Birth of Insight

Author:   Erik Braun (Erasmus School of Economics, the Netherlands)
Publisher:   University of Chicago Press
ISBN:  

9781306094740


Pages:   274
Publication Date:   01 January 2013
Format:   Undefined
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Birth of Insight


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Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Erik Braun (Erasmus School of Economics, the Netherlands)
Publisher:   University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
ISBN:  

9781306094740


ISBN 10:   1306094747
Pages:   274
Publication Date:   01 January 2013
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Undefined
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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