Podcasts about buddhist burma

Myanmar is the dream destination for so many meditators and spiritual seekers, and this was certainly the case for Sebastien Le Normand. A published author and French yogi in the tradition of S.N. Goenka living in Canada, Sebastien long wished to visit sites related to this lineage of teachers, and he made his dream a reality by planning a personal pilgrimage in 2016. He was so moved by the experience that he returned twice more, once ordaining temporarily as a monk in the Sagaing Hills. In our discussion, he talks about his experiences and reflections of being a meditator in Buddhist Burma, and staying for extended periods at monasteries. After the talk, Melissa Coats joins Zach Hessler to reflect upon Sebastien's interview. They discuss their own itinerant lifestyle as meditators and temporary monastics, and reflect upon the opportunities that Myanmar has provided to so many Western spiritual seekers following their own Hero's Journeys. Whether you are an accomplished traveler yourself or just an armchair adventurer, strap yourself in for this spiritual adventure tale, as we lead you through a virtual tour of Buddhist Burma! If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at http://www.insightmyanmar.org/donation (www.insightmyanmar.org/donation). Support this podcast

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they will be more inclined to accept what seems a modest project. Whether or not Ward Keeler had this writing strategy firmly in mind when he wrote the preface to The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), it’s the one he adopts, and with the recommended effect. Anticipating that the reader picking up a book on Burma with both “hierarchy” and “masculinity” in its title might be looking for answers to the question of how and why military men dominated the country for so long, and how and why everyone else tolerated them for as long as they did, he tells the reader that he leaves it to them “to speculate as to how such notions as the workings of hierarchy or the location of power ‘above one’s head’ encouraged… members of the former regime to impose control over the nation’s populace with such ferocious complacency”. His own concerns are more immediate and pedestrian, he says. Except, of course, they are much more than that. For as the reader turns the pages they are led through deceptively straightforward descriptions of both street and monastic life, into a theory of hierarchy and a study of masculinity that is at once in conversation with Keeler’s many interlocutors in Burma, and with classics in anthropological inquiry. Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss egalitarianism and autonomy, anthropology and audience, clientelism and communism, and how the study of Java and Bali informed his thinking about Burma. Enjoyed this episode? Then you may also like listening to Ward Keeler discuss Guillaume Rozenberg’s The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma, which he translated. Are area studies your thing? Then why not also check out the New Books in Eastern European Studies channel. They’re featuring a lot of great books on topics relevant to Southeast Asian studies. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they will be more inclined to accept what seems a modest project. Whether or not Ward Keeler had this writing strategy firmly in mind when he wrote the preface to The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), it’s the one he adopts, and with the recommended effect. Anticipating that the reader picking up a book on Burma with both “hierarchy” and “masculinity” in its title might be looking for answers to the question of how and why military men dominated the country for so long, and how and why everyone else tolerated them for as long as they did, he tells the reader that he leaves it to them “to speculate as to how such notions as the workings of hierarchy or the location of power ‘above one’s head’ encouraged… members of the former regime to impose control over the nation’s populace with such ferocious complacency”. His own concerns are more immediate and pedestrian, he says. Except, of course, they are much more than that. For as the reader turns the pages they are led through deceptively straightforward descriptions of both street and monastic life, into a theory of hierarchy and a study of masculinity that is at once in conversation with Keeler’s many interlocutors in Burma, and with classics in anthropological inquiry. Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss egalitarianism and autonomy, anthropology and audience, clientelism and communism, and how the study of Java and Bali informed his thinking about Burma. Enjoyed this episode? Then you may also like listening to Ward Keeler discuss Guillaume Rozenberg’s The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma, which he translated. Are area studies your thing? Then why not also check out the New Books in Eastern European Studies channel. They’re featuring a lot of great books on topics relevant to Southeast Asian studies. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they will be more inclined to accept what seems a modest project. Whether or not Ward Keeler had this writing strategy firmly in mind when he wrote the preface to The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), it’s the one he adopts, and with the recommended effect. Anticipating that the reader picking up a book on Burma with both “hierarchy” and “masculinity” in its title might be looking for answers to the question of how and why military men dominated the country for so long, and how and why everyone else tolerated them for as long as they did, he tells the reader that he leaves it to them “to speculate as to how such notions as the workings of hierarchy or the location of power ‘above one’s head’ encouraged… members of the former regime to impose control over the nation’s populace with such ferocious complacency”. His own concerns are more immediate and pedestrian, he says. Except, of course, they are much more than that. For as the reader turns the pages they are led through deceptively straightforward descriptions of both street and monastic life, into a theory of hierarchy and a study of masculinity that is at once in conversation with Keeler’s many interlocutors in Burma, and with classics in anthropological inquiry. Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss egalitarianism and autonomy, anthropology and audience, clientelism and communism, and how the study of Java and Bali informed his thinking about Burma. Enjoyed this episode? Then you may also like listening to Ward Keeler discuss Guillaume Rozenberg’s The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma, which he translated. Are area studies your thing? Then why not also check out the New Books in Eastern European Studies channel. They’re featuring a lot of great books on topics relevant to Southeast Asian studies. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they will be more inclined to accept what seems a modest project. Whether or not Ward Keeler had this writing strategy firmly in mind when he wrote the preface to The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), it’s the one he adopts, and with the recommended effect. Anticipating that the reader picking up a book on Burma with both “hierarchy” and “masculinity” in its title might be looking for answers to the question of how and why military men dominated the country for so long, and how and why everyone else tolerated them for as long as they did, he tells the reader that he leaves it to them “to speculate as to how such notions as the workings of hierarchy or the location of power ‘above one’s head’ encouraged… members of the former regime to impose control over the nation’s populace with such ferocious complacency”. His own concerns are more immediate and pedestrian, he says. Except, of course, they are much more than that. For as the reader turns the pages they are led through deceptively straightforward descriptions of both street and monastic life, into a theory of hierarchy and a study of masculinity that is at once in conversation with Keeler’s many interlocutors in Burma, and with classics in anthropological inquiry. Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss egalitarianism and autonomy, anthropology and audience, clientelism and communism, and how the study of Java and Bali informed his thinking about Burma. Enjoyed this episode? Then you may also like listening to Ward Keeler discuss Guillaume Rozenberg’s The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma, which he translated. Are area studies your thing? Then why not also check out the New Books in Eastern European Studies channel. They’re featuring a lot of great books on topics relevant to Southeast Asian studies. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they will be more inclined to accept what seems a modest project. Whether or not Ward Keeler had this writing strategy firmly in mind when he wrote the preface to The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), it’s the one he adopts, and with the recommended effect. Anticipating that the reader picking up a book on Burma with both “hierarchy” and “masculinity” in its title might be looking for answers to the question of how and why military men dominated the country for so long, and how and why everyone else tolerated them for as long as they did, he tells the reader that he leaves it to them “to speculate as to how such notions as the workings of hierarchy or the location of power ‘above one’s head’ encouraged… members of the former regime to impose control over the nation’s populace with such ferocious complacency”. His own concerns are more immediate and pedestrian, he says. Except, of course, they are much more than that. For as the reader turns the pages they are led through deceptively straightforward descriptions of both street and monastic life, into a theory of hierarchy and a study of masculinity that is at once in conversation with Keeler’s many interlocutors in Burma, and with classics in anthropological inquiry. Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss egalitarianism and autonomy, anthropology and audience, clientelism and communism, and how the study of Java and Bali informed his thinking about Burma. Enjoyed this episode? Then you may also like listening to Ward Keeler discuss Guillaume Rozenberg’s The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma, which he translated. Are area studies your thing? Then why not also check out the New Books in Eastern European Studies channel. They’re featuring a lot of great books on topics relevant to Southeast Asian studies. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they will be more inclined to accept what seems a modest project. Whether or not Ward Keeler had this writing strategy firmly in mind when he wrote the preface to The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), it’s the one he adopts, and with the recommended effect. Anticipating that the reader picking up a book on Burma with both “hierarchy” and “masculinity” in its title might be looking for answers to the question of how and why military men dominated the country for so long, and how and why everyone else tolerated them for as long as they did, he tells the reader that he leaves it to them “to speculate as to how such notions as the workings of hierarchy or the location of power ‘above one’s head’ encouraged… members of the former regime to impose control over the nation’s populace with such ferocious complacency”. His own concerns are more immediate and pedestrian, he says. Except, of course, they are much more than that. For as the reader turns the pages they are led through deceptively straightforward descriptions of both street and monastic life, into a theory of hierarchy and a study of masculinity that is at once in conversation with Keeler’s many interlocutors in Burma, and with classics in anthropological inquiry. Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss egalitarianism and autonomy, anthropology and audience, clientelism and communism, and how the study of Java and Bali informed his thinking about Burma. Enjoyed this episode? Then you may also like listening to Ward Keeler discuss Guillaume Rozenberg’s The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma, which he translated. Are area studies your thing? Then why not also check out the New Books in Eastern European Studies channel. They’re featuring a lot of great books on topics relevant to Southeast Asian studies. