[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

Evil Dreams and the Burmese Militar



Subject: Evil Dreams and the Burmese Military

--=====================_811643348==_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"



--=====================_811643348==_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

EVIL DREAMS AND THE MILITARY IN BURMA

by Ken and Visakha Kawasaki

There is a dramatic sequence of paintings which a visitor
often finds hanging in pagoda walkways and monasteries
throughout Burma.  The style of painting may vary from
place to place, but the allegorical scenes are always the
same.  Foreign tourists are puzzled by such things as tiny
frogs swallowing gigantic black snakes, huge blocks of solid
stone floating on the water while dry gourds sink to the
bottom, people holding an expensive gold bowl for an ugly
jackal to piss into, and cows sucking milk from their own
new-born calves.  Ordinary Burmese people have no
problem explaining their significance.  The story on which
these paintings are based is Buddhist, but it is not
exclusively Burmese.  When one understands the meaning,
however, it becomes obvious why the paintings have
become so popular in contemporary Burma.

The story, called "Mahasupina Jataka," is one of the 550
stories in which Buddha related his past lives during which,
as the Bodhisatta,  he  perfected the Ten Paramis or virtues
requisite to achieving Buddhahood.  At various times the
Bodhisatta was born as an animal (never larger than an
elephant nor smaller than a quail), as a deity, or as a human
being.  Rather than being bloodless morality tales, the
Jatakas might be said to be the earthiest part of the Buddhist
canon.  In these stories, the Bodhisatta repeatedly displayed
supreme patience, generosity, and wisdom, but he also stole
and even killed on some occasions.  In no instance,
however, did the Bodhisatta ever tell a lie.  By his very
aspiration to Buddhahood, he was in harmony with the
Truth, or Dhamma.
 
Mahasupina Jataka relates sixteen great dreams which
Pasenadi, King of Kosala, had one night.  The king was so
upset by these dreams that he summoned his Brahmin
advisors to interpret them and to prevent the evil he feared
they portended.  Predictably enough, the Brahmins forecast
disaster unless the king ordered a great sacrifice of living
animals.  The Brahmanism of that day often included blood
sacrifices, which meant great feasting and increased wealth
for the greedy Brahmins.  Before the brahmins slit any
creatures' throats, however, Queen Mallika urged her
husband to consult with the Buddha as to the true
interpretation of the dreams.

Upon hearing the dreams, the Buddha immediately
reassured the king that he had nothing to fear from them. 
The Buddha explained that these dreams described a future
time when rulers would be evil, irresponsible, and stingy. 
Since King Pasenadi himself had nothing to fear from the
dreams, there was no need to slaughter any animals.  In this
instance, as in many others, Buddha prevented terrible
bloodshed and taught the value of the non-harming of living
beings..

Paintings of Mahasupina Jataka became popular in Burma
after the 1962 military coup by Ne Win.  These huge panels,
commissioned by pious believers and hung in pagodas and
temples where they can still be seen today, are an expression
of the frustration ordinary Burmese Buddhists have felt
about the cruel military dictatorship that grinds them down
so hard.  The similarity between the Buddha's description of
the future time and present situation in Burma is, to say the
least, striking.  In discussing these paintings we can see that
what was true of Ne Win's regime is even more applicable
to SLORC.

In the third dream full-grown cows knelt to suck milk from
their own new-born calves.  The Buddha explained that this
foretold a time when age would no longer be respected.  At
that time, old people, destitute and dependent, would
survive only by the favor and whim of their children, like
cows nursed by day-old calves.

In Buddhism there has always been a strong tradition of
respect for age, but in Burma today, the military makes no
allowance for age when it comes to slave labor or
porterage.  Men as old as 70 have been swept up and forced
to work for the army.  How can SLORC soldiers treat
civilian porters, especially those older than themselves, so
brutally?  The answer lies in the statement made by
countless porters: "They just didn't think of us as human
beings."  In SLORC's  Officer Training School, soldiers are
indoctrinated to think of porters as simple pack animals
there to serve the military.  All officers use the same  lines,
almost word for word when talking to the porters:
"Medicine? This is not your mother's house! You are not
our relatives! It is your fate to carry things like this."  If any
soldier should hesitate to capture or beat porters, he will be
asked, "Are these people your fathers? Your
brothers-in-law?"

