Witness to the Rohingas

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BZ-02606
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good morning
ah i'm happy to be with you this fine spring morning and i'm honored to see all of you from the busy see
my teacher
another teacher friends from college friends from the international buddhist world a family members ah it's really it's gratifying to be able to speak to you this morning
ah
the last night was the start of the jewish holiday of passover i believe
it's a week-long festival of liberation it celebrates the jewish people's escaped from captivity in egypt twenty five hundred years ago
add this story is really compellingly told yeah no second book of the the hebrew scriptures the book of exodus
and with that history and mind i want to tell you
ah about what i have experienced in the last week
last night i returned from an interface
witness to a to bangladesh
to the exiled rohingya communities
in the very south of bangladesh who ah
we've driven over the nearby border from burma
by virtue of their religion and suppose a ethnicity
now tell you a little about this i'm probably have to follow up with another with a trip
report back with slides and more detail
i'm trying to figure out
to where to start
ah and what to say in short time that we haven't leave some time for questions ah and also how to
offer a talk that does what her talks are supposed to
when supposed to do which is to encourage practice
what is our practice
here
what is our practice in the context of ah
the reality that
that martin luther king spoke of when he said ah we are brothers brother because we are brothers keeper because we are our brothers brother and sister's sister
and i think that the context of said the buddhist context at all said which is also a context for our jaws and practices
first of all the
the first step
on the eightfold path
which is right for you
what right view means to me is
in many ways it's stability to and flexibility to shift
your vision
some other words to have a a focus that can look very closely at
ah i'm looking right now second straightening out my
little portfolio here so that it's in order and seeing what's right in front of me very closely
and it's also recognizing that what's in front of me is the reality of all beings the world that we live in the fact that we're connected to the rohingya people were connected to the people of me more connected to the people
of bangladesh compact and connected to the people of east oakland
and all of this is also needs to be within the shifting capacity of our view
and that we notice we cultivate this capacity as we practice as we sit
usually we sit facing the wall
and that wall
contains all realities
that wall that we face is really it's like a mirror
you know how it's it appears white
blank perhaps
but it's not contains everything because it's our own minds and it's been projected
and then reflected back to us that makes sense
so that's one principal principal right view the principle that principles that i wouldn't draw or are based on the the parameters and they they're ah
two sequential perfection these the bodhisattvas perfections ah so they are the practices of bodhisattvas of of enlightening beings and it's both the expression of their enlightenment
it's also
the practices that they cultivate to manifest the enlightenment that is within each of us so those two these two principles that i'd mention our our patients or shanty
and effort varia and they they are completely intertwined
and so
when you go to places like
the camps that i visited you see in these suffering people
ah
the practice of patients in the practice of practice of effort
which are human qualities they're not buddhist qualities as such they just have been articulated as as bodhisattva practices but really this is that all humans do this in irrespective of what they call them or what face the ah
they follow in their lives
and it's also true that in order to
be present with the suffering that
that i was witness to that
our group which i'll tell you that was bearing witness to and now i bear that witness to you
ha that that took a certain amount of of patience
on my part
and a certain amount of effort in the context of the practice ah has a
soda roshi
has has taught and common to all of our teachers ah you could express that as ah you should always know where your feeder
so when i'm off center
i returned to that principle i literally place my feet on the ground
and i feel them i feel how my weight is there how it's distributed and so forth in that brings me back into my body and into my awareness and this is also had the heart of our practice
so that's all
the context

