King Mindon transferred the capital from Ava to Mandalay, the last royal capital before the British
annexation of the whole of Myanmar
in 1886. In the early years of his reign, Mindon strove to improve monastic
discipline. Although a system of official investigation of complaints relating
to bhikkhus’ misdemeanours existed, each king had to take his own initiative in
re-establishing order in the Sangha.
Mindon
found that the attitude of many members of the Sagha to their code of conduct
was exceedingly lax. He therefore wanted all bhikkhus of his dominions to take
a vow of obedience to the Vinaya rules in front of a Buddha image. He consulted
the Sangharāja who convened an assembly of Mahātheras,
the Thudhamma Council. As opinions
regarding the vow differed, the primate’s disciple, Paññāsāmi, had to deliver a
religious address in support of the bhikkhus at the time of ordination and that
if the kind sincerely desired to improve the discipline in the Order, he should
be supported. All agreed, and the vow was prescribed.
The
greatest challenge King Mindon had to face as a Buddhist monarch was
undoubtedly his duty to look after the spiritual welfare of his subjects not
only in his own dominions, but also in the parts of Myanmar occupied by the British.
Moreover, he and many of the leading Sayadaws
of his court were increasingly aware that the British were only waiting for an
occasion to annex the whole of Myanmar.
Mindon’s army clearly would not be
able to stand up to the might of the Indian colonial government. Therefore, it
was not only important to support religious activities in the occupied
territories but it was also essential to prepare the religion for the time when
it would have to survive without the support of a Buddhist monarch.
The British
had made it clear at the outset that they would not take over the traditional
role of the Myanmar
kings, that of protector of the Sāsana. The new masters’ religion,
Christianity, rapidly gained influence through the missionary schools were popular
because their education provided much assistance in securing a job and favour
with the colonisers. Christian religious education was a compulsory part of
their curriculum.
After the
conquest of Lower Myanmar, many bhikkhus had fled north in order to remain
within the jurisdiction of the Myanmar
kings. Many monasteries in British Myanmar were left without an incumbent and
whole villages were therefore bereft of the opportunity to receive religious
and general education.
King Mindon, aware of this situation,
tried to convince bhikkhus to return to Lower Myanmar
in order to serve their people. The king’s efforts proved successful and many
bhikkhus returned to their places of origin. But soon it became clear that
without the king’s ecclesiastic officials to control the discipline of the
Sangha, many bhikkhus developed a careless attitude towards their code of
discipline.
The Okpo
Sayadaw, from Okpo between Yangon and Pago, had stopped many bhikkhus on their
way to Upper Myanmar when the movement of
bhikkhus out of the conquered territories was at its peak around 1855. He
assembled the bhikkhus around himself teaching that the Sangha needed no
protection from the secular power if it observed the rules of the Vinaya
strictly.
His monastery was the birth place
of a movement of strict monastic discipline. He also emphasized that mental
volition was what really mattered in the religion of the Buddha and that acts
of worship done with an impure intention were worthless. He obviously felt that
much of the Buddhist practice had become a ritual and that the essence had been
lost.
In addition to this, however, his
movement also challenged the authority of the king’s Council of Sayadaws, the
leaders of the unified Thudhamma sect, when he declared their ordination was
invalid due to a teachnicality. As a result, he took the higher ordination anew
together with his followers.
The Okpo
Sayadaw was not the only critic of the Thudhamma Sayadaws. In Upper
Myanmar, the Ngettwin Sayadaw criticized many religious practices
and maintained that a radical reassessment of religious teachings was
necessary.
The Ngettwin Sayadaw was also a
source of inspiration for the Okpo Sayadaw and other reformers. He had been the
teacher of Mindon’s chief queen and had also advised the king on many
occasions. Interestingly, he was a driving force in a movement in Upper Myanmar that wanted to return to the fundamentals
of the religion, but more radically than the Okpo Sayadaw.
The Ngettwin Sayadaw, together with
many other bhikkhus, left the royal city and went to live in the forest near
Sagaing. He started to preach that meditation was essential for all bhikkhus
and he required an aspirant to novicehood to prove that he had practiced
meditation before he would ordain him.
All the bhikkhus around him had to
spend a period of the day in meditation and he emphasized that meditation was
of much greater importance than learning. He advised lay people to stop making
offerings of flowers, fruits, and candles to Buddha images, but to meditate
regularly on the Uposatha days.
Of course, his instructions that
offerings to Buddha images were fruitless and merely dirtied the places of
worship, caused considerable unhappiness with the traditional Thudhamma Council
and presumably with many ordinary people. However, the Ngettwin Sayadaw never
strove to form a different sect by holding a separate ordination as did the
Okpo Sayadaw.
His reforms were within the
community and within a Buddhist society that was presided over by a king. The
Okpo Sayadaw had no place for royalty in his view of the world and did not
hesitate to confront the system that was still alive, though obviously doomed.
Two other
important Sayadaws of King Mindon’s reign deserve mention: the Shwegyin Sayadaw
and the Thingazar Sayadaw. The Shwegyin Sayadaw also tried to reform the Sangha
and his movement is still very much alive and highly respected in Myanmar today.
He had studied under the Okpo Sayadaw, but when he returned to his native
Shwegyin near Shwebo in Upper Myanmar, he
avoided controversy in never rebelling against the Thudhamma Council.
He introduced two new rules for his
bhikkhus, that they must not chew betel and consume tobacco after noon. He also
maintained that the Sangha must regulate itself without help from the
authority, but he never doubted the validity of traditional ordination
ceremony. He wrote 29 Buddhist texts.
The
Thingazar Sayadaw was one of the most popular of the great Sayadaws of his
time. He was also part of the movement to return to the basics of the teachings
and greatly emphasized the importance of practice as opposed to mere
scholarship. Though he was greatly honoured by the king and made a member of
the Thudhamma Council, he preferred spending long periods in solitude in the
forest.
In the numerous monasteries built
for him by the royal family and the nobility of the country, he insisted on the
practice of the purest of conduct in accordance with the Vinaya. However, e did
not involve himself in disputes with the extreme reformers or the Thudhamma
council. He became very popular through the humorous tales he told in sermons
preached in his frequent travels up and down the country. (Roger Bischoff, Buddhism in Myanmar, page, 59, 63)