Buddha taught us that we should respect all those older than
ourselves because there is no one who has not been our
relative, at some time during the samsaric past.  Burmese
soldiers are indoctrinated, however, to believe that the
Army is their only true family, and that civilians are less than
human.  On the front page of every issue of the military
newspaper, Doye Duha (Our Affairs), published every two
days for distribution to the armed forces, printed in bold
letters is the slogan, "The army is your only true parent. 
Don't listen to outsiders; trust nobody but your own blood."

In the fifth dream, the king saw a horse with a mouth on
each side of its head.  That dreadful horse was eating fodder
voraciously with both mouths at the same time.

The Buddha explained that this described a time when
unrighteous and irresponsible rulers who would appoint
greedy and wicked men to be judges.  These magistrates
would be so despicable and unjust that they would take
bribes from both sides as they sit in judgment on a case.  In
that way they would be doubly corrupt like the horse that
ate fodder with two mouths at once.

Trials conducted under SLORC are highly suspect. 
According to Amnesty International, military tribunals
which restrict the defendant's rights of defense and appeal
are not conducted according to international standards of
fairness.  Political prisoners are frequently given no more
than a single half-day hearing, conducted in camera within
the prison in which the accused is held (often
incommunicado, without access to family members or legal
counsel).  The accused is thus denied the opportunity to
prepare any defense and to exercise the right of defense in
court.

In the eighth dream, the king saw a big pitcher outside a
palace gate, already full to the brim.  Around it there were
many empty pitchers.  From all directions came a steady
stream of people carrying on their heads pots of water
which they poured into the already full pitcher.  The water
from that single central pitcher spilled over and soaked
wastefully into the sand.  Still the people came and poured
more and more into the overflowing vessel.  Not a single
person even glanced at the empty pitchers.
Buddha explained that when the world was in decline, the
rulers would be poorer, yet far more demanding than in
ordinary times.  These rulers in their poverty and selfishness
would force the entire country to work exclusively for them. 
The rulers would make citizens labor only for the them,
neglecting their own livelihood.  For the rulers' sake the
people would be forced to surrender their own land, to plant
sugar cane, to make sugar mills, and to boil down molasses. 
Peasants would harvest the crops and fill the rulers'
storerooms and warehouses to overflowing, but they would
be unable to even glance at their own empty barns and
granaries at home.  Their forced labor would be like filling
to overflowing the full pitcher, heedless of the other empty
ones.

Forcible conscription of civilians into compulsory labor
duties for the military is widespread in Burma today.  The
period of service may last months, and even in some cases
even years, but no pay is given.  Even  pregnant women,
children, and the elderly are regularly conscripted to work
for the SLORC.  Typical labor duties include the
construction of roads, airfields, army barracks, and railway
lines in government controlled areas, while in war zones
civilians have been forced to work as lookouts and as
porters.  The number of civilians conscripted for such duties
can be immense.  On May 8, 1992, Working People's Daily
proudly reported that over 300,000 people had "contributed
voluntary labor" on the Aungban-Loikaw railway line alone.

Burma's military rulers have also wantonly expropriated
land from the people without compensation and have
forcibly relocated hundreds of thousands of citizens.  The
army has taken land, established plantations for its own
purposes, and then forced people to work without pay on
those plantations.

A 1994 U.S. Department of State Report "Burma Human
Rights Practices", describes Burmese forced labor
conditions as "inhumane" and when coupled with the
"forced resettlement of civilians [accounted for] hundreds of
deaths due to disease, harsh treatment, and overwork."

What makes the slave labor in Burma even more unpalatable
is SLORC's repeated claims that the people are happy to toil
for them and that it is a proud part of the country's
Buddhist heritage. The most unforgivable aspect of these
abuses is the use of Buddhism as a shield and an excuse.  In
an official press release on December 14, 1992, the
government stated that Burma has a "tradition of labor" and
that, in a Buddhist country, the contribution of such labor is
a "noble deed."

In the ninth dream, the king saw a deep pool with sloping
banks overgrown with lotuses.  A variety of  animals
approached the pool to drink, but strangely enough, while
the deep water in the middle was terribly muddy, the waters
at the edges, despite all the thirsty creatures trampling them,
was clear and sparkling.

Buddha explained that when rulers grew increasingly
corrupt, ruling according to their own whim, they would
never give justice or make judgments according to what was
right.  Being greedy, they would grow fat on bribes.  Never
showing mercy or compassion, they would be fierce and
cruel to their subjects.  These rulers would amass
tremendous wealth by crushing their subjects like stalks of
sugarcane in a mill and by taxing them to the last coin. 
Unable to endure the oppression, the citizens would
abandon their villages, towns, and cities and would flee as
refugees to the borders.  The heart of the country would be
like a wilderness, while the remote areas along the borders
would be teeming with people.  The country would be just
like the pool, muddy in the middle and clear at the edges.

