The Joyce Pearce Memorial Lecture
Refugee Studies Programme
University of Oxford
19 May 1993
Towards A True Refuge
by
Aung San Suu Kyi
Honorary Fellow of St Hugh's College
Nobel Peace Laureate
When I was told that I had been invited to deliver the Joyce
Pearce Memorial Lecture for 1993, I felt very honoured. I also felt
warmed by all that I had heard about Miss Pearce's Ockenden Venture,
especially from Patricia Gore-Booth and her late husband Paul,
dearly-loved friends who taught me much about kindness and caring. The
thought that the lecture would be held under the auspices of Queen
Elizabeth House gave me particular pleasure. It is a place where I
have spent many fruitful hours attending seminars and lectures and
meeting people from different parts of the world. Those hours now
appear to me suffused in Oxford tranquility and reason and good
fellowship. So I would like to thank the Refugee Studies Programme and
the Committee of the Annual Joyce Pearce Memorial Lecture for more than
just the invitation. I would also like to thank them for the
delightful recollections conjured up by their invitation.
As Joyce Pearce put so much of her life and talents into her
work for refugees, I wondered whether the lecture should not be related
to refugee issues. But I felt very reluctant to take up a topic with
which the audience is probably well acquainted while I am not.
Then it occurred to me that the Burmese expression for refugee
is dukkha-the, "one who has to bear dukkha, suffering". In that sense,
none of us can avoid knowing what it is to be a refugee. The refuge we
all seek is protection from forces which wrench us away from the
security and comfort, physical and mental, which give dignity and
meaning to human existence.
The answer as to how such protection might be provided can be
found only when the destructive forces have been identified.
Well-publicised catastrophes that rock the sensibilities of the world
have small beginnings, barely discernible from the private and
contained forms of distress which make up the normal quota of everyday
suffering. No man-made disaster suddenly bursts forth from the earth
like warring armies sprung from dragon's teeth. After all, even in the
myth the dragon's teeth were procured and sown by a man for reasons
quite unrelated to innocent zoological or agricultural pursuits.
Calamities which are not the result of purely natural phenomena usually
have their origins, distant and obscure though they may be in common
human failings.
But how common need those failings be? In a world which no
longer accepts that "common" germs and diseases should be left
unchecked to take their toll of the weak and defenceless, it would not
be inappropriate to ask if more attention should be paid to correcting
"common" attitudes and values that pose a far more lethal threat to
humankind. It is my thoughts on some of these attitudes and values,
which seem to be regarded as inevitable in an increasingly
materialistic world, that I would like to communicate to you on this
occasion.
The end of the cold war has been represented as a signal for
shifting the emphasis of national and international concern from
ideology and politics to economics and trade. But it is open to debate
whether policies heavily, if not wholly, influenced by economic
considerations will make of the much bruited "New World Order" an era
of progress and harmony such as is longed for by peoples and nations
weary of conflict and suffering.
As the twentieth century draws to a close, it has become
obvious that material yardsticks alone cannot serve as an adequate
measure of human well-being. Even as basic an issue as poverty has to
be reexamined to take into account the psychological sense of
deprivation that makes people feel poor. Such a "modern" concept of
poverty is nothing new to the Burmese who have always used the word
hsinye to indicate not only an insufficiency of material goods but also
physical discomfort and distress of mind -- to be poor is to suffer
from a paucity of those mental and spiritual as well as material
resources that make a human being feel fulfilled and give life a
meaning beyond mere existence. It follows as a matter of course that
chantha, the converse of hsinye, denotes not only material prosperity
but also bodily ease and general felicity. One speaks of chantha of
the mind and of the body and one would wish to be possessed of both.
