Daw Suu's Letter from Burma #7 (199

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Subject: Daw Suu's Letter from Burma #7 (1997)

Mainichi Daily News, Monday, August 4, 1997

POLITICAL, SPIRITUAL STRUGGLES INSEPARABLY LINKED
"Kaleidoscope"

Letter from Burma (No. 7) by Aung San Suu Kyi

        The toys of my early childhood seemed luxurious in post-World War II
Burma, but in fact they were quite modest.  I had a series of round-eyed,
hairless dolls made of thin, pink plastic, which buckled and cracked easily,
and with moveable limbs attached by means of brittle elastic string that
could ill withstand the attention of restless little hands.  Few children
could resist the temptation to put the chubby arms and legs through vigorous
acrobatic maneuvers until the ill-used articles either snapped off or hung
dejectedly from a sad gray cord wrung out of all elasticity.  In spite of
their lack of durability and beauty, I regarded these dolls with vague
respect, as I had heard some adults expound the theory that the
metamorphosis of Japan into a modern, industrialized nation had begun with
the manufacture and export of such objects.  Apart from the dolls, there
were dolls' tea sets (made of plastic much harder than the dolls
themselves), wind-up toys (a velvety little monkey clashing a pair of
cymbals stands out in my memory among a motley fleet of painted, tin
vehicles), jigsaw puzzles, board games, colored pencils and water colors.
        The toy that I considered most fascinating was a kaleidoscope.  It
filled me with wonder that the slightest turn of an unassuming little metal
tube should result in a beautiful visual experience, which was completely
new each time.  Somebody said that the patterns formed in the kaleidoscope
were similar to the structure of snowflakes, making the toy doubly exotic
for me as snow was a thing of remote, unreachable beauty in our tropical
world.  The kaleidoscope did not last long.  My two brothers and myself,
numerous children visitors and grown-ups who did not consider it beneath
their dignity to display an interest in toys, subjected the tube to more
twirling and shaking than it could take without collapsing into bits.  After
the kaleidoscope had gone the way of all over-used toys, my brother put
together a crude, home-make version from three strips of mirror and chips of
colored glass.  It was neither neat nor convenient, but it served its
purpose, which was to create enchantment.  When I came across the
translucent brightness of stained glass in my adult years, I was reminded of
the jeweled mosaic wonders of that rickety little homemade kaleidoscope.
        A fall down the stairs a couple of months ago brought back memories
of the favorite toy of my early childhood.  This was not because as I
tumbled down I saw starts and technicolored flashes as might have happened
to characters in the comics I read in those days.  It was because the weeks
of enforced rest that followed the incident put me in a position from which
I could get a panoramic view of life as a series of vignettes, the
components clustering and dispersing and shifting and changing with
kaleidoscopic virtuosity.  In this age of advanced medical technology there
must be devises that make it possible for a person to read comfortably while
lying flat on her back.  However, since I have not yet acquired such devices
and in any case my doctor had advised me not to strain my eyes, I found
myself with a lot of time for contemplation.  As I lay with one hand resting
on my brow in conformity with proper poetic convention, the permutations and
combinations of human problems arising out of samsara, the continual cycle
of life and death and suffering due to karma.  Its nature appeared before
me, more varied than snowflake patterns but hardly possessed of such
delicate prettiness.
        Although the pattern of life changes constantly, sometimes echoes of
old configurations recur.  As a student, I was caught up in the 1960s
concern about apartheid, contributing my tiny bit of support for the
struggle of the black people by refusing to buy products from South Africa.
Now in my mature years, I am caught up in the question of economic sanctions
against the military regime in my own country.  The hows and whys and
wherefores, the analysis of possible consequences, the weighing of the pros
and the cons, the never ending argument about the relationship between
politics and economics.  (How can those who know that Japanese were given
honorary white status in South Africa under apartheid because of the
economic status of Japan deny the intimate link between politics and economics?)
        Mixed into the familiar and the deja vu are the unpredictable, the
unexpected, and the sense that life is continual process of learning.  As my
52nd birthday approached in June, I remembered a friend at university
quoting the lines of Horace:

Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume
Labuntur anni

        We were both in our very early twenties and we imagined we could
feel the cool draught of fleeting time on our well rounded cheeks.  The
thought of our youthful world-weariness makes me smile now, and it occurs to
me that in many ways the young are probably tougher than the old.  Largely
untried and untouched by the "vicissitudes of life," a phrase that has a
comic ring for those who have not know the twists and turns of capricious
fortune, we were clad in a steely armor of innocent prejudices and
expectations, barely pierced by uncertainty.  Fifty seemed old to us then,
an age when we would know just about all that has to be known about life,
blase as Betty Grable in her prime with narrowed eyes and hard mouth.  Well,
of course now that I am well established in my second half century, it turns
out to not like that at all.
        Birth and death are the two faces of the alchemist coin of
existence.  A month after my birthday came the 50th anniversary of my
father's death.  He died when he was 32 years old, and it is difficult to
imagine him as an octogenarian.  The year my father would have turned
seventy, an old friend of the family remarked that we should not mourn his
early death because he was blessed not to have become old, not have know, as
she put it, "the destroying years." He remains forever preserved in the
tender sternness of his youth and in the intense gravity of the struggle
that was his life.  But still, it saddens me and many others among my
countrymen and women to remember that he had been cut off in his prime,
before he was able to complete the task of setting Burma firmly on th path
to strong, stable nationhood.  Had he lived long enough to guide our country
through the crucial first decades of independence, there is every likelihood
that we would now be enjoying the fruits of justice, unity, peace and a
confident, well-nurtured, well-educated people.
        This year's Martyrs Day, which commemorates the assassination of my
father and eight associates, coincided with the full moon of the Burmese
month of Waso, which marks the beginning of the rainy season Buddhist
retreat.  The National League for Democracy arranged a ceremony for offering
food and robes to fifty monks for the sake of merit to be shared between
those who have passed away and those who have been left behind.  It was an
occasion that afforded us with an opportunity to reflect on the three
aspects common to all conditioned things:  /anicca/ (impermanence), /dukha/
(suffering) and /anatta/ (the unresponsiveness of objects to one's wishes)
and on nirvana, the unconditioned, undefiled state where anicca, dukha and
anatta become extinct.  Spiritual matters are as much an integral component
of the fabric of human existence as politics, which has to do with how man
relates to others of his kind.  Whether we like it or not, the spiritual and
political will remain part of the design of our lives.