so i was invited about two or three months ago to join an interface deletion
representing
both three fates and i was gonna be the fourth representing islam
and christianity judaism and they were looking for a buddhist for an american delegation to these rogue into camps and i tried to say i did say no
ah there were other things that i felt responsible to
ah but i also said i would try very hard to find someone else to ah to be able to go because
to some degree
the expulsion of the rohingyas from myanmar
is being done there's an attempt to frame it in the name of buddhism
whither that's actually the case or not
ha i would argue that it is
even though the motivations underneath that are not a bad buddhism to bad greed and they're bad power
ah and yet there are buddhists who willingly collaborate with this and i think that the rest of the world
sees this as a a great conundrum even the muslims that i met in the delegation they said rob
buddhism is is a religion of peace
and you know i think that's true
ah if you look at
christianity it's also religion of peace
but the things that are done in the names of religion
ah
often bear the delusion and distortion of human beings
and this is to serve
cut to the chase in terms of my view of this situation and situations around the world wherever you have the entanglement of religion
and the state
the ain't nothing good gonna happen there
ah anne frank that you can look at israel
you can look at it places in the middle east and frankly you can look at the united states so much has been done here
with the the mantle of christianity placed on their shoulders of the government ah we're no better
we don't have any moral authority that is greater than any other nation
so i said no and then about two weeks ago the invitation came again from the organizers who didn't realize they were asking the same person
and ah
i had failed to find somebody else then i said i
i had to ask people so i asked laurie
and i was also supposed to be teaching i was teaching me how to apply pious and centers chaplaincy program and so i asked roshi joan halifax you know because i was going to leave early and they said go
they said you were the person to go so
i decide to go
hum although it was crazy trip
so i left i landed in bangladesh the twenty fifth
and i left publish on the twenty ninth
and of those like for five days ha i told them up forty eight hours of that was in the air
and i would say it and other third if it was ah stuck in traffic jams in bangladesh
ah but still
we had very
powerful and unsettling
opportunities to
visit the camps
south of cox's bazar and also to
basically listen to people just listen to them
because these people needed to tell their stories
they needed to be witnessed
and the world needs to hear
this is i was looking at up this is a modern exodus so i was looking up on of course the source of all knowledge wikipedia or today and is est there was is estimated that when the jews left egypt it was it was like six hundred and thirty five thousand of them have left ah wow
well seven hundred thousand
rohingya is have left
ah myanmar
crossed over the enough river that divides myanmar bangladesh
the seven hundred thousand since august twenty fifth
two thousand and seventeen
ah that's a lot of people
and they join
another three hundred thousand who were already residing in camps on the border
in bangladesh after expulsions in nineteen seventy eight and ninety ninety one ninety two
so
this is a modern exodus
ah and the seas did not part
and the rohingyas did not arrive at the promised land
if this is the promised land
things have really gone downhill
hum
and so these seven hundred thousand ah they if they fled
and what they were fleeing was
the destruction systematic destruction of their villages which have been documented by all kinds of photographs and and aerial mapping
murder on a scale it's very hard to imagine
ah rape as a
as an ordinary daily occurrence
in the repression by the military and rape as a form not so much of sexuality but as as terror and violence
so the pressing question that
people have been asking me for several years ah like how could buddhists do this
how is this buddhism
which is
it's a very useful question to ask ourselves if we are putting ourselves in the position if we carry any idealization
about what buddhism might be
how it's possible and simplest ways because
so-called buddhism
is practiced by humans
who are
certainly potentially diluted
and frighteningly harboring our own
reserve reservoirs of
a violence within us
and no one hi if i see this and i see what's going on in myanmar i realize i'm not an exception to this
and i need to look at where those wellsprings are within me
but it's also that the buddhists in myanmar or i have i have a very complex ah analysis which ah i checked with both with buddhists and with with other people that i respect
i've been checking it for last couple of years and i checked that most recently on this trip ah and a buddhist your subject
in that part of and more people are subject to ah to fear
to sixty years of
ah sixty years of fear in the face of the repressive military ah to manipulation
on the basis of national and religious identity
and that fear is being stoked by
the burmese military who who really pull the strings and control the government and its
manifested for the sake of their own ah greed
and greed for social control but more directly for natural resources for access to land for access to ports and so forth
and i would say from what i've seen this is maybe a
a a painful thing to say that there are certain countries in which
the buddhist authorities and religious figures ah
have
embraced the kind of arrogance about their their wisdom in their vision and the superiority of buddhism
can they really wholeheartedly the they embrace it and they believe it
so these are these are some of the conditions
they had no excuse
for what
we heard happening there is no there is known
not a they could never be an excuse for the disproportionate violence that we saw for the burning of villages
for the murdering of families in front of each other for the slaughtering of children by shooting hacking beating drowning burning babies
ah
is no excuse not human but it's you mean
it's unfortunately and inevitably human and then the question of courses what will we do about it
how will we look at those tendencies within ourselves
and how we help ourselves and others to awaken to them
so this was a delegation was interesting delegation ah it was are mostly muslim
all from the united states although some were born in islamic countries where it settled here ah
mostly muslim
there was a very a prominent ah
evangelical christian minister who has a a network of churches within the united states very interesting guy bob roberts who are has he's progressive is a project progressive evangelical even though he's also the
this is the conundrum is also a conservative republican you know but he doesn't believe in christian violence in christians ah supremacy and he's been he's been organizing retreats for
ah bring together rabbis evangelical ministers and he moms and now he's thinking that they didn't quite
it really took time for people even asked me anything about buddhism and so that they don't like the kit get their head around something that with there's not a god you know ah and so they do so then of you'd be seen at the table and nobody would ask you anything you know like you're asking all these question
to take i'm sure that you've had this experience fairly times ah
the and there were and there was a rabbi
and you'll also be rich interesting people because i would say about half of them were republicans
and you are a number of people who work in the in the bush white house and fortunately a couple of the obama white house hair and some in the trump white house ah
