Everything Is Broken (21 page)

I was in Burma not long after Khin Nyunt was placed under house arrest by his colleagues and was amazed by how quickly all remnants of the general’s existence were removed. Photographs of the general had been excised from the Defense Services Museum along with any references to him. Plaques detailing the many donations and renovations he oversaw at pagodas around the country disappeared. It was even thought that the personal jewels he once placed on the
hti
at the top of the Shwedagon Pagoda had been taken down, thereby severing any vestiges of a quasi-spiritual source of strength. Khin Nyunt, once one of the most influential men in the ruling junta, had been effectively vanished.

The Burmese phrase
thoke thin ye
, which means “to wipe clean or eliminate,” is used to evoke the totality with which rivals and pretenders to the throne must be eradicated.
Thoke thin ye
can be likened to pulling a weed out at the roots so that no strands are left to grow anew. It is a vanishing so complete that it is almost as if nothing had ever existed.

 

 

 

MY EFFORTS
to understand the Burmese junta required a significant amount of homework on Burmese superstitions. Astrology is taken seriously by the ruling generals. When Ne Win’s family was brought down, their astrologer was also put in prison. Likewise, Khin Nyunt’s downfall saw the arrest of his favored fortune-teller, Bodaw Than Hla. Among Than Shwe’s primary seers are an elderly nun and a boy visionary who also happens to be his grandson. It is often said that Than Shwe does not make any major decisions without first consulting his soothsayers.

There are a great variety of specialists available in Burma for those who dabble with the occult. There are alchemist monks, shamans who can conjure up love potions or fatal poisons, and practitioners of black magic known as
auk-lan saya
(literally, a “specialist of the lower path,” or “one who has chosen the way of darkness”).

One of the most popular forms of magic, practiced by many, is
yadaya
. Similar to voodoo,
yadaya
are ritualistic acts prescribed by an astrologer to prevent bad luck. Each
yadaya
is particular to a person’s date of birth and the type of calamity that needs to be averted. Pocket books can be purchased at pagodas detailing simple
yadaya
for everyday challenges such as minor illnesses, school exams, or the construction of a new house. If, for instance, a person born on Sunday is suffering from an incurable stomachache, he or she might be advised to offer nine candles and nine flowers to a Buddha image. Especially knotty problems might call for a certain species of flower, a designated pagoda, and a specific date or number of repetitions.

It was just after September 2007 that Kyaing Kyaing, the wife of the senior general, was said to have performed a
yadaya
ritual in which she circumambulated the Shwedagon Pagoda with a dog and a pig. I have never quite been able to fathom the precise significance of the animals in this odd ceremony. One theory was that they had been chosen to weaken Aung San Suu Kyi’s magnetic hold over the people of Burma. The first letter of the word for dog (
khwe
) signifies Monday, and the first letter of the word for a pig (
wet
) signifies Wednesday. As Aung San Suu Kyi was born on a Tuesday, the day in between these two days, walking the animals around in a circle symbolically binds her until she is unable to move and is therefore powerless.

Another theory had it that the ritual was conducted to reverse a prophetic saying in which a running dog and pig represent cowardly people fleeing from trouble. By leading the animals, the first lady could negate the effect of perceived troubles faced by her family and would no longer need to flee. In some versions of the story, Kyaing Kyaing actually sits astride the pig and rides it around the pagoda. Whatever the rationale, everyone I spoke with agreed it was dark magic, and that it meant the ruling family must be very afraid.

Pho Yaza, a Burmese scholar and expert in shamanistic spells, once tried to explain to me the connected practice of
ket kin
, the form of magic to which some attribute Kyaing Kyaing’s midnight dog walking at the Shwedagon.
Ket kin
is premised on the idea that each letter in the Burmese alphabet is connected to a day of the week that, in turn, indicates a number and a planet. If the correct occult rituals are conducted, letters and words can influence the planets and the fate of human beings.

