I simply cannot remember the exact circumstances in which I first heard of Tharmanay Kyaw Sayadaw. It’s been bothering me tonight, for some reason. Perhaps it was a brief remark made long ago, or a sentence in an incomplete reading, or possibly a distant voice on a low-quality audio recording. Is it not true that names manifest in our lives with such lack of ceremony? They simply appear and then remain ingrained in the mind.
It’s late—the kind of late where the house gets that specific sort of quiet. Beside me, a cup of tea has grown cold in the quiet, and I have been observing it instead of shifting my position. However, when he is in my thoughts, I don't focus on religious tenets or a list of milestones. I merely remember how conversation hushes whenever he is the subject. To be perfectly sincere, that is the most accurate description I can offer.
I do not know why certain people seem to possess such an innate sense of importance. It is an understated power; a simple stillness in the air that changes the way people carry themselves. One sensed that he was a man who moved without the slightest haste. As if he were prepared to remain in the awkward segments of time until everything became still. Then again, perhaps I am merely projecting my own thoughts; it is something I tend to do.
A dim memory remains—possibly a video clip I once encountered— where he was talking at such an unhurried pace. He left these vast, quiet gaps between each of his sentences. Initially, I suspected a technical delay in the recording, but it was simply his manner. Waiting; letting the speech take effect, or perhaps not. I can still feel the initial impatience I felt, and the subsequent regret it caused. I do not know if that observation is more about his presence or my lack of it.
Within that environment, reverence is as common as the air itself. Yet he appeared to bear that respect without any outward display of pride. He made no grand displays, only a quiet persistence. He resembled someone maintaining a fire that has burned for ages. I am aware that this comparison is poetic, even if I did not mean it to be. It is simply the mental picture that I keep returning to.
I sometimes muse on the reality of living such a life. People watching you for decades, measuring themselves against your silence, or your way of taking meals, or your complete lack of reaction to things. It sounds exhausting. I wouldn’t want it. I don't think he "wanted" it either, but I don't actually know.
A motorcycle is audible in the distance, then quickly goes quiet. I find myself reflecting on how inadequate the term “respected” seems. It does not carry the right meaning; authentic respect is often heavy. It is profound; it compels a person to sit more formally without conscious thought.
I do not write this to categorize who he was as a person. I couldn’t do that if I tried. I am merely observing the way some names persist in the mind. The way they influence things in silence, only to reappear tharmanay kyaw in your mind years later in those quiet moments when one is doing nothing of consequence.