Even a cursory look at the present situation shows how
closely this description fits Burma.  Millions of Burmese
have fled to escape the military's oppression.  Those
refugees who have managed cross the borders are but a few
compared to those who, displaced from their communities,
have been unable to reach the comparative safety of a
second country.  In addition to these obvious refugees,
there are also hundreds of thousands of Burmese who,
abandoning the country in despair or fear, have sought to
make a living elsewhere.  Many of these are well-educated
and able, but they could not survive inside the country
because of the incompetence and cruelty of the military
rulers.

During 1989 and 1990 alone, the Burmese military forced
more than 500,000 citizens to relocate from their own
settled communities and neighborhoods to satellite new
towns.  Such moves contradict Article 12 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which declares, "No one shall
be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy,
family, home, or correspondence."  In one case alone,
nearly 100,000 people were moved to the new town of
Hlaing Thayar near Rangoon.   While conditions varied,
local health workers privately reported high fatality levels at
many of the new sites due to malaria and poor sanitation.

Burma's continuing political and economic crisis is forcing
ever greater numbers of inhabitants to leave their homes.  In
mid-1994 over 300,000 refugees, mostly ethnic minorities,
were officially recorded at camps in neighboring Thailand,
Bangladesh, India and China.  Unofficial estimates were
over three times that figure, meaning that over one million
exiles and migrants were subsisting precariously around
Burma's troubled borders.  Those figures told only half the
story because there were also over one million internally
displaced persons inside Burma itself, including relocated
villagers from the war-zones, those forcibly resettled in
recent SLORC development projects, and refugees still
trying to survive in the hills.

In the tenth dream the king saw rice boiling endlessly in a
pot.  The cooking continued in three stages which were
sharply delineated and separate from each other.  One part
of the rice was sodden, another part was hard and raw,
while the third part was perfectly cooked.

Buddha explained that this dream also referred to a future
time when kings would be unrighteous.  Following the
king's example, the entire kingdom, including nobles,
Brahmins, artisans, merchants, and even farmers would
become corrupt.  Even the winds blowing over the realm of
such an unrighteous king would be cruel and lawless.  As 
the spirits of the skies became disturbed, there would be a
drought, but if rain did fall, it would never fall uniformly and
evenly throughout the land.  In some places a heavy
downpour would damage crops, while in other areas crops
would wither from drought  or thrive with adequate rain. 
The crops, like the rice in the pot, would have no uniform
character.  This can be interpreted as referring to sharp
divisions among the population between the rich and the
poor.

Taking this dream quite literally, the SLORC's greed has
tragically disturbed the spirits of the skies.  Burma has been
losing more than 800,00 hectares of forests each year since
1988.  All of its teak reserves, once the largest and best
maintained in Asia, may be gone within ten years.  In Karen,
Kayah, Mon, Kachin, and Shan States, large areas have
been stripped of all forest growth.   In the past several
monsoon seasons heavy flooding occurred for the first time
in remote valleys in both the Karen and Kachin States where
some of the heaviest logging had been taking place.  In
1991, over 140 people are known to have died from floods. 
Local villagers had no doubt that uncontrolled forest
destruction was to blame.

Since 1962 when the nationalization of so many enterprises
began, the rich in Burma have been the military elite and
their families.  Ne Win's reign was corruption itself, based
as it was on an ubiquitous secret military intelligence (MI)
network which intruded into the private lives of anyone who
might threaten him.  Along with this spy network was an
overwhelming pursuit of private gain at the highest level
through smuggling, bribery and the black market.  Those Ne
Win chose to run the country have never hesitated to line
their pockets, but he frequently exposed that corruption in
order  to remove a potential rival.  Ne Win is said to have
smuggled prize pearls through his own gem emporium in
Zurich, to hold bank accounts in Switzerland and extensive
property in Germany.

Recently there have been much vaunted changes toward
open-market capitalism in Burma, but here, too, corruption
is rife.  Burma's largest new financial institution, the Union
of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH), set up by
SLORC in 1990, is totally controlled by the military.  Shares
in UMEH are held by the Ministry of Defense, Defense
Service personnel, regimental institutes, and senior ex-service 
men.   Both its chairman and managing director are
senior SLORC officers.  The military, their friends, and their
relations are also in positions to benefit from mass
resettlement programs, because all land in Burma can be
seized without any compensation.  During a government
auction of mineral rights in Hpakhan in 1990, for example,
many indigenous Kachin jade miners were forced by army - 
backed newcomers to abandon land which their families had
traditionally owned and worked.   Likewise, the military
sold to Thai companies for tremendous sums the rights to
fish in the Andaman Sea.  Subsequently, local Tavoyan,
Karen, Mon, and Salum fishermen were forbidden from
their traditional waters, and entire fishing villages faced
starvation for the first time.

