Download or read book The Buddha s Wizards written by Thomas Nathan Patton and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wizards with magical powers to heal the sick, possess the bodies of their followers, and defend their tradition against outside threats are far from the typical picture of Buddhism. Yet belief in wizard-saints who protect their devotees and intervene in the world is widespread among Burmese Buddhists. The Buddha’s Wizards is a historically informed ethnographic study that explores the supernatural landscape of Buddhism in Myanmar to explain the persistence of wizardry as a form of lived religion in the modern era. Thomas Nathan Patton explains the world of wizards, spells, and supernatural powers in terms of both the broader social, political, and religious context and the intimate roles that wizards play in people’s everyday lives. He draws on affect theory, material and visual culture, long-term participant observation, and the testimonies of the devout to show how devotees perceive the protective power of wizard-saints. Patton considers beliefs and practices associated with wizards to be forms of defending Buddhist traditions from colonial and state power and culturally sanctioned responses to restrictive gender roles. The book also offers a new lens on the political struggles and social transformations that have taken place in Myanmar in recent years. Featuring close attention to the voices of individual wizard devotees and the wizards themselves, The Buddha’s Wizards provides a striking new look at a little-known aspect of Buddhist belief that helps expand our ways of thinking about the daily experience of lived religious practices.

Download or read book Buddhist Art of Myanmar written by Sylvia Fraser-Lu and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning showcase of exceptional and rare works of Buddhist art, presented to the international community for the first time The practice of Buddhism in Myanmar (Burma) has resulted in the production of dazzling objects since the 5th century. This landmark publication presents the first overview of these magnificent works of art from major museums in Myanmar and collections in the United States, including sculptures, paintings, textiles, and religious implements created for temples and monasteries, or for personal devotion. Many of these pieces have never before been seen outside of Myanmar. Accompanied by brilliant color photography, essays by Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Donald M. Stadtner, and scholars from around the world synthesize the history of Myanmar from the ancient through colonial periods and discuss the critical links between religion, geography, governance, historiography, and artistic production. The authors examine the multiplicity of styles and techniques throughout the country, the ways Buddhist narratives have been conveyed through works of art, and the context in which the diverse objects were used. Certain to be the essential resource on the subject, Buddhist Art of Myanmar illuminates two millennia of rarely seen masterpieces.

Download or read book Saving Buddhism written by Alicia Turner and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saving Buddhism explores the dissonance between the goals of the colonial state and the Buddhist worldview that animated Burmese Buddhism at the turn of the twentieth century. For many Burmese, the salient and ordering discourse was not nation or modernity but sāsana, the life of the Buddha’s teachings. Burmese Buddhists interpreted the political and social changes between 1890 and 1920 as signs that the Buddha’s sāsana was deteriorating. This fear of decline drove waves of activity and organizing to prevent the loss of the Buddha’s teachings. Burmese set out to save Buddhism, but achieved much more: they took advantage of the indeterminacy of the moment to challenge the colonial frameworks that were beginning to shape their world. Author Alicia Turner has examined thousands of rarely used sources-- newspapers and Buddhist journals, donation lists, and colonial reports—to trace three discourses set in motion by the colonial encounter: the evolving understanding of sāsana as an orienting framework for change, the adaptive modes of identity made possible in the moral community, and the ongoing definition of religion as a site of conflict and negotiation of autonomy. Beginning from an understanding that defining and redefining the boundaries of religion operated as a key technique of colonial power—shaping subjects through European categories and authorizing projects of colonial governmentality—she explores how Burmese Buddhists became actively engaged in defining and inflecting religion to shape their colonial situation and forward their own local projects. Saving Buddhism intervenes not just in scholarly conversations about religion and colonialism, but in theoretical work in religious studies on the categories of “religion” and “secular.” It contributes to ongoing studies of colonialism, nation, and identity in Southeast Asian studies by working to denaturalize nationalist histories. It also engages conversations on millennialism and the construction of identity in Buddhist studies by tracing the fluid nature of sāsana as a discourse. The layers of Buddhist history that emerge challenge us to see multiple modes of identity in colonial modernity and offer insights into the instabilities of categories we too often take for granted.

Download or read book Traditions of Buddhist Practice in Burma written by Gustaaf Houtman and published by ILCAA. This book was released on 1990 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Buddhas of Burma written by Jean-Pierre Grandjean and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than two thousand years of Buddhist history, Burma (the country now called Myanmar) is heir to one of the richest traditions of Buddhist art in the world--images of the Buddha are almost everywhere one turns, from huge monumental statues to tiny votive figures. Jean-Pierre Grandjean's stunning photo essay is a compact tour of the Buddha images of Burma from every period and region.

