Watch what you say in Myanmar’s sacred forest

What’s a more powerful conservation incentive — a government jail or the wrath of a nature spirit?

Myint Naing has one of the easier jobs in the Myanmar forestry department. Since 1999 his task has been to protect the Zee-O Thit-Hla forest in the country’s central region. It became a government forest reserve in 1988, and since then, no one has cut a tree.

Is it the fear of a three-year prison sentence that has kept this cool holy grove intact while its surroundings lie barren? Or might it be the nat spirits that protect this sacred grove?

To get to the Zee-O Thit-Hla forest (the name roughly translates as “beautiful old forest of Zee-O village”), I drove about 10 kilometers (six miles) outside the ancient temple ruins of Bagan in the direction of Mount Popa, turned north, and bounced along for the same distance on a rutted dusty track best suited for ox carts or four-wheel drive vehicles.

I passed through desiccated land punctuated by fallow groundnut cultivations and one or two villages in which life in the thatched-roof houses probably hasn’t changed all that much since the monumental stupas of Bagan were built a thousand years ago.

As our Land Cruiser came to a dusty halt, I was greeted by U Thu Taw, the village headman. He was an age-softened man wearing an immaculate long-sleeved white shirt with a Nehru collar, white turban and checked longyi, and didn’t seem especially surprised to see a stranger pop into his village of a thousand people and start asking about the local holy grove.

Guardian spirits

A tin-roofed shed near the forest’s entrance contains gaudy-colored, puppet-sized statues of the forest’s two guardian nat spirits, brother U Hla Tin Aung and his sister Daw Pun Mya Yin.

Found throughout Myanmar, such demi-deities control important events in people’s lives.

At the entrance to the 16-hectare (40-acre) forest, I asked if I should remove my shoes. U Thu Taw murmured a vague incantation to the forest spirits: “This is a visitor with tender soles; give him permission to wear shoes.”

Apparently he received an okay, and he nodded agreement. Not wishing to tempt fate, though, I removed my hiking boots and socks.

The air was cool inside the forest, a welcome relief from the cactus-dotted landscapes outside the perimeter. Some 35 tree species have been catalogued in this oasis of green and I strolled amid mature Shorea trees so large I couldn’t put my arms around them, and several fine Ficus trees, which are seldom found in the arid zone.

Some experts believe that the Zee-O Thit-Hla grove is a relict forest, a rare example of a richer flora that existed prior to the deforestation that accompanied the 11th to 13th-century construction of the great temples of Bagan.

A sacred grove

The Zee-O Thit-Hla forest represents conservation by the people, for the people. Sacred groves, or “life reserves,” as one villager describes them, survive today because they serve people’s physical and spiritual needs.

In one sense, sacred forests fit my Cartesian, left-brained worldview. They act as watersheds and offer shelter for animals. They are repositories for medicinal plants and, in an emergency and given the proper ceremonies, can provide timber to rebuild a village ravaged by fire.

But they are also places of magic and power.

Sacred forests are found throughout the swath of Hindu/Buddhist countries that runs from India through southern China and across to Vietnam.

Local people generally insist that anyone who enters these holy sites must follow strict folk taboos — no swearing or loud noise, no lewd behavior (one village couple reportedly became barren after they had a tryst in the forest) and don’t take anything out, not even a twig.

“Forests have guardian spirits,” notes Sein Tu, retired professor of psychology at Mandalay University. “When the spirits feel slighted by infractions, such as foul language, they are believed to mete out terrible punishments to the wrong-doer, as in the case of a young man known to me who scornfully urinated in front of a nat altar and suffered a complete mental breakdown.”

While the Zee-O Thit-Hla sacred forest (formally known as the Ingyin Nature Reserve), might have government protection, I sense that its real power lies in things that go bump in the night. Throughout Asia one hears supernatural stories: a jealous wife puts a black magic curse on her husband’s mistress that makes the woman go mad. A man coughs blood, and when doctors X-ray his lungs, they find dozens of metal pins put there by a sorcerer. A farmer spends the night in the forest, and when dawn comes villagers find that he has entranced a man-eating tiger into a cage.