In December 1987  the United Nations granted Burma the
status of "Least Developed Country,"  but luxury hotels,
restaurants, discos, and department stores are springing up
like weeds in all the major cities.  Burma's already grave
humanitarian crisis is rapidly worsening.  UNICEF has
called it "Myanmar's Silent Emergency."

Like the rice in the pot, the divisions in Burma between the
rich and the poor, the military and the people, are sharply
and clearly delineated.  The military elite and their families
have access to the best food, the best medical care, and the
best education in the country, while the rest of the
population must do with very little.   In Burma there is only
one doctor for every 12,500 people, the inflation rate for
rice is 800 percent, three out of four children don't complete
primary school, 40 percent of the children under 3 suffer
from malnutrition, and only 2 percent of the people have
access to electricity.  Half of the national budget is spent on
the military, which has doubled to 300,000 in only 6 years. 
By its corruption, SLORC has blighted the country.

In the fifteenth dream a disgusting, vulgar crow was
escorted by a retinue of magnificent Mandarin ducks with
shiny golden feathers.

Buddha explained that this dream foretold a time when
weak and incompetent rulers would themselves be cowards
and fools.  Fearing revolution because of their stupid
failures, they would elevate their lowest servants, the
uneducated riff-raff, to nobility.  Unable to support
themselves, the real nobles and the educated elite would
have to dance attendance on the upstarts, serving them as
the regal Mandarin ducks had to serve the crow.

In Burma, the military rulers have granted all positions of
authority and responsibility not according to qualifications
of education or merit, but simply according to loyalty.  The
heads of all organizations and government departments, as
well as the members of all committees and trustee boards,
are military or retired military personnel.  Few of these men
were educated at even the high school level.  Furthermore,
they can be likened to the crows, who are described as
destructive, reckless, greedy, gluttonous, rough, merciless,
weak, noisy, forgetful, and wasteful. The former elite, those
with proper education and qualifications, are forced to bow
and scrape before these parvenus

In the last of the sixteen dreams the king saw goats chasing
wolves and devouring them.  Merely seeing a goat in the
distance was enough to make the wolves flee in terror and
hide in thickets.

Buddha explained that this dream also would be fulfilled in a
time when rulers were unrighteous.  The low-born would be
raised to important posts, while the truly noble would sink
into poverty and distress.  Gaining power in the law courts,
the parvenus would claim the property of the impoverished
old nobility.  When the true owners pleaded for their rights,
the rulers' minions would have them tortured and thrown
out, saying, "That will teach you!  The king will hear of
your insolence, and we will have your hands and feet
chopped off!"  Hearing this, the terrified nobles would agree
that black is white and that their property had never been
their own at all.  After that, they would simply cower at
home in an agony of fear.  At the same time, evil monks
would harass good, worthy monks, until the worthy ones
fled from the monasteries to the jungle.  This oppression of
those truly noble by the low-born would be like the
intimidation of wolves by goats.

The unmistakable climate of fear in Burma is apparent even
to official visitors like Prof. Yokota, UN Human Rights
Expert who are carefully isolated from ordinary people.  
Some estimate that as many as one out of every five people
is connected to military intelligence.   With spies even inside
the monasteries, many monks have fled either to the border
areas or to refuge overseas.

It is perhaps this last dream which holds the greatest import
for Buddhists.  Many Cambodians, also pious Buddhists,
admitted that they could forgive the Khmer Rouge for
having murdered their families, but added, "We can never
forgive them for trying to destroy our Buddhism."  In
Burma, the action of the military against Buddhism and the
Sangha is of a different sort and on a different scale, slower,
and more subtle, but it is, nevertheless, extremely
destructive.

