Learning about Buddhism

As many of you know, I am currently in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.  I have started a side business here of teaching and tutoring English.  I have three clients and enjoy all three of them thoroughly.  Two clients are businesses with about 5-9 young business pros attending each class and the other is a primary school where I teach for 4 hours on Thursday’s usually (except this week and last, testing and a holiday).

Yesterday was a Buddhist holiday called The Full Moon Day of Thadingyut.  I talked to one of my business groups on Saturday about their plans for the holiday (most businesses took off Monday-Wednesday, Monday was a Muslim holiday and Wednesday was a Buddhist holiday so they just combined them).  They said they were staying in Yangon because that’s where their families lived.  I asked what they planned on doing during their time off.

They informed me they would pray to their elders.  Elders in Buddhism refer to parents, grandparents, teachers and Buddha himself and I think I’m forgetting someone.  They pray to them for forgiveness and the elders wish them peace, love and freedom among other things.  They give gifts to their elders as well during this time.  I asked them if the elders gave them gifts in return and they replied only to their small children, usually a small amount of money or something.

One of my business pros told me she would pray to me…and I would give her money.  We all had a good laugh at that, especially when I told her I would give her children money.  She’s 23 and doesn’t have a husband or children and doesn’t want either for a long time apparently.  I told her I would give her children 5,000 kyat each ($5 basically) and she replied that she would have 20 children so I would give her $100.  I said sure, but it will cost much more to feed 20 mouths!

Today at my second business client, I had printed out some discussion questions on Buddhism, Islam and Jesus.  It was an hour and a half long class and we didn’t even get through all the Buddhism questions.  It was fascinating to learn about their belief system.  There are several types of Buddhism which I was unaware of for starters.  The typical Buddha statue we think of in the west isn’t even the one Myanmar people use as a statue.  One of the questions on the discussion sheet that I downloaded off a site asked ‘Why is Buddha fat?’  They all asked me why that question was on there.  That’s when I learned about different types of Buddhism.

They all told me about a famous monk in Myanmar in particular.  I can’t recall his name, but in 1985 he won the Guinness world record for reciting the most pages from memory of anyone.  It was an ancient language that has since mostly died off.  He recited from memory 16,000 pages!!!  I’ve never even heard of anything close to that!  I know some Jewish rabbis are known for memorizing the Pentateuch but I don’t think that’s even close to 16,000 pages!  And in Christianity we’re lucky if we remember a short verse or two!  I’ve heard some people say they have memorized the Sermon on the Mount which is 3 chapters and I’ve been impressed by that.  We got nothin’ on this monk back in the day!

Anyway, it was so encouraging to listen and learn from them about their religion and beliefs.  I learned so much from them tonight.  I’ll of course share my own beliefs when I share about Jesus and get their opinions on Islam, but I really enjoyed our first day of conversation about this stuff!  Maybe if we all just listened to each other we’d get a lot further??