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will relieve their minds, he says. Then they will be more inclined to accept what seems a modest project. Whether or not Ward Keeler had this writing strategy firmly in mind when he wrote the preface to The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), it's the one he adopts, and with the recommended effect. Anticipating that the reader picking up a book on Burma with both “hierarchy” and “masculinity” in its title might be looking for answers to the question of how and why military men dominated the country for so long, and how and why everyone else tolerated them for as long as they did, he tells the reader that he leaves it to them “to speculate as to how such notions as the workings of hierarchy or the location of power ‘above one's head' encouraged… members of the former regime to impose control over the nation's populace with such ferocious complacency”. His own concerns are more immediate and pedestrian, he says. Except, of course, they are much more than that. For as the reader turns the pages they are led through deceptively straightforward descriptions of both street and monastic life, into a theory of hierarchy and a study of masculinity that is at once in conversation with Keeler's many interlocutors in Burma, and with classics in anthropological inquiry. Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss egalitarianism and autonomy, anthropology and audience, clientelism and communism, and how the study of Java and Bali informed his thinking about Burma. Enjoyed this episode? Then you may also like listening to Ward Keeler discuss Guillaume Rozenberg's The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma, which he translated. Are area studies your thing? Then why not also check out the New Books in Eastern European Studies channel. They're featuring a lot of great books on topics relevant to Southeast Asian studies. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

“It is difficult to characterize this fascinating book,” George Tanabe writes in his short preface to The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), “Not just because it concerns thousand-year-old Burmese Buddhists who fly but also because its author has chosen, almost by necessity, unusual procedures for studying and writing about this strange topic.” Indeed. Not only Guillaume Rozenberg’s topic but also his book is itself unusual and intriguing. First published in French and now available in English thanks to the work of Ward Keeler, this is the second in a planned tetralogy on the extraordinary in Burmese Buddhism. Variously a thrilling narrative of raining coconuts and candles, a how-to guide for budding alchemists, and an account of people rendering their bodies impervious to swords and blows, at its twists and turns The Immortals also offers uncommon insights into the relationship of belief to political and social order. At the same time, it reflects frankly on the odd role of the author in not merely recording but somehow also participating in the fashioning of this cult of the incredible in an otherwise unremarkable village in Burma’s Buddhist heartland. The book’s translator Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss scepticism and believing, vulnerability and masculinity, public order and military rule, Melford Spiro and the study of supernaturalism, anthropology’s crisis in representation, expository French style and the third person as rhetorical device, and language learning as anthropological exercise. You may also be interested in: * Erik Braun The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw * Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“It is difficult to characterize this fascinating book,” George Tanabe writes in his short preface to The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), “Not just because it concerns thousand-year-old Burmese Buddhists who fly but also because its author has chosen, almost by necessity, unusual procedures for studying and writing about this strange topic.” Indeed. Not only Guillaume Rozenberg’s topic but also his book is itself unusual and intriguing. First published in French and now available in English thanks to the work of Ward Keeler, this is the second in a planned tetralogy on the extraordinary in Burmese Buddhism. Variously a thrilling narrative of raining coconuts and candles, a how-to guide for budding alchemists, and an account of people rendering their bodies impervious to swords and blows, at its twists and turns The Immortals also offers uncommon insights into the relationship of belief to political and social order. At the same time, it reflects frankly on the odd role of the author in not merely recording but somehow also participating in the fashioning of this cult of the incredible in an otherwise unremarkable village in Burma’s Buddhist heartland. The book’s translator Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss scepticism and believing, vulnerability and masculinity, public order and military rule, Melford Spiro and the study of supernaturalism, anthropology’s crisis in representation, expository French style and the third person as rhetorical device, and language learning as anthropological exercise. You may also be interested in: * Erik Braun The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw * Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“It is difficult to characterize this fascinating book,” George Tanabe writes in his short preface to The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), “Not just because it concerns thousand-year-old Burmese Buddhists who fly but also because its author has chosen, almost by necessity, unusual procedures for studying and writing about this strange topic.” Indeed. Not only Guillaume Rozenberg’s topic but also his book is itself unusual and intriguing. First published in French and now available in English thanks to the work of Ward Keeler, this is the second in a planned tetralogy on the extraordinary in Burmese Buddhism. Variously a thrilling narrative of raining coconuts and candles, a how-to guide for budding alchemists, and an account of people rendering their bodies impervious to swords and blows, at its twists and turns The Immortals also offers uncommon insights into the relationship of belief to political and social order. At the same time, it reflects frankly on the odd role of the author in not merely recording but somehow