and not my usual crowd you know
miss out
ah and
they also
they believed in something that i don't believe in and you may not be happy hearing this it i don't believe in any kind of american moral superiority
you know they really did almost all of them you know it's like this is this is what we have to offer to the world and i just don't
don't buy it
but i was fortunate i had a really good friend one good friend and his delegation we didn't find out until the end was going to be there ah
many richard riak who was formerly the president of shambala the shamble religious organization and in any also work for amnesty international from and ears he works in srilanka a lot and we've been working together for about ah for long time
and we hardly ever going to spend time together bedroom like oh we had pals so ah that felt good
but fifteen
fifteen one five with small
guess ah yes i would say it's about a third women ah islamic women and one woman who was the spokesperson for the delegation who was a fox news commentator
i'll say this as they said it is not my this is not my crowd
but actually muslim were really good and interesting people which is great to know
ha i a i do know that ah but sometimes one can lose one's perspective however i want to let me read you what i what i wrote for we had a press conference in hob
i think i'm just gonna get to scratch the surface here today but let me read you what i wrote it what we have seen in we went to a chemical baloo collie ah i just want oh well before we did like these camps are immense
in the nineties i spin
quite a bit of time in burmese refugee camps with burmese as a refugees who have been driven over the border from ah from burma into thailand and so i've seen camps i thought i had seen gibbs is nothing like this
yes said okay ah the camps were enormous they were sprawled over spilling over the hillsides and they were good in this area that had been very rich green biodiverse area
all the trees are gone all the cover was gone it was just bare dirt in terraces and you know it made you wonder what's going to happen next week when the monsoon arises and all this ah
turned to mud how are people going to get around it's just i can't imagine enormous
this expanse everywhere that you can see of people
of these makeshift tent structures
with ah basically
an open sewer
running through the center of the camp by the passageway with an incredible ah stench
you know what's gonna happen when the rains come
so this is bolo collie camp ah so what we saw what we've seen this is from the got a press release
what we have seen in the bolo colleague camps makes my heart weep
in our time in the camp speaking with rohingya refugees we had an opportunity to bear witness to victims of the worst of human violence and cruelty
there is experience their experiences unimaginable and yet real undeniable
to my understanding and that of buddhists around the world the murder and dislocation in myanmar have nothing to do with the buddha's teachings
these teachings say just as a mother watches over it gets her child so with a boundless mine she wants infused love over the entire world
this is from the metro suitor the ancient teaching of loving kindness which burmese monks chanted as they faced the guns and bayonets of the burmese military during two thousand and seven so saffron revolution
this prayer conveys the buddha's great love of life and acceptance of all people and beings the very thing that many buddhists in myanmar
brutally deny the rohingya people
hum and then i say one of the things that that we've done thanks to the generosity of of many of you and others so i raised a about twelve thousand dollars and the week before i left i carried some of that with me and did not
distributed because i couldn't figure out a way to distributed but it's all going to go into next week or so and i've started a website and i have some press releases with the information on the website there in blue and leave them out
bulletin board table football shelf we started a website called a buddhist humanitarian project dot org
which detail
allows old it's letter which each of you can sign and we will send copies is letterer you can write your own letters to the authorities in myanmar
whether this will work or not i don't know but
it's something we have to do and you can also make a donation either directly to ah organizations that we provide links for a or to clear view project and a tax deductible way and and we will distribute it so woodson us today have launched a website to raise up
the rohingyas cry for justice safety and citizenship in their burmese homeland we in the west along with many friends and asia and around the world will do our unceasing best to press the government and buddhist leadership in me and more for rohingya rights we were
raise resources for humanitarian assistance and we give thanks to the government of bangladesh for welcoming and making a place for a million refugees in their sorrow and need
so that's what i read
i just want is i want to open to some discussion but the question i think it's worth asking is
what do the rohingyas want
i'm spare you the more graphic details of their oppression we heard this in we be saw
people who are resilient we saw people who were broken
we saw
a woman burned over her entire body and scarred ah we saw children with wounds on them
we didn't see the victims were gone because they were gone
ah what they want with they're asking for are three principal
requests or demands one is safety
and that would be safety whether they're in bangladesh from the safety from the the circumstances of their really difficult life in these camps safety from disease safety by virtue of education
and safety most centrally
in the context of any return to me and mar which is what they wouldn't like they lived there from many hundreds of years
they want justice
which means bringing the perpetrators of these murders in this systematic violence ah
two accountability before the international court in the hague
and they want says chip
something that
they have been denied when they were when they were classified as non citizens in nineteen sixty two by the the burmese revolution then all of their rights were taken away they are seen as non citizens so they want and
in fact one of the things that was really powerful so we
the first day we visited the the proximate cause of the the flight in august was ah a slaughter a massacre in two villages along the border to let totally is what is called and
ah
what the government had tried to do
and they've tried tried systematically almost everywhere is get people to sign a document and they would give him a card when they signed as saying
i am not
i am not originally from myanmar
and i have my background is bengali from bangladesh and it would get them basically to sign is under threat of of death
without seeing
therefore history and a local existence
so ah they wanted his chip
it's just i have to show didn't that poster it's here
so i'll take a leave us outside
this is a poster we were given last night i love you can see it
the very striking photograph and said
when buddha looks away
and what i would say the buddha didn't look away
who doesn't look away
people who call themselves buddhists
are looking away
but this does not constitute buddhism to me
wicked
argue about what is or what is not a buddhist
ha
but
the voter doesn't look away and neither should we so i'm gonna stop there there's so much that i could say i'm very glad that i could go i'm writing more about this i suggest you check out
the website now i have some of these pressure these is out which has the website address and ah will have an opportunity to talk more but we have little time for questions yeah afternoon of surgeon

