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I had been here once in 1973 so I kept my second visit to the legendary Shwedagon Pagoda for the end, just before leaving for India.
According to the legend, the original stupa on this site would have been built during the Buddha's lifetime in the sixth century B.C. Such an irrational idea only adds to the magic this holy place holds for believers.
Magic or not, the Shwedagon complex is impressive and beautiful. The main stupa, that rises 98 meters above its base, is surrounded by a forest of some 60 small ones and by an equal number of shrines, pavilions and temples on a 5.6 hectare (14 acre), marble paved platform.
The purpose of building, improving, beautifying and visiting Shwedagon is, like all other Therevada Buddhist holy places, to acquire merit to compensate for bad actions in the past (bad karma), in order to increase one's chances of being born again in better rather than poorer circumstances in a future life. Nat worship is more immediately practical as they are believed to be specialized in the services they grant in exchange of prayer somewhat like the various saints of the Catholic religion are; St-Anthony of Padua helps to find lost objects, St-Jude assists in lost causes, etc.
There are a dozen shrines like this one around the main stupa where the faithful gain merit by pouring water on a small Buddha to refresh it from the heat of the sun. They can also pour water over an animal totem figure to be granted the benefits dispensed by that specific totem. Here, a lady is pouring her cupful on an elephant figure; I don't know what payoff she expects, maybe memory?
The area around the star, known as the "Wish Fulfilling Place" attracts a lot of people who might not get their wishes but who at least get the hope of obtaining them.
The man on the left below sitting in the lotus position was staring directly into the sun. I passed by a couple of times over a period of an hour or so and he had not budged. I don't know what his wish was but if it was blindness, then I think his chances of being rewarded are excellent. Ringing the big bell on the right is said to be a good way to attract the attention of the spirits to mortal needs, provided the wish remains a secret. Therefore, I will not tell you what I was hoping for when I executed the ritual bell banging
I spent a lot of time in Shwedagon just observing the people's behaviour in this unreal environment. The beauty, the richness and the magic made possible the collective evasion from reality that I could read in their contented faces.
At this station, the man was refreshing the Buddha that you can just glimpse over his right shoulder and the woman was pouring water on the figure of a rat.
At this point, I met Khin Suu, a young Rakhine girl who was pleased to have an occasion to practice English. We sat down and had a long conversation on religion, on traditional values and their disappearance, on the role of women in her society and so on.
Here, Khin Suu is refreshing the Buddha at my request. It had been a rewarding afternoon, full of wonderment, questioning and meditation topped off with an interesting conversation with a friendly attractive girl. I felt I had gained another little bit of understanding and wondered if I would ever achieve an inner peace approaching that of the old man on the right below.
As we were leaving, I was approached by an athletic looking young man who asked to interview me for "The New Yangon Times". My intuitive alarms immediately rang loud and clear but I did not show it as I asked him to tell me more about his paper which I had not noticed on the stands. This gave him a chance to spin a tale about a new privately owned English language newspaper with Australian shareholders, allegedly doing a series on what foreign tourists thought of Myanmar. It was obviously a phony reporter. I was tempted to tell him I did not have time but, heeding the warning about military intelligence I had received two weeks earlier, I humoured him and gave him the most appropriate answers to his clumsy questions. When he finally let us go, the magic aura around Shwedagon had disappeared as I stood with both feet firmly planted in the sad reality of a police state.
