The importance of Abhidhamma (higher doctrine) in Myanmar Buddhist society is well known. However, it is only within the last century that this doctrine has become more accessible to the laity, and specifically to women devotees.

During the colonial era, a considerable number of literate women were part of a “growing reading public,” and I argue that Burmese laywomen created a “demand” for learning Buddhist doctrine, with monks then creating a “supply”.

No one enters Burmese traffic with any assumptions about fundamental rights. Pedestrians, certainly, enjoy no “right of way.” No one, by the same token, is ever excluded from the game as long as they remain in motion. […] If you get ahead, you were right to try. If you don’t, you were right to yield. What’s to argue?

When it comes to hierarchies, Southeast Asia can be frustratingly (even scandalously) foreign for those of us raised in egalitarian, Western democracies. This is a book which explains clearly and sympathetically, but not uncritically, the logic behind Burma’s hierarchical arrangements with a close focus on the unique role of monks and gender.

Buddhism in Burma is involved in a continuing and intense struggle against a repressive military regime.

While much continues to unfold, the struggle between the Burmese military and its Buddhist subjects has, regrettably, only deepened in the decades since this article was first published.

Purity of mind is the greatest common denominator of all religions. Love, which alone is the means for the unity of mankind, must be supreme, and it cannot be so unless the mind is transcendentally pure.

This book contains the transcripts of three lectures given in 1951 to a class of Westerners in Burma who were looking to better understand the local religion.

promising him special access to a better future life and even nibbāna, that possesses great appeal to him. […] When people engage in religious behavior, they are trying to see where there is a concentration of power to which they can connect themselves. So, the question is, where do you think such concentrations of power lie?

When the weizza appear, the sermons that they convey are simple, basic, Buddhist lessons. There’s nothing unusual about what they prescribe to people as the way to be good Buddhists. So, while the circumstances in which these lessons are conveyed is most unusual, their content is altogether garden-variety, Burmese Buddhism.

A discussion on Guillaume Rozenberg’s 2010 French anthropology work on miracle cults in Myanmar (Les immortels: Visages de l’incroyable en Birmanie bouddhiste), published in English translation in 2015.

I urge you to meditate beforehand, i.e., before you come across old age, sickness and death

Six brief talks given by Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw in 1952 around Asia on the path to Nibbana while on a tour sponsored by the newly-independent Burmese government to drum up support for its then-upcoming Sixth Council.

The insight exercises can be practised not only in solitude, as is necessary in the case of the exercise of calm or samatha, but they can be practised everywhere. Maturity of knowledge is the main thing required. For if knowledge is ripe, the insight of impermanence may easily be accomplished while listening to a discourse or while living a householder’s ordinary life.

In this work, Ledi Sayadaw explores topics such as the distortions of perception (vipallasa), the conceivings (mannana), the stages (bhumi), the Noble Truths (sacca), the causes of phenomena, the higher knowledges, Nibbana, and more. Each subject is thoroughly explained and accompanied by concise descriptions, some taken from the Pali texts and others drawn from Ledi Sayadaw’s own teachings.

The translation includes the Pāli word commentary.

The present nuns in Burma had a great period of revival and prosperity during the sasana reforms sponsored by King Mindon, who built the royal city of Mandalay and held the Fifth Buddhist Council…

The historical and social context for the Theravāda nuns of Burma.

Neither Buddhism, a practice of transforming oneself with love, compassion, and wisdom, nor the Buddha, an ideal description of man enjoying life without harming oneself or others, helped me appeal to those monks who had the author- ity to imprison me. I came to know deeply that these monks did not truly understand that Buddhism is about the practice of love, compassion, and wisdom, even though they all said that they understood.

In this article, the author describes her experiences as a mendicant nun (both as thilashin and bhikkhuni), facing discrimination against women in the Burmese Buddhist community. While giving an insight into the everyday life of a monastic, she highlights the deeply entrenched gender biases and the struggle for equal rights within the monastic system.

Later published by the Buddhist Publication Society as The Requisites of Enlightenment.

It is the human need to express devotion to and adoration of the Buddha and his teaching that manifests itself in the act of building pagodas and in making ceremonial offerings before shrines.

This illustrated book is a journey through Burma’s legendary and renowned pagodas and other famous places, sharing the myths and stories tied to each site—legends that are deeply ingrained in the hearts and minds of every Burmese.

Ledi Sayadaw was simultaneously a great teacher to his monks and lay disciples, a great Dhamma preacher to large segments of the Burmese population, a founder and organizer of many Buddhist lay organizations, a famous teacher and popularizer of meditation practice, especially Ānāpāna and Vipassanā, and a classical scholar-monk and author of classical work.