Trouble is, when you try to meet some of these magic-imbued people, the answer results in many degrees of separation — these surreal episodes always seem to take place “in a distant village, over the next hill.”

Respecting the forest

So, when I asked what trouble could befall someone who violated the sanctity of this sacred forest in Myanmar, I expected the usual generalizations — “you’ll fall sick,” or “bad things will happen.” I listened with a grain of salt when I heard that a local farmer’s house had burned down after he and a relative cursed and were disrespectful in this holy grove outside Bagan. Just another impossible-to-verify Asian folk tale; I was not expecting that the malefactors would have names and live a few steps away.

“The unfortunate men were U Aung Khin and his son-in-law U Aye San,” explained U Thu Taw, the village headman. “Want to meet them?”

I was introduced to U Aye San and asked him about the story that he and his father-in-law had blasphemed the forest spirits and had been punished by the nats.

U Maung Nyo, 46, a nat kadaw (a medium who speaks with nats) prepares for a séance with the forest nats. (Credit: Paul Spencer Sochaczewski)

“Yes,” U Aye San said. “My father-in-law was acting eccentric the morning we entered the sacred forest. We were disrespectful, but we didn’t know we were breaking the taboo.”

As any cop will tell you, ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, and the spirit-policemen of Zee-O Thit-Hla forest served punishment.

 “A few hours after we returned to the village, I heard a commotion,” U Aye San said. “U Aung Khin’s house was burning. He was inside and got burned. But it was very odd. The cooking fire had been extinguished. The fire apparently started spontaneously, among the dried palm toddy leaves.”

I was introduced to the hapless father-in-law. U Aung Khin is 84 (“my secret of long life is rice and toddy”) and half deaf. My translator shouted into his good ear, but to no avail. He was either embarrassed to speak about the event, or his memory was gone. He could not confirm or deny U Aye San’s story.

Speaking to the spirits

At the time of my third, and last visit to the forest shrine I was working on a book about shamans, mediums and nature spirits. I was soon introduced to U Maung Nyo, a smiling shaman who, I was told, could speak with the nats.

I asked if he could perform a ceremony and he agreed, as easily as if I had asked my neighbor in Switzerland if I could borrow his lawn mower. He prepared the shrine with fresh flowers and lit sticks of incense. A small crowd had joined for the ceremony. U Maung Nyo quickly entered a trance, and the ensuing conversation was enlightening, not only for me but for the villagers who also participated.

He began by channeling the sister nat, Daw Pun Mya Yin, who explained she had always been on this site, and the forest was her home and her responsibility to protect. Her brother, U Hla Tin Aung, then interrupted to say, “I’m a newcomer.”

I asked, through an interpreter, what he meant. U Maung Nyo questioned the nat and his story surprised not only the medium but all the villagers who had gathered. The nat brother U Hla Tin Aung told a previously undisclosed tale.

“I used to live in a forest near Bagan,” he said. “But the forest was cut by the British [who had a colonial presence in Burma from 1824 to 1948]. I had no place to stay, so I came here to be with my sister.”

For me this was a geopolitical-ecological nat jackpot. The nat scolded the British (and implicated all foreigners) for destroying nature. He was a displaced nat, a form of religio-supernatural environmental refugee.

The brother nat U Hla Tin Aung, speaking through U Maung Nyo, then went on a very modern-sounding conservation riff bemoaning forest destruction worldwide and explained what happens to people who disrespect the forests.

On departure, I ask Myint Naing, the Zee-O Thit-Hla forest guard, which is a stronger deterrent to villagers — the nats or the government.

“The nats,” he says without hesitation. “Definitely the nats.”

Some questions to consider:

1. Why do the people of Myanmar consider the Zee-O Thit-Hla forest sacred?
2. How can spiritual and religious beliefs help in environmental protection?
3. Why do you think that many people believe in spirits that inhabit ancient places?

Paul Spencer Sochaczewski graduated from George Washington University and served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. He lived in Southeast Asia for 15 years, then moved to Switzerland where he was head of Creative Services at World Wildlife Foundation International. He has written 20 books and more than 600 by-lined articles in publications including News Decoder, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, Travel and Leisure. He gives presentations about Wallace, and other subjects, worldwide. He is French-American and lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

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