also participating in the fashioning of this cult of the incredible in an otherwise unremarkable village in Burma’s Buddhist heartland. The book’s translator Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss scepticism and believing, vulnerability and masculinity, public order and military rule, Melford Spiro and the study of supernaturalism, anthropology’s crisis in representation, expository French style and the third person as rhetorical device, and language learning as anthropological exercise. You may also be interested in: * Erik Braun The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw * Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“It is difficult to characterize this fascinating book,” George Tanabe writes in his short preface to The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), “Not just because it concerns thousand-year-old Burmese Buddhists who fly but also because its author has chosen, almost by necessity, unusual procedures for studying and writing about this strange topic.” Indeed. Not only Guillaume Rozenberg’s topic but also his book is itself unusual and intriguing. First published in French and now available in English thanks to the work of Ward Keeler, this is the second in a planned tetralogy on the extraordinary in Burmese Buddhism. Variously a thrilling narrative of raining coconuts and candles, a how-to guide for budding alchemists, and an account of people rendering their bodies impervious to swords and blows, at its twists and turns The Immortals also offers uncommon insights into the relationship of belief to political and social order. At the same time, it reflects frankly on the odd role of the author in not merely recording but somehow also participating in the fashioning of this cult of the incredible in an otherwise unremarkable village in Burma’s Buddhist heartland. The book’s translator Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss scepticism and believing, vulnerability and masculinity, public order and military rule, Melford Spiro and the study of supernaturalism, anthropology’s crisis in representation, expository French style and the third person as rhetorical device, and language learning as anthropological exercise. You may also be interested in: * Erik Braun The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw * Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“It is difficult to characterize this fascinating book,” George Tanabe writes in his short preface to The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), “Not just because it concerns thousand-year-old Burmese Buddhists who fly but also because its author has chosen, almost by necessity, unusual procedures for studying and writing about this strange topic.” Indeed. Not only Guillaume Rozenberg’s topic but also his book is itself unusual and intriguing. First published in French and now available in English thanks to the work of Ward Keeler, this is the second in a planned tetralogy on the extraordinary in Burmese Buddhism. Variously a thrilling narrative of raining coconuts and candles, a how-to guide for budding alchemists, and an account of people rendering their bodies impervious to swords and blows, at its twists and turns The Immortals also offers uncommon insights into the relationship of belief to political and social order. At the same time, it reflects frankly on the odd role of the author in not merely recording but somehow also participating in the fashioning of this cult of the incredible in an otherwise unremarkable village in Burma’s Buddhist heartland. The book’s translator Ward Keeler joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss scepticism and believing, vulnerability and masculinity, public order and military rule, Melford Spiro and the study of supernaturalism, anthropology’s crisis in representation, expository French style and the third person as rhetorical device, and language learning as anthropological exercise. You may also be interested in: * Erik Braun The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw * Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr Ward Keeler speaks at the Southeast Asia Seminar. Traffic on city streets is the first of three scenes from everyday life Ward Keeler will use in this lecture to illustrate principles of hierarchy and power as they obtain in contemporary Burmese social life. The second is the public "Dhamma talks" or Buddhist sermons sponsored increasingly frequently at pagodas and neighbourhood festivals. The third is the interaction among customers and servers at tea shops, where hot and cold drinks and a variety of snacks can be had at most hours of the day. The very ordinariness of these phenomena shows how concerns for relative standing—hierarchical understandings—and the privileges and obligations they entail, pervade Burmese social interaction. At the same time, differences among these scenes makes it possible to illustrate how hierarchy inflects behaviour in diverse ways according to the nature of the situation at hand: when interaction is anonymous and therefore implicates only differences in power; when situations elicit enthusiastic displays of subordination; and when arrangements provide hints of what superior standing without implications of reciprocal obligation would feel like, which is to say, why the market economy exercises such seductive allure. Ward Keeler is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph. D from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, following undergraduate studies at Cornell University. During the first part of his career, he did research on the performing arts, language, and gender in Java and Bali (Indonesia). More recently he has conducted fieldwork in Mandalay (Burma). His published works include two books on the Javanese shadow play tradition, the annotated translation of a postmodernist Indonesian novel, a textbook for the Javanese language, three CDs of Burmese classical music, as well as a number of articles on both Indonesia and Burma. He and a collaborator, Allen Lyan, have prepared materials for foreign learners of Burmese, which they hope to publish in the near future. The lecture is based on the opening chapter of a book, The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma, based on recent fieldwork in Mandalay, to be published by the University of Hawaii Press.