qualities and practices which she feels ‘could reconcile the diverse instincts and aspirations of mankind’ from a Buddhist point of view [B1]. According to Buddhism it is not lack of material wealth, but greed or lust, the first of the Ten Impurities (kilesa), which stand in the way of a wholesome state of mind. On the other hand, it is liberalism or generosity which head the various lists of the Ten Perfections of the Buddha (parami), the Ten Virtues, and the Ten Duties of Kings. This ‘is a recognition of the crucial importance of the liberal, generous spirit as an effective antidote to greed as well as a fount of virtues which engender happiness and harmony’ [C1]. Furthermore, in Buddhism loving-kindness, compassion and sympathetic joy are ‘divine’ states of mind which ‘help to alleviate suffering and to spread happiness among all beings,’ and the obstacle to the cultivation of these noble mental states is ‘narrow self-interest’ [D1].

In short, it is ‘a generous spirit’ which peoples and nations should cultivate, ‘which welcome the happiness of others as an enhancement of the happiness of the self’ which will make ‘many seemingly insoluble problems … prove less tractable’ [C2].

Her belief in karma as the inevitable relationship between cause and effect permits the view that people who do evil or act as if they are above the law are punished for their own wrong-doings [G1].

Her personal views on the interrelationship between Buddhism and politics do not become evident until her statements and interviews in some of the later sections of Freedom from fear are examined. More Buddhist concepts are employed in ‘Quest for democracy’, where due to her newly found political role, she has tended to address a broader audience to include the Burmese electorate as a whole and the international public.[17] Nevertheless, though guided by Buddhist principles, she does not think of herself as a Buddhist politician: ‘I don’t think of myself as either a Gandhian or Buddhist politician. I am Buddhist of course, and I would be guided by all the Buddhist principles that I have absorbed throughout my life’.[18]

In the face of such difficult personal circumstances, she began to take a greater interest in the development of ‘inner spiritual strength’ [S5] and in the practice of Buddhist techniques of mental culture [D4–7].[19]

Post-house arrest

At an interview shortly after her release from house arrest on 11 July 1995, Aung San Suu Kyi said ‘I hope I've matured. I feel spiritually stronger; in a sense I've been tested and that has strengthened me. And I think that I have learned to put a much greater value on compassion. I think compassion is very important in this world.’[20]

Two major publications arose from the material she provided after her release on 11 July 1995, namely The voice of hope and Letters from Burma both published in 1997. A new edition of Freedom from Fear with five additional essays was also published in 1995. In addition, a number of speeches and other kinds of presentations were published in various newspapers and on the Internet.

This material demonstrates an extremely strong commitment to make Buddhism relevant and central to politics. One of the first things she did after her house arrest was to visit the Thamanya Sayadaw (see below).

She has explicitly argued for not separating ‘the secular from the [Buddhist] spiritual’ [H1]. She expressed her view that in Vietnam the Buddhist movement could not succeed as there were many non-Buddhists holding power and ‘the Buddhist movement could not activate those who were crucial to the situation’. Though in Burma this is not the case, however, she also recognizes that Buddhism, which has no parish, has features that hold back the political organization of people and permit greater control by the regime [H2].

Some awkward elements still enter her speeches. In a speech on 14 October 1995, she referred appreciatively to the status of Upper Burmans [Avaqa:], who were the majority present, who will ‘lead the country to prosperity’ [Aekac\:sa:qv\]. This may be appropriate in a particular context, but if the speech were to be reported country-wide then it is unlikely to endear the Lower Burmans. In the same speech, a monk interrupted and asked her opinion of the saying, ‘if you learn knowledge, it is for the country progress, but if you look for money, the country suffers’. Though her answer was cleverly phrased in terms of the contrast between mundane knowledge and transcendental wisdom, instead of answering by addressing the monk politely using the monastic sacred language such as ‘your holiness’ ‘pupil’ (ta-byí daw) and ‘lord’ (a-shin-hpayà), she answered the public directly going against the grain of Burmese custom which her father observed in his speeches, always showing politeness to the Sangha.

Factors influencing Aung San Suu Kyi's Buddhicisation

I have already drawn attention to the value of Buddhism in political opposition, both through the Sangha and the concepts that accompany Buddhism in terms of salvation from samsara. Though Aung San Suu Kyi's choice for Buddhism may be thus interpreted, there were more specific factors that led to her emphasis on Buddhism.

