Insight Myanmar

Our team has decided to present a new series that focuses on our love and appreciation for the Golden Land. We hope that upcoming episodes in this series can help to provide some kind of counterbalan…

Coco’s career path in medicine wasn’t supposed to end up this way. But