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 JoycePearce Memorial Lecture for 1993, I felt very honoured. I also feltwarmed 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. Thethought that the lecture would be held under the auspices of QueenElizabeth House gave me particular pleasure. It is a place where Ihave spent many fruitful hours attending seminars and lectures andmeeting people from different parts of the world. Those hours nowappear to me suffused in Oxford tranquility and reason and goodfellowship. So I would like to thank the Refugee Studies Programme andthe Committee of the Annual Joyce Pearce Memorial Lecture for more thanjust the invitation. I would also like to thank them for thedelightful recollections conjured up by their invitation.
As Joyce Pearce put so much of her life and talents into herwork for refugees, I wondered whether the lecture should not be relatedto refugee issues. But I felt very reluctant to take up a topic withwhich the audience is probably well acquainted while I am not.
Then it occurred to me that the Burmese expression for refugeeis 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 weall seek is protection from forces which wrench us away from thesecurity and comfort, physical and mental, which give dignity andmeaning to human existence.
The answer as to how such protection might be provided can befound only when the destructive forces have been identified.Well-publicised catastrophes that rock the sensibilities of the worldhave small beginnings, barely discernible from the private andcontained forms of distress which make up the normal quota of everydaysuffering. No man-made disaster suddenly bursts forth from the earthlike warring armies sprung from dragon's teeth. After all, even in themyth the dragon's teeth were procured and sown by a man for reasonsquite unrelated to innocent zoological or agricultural pursuits.Calamities which are not the result of purely natural phenomena usuallyhave their origins, distant and obscure though they may be in commonhuman failings.
But how common need those failings be? In a world which nolonger accepts that "common" germs and diseases should be leftunchecked to take their toll of the weak and defenceless, it would notbe inappropriate to ask if more attention should be paid to correcting"common" attitudes and values that pose a far more lethal threat tohumankind. It is my thoughts on some of these attitudes and values,which seem to be regarded as inevitable in an increasinglymaterialistic world, that I would like to communicate to you on thisoccasion.
The end of the cold war has been represented as a signal forshifting the emphasis of national and international concern fromideology and politics to economics and trade. But it is open to debatewhether policies heavily, if not wholly, influenced by economicconsiderations will make of the much bruited "New World Order" an eraof progress and harmony such as is longed for by peoples and nationsweary of conflict and suffering.
As the twentieth century draws to a close, it has becomeobvious that material yardsticks alone cannot serve as an adequatemeasure of human well-being. Even as basic an issue as poverty has tobe reexamined to take into account the psychological sense ofdeprivation that makes people feel poor. Such a "modern" concept ofpoverty is nothing new to the Burmese who have always used the wordhsinye to indicate not only an insufficiency of material goods but alsophysical discomfort and distress of mind -- to be poor is to sufferfrom a paucity of those mental and spiritual as well as materialresources that make a human being feel fulfilled and give life ameaning beyond mere existence. It follows as a matter of course thatchantha, the converse of hsinye, denotes not only material prosperitybut also bodily ease and general felicity. One speaks of chantha ofthe mind and of the body and one would wish to be possessed of both.
It is widely accepted, if not too often articulated, thatgovernments and international agencies should limit their efforts tothe elimination of the more obvious forms of suffering rather than takeon a task so uncertain, so abstruse and so susceptible to varyinginterpretations, as the promotion of happiness. Many believe thatpolicies and legislations aimed at establishing minimum standards withregard to wages, health care, working conditions, housing and education(in the formal, very limited sense of the word) are the most that canreasonably be expected from institutions as a contribution towardshuman well-being. There seems to be an underlying assumption thatamelioration in material conditions would eventually bring in its wakean improvement in social attitudes, philosophical values and ethicalstandards. The Burmese saying "Morality (sila) can be upheld only whenthe stomach is full" is our version of a widely held sentiment thatcuts 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 faithfulreflection of what actually goes on in human society. While it isundeniable that many have been driven to immorality and crime by theneed to survive, it is equally evident that the possession of asignificant surplus of material goods has never been a guaranteeagainst covetousness, rapacity and the infinite variety of vice andpain that spring from such passions. Indeed it could be argued thatthe unrelenting compulsion of those who already have much to acquireeven more has generated greater injustice, immorality and wretchednessthan the cumulative effect of the struggle of the severelyunderprivileged to better their lot.
Given that man's greed can be a pit as bottomless as hisstomach and that a psychological sense of deprivation can persistbeyond the point where basic needs have been adequately met, it canhardly be expected that an increase in material prosperity alone wouldensure even a decline in economic strife, let alone a mitigation ofthose myriad other forces that spawn earthly misery.
