Dear Burma: A Novel

By Randy Rosenthal

In May 2007, American neuroscientist James Stone decides to become a Buddhist monk and flies to Rangoon, Burma--now known as Yangon, Myanmar. Despite being hot and humid, Rangoon is like a Buddhist Disneyland, and at the iconic Shwedagon Pagoda, James meets U Nanda, a flamboyant monk who brings him to a nearby monastery, where he takes vows. Dissatisfied with the laxity of mainstream monastic life, James joins an intensive Vipassana meditation course, where he meets Daw Vira, a beautiful but mysterious British nun whom he follows to an idyllic monastery in the middle of the country.

James wants to stay there forever, but his plans are diverted when he and Vira leave on a pilgrimage, participate in the massive anti-government protests known as the Saffron Revolution, and are then confined in Burma's notorious Insein Prison. By the time Cyclone Nargis brings destruction to the country, James admits that his desire for Vira is stronger than his desire to achieve enlightenment.

Written as a letter from James to his brother, Dear Burma is ultimately a love story--the story of an impossible love between a monk and a nun, and a love letter to Buddhism and a Burma now lost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666777727

Randy Rosenthal

Randy Rosenthal is the author of the novels Dear Burma and The Messiah of Shangri-La. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Post, The American Scholar, Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma, Tricycle, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and several other publications. He teaches writing courses for Harvard University and lives in Boston.

Book preview

DEAR BURMA

A Novel

Randy Rosenthal

DEAR BURMA

A Novel

Copyright ©

2023

Randy Rosenthal. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Resource Publications

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paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-7770-3

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-7771-0

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-7772-7

version number 07/17/23

Table of Contents

Title Page

A Day in Rangoon

The Tale about the Hunter

The Monk’s Life

The Tale about the Djinn

The Goenka Center

The Tale about the Ferryman

The Monastery of My Dreams

The Tale about the Pilgrim

The Yatra

The Tale of the Puppet Maker

The Uprising

The Prison

The Cyclone

The Tale of the Archer

The Escape

Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddha

Homage to the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Rightly Self-Awakened One

Holiness is a thing of toil and blood that cannot be grafted onto a full and rich life like some pretty ornament.

—Bruno Schulz

Dear Brother,

You asked me why. I said I wanted to live a life without computers and cell phones, merchant copies and customer copies, rent and mortgage and interest rates, dating and marriage and divorce, lawsuits and utility bills and tax returns, the Dow and IRAs and 401(k)s, deadlines and health care premiums and paying at the pump, sitting in traffic and holiday shopping and all of those fetters that keep us from realizing our potential as human beings.

You’re running away, you said with a smirk.

I sighed and said, I don’t want to argue.

You’re going off to be a monk because you feel guilty for being privileged, you told me.

I’m going to become a monk because it feels like the right thing to do.

The right thing to do is to sit on your butt all day?

I surrendered a smile, but kept my mouth closed.

Look, you said. If all that academic politically-correct crap has brainwashed you into feeling guilty for being a privileged white heterosexual American, then go join an NGO and help poor people or something.

The wisest way to spend my life is in meditation, I said.

That’s naïve, you said. My little brother calling me naïve.

I told you that I loved you, and you gave in and asked me how long I’d be gone.

At the time, I’d never guess that less than a year after this conversation, I’d find myself in Burma’s most notorious prison—and in love with a nun. That I would have to escape the country, and that I’d now need your help to get back home.

I just sent you an email about what I need, but here I want to tell you everything.

A Day in Rangoon

The flight to Burma took over sixteen hours. I began to meditate after fastening my seatbelt, but was asleep before the plane was in the air. Sometime later I awoke in the cold, quiet cabin. All the passengers were asleep. Covered in blankets, heads tilted at aching angles, their mouths open like the dead. I pressed my face to the window. Tiny crystals of ice had formed between the inner and outer panes. An unceasing sea of frosty blue clouds stretched on underneath the plane, punctured here and there by dark peaks. The mountains of Asia. Hours later, after changing planes in Taiwan and then again in Singapore, I landed in Rangoon’s new international airport, alone and eager.

The airport was empty. Big, clean, and modern, but empty. No concession stands, no rental car companies, hardly any seats. Just a few old men sulking at a table, waiting to change dollars into kyhat—for what a friendly flight attendant told me would be an outrageous ratio. She advised I change money at my hotel.

Not having brought a suitcase, I tightened the straps of my backpack and walked out to the curb, where I was immediately surrounded by taxi drivers yipping like tiny dogs. Never had I been enveloped by air so hot, so oppressive. My mind reeled.

Burma has three seasons: the cool, the monsoon, and the hot. In Burmese Days, George Orwell wrote that April was the cruelest month. I arrived on the second of May, and it was scorching. Wanting to get there as soon as possible after I made my decision, I hadn’t planned when to go, buying a ticket immediately after receiving a visa. My shirt had started sticking to my skin, and it wasn’t yet eight in the morning.

