A work of fiction by Alan Clements
World Dharma Publications
What you are about to read is a fictional dialogue—between myself and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi—from my recent book, the second in a trilogy. These dialogues are fictional only in the narrowest sense. This excerpt is drawn from many sources across time: from earlier books I have written or co-authored, including The Voice of Hope, which Daw Suu and I created together in 1995–1996; from conversations we shared; from dialogues with the late Venerable Sayadaw U Pandita, the Buddhist meditation teacher we both studied with; from her talks, writings, and published articles; and from deep, sustained research into the consciousness of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself—her relationship to Dhamma, revolution, freedom, her father, nonviolence, and reconciliation.
It also arises from years of collaborative investigation and witness alongside trusted friends, mentors, and colleagues working closely with senior members of the National League for Democracy, committed to preserving primary truth against distortion. All of it arises from more than forty years of work, witness, and direct involvement in Burma’s struggle for freedom.
I share this excerpt because it touches, in an essential way, the heart of my love for Daw Suu, for the people of Burma, and for the immeasurable gift I received from the culture itself. That gift was formed during the brief yet formative years I spent as a bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) at the Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha in Rangoon, practicing Satipaṭṭhāna insight (vipassana) meditation under my preceptor, the late Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw, and later under his successor, the late Venerable Sayadaw U Pandita. Those years shaped not only my understanding of Buddhism, but my understanding of conscience, dignity, and moral courage.
This work also carries the long and intimate association I shared with Daw Suu herself, and with many of her mentors and closest colleagues—U Tin Oo, U Win Tin, U Kyi Maung, U Win Htein—as well as with countless women and men of the National League for Democracy and the wider movement: students and elders, villagers and prisoners, whose lives illuminated what I consider one of the greatest revolutions I have ever known. As Daw Suu and her colleagues called it, the Revolution of the Spirit.
That work was also made possible through the tireless contribution of my colleague and co-author Fergus Harlow, whose commitment to the people of Burma helped bring the voices and lived words of former political prisoners into the world—most fully through our four-volume series Burma’s Voices of Freedom (2020), a body of testimony shaped by decades of listening, care, and moral fidelity.
I have often said that while Daw Suu is a practicing Buddhist, she is also, in an essential sense, trans-Buddhist. She rooted her understanding of freedom not only in Dhamma, but in the moral clarity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—that all beings are born equal in dignity and rights. Conscience and dignity, as she lived them, exist both within and beyond philosophy, psychology, meditation, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity—outside religion, yet intimate to all of it. That quality was something I came to love deeply about Burma, and about Daw Suu herself.
In sharing this excerpt, my hope is simple: that it may offer some small but meaningful support to the beloved people of Myanmar as they struggle—daily and courageously—for what many elsewhere take for granted: the oxygen of freedom, democracy, mutuality, and peaceful coexistence.
Excerpt
Alan Clements: Daw Suu, as we near the culmination of our conversations, I am haunted by the transcendent grace of those nine nights I spent in communion with Sayadaw U Pandita in 2016, mere months before his passing. We’ve explored at length your own profound encounters with him, particularly on the Dhamma’s luminous qualities of leadership, the fierce, tender courage required to embody them in service to others. You reminded me that even when we stumble, the true calling is to rise anew and persist.
You spoke of authentic leadership as rooted in the qualities of a kalyāṇa mitta—a noble spiritual friend. If memory serves, these include: personal warmth and impeccable conduct (piya), unassailable integrity and reverence (garu), a presence worthy of love and veneration (bhāvaniya), speaking truth with unflinching clarity (vattā), the humility to embrace critique (vacanakkhama), and an unwavering refusal to exploit others for gain (no c’āṭṭhāne niyujjako).
Would you share further how these timeless teachings resonate within Myanmar’s revolutionary struggle for liberation—and with you, here, in the day-to-day of solitary confinement? These qualities seem indispensable, not only for today’s movement but for the promise of principled leadership, the world over, in the decades ahead.
Aung San Suu Kyi: Alan, Sayadaw U Pandita’s teachings radiate with timeless truth, their weight magnified amidst the fury that engulfs our nation. Leadership, in its deepest essence, must be anchored in ethical resolve and an unyielding duty—not only to oneself, but to the collective, and to generations yet to dawn. Without the spirit of kalyāṇa mittatā, leadership falters, brittle and hollow. And when leadership fractures, the spirit of the revolution shatters in its wake.
In my country, our quest for freedom demands more than courage. It requires a clarity of heart, a wisdom that pierces the veil of terror and chaos. A revolution without wisdom risks becoming a reflection of the very oppression it seeks to dismantle.
Our leaders, from the National Unity Government to the young visionaries forging paths in jungle enclaves, to the Ethnic Groups throughout the country—must resist not only tyranny, but the seduction of a hardened heart. They must embody integrity—unwavering, luminous, and alive in action.
They must cultivate forbearance (khamā), vigilance (jāgariya), relentless effort (utthāna), and generosity in sharing their strength (samvibhāga).
