Chapter 18. Revolution of the Spirit. From the book `Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy' by Gustaaf Houtman

Closely related to freedom from fear, Aung San Suu Kyi refers to a ‘revolution of the spirit’ [sit\Dåt\ eta\lHn\er:] in her speeches and writing. The earliest and central reference to this concept is to be found in the speech ‘Freedom from Fear’ (Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought). Nevertheless, it is a much broader concept than freedom from fear, for it advocates striving more broadly for spiritual perfection. I have already introduced the concept of political revolution, constituted in terms of a revolution that involves uprooting mental defilements such as greed, and here I wish to elicit more specifically what these senior NLD leaders make of it.

Aung San Suu Kyi's revolution of the spirit

In the essay Freedom from Fear she argued that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not have the reach that it should have, as it can not be guaranteed by the international community while there are governments ‘whose authority is founded on coercion rather than the mandate of the people’ and while there are interest groups which ‘place short-term profits above long-term peace and prosperity’. As long as this persists, ‘there will continue to be arenas of struggle where victims of oppression have to draw on their own inner resources to defend their inalienable rights as members of the human family’. Here Aung San Suu Kyi made a close association between the ‘revolution of the spirit’ and the struggle for democracy, for she says that ‘a people who would build a nation in which strong democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear’ [S8]. In other words, the struggle for democracy is a struggle to cleanse one's own mind, it is a revolution of the spirit.

However, the revolution of the spirit is more than just this, for it also means ‘perfection’. Spiritual values must accompany material advancement: ‘at the root of human responsibility is the concept of perfection,[1] the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments’. To cultivate truth, justice and compassion, they cannot therefore ‘be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power’.

In her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize speech, presented by her son Alexander Aris on 10 December 1991, this concept of ‘revolution of the spirit’ is reiterated. However, by this time the Gandhi and Aung San element of ‘fearlessness’ is absent, and it more specifically uses the Buddhist discourse drawn from ‘In the quest for democracy’. Her son reminds the audience that his mother is not just a ‘political dissident’ who ‘strives by peaceful means for democratic change’, but ‘we should remember that her quest is basically spiritual’ [S1].

The speech, after asserting that in the military regime ‘there are those to whom the present policies of fear and repression are abhorrent, violating as they do the most sacred principles of Burma's Buddhist heritage’, it much more clearly delineates the spiritual revolution as a Buddhist quest for enlightenment.

Between the 1990 Freedom of Thought and the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize speeches, which were delivered only five months apart, this spiritual revolution concept has undergone a noticeable shift from a ‘universalist’ cross-cultural concept (Gandhi and Aung San), towards more specifically universalising those practices and perfections (parami)permittingattainment of Buddhahood, in which enlightenment is combined with compassion for the world. Though both may be characterised as ways of overcoming fear,

(c) ILCAA 1999 - Gustaaf Houtman. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia & Africa Monograph Series 33, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999, ISBN 4-87297-748-3, p301/392

This shift may be understood in several ways. First, it may be understood in terms of the chronology of events. In May 1991, just prior to the Freedom of Thought speech, the regime forced the NLD to drop all leaders from the party, allowing only three ex-military commanders as leaders. This was a low point in NLD politics, and firm and final evidence of the regime's total disregard for election results. Her attitude was more confrontational then, than after five months of reflection, when she had to rethink her political strategy in terms of a longer-term ideology.

Second, ‘fearlessness’ fits differently in the context of the different prizes. The Sakharov Prize was given for freedom of thought in which fearlessness is a positive attribute. However, in the context of a Peace Prize ‘fearlessness’ is not necessarily a positive attribute, for the same quality can give rise to war. The metaphor Aung San Suu Kyi used for fearless resistance is that of the ‘glass splinter’, which ‘with its sharp glinting power to defend itself against hands that try to crush’ is a comparatively violent metaphor. Buddhist enlightenment, on the other hand, is attractive for its emphasis on non-violent means of changing attitudes and making conquests.

However, a third explanation may be found in her assertion that the revolution of the spirit involves a change of mental processes by means of specific homegrown solutions. In this respect, the Gandhi concept of fearlessness, since it uses a ‘Hindu’ technique, is not adequate as a primary role model for Burma. Nor is, for that matter, Aung San's, which was not always a non-violent fearlessness in his military career.

Some support the idea that Aung San Suu Kyi revised her views in order to develop an ideology that may persist in the long-term. Philip Kraeger in his essay ‘Peaceful Struggle for Human Rights in Burma’, attempts to relate this concept to Aung San Suu Kyi's awareness that ‘continuity of vision’ and ‘ideational content’ is an important component of a revolution. He suggests she may have feared that similar discontinuities would take place, as they did between the older generation of revolutionaries. Saya San depended on charisma, and harked back to kingship in ‘mundane knowledge’ style, and the newer student-type leaders, such as Aung San, looked forward and attempted to give leadership a more modern intellectual framework (though translated by Kodawhmaing and Ba Maw). Unlike India, where ‘political and intellectual leadership often coincided’ and where ‘there had been an uninterrupted stream of able leaders from the last years of the nineteenth century until independence’, in Burma the development was ‘more fractured’. In this context, she writes in her analysis of intellectual life in Burma and India: ‘actions without ideational content lose their potency as soon as the situation, which called for them, ceases to be valid. A series of pragmatic moves unconnected by a continuity of vision cannot be expected to sustain a long-term movement.’[3]

Kraeger's argument, though interesting and relevant, does not incorporate the perspectives added by the revolution of the spirit as an internal cultural debate. In Voice of hope, Aung San Suu Kyi describes a ‘true revolution’ as going beyond a change in the material world, and as a change ‘of the spirit’. Thus, the ‘struggle for democracy’ is based on ‘spiritual values’, ‘values that are different to those you have lived by before’, which inevitably change peoples' mentality [S2]. This notion also exists in her essay ‘In quest for democracy’, where the quest for democracy is ‘part of the unceasing human endeavour to prove that the spirit of man can transcend the flaws of his own nature’ [S1] [Y18].

