Sharing: Hello Sayadaw! Foreigners who have come here as volunteers, have all different motivations; intentions; background; personal habits and practices. We come here and we find it is different from our expectations. So, we want to change things and end up doing completely different practices than what we intended to. People here have behaviours that we feel wrong and we don’t like it. But hopefully with your presence it will take less time for them to change and improve and to understand what is good from what is bad. Thank you!

– “Now this is the right time for teaching in Thabarwa center, both in Myanmar and English. There are also Vietnamese. Now we cannot go anywhere, we cannot do everything, so we can emphasize practicing meditation. There will be more teaching here also. To be clear about keeping precepts: in theory we can not say “”killing is good””. We must say: no killing, stop killing. This is in theory, but in practice, they are killing animals for food, we can not stop. We always say “”no stealing””, but here also, in the country stealing even from the government (they are stealing properties also). Because of the actual condition, we can not say: “”stealing is good””. We must say: “”Stop stealing! No stealing!””. Theory is theory; practice is practice. The real condition and the theory we are using may not be the same all the time. So also we can not say: “”Sexual misconduct is good!””, we must say it is not. Even if we can not stop now, but we can not accept it. The theory may not change because of the present condition, but in the future the practise will change, the theory will not change in the meditation center.

In the society the law and regulations may change. But in the meditation center, the same theory, even if not much successful practice. There will be drinking and smoking, but the theory will be the same, even if people are drinking and smoking we can not change the condition, but wrong action, bad action – bad result, for sure. When there is time, the people who are doing what is bad, breaking precepts will suffer from bad consequences for sure. At that time they may not be able to do what is bad. This is the natural law. That’s why we just need to endure whatever good or bad. We just need to be able to be using-only, whatever good or bad experience. In this way we can save merits, we can survive, we can continue doing good deeds. This is competition, like, now the boxing or other sports contest stopped because of the virus. But here in Thabarwa center, we rely on doing good deeds, that’s why no need to stop. We continue competition between good and bad, right and wrong. That’s why in the long run we’re sure to get success.

For Myanmar people, there are the same conditions as for the international volunteers. In the beginning, no many meditators, not many volunteers, not many keeping-precepts. But there are competitions, there are battles, fighting between good and bad. We don’t give up. Even if we have no chance to get success, because of doing good deeds continuously in the worst condition, finally we get success among the Myanmar people. This is the same for international volunteers. Some people will give up and go out of the center, but more new volunteers, meditators will join in this center and there will be fighting all the time for sure. Finally the merits, good deeds will get success for sure. This is the right theory, we just need to practice. When we can practise, we can understand for sure.

There are over 100 Thabarwa centers around the world. There are the same activities. If we don’t give up doing good deeds, we are sure to get success. There will be many difficulties for sure.”