Your donation reaches the Sagaing Hills
Many meditators around the world have a special feeling when they recall their visit to the Sagaing Hills, located about 45 minutes outside of Mandalay. For centuries, this is the place where practice-minded monastics retreated away from cosmopolitan society and the orthodoxy of the Sangha to pursue their own meditation to their heart’s content. And even when visiting in the 21st century, the history of such truth-seekers purifying the depths of their minds seems to linger in the air, between the old teak rafters of the small monasteries, and in the very stones lining the walkways built into the hills. It is a place that few meditators who have visited will ever forget.
While Burmese history has not been easy by any stretch of the imagination, the monks and nuns now in the Sagaing Hills are living through difficult times indeed. Let us not forget that much of this area was a safe haven even during the hell days of World War II, as Burmese leaders had pleaded with the British to plan their operations around this sacred place.
Yet we have all seen the disregard and disgust with which the Tatmadaw treats its great monks and even the legacy of Dhamma within their country, and so soldiers have not paused when killing innocents throughout the Sagaing Division, and even in the downtown area of the Sagaing town, just a stone’s throw away from the famous Sitagu Academy, where the once highly respected Sitagu Sayadaw keeps his silence.
Above town, in the hills, “the Abode of the Holy Recluses” as the sign reminds us, monks and nuns are not yet facing direct violence, yet they are now confronting severe shortages of food and other supplies. For this reason, we transferred some of the donation fund to a trusted contact, who then rented and loaded up a full truck and has spent the last week delivering these goods to 20 monasteries and nunneries (listed below).
For anyone who has benefited from the Dhamma emanating from the Sagaing Hills, either directly or indirectly, please consider this critical time where the opportunity arises to give back to those who have given us meditators so much. The need is critical, and your funds now provide a lifeline so that these monastics can stay sheltered safely as the military continues its offensive against its own people.
List of Sagaing Hills monasteries and nunneries visited:
1. Pyin Nyar Man Dine nunnery
2. Yadana Theingi nunnery (1)
3. Yadana Theingi nunnery (2)
4. Sasana Gone Yi nunnery
5. Shwe Yadana nunnery
6. Ketumati thebawa Yeik tha nunnery
7. Aung Mindala monastery
8. Sittathuka monastery
9. Zambuaye monastery
10. Waynayyathuka monastery
11. Min Thiddi monastery
12. Noe Kyar monastery
13. Prakkama monastery
14. Ywar Oo monastery
15. Pazzetayon monastery
16. Ye Pa Dine monastery
17. Ywar Oo monastery
18. La Pyae Wan nunnery
19. War Kai Ma Nunnery
19. West DH nunnery