Furthermore, the call for a ‘revolution of the spirit’ is necessitated by a lack of room to manoeuvre in the political and social sphere.

This idea is given more substance in her essay ‘Towards a true refuge’, which she presented at Elizabeth House, Oxford, where the Refugee Studies Programme is located. Here, she identifies with the many Burmese and other refugees against the hunger of repressive regimes for power and wealth, which can only be countered by developing their inner spiritual resources, for ‘there only remain to sustain them the values of their cultural and spiritual inheritance’ and ‘the great majority of the world's refugees are seeking

sanctuary from situations rendered untenable by a dearth of humanity and wisdom’.[5]

She proceeds to write of a ‘dream of a society ruled by loving-kindness, reason and justice’. The ‘revolution of the spirit’, though in many contexts conceived of as Buddhist, has loving-kindness in common with every religion [E23].

In a more general sense, however, the concept of a ‘spiritual revolution’ may be understood as making an opening for free spiritual practice in a state regulating every aspect of peoples’ lives. As she says, ‘the authorities accuse us of using religion for political purposes, perhaps because this is what they themselves are doing, or perhaps because they cannot recognize the multi-dimensional nature of man as a social being. Our right to freedom of worship has become threatened by the desire of the authorities to curtail the activities of our party’.[6]

Thus, given the lack of fronts on which she can fight the regime with any success, the spiritual sphere is a very good beginning for it elicits the broadest support with the Burmese people and of all battles, it is a battle that can be won. Whether this can translate into a pragmatic government capable of handling the complex political and economic problems is a different matter that I cannot address at this juncture.

The concept of ‘spiritual revolution’ is extended by the idea of ‘spiritual and intellectual reconciliation’ that she sought with the SLORC, which is the ‘reconciliation between different ideas’ [Y3]. Tin U put it that democracy can be attained under the SLORC if they demonstrate ‘kindness’ and ‘compassion’. In his view, this is why ‘Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has called our movement for democracy a “revolution of the spirit.”’ [S4]

To evoke this spiritual revolution we must again draw attention to Pandita's preaching about reconciliation with the regime through right speech supported by vipassana practice [R2]. This revolution does not start with one’s adversary, but with the development in oneself of ‘inner spiritual strength’ and ‘spiritual steadiness’ which helps ‘to shore up … spiritual powers’ of pro-democracy activists [S5][S6].

Tin U's spiritual revolution

Tambiah once wrote that the ‘passage from violence to righteousness is problematic for all actual rulers’. The Buddha had admitted to violent rule during his lives prior to his spiritual conquest while carrying out his role as a universal ruler (cakavatti), for ‘the wheel of righteousness conquers more effectively than the scepter of danda [punishment]’. [7] Asoka and Anawratha had a history of violence before they turned to Buddhism. Ultimately, the people appeal to the military regime to become part of the ‘spiritual revolution’ by practising vipassana and developing metta. To repeat Tin U's words:

Tin U began his practice of vipassana during his first prison term.[8] When he was released from prison in 1980, he became a monk for two years[9] at the Thathana Yeiktha in Rangoon, the chief centre in the vipassana tradition of the Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–82). I first met Tin U when he was a monk, while I was engaged in my fieldwork in the centre between 1981–82. Why does Tin U so firmly hope for this change? Is it because he himself has been part of this ‘spiritual revolution’? Once he was on the side of the military regime, but the change brought about by vipassana brought him into the fold of the democrats. In response to the question how he, who was once in charge of Ne Win's military and participated in the repression of the Burmese people, could now join hands with the democratic movements, he says

It is worth recounting in some detail the moment at which the revolution of the spirit took place within him – his conversion from soldier to monk to democrat as the result of his experiences in prison. This began with his inability to cope with the humiliation of confinement that ultimately expressed itself in physical illness.

The suffering then prompted him to find a way out, which was suggested by the satipatthana method of the Mahasi Sayadaw.

Subsequently, he practised in tranquillity, until he joined the democratic movement.

One of the principal elements of the ‘revolution of the spirit’ is the overcoming of the habit of fear and apathy, and as already argued above, this may be done by cultivating metta and attaining the habit of mindfulness through mental culture [S7]. Ultimately, however, one of the most effective ways of accomplishing this revolution of the spirit, is by uprooting the defilements in the way the revolution concept was originally conceived (see chapter 11).

In the Indian prisons, it was the authorities who experienced the first change as a result of the revolution of the spirit, before the prisoners.

[1] This concept of perfection is, in turn, closely tied to her view of Aung San (see previous note). However, it is also related to the concept of perfection for attainment of Buddhahood.

[2] ASSK (1991:174, 238). Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, though mentioning Gandhi as a role model for Aung San Suu Kyi, also quoted more extensively from the Buddhist ‘In the Quest for Democracy’ in his speech on the same date. Distorting her views, newspaper articles in Burma have heavily criticised Aung San Suu Kyi for suggesting that ordinary people can become Buddhas ‘in this life’.

[3] ASSK (1995:128).

[4] ASSK (1997a:50–51). See also [S3].

[5] ASSK (1991:247).

[6] ASSK (1997a:199).

[7] Tambiah (1976:45-46).

[8] For Tin U's own account of his prison experiences see ASSK (1997b:228–29) as cited below.

[9] See ASSK (1997b:229).

[10] ASSK (1997b:209).