It can be hard for those who come from non-English speaking backgrounds to settle into life in Australia.
It was an especially daunting few years for Ashin Moonienda, a 41-year-old Karen-speaking Buddhist monk. Moonienda came to Australia 12 years ago from a Thai refugee camp, having fled civil war in Myanmar prior to that.
Now Moonienda is thriving in the regional Victorian city of Bendigo, but it took some time to acclimatise due to big lingual and cultural gaps that led to misunderstandings for the monk – some harrowing, some comical.
Life is quite different for monks in countries such as Myanmar than Australia. In Myanmar around 90 per cent of the population is Buddhist, while Buddhism is a more unusual belief system in a regional Australian town like Bendigo.
There are about 500,000 monks across Myanmar, and each receives donations from regular people including food and care. It is not an uncommon sight in Myanmar to see people waiting outside their homes at 5am giving food to passing monks.
(photo: Francesca Rizzoli) Source: Supplied
Devoted Buddhists see these monks as being as important as the Buddha himself, thus will never show them their feet, nor sit at the same or higher level as a monk during prayer. Even stepping on the shadow of a monk is a faux-pas where Moonienda comes from.
Bendigo had few Buddhists before Moonienda arrived. Moonienda moved to Bendigo with another Karen monk. In a gesture of interfaith kindness, both monks were hosted by a Catholic priest in Bendigo while they were finding a more permanent home.
“While I was living alone, it was really hard,” Moonienda tells SBS Burmese. “When I would cook rice in a rice cooker, I put eggs in there so I can eat with rice and that’s all I knew how to do. I stayed alone for two years but my cooking skill never improved.”
“I was scared of worldly things [distractions from the spiritual pursuit of monkhood] that’s why I decided to become a monk but here I am, having to do all the worldly things to survive.”
(photo: Francesca Rizzoli) Source: Supplied
Keeping the faith
While life in Australia is good, the first few years were the hardest for Moonienda and he recalls funny, shocking and scary anecdotes to illustrate that experience.
For example, after finishing 500 hours of English classes, Centrelink offered Moonienda a job that would be in deep conflict with his own worldview and pacifist practise as a monk.
“At an interview the Centrelink staff asked me if I was willing to work,” says Moonienda. “Although it is not convenient for me, I said, ‘yes’. And he then said, ‘Since your English is not very good yet, are you willing to work at a meat factory?’ I wanted to laugh at that point but I answered ‘Yes’ again.
“As we went on, I asked if I would be allowed to continue my study [and not work at an abattoir] and he said I can if I wanted to. That’s when I felt relieved,” he laughs.
In English class Moonienda’s classmates didn’t see him with the same religious reverence as people in Myanmar would. Once, Moonienda remembers, an African woman and another European classmate rubbed his bald head and asked, “Why doesn’t your hair grow?”.
(photo: Francesca Rizzoli) Source: Supplied
“I wanted to laugh and felt awkward but then I said, ‘My hair is not meant to grow so I always shave it’,” he says.
Moonieinda says although he felt discomfort in these instances, he understands the Centrelink worker and English classmates didn’t mean to disrespect him; they simply didn’t know that as a monk he is prohibited from killing living things, or being touched by women.
On another occasion, Moonieinda was followed by three women on the street. He noticed their curiosity and walked faster to avoid them. The women caught up with him at a traffic light, where one of them touched his robe and asked, “Where did you buy your onesie?”
“I told them, ‘I am a Buddhist monk and this robe is worn by monks,’ but they didn’t understand me. I asked if they know the Dalai Lama and they said, ‘Yes, yes, we have seen him on TV.’ I then told them that we are the same.”
For others not familiar with these robes, they presume that every monk is a kung fu master, says Moonienda.
(photo: Francesca Rizzoli) Source: Supplied
“It’s happened to me twice; once in Melbourne and another time in Bendigo,” he says of being mistaken for a martial artist.
“A group of young men with loud voices approached and said hello to me. They said they had seen monks like me in videos and asked if I am happy to teach them kung fu and that they would pay me.”
Obviously, Moonienda refused the opportunity.
“On another occasion another man started showing off kung fu moves and challenged me to a fight to test out his skill,” remembers Moonienda. “There were a lot of people looking at us and I was confused and scared. I told him, ‘I don’t know any moves,’ then he clasped his hands together, bowed to me and left.”
Even eating was an issue for Moonienda at times. As Buddhist monks eat just twice a day – a dawn breakfast and ‘lunch’ before midday – with no other meals allowed, Moonienda would have frequent clashes with class and mealtimes. He went hungry at least a few times when he could not dash to his car to quickly eat a meal in a break from class.
Moonienda’s hunger for education and helping his community led him to continue to study online. He has now completed a range of English language certificates, as well as a Bachelor of Community Development from Latrobe University.
(photo: Francesca Rizzoli) Source: Supplied
Life before Bendigo
While the challenges of settling into life in Bendigo were not simple, Moonienda’s prior life in Myanmar had been considerably more difficult.
Moonieinda was born in a small village in Myanmar’s Karen state during a period of civil war. His parents worried for his future and sent him away from their village to live in a monastery and become a novice monk. Moonienda tells SBS Burmese he was always attracted to leading a spiritual life.
“Worldly things scared me so I decided to become a monk after I turned 20 and I had also been a novice monk since I was young. I felt attached to and used to living a religious life,” he says.
He managed to finish high school in the midst of civil war but his mother passed away and, as many Karen people were at the time, his father was badly beaten by the Burmese army, leaving him with seven broken ribs and three months in hospital.
Like thousands of others, they fled to a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border where one of his uncles, a monk named Rambo, lived.
Moonienda continued to live there as a monk and became a school teacher. But, after seven years in the camp, an opportunity to migrate to Australia emerged.
(photo: Francesca Rizzoli) Source: Supplied
By that time, many of the ethnically Karen refugees had resettled in countries such as Australia, Finland and the USA. That included many Karen Buddhists, but leaving the camp meant they would not have Karen monks to give them spiritual guidance.
“An Australian man named Martin West came and asked if monks from different camps would be interested in joining other Buddhists overseas and that’s why I applied for Australia,” he says.
Some Karen monks quit the monkhood years after coming to Australia because it was too challenging for them to maintain the lifestyle here.
“I found it very hard too but I came to Australia out of religious responsibility, so I thought I would hang in there as long as I could and if I got to the point where I couldn’t continue, then I would quit. Luckily things got better for me,” he says.
The Buddhists of Bendigo
Bendigo now hosts 65 Karen Buddhist families, with more than 300 total individuals. As such, Moonienda does not worry about food anymore, with those families donating to him regularly.
He, in turn, provides spiritual support to the community, and teaches Karen youngsters about Buddhism in English and Karen every fortnight.
Bendigo’s Karen community are also building a monastery on a block of land they purchased a few years ago. Plans are for two buildings at this stage, with one due for completion at the end of 2019 based on donations from the community, with the other building likely to be funded by a bank loan.
After witnessing the conflict over the building of a mosque in Bendigo a few years ago, Moonienda says he was at first concerned that his community might face the same problem, but has seen no such issues so far.
(photo: Francesca Rizzoli) Source: Supplied
“When we sent notices to neighbours about our plan, there was no opposition and everything went so smoothly.”
"Once we finish building the monastery, Buddhists from Bendigo, Werribee, Hoppers Crossing, Nhill and Geelong will be very happy because they have been supporting and trying so hard for this to happen… We can celebrate special big events and also we can provide temporary shelter to new refugees while they are looking for a place to rent."
