This is Sanghamitra.

Flying monks.

Paldin is a 62 year old monk.

And jumping monks of Tibet.

The police took the monks into the courtyard of the police station and searched the vehicle. They then searched the monks, confiscating Thich Quang Do's mobile phone.

A 21 year old monk. He was very happy.

As monks, we believe in alleviating suffering wherever we see it, as part of the vows we have taken. We could not ignore our people s suffering.

From the Zen master Seng ts'an If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against.

My own way of dealing with it was to become a monk.

I met Sanghamitra eight years ago when I was in Bangalore organizing a workshop with leaders of different NGO's working in some of the hardest aspects of society.

His religious name, by which he will be referred to hereafter, is Thich Quang Do.

We don't know who he was.

A squad of Security Police armed with electric truncheons intercepted the monks and placed them under arrest.

Perhaps he was a Jain monk, like Bahubali over here, the Gomateshwara Bahubali whose image is not far from Mysore.

Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan, a representative of the military, recently told UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari that the marchers in the streets were bogus monks. But we are genuine, and thousands of us from Rangoon, Mandalay, Pegu, Arakan, Magwe, and Sagaing demonstrated for peace.

When I asked Sanghamitra, How did you get from English literature to HIV AIDS?

Many monks and nuns have been abused and beaten, and thousands who have been arrested endure continued brutality. More than 1,000 are missing, and many are presumed dead.

And we stitch them together like medieval monks.

Am I telling you to embrace Seng ts'an and stop, stop with this struggle of for and against?

And it is not only the monks who are united. When we started our peaceful marches for change, students, youth, intellectuals, and ordinary people joined us in the streets, in the rain.

In the end, stories move like whirling dervishes, drawing circles beyond circles.

If you are lucky enough to meet Sanghamitra and ask her why and how, how have you achieved so much?

Let's face it, becoming a celibate monk is going to change a number of things.

Since that time, under her leadership, Samraksha has been a pioneer in all fields related to HIV AIDS.

Sanghamitra told me just last week she had just come back from two weeks in the villages, and she had a real breakthrough.

So I quit my degree, I headed off to the Himalayas, I became a monk, and I started studying meditation.

They then separated the monks, taking them to different places for interrogation. Thich Quang Do was taken to Ho Chi Minh City.

Many people, including Buddhist clerics and followers, as well as representatives of local authorities, have visited and wished him well.

Whilst neither of the monks was ever informed of this investigation, the Government is clearly aware of the affair.

You have to come into the world like Asanga did, who was looking to realize Maitreya Buddha after 12 years sitting in the cave.

But he saw the work, the care, the compassion that Sanghamitra and her team brought to the village, and he wanted to be part of it.

His whole monastery was thrown into prison at the time of the uprising, when the Dalai Lama had to leave Tibet.

But the bullets and clubs unleashed on Buddhist monks have worked. The monks have retreated, and an eerie normalcy has returned to Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar s principal city and former capital.

Sanghamitra didn't start life as a leader of an NGO, she started her career as university professor, teaching English literature.

For a monk to involve himself in politics or to hold a political post is contrary to the ethical code of Theravada Buddhism. But in Burma today, this spiritual philosophy, rooted in compassion and non violence, has assumed unexpected dimensions of defiance and recalcitrance, as monks challenge the hegemony of the military junta that rules our country.

But the good news is that we don't have to figure it out as we go along we have models, we have examples, like Benki and Sanghamitra and Jianchuan.

One of them is we have better reporting. The Associated Press is a better chronicler of wars over the surface of the Earth than sixteenth century monks were.

What's he doing over there at Amrapali's house with all his 500 monks, and so on. They were all grumbling, and so they boycotted him.

So, I guess it is a result of globalization that you can find Coca Cola tins on top of Everest and a Buddhist monk in Monterey.

To date, there reportedly remain over 1,100 political prisoners in Myanmar, including monks, lawyers, teachers, journalists, farmers, politicians, student leaders, writers and poets.

On 9 October 2003, at 9.30 a.m., Thich Quang Do was arrested by the Nhatrang City Security Police as he was driving towards Ho Chi Minh City with a group of Buddhist monks.

We are both Burmese Buddhist monks a leader of the All Burma Sangha Coalition that led the recent protests, and a scholar teaching in the United States. One of us is in hiding today, because Burma s military government met the peaceful protests of our Buddhist brothers and sisters with violence and brutality.

Concerning Mr. Thich Huyen Quang (Le Dinh Nhan), the source reported that he is a Vietnamese citizen and Buddhist monk, aged 87, the Fourth Supreme Patriarch of UBCV.

My telephone is cut, my communications are monitored, and I am forbidden to travel Thich Vien Phuong, the young monk who filmed the message, was arrested by Security Police as he left Thanh Minh Zen Monastery and detained for several hours of intensive questioning.

Some sage and repeatedly furry monks at this place called the d.school designed a meeting that you can literally step out of when it's over.