First, in early September 1988 prior to the foundation of the NLD Aung San Suu Kyi was accused of being surrounded by Communists [N1]. Indeed, she has been accused of ‘going the same way as her uncle's [Than Tun's] Burma Communist Party’.[22] One observer put it that Buddhism ‘is an invaluable weapon in defending the political system against the attacks of the only hostile ideology capable of posing a serious threat, i.e. communism.’[23] This drove Aung San Suu Kyi, in turn, to emphasize her Buddhist credentials from the start. The accusation of communism was continued by military intelligence in mid September 1988,[24] and later similar accusations were made by Aung Gyi on 3 December of the same year and in 1989.[25] Though Aung San Suu Kyi denied this, stating on two occasions in June 1989 that these members had long renounced their communist views and that the NLD was, in fact, anti-communist,[26] this became a repeated criticism by the SLORC. The accusations were perpetuated in subsequent journalist reports,[27] and have continued right up until today.[28]

In response she appealed to the Buddhist precepts, ‘denied she was a communist or sacrilegious, and reminded the country’s military leaders of two Buddhist precepts, against lying and killing’. Aung San Suu Kyi could not have survived these attacks on her political aspirations without countering with Buddhist

ideas. Her critique in terms of Buddhism is made all the easier given the regime's lack of interest and understanding of Buddhism [H3], who are sometimes said to have five ‘anti-Buddhist’ moral precepts, namely jealousy, envy, anger, greed and childish stupidity.[29]

Second, the course of events pointed to Buddhism as the last bastion of freedom and democracy. The Sangha played a supportive role in the democracy movement as ‘their monasteries have offered a haven for poor students and Burmese dissidents’.[30] Once all the students and politicians opposing the regime had been silenced, the political arena shifted to the monkhood, the one element which the regime has never been able to establish full control over despite its attempts in the 1980s. Burmese people care intensely about their Buddhism, and the regime acted against the collective will of the Sangha, which itself for a moment became the most effective idiom of opposition [L1]. This completely delegitimized the regime in the eyes of the majority of Burmese Buddhists and inflicted irreparable damage.

Buddhism was therefore more than a way of countering the accusation of communism; it proved to be the last possible form of opposition against the ruthless military regime once all other forms of protest had been silenced. In countering with Buddhist ideas, and with the army's subsequent behaviour towards Buddhism, Aung San Suu Kyi evidently did much more than counter accusations of her as a communist – she gained the regime's high ground.[31] Since the 1950s, the Burmese army has justified its prominence in the political arena in terms of its role in fighting communist insurgency and has periodically uncovered communist inspired conspiracies commonly presented as a major danger to Buddhism. With the regime now perceived as opposing Buddhism, however, it has left the defence of Buddhism to the NLD and has effectively delegitimised itself.

Third, the personal attack on her ‘foreign’ lifestyle, connexions and her supposed ignorance of Burmese and Buddhist ways [L2-L4] have pressed her to play up Buddhism, for Buddhism is the most highly valued aspect of Burman culture.

Fourth, as already suggested, her emotional state as the result of her confinement is linked to the adoption of Buddhist techniques of mental culture.

Fifth, democracy has been designated as incompatible and ‘foreign’ by the regime. The same is the case with human rights. Aung San Suu Kyi has argued that democracy and human rights resonate with the Burmese Buddhist value system. She argues that The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is ‘wholesome and good’ and is present in indigenous Buddhist values. Furthermore, without the geographical exchange of ideas Buddhism would never even have reached Burma. Taking the regime's argument to the extreme, Buddhist values, themselves the core of Burmese society, would have remained in India, so that ‘Buddhism would be confined to north India, Christianity to a narrow tract in the Middle East and Islam to Arabia’.[32] As she responsed to the question whether ‘you are ushering in a renaissance period in Burma, which is combining timeless Buddhist values with modern political principles?’ she said: ‘When people face troubles, they are forced to reassess their lives and their values, and that is what leads to renaissance.’

Sixth, after a few half-hearted attempts in 1989, the regime has been unwilling to involve themselves in dialogue with the elected NLD. Her commitment to pursue a politics of non-violence, which she has consistently advocated since,[33] meant that she had to take up all possible instruments for peaceful opposition to the regime. This meant the involvement of those ideas most strongly advocating non-violence, which were bound to draw her back to Buddhism and to influential monks for inspiration.

Seventh, the regime has criticised the NLD for engaging in anti-Buddhist activities [H4], which the NLD responded to with Buddhist arguments.[34] See Appendix 4 for an example of an article attacking Aung San Suu Kyi on two of the ten defilements, namely jealousy and envy.

Finally, her husband Michael Aris is a renowned scholar of Buddhism, and she has herself spent much time in Nepal; this has undoubtedly influenced her views, in particular metta and karuna, which are

The political arena in which she found herself increasingly brought Buddhism to the fore. Sensing that Buddhism was one of the last remaining platforms for NLD opposition, the regime proposed a purge of the monastic order towards the end of September 1996 in order, to prevent the ordination of NLD members [H5].

It is not until her 1997 publications that we find out how much this Buddhist discourse has advanced. This has surprised some observers. For example, Lintner (1997), in his review of her two 1997 books, says that ‘her tendency to explain political phenomena in terms of Buddhist philosophy alienates her from the local and international business communities, as well as other potential supporters of the open, pluralistic society that she advocates’.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s attitude towards Buddhism, already evident in her early writings before 1988, has been that historically it played an important role in Burmese concepts of identity and in politics.[35] In particular, she characterises education in Burma as ‘connected with the teachings of the Buddha who had pointed out the way to nirvana’, so that to be educated ‘meant more than the mere acquisition of book learning; it meant the mastery of supreme knowledge that would lead to enlightenment’, which was quite different from British colonial education.[36] She recognizes her father’s preoccupation with Buddhism in his early youth. Though she sketches her father’s actions against a Buddhist background,[37] she also recognizes that he later expressed a firm dislike for integrating Buddhism into politics.[38] Her own early education included visits to Shwedagon Pagoda, listening to her aunt's stories about the Buddha's lives and Buddhist values.[39] In her letters, she demonstrates her commitment during her campaigns to listen to the advice of members of the monastic order from all over Burma, including a Sagaing monk who instructed her to bear in mind the example of Sumedha who took the vow to become a Buddha and postponed enlightenment for the good of the world [H6-H7].