The military crackdown on the Sangha began soon after Ne
Win's coup.  In 1962 he ordered all monks to join a national
register, but many refused.  In 1965 there were mass
protests against the creation of a central All Buddha Sasana
Sangha Organization, and seven hundred sangha, including
senior monks, were arrested.  Some of these monks were
harshly abused, disrobed, and imprisoned.  In 1974, when
the military blocked a proper funeral for U Thant, UN
Secretary-General, six hundred members of the Sangha
were arrested, and several monks were bayonetted and shot. 
The military junta continued to put pressure on the sangha
and to issue defamatory statements through the state-controlled
media.  There were numerous instances of 
trumped - up charges being brought against senior monks. 
Some were arrested, their monasteries closed, and their
property seized by the government. Government 
propaganda was relentless in claiming that monks were
shameless parasites, while soldiers sacrificed everything for
the country.

In the brief democracy summer of 1988, monasteries
quickly broke free of the administrative shackles imposed by
the Ne Win regime.  As respected community figures,
monks were elected to lead many of the Strike Committees
that proliferated across the country.  Several  monks were
killed when troops opened fire on crowds in demonstrations
in Rangoon and Moulmein.  Of the more than 10,000
people killed during August and September, at least 600
were members of the Sangha.  In many cases, soldiers were
ordered to strip dead monks of their robes and to dispose of
the bodies secretly.

On July 6, 1989, the army desecrated sacred Shwedagon
Pagoda by setting up barricades on the platform to search
all pilgrims.  After themselves behaving provocatively,
soldiers killed 11 monks and 17 students and closed the
pagoda for five days.  Also in July, Ven. U Kawainda, a
senior monk in Mandalay who had been one of the leading
advocates for human rights in 1988, was arrested.  On
September 9, 1991, BBC reported that this monk had been
tortured to death in prison.

By mid-1990, as violence and oppression continued, as
many as 400 monks had arrived to take sanctuary in Thai
monasteries in Bangkok, while hundreds more sheltered in
make-shift monasteries along the Thai-Burma border.

Inside Burma, public ceremonies involving monks have
continued to be closely watched.  On May 17, 1990, for
example, the entire Pyitaingdaung Drum Band was arrested
for illegally playing songs supporting the NLD at an
ordination ceremony for a monk.  In July of the same year,
seven civilians were reportedly sentenced to five years' hard
labor by a Military Tribunal for breaking Order 2.88, which
bans gatherings of more than five people, when they joined
a peaceful monks' protest outside Shwedagon Pagoda.  The
monks were demonstrating because soldiers had refused
some of them entry to a service commemorating the
anniversary of the Buddha's first sermon.

On August 8, 1990, in commemoration of the second
anniversary of the democracy uprising, over 7,000 monks
and novices solemnly walked through the streets of
Mandalay accepting alms from the people.  Soldiers
confronted the monks and opened fire, killing two monks
and two students and wounding seventeen others.  One
novice disappeared.

Following this massacre, the Monks' Union (Sangha
Sammagi) of Mandalay, led by Ven. U Yewata declared an
act of the Sangha called "overturning the bowl" (pattam
nikkujjana kamma).  Recognizing that the army had
committed at least one of the eight kinds of wrongdoing
against the Sangha, monks formally decided to refuse alms
from army members or their families or to solemnize their
funerals.  This boycott spread very quickly, and throughout
Burma monks refused to attend religious services organized
by the SLORC.  Though the purpose of the boycott was
compassionate--to help the evil doers atone for their deeds
and forsake their evil ways, Saw Maung and Mandalay
Division Commander Tun Kyi refused to repent.  They
declared that their actions were completely justified and that
they were not afraid of going to hell.

The monks' boycott was the excuse for the SLORC to
instigate a massive clampdown on the Sangha.  Monasteries
were surrounded by armed troops.  Electricity, water, and
communication lines were cut, and monks were prevented
from going on their daily alms rounds.  After one week of
blockade, armed troops entered the monasteries and
arrested the leaders.  More than 350 monasteries were
raided, and more than 3,000 monks and novices were
arrested.  Twenty monasteries were seized and nationalized. 
These mass arrests were swiftly followed on October 31,
1990, by a SLORC declaration that there would be only one
monks' organization in Burma with nine legally-approved
sects.  Any monk trying to set up a new Buddhist group
would be subject to up to three years in jail.

What is even more reprehensible is that these evil acts
against the Buddha Sasana have been carried out in the very
name of Buddhism.  The miliary leaders have proclaimed
that they are actually trying to protect and purify Buddhism
in Burma.  At the same time they are arresting, torturing
and exiling senior monks, they are making a big show of
offering color TV's and other fancy items to monks who
either collaborate  in their evil designs or who cannot refuse.

It is not difficult, however, to see through the transparent
ruse of the military.  Their actions have consistently shown
that they are not Buddhists.

