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Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults in Contemporary Burma
BÉNÉDICTE BRAC DE LA PERRIÈRE, GUILLAUME ROZENBERG, and ALICIA TURNER, eds.
Singapore: NUS Press, 2014, xxvii+261p.
Exciting things are happening in the study of Burmese Buddhism. Recent years have seen the publication of very important contributions to our understanding of this field. In particular, investigations of the roots of the "mindfulness" meditation phenomenon as a Burmese reaction to colonialism have garnered attention far beyond a scholarly audience concerned with Burma exclusively (for example, Braun 2013). Though fascinating, this focus on the origins and spread of the so-called vipassana meditation movement has neglected what Kate Crosby, in the preface to Champions of Buddhism, calls "the Other Burmese Buddhism," by which she means the popular yet politically marginal set of practices belonging to the so-called weikza-path. It is to examining this path that Champions of Buddhism is devoted, both as an introduction to this under-investigated phenomenon and as a stimulus to further inquiries into the nature of Buddhism in Burma and Buddhist global modernity in general. In both respects, it succeeds marvelously.
Unless they are experts in Burmese Buddhism, readers may at this point wonder what exactly is meant by the term weikza. In the foreword to the volume, the editors give a good idea by describing weikza as "a religious virtuoso" (p. ix). Because of his behavior, meditation skills, and expertise in the magical arts, a weikza attains the ability to live very long, with the purpose of being present when the next Buddha, Maitreya, appears in our world. Though the usage of magic with the explicit purpose of lengthening one's life may not sound very "Buddhist" to some, one argument that this volume forcefully makes is that such practices are as Buddhist as monks singing sutras or meditating in temples. In her preface (the book has both a foreword and a preface, but-puzzlingly-no introduction), Crosby explores this alternative Burmese Buddhism by sketching the practical, political, and ideological motivations...