Born in 1846, known for his deep meditation practice and devotion to the Abhidhamma, Ledi Sayadaw played a pivotal role in the revival of Theravāda Buddhism in Burma and beyond.

There is a contradiction between the spiritual worthiness felt by thilá-shin themselves and the mundane degradation to which they are subject.

social welfare activities conducted by nuns in Myanmar enhance their social and religious capital

I examine this change with the example of the Shwemyintzu nunnery founded in 1993 in the legacy of Daw Nyanacari.

Field-based observations on the young charismatic Phu Taki and his community, as well as on the practice of pagoda worship called Duwae

The purpose is threefold: first, to give ethnographic details of the hybrid nature of religious practices among Buddhist Pwo Karen, thereby demonstrating how sacred space and power are contested, despite the strong hand of the state; second, to challenge the assumed equation between non-Buddhist minorities on the one hand, and Buddhists as a lowland majority aligned to the state on the other; and third, to raise an alternative understanding to predominantly state-centered perspectives on Theravada Buddhism.

Known in Burmese as the weikza-lam or ‘Path of Esoteric Knowledge,’ this tradition has as its goal not the termination of saṃsāric life as an arahant, but rather its indefinite prolongation through the attainment of virtual immortality

On a unique, Burmese hybrid of Buddhism and Daoism.

The religious courts that try these cases have the backing of state law enforcement agencies: failure to comply with their judgements is punishable by imprisonment. A guilty verdict has been passed in all seventeen cases to date. There is no opportunity of appeal.

1. The Pali Literature of Ceylon by G. P. Malalasekera
2. The Pali Literature of Burma by Mabel Haynes Bode
3. The Pali Literature of South-East Asia by H. Saddhātissa

All three works, previously published independently, are here compiled into a single volume.

The earliest events are the legendary visits of the Buddha to Burma. These can be doubted of course, but are an important part of Burmese mythology.

An overview of Burmese Buddhist History and its relevance today.

Anthropologists and religious scholars have long debated the relationship between doctrinal Theravada Buddhism, so-called ‘animism’, and other folk practices in southeast Asian societies. A variety of models of this relationship have been proposed on the basis of ethnographic evidence. We provide the first psychometric and quantitative evaluation of these competing models, using a new scale developed for this purpose, the Burmese Buddhist Religiosity Scale.

We argue that this model provides support for a two-dimensional distinction between great and little traditions, shedding light on decades-old theoretical debates. Far from being in conflict, the transnational religious tradition of the literati and the variegated religious practices of locals appear to be reflected in two [orthogonal] dimensions of religiosity.

… it is necessary to work for the total removal within oneself of sakkāya-diṭṭhi, which is the root cause of rebirth in the miserable states of existence. Sakkāya-diṭṭhi can only be destroyed completely by the noble path and fruit: the three supramundane virtues of morality, concentration, and wisdom. It is therefore imperative to work for the development of these virtues. How should one do the work? By means of noting

One of the toughest interviews I’ve ever had.

Bhikkhu Bodhi responds to ethical questions posed by Buddhists in Burma facing extraordinary violence from their military junta.

For Bhikkhu Bodhi’s return to the podcast a year later see episode 104.

I allow you, monks, to turn the bowl upside down

How the Burmese saṅgha used the allowance in AN 8.87 to protest injustice.

Over 15,000 photographs of Buddhist archeological sites, pilgrimage centres, and temples in SE Asia, as well as Videos, Maps, Posters, etc.

This is striking proof of the general reliability with which Buddhist monks transmitted their texts

The amazing story of ancient Pāli texts in Burma, discovered to contain only minor differences from the contemporary canon.

In this illuminating interview, we see how this meme of the declining Dhamma gave rise to particular responses among Burmese Buddhists to British Colonialism and how those reactions helped to birth modern Buddhism.

An interview with the first author of the book by the same name.

… the vinaya is nearly as central to the Buddhist religion as the shari’a is to Islam. If we were to rank religions in order of legalism, Theravāda would come at the legalistic end of the scale, near to Islam and far from, for example, Taoism.

The fascinating history of Burmese law demonstrates and explains the relationship between textual conservativism and legal sovereignty in the Theravāda world and the profound effect this had on Buddhist discourse in the region.

Transcribed from a series of YouTube videos, this short booklet concisely describes the practice as it’s taught in the Mahasi vipassana tradition.

For those practicing intensively according to this booklet, I encourage you to sign up for one-on-one instruction here.

There is also a sequel to this booklet.

If a sensation of itchiness intervenes and the yogi desires to scratch because it is hard to bear, both the sensation and the desire to get rid of it should be noted, without immediately getting rid of the sensation by scratching.

An excellent general introduction to meditation, these instructions are applicable to whatever meditation technique you use.