well gate so it i will ah thank you
he hopes i
you're the competition

the in part yes yeah do you would like me to explain it
so this is not a new struggle
ah the as i said the
the attempt to ah
the drive out the rohingyas has been going on ah
since certainly since the beginning of the of the nature of the oven of a country called be more or an independent country called me and more or burma ah
part of it was of migration that was encouraged by british colonialism
but in the in the context of the ah of the expulsion there's there's been understandable resistance and the part of some of some groupings within me and why so the product to read provocation for the to literally
massacre was a an attack on
ah police stations within rakhine state by a rohingya militants
and that's true and there is a rohingya there's there's various factions and liberation or groupings that it have emerged within the last thirty years ah
and
they've all they've arisen to my mind or in reaction to depression that's been that's been levied on them ah and i don't excuse that are justified on excuse the the murder of rakhine burmese
people ah
but the question of proportion is so is so mind boggling
you know to
i think they were eleven police officers or military who were killed in these attacks and that resulted in ten to twenty thousand ah rocking as killed in and all them and spelled so ah
there it's it's not that there's no provocation
it's just
in a to me in asia
a self fulfilling prophecy what the burmese government is doing is creating the basis for a more massive and also internationalized islamic response terror and this is what i
i have to say that muslims and his delegation were really good they completely opposed to any kind of any kind of ah
once the name of of islam and they were very clear about that says that

that that's yeah that that's the in this immediate it was the spark that that led to this immediate flight yeah more there had been a flight there had been expulsion servant and people going by this was just this unleashed a flood yeah yeah
it really did
he'll have me

that's a really good question from what we understood and i think we were there too short a time to to really understand but from what people from various sorts of hussein as know there's very little that they have very little ah what we would call
civil society and that they didn't have that in myanmar either they were just there was sort of going about their lives without any political powers that are self organization so yeah it it's it's lacking and that makes it very difficult yeah
so

