Hindu, Buddhist and Daoist Meditation

Bronkhorst, Bäumer, Houtman, Anaalayo, Dessein,

Eskildsen, Komjathy, Eifring
This volume is ready to be published right after New Year
by Hermes Academic Publishing.
Halvor Eifring (ed)

Vipassanā in Burma

Self-government and the Ledi Ānāpāna Tradition

Gustaaf Houtman

A deity asks the Buddha:

Tangle within, without, lo! In the toils
Entangled is the race of sentient things.
Hence would I ask thee, Gotama, of this:
Who is’t can from this tangle disembroil

The Buddha replies:

The human being,1 discreet, on virtue planted firm
In intellect and intuition trained;
The renouncer2 ardent and discriminant;
Can from this tangle disembroil.

1
Pe Maung Tin (1921-25) has “the man” but Mahasi (1979) prefers “human
being” (lu).
2
Pe Maung Tin (1921-25:1) translates P. bhikkhu as “brother”, but Mahasi
(1979: 4) prefers yahàn, the Burmese term for ordained monk. Insofar as this
state involves renunciation (from which begging arises), and in keeping with the
notion of “monk-of-ultimate truth” as a sexless designation, I prefer the general
term renouncer here.

1
2 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

This paper provides a case study of renouncer Saya Lei, a

Burmese vipassanā practicing hermitess whose experiences I
present in the second part of this essay. This is preceded by a
brief introductory section on its emergence as a popular
movement that gave rise to two major historical vipassanā
traditions in Burma. It is followed by a concluding part asking
whether we can understand the differential enthusiastic
emphasis on vipassanā in Burma over other forms of
meditation such as samatha without prior analysis of its
evolution as a tradition in its wider socio-political and
historical context.

Vipassanā techniques3
There are endless works on the methodology of vipassanā
and on the technicalities surrounding its practice and
attainments in doctrinal and commentarial works. In many
cases, however, these have been stripped of the contexts in
which these traditions emerged. My interests lie in
understanding vipassanā in the context of contemporary
Burmese biographical, cultural, and socio-political contexts
from which these methods emerged and where they are
practiced. This suggests vipassanā has a lot to do with the
foreigner but not quite in the way scholars such as Sharf
(1995) have suggested, who locates the popularization of
vipassanā principally in the demands of the middle classes and
as the result of a reification of “religious experience” by
scholars in the west:

The rationalization of meditation, coupled with the

Westernized values of the middle class patrons of urban
meditation centers, led naturally to a deemphasis on the
traditional soteriological goal - bringing an end to rebirth.
(Sharf 1995: 258)
3
For an excellent critique of those who would postulate vipassanā as a separate
technique see Cousins (1996).
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 3

What Sharf overlooks is that each of these traditions has its

own ramifications. In the Burmese context not all are so
readily reduced to western influence, whether the western
middle classes or Protestantism. Indeed, the traditions that I
have observed in Burma are less about copying or aping than
they are the product of a conversation and a genuine attempt
to develop new vernacular senses of identity whilst under
siege both by foreign colonialists and by oppressive regimes.
For example, anyone visiting the area of Monywa will find
that peasants in some villages in these areas are not only
perfectly capable of engaging anyone on the array of
methodologies for practicing vipassanā without involving a
single foreigner, but are themselves engaged in debates, with
some villages already having been divided over which
methods are best since the 1930s.
Furthermore, I see no evidence that this development
“represents the final collapse of the traditional distinction
between mundane and supermundane goals — the distinction
that served to legitimize the institution of the lay-supported
samgha” (Sharf, 1995: 258): indeed, the Saṅgha remains at
the heart with its teaching and practice, and esteem of the
Sangha has not suffered any major erosion. What appears
true, however, is that vipassanā has increasingly come to be
seen as a separate tradition of its own, whereas in its early
days it was seen as part of a broader repertoire of activities.
The concepts of “practice” (paṭipatti) and meditation
(bhāvanā) have long been interpreted as a broader activity,
even involving acts like recitation or repetition. Further
research needs to be done on the vernacular context of the
practice, but I cannot confirm Sharf’s generalizations in
relation to these traditions insofar as they operate in Burma
(he based himself mostly on comments about Sri Lanka, which
represents a different case).
4 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

The earliest evidence of vipassanā popularization in Burma

goes back to the royal courts in the mid-1850s, when Burma
was already an emasculated kingdom partly under colonial
rule. Hpo Hlaing, then Minister of the Interior under King
Mindon, and author of several works on vipassanā (some
while in exile), was stimulated to assert vipassanā as an
appropriate method in the courts whilst engaging foreign
knowledge: Hpo Hlaing proclaimed non-self as an attribute of
Burmese identity in the face of foreign invaders who he
interpreted as typically believing in asserting a self. Ledi
Sayadaw, impressed with Hpo Hlaing, inherited his interests in
vipassanā, and was in touch with western Buddhologists
(more than western missionaries). He wrote his first work on
vipassanā in 1914, entitled “for the benefit of European
Buddhists” (Wun-ní-tá, 1956: 175). What this suggests is less
that the Burmese were aping the west, but that they presented
interested western Buddhist visitors with a practice that would
have tickled their interest, whilst also demonstrating that it
performed certain functions in Burmese society with a strong
following.
Vipassanā practice, by observing all mental and bodily
processes as transient, leads to a theoretical and experiential
understanding of one’s existence as conditioned: from
questioning one’s own mental and physical make-up in life,
practitioners graduate to questioning the ethnic and socio-
cultural environment and the polity of which they are part. In
short, it posits an order beyond the self-evident order of
absolute identities of which we tend to habitually think
ourselves part.
Vipassanā has a history of adoption by political reformers
(for example, Hpo Hlaing not only emphasised and wrote
about vipassanā but also proposed a form of “traditional
democracy”), and these traditions are associated with a track-
record of questioning the political orders associated with
British colonialism (1824-48), during the parliamentary
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 5

