Sonia Faleiro

Little is known about Wirathu’s early life beyond what he has chosen to share. Born in 1968 in Kyaukse, a town in Mandalay, he was one of eight children. His father, a tractor driver and water seller, traveled in an oxcart to earn a living, often bringing his son along. Wirathu was seventeen when he finally graduated the eighth grade, at which point his father sent him to a monastery for what was meant to be a brief stint, a rite of passage for Burmese Buddhist men. For Wirathu, it became a calling. “The Buddha’s teachings,” he told the Swiss director Barbet Schroeder in the 2017 documentary The Venerable W., “were a peaceful domain without worry.” He passed his exams and adopted to monastic discipline—one meal a day, cold-water baths, hours spent sitting on the wooden floor in study and recitation. His family was furious. “My father banged his head against the wall,” Wirathu told Schroeder in soporific tone. As the eldest son, his absence meant a loss of income.

In 1991, Wirathu moved to Masoyein Monastery, fifty kilometers away. The monastery housed over 2,000 novices, and twenty-three-year-old Wirathu went largely unnoticed. “When I fell ill, I was alone,” he said. “I had to take care of myself.” Each day, he carried his alms bowl through the streets, begging for food that was often barely edible. In the rigid hierarchy of the monastery, power was the only way to earn respect.

At the time, a monk at Yangon’s Tant Kyi Taung Pagoda was drawing crowds with an unusual meditation technique. Grainy online videos show followers roaring like tigers and slithering like snakes. Intrigued but skeptical, Wirathu studied the Buddhist canon and concluded that the monk was a fraud. His response was a book, The Path of the Theravada, which he claimed the military banned, forcing him to self-publish. The book marked the beg