Insight Myanmar

If you reference the Philippines, vipassana meditation practice and Buddhist study are not the first things that come to mind! That is because this heavily Catholic island nation is pretty much the o…

Alan Clements’ new book, Burma: Voices of Freedom, is a monumental achievement, a work more than three decades in the making. Alan interviewed hundreds of people in order to examine the intersecting …

“Having already witnessed first-hand the transformation of mindfulness from mysterious curiosity to commercialized buzzword, going back to read about a time when so much was still so unexplored gener…

The second in a two-part interview, educator and amateur historian Zaw Win Htet continues his stories that weave together his own life, his local region, and some of the most revered Dhamma teachers …

“My grandmother is the main character of this story,” Zaw Win Htet informs us as he begins the interview. An educator and amateur historian, Zaw shares how the bedtime stories she told him every nigh…

This is the third in our ongoing “Intersections of Dhamma and Race” podcast series. At this time of increased tensions, there is a sore need for personal reflection and introspection, deep and active…

The story of Melissa Coats is a tale of finding balances. It relates to navigating her identity, being half-white and half-Korean, and her practice, going back and forth between being a lay practitio…

The sixth episode in our “COVID-19 in Myanmar” series, this is the first show in this series in which all the voices are from a single place—in this case, Thabarwa Monastery in Than Lyin.

This episod…

Sometimes a single moment can be so profound… or so complex… that it takes hours, or even days, following the encounter to get a handle on it. In the story that follows, that “moment” has been taking…

This is a very different kind of show than any previous episode we’ve brought you on the Insight Myanmar Podcast. Regular listeners may remember that a few months ago, we interrupted our usual run of…

Welcome to the fifth episode in our ongoing “COVID-19 in Myanmar” series, called “Sheltering in Place.” While the previous show told the stories of four expats who left just before the world closed d…

How has the coronavirus pandemic impacted foreign meditators in Myanmar? This is precisely the question we set out to answer in this “Expats in Exile Edition” of our COVID-19 in Myanmar series.

The gu…

In 2017, Zach Hessler, then known as U Obhasa, was a forest monk in upper Myanmar. Following in the tradition of monks during the Buddha's time, one day he set out from his forest monastery on foot t…

How is the coronavirus pandemic impacting monastics in Myanmar? This is precisely the question we set out to answer in this very special “Monastic Edition” of our COVID-19 in Myanmar series. The gues…

In the second installment of our ongoing COVID-19 in Myanmar series, we present the Women’s Edition. So often at times of crisis and at key moments in world events, it is the voices of men who make t…

In this inaugural episode of our ongoing "COVID-19 in Myanmar" series, we present the Burmese Edition, where we hear from the four local voices who present their perspectives on the ongoing coronavir…

In this inaugural edition of the “Myanmar Dhamma Diaries,” Joah tells the story of an alcoholic Airbnb guest from Europe who disrupts his Yangon home. Learning that the guest had chosen to stay there…

Swe Win’s journey has taken him from a love of British literature to the pits of solitary confinement in Insein Prison in Yangon, where he escaped harsh conditions and toxic anger by taking up a medi…

The provincial upbringing that characterized Maria Alejandra Amaya V’s childhood in the Colombian countryside outside of Bogotá could scarcely have predicted her later interest in Vipassana meditatio…

Ashin Sarana may be one of the most well-known foreign monks in Myanmar today. He conducts his own meditation courses and routinely gives Dhamma talks in fluent Burmese. But did you know that his ear…