Download or read book The Birth of Insight written by Erik Braun and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insight meditation, which claims to offer practitioners a chance to escape all suffering by perceiving the true nature of reality, is one of the most popular forms of meditation today. The Theravada Buddhist cultures of South and Southeast Asia often see it as the Buddha’s most important gift to humanity. In the first book to examine how this practice came to play such a dominant—and relatively recent—role in Buddhism, Erik Braun takes readers to Burma, revealing that Burmese Buddhists in the colonial period were pioneers in making insight meditation indispensable to modern Buddhism. Braun focuses on the Burmese monk Ledi Sayadaw, a pivotal architect of modern insight meditation, and explores Ledi’s popularization of the study of crucial Buddhist philosophical texts in the early twentieth century. By promoting the study of such abstruse texts, Braun shows, Ledi was able to standardize and simplify meditation methods and make them widely accessible—in part to protect Buddhism in Burma after the British takeover in 1885. Braun also addresses the question of what really constitutes the “modern” in colonial and postcolonial forms of Buddhism, arguing that the emergence of this type of meditation was caused by precolonial factors in Burmese culture as well as the disruptive forces of the colonial era. Offering a readable narrative of the life and legacy of one of modern Buddhism’s most important figures, The Birth of Insight provides an original account of the development of mass meditation.

Download or read book The Bejewelled Buddha from India to Burma written by Claudine Bautze-Picron and published by Sanctum Books. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents a comprehensive study of 'The Bejewelled Buddha' considering stylistic as well as iconographic issues. A crucial moment in the Buddha's life seems to have been referred to through this image, namely, the sojourn on Mount Meru, where the Buddha sat on Indra's seat and taught all the gods. By occupying the seat of the king of the gods he was able to endorse the royal function of this deity; this becomes particularly evident in the late fifth century, and probably reflects the dramatic situation that the Buddhist community was confronted with, i.e. the political power essentially fostering the Hindu religion and social structure. Hence, the Buddha is depicted as a perfect and powerful ruler sitting at the top of the universe and showing himself adorned as a king; more than any human ruler, the Buddha rules over the universe. There is also another dimension that should never be neglected - as in any other Indian cult, worship of his image entailed offerings of various kinds, such as flower garlands or jewels, being made to the Buddha. The image of the Bejewelled Buddha thus included various constituents while at the same time it was used as the locus where different religious or political concepts found a way of expression. The result was the creation of an image of multi-layered significance which found its way into all Asian cultures.

Download or read book Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century written by Monique Skidmore and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2005-07-31 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first study in a half century of one of the least known societies in the contemporary world. Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century provides insight into the everyday lives, concerns, and values of the people of this reclusive nation. Prominent anthropologists and religion scholars with in-depth, long-term knowledge of central Burma offer detailed analyses of the ways in which Burmese actively manage and create lives for themselves in the shadow of a military dictatorship. Their research crosses the domains of religious, political, and social life, examining public festivals and performance, local-state relations, literary life, lottery frenzies, mass meditators, political rumors and black humor, the value of children, changing male identities, and more in this impressive, wide-ranging collection.

Download or read book Religion and Politics in Burma written by Donald Eugene Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The interaction of Buddhism and politics in the Theravada Buddhist countries since their independence is considered. Burmese attempts to relate Buddhism to the ideologies of nationalism, democracy, and socialism are analyzed. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Myanmar s Buddhist Muslim Crisis written by John Clifford Holt and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myanmar’s Buddhist-Muslim Crisis is a probing search into the reasons and rationalizations behind the violence occurring in Myanmar, especially the oppressive military campaigns waged against Rohingya Muslims by the army in 2016 and 2017. Over more than three years John Holt traveled around Myanmar engaging in sustained conversations with prominent and articulate participants and observers. What emerges from his peregrinations is a series of compelling portraits revealing both deep insights and entrenched misunderstandings. To understand the conflict, Holt must first accurately capture the viewpoints of his different conversation partners, who include Buddhists and Muslims, men and women, monks and laypeople, activists and scholars. Conversations range widely over issues such as the rise of Buddhist nationalism; the sometimes enigmatic and unexpected positions taken by Aung San Suu Kyii; use of the controversial term “Rohingya”; the impact of state-sponsored propaganda on the Burmese public; resistance to narratives emanating from international media, the United Nations, and the international diplomatic community; the frustrations of local political leaders who have felt left out of the policy-making process in the Rakhine State; and the constructive hopes and efforts still being made by forward-looking activists in Yangon. Three main perspectives emerge from the voices he listens to, those of Arakanese Buddhists who are native to Rakhine (once called Arakan), where much of the conflict has taken place; Burmese Buddhists (or Bamars), who make up the vast majority of Myanmar’s population; and the Rohingya Muslims, whose tragic story has been widely disseminated by the international media. What surfaces in conversation after conversation among all three groups is a narrative of siege: all see themselves as the aggrieved party, and all recount a history of being under siege. John Holt gives voice to these different perspectives as an engaged and concerned participant, offering both a critical and empathetic account of Myanmar’s tragic predicament. Readers follow the hopes and dismay of this seasoned scholar of Theravada Buddhism as he seeks his own understanding of the variously impassioned forces in play in this still unfolding drama.