The flight attendant also told me that it should cost three dollars to get from the airport to the city center. Five dollars to the city center, all the cab drivers said. I asked why. New airport, new fees, they explained. It didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t argue in such heat. Telling myself I would soon no longer need money, I got into the first cab that seemed like it wouldn’t fall apart, and gave the name of my hotel to the driver.

Thamada, the driver repeated.

You know it? I asked.

He nodded. No problem, he said, and we were off. Exiting the airport, he kept repeating the name. Tha-ma-da. Tha-maaaa-da. I understood he was seeing if further repetition would ring a bell. Tha-ma-da. Tha-maaaa-da. He didn’t know it.

It was early, but the streets of Rangoon were bustling. We passed groups of children wearing tank tops or big T-shirts, some of them barefoot. When they saw my face, they pointed and smiled. My hand raised in a lazy wave. Once we got near the city center and traffic became more congested, there was trash, dilapidated buildings, and poverty. Abject poverty. And never had I seen so much red in my life. It seemed half of the male population had taken robes. So many monks it made sense why Burma was so poor. What kind of economy can you have if half of the men weren’t working? Oh, and the nuns, you would have loved the nuns. All dressed in bubble-gum pink, their bald heads shielded by dreamy parasols. We drove by a large temple, golden and bell-shaped, the top of the bell coming to a tall point. From photographs I knew it was the great Shwedagon Pagoda, and it was absolutely gorgeous. The morning was glorious.

The driver asked me which country I was from. I told him.

Ah, America, he smiled into the rearview mirror. Best country.

Really? I asked, amused. Why is America the best country?

Very wealthy, he answered. Very powerful.

We stopped at a light. He turned his head around, as if taking me into his close confidence. He said, I hope the American army invades Mya-mar.

I knew that the government officially changed Burma’s name to Myanmar back in 1989, but to me it was still Burma, and Yangon was still Rangoon. As far as a knew, using the old names was a way of showing you didn’t support the government.

You don’t want that, I said, shaking my head. You know what happened to Iraq, right? You don’t want that here.

I hate the military government, he said, still facing me.

I said, But you have so many wonderful pagodas here—you wouldn’t want them to be blown up by the Americans.

How can I feed my family with pagodas? he asked, and I felt like a moron. The light changed, someone honked, and he turned back around to face the road.

What’s the problem with the government? I asked the back of his head. I’ve heard so many things, but—I don’t exactly know.

We have no rights, the driver said. We have no rights, for example, to make a demonstration.

The driver’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. I was quiet.

I had no idea that in less than six months, I’d be arrested for participating in such a demonstration against the government. A multi-day demonstration that included over a hundred thousand monks, and would change the country forever.

One time not long ago they raised fuel prices, the driver said, and my friend lost his taxi. He made a demonstration in front of government building. He held up a sign that said he couldn’t afford gas prices. Then a car pulled up to my friend, and two secret police took him away. I have never seen him since that day.

I’m surprised you’re talking about this, I said.

They have so many secret police in the street. Thugs, you know? Anyone does something wrong, they grab them, and they take them away.

We moved deeper into the city. At another stoplight, a street vendor wearing a toga of white flowers approached the window. The driver bought a wreath of jasmine flowers, and gently hung it over his rearview mirror. Thinking back, everywhere in Burma has the scent of jasmine flowers. Jasmine flowers on the verge of rotting.

We drove several blocks and then the driver said, Sometimes I want to make a demonstration. But I have a family.

What do you want to protest about?

You see this car? Twenty-five thousand US dollars, he said.

In America, the car would have sold for a few thousand, at most. I said so. Then I asked, Why’s it so expensive?

Two hundred percent tax, he said and grinned.

What do you mean two hundred percent tax?

Tax, the government tax. They tax everything we need to have business. Cars, two hundred percent tax. Cell phone, three hundred percent tax. So expensive, so we can’t do business. Our economy can’t work with these taxes. We work, they just keep it all.

We curved along a large round-about, passing a sign that warned:

DEATH PENALTY FOR DRUG-TRAFFICKING

The sign was in English, and I thought about the Burma Road, all the heroin smuggled from Burma into China, and out to the rest of the world. The cabdriver stopped at street corners and asked people for directions, turned down small side-streets and around golden temples, asked again, and eventually he pulled in front of a six-story hotel with tall glass windows all along the ground floor.

Thamada, the driver said. No problem.

I handed the driver a five-dollar bill and walked inside the hotel lobby, blasted by air-conditioning. Thamada hotel was mid-range, a nicer place than I’d usually stay, but with only a day or two before I took robes, I figured there’s no harm in splurging. The woman behind the reception desk wore yellowish paint on her cheeks. I asked about it and she said it was thanakha.

We wear thanakha for sun protection, and to make beautiful.

I checked in and tried to change dollars to kyat. She wouldn’t accept my hundred-dollar bill.

Why not? I asked.

Leaning over the counter, the receptionist pointed to a red dot near the center. The bills have to be clean, she explained.