democracy period (1948-62), and also under the military

dictatorship in Burma since 1962, including by PM U Nu and,
more recently, by Aung San Suu Kyi.
How do techniques aiming to interrogate one’s own
personal make-up bring to the fore questions of larger
magnitude, including political ones? In presenting this
technique in the context of the life of a contemporary
Burmese practitioner, I hope to return focus to what propelled
vipassanā to public view in Burma, whilst bearing in mind
that this technique will signify very different things in other
cultural settings (e.g. today the technique is used worldwide
to reform personalities in psychotherapy to prisons).
Vipassanā is presented by practitioners as the summum
bonum of Buddhist “practice” (paṭipatti) and as leading to
realization of the essence of the Buddha’s post-enlightenment
teachings. It is glossed as “beholding in a special, attentive
manner the mind and the objects of senses for such symptoms
as impermanence [suffering, and egolessness]”.4 Childers
(1922: 580) gave its Pāli meaning as “seeing clearly, spiritual
insight […] produced by the successful exercise of ecstatic
meditation […] an attribute of Arahatship”, whereas Rhys
Davids and Stede (1921-25: 627) preferred “inward vision,
insight, intuition, introspection”. It refers to a variety of
techniques by which practitioners come to terms with the true
nature of existence and develop an intuitive knowledge of the
interrelationship between suffering (dukkha), the impermanent
nature of existence (anicca), and the illusion of selfhood
(anattā). Although emphasising practice over scriptural
learning, much like the Zen traditions of Japan, this practice
has spawned in Burma a gigantic vernacular literature of many
thousands of books and pamphlets since the 20th century.
They cover biographies, histories, doctrinal reflections,
translations of Pāli works, etc., to which foreigners are
4
Yoknan hnitpà go aneiksá sá thàw lekhkana à hpyín a htù shú hsin
gyin gyìn (MAA 1980: 153).
6 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

increasingly contributing their own body of literature in other

languages as these traditions come to the fore internationally.
In short, vipassanā is Burma’s biggest export service industry.
Since founding the first centre dedicated to practice, also
by laity in 1911, today there are well over a thousand centres
in Burma in several dozen distinct traditions conceived for
practice by unordained laity as well as monks. This represents
a significant historical shift in Burmese Buddhism, as there are
no records of such institutions dedicated to widespread
vipassanā teaching to laity prior to the twentieth century. Its
popularization did not take place on any scale, among
unordained Buddhists at least, until the 1930s, when these
techniques came to be disseminated predominantly by pupils
of the Ledi Hsayadaw (1846-1923) and by the Mìngùn
Hsayadaw (1869-1954). Though a famous role model in terms
of his own meditative practices, contributions by the Ledi
Hsayadaw himself were mainly limited to preaching and
writing about the subject: he personally never taught the
unordained on any scale. Mìngùn’s contribution, on the other
hand, did involve giving practical instruction to the
unordained on some scale, as he was involved in the earliest-
known institutionalisation of formal classes for the unordained
in a centre founded for this purpose by his disciples in 1911.
Nevertheless, it was mainly pupils of these two monks who
took vipassanā methods to the masses. The big names in the
1920s and 30s were the Kyaungbàn Hsayadaw (1860-1927),
Nyaunglún Hsayadaw (1864-1933), Theikchádaung
Hsayadaw (1871-1937), Mòhnyìn Hsayadaw (1873-1964),
Hsaya Thetgyì (1873-1946), Hanthawádi Hsayadaw (1886-
1959), Sùnlùn Hs. (1878-1952), Myat Theìn Htùn (1896-?)
and the Weibu Hsayadaw (1896-1977): possibly with
exception of Nyaunglún Hsayadaw, these had all been
influenced in one way or another either through personal
contact with or reading the writings of the Ledi Hsayadaw or
the Mìngùn Hsayadaw.
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 7

Among the several dozen or so methods taught in Burma,

teachers will each teach their own vipassanā techniques that
will typically vary in detail and character from the techniques
taught by their own teachers. Since it is about practicalities,
the way they teach will also be tweaked to the personality and
abilities of their students and will undergo change over time.
They may themselves practice other methods in addition to
the ones they teach. With a number of notable lay and female
exceptions, most teachers are ordained men. Although periods
of retreat vary considerably, anywhere between 10 days and
many months, what all techniques have in common is the
emphasis on the taking of moral precepts (sila) prior to
beginning a course for its duration, an emphasis on a
regimented life, getting up early and sleeping little, and not
reading, writing or engaging in discursive thought while
practicing. Typically, teachers have daily sessions with
students, individually or in groups, engaging them on their
experiences and advising them on how to best deal with these.
Typically also, teachers will first seek to stabilize the student’s
mind by focusing on breath, after which broader techniques
such as contemplation of the body may be attempted.
Most vipassanā techniques popularized internationally
today may be traced back to two principal vipassanā lineages
in Burma (Houtman, 1990; Cousins, 1996), though these
lineages by no means encompass all the traditions taught
since. The two most influential techniques historically are the
Ledi Hsayadaw “mindfulness of breathing” (ānāpāna) and
Mingun Hsayadaw “mindulfness” or “rising and lowering of
the belly” (thadípahtan or hpaùngpein) techniques. The
former spawned several lineages of teachers, including lay
teachers Saya Thet Gyi, Ba Khin, Goenka, and (by reading) U
Myat Thein Htun, and monastic teachers such as
Kyaungban/Mohnyin/Theikchadaung Hsayadaws. The Mingun
Hsayadaw tradition was the first to establish a vipassanā
practice centre for lay practice in the first decade of the 20th
8 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

century, and spawned lay teachers such as U Myat Kyaw and

monk teachers such as Taungpulu Hsayadaw and the Mahasi
Hsayadaw: this is also the lineage that came to the centre of
the political order under prime minister U Nu in the 1950s.
The Mahasi technique has been subject to controversy (e.g.
Bond, 1992:164-65; Sharf, 1995:256-57; Jordt, 2007:228). It
is sometimes referred to as a “dry insight” technique because,
as taught to laity, it contains little emphasis on prior practice
of the samatha jhānas (concentration meditation). In
particular, Sinhalese monks have criticized this technique for
the way breath is noted via the rise and fall of the belly and
what many interpret as an unnecessary bifurcation between
samatha and vipassanā. This technique is sometimes referred
to as more suitable for monastic practice, as retreats tend to
be of longer duration and a little less structured than the
ānāpāna techniques. It is revealing that this “dry insight”
practice came under state support during U Nu’s period of
parliamentary democracy (1948-62), when samatha methods
were particularly de-emphasised.
Largely through the teachings of Goenka, who returned
from Burma to India, the Ledi Sayadaw ānāpāna method is
internationally the more widely practiced among laity. It has
been adapted to quick and short courses that specialise in
teaching lay people with little time off. It is easy to understand
with the first three days spent in attaining mindfulness on
breath passing through the nostrils, after which there is a
crossing over to vipassanā through contemplation of the body
(kayanupassana).
U Nu fostered the institutionalisation of vipassana under
his parliamentary government between the years 1948-62,
which brought to the fore new generations of teachers to
disseminate these techniques under the umbrella of state
sponsorship, amongst whom the Mahasi Hsayadaw was by far
the most influential. The writings of John F. Brohm (1957),
Winston King (1961, 1964a, 1964b, 1971, 1980), the auto-
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 9

biographical travelogues and meditation experiences of Rear-

Admiral Shattock (1958, 1988) and Byles (1962, 1965), and
the vignettes by Kornfield (1977), and later work by Houtman
(1990, 1999), Braun (2008), and Jordt (2007) have so far
constituted the main source material in English upon which
our understanding of these traditions derive.
Winston King and J. F. Brohm demonstrated the link
between popularization of vipassanā techniques, attainment of
national independence in 1948, and the celebration of 2500
years of Buddhism. These events all took place whilst they
were in Burma for their research and is expressed in a popular
prophesy frequently recounted in Burma concerning the
conjunction between national independence and the
inauguration of a new 500 year time-period during which
vipassanā would become the most popular Buddhist practice
leading to enlightenment.
However, this literature focused primarily on the later Nu-
subsidized “bare insight” generation of teachers, leaving the
impression that these techniques were, if not invented, at least
first taken up and popularised primarily by an urban western
educated elite in the course of this relatively late Nu-led
religious revival. When read in conjunction with scholarship
on meditative traditions elsewhere in the colonised Buddhist
world, such as on Southeast Asian Buddhism by such scholars
as Bechert (1966-73), and in conjunction with material on Sri
Lanka, for instance that by Gombrich (1983) and Carrithers
(1983), which sketch a similarly short historical horizon for
Buddhist meditational practice elsewhere, we are left with the
view that vipassanā traditions are “without history”, and are a
modern reinvention.
There is a substantial body of vernacular in Burmese
literature pointing at historical evidence of the practice and
teaching of vipassanā earlier than that. Braun (2008: 61) has
argued, based on Pranke’s work, for the lack of assertion of
contemporary attainment of arahatship in historical sources
10 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

immediately before the 18th century.5 It was not until

Mindon’s emphasis on discipline and saṅgha reform, and in
his patronage of the forest traditions, that the idea of
arahatship as a feasible attainment in the here and now
emerged. A number of works emphasising vipassanā
originated in the middle of the 19th century, but most are of
20th century origin. This literature reveals how vipassanā
practice was subject to debate from the second quarter of the
19th century onwards, roughly coterminous with British
encroachment on Burmese territory and the loss of self-
esteem this brought to members of the royal family. It
involved monastic personalities such as Thìlòn Hsayadaw
(1786-1860), Htut-hkaung Hsayadaw (1798-1880), Shwe-
gyin Hsayadaw (1822-1893), Hngetdwìn Hsayadaw (1831-
1910), and Hpòndawgyì Ù Thilá (1832-1908), at least one
nun, namely Me Kìn (1814-1882), and members of the
ministers of Mindon's Court such as Minister of Interior
Affairs U Hpo Hlaing.
In supporting these personalities, King Mindon raised the
profile of Buddhist practice (including more broadly bhāvanā
and vipassanā), more than any authority figure before.
Furthermore, his own personal practice (though in a form not
recognizable today) and encouragement of these techniques
between the 1840s and the 1870s sets him apart from his
predecessors in Burmese history. During his rule, and as a
result of his patronage, came to fame these earliest
generations of vipassanā practitioners to whom contemporary
teachers trace back their lineage of practice.6
5
“Pranke has noted that the Vamsadipanai (1799) and the Sasanasiddhipidipaka
(1812) take for granted that no arhats exist in the sangha. But the 1831
Thathanalinkara sadan states that enlightenment is possible for meditation
practices, while the 1861 Sasanavamsa states categorically that there are monks
living in the sangha who are arhats.” (Braun 2008: 61)
6
As Ferguson (1975: 257) put it, “After King Mindon […] many lay people,
particularly in Lower Burma, began to honour meditating forest monks, and
some of these developed the belief that meditation was superior to textual
memorization as the means to nirvana.”
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 11