Download or read book Champions of Buddhism written by Kate Crosby and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hidden at the margins of Burmese Buddhism and culture, the cults of the weikza shape Burmese culture by bringing together practices of supernatural power and a mission to protect Buddhism. This exciting new research on an often hidden aspect of Burmese religion places weikza in relation to the Vipassana insight meditation movement and conventional Buddhist practices, as well as the contemporary rise of Buddhist fundamentalism. Featuring research based on fieldwork only possible in recent years, paired with reflective essays by senior Buddhist studies scholars, this book situates the weikza cult in relation to broader Buddhist and Southeast Asian contexts, offering interpretations and investigations as rich and diverse as the Burmese expressions of the weikza cults themselves. Champions of Buddhism opens the field to new questions, new problems, and new connections with the study of religion and Southeast Asia in general.

Download or read book Burma in transition written by Ursula Hohmeyer and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2014-01-22 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Burma, or Myanmar as the country has officially been called since 1989, is gradually starting to throw off the shackles of military dictatorship. Since the elections in November 2010, General Thein Sein has governed as “civilian” president. Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of national hero, Aung San, who won independence from the British after the Second World War, is seeking highest Office in 2015. Enormous changes at the legal, economic and financial level and in the infrastructure and modern technology are essential. Burmese constitute only two-thirds of the 60 million inhabitants. The country is populated by 135 recognised ethnic groups which are not all Buddhists and some of them have been fighting civil wars against the majority people. This unresolved legacy is a burden for the young “democracy” which could fail at any time because of it. The book describes the current Situation, reports on underlying historical and religious factors and explores future perspectives. The author Ursula Hohmeyer has been travelling around this fascinating country since 1984 and has established make many contacts with its people.

Download or read book Buddhism Education and Politics in Burma and Thailand written by Khammai Dhammasami and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on primary sources in Pali, Burmese and Thai, practising monk Venerable Khammai Dhammasami guides the reader through the complex history of monastic education in two neighbouring countries with very different Buddhist societies: Burma and Thailand. This book provides a clear account of the ways in which royal leaders and monastic institutions worked to develop monastic education in the face of changing political and economic conditions, including colonialism and the political instability of the 19th and 20th centuries. It studies influences from both British colonists and Siamese/Thai reformers, and engages with primary material, including documents from Burmese monasteries, royal orders, royal chronicles, and official government records. As the first book to examine monastic education in Burma and Thailand, this is a welcome contribution to the social, monastic and religious history of Southeast Asia, and the growing field of Burmese Buddhist Studies.

Download or read book The Immortals written by Guillaume Rozenberg and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1952 a twenty-six-year-old man living in a village in Central Burma was possessed by weikza—humans with extraordinary powers, including immortality. Key figures in Burmese Buddhism, weikza do not die but live on in an invisible realm. From there they re-enter the world through possession to care for people's temporal and spiritual needs while protecting and propagating Buddhism. A cult quickly formed around the young peasant, the chosen medium for four weikza ranging in age from 150 to 1000 years. In addition, these weikza appeared regularly in the flesh. The Immortals plunges us into the midst of this cult, which continues to attract followers from all over the country who seek to pay homage to the weikza, receive their teaching, and benefit from their power. The cult of the four weikza raises a number of classic anthropological issues, particularly for the anthropology of religion: the nature of the supernatural and of belief; the relations among religion, magic, and science; the experience of possession. It also provides a window on contemporary Burmese society. To contemplate both, the author adopts an unconventional approach, which itself reflects representation in anthropology, or, more precisely, how anthropology uses description and the interpretations description occasions to make sense of what it studies. The writing makes clear both the indigenous take on reality and the work of anthropological understanding as it is being elaborated, along with the ties that connect the latter to the former. Mixing narration of the incredible with reflection on the forms religious experience takes, The Immortals offers us a way to accompany the author into the field and to grasp—to take up and make our own—the anthropologist's interpretations and the realities to which they pertain.

Download or read book Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution written by Manuel Sarkisyanz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Splendour in Wood written by Sylvia Fraser-Lu and published by Weatherhill, Incorporated. This book was released on 2001 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Burmese wooden monasteries and related pavilions have not received the scholarly attention that they deserve. This is unfortunate, given the particularly ephemeral nature of wood in a damp tropical climate, with voracious insect life and the ever-present risk of floods, fire and earthquakes. Many extant structures are in a dilapidated condition; either the original donors have moved away or their descendants no longer have adequate financial resources to maintain a forebear's work. This book introduces the reader to the beauty and genius of Burmese craftsmanship as expressed in the construction and embellishment of Buddhist wooden monasteries. For posterity, the details of many wooden monasteries are recorded--not only the "old" and the "beautiful," but also others with architectural features of note. The book is copiously illustrated with sketches of floor plans and architectural details of many monasteries as well as with photographs of significant features of temple architecture.

Download or read book In Search of Burma written by Caroline Courtauld and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: