The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism & the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw

by 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.

Genres: Buddhism, History, Religion, Meditation

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 12, 2013

Reviews

[Ihor Kolesnyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ця книга - розгорнутий екскурс у історію становлення нового виду буддійської практики, коли миряни отримали можливість медитувати і згодом цей рух вийшов за межі регіону.
Леді Саядо, який мені схожий на Магатму Ганді, але бірманського, був одним із перших монахів, які відкрили можливість для пробудження людям, які не є монахами/монахинями. Згодом цей рух ліг у основу боротьби проти колоніалізму, за власну ідентичність і навіть в основу дуже специфічної консервативно-демократичної громадської активності.
Є тут також про практики, інших вчителів та поширення на Заході за посередництва Джека Корнфілда, Джозефа Голдстіна та інших.

[Juergen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very academic work and a bit of a dull read. The author was also interviewed for the Buddhist Geeks podcast recently, and it's worth finding as it gives a good overview of his research (and resultingly the content of this work): http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2014/04/...

The author focuses on the life and works of the 19/20th c. Burmese Buddhist monk, the Ledi Sayadaw. It is without question that we western meditators owe this monastic a great debt. Without his vitalization of Buddhism in Burma during the colonial rule of the British, we would not have the meditation practices that we have today. In Burma, he wrote commentarial works and urged study of Buddhism as a means to preserve the religion. His legacy spread out to the west through the works of the Mahasi Sayadaw and U Bha Khin, two of the root teachers of the techniques most frequently known and practiced in the west.

History is always important in providing perspective, so I would recommend this to all Buddhist meditators despite the dryness.

[jjfoerch · Rating 5 out of 5]

A scholarly examination of the life and times of the Burmese Theravadan monk, Ledi Sayadaw, and how the current flowering of insight meditation in the West can trace many roots to his reformulation of lay Buddhist practice in Burma under colonial rule. A dense work, but a short one, worth the effort for any who want to understand the roots of Buddhism's spread and secularization in the West.

The book builds comprehensively to its thesis, laying the groundwork so that the reader gains an understanding of Myanmar/Burma in the colonial period, the context in which Ledi Sayadaw lived, his influences, his life and works, and enough Abhidhamma philosophy to get a sense and appreciation for his message.

I think I will be referring back especially to the conclusion and chapter 5 in my further journey with Buddhism, and I think possibly the conclusion could stand on its own for one who was primarily interested in the history of insight meditation in the West. Chapter 5 was especially interesting as well because it covered his shorter writings, and sparked my interest to hopefully read a couple of them.

Definitely a book of history, but even so, it helped me to better understand several nuances of Buddhism, such as how the Abhidhamma fits with the rest of the tradition, and the differences between traditional Buddhist mindfulness practice and its psychologized form popular in the West.

If I revisit this book beyond the last chapter and conclusion, I'm going to do so with a notepad to keep track of dates, as the narrative is based on topics, not a rigid chronology, so a timeline would help me better follow the biographical arc.

[Michael W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this a lengthy review elsewhere, so will just quote my conclusion here:
"This book is a major contribution to Buddhist and Burma Studies alike. It bridges the gap in the literature between studies of precolonial Buddhism, on the one hand, and late-colonial and contemporary Buddhism, on the other. It also shows in the conclusion, the links between Burma, Ledi, and the mainstreaming of mass insight meditation in America. The present reviewer would recommend that this study be read alongside Alicia’s Turner’s Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma (Hawaii, 2014), because both books strongly complement each other, presenting together a powerful introduction to the shaping of the lay Buddhist community in a formative period of modern Burmese history. This book should be essential reading for scholars of Buddhism and Southeast Asian Studies alike and will certainly find very welcoming readers in both undergraduate and postgraduate courses."

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly dry and scholarly, but the background tying Ledi's career to the court of Mindon and his work with the Abbidhamma was fascinating if not necessarily super engaging. The book gets most interesting when it starts to detail Ledi's innovation with promoting meditation among the laity, particularly his emphasis of enlightenment as a practical end and his decoupling of concentration practice from vipassana.

It whets the appetite for a more general account of the story of how contemporary Western Meditation culture was formed. I'd love to see a book that went into greater detail about Chogyam Trungpa, Ajhan Cha, Mahasi Sayadaw and other important figures that played key roles in bringing meditation to the West.

In particular, with Braun's book being so focused on Burma, I would have liked to have read a history with equal detail of all the various Burmese figures that influenced the globalization of vipassana, but particularly Mahasi Sayadaw.

[Thaths · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dry, plodding academic work whose thesis is that Ledi Sayadaw, in the late 19th (and early 20th) century laid the foundations of making meditation a part of laity's practice. This would evolve into the modern mindfulness movement. I found the introductory chapters, and the conclusion chapter most useful in terms of understanding the lineages (Mahasi versus U Ba Khin, for example).

[Saettare · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not so much a biography of this influential Burmese spiritual leader as a scholarly survey of a revolution in Buddhist religious practice in Myanmar during one of the many periods of great duress the country has experienced in recent history. Having just traveled through this wonderfully rich place I found that many of the insights put forth here resonate with the way in which the religion is lived on the ground amidst many of the gracious ordinary citizens that we encountered, especially those who shared their conceptions of Buddhist prayer and practice with us in the many pagodas we visited and a long ride we took from Bagan to Mandalay with a driver who was particularly articulate about many of these issues in some of the most ordinary terms. I'm glad to have stumbled upon this book when I did. It's one of those happy serendipitous coincidences.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed in this book, as I was hoping to learn about the history of insight meditation and, of course, Ledi Sayadaw himself, but the circumstances surrounding Ledi Sayadaw's role in the development of the lay insight meditation requires an enormous amount of back story, far more than I was interested in. If you're looking for a history of Buddhism in Burma, you've found the right book. Otherwise, if you're hoping to learn more about insight meditation, this book contains little more than a few pages worth of information, most of which could be easily summed up in a few paragraphs.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

a remarkable study of Buddhism in the modern world, lacization and monkification??
check it out.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author did a good job of making the subject matter interesting and accessible.