Though Brohm and King, in their concern to document the

Nu era, did not cover historical dimensions prior to the Nu
period, the correlation they identify between transformation in
the political order and popularisation of vipassanā hold even
in the Mindon period, for these were the two grand periods of
state sponsorship of Buddhist practice. The Mindon and the
Nu eras also marked either end of the colonial period, when
faith in Burmese Buddhist identity was most severely shaken.
In this sense vipassanā is party to more than crossing the
threshold of death as part of some life-cycle ritual. In
character with the way Van Gennep (2004) derived his theory
of rites of passage, it also plays a role in that rite of transition
between one concept of political domain as opposed to
another. Indeed, vipassanā has a role to play not only in the
personal transformation of Burmese leaders, but in the
transformation of the Burmese people and their polity.7
If interest in vipassanā was triggered at times of political
transition, vipassanā has an important role to play in the
transition of contemporary Burma from post-1962 military
state to democratic government. To understand this question
we need to understand Buddhist meditative techniques as
addressing, at one and the same time, questions of the smallest
magnitude in the sense of a personal technique for
manipulation of one’s body and mind to gain personal
enlightenment, and questions of the larger magnitude, which is
the understanding of nature at large, the place of all entities
within it, including those of state, ethnic group and person.
Furthermore, meditative attainment lies at the heart of
concepts of power, both of the supernatural and of the
political kind. The role of vipassanā in the post-1988 struggle
7
Van Gennep (2004) describes rites-de-passage as a journey that is marked
across both territorially across geographical boundaries, as well as across time,
i.e. the different phases of a life-cycle. In the last paragraph of the conclusion,
Van Gennep deals with Buddhist societies: once we enter ‘circular’ societies
where life is perceived as endlessly repetitive rebirths (cf. ‘rectilinear’ societies
where rituals are understood as one-off in a single life-time), repetitiveness is an
impetus towards (meditation and also) philosophy.
12 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

by National League for Democracy leaders such as Aung San

Suu Kyi has been noted in more detail elsewhere (Houtman,
1999).

Hermitess Hsayalei
Hermitess Hsayaleì (Little Teacher, abbrev. SL) explains to me
in the course of about fifteen in-depth interviews how she
started her vipassanā contemplation practice in the Ledi
ānāpāna tradition, what her experiences were, and of her
concerns about its vulnerability as a continuous tradition. She
convinces me that, paradoxically as it may seem, she found
certitude in its practice, which appears to assert such radical
doubts about the material and mental world most of us take
for granted.
Her account of herself gives us an immediate and lively
introduction to vipassanā as a Buddhist practice among
practices, and as a Buddhist institution among institutions.
Her personal statements reverberate in many ways in the
discursive world surrounding this practice wherever we care
to look - whether it be in biographies, histories, or preachings.
Since such experiences are sensitive to misunderstanding,
however, I have secured anonymity by not identifying her
name, the centre, or the exact region.
SL resides at a vipassanā centre. She had been closely
involved in setting up this centre just after World War II in the
late 1940s, and lived in it for over thirty years. She helped
generate most of the finance to keep it going. Officially, she
was in charge of running the catering services, but unofficially
she ran the centre virtually single-handed. She also helped to
solve problems contemplators faced, particularly female ones.
After a long search I had found someone who was prepared to
discuss some of the issues about which few teachers had been
willing to talk to me. SL was forthcoming and open about her
life and her relationships with the people around her, which
permitted understanding the life of someone closely involved.
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 13

SL characterised herself as a “hermitess” (yatheímá) and

not a “nun” (thiláyin).8 She indicated that she was not a nun
because she wore brown robes characteristic of hermits
instead of pink robes nuns usually wear, and because she kept
the Ten Precepts rather than the Eight Precepts normally kept
by nuns.
This point about morality is a crucial one. Without morality
no concentration can arise, and without concentration no
vipassanā can be attempted, and no insight can be attained.
Morality, therefore, is the “bedrock” of otherworldly
knowledge and is fundamental to all forms of Buddhist
practice. The nobility of a person is measurable by the number
of precepts adhered to: the monk, with 227 rules is on top
which, when enumerated further, becomes 95,036,000 Vinaya
precepts; the novice with 70 rules is below that; the nun or
yogi, with either the 10, 9, or 8 precepts at full moon and at
monasteries and holidays lower down; the 8 precepts for laity
living at home yet lower; until finally there is the “normal”
Buddhist with the 5 precepts. There are many more or less
well-known divisions in morality which I shall not go into, 9
but this is to show how the Burmese are connoiseurs of the
finer points of morality as a vast system which varies
depending on the aims one sets oneself in life.
Given that there is no strong notion of self, morality is not,
of course, some permanent attribute of the person. Indeed, it
is possible to become a monk or a yogi and take the “high”
precepts, to drop them to the usual 5 when returning home.
8
Most Burmese Buddhists regard nuns as having low status, but increasingly
there are Burmese Buddhists who admire nuns, particularly those who take
exams in scriptural learning at high level. As Mò-hnyìn nuns are highly regarded,
Hsayaleì preferred to be associated with that tradition (See also Mendelson
1975:146).
9
For example, though the minimum is the 5 permanent moralities for all
ordinary people, there are also 5 special moralities for higher beings.
Furthermore, there are also the 6 moralities for female monks and female
probationers (Awbatha 1975: 626). Finally, there are the 12 moralities of the
Hngetwin sect (Mendelson, 1975:110).
14 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

Historically, mishaps in the kingdom were attributed to bad

morality on the part of the king, and there is a strong causality
attributable to one’s transgressions or observances of morality
in the past.10 It is a discipline which one “takes” (yu thi) more
or less of, and “wears” (wut thi) at different times of one’s life.
If this morality is measurable by such delicate and precise
enumeration, meditational achievement is indirectly
measurable by the use of qualitative numeral classifiers, a
classifier which distinguishes lesser or higher beings when
subjecting them to a counting.11 It is possible to write a whole
book on the implications of these, but I mention them here
because SL has located herself at the “upper end” of the
morality scale for nuns, taking 10 precepts instead of the 8,
which indicates how serious she is about insight.12
SL came from a merchant family trading in lime. When she
was young, her mother contracted Bubonic plague. Though
she responded to treatment and recovered, she was never
again able to do any work. Her father died of tuberculosis
when she was fourteen. There was no one to take care of the
children. At the age of thirteen, while her parents were ill, she
was put in the care of a merchant lady who sold jaggery, and
with whom she worked to maintain her five younger sisters.
The lady at the market taught her all the secrets of business
until the age of nineteen, when she set up a little shop of her
own, selling household goods such as soap and matches. SL
traded like this until the age of thirty, when the event of the
10
See, e.g., Sangermano (1893:18); Lieberman (1984:35-6).
11
The Buddha is counted as hsu, as are staircases and nets: “No one can measure
him; to speak of him, there are no words; what the mind might conceive vanishes
and all ways of speaking vanish.” (Suttanipāta, v 1074) This point about
qualification of self in meditation vs. quantification of self in terms of morality
and charity is brought home in a perceptive paragraph by King (1964b: 51), in
which he recounts how a meditator was chided for quantifying the merit
achieved in meditation.
12
Interestingly, Burmese Buddhists never refer to the 500 rules of nuns, a
reference common elsewhere (See E. Lamotte 1988: 42). This may explain the
impossibility of women to be ordained in terms of a strong attitude by Burmese
on the status of women, rather than the historical disruption of lineage.
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 15