Ket kin
was thought to have driven broad-reaching public policy in 2006, when an order was issued for people to plant physic nuts, a shrub with toxic seeds that goes by the scientific name of
Jatropha curcas
. According to state media, physic nut oil could be used as biodiesel fuel and would help the country meet its own energy needs. Mass plantings were conducted along roadsides and around schools and government buildings. Many townships were ordered to produce a required amount of physic nuts and had to either cultivate scrubland to fill the quota or replant existing arable land. Not only do the physic nuts provide fuel, the authorities assured, but the branches can be used as firewood, crushed physic nut makes a wonderful fertilizer, and the oil even has medicinal properties. Kyaing Kyaing herself, along with other wives of the top generals, oversaw a physic nut planting event in Rangoon in which she ceremoniously watered a sapling as if she were anointing a new shrine at a favored pagoda.

To date, the physic nuts have failed to reap the miraculous rewards promised, and few people harbored any delusions that there had been agricultural or economic experts involved in the great physic nut push.

In Burmese, the physic nut is known as
kyet suu
. The first letter of
kyet
represents Monday and the first letter of
suu
represents Tuesday. If the last two parts of Aung San Suu Kyi’s name, Suu Kyi (an oft-used shortened version) were reversed they would achieve the same numerical and planetary sequence as
kyet suu
. So the mass planting of
kyet suu
throughout the country neutralizes her power by figuratively reversing her name. Pho Yaza explained all this to me with a disdain that implied hardly anyone really believed this mumbo jumbo could ever do any damage to Aung San Suu Kyi’s power base.

Essential to the practice of
yadaya
is numerology. Burma’s calendar is filled with numerologically significant dates, such as the start of the nationwide uprising on August 8, 1988 (a date known as
shit-lay-lone
, or “the four eights”). For the regime, however, nine seems to be a luckier number and many dates relevant to the generals are coincidentally divisible by nine:

A British reporter who covered Burma during and after the 1988 uprising timed his visits to Burma with what he called “power days” that were divisible by the number nine in order to have a better chance of catching news events. Though it wasn’t a fool-proof system, he said it worked as well as any method used to analyze what could happen next in Burma.

Quite a few people I spoke with after September 2007 commented on how the crackdown against the monks was largely completed by September 27, 2007 (a most auspicious date that can be rewritten as 9/9/9).

In Burma, a person’s date of birth is essential to diagnosing problems and charting a pathway through life. Working with this key to unlocking an individual’s future, astrologers can help people decide what day to get married and even whom to get married to. It is thought by some that the date officially given as Than Shwe’s birth date (February 2, 1933) is not correct. Burmese leaders have often kept their birth dates secret for reasons of personal safety; lethal magic can be practiced against you if your enemies have this key to work with.

I know a keen amateur astrologer in Burma who works, not with palm-leaf manuscripts and cabbalistic squares, but with a computer program through which he calculates the astrological outcomes of political events. Like the reporter, he has found following the astrological forecast of the senior general a fairly reliable way of understanding decisions made by the regime. To plot the course of the general’s life, it helps to have an accurate date of birth, and he methodically sifted through the calendar and times until finally arriving at one that matched up to significant events in Than Shwe’s life. For the record, the date he decided on is April 1, 1932 (6:00 A.M.).

It didn’t matter how much I read or how many people I talked to about the practice of magic, there was always a puzzling element that defied explanation. The new Buddha image at the Shwedagon Pagoda was a case in point.

A visit to the Shwedagon is often part of the itinerary for visiting dignitaries and, in recent years, government minders have led their guests to a new shrine placed on the pagoda platform—a sculpture of the Buddha hewn from a large hunk of white jade streaked with emerald green. Various Asian leaders have knelt in front of this image, and worshippers have included the United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who was photographed bowing before it with his hands held together in prayer, and the UN undersecretary-general Ibrahim Gambari, pictured grasping the knees of the cross-legged image and gazing up at its face with a happy grin.

