CURRENT MISSION

PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST OR MESSAGE ME UNTIL YOU HAVE READ MY COUCH DESCRIPTION

ABOUT ME

PLEASE READ MY COUCH DESCRIPTION BEFORE REQUESTING OR MESSAGING ME.

Hello fellow Myanmar travelers! I am an international school teacher here in Yangon.

Check out this amazing phone directory for the entire country of Myanmar!
http://www.tourismtransparency.org/find-a-business (Phonebook)

My newest performance, in the way of the Emancipator flow!
http://www.vimeo.com/myanmarflow/deathstar

Watch me spin poi, spin buugeng, and juggle all around Myanmar! http://www.vimeo.com/myanmarflow/inspiringjoy

Watch me meditate in the flow of Buugeng across the beautiful country of Vietnam!
http://www.vimeo.com/myanmarflow/buugengvietnam

Woo hoo! I made Myanmar national television!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg5yDKg4Vic

Check out my blog on India!
http://www.bestokednow.com

PHILOSOPHY

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." - André Gide

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
- Hermann Hesse

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I host and try to be as awesome as awesome can be!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Amazing.

Interests

Fire Poi and Object Manipulation (2 years)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-BF75KjFG0
http://www.vimeo.com/myanmarflow/inlemonestary
Rock Climbing (3 years)
Tae Kwon Do (5 years)
Yoga (3 months)

• arts
• performing arts
• yoga
• meditation
• juggling
• blogging
• rock climbing
• business
• teaching
• history
• law
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Be Here Now - Ram Dass
The Prophet - Kalil Gabran

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Burma, India, and Kyrgyzstan

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach: performing arts
Learn: performing arts
Share: performing arts, love, happiness :)

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Netherlands, Poland, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

India, Myanmar, South Korea

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