illness and subsequent death of her mother’s sister, her

favourite aunt, took place. This aunt had lived with the family,
where she helped to take care of SL’s mother and sisters; SL
regarded her as a mother. When this aunt was ill in the
hospital, people in the hospital used to comment on how SL
took care of her aunt as if she were her mother.
It was at this time of stress during the illness of her aunt
that her interest in insight evolved:

At that time I met a market saleswoman who was

somewhat older than I. In a conversation with her my
morale was not improved; she told me that the way most
people lived in this world was bound to lead to rebirth in
the lower four abodes. The only way out was to practise
mental culture. A man who had founded an insight centre
was then running a transport company, paddling onions and
garlic between A and my home town. I was told that he
knew a lot about Buddhism. His teaching, so the market
saleswoman told me, was a teaching which could free from
rebirth in the nether hells.

SL decided to see this remarkable teacher:

I went to see him, and for the first time ever I forgot about
my shop, and no longer considered it the most important
thing in my life. I started practising by myself for about
seven days off and on when I was free from work.

Soon, however, her mother objected to her mental culture and

did not want her to visit the teacher:

The meditation teacher travelled, going to A, B, C, and D,

and I dearly wanted to attend his preachings in C, but my
mother did not want me to go. To my mind it was a shame
not to go to hear this very important means of release of
16 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

rebirth. Eventually I went in spite of my mother’s

objections to attend the first course the teacher gave in my
hometown. It was held in a building owned by the market
saleswoman, and we were asked to bring along five people
for the course each, to make it worthwhile.

SL’s great sense of early bereavement facing death and illness,

the pressure upon her to provide for dependents while not
mentally up to the task, and finding in a teacher a symbol of
renunciation from this unsatisfactory life that she wished to
pursue: these were indeed the omens that had motivated the
Buddha to renounce. SL‘s initial experience, then, was not so
very different from the Buddha’s own experience, and one can
imagine that if a method is devised with a particular problem
in mind, that this will tend to be reused again and again by
others faced with similar conditions.
I asked SL to recount her experiences during her first
course, which she did somewhat reluctantly:13

The experiences of destruction and birth (hpyit- pyet)14

were many and fast. My experience of these developed in
two phases. First it felt as if dough or wet sand was coming
out of my body and particularly out of my head, and was
slowly dripping onto the ground. During the second phase
I felt as if only smoke was coming out of my body, going
upwards. This latter phase showed that I had made some
progress, for they were sensations of a less gross nature. I
was later told that after smoke come sensations of essence
(a- ngweí), which is even finer.

13
Meditation experiences should not be talked about openly.
14
Hpyit- pyet is commonly used in some meditation methods to refer to the
feelings of air flowing in and out of the nostrils. The experience of this leads to
tha- ma- hta' after which an intuitive awareness of impermanence is aimed at, i.e.
birth and destruction of all phenomena.
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 17

The insight experience, then, moves from experiencing the

body as a “gross” experience of impermanence (the heavy
movement of sand or dough), to a finer experience (the
swiftness of smoke or essence), until, at the point where her
sense of body and mind disappeared altogether, there was no
sensation left:

I soon had no sensations in the body anymore, nor of mind,

and I felt as if I could see the constituent elements of my
body. Instead of feeling “shapeful” I was conscious of the
various constituent elements of the body. At the time I did
not realize the significance of these experiences, but when I
saw the teacher he approved of them, and explained to me
that it was the experience of impermanence. I was not
convinced, and still felt I did not know what impermanence
was about. I did not understand the reality of the
birth-destruction process, and only believed what I could
see with my eyes.

Insight experiences here, therefore, proceed according to a

gradual increased realisation of the process of birth and death
in mind and body, not as a one-off event between the cradle
and the grave, but as a continuous process until there is no
substance or continuity to them as we normally think of them.
In this way, the Mahasi puts it, within every minute 50-60 acts
of noting mental events are possible. These make us realise
the flux that goes on and challenges the structuring of our
experience by any other means but a mindfulness as they take
place. Discursiveness, here, is too slow and too misleading to
keep up with reality of being and of becoming.
Such experience, however, does not mean nihilism or a
denial of the reality of one’s social obligations, for SL
explains:
18 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

Another experience I had was that I saw three

benefactors15 in front of my eyes: my mother, Daw U, and
Daw T. I cried and I wanted to return to them the debt of
gratitude. I returned the debt of gratitude to them by
teaching them mental culture.

I asked how SL felt after these experiences when she returned

home:

It affected my life immediately. I could, for example, no

longer smear thanahkà16 onto my face. I would no longer
wear beautiful clothing. In fact I never smeared thanahkà
or wore beautiful clothing again. Though I did go to my
usual work at the market, I found that I could no longer
chat in the usual market language. I no longer performed
my work properly, and it became a problem to my younger
sisters and my mother.

Her experience of her body as shapeless, insubstantial, and

without sensation, and her changes of mind, issued in her a
changing of attitude to dress, make-up, use of language, and
work. Once again, however, SL asserts how this is not due to
some sense of nihilism, for she confirms her sensitivity to her
“benefactors” of whom she had a vision in the course of the
first session by inviting them all three to contemplate:

Two of them did not need much convincing to come along,

but Daw T had cancer at the time, and her family did not
15
Kyeìzùshin, or “masters of grace” denotes formally a class of ten beings which
includes: the Buddha; silent Buddhas; the Buddha’s left and right hand disciples;
one’s mother; one’s father; those who are more noble in age, qualities, morality
and so forth than oneself; those who feed and dress one; those who teach one the
tayà (Buddhist teachings). During subsequent conversations with SL it became
apparent that she was fervently anti-communist because “they did not know their
benefactors”.
16
The bark root of the thanahkà tree is used by women, pounded and then
smeared onto their faces as a cooling beauty cream.
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 19

like the idea of her going out to practise mental culture.

But when I cried, she understood how much it meant to
me, and came. She died shortly after contemplating.

I asked SL to explain to me her feelings during the second

phase:

It was during this period that the meaning of the Buddha’s

teachings became suddenly clear to me. Here I went up
onto the “path of knowledge” (nyanzin).17

It was just prior to the middle of this path that SL experienced

great fear:18
17
The “path of knowledge” is a technical reference to the 16 point scale of
progression of insight as laid down in the commentaries. It describes the
experiences a successful yogi will have before achieving streamwinner
(thàwdaban), the first of the four holy stages (aríya) which guarantee the
cessation of rebirth. Couched in terms of the language of mental culture, this
cannot be easily related to by non-practitioners and it is therefore given only to
those who have successfully achieved “the path of insight” ( nyanzin). Briefly, it
expounds 16 stages in the sensation and perceptions of the yogi — paraphrased
in my own words and slightly abbreviated: the knowledge distinguishing
between mind and matter (and awareness that there is no “I”, only mind and
matter); the capacity to distinguish between cause and effect (doubt of past,
present and future existence of “I” is removed); the object of noting disappears at
the same time as noting (“I”, and everything, is realised to be nothing but
“impermanent” and “suffering”, not worth hanging onto); one becomes aware
that becoming and destruction, previously thought to be long developments, are
in fact lots of rapid becomings and destructions (ecstasy develops); everything is
seen in its aspect of dissolution (strengthening awareness of non-self, suffering,
and impermanence); fear occurs because of the rapid dissolution of all
phenomena; knowledge of misery is developed through the realisation that all
psycho-physical phenomena rapidly dissolve; these are observed as devoid of
pleasure and as unreliable; all phenomena are seen as suffering and the desire
arises to renounce the body-mind and one attains further energy this way to
continue; characteristics of impermanence, suffering and impersonality come to
be better appreciated and pains excessive to bear are encountered which
disappear when noted so that equanimity develops; noting becomes rapid and
without effort and glimpses of cessation (neik- ban) are attained; sudden
realization of a fleeting moment of cessation of all phenomenal processes;
retrospection occurs over the path of insight and of the holy ones.
18
This is known as Bhaya Ñana.
20 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

Yet it all happened in stages and as I progressed I got at

once terribly frightened, and began to see this whole
progression of experiences as an enemy. I desperately tried
to get rid of this fear, and I cried terribly.

It is with these situations in mind that the teacher is crucial,

and SL could not have done without his encouragement:

I went to see the teacher, who said that I should face this
fear, that I should go back and practise through it. He
preached and encouraged me a lot. I just did not know
what to do with my body. I could not run away from the
sensations, for they were in my head. I could not discard
my body. Yet the encouragement by my teacher made me
face my fears, and I continued.

This is not unsimilar to what in western mysticism is referred

to as the “dark night of the senses”, which is later followed by
the “dark night of the soul”, which is a dying, first to the
senses, and later to self. This experience is frightening, for it
involves abandoning all hitherto assumed certainties of life:

After some more practice I found my way out, and my

knowledge about impermanence became clear. Had I
escaped and run away, I would have never had this
experience. My fear was the fear of intuitive realisation of
impermanence, but lacking the realisation that there was a
way out of suffering, disease, old age and death, and
lacking the realisation that insight was the answer to all
this. I have never told anyone these experiences except my
teacher, not even my closest friend.

It is not usual to describe experiences in mental culture to

others except one’s teacher. The reason given is usually that it
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 21

would harm the person who would not believe the experiences
happened, and it also gives rise to misunderstandings. Yet
because I had a deep interest in it as a subject of study, SL
allowed herself to answer these questions. What happened
when you returned home that time, I asked.

When I returned home, I just gave up all the work at the

market, and this caused big problems, as my younger
sisters had no knowledge of buying and selling. Before
insight I had always been fascinated by market life: I used
to be the last to leave the store, and when the gong went I
just went on working until all the others had packed up.
But after insight I just wanted to drop it all.

When I asked for SL’s experiences during the third period, she
said:

I do not want to talk about it. It is improper to do so. If

people hear it and say thadú, thadú, thadú.19 then all is
well, but if they do not believe it or were to be jealous,
then it would be an obstacle to their spiritual quest.

But she did tell me eventually and not altogether reluctantly,

for we had established a sense of trust and it was all part of a
running dialogue over many sessions:

Through this experience of the realisation of

birth-destruction I knew impermanence, where there was
nothing left. During the third sitting I faced up to this: I
was looking at my mind which was in my heart. It was no
longer, it was destroyed. There was at once nothing to
look at anymore, and the process of becoming-destruction
had come to an end.
19
̰ Thadu', literally “good”, is said three times as a recognition of meritorious
action. It is usually said at the end of offerings somewhat like the Christian
“amen”.
22 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

This achievement meant a mastery of the path. I asked what

happened on return home after this experience:

On return home I could not live there anymore. I could not

even talk about things: this was all worldly talk. I had the
urge only to talk and read of “otherworldly” things.

Her personal journey had transformed her. Collective culture

has no agency in insight, which deals with the grand
cosmological laws way above convention, and it is this which
allows people to extricate themselves from the grip of
collective culture and collective life. For example, SL
proposed that insight is “an avenue to short-cut fate” (kan
hpyat lan), where the “sensations” (weidana) experienced
during a sitting are nothing but the “undergoing of the debts
of rebirth” (wutkyweì hkan sà thi). In other words, insight
practice “kills” (that thi) the retributions of past deeds which
would have otherwise been suffered in reality at some stage,
some life, in the future. SL told me about her experience.

I had the experience of feeling like a fish on land, and at

one stage I rolled about like mad exactly like a fish on land.
No less than three people had to hold me, so violently did I
shake.

In this case, SL attributed her experiences to the retributions

of a past life as a fisherman, whose demeritorious actions of
killing fish she experienced, the effects of which can be
transcended.
Through insight, SL gradually extricated herself from what
she came to see as a misguided and doubtful life in society
that encourages continuities and certainties that are simply not
there. In other words, through the personal culture of insight
she gradually comes to challenge the collective culture of
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 23

discourse and convention, so that, in the end, she can no

longer live in the same way and, as a person transformed by
this experience, she opts out. Yet the society she opts out
from, as I have already referred to, had within itself this
possibility for personal culture, for SL came to know about
insight from other Buddhists – vipassanā centres are stable
features in Burmese society. Indeed, to the extent that the
centre of Burmese society is at its periphery - the monastery,
and in particular the forest monastery - personal culture is at
one and the same time affirmed by the grand tradition of
renunciation so central to society, so central to everyday life in
terms of charity and morality, and yet at the same time
apparently so peripheral to the continuities thereby
established.
Furthermore, it is not as if SL opts out completely, for the
insight centre engaged Burmese society, with business, and
with other monasteries. So while, though in confidence, and
with remarkable frankness, she had told me of her personal
experiences, she also told me about the difficulties she faces
with learned monks who seem little interested in the insight
centre and prefer scholarly learning. With few monks
interested in the centre run by the “unordained”,20 she explains
to me the problems in respect of teacher-pupil succession
when insight centres have no monastic head. Indeed, SL, who
had devoted her life to insight, and given so much of her life
to the centre, recounts her disappointments. She had donated
a monastery just inside the compound of the centre in the
hope that the monks would take an active interest in teaching
and studying mental culture. They did not, and merely went
their way insisting on doing scriptural learning.
Additionally, some in the centre administration opposed her
ideas, seeing in her continued interest in concentration
20
With the exception of SL, who was an ordained nun. Though she considers
herself a hermitess, these are not normally ordained. Yet she was ordained by the
method of nuns, though she prefers to be known as a hermitess because of the
different status that this conveys — it is more highly regarded in Burma.
24 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

meditation and the occult. Indeed, her initiative in building a

pagoda was largely financed by bona fide practitioners of
royal charity (daná), seeking to establish themselves firmly
onto the path of concentration and sagehood, rather than
insight and purity. She also tells me of the difficulties she
herself has with such concentration meditators who are
constantly looking for openings in the centre to bestow big
acts of charity in order to attain grand merit appropriate to
kings.

The nature of vipassanā

I have presented a case study to show how vipassanā

experiences may be understood and contextualised in a
vipassanā centre in Burma. This particular practitioner is not
necessarily representative of vipassanā practitioners more
generally, but she has a long association with the practice, and
her experiences are of interest: her life as she relates it exhibits
a graduation of experiential awareness of the three marks of
existence. Sharf (1995) argues that the tendency towards
emphasising religious experience is essentially a western
influenced impetus. He may well be right that many authors
and scholars of religious studies have a tendency towards
privileging religious experience without demonstrating
empirical support for their generalizations, but I am not at all
sure this argument can be used to generalize about
practitioners of this tradition everywhere for several reasons.
First, although we can argue about what modernization
means, this particular practitioner most certainly had
experiences that are not necessarily accounted for, related to
or encompassed by any particularly identifiable “western”
influence. Her experiences are embedded in a Burmese
context, where references to renunciation are plenty in
everyday social and cultural discourse. Second, perhaps the
rarity of relating her experiences have to do with the way such
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 25

experiences are indeed difficult to relate, interpret and

contextualize, which explains why these particular experiences
are, in the Burmese context, rarely spoken or written about.
There is an injunction on relating experiences suggesting
higher levels of attainment — whether by laity or Sangha —
for a good reason: the potential of political instability. The
powers attained in the various kinds of meditation have value
for aspirants to political and military leadership. Also, there is
no easy vocabulary for relating these experiences (although
Cousins (1996) does a good job giving an oversight of
canonical/commentarial terms involved).
Sharf’s criticism of vipassanā as a product of the west and
of experience largely as an invention, leaves little room for
analysis of this practitioner in Buddhist Burma, a country with
a record surely of one of the longest uninterrupted socio-
political and cultural experiences with Buddhism. Here
renunciation, unlike in Japan, is today part of everyone’s
vocabulary and, furthermore, also a regular practice with
temporary ordination and opportunities for practicing
meditation within reach of most Burmese households, who
already support the estimated 400,000 monks, nuns and
novices in the country.
Sharf (1995: 233, 243) has suggested that “While we do
find some contemporary Theravada teachers touting the
benefits of exalted meditative experience, they are invariably
associated with modern reform movements stimulated by
contact with Western missionaries and Occidental
scholarship”, and that the reason for the stature of vipassanā
and Zen in the West “is no mystery”, since “partisans of both
vipassanā and Zen have been largely responsible for
perpetuating the image of Buddhism as a rational, humanistic,
contemplative creed that eschews magic and empty ritual”.
While he has many features right — that these are often linked
to reform movements, are on the whole against extensive
ritual, that many will frown on magic, and also that western
26 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

discourse may be transfixed on religious experience in the last

century, etc. — he does not quite get to the historical and
biographical contexts of these movement and their early
beginnings to make the judgments he has.
Cousins (1996) makes a different and, in my view, more
useful argument centred more closely on his detailed grasp of
the experiences involved as a practitioner himself, with both
the canonical/commentarial traditions and the actual history
and diversity of meditational practices in Theravada South
East Asia. Although he recognizes a change in the substance
of this tradition towards isolating vipassanā over other
reforms based on different Buddhist practices emphasised
hitherto, his view is not particularly that emphasis on religious
experience is exaggerated or necessarily the product of the
west, but simply that it requires explanation as to why some
meditation traditions have eclipsed others in some Buddhist
countries and also in the international arena. In particular, his
view of the Burmese emphasis on dry insight is that it has
eclipsed what historically, based on his research in the early
canonical/commentarial sources and in other countries such as
Thailand and Laos, were more commonly found as combined
samatha-vipassanā practices. Cousins raises the issue of the
balance of samatha and vipassanā in Burmese methods, and
what he feels is a comparative emphasis on vipassanā as a
technique that somehow bypasses samatha in the popularized
dry insight methodology.
What we have learned of from this case study is, as
Cousins indeed suggests, a much more complex situation.
Samatha practitioners, associated with a hierarchical polity,
power and grand donations, forge their way into supporting
the vipassanā centre that SL was part of, and yogis
themselves frequently cross the threshold towards more
dedicated samatha practice even in vipassanā centres. When
the monks went onto the streets in processions during the
“saffron revolution” of September and October 2007, they did
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 27

so sending loving-kindness (metta), one of the most common

samatha practices. I am in agreement with Cousins, therefore,
that the tendency to render everything in vipassanā terms can
be quite misleading.
Short of seeing the prevalent emphasis on vipassanā in
20th-century Burma as an enigma or as some western
influence, I here wish to consider the more specifically
political dimensions to the problem. Royalty would typically
seek to exercise a firm grip on claims to enlightenment and
would patrol grand acts of charity such as building pagodas.
In a post-royal Burmese world since abolition of the
monarchy in 1885, we have perhaps underestimated the
particular political conditions that have given the impetus to
an emphasis on vipassanā and samatha and, conversely, the
political conditions to which samatha and vipassanā
practitioners aspire: these may better explain differential
emphasis on either method, both regionally and historically.
Let me unpack this idea. SL emphasises that vipassanā
permits “burning” of kamma and thus is capable of short-
circuiting the rounds of rebirths. Yet kamma itself is a
necessary ingredient for hierarchical differentiation for a
monarchy to arise and be sustained. King Mindon and his
courtiers advocated vipassanā as helpful in the court and
among monks he supported, but with no monarchy in the
Burmese context to patrol and limit claims to Buddhist
enlightenment subsequently, vipassanā was freed for laity to
take to it en masse since then. This suggests that the polity
and mental culture impact one another. I have elsewhere
argued (Houtman, 2009) that the loka-nibbana axis
represents the primary axis around which Burmese political
oratory orients itself, even among the most secular politicians
and certainly among the most popular ones, even if this
rhetoric manifests itself differently over time. To the extent
that the polity itself has nibbana in its sights, not least by the
building of pagodas in commemoration of the Buddha’s
28 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

enlightenment, we cannot dissociate either vipassanā or

samatha from the polity. Indeed, as I have already argued, the
liberalization of attainment to nibbana as everyone’s business
under the immediate post-independent parliamentary
democracy of U Nu, who institutionalised the bare insight
tradition, is associated with a vision of a collapsed royal
hierarchical polity where a democratic political order would
be one outcome. So the techniques taught both, have political
consequences, and in themselves participate in changes in
these conditions. This is how I see the perpetual engagement
of these traditions by successive democracy leaders such as
Aung San Suu Kyi, but also military leaders such as Tin U;
where vipassanā affords transformations of identities from
hierarchical army personnel into democrats and, in cases such
as General Ne Win and Sein Lwin, where vipassanā permits
easing into retirement.
When the Ledi Sayadaw entered the forest to discover the
intricacies of vipassanā, he did so inspired by Hpo Hlaing in
response to the dangers posed by the British colonial invasion
of Upper Burma and the threat of collapse of the moral fibre
of society as represented in the destruction of Buddhism by
colonial intervention. Here, occupying governments, whether
of the British or Japanese occupational/colonial variety, have
little opportunity to legitimate or insert themselves. Where
governments have done so subsequently, however, they have
done so in Burma mostly as patrons of vipassanā as a non-
violent path to nibbāna (cf. the confrontational paths of
samatha and occult arts practised by the weikza) in
encouragement of self-restraint on the part of its citizens,
which explains the growth of this particular technique in
Burma after national independence. This compares with
Thailand, where royalty maintains strict hierarchical control
over spiritual achievements, and where vipassanā never
received quite the same reception historically.
 VIPASSANĀ IN BURMA 29

Ever since the Burmese generals have taken on royal airs in

the 1990s, however, new vipassanā methods have emerged in
public view supporting potentially hierarchization of
achievements that formally conjoin attainment of samatha-
jhāna with the practice of vipassanā, such as by the Pa Auk
Sayadaw.

Conclusion
There is plenty of scope here for exploring the relationship
between prevailing polities and the manifestations of
meditation techniques where, for instance, democracies,
monarchies and military regimes may foster very different
meditation techniques and experiences. Samatha leads to
powers controlling rebirth and stands at the pinnacle of
hierarchical relationships that serve a purpose particularly
during millennial moments, as it did during the peasant
rebellions of Saya San and the discourse of the Thakins in the
1920s until the late 1930s. Aung San was widely interpreted
as a rebirth of samatha-practicing Weikza Bo Bo Aung in
1939 on the eve of the Japanese invasion, focusing hope on
him for hastening demise of British colonialism as illegitimate.
More recently, however, military patronage of samatha
explains the popularization of the Pa Auk Sayadaw methods.
Much more work is needed to fully understand the interplay
between the samatha and vipassana traditions and between
these techniques and the polity To understand this fully, we
must also engage the enormous vernacular literature available
and the exact historical conditions of their arising and
perpetuation

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30 GUSTAAF HOUTMAN

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