Well done Venerable @Vimala for all your work galvanising awareness and action on this issue.
May there be peace and justice in Myanmar. 
9 Likes
… and everywhere! 
9 Likes
And in the Myanmar DVB news:
The Democratic Voice of Burma, based in Norway, has played a very important role in the providing uncensored news into Burma during the Saffron revolution. They moved back into Burma in 2012 but now 3 of their journalists have fled to Thailand and were arrested there.
5 Likes
The Overturned Alms Bowl: When One is Unworthy to Serve
https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/the-overturned-alms-bowl-when-one-is-unworthy-to-serve
1 Like
I am very glad that so many (senior) monastics and lay people supported this and that the news has also been spread by the media, especially the Democratic Voice of Burma, which has since 1992 been aiming to get uncensored news into Burma and which played a crucial role in the Saffron Revolution. They run from Norway but in 2012 made the move back to Burma.
Through various channels we received feedback that the people and Sangha in Myanmar really appreciated this action. It gave them encouragement and hope and faith in the Buddha’s teachings.
I want to thank our friend Ayya Yeshe from Australia, who has so tirelessly helped me, supported me and encouraged me to make this happen. I would not have been able to do it without her dedication and strength. She is a real pillar for Buddhist social justice in the world.
I also want to thank all the monastics and lay people who have supported this movement by sending in pictures of themselves. Every day we received pictures from the senior teachers I so respect and from friends from around the world, some known to us, others unknown. I feel so touched by your support.
And last but certainly not least I thank my Burmese friends from the Sangha 4 Myanmar team who have done such a great job and who did all those things I had no idea about! You have been amazing!
During the first week of this action, we were targetted by hackers who convinced the Facebook robot to remove all posts with the below viral picture of the monks that were the direct impetus for me and blocked the account of our administrator. In the mean time, she has her account back. We do not know what happend to these monks. Long before we started we heard that the abbot of this monastery was arrested for posting this picture. We want to keep their memory alive and not let their sacrifice be in vain.
I sincerely wish that the next year we will see some changes happening in Myanmar and that the country once again will become a haven of Dhamma where all of us can freely go to study and practice and where compassion, and not violence, reigns.
With gratitude to all and very happy Vesak,
Ven. Vimala
15 Likes
Mizzima News TV (around minute 6)
4 Likes
Swiss Society of Radio and Television article with an anonymous monk in Burma that we could facilitate.
3 Likes
Monks to be put at checkpoints:
2 Likes
such a tragedy of suffering
Thanks for the updates 
2 Likes
2023 is the year of the Tiger and that’s when conservative forces can be overthrown by a revolution.
Myanmar Junta Drops Plan to Place Buddhist Monks on Military Roadblocks
More than six months after the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown in a military-led coup, a plan by the junta to position Buddhist monks on military checkpoints and roadblocks in Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay has been abandoned in the face of opposition from the monastic sangha, local media sources report.
The plan, which initially received reluctant approval from Mandalay’s official monastic regulatory body, the Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, would have seen up to three monks stationed at military checkpoints around Mandalay, set up to enforce COVID-19 restrictions and to discourage pro-democracy protests.
“When the checkpoints were put in place last Monday [16 August], they were manned only by regime forces and civilian administrators because monks refused to take part in the scheme,” the news website Myanmar Now reported on Monday, citing monastic sources. (Myanmar Now)
“Now they know that nothing can be done without the consent of the Buddhist monks,” a member of the Sangha Union, which represents monks opposed to the military junta, was quoted as saying. (Myanmar Now)
Buddhist monastics, venerated throughout Burmese society, are highly influential in Myanmar (formerly Burma), a predominantly Theravada Buddhist country in which 88 per cent of the population of roughly 60 million people identify as Buddhists, according to 2014 census data. Buddhist monastics stood at the forefront of pro-democracy protests against the previous military junta in 2007, a movement known as the Saffron Revolution, which helped to bolster grassroots support. Buddhist monks are estimated to number in excess of 500,000, mainly centered in and around the cities of Yangon and Mandalay, along with some 75,000 Buddhist nuns.
3 Likes
2 Likes
Shadow government declares war:
3 Likes
Bikkhu Bodhi answers questions from Myanmar Buddhists on the doctrinal implications of the current situation:
5 Likes
Do we have any news on myanmar? I still can’t believe the junta released that monster posing as a monk for political power. Absolutely foul, may myanmar be given the gift of fearlessness soon.
1 Like
Monks should not get involved in political affairs.
Furthermore, bhikkhus or bhikkhunis who encourage killing or fighting (merely praising) are guilty of a disrobing defeat offense if someone dies with that speech as a cause. How to know if a public statement was a cause or what the mind was when posting such things? That is why monks should not do this or give dhammatalks on this.
off-topic: The same is true with praising abortion or euthanasia
1 Like
Small update on the situation with the Junta.
3 Likes
Myanmar’s military turns to Buddhism in bid for legitimacy
I hope people here will find this excerpt (Overturning the alms bowl — Insight Myanmar) relevant:
Last year, a Western monk in Burma who has become an apologist for the military regime wrote a scathing indictment of monks who overturned their alms bowls. This was being carried out by some members of the Sangha as a symbolic protest to indicate they would no longer accept support from those in the military carrying out atrocities against innocent people. In hoping to prove his point, the monk wrote, “Such proclamations should not be casually done for the purpose of gaining Facebook likes, support, political asylum, or pats on the back.” Because this monk had used a translation from the Saṁyutta Nikāya by Bhikkhu Bodhi in his essay to argue his point, I was quite curious to hear the Venerable’s own take on this point when we conducted our recent interview.
Bhikkhu Bodhi began by acknowledging that he was himself guilty of this act, as he had joined other monastics in taking photos of himself holding an overturned alms bowl. He seemed to find it somewhat amusing that he was being accused of doing this as a means of virtue signaling or to boost his social media profile. He went on to say, “I think he said that monks did this in order to receive pats on the back? Is that the expression that he used? Facebook likes and pats on the back? I mean, I hardly even look at Facebook! So I don’t think I did that for the purpose of likes.”
In the following excerpt, Bhikkhu Bodhi goes on to provide further scriptural understanding for the purpose of overturning the alms bowl.
“The act of turning over the alms bowl should be decided by a consensus of monastics as a way of showing rejection of the behavior of a lay person who’s creating harm for the monastic community, or who’s disparaging the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.
And so when we did this, taking our photos and sending them to a central reception place that received them and posted them on Facebook, it was not done with the idea that we were performing an official act of the Sangha, rather just a symbolic way of showing that we were opposed to the behavior, the actions taken by these leaders of the Tatmadaw in Myanmar; a way of showing that we didn’t agree with their the type of dictatorial regime that they were imposing on the country, that we didn’t agree with the way that they were shooting people, killing people, arresting people arbitrarily, and sentencing them to long prison terms.
Since we would assume that even the leaders in Myanmar, at least as a rough assumption, have some regard for monastics and have some acceptance of the idea of gaining merit by making alms offerings to the Sangha, the idea was that by turning the bowl upside down, we are showing that we are denying them, at least symbolically, the opportunity to make offerings and to acquire merit through gifts to the Sangha. It was not intended as an official act of the Sangha, but as a symbolic way to send a message to the people at the head of the [Burmese junta] regime, that we are opposed to their types of policies and to their grip on power.”
6 Likes