Furthermore, I am not sure when this began, but by 1998 Aung San Suu Kyi was donating money every month to monks from the following monasteries: Shwetaungkon Monastery (U Pandita); Mun Pali Tekkatho (on the 19th to commemorate her father's death); Chanmyei Yeiktha; and Shwe Kyetyek Kyaung (on the 27th to commemorate her mother's death). The Shwetaungkon Monastery and Chanmye Yeiktha are vipassana training centres, and the Shwekyet Yek Kyaung is the monastery where her sons were novitiated.

However, she has also warned against the pitfalls of a ‘bigoted and narrow-minded attitude’ towards Buddhism.[40] She not only expresses her tolerance for religion, but she considers religion a positive value. She says that ‘religion is about increasing peace and harmony in the world’, and ‘Everyone should be given a chance to create peace and harmony in their own way’ [ZN1]. Her maternal grandfather in particular, who was a Christian and to whom she read the Bible in Burmese, helped her appreciate this.[41]

[1] It is sometimes accompanied by ‘Palicizing’ and ‘de-Sanskritizing’ an identity or a text, as happened with the appointment of Sakka to replace Min Mahagiri and the reduction of the number of nats to the Buddhist number thirty-three, the increased involvement of the Buddha and his teachings in Manu law texts and in the Ramayana.

[2] Lintner, Bertil. ‘Burma's voice of democracy.’ Far Eastern Economic Review , 11.09.1997, pp. 52-53.

[3] Steinberg, David I. ‘What medium for the message?’ Bangkok Post, 16.08.1997.

[4] Oishi (1997:19,21,27).

[5] I think Kraeger (1995:330) is right in his interpretation of the revolution of the spirit.

[6] ASSK (1995:193)

[7] Parenteau (1994:100).

[8] ASSK (1995:192).

[9] Jannuzi (1998:206).

[10] The regime attributes appropriating a diary by the opposition on Gene Sharp's influence in Burma. (See Di Hlaing. ‘Strategic political defiance.’ NLM, 15.08.1996.)

[11] See also Hpe Kan Kaùng (1997:121).

[12] Mya Maung (1991:248).

[13] Saw Maung (1990a:60).

[14] Saw Maung (1991:7).

[15] lUTk\eKæ:kqsßapiuRHity\X

[16] ASSK (1995:240).

[17] It is possible that Buddhist concepts may be found in the original Burmese of some of the speeches, but it is difficult to make this out in the translation. There are some sections, such as her speech at Shwedagon Pagoda on 26.8.1988, ‘In the eye of the Burmese revolution’ (12.09.1988) which are not given over to references to Buddhism at all

[18] ASSK (1997b:79).

[19] Aee also Mallet (1994).

[20] ‘Patience, pragrmatism pays off for “the Lady”’. The Nation, 01.11.1995.

[21] Yangon's Press Conference (3), Rangoon, 01.10.1996.

[22] ‘Very sorry – in the Tawgyi. NLM, 04.06.1996.

[23] Smith (1965:311–312).

[24] Working People's Daily (Rangoon), 18.09.1988; ASSK (1991:274).

[25] New Yorker, 09.10.1989, p. 91; ASSK (1995:341); ASSK (1991:274–75).

[26] Amnesty International (1989:40,55); ASSK (1995:343,344).

[27] Hpe Kan Kaùng (1997:114–20).

[28] Thanlyet. ‘Harm caused by one s own deed, being caught in one's own trap – all should beware!’. NLM, 25.11.96.

[29] U Kyi Maung in ASSK (1997b:180).

[30] Mya Maung (1992:174).

[31] ‘This cultural taunting of bad rulers by the leading clergy of Upper Burma spread to other Buddhist monks across Burma and apparently caused some psychological trauma to the military rank and files. Indeed, being Burmese and Buddhist is synonymous and these cultural sanctions may well be the most potent weapon against the army.’ (Mya Maung 1991:303).

[32] ASSK (1995:175).

[33] Bangkok Post, 26.03.1989; ASSK (1991:324).

[34] The regime, in their 45th Press Conference, accused Aung San Suu Kyi as anti Buddhist, and of having said The Buddha also was an ordinary human (Hpe Kan Kaùng 1997:121).

[35] ASSK (1991:113,141–42}.

[36] ASSK (1991:124–25, 294).

[37] e.g. ASSK (1991:187–88).

[38] ASSK (1991:7,8).

[39] Whitney (1997:25–27).

[40] ASSK (1991:202).

[41] Parenteau (1994:61), Whitney (1997:32).