The Birth of Insight by Erik Braun

[Ben]

This publication will be of interest to those who are either interested in or practice Burmese Theravada or one of its variants.

The Birth of Insight
MEDITATION, MODERN BUDDHISM, AND THE BURMESE MONK LEDI SAYADAW
ERIK BRAUN

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.

Publication date: November 2013
$USD35.77

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/boo ... 44419.html

[mikenz66]

There is an interesting interview with Erik (in 2 parts) on the Buddhist Geeks website:

BG 318: The Birth of Insight Meditation
BG 319: The Making of a Mass Meditation Movement


Mike

[mikenz66]

See also these threads about Erik Braun's work:
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=19911
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 80#p276370
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=18757


Mike

[Sabbe_Dhamma_Anatta]

.

Ben's Amazon Book Review

"The book I wanted to write"

• Three years ago I was in Myanmar to attend a 30-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat at one of SN Goenka's centres in Mandalay. On my brief pilgrimage which bookended my retreat I visited Ledi Sayadaw's meditation cave on the banks of the Chindwin River near Monywa. I also visited the Archives and Library of Buddhism at Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon in a bid to do some research into the history of meditation practice in Burma. Unfortunately, without letters of recommendation from a university in my home country I was unable to access their collections.
  
  Thank you to Erik Braun for Birth of Insight. This is an extremely important work that charts the origins of one of the most influential forms of modern Buddhism to the person of Ledi Sayadaw and his efforts to safeguard the Sasana from the disruptive effects of British colonisation Burma in the 1880s.
  
  For anyone who is a practitioner of any strain of Burmese Buddhism, practitioners of 'mindfulness' meditation or those seeking to develop their understanding of Modern Burmese power relations, this work provides a grounding in the powerful social and political contexts that were at play. This is a must read.
  Review page link