yes
no no no you can't do that for a million people
it's not small is beautiful ah
unhcr has designated a billion dollars for rohingya relief ah there is a constant flow of ngo is a constant is a vast ngo a non-gaap
from adult organization their their presence in the campus is really in the camps are palpable and
the one narrow road is clogged with their vehicles we went to send some for anti air ah
headquarters and and hospital and like it's enormous the scale is just enormous and so there's a and i think there's some degree of coordination but it's it's also really weird because the needs are so great but also
these organizations have their own needs if you feel understand sake of like oh we can grow by you know getting in there it it's it's a weird culture you know it just those kinds of camps are very a reared culture and you know you'll see the u s
an acr and unicef it's like
you have this terrible poverty and they're driving in these in the brand new huge white white vans and you know ah
it's it's weird yeah

yes
oh absolutely they really are thinking about it and the government is thinking about you but the government is a completely wacky bland also ah they are going to the building
a
refugee
ah center
two for as as housing for one hundred thousand refugees on an island called thing guard jar which is in the bay of bengal it's the whole island's about four feet above water level the above sea level it floods every year it's there is nothing around it's complete surrounded
by water and it's like they're planning to do this is is a horrible horrible idea anyway
yeah linda
or yelena

who is it

yeah

of course
yeah i'm joanna could probably quote you from my have answer in in sri lanka which is that a completely self fulfilling ah
buddhist triumphalist text going back to thousand years yeah
see i considered canonical right yeah
maybe one or two more joy

the international allies functionally are
china and russia i would say when you sacred
yeah russia also has been has been aligned with them in the security council ah and
what they gain so you have to think geographically about burma and again this goes into great detail the birdman majority burman ethnic majorities about sixty percent ah it's in the center of the country the wealth of the country he
is in the ethnic areas that encircle the berman majority the wealth consists of timber minerals ah natural gas and petroleum ah and ah also
in rakhine state where they're being driven out of or access to
the indian ocean as as a geopolitical ah resource so china wants ports on the indian ocean the russians would like it so so it there's geopolitical basis for this
the second question to give to quit okay yes i guess

yeah they are they are there on the ground and also i have to say but bangladeshi buddhists are on the ground or ratio cause the guy from japan
the buddhist response has been pretty strong i mean and it's also really encouraging as i met a number of people from buddhist organizations within bangladesh ah who are really throwing themselves into this year
maybe one
someone who has an s question
yeah i kinda jake

fake news
fake news yes yeah it's a great it's in to great meme fake news
basically she's denying that these things are real ah and her approach has been to stonewall she was in australia i think last week or the week before couple weeks ago and you know she had public meetings made public statements and
took no no press no press questions you know ah she's
the thing is when i started going to me and mar or to burma
i started going to the camps ah in so-called liberated areas in ninety ninety one or ninety ninety two and ah
the attitude of these of the rebel groups that we met with even then was they didn't trust her they thought that she was aligned with the military and i was highly skeptical of that and i just thought well this is this kind of as
the which it is ah but
she does not hold an elected position
she served in is created position state counselor at the with the permission of the military a permission that can be revoked at any time and i do not presume to have any idea what she so-called really thinks
but i can look at what people do
so i have some i have some sympathy for her personally but as the as an actor of policy and as an enabler of the military regime i'm deeply skeptical ah and it's painful to say so and also we know
know that it's a whole lot easier to be an icon then to be a political figure
you know but ah
the the world is responding i don't want to revile her
but i also don't you know i want to figure out what would encourage her to
speak the truth
so i think we need to end will have little time outside or thank you for listening and i wanted to say wonder the thing
you know ah
i want to acknowledge it for years now
ah i've been juggling responsibilities between the responsibilities i have here as vice habit
and responsibilities i feel to the expression of buddha dharma in the wider world
particularly to those experiencing ah
experiencing depression as buddhists
ah and those ah who are being oppressed by buddhists ah so it's hard for me to keep these balls in the air and i apologise sometimes one slips and i drop one
ah
but i really appreciate i appreciate your support
ah and
even though you know people here at bc same make some people some people may understandably asked set of where
my heart lies
ah
my heart might be just one more of these things that i juggle one of the balls in the air or not but
because of the practice that i've cultivated here with you for
nearly four decades
my belly
my horror at my mind
our
they're always with you here
and ah
even if i'm halfway around the world they're never you were never apart from my thoughts and for better or worse my emails
so thank you