Beyond all reason

I was in our local dama-yon, the community hall for Buddhists this afternoon, the fourth day of our water festival. This place has been our polling station for the landmark general elections of last November. On the same gray board that carried the name of the candidates for the election, I saw two calendars. The wind has changed. I see it flutters the leaves of time. You'll need to tear off the old ones to keep up with the present so as to be ready for the future.

I haven't seen Padauk, the seasonal flower of the water festival yet. They mark the transition from old to the new Myanmar year and Padauk should be here any time soon I guess.

We all are hoping to welcome a Myanmar new year full of peace and promise. Yet for the present, we may soon see problems on the table that threatened to suffocate and swallow us bit by bit like a constrictor. Some, like the Myitsone Dam problem would not leave us alone until it has been resolved one way or another.

It is perfectly legitimate for you or me or anyone to say YES or NO to the Myitsone Dam. But it has to come from the bottom of your heart and with a clear conscience. Clearly it is our birthright to have a say. Then allow me to refuse to listen to any arguments for or against the Dam because I won't be able to understand them anyway, or else choose not to understand and that won't make a difference for me. With a problem of such scale, no analysis would be broad enough or deep enough to best serve the peoples of our land or our future generations. In such a situation, all the fine analysis, faultless arguments, and intricate logic won't do. For, what is more justifiable than the genuine will of the people?

Beyond all reason has been a phrase meaning idiocy that is unthinkable and it would have been used here and abroad for condemning “such blind denial in the name of will of the people”. I take that differently. In fact, the will of people is over and above all reason because no amount of reasoning will be good enough to resolve a problem big enough to be resolvable only by people's genuine will.

Anyway, let each of us exercise this right by ourselves and then let me point out that the burden of proof against the primacy of people's will rests on those who disagree. And now, Myitsone is in distress. Because we are fed and sheltered by this land, these waters, and this sky, shouldn't we be sensitive to their woes? If we can't express our gratitude decently and repay this debt in our life time shouldn't we let our children and their children and their children do it in their times and beyond? Shouldn't we better leave the hardest part to the future generations with their better knowledge and more advanced technologies and in doing so reserve finer rewards when, where, and for whom these are rightly due?

Nevertheless beware of this dirty device: When reason fails, the Devil helps. That means “When all the usual, sensible, known methods or procedures fail to get you out of a jam; you take whatever measures needed to force a solution”. We need to be constantly on the alert for such foul play and endure!