I took out another hundred.

No, I apologize but we cannot change that either.

Why not this one?

Because it’s the old kind. And it’s folded.

The old kind? I looked at my bill. Ben Franklin was centered, his head smaller than the newer bills that look like toy money. And there was a small crease on the corner.

But this is what the bank gave me in America.

Sorry, she said, we can’t accept it. Government policy.

I took out another hundred, now beginning to worry. I couldn’t get more, as there were no ATMs in Burma. Neither could I use a credit card. Because of the sanctions, international credit card companies and banks couldn’t do business in the country.

Thankfully, there was not a tiny fold or red dot on this hundred-dollar bill, and it was the new kind. The exchange rate was about one dollar for one thousand khyat, and the receptionist began counting out one-thousand-kyhat bills. Once she reached a hundred, there was a large stack.

Can you give me a bigger bill than a one thousand? I asked.

Sorry, that’s the biggest bill we have, she said.

You only have a one thousand kyhat bill? That’s less than one dollar.

That’s what we have.

I asked why, imagining if the US Treasury only printed one dollar bills.

The government policy to control inflation, she said.

I shoved the stack of kyat into the front pocket of my backpack, and a man wearing a plaid skirt showed me up to my room. A sticker in the elevator commanded: Stop Sex tourism!

The room was clean and cool, with polished floors of teak wood, the nation’s most valuable export—next to drugs and gems. Out the window was a view of a tall stone spire from a church opposite the hotel, and further down the street was a train station looking like an ancient Chinese palace. A mile or so away was a hint of the golden gleam of the great Shwedagon Pagoda. It was just before nine in the morning. There was the exhilaration that comes with finally doing what has been long planned. After a shower I changed into a plain white T-shirt and beige travel pants, and went back downstairs where I was offered an English breakfast. I declined; I’d get something to eat out around the city. I didn’t know what Burmese food was, but since the country is sandwiched between India and Thailand, I figured their food must be good. And I wanted to get to the Shwedagon Pagoda as soon as possible. So out into the heat, waving off the taxi drivers parked in front of the hotel.

The sidewalks were broken, uneven, and slippery. Past me walked men in ankle-length, multi-colored skirts. Longyis. All men were wearing them. They also wore short sleeved, collared, button-up shirts, plaid or paper-crisp white. The longyi doesn’t have pockets, so each man had a wallet stuffed into the back of their waistline. Big, fat wallets, as they had to hold so many kyat, because of the government’s absurd policy of controlling inflation. I thought how easily their wallets could be stolen, but figured that because this is a Buddhist country, no one steals. Some men approached me, conspiratorially asking if I wanted to change money. I shook my head and waved them away. Many of the men smiled at me with ruby red stained mouths. It looked like their gums were bleeding. Blood spots were all over the sidewalk. I later found out this was not blood but betel nut, a mild narcotic most men chewed.

Most of the women and children wore thanakha on their cheeks. All around rose sonorous voices, singing their language with perfect tonal pitch. Each word a neat, single syllable. Women held each other’s hands. Men walked with an arm slung over another’s shoulder. But men and women did not touch. There were many billboards, but none advertised American corporate brands. The streets were free of McDonalds and Coca-Cola. Starbucks didn’t exist. A few teenagers wore jeans, but otherwise the government’s isolationism left Burma as one of the least Westernized countries in the world.

There was a surprising amount ethnic diversity, not only the round-faced Bamar people, who look a cross between an Indian and a Thai. There were many dark faced Indian Hindus and turbaned Muslims, and some light-skinned northerners with high cheekbones, looking like Japanese models. I knew ethic divisions plagued the country, and that the longest civil war in history continued in the far north, with the Kachin Independence Army fighting to keep control of the smuggling routes near the Chinese and Indian borders.

A few hundred yards away from the hotel, I passed a building guarded by a high-wall topped with barbed-wire. Above the building was a green billboard with white writing in both English and Burmese:

TRUE PATRIOTISM

•It is very important for everyone of the nation wherever he lives to cultivate strong union spirit.

•Only Union Spirit is the true patriotism our nationalities will have to uphold and safeguard.

•Traitors, acting as stooges for foreign elements, must be instilled with Union Spirit or be crushed.

Using the tall pagoda point as a guide, I kept walking and walking. Sticky with sweat and feeling light pangs of hunger, I finally arrived at the Shwedagon, stopping to wipe my face with my shirt and gaze up at the golden pagoda rising majestically into the sky. This was it, what pulled me here, this great icon of Burmese Buddhism. Do you know anything about the Shwedagon? This is the legend: The first people who the Buddha met after his Enlightenment were Burmese merchants, two brothers named Taphussa and Bhallika. They offered the Blessed One rice cakes and honey, and in return the Buddha gave them eight of his hairs. The merchants took the hairs back to Burma and enshrined them on a sacred hill in the oldest area of Rangoon, which was then known as Dagon. A stupa made of gold covered the relics.