Morality is the foundation of all Buddhist practice.  The
minimum moral practice for laymen is the five precepts;
abstaining from killing any living being, abstaining from
stealing, abstaining from unlawful sexual intercourse,
abstaining from lying, and abstaining from the use of
intoxicants that cloud the mind.

In Burma these fundamental moral principles are
systematically and explicitly violated by the military leaders
in the way they govern the entire country.  In February
1995, Prof. Yozo Yokota told the UN Human Rights
Commission that the conduct of the Burmese military must
be brought "into line with accepted international human
rights and humanitarian standards so that they do not
arbitrarily kill, rape, confiscate property, force persons into
acts of labor or porterage, relocate them, or otherwise treat
persons without respect for their dignity as human beings." 
In his 1993 report,  he wrote, "forced relocation and forced
portering has led to a systematic pattern of torture
(including rape), cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,
disappearance or arbitrary execution of Muslim and other
Rakhine ethnic minorities by the Myanmar authorities."  In
his 1994 report, he wrote that among other "atrocities,"
rape was "being committed consistently and on a wide scale
by the soldiers of the Myanmar Army against innocent
villagers (particularly those belonging to ethnic minorities)."

Whereas Buddhism teaches tolerance toward other
religions, the leaders of SLORC have attempted to use the
religion to subdue or to eradicate some of the ethnic
minorities.  In Chin State SLORC is using various tactics to
subvert Christianity, which is the dominant religion there. 
Young Burman soldiers who are stationed there are
promised promotions if they marry Christian girls.  Chin
Christian missionaries are prevented from moving from one
section of the state to another.  Last year, when SLORC
offered free education to Chin youth who agreed to study in
Rangoon, several Christian families sent their children to the
capital.  A few months later they learned that all the children
were staying at Kaba Aye monastery.  The boys had had
their heads shaved and had been ordained as Buddhist
novices, but the girls had so far successfully refused. 
SLORC refused to let the children return and even to allow
members of the Chin community in Rangoon to meet them. 
When representatives from Chin State finally met the
children, they all begged to be taken home, but SLORC
continued to refuse permission for this.  Such forcible
conversion is totally in conflict with the Teaching of the
Buddha.  The Dhamma is ehipassiko (inviting one to come
and see for himself); and coercion is a contradiction in
terms.

In late 1994 and early 1995 SLORC launched a massive
offensive against the strongholds of the Karen National
Union (KNU).  The government claimed that it was not
directly responsible for the attacks, but that they were
organized and carried out by a group of Buddhist Karen,
Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), who were
rebelling against the Christian leadership of the KNU. 
There is overwhelming evidence that the DKBA is entirely
controlled by SLORC.  The monasteries supporting the
movement were set up and supported by SLORC.  Those
very monasteries were used as weapons caches.  What is
even more contemptible is that SLORC would have the
world believe that there could ever be a Buddhist "army." 
Here too SLORC is using Buddhism to further its own evil
goals, and in the process weakening the very foundations of
the Buddha Sasana.  No war has ever been fought in the
name of Buddhism, and it is unthinkable that the advice of
the Sangha would ever promote anything but peace and
prosperity, both at home and abroad.  The DKBA with its
SLORC companions are a band of outlaws, threatening
Christians and animists with violence, kidnaping helpless
refugees, robbing them of rice and jewelry, and wantonly
killing any who stand in their way.  Since monks neither use
nor advocate violence , SLORC's propaganda about DKBA
is nothing but demeaning lies.  The Sangha has but one
message for any ruler: "Never in this world does hatred
cease by hatred: it ceases only by love.  This is the Law
Eternal."

The Buddha clearly taught that a government must uphold
the moral and spiritual law.  Being the means to
enlightenment, Buddhism demands that a Buddhist state
recognize that the true goal of life is to attain Nibbana, and
that it has the duty of providing for all its citizens a political
and social organization within which both monks and lay
people can live in accordance with Dhamma.  Not a single
page of Buddhist history is lit with the flame of inquisitional
fires, darkened with smoke of heretic cities ablaze, nor red
with the blood of guiltless victims of religious hatred. 
Buddhism wields only the Sword of Wisdom and recognizes
only one enemy, Ignorance.  The evils that we see in Burma
are explained by the greed, hatred, and delusion of the
military rulers.  It is no wonder that the Burmese people see
their country in the sixteen great dreams of King Pasenadi. 
The greatest sin of these rulers, however, is that they work
their wickedness under a pretense of piety. 



--=====================_811643348==_--