Insight Myanmar28 Jun 2021

The View From France

In more normal times, Thiri Nandar would look for a way to balance her love of music with a spiritual practice. But the challenges of this current crisis make it impossible to either enjoy her music, or pursue her meditation practice. Instead, she is an active member of La Communauté Birmane (CBF), where she works tirelessly to fundraise to support the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), as well as providing food and medicine to impoverished communities.

In France, her home away from home, she unsuccessfully tries to raise people’s awareness of the terrible situation in Myanmar, but most do not see the relevance of events taking place so far away to their own lives. And even then, it is hard enough discerning what the actual “news” really is. Independent journalism in Myanmar has been outlawed, with many reporters arrested or in hiding, so she is left to sift through military-sponsored fake news on one side, and the false hopes regularly shared by protesters on the other.

Thiri Nandar also has grave concerns with how the military is coopting Buddhism to keep themselves in power at all costs. This has had an especially disastrous impact on the younger generation, many of whom are now rejecting the Buddha’s teachings entirely, unable to separate them from the junta’s perversions. She is grateful that she was not raised to be a “traditional” Buddhist who faithfully participated in ceremonies and practices but with little understanding, instead benefitting from a personal monastic tutor who encouraged her to question every part of the teachings, while teaching her an ānāpāna meditation practice.

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