E - I - E - I - O

I’ve been asked this question three times by travelers who are not meditators.

“Something I don’t get about this Buddha thing—why so many? I mean, you go into a cave and there are thousands of Buddhas. And you go to Shwedagon Pagoda and there’s another couple of hundred. How come?”

Short answer: merit toward eventual liberation, or receiving some kind of blessing from Buddha. Longer answer: donating a Buddha statue is viewed as a way to get merit without spending the required time looking at your mind and seeing why it does what it does when it does. As I'm sure Buddha would have preferred rather than have his followers buy more Buddha statues.

Last Wednesday was the end of my fourth full month in Myanmar, and I’ll take a wild guess at the number of images of Buddha that I’ve seen, either painted or sculpted, during that time: over 10,000. That includes all of the small images of Buddha painted on the walls of temples built 800-900 years ago.

Someone had to pay for all of those statues and paintings. Understanding that gives you a peek into the ways that things have always been done in Myanmar.

Until the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, there was a very clear-cut distinction between monks and lay people. If you were truly interested in meditation and liberation, you had to become a monk, since there was no other way to get instruction in vipassana, shamatha, or any other meditation practice, or to get support for your personal efforts toward nibbana.

(An interesting aside: I am told that interest in meditation as a central Buddhist principle has ebbed and flowed over the centuries, at least in the Theravada tradition. There have been long periods when meditation was not really required of monks, interspersed with periods when meditation was emphasized as central to liberation and the monastic life.)

Sometime during the past 100 or so years a number of meditation masters, countable on the digits of any one of your four limbs, decided that lay practitioners could meditate, and in fact should be encouraged to meditate regardless of their earthly responsibilities. That was a radical idea at the time.

Prior to that shift, you had your meditators in robes, and everyone else wanting opportunities to receive some kind of blessing or merit. Today you can still see simple acts of kindness that have long been considered the most direct way to receive merit: feeding a monk or nun. Here’s a case in point, just outside the main gate of the Yangon Shwe Oo Min Meditation Center:

Historically, kings have occupied the other end of the spectrum. Every king in Myanmar history has been obligated to commission the construction of stupas and temples—the bigger, the grander, the better—and to support (and to receive political support from) the sangha of ordained monks. The most powerful kings (in many cases meaning those who were the most violent and successful in killing sentient beings during military conquests) built some of the greatest temples.

Quantity has been emphasized at certain times in Myanmar history. Thus, you have Bagan, where kings paid for the construction of over 4,000 temples and stupas between the 11^th and 13^th centuries. The ones made of wood are gone. The brick ones are in various states of disrepair, and the current government is collecting money from a broad range of international donors to rebuild them. In many cases the motivation for sponsoring the rebuilding of a temple or stupa in the 21^st century is exactly the same as the motivation for building them in the 11^th century: to earn merit.

Then you have a place like Kakku, which I hope to visit sometime next week. Here I can give you a precise count: there are 2,478 stupas at Kakku. A local legend states that the great King Ashoka of India started the “stupa garden” in the third century BC. If you have a few minutes, search for images online.

Then you’ve got your caves overflowing with Buddha images. Spelunkers are out of luck in Myanmar if they’re looking for empty caves to explore—where there’s a cave, there are dozens or hundreds or thousands of Buddha statues inside. Each statue was given by a donor looking for merit. The donors of older statues are long-dead and long-forgotten. But today’s donors will be long-remembered (at least for a couple of centuries) because they paid the sculptors to carve their names and the dates of their donations on the bases of the statues. All in the name of merit.

Arguably the most famous cave is the Shwe Oo Min cave in Pindaya—that’s right, the same Shwe Oo Min who was the teacher of my Sayadaw in Yangon. I haven’t been to Pindaya yet, it’s on my list. But I have been to a separate Shwe Oo Min cave in Kalaw, where I did my second retreat. Some pics:

The most sensual Buddha I've seen to date rests in the Kalaw cave:

My first day in Kalaw I went searching for the Shwe Oo Min Meditation Center, and that’s when I found out that many monasteries, meditation centers, and caves all over the country are named after that teacher. I did not find the center that day, but I did find a Shwe Oo Min monastery that did not welcome foreign yogis, and just down the road from that monastery I found the Kalaw version of the Shwe Oo Min caves, with this admonition before entering:

Because my mind is what it is, within minutes of entering the cave I was inspired to sing:

Old Shwe Oo Min had a cave,

E-I-E-I-O.

And in that cave he had some Buddhas,

E-I-E-I-O.

With a Buddha Buddha here, and a Buddha Buddha there,

Here a Buddha, there a Buddha, everywhere a Buddha Buddha.

Old Shwe Oo Min had a cave,

E-I-E-I-O.

(Every-bo-dy sing:)

Old Shwe Oo Min had a cave . . .

As they say in the meditation biz, everyone has their causes and conditions, and understanding them is a big step toward liberation. I am happy to be your cause and condition should you ever visit these caves and feel like breaking out in song.

Here’s a 20-year-old photo of Shwe Oo Min (center) with Sayadaw U Tejaniya, my Yangon Sayadaw, on the left and up one step. It hangs on the wall of the main meditation hall of the retreat center in Kalaw.

And one last photo: your humble blogger with my Kalaw Sayadaw (a remarkable Vietnamese monk named U Huai) and fellow yogis: from left-to-right, a Mexican, an Aussie, a Czech, and a Yank. Missing from the photo: the fifth member of our international yogi quintet, a Burmese with excellent English and an amazing knowledge of dhamma. For almost two weeks it was just the five of us, doing our daily practice, having some intense dhamma discussions during mealtimes and in our dormitory, and spending an hour with U Huai every evening at 6, peppering him with all kinds of questions about meditation and Buddhism. A wonderful experience. U Huai is 67. The pic was taken on a hike in the mountains behind the retreat center. Guess which one shops at REI.

I am very fortunate!