It is widely accepted, if not too often articulated, that
governments and international agencies should limit their efforts to
the elimination of the more obvious forms of suffering rather than take
on a task so uncertain, so abstruse and so susceptible to varying
interpretations, as the promotion of happiness. Many believe that
policies and legislations aimed at establishing minimum standards with
regard to wages, health care, working conditions, housing and education
(in the formal, very limited sense of the word) are the most that can
reasonably be expected from institutions as a contribution towards
human well-being. There seems to be an underlying assumption that
amelioration in material conditions would eventually bring in its wake
an improvement in social attitudes, philosophical values and ethical
standards. The Burmese saying "Morality (sila) can be upheld only when
the stomach is full" is our version of a widely held sentiment that
cuts across cultural boundaries. Brecht's "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral" (First comes fodder, then come morals) also springs to mind.
But such axioms are hardly a faithful
reflection of what actually goes on in human society. While it is
undeniable that many have been driven to immorality and crime by the
need to survive, it is equally evident that the possession of a
significant surplus of material goods has never been a guarantee
against covetousness, rapacity and the infinite variety of vice and
pain that spring from such passions. Indeed it could be argued that
the unrelenting compulsion of those who already have much to acquire
even more has generated greater injustice, immorality and wretchedness
than the cumulative effect of the struggle of the severely
underprivileged to better their lot.
Given that man's greed can be a pit as bottomless as his
stomach and that a psychological sense of deprivation can persist
beyond the point where basic needs have been adequately met, it can
hardly be expected that an increase in material prosperity alone would
ensure even a decline in economic strife, let alone a mitigation of
those myriad other forces that spawn earthly misery.
The teachings of Buddhism which delve into the various causes
of suffering identify greed as lust -- the passion for indulging an
intemperate appetite -- as the first of the Ten Impurities that stand
in the way of a tranquil, wholesome state of mind. On the other hand
much value is attached to liberality or generosity which heads such
lists as the Ten Perfections of the Buddha, the Ten Virtues which
should be practised, and the Ten Duties of Kings. This emphasis on
liberality should not be regarded as a facile endorsement of
alms-giving based on canny calculation of possible benefits in the way
of worldly prestige or otherworldly rewards. It is a recognition of
the crucial importance of the liberal, generous spirit as an effective
antidote to greed as well as a fount of virtues which engender
happiness and harmony. The late Sayadaw Ashin Janaka Bivamsa of the
famous Mahagandhrun monastery at Amarapura taught that liberality
without morality cannot really be pure. An act of charity committed
for the sake of earning praise or prestige or a place in a heavenly
abode he held to be tantamount to an act of greed.
Loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity
Buddhists see as "divine" states of mind which help to alleviate
suffering and to spread happiness among all beings. The greatest
obstacle to these noble emotions is not so much hatred, anger or ill
will as the rigid state that comes of a prolonged and unwavering
concentration on narrow self-interest. Hatred, anger or ill-will which
arises from wrongs suffered, from misunderstanding or from fear and
envy may yet be appeased if there is sufficient generosity of spirit to
permit forbearance, forgiveness and reconciliation. But it would be
impossible to maintain ore restore harmony when contention is rooted in
the visceral inability of protagonists to concede that the other party
has an equal claim to justice, sympathy and consideration. Hardness,
selfishness and narrowness belong with greed, just as kindness,
understanding and vision belong with true generosity.
The act of willingly subtracting from one's own limited store
of the good and the agreeable for the sake of adding to that of others
reflects the understanding that individual happiness needs a base
broader than the mere satisfaction of selfish passions. From there, it
is not such a large step to the realization that respecting the
susceptibilities and rights of others is as important as defending
one's own susceptibilities and rights if civilized society is to be
safeguarded. But the desirability of redressing imbalances which spoil
the harmony of human relationships -- the ultimate foundation for
global peace and security -- is not always appreciated. Buddhism and
other religious and ethical systems, however, have long recognised and
sought to correct this prejudice in favour of the self. A
Jewish scholar commenting on the Torah wrote: "In morals, holiness
negatively demanded resistance to every urge of nature which made
self-serving the essence of human life; and positively, submission to
an ethic which placed service to others at the centre of its system." [1]