Photograph courtesy of Insight Myanmar.
A report by Insight Myanmar
BGR partner Insight Myanmar shares the following report from their contacts in Myanmar describing a relief effort to bring rice to monastics living on and around Yetagun Mountain, in southern Myanmar. Heavy rains in this region caused a breach at the outlet of Sedawgyi Dam, flooding nearby villages and destroying acres of rice fields; in one village, an estimated 26 tons of rice were lost. With hundreds of people in these villages already experiencing food insecurity and displacement, the local forest monastics did not go on their usual alms round, thereby losing their primary source of food.
Most of the monasteries in this area are “forest solitude monasteries,” home to between one and five monks. Also located in this region are several Pariyatti monasteries and nunneries, traditional Buddhist monastic schools where 20 to 50 monks or nuns live and study.
The following has been edited for clarity.
Yesterday, we completed the donation to the monks and nuns from the monasteries and nunneries at the bottom of Yetagun Mountain and Yankin Hill. We saw that the dirt roads are truly in poor condition; some concrete roads were even washed away by the floods. In the morning, we invited 80 monks from 50 forest monasteries and 20 nuns from a Pariyatti nunnery to a gathering point at the bottom of the mountains that we could reach by car. Here we gave them rice sacks and cooking oil. One of the beneficiary monks said that due to severe flooding in the villages, the monks had not gone on their morning alms round for the past two weeks. Our contribution was helpful to them as most of them are elderly.
We continued our donation program in the afternoon, bringing rice to two Pariyatti monasteries and another Pariyatti nunnery: the Lay Kyun Marn Aung Samanera University, at the feet of the Yankin Hill, where 432 novices and monks are residing and studying; U Yin Pariyatti Monastery, home to over 200 monastics; and the Chan Mya Ramsī nunnery, which has 275 nuns.
When we informed the head nun of Chan Mya Ramsī Nunnery of this donation, she said, “We (the leading nuns) always have to see how the rice sacks we keep in the garage are growing ever fewer in number.” She continued, “There are about a hundred nuns here who are preparing for their exams, so they cannot go on their alms rounds for rice. As we have 275 nuns and also refugees who fled from my native village in Gantgaw, we are feeding about 300 people per day.” There are also increasing armed encounters in the region, and the compassionate nuns are helping to feed people affected by these encounters.
We saw that the forest monks living in these small monasteries and the nuns in their nunneries not only were short of alms food, but also had not received new robe offerings yet. At the least, our donation has helped these forest monks and nuns to obtain alms food. As for the monks who strictly follow the Vinaya (monastic discipline), it is truly hard for them to survive in their daily life.
Let me conclude my report with the words spoken by one of the beneficiary monks who received our donation: “Even the urban monasteries and the ones that used to have regular sponsors had to buy rice for their own meals at the beginning of the Rains Retreat. As for us, we mainly depend on the alms food offered by laypeople. In this situation, which is hard even for our poor lay sponsors, how could we go on alms round? We now only go one or two days a week. On the other days, we cook for ourselves. Now you have relieved some of our concerns for a period of time.”
