A true account of a strange phenomenon a group of us encountered many years ago during a tour to Myanmar.

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In 1997, I went with a group of 7 of my friends for a 1-
week visit to Myanmar. There were 5 ladies and 3 men
including me. The youngest in the group was Michael, an
undergraduate in a foreign university; he was back in
Malaysia for his vacation. I had taught him Chemistry and
English in our community guidance classes when he was
in Form 4 and 5.
Yangon is just about 992 miles away from Kuala Lumpur
and the flight time to the Yangon International Airport
was just over 2 hours. After the usual arrival procedures at
the airport we were met by a local Burmese friend who
arranged a van to take us to a monastery situated about
120 miles away from Yangon. The journey through the
rural area of Yangon was quite an eye-opener. We saw
many people and homes that were very poor but there was
an air of peacefulness, and contentment, a sort of
happiness in the faces of the rural folks. Upon reaching
the monastery where we would be staying for about 3
days, we were very warmly welcomed by many novice
monks and devotees led by a couple who were doctors.
The husband and wife doctors were very friendly and
hospitable and they spoke very good English. They acted
as our interpreters all throughout our stay at the
monastery.

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We were brought to see and pay our respects to the abbot
of the monastery in his room. The abbot had been very
sick for quite some time already and he was lying on his
bed. The doctors told us that he was suffering from renal
failure and a few other ailments. Despite his weak
physical condition, the abbot welcomed us most warmly.
He was very kind and compassionate. He gave us
inspiring advice and hoped that our short stay at the
monastery would be a happy and most meaningful one. He
invited us to participate in the various religious activities
held in the temple.
During the period of our stay, we had many discussions
with our two doctor friends. They were very devoted in
their religious practices and told us of some of the
‘miraculous’ experiences they had or the strange
phenomena they had witnessed. I remember some of the
things the husband told us:
“Our lives were once saved by the abbot who has great
love and compassion. My wife and I were traveling in a
car to attend a medical seminar in Yangon some years
back. I was driving and we had to drive through some
hilly area. It was in the hot afternoon when a dangerous
accident happened on the road. I must have dozed off and
suddenly we felt the car spinning round and round. We
panicked and I could hear my wife chanting her prayers.

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The kind face of the temple abbot came upon my mind
persistently and I found myself pleading to him to help
save our lives. Very miraculously, the car in a matter of
moments came to a complete stop. We were just some
meters from the edge of a ravine. Everything happened so
fast but deep down in us we believed that a strange force
saved us from what could have been a tragic car accident.
In our hearts we knew that our kind abbot had intervened
in a way we really could not understand. We are very
grateful to him and since the incident, our faith in the
abbot and the temple has grown very strong. We now
serve the abbot and the monastery in whatever way we
can.
There was another occasion when something inexplicable
happened. The abbot was giving a religious talk to the
congregation members in one of the shrine halls. It was a
full-moon night and my wife and I were there to help. I
was in charge of the tape recording for the talk and my
wife helped in serving the refreshments. Quite a number of
devotees turned up to listen to the talk by the abbot. The
whole talk was delivered completely in Burmese. At the
end of the talk there was a question and answer session.
That night when my wife and I went home, we tested the
recording using our cassette recorder. We listened again
to the recorded talk. To our great shock, towards the end
of the talk, there were parts of the talk that were not in the
Burmese language but in Pali, the language used way

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in the Burmese language but in Pali, the language used
way back in ancient India. This was really baffling and we
could not understand this strange phenomenon.”
The doctor also told us of some peculiar appearances of
lights in the sky during certain full-moon and new-moon
days. We eight of us from Malaysia personally
experienced one such strange happening during our short
stay at the monastery. This was what we witnessed:
The happening took place on the afternoon of the last day
of our stay. We were having a discussion with our doctor
friends in the shrine hall of the temple. It was around 4 pm
local time. ( 5.30 pm Malaysian time ) Suddenly there was
a commotion outside the temple. There was a crowd of
perhaps thirty to forty people all looking up to the clear
sky. The faces showed awe, admiration and respect. It was
like a scene from Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounter Of
The Third Kind”. All of us went out to see for ourselves
what was happening. I looked up into the sky just like
everybody else did. The sun was shining quite brightly. I
was very surprised that my eyes were not feeling
uncomfortable with the glare of the sun. I had been having
some eye cataract problems and had been experiencing
discomfort whenever I looked into the sun above. But now
this did not happen.
What I saw was really puzzling.

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Dancing around the sun were beautiful balls of colored
lights. I thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me. I
took out my spectacles, gave it a good wipe and watched
again. The dancing lights were still there. “Optical
Illusion?” “A hypnosis?” “UFOs and Aliens?” “Angels,
devas or other heavenly beings?” The thoughts were
racing through my mind. When I checked with the other
members in our group, they too saw what I saw. This
strange phenomenon went on for some time, perhaps for 7
or 8 minutes. I then went back inside the temple while the
others still kept on watching. I found our doctor friends
sitting on the floor. I joined them and started to ask them a
number of questions. They told me that this sort of
phenomenon had taken place a number of times on days
corresponding to the new-moon or full-moon of the lunar
calendar. They attributed this to the intervention of
heavenly beings but I thought to myself, “Well, we don’t
really know.”
When the phenomenon ended and the onlookers had
dispersed, Michael, the youngest member on our group
came inside the temple. He said to me, “Aiyah, Brother
Oh, you missed the ending part of the ‘show’!” “What
happened?” I asked. Michael replied, “After you left, the
dancing lights came down. They were like ‘balls’,
beautiful colored ones. A few of them touched my thighs
and lower body.”

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“Oh, you were hit by the ‘dancing balls’! Did you feel any
pain?” I asked. “No, not at all,” Michael said. “They were
optical in nature. Upon touching me, they vanished.” A
few other members of our group also narrated the same
thing.
The following day we said goodbye to the abbot and all
our Burmese friends and left for Yangon. We stayed a few
days in Yangon and toured various interesting tourist
places in and around Yangon. For the few remaining days
we were in Yangon, I would look up into the sky at
around 4 pm local time, hoping to see the dancing lights
again. But to this day I never saw such a strange
phenomenon again.
Reflection
* In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we find the following lines:
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
- Hamlet (1.5.166-7), Hamlet to Horatio
* We should not jump to conclusions when we encounter
strange things we don’t understand. We should not fall
victims to superstition or speculation. Keep an open mind and
have the honest attitude, “We don’t know for sure as yet; one
day perhaps science can offer a logical explanation.”
* Don’t attach to ‘miraculous’ phenomena – there is a cause
according to Natural Laws. Never let such things detract you
from the Goal of Buddhists – To walk The Noble 8-Fold Path
ardently so as to end Dukkha or Suffering. Worshiping
‘miraculous’ things cannot cause our Dukkha to cease!