Buddhist Monastery

Thabarwa (BURMA)

When the first Covid 19 lock down began on March 2020, halfway across the world, I started my lockdown in a very special place, a charity in Myanmar called Thabarwa.

This charity became my home for 5 months and this was my experience !

Contents:

🟧 Intro

🟨 Activities

🟩 Best Moments

🟦 Challenges

🟪 Summary

Introduction

Thabarwa is an international NGO with its headquarters just outside Yangon. A self-sustaining and (relatively) autonomous community existing apart from the government, and what feels like the world. A bubble where ‘reality’ is more of a concept than a given fact.

The premise of these centres isn’t easy to explain, because it’s simple: they accept anybody in need of help. Further words that can help to understand their essence include; sharing, cooperation, unconditional help, awareness, and love.

Cliché and hard to believe, I know, but it’s true.

You walk into what you have been told is a Buddhist Monastery and you wonder ‘am I in the right place?’. It feels more like a busy village with; kids running barefoot, stray dogs everywhere and bikes zooming past you. Then you hear there are two hospitals, an orphanage, a dog shelter and hundreds of shelters for the elderly and you realise you really are somewhere special.

The head monk (Sayadaw) was a businessman until 2007, when he became enlightened, renounced his possessions, and the material world and founded this charity, which now has centres worldwide: from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles, Italy and Taiwan.

This experience taught me humility. I realized that my life as a white, privileged schoolgirl from a little town in England was just one (extremely fortunate) version of reality and that, throughout the world, people's lived experience on this planet varies immensely.

Activities

Whilst the rest of the world locked down, this charity carried on; with patients to be fed, monks collecting donations and markets open and bustling. It is hard to convey the respect people have for Buddhism in the East, as Western culture is so fundamentally different. But without this culture of respect, I would not have had a home here. Thanks to the astonishing generosity of the Burmese, I was able to stay and was given breakfast/lunch, a bed, clean water and electricity, all from the donations of surrounding villagers.

Despite being the youngest volunteer, I feel I truly made a difference and I am very proud of myself for that.

Below are some activities in the life of volunteering :)

• Yoga • Meditation • Caring for bed-bound patients; washing and feeding them • Diaper Party! • Patient Care • Painting benches • Leading workshops • Cleaning • Playing with kids • Drawing • Teaching English • Trying to get rid of bed bugs • Running • Playing chess • Laughing • Working out • Being mindful • Physiotherapy • Dhamma talks • Reading • Helping street dogs • Cooking . . . and more!

Best Moments

• Teaching my first yoga class!!!

• Chopping papaya and mango at sunset ☀️

• A monk saying I look like Angelina Jolie

• Making coconut rice balls (Moloebo in Burmese) with Sayalays (female nuns) and a young Burmese fella called Win

• Teaching Win English 📚 + learning some Spanish and singing a beautiful song called Cuatro Vientos

• Exploring derelict temples and wandering across a lone monk meditating with a candle

• Facilitating workshops called ‘sharing circles’ - a safe space where people could discuss their emotions and practice listening skills

• Celebrating my 19th Birthday ✨

• Helping one of my patients called NiNi go out for a walk early in the morning + her putting Tanika (a traditional plant-based sun cream) on my face

• Jammin in the kitchen with an amazingly gifted Colombian guitarist and volunteer - such good rhythm and energy

• Appreciating the really little things in life eg. being glad that water came out of the tap so I could clean my teeth

• Sitting and reading whilst drinking a coffee in the thunderstorms (it was monsoon season so rained every day at 2 pm) 🌦

• Watching sunsets with Stanley (my partner at Thabarwa)

• Shopping at the local supermarket for donations to the volunteer center (yoga mats/mugs/pillows/fairy lights/cleaning supplies)

• Winning an arm wrestle against a monk and getting a banana 🍌

• Practicing yoga and tai chi

• Taking myself on a retreat for 3 days with no phone, little food and lots of meditation (+ my smiley :)

• Amazing mantra singing - absolutely beautiful 💜

• Appreciating modern luxuries like toilet paper when visiting the city

• Buying a swing set for the garden area with money I raised on facebook – many of the kids had never been on a swing before!!

• Piggyback rides, playing with puppies and movie nights

• Group meetings and hugs with all volunteers – especially when someone was leaving as they would make a speech about their experience at Thabarwa

• Living in an international community of 40 volunteers with vastly different languages, values, beliefs, and experiences to me and making friends I will cherish for a lifetime

• Spending time with a lovely 12-year-old Burmese girl called Me Chen Yen who wants to be a dentist

• Electricity cutting out and being able to see the stars clearly from the top floor

• Learning to live in a different culture; to appreciate, respect and adopt a different way of life, faith and identity 🤍  

Challenges

Trying to describe this experience has proven more difficult than expected. I’ve procrastinated for so long. I’m sure you understand. When you experience events that truly reach the core of who you are, how you see yourself, and the world, it is indescribable.

Alongside this was my fear of over glamorizing this experience. There were many days where I was overwhelmed. Patients I cared for starved to death, they suffered immensely. You start to feel that it’s your fault, that there’s always more you could be doing. You become attached.

You question why the world is the way it is, how such inequality can exist and how none of it makes any sense. But through it all, the Buddhist philosophy of impermanence was rooted in everything. ‘Thabarwa’ itself means nature in Burmese. The mantra that change is inevitable and no matter what suffering you are experiencing, it will pass.

Directly experiencing these concepts through meditation (which I have written a blog post on, wink wink) allowed me to practice detachment and acceptance. To say these pillars (noble truths in Bhuddist lingo) helped me, would be an understatement. They have changed the course of my life and others.

The hardest factor for me actually was coming ‘home’. Adjusting to the western world, adjusting to the post covid world, and experiencing what can only describe as a spiritual crisis was challenging. I got counselling, I spent time reflecting, I accepted I will never see the world the same way again.

I cherish the memories and lessons I learnt from this beautiful, spiritual place.

Summary

I returned on August 5th (on the first relief flight back to Heathrow in months). I gave my Mum the biggest damn hug (she made me a sign and everything 😭). After almost 7 months in South East Asia, I was back.

Reflecting now, I realize this was a truly life-changing experience that challenged me, pushed me beyond every limit I knew, and made me a more compassionate, loving, and self-aware person.

I am forever grateful to every beautiful soul with whom I shared this experience and I fully intend to return to Thabarwa in the future 💛

Thank you, and thank you also for reading my story + the wee quote below! :)

‘Those who come back through the door in the wall will never be quite the same as those who went out. 

They will be wiser, but less sure, happier, but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging their ignorance, yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, 

of systematic reasoning to the simply unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend”

• Aldous Huxley