A tiny spark is usually enough to ignite the memory. In this instance, it was the noise of pages adhering to one another when I tried to flip through an old book left beside the window for too long. It's a common result of humidity. I found myself hesitating for a long moment, ungluing each page with care, and his name drifted back to me, softly and without warning.
There is a peculiar quality to revered personalities such as his. You don’t actually see them very much. If seen at all, it is typically from a remote perspective, transmitted through anecdotes, reminiscences, and partial quotations that no one can quite place. With Tharmanay Kyaw Sayadaw, I feel like I know him mostly through absences. Without grandiosity, without speed, and without the need for clarification. Such silences communicate more than a multitude of words.
I remember seeking another's perspective on him once It wasn't a direct or official inquiry. Only an offhand query, no different from asking about the rain. The person nodded, smiled a little, and said something like, “Ah, Sayadaw… very steady.” That was the extent of it, with no further detail. At the time, I felt slightly disappointed. Looking back, I realize the answer was ideal.
It’s mid-afternoon where I am. The day is filled with a muted, unexceptional light. I find myself sitting on the floor today, for no identifiable cause. Perhaps my spine desired a different sort of challenge this morning. My thoughts return to the concept of stability and its scarcity. Wisdom is often praised, but steadiness feels like the more arduous more info path. Wisdom is something we can respect from the outside. Steadiness has to be lived next to, day after day.
Tharmanay Kyaw Sayadaw lived through so much change. Shifts in the political and social landscape, alongside the constant flux of rebuilding which defines the historical arc of modern Burma. Nevertheless, discussions about him rarely focus on his views or stances. They speak primarily of his consistency. He was like a fixed coordinate in a landscape of constant motion. How one avoids rigidity while remaining so constant is a mystery to me. Such a balance appears almost beyond human capability.
A small scene continues to replay in my thoughts, though I can’t even be sure it really happened the way I remember it. A bhikkhu slowly and methodically adjusting his traditional robes, as though he were in no hurry to go anywhere else. That might not even have been Tharmanay Kyaw Sayadaw. Memory blurs people together. But the feeling stuck. That feeling of being unhurried by the expectations of the world.
I often reflect on the sacrifices required to be a person of that nature. Not in a theatrical way, but in the subtle daily price. The quiet sacrifices that don’t look like sacrifices from the outside. The dialogues that were never held. Permitting errors in perception to remain. Permitting individuals to superimpose their own needs upon your image. I cannot say if he ever pondered these things. Perhaps he did not, and perhaps that is exactly the essence.
My hands have become dusty from handling the book. I remove the dust without much thought. Composing these thoughts seems somewhat redundant, in a positive sense. Not everything needs to have a clear use. On occasion, it is sufficient simply to recognize. that certain lives leave an imprint without feeling the need to explain their own existence. Tharmanay Kyaw Sayadaw feels very much like that to me. An influence that is experienced rather than analyzed, as it should be.