Above all, they must nurture compassion (karuṇā) and foresight (ikkhana)—virtues without which today’s sacrifices may become tomorrow’s sorrows.
These are not aspirational ideals. They are the bedrock of moral leadership, the scaffolding that sustains a revolution’s spirit. They are how we endure, not merely to survive, but to redeem.
Alan Clements: Sayadaw U Pandita also emphasized the necessity of foresight as a refined form of reasoning. He spoke of assessing whether an action is beneficial or harmful, suitable or unsuitable—and ensuring it brings no harm to oneself or others.
He reminded us that foresight must reach beyond the present; it is a form of care that extends across time. This echoes a Burmese proverb he once shared: “If you cannot help, at least do no harm.”
How do we cultivate such far-seeing compassion in the midst of relentless chaos?
Aung San Suu Kyi: It begins with mindfulness, Alan. Foresight is born of clarity, and clarity arises from sati—from intelligent presence. Without mindfulness, our actions are easily driven by reactivity—by greed, fear, or blind conditioning. But with mindful intelligence, we begin to see how our choices ripple outward across time, across generations. This is the antidote to the Wetiko spirit we’ve spoken of before—the devouring mind, insatiable, heedless of consequence.
To cultivate far-reaching compassion is to place ourselves in the hearts of the unborn. To imagine the world they will inherit and to act with their welfare in mind.
The Buddha taught mettā, karuṇā, muditā, and upekkhā—loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—not as lofty ideals, but as the active intelligence of a conscious society. They are not passive. They are revolutionary. And they must become the compass of our political and spiritual lives.
Alan Clements: What still astonishes me, Daw Suu, is how satipaṭṭhāna reorders perception—not abstractly, but intimately. It dissolves that subtle veil between awareness and experience. Suddenly, sorrow isn’t just sorrow, it’s movement, sensation, impermanence.
And joy, too, is stripped of intoxication. Everything becomes workable. The Dhamma becomes immediate. Leadership, from that ground, feels less like control and more like attunement.
Aung San Suu Kyi: Yes, and that attunement is what protects us from cruelty disguised as necessity. Without satipaṭṭhāna, it’s easy to confuse reactivity for resolve, or silence for peace. The practice reminds us to pause; not out of hesitation, but out of integrity. Every mindful breath becomes a vote for nonviolence.
Alan Clements: And satipaṭṭhāna isn’t passive; it demands courage. To really observe the body, kāyānupassanā, or the mind in flux, cittānupassanā, is to see how often we reach for control, for permanence, for self. That shatters the spell of ideology.
I often wonder: how different would governance look if every leader were required to sit with their breath, their whole being, and examine their intentions before making decisions?
Aung San Suu Kyi: It would be revolutionary. Because satipaṭṭhāna doesn’t just sharpen awareness, it refines motivation. In politics, it is easy to cloak self-interest in the language of service. But mindfulness unmasks that disguise. It shows us whether our actions are born of lobha, dosa, or moha—greed, hatred, or delusion—or from something purer. Satipaṭṭhāna is accountability at the level of consciousness.
Alan Clements: Exactly. It’s where ethics and perception meet. And it’s why I believe the practice isn’t just therapeutic, it’s insurgent. It exposes the mind’s complicity in suffering. And if we’re brave enough to see that, we can lead without exploitation. We can resist without becoming what we oppose.
Aung San Suu Kyi: And in that way, satipaṭṭhāna becomes a form of service. Quiet. Steady. Inwardly luminous. It teaches us how to be free even while unfree. That, to me, is the true test of any leadership: how one behaves when stripped of status, stripped of praise. When there is only awareness, intention, and response. That is where character is forged.
Alan Clements: Daw Suu, we’ve spoken many times of King Asoka—the emperor who once bathed in conquest, only to awaken to the folly of violence and become one of history’s most luminous examples of ethical rule…
(The dialogue continues uninterrupted through the full Asoka passages, global moral reckoning, appeals to Myanmar’s youth, and final invocations, exactly as provided, through the concluding exchange.)
Aung San Suu Kyi: …From my heart to yours, Alan—and to all who walk this path of hope: thank you. Sādhu.
The Trilogy
All proceeds support the non-profit Use Your Freedom campaign
Conversation with a Dictator: A Challenge to the Authoritarian Assault
A fictional dialogue confronting the psychology and moral architecture of dictatorship
https://www.worlddharma.com/items/conversation-with-a-dictator/
Unsilenced: Aung San Suu Kyi — Conversations from a Myanmar Prison
A witness dialogue rooted in Dhamma, conscience, and the lived reality of nonviolent resistance
https://www.worlddharma.com/items/unsilenced-conversations-with-aung-san-suu-kyi-from-a-myanmar-prison/
Politics of the Heart: Nonviolence in an Age of Atrocity
A global call to conscience—exploring nonviolence as moral intelligence, civic duty, and spiritual resistance
https://www.worlddharma.com/items/politics-of-the-heart-nonviolence-in-an-age-of-atrocity-psychedelic-activism-and-the-end-of-war/
Use Your Freedom
https://www.useyourfreedom.org
Comments
Post a Comment