The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the

The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (Buddhism and Modernity)

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 Buddhaâ€™s most important gift to humanity. In the first book to examine how this practice came to play such a dominantâ€”and relatively recentâ€”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 Lediâ€™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 accessibleâ€”in part to protect Buddhism in Burma after the British takeover in 1885. Braun also addresses the question of what really constitutes the â€œmodernâ€ 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 Buddhismâ€™s most important figures, The Birth of Insight provides an original account of the development of mass meditation.
Country USA
Brand University of Chicago Press
Manufacturer University of Chicago Press
Binding Hardcover
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780226000800
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	University of Chicago Press
Manufacturer	University of Chicago Press
Binding	Hardcover
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780226000800
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (Buddhism and Modernity)

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