The teachings of Buddhism which delve into the various causesof suffering identify greed as lust -- the passion for indulging anintemperate appetite -- as the first of the Ten Impurities that standin the way of a tranquil, wholesome state of mind. On the other handmuch value is attached to liberality or generosity which heads suchlists as the Ten Perfections of the Buddha, the Ten Virtues whichshould be practised, and the Ten Duties of Kings. This emphasis onliberality should not be regarded as a facile endorsem*nt ofalms-giving based on canny calculation of possible benefits in the wayof worldly prestige or otherworldly rewards. It is a recognition ofthe crucial importance of the liberal, generous spirit as an effectiveantidote to greed as well as a fount of virtues which engenderhappiness and harmony. The late Sayadaw Ashin Janaka Bivamsa of thefamous Mahagandhrun monastery at Amarapura taught that liberalitywithout morality cannot really be pure. An act of charity committedfor the sake of earning praise or prestige or a place in a heavenlyabode he held to be tantamount to an act of greed.
Loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimityBuddhists see as "divine" states of mind which help to alleviatesuffering and to spread happiness among all beings. The greatestobstacle to these noble emotions is not so much hatred, anger or illwill as the rigid state that comes of a prolonged and unwaveringconcentration on narrow self-interest. Hatred, anger or ill-will whicharises from wrongs suffered, from misunderstanding or from fear andenvy may yet be appeased if there is sufficient generosity of spirit topermit forbearance, forgiveness and reconciliation. But it would beimpossible to maintain ore restore harmony when contention is rooted inthe visceral inability of protagonists to concede that the other partyhas 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 storeof the good and the agreeable for the sake of adding to that of othersreflects the understanding that individual happiness needs a basebroader than the mere satisfaction of selfish passions. From there, itis not such a large step to the realization that respecting thesusceptibilities and rights of others is as important as defendingone's own susceptibilities and rights if civilized society is to besafeguarded. But the desirability of redressing imbalances which spoilthe harmony of human relationships -- the ultimate foundation forglobal peace and security -- is not always appreciated. Buddhism andother religious and ethical systems, however, have long recognised andsought to correct this prejudice in favour of the self. AJewish scholar commenting on the Torah wrote: "In morals, holinessnegatively demanded resistance to every urge of nature which madeself-serving the essence of human life; and positively, submission toan ethic which placed service to others at the centre of its system." [1]
It would be naive to expect that all men could be expected toplace service to others before service to the self. But withsufficient resolve on the part of governments and institutions thatinfluence public opinion and set international standards of behaviour,a greater proportion of the world's population could be made to realizethat self-interest (whether as an individual, a community or a nation)cannot be divorced entirely from the interests of others. Instead ofassuming that material progress will bring an improvement in social,political and ethical standards, should it not be considered that anactive promotion of appropriate social, political and ethical valuesmight not only aid material progress but also help to ensure that itsresults are wisely and happily distributed? "Wealth enough to keepmisery away and a heart wise enough to use it" was described as the"greatest good" by Aeschylus who lived in an age when, after decades ofwar, revolution and tyrannies, Athenian democracy in its morningfreshness was beginning to prove itself as a system wonderfully suitedto free, thinking men.[2]
A narrowly focused materialism that seeks to block out allconsiderations apparently irrelevant to one's own well-being finallyblocks out what is in fact most relevant. Discussing the "culture ofcontentment" which poses a challenge to the social and economic futureof the United States of America, Professor John Kenneth Galbraith haspointed out that the fortunate and the favoured are so preoccupied withimmediate comfort and contentment they have ceased to contemplate orrespond to their own longer-term well-being. "And this is not only inthe capitalist world, as it is still called: a deeper and more generalhuman instinct is here involved", he wrote[3]the instinct to opt for narrow, short-term benefits can present asignificant threat to the continued prosperity of a rich,industrialized state shored up by strongly established institutions,how much more of a threat might it be to nations which have butrecently embarked, rather unsteadily, on the grand adventure of freemarket economics and democratic politics? And it would surely be ofthe utmost danger to those societies still hovering on the edge ofliberty and justice, still dominated by a minority well content withits monopoly on economic and political power.
In newly emergent democracies many who have been disappointedin their expectations of immediate material betterment have sought towork out their frustrations by subscribing to outmoded and obscureconspiracy theories that foster prejudice, paranoia and violence. Thesearch for scapegoats is essentially an abnegation of responsibility:it indicates an inability to assess honestly and intelligently the truenature of the problems which lie at the root of social and economicdifficulties and a lack of resolve in grappling with them. Thevaluation of achievement in predominantly material terms implies alimited and limiting view of human society, denying it many of thequalities that make it more than a conglomerate of egoisticconsumer-gatherers who have advanced little beyond the prehistoricinstinct for survival.
It is perfectly natural that all people should wish for asecure refuge. It is unfortunate that in spite of strong evidence tothe contrary, so many still act as though security would be guaranteedif they fortified themselves with an abundance of materialpossessions. The greatest threats to global security today come notfrom the economic deficiencies of the poorest nations but fromreligious, racial (or tribal) and political dissensions raging in thoseregions where principles and practices which could reconcile thediverse instincts and aspirations of mankind have been ignored,repressed or distorted.
Man-made disasters are made by dominant individuals and cliqueswhich refuse to move beyond the autistic confines of partisaninterest. An eminent development economist has observed that the bestdefence against famine is an accountable government. It makes littlepolitical or economic sense to give aid without trying to address thecirc*mstances that render aid ineffectual. No amount of material goodsand technological know-how will compensate for human irresponsibilityand viciousness.
Developed and developing nations alike suffer as a result ofpolicies removed from a framework of values which uphold minimumstandards of justice and tolerance. The rapidity with which the oldSoviet Union splintered into new states, many of them stamped with afierce racial assertiveness, illustrates that decades of authoritarianrule may have achieved uniformity and obedience but could not achievelong-term harmony or stability. Nor did the material benefits enjoyedunder the relatively successful post- totalitarian state[4]Yugoslavia succeed in dissipating the psychological impress of broodinghistorical experiences which have now led to some of the worstreligious and ethnic violence the Balkans has ever witnessed. Peace,stability and unity cannot be bought or coerced: they have to benurtured by promoting sensitivity to human needs and respect for therights and opinions of others. Diversity and dissent need not inhibitthe emergence of strong, stable societies, but inflexibility,narrowness and unadulterated materialism can prevent healthy growth.And when attitudes have been allowed to harden to the point thatotherness becomes a sufficient reason for nullifying a person's claimto be treated as a fellow human being, the trappings of moderncivilization crumble with frightening speed.
In the most troubled areas of the world, reserves of toleranceand compassion disappear, security becomes non-existent and creaturecomforts are reduced to a minimum -- but stockpiles of weapons abound.As a system of values this is totally mad. By the time it is acceptedthat the only way out of an impasse of hats, bloodshed and social andeconomic chaos created by men is for those men to get together to finda peaceful solution through dialogue and compromise, it is usually nolonger easy to restore sanity. Those who have been conditioned bysystems which make a mockery of the law by legalizing injustices andwhich attack the very foundations of harmony by perpetuating social,political and economic imbalances cannot adjust quickly -- if at all --to the concept of a fair settlement which places general well-being andjustice above partisan advantage.
During the cold war the iniquities of ruthless governments andarmed groups were condoned for ideological reasons. The results havebeen far from happy. Although there is greater emphasis in justice andhuman rights today, there are still ardent advocates in favour ofgiving priority to political and economic expediency -- increasinglythe latter. It is the cold argument: achieve economic success and allelse will follow. But even long-affluent societies are plagued byformidable social ills which have provided deep anxieties about thefuture. And newly-rich nations appear to be spending a significantportion of their wealth on arms and armies. Clearly there is noinherent link between greater prosperity and greater security andpeace. Both prosperity and peace -- or even the expectation of greaterpeace. Both prosperity and peace are necessary for the happiness ofmankind, the one to alleviate suffering, the other to promotetranquility. Only policies which place equal importance on both willmake a truly richer world, one in which men can enjoy "chantha" of thebody and of the mind. The drive for economic progress needs to betempered by an awareness of the dangers of greed and selfishness whichso easily lead to narrowness and inhumanity. If peoples and nationscultivate a generous spirit that welcomes the happiness of others as anenhancement of the self, many seemingly insoluble problems would proveless intractable.
Those who have worked with refugees are in the best position toknow that when people have been stripped of all their material supportsthere only remain to sustain them the values of their cultural andspiritual inheritance. A tradition of sharing instilled by age-oldbeliefs in the joy of giving and the sanctity of compassion will move ahomeless destitute to press a portion of his meagre rations onstrangers with all the grace and delight of one who has ample riches todispense. On the other hand, predatory traits honed by along-established habit of yielding to "every urge of nature which madeself-serving the essence of human life" will lead men to plunderfellow-sufferers of their last pathetic possessions. And of course thegreat majority of the world's refugees are seeking sanctuary fromsituations rendered untenable by a dearth of humanity and wisdom.
The dream of a society ruled by loving kindness, reason andjustice is a dream as old as civilized man. Does it have to be animpossible dream? Karl Popper, explaining his abiding optimism in sotroubled a world as ours, said that the darkness had always been therebut the light was new. Because it is new it has to be tended with careand diligence. It is true that even the smallest light cannot heextinguished by all the darkness in the world, because darkness iswholly negative. It is merely an absence of light. But a small lightcannot dispel acres of encircling gloom. It needs to grow stronger, toshed its brightness further and further. And people need to accustomtheir eyes to the light to see it as a benediction rather than a pain,to learn to love it. We are so much in need of a brighter world whichwill offer adequate refuge to all its inhabitants. [End]