Curiously, the Buddha image does not conform to any traditional style or period in Burmese art history. The image is seated and wears a golden headdress studded with nine large rubies. It has a short neck and a broad and rather pugnacious face. Buddha images usually depict the Buddha’s serenity and grace, but this one seems to highlight less flattering features. On closer inspection, the flat nose and hooded eyes bear an uncanny likeness to the country’s ruler, Senior General Than Shwe.

The resemblance may be pure coincidence or another extravagant
yadaya
to secure the general’s future. Or, it may just be a really good joke that keeps the boys in Naypyidaw amused and provides plenty of photo ops for ridiculing foreign leaders.

 

 

 

THAN SHWE’S PAGODA
is visible from all over Naypyidaw. In keeping with monarchical tradition, it is a suitably enormous religious edifice constructed to provide the new capital with a spiritual heart. Known as the Uppatasanti, the pagoda is a replica of the sacred Shwedagon in Rangoon. The proportions of the new pagoda are almost identical to its ancient model, but the Uppatasanti was initially reported to be one deferential foot shorter than the Shwedagon. A
New Light of Myanmar
article, however, stated that the pagoda was 325 feet high, which would actually make it very slightly
taller
than the original.

It was early evening when I visited the Uppatasanti during my trip to Naypyidaw. Floodlights were trained on the recently completed pagoda, and it was an impressive sight. The fresh gilding was lustrous and unearthly against the deepening indigo of the night sky. Endless plains rolled out around the pagoda toward dark horizons that were lit up by shards of lightning, heralding the approach of a storm.

Unlike the Shwedagon, the Uppatasanti is hollow and visitors can enter the cavernous interior. Not all of the decorations had been completed, and female workers lay on bamboo scaffolding with their faces pressed close to newly hewn carvings as they used toothbrushes to gently polish the bas-relief sculptures in the entrance archways. High up on the green walls of the inner dome, the Buddha’s principal teachings are displayed in both Burmese and English. Etched onto golden plaques are the Noble Truth of Suffering and the Eightfold Path, which state that all life is suffering and counsels that solace can be found in correct conduct that includes right intention, right speech, and right action.

The construction of a pagoda, especially one of this size and stature, is an extended affair laden with ritual. The process begins with the choice of an auspicious site and ceremonies to purify the land. Foundation bricks made of gold and jade are symbolically laid at the center of the site, and sacred relics have to be acquired and enshrined within the edifice. Each step, including the actual construction, must be conducted on an opportune date at a time calculated by an astrologer.

The Uppatasanti was built in keeping with these rituals, only some of which were well documented. According to the
New Light of Myanmar
, each of the ruling generals made offerings of sacred items to be enshrined at the heart of the pagoda. Among those provided by Than Shwe and his wife was a sacred tooth relic of the Buddha obtained from China. Vice Senior General Maung Aye and his wife also donated a sacred tooth relic, from Sri Lanka. (Presumably, both were replicas, as the limited number of tooth relics believed to be authentic have been accounted for.) The published list also made vague mention of “other offertories,” which left many to wonder what else may lie beneath the Uppatasanti.

When the body of one of Burma’s most revered monks, Thamanya Sayadaw, disappeared from its resting place in April 2008, there were allegations that the generals were behind the heist. The details of the case were bewildering. One night, men wearing military uniforms stormed into the chamber where the venerated monk had been laid in rest since his death in 2003. They smashed his glass tomb and removed his body. A few days later the monastery received an anonymous message that the Sayadaw’s body had been cremated and his ashes could be picked up at a nearby village. His holy remains were duly collected and have since been securely locked away, but the case was never solved.

It is believed that when the corpse of an enlightened monk is cremated, sacred crystals or jewel-like remnants of his earthly form will be found among the ashes. These relics are called
dat-taw
and are worshipped by followers as a direct link to the deceased monk. Only a truly enlightened being, known as a
yahanda
, can leave behind such relics, and only a very few monks ever reach such spiritual heights. To be a
yahanda
is to no longer be influenced by the illusions of material life on this earth. It is the last stage of being, and upon death the
yahanda
attains Nirvana, or eternal enlightenment.