Friedrich Lustig

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Friedrich Voldemar Lustig also known as Ashin Ananda (born 26 April 1912 in Narva, Estonia; 4 April 1989 in Rangoon, Myanmar) was an Estonian Buddhist, a Latvian Buddhist archbishop and Sangharja for Estonia and Lithuania.

[edit] Life

At a young age he became regarded as a child prodigy because of his talent as a pianist—he could play difficult pieces by famous composers such as Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff. He earned money to pay for his education by playing the piano at the best cinema in his hometown, Narva. These were the days of silent movies, and he had to decide quickly which tune was suitable for each scene on the silver screen. "In later years I realized that period of my life was very useful for me, for it enriched my imagination and encouraged me to compose good poetry," he wrote in his "Brief Sketch of My Life."

He became a devout Buddhist and took the Burmese or monastic name of Ashin Ananda. He was especially effective in publicizing Burmese poetry and traditional music among English-speaking audiences.He entered Burma from Thailand on September 8, 1949,and was granted asylum by U Nu. Before that, he had stayed in Thailand for over a decade, during which his native country, Estonia, was annexed by the Soviet Union and his passport became invalid. A strong anti-communist, he preferred to be a man without a country rather than to carry a Soviet passport.

When Ne Win’s military dictatorship came to power, and foreigners were forced to leave, Ashin Ananda got permission to stay because of this peculiar situation. Ne Win appreciated his anti-communist stance and asked him to write articles denouncing communists in "The Working People’s Daily" and "The Guardian" — which Ananda happily did for ten years. "I am not sorry for what I did. I wrote everything with a clear conscience," he said later to a foreign journalist. Considering the fate of his tiny Baltic country, Estonia, which was engulfed by the communists in 1940, resulting in 25 percent of the one million Estonians being persecuted — either killed, sent to Russia’s prison camps or forced to escape abroad — Lustig probably wrote those anti-communist pieces with satisfaction, if not with pleasure.

"If you go to the Shwedagon and ask anybody about Friedrich Lustig, they will know him". Such is the popularity of this extraordinary foreign monk who spent forty years in Burma, and was allowed to live at the Shwedagon Pagoda by Ne Win.

Ashin Ananda did not get to see his native country free again. He died a year before Estonia regained independence. Possibly, he was the only Estonian who held a genuine Estonian passport for all the fifty years of Russian occupation, and never gave it up for any other passport. Estonian people must be very proud of that. He died in 1989 in Rangoon, Myanmar.

[edit] See also

• Buddhism in Estonia
• Buddhism in Russia
• Agvan Dorjiev
• Datsan
• Dashi-Dorzho Itigelov

[edit] External links

• Estonian Archives in Australia: Friedrich Lustig / Ashin Ananda
• (German) Buddhismus im Baltikum

				Buddhism
Terms and concepts		History		Schools and Sects		People		By region and country
List of topics		Timeline		Temples		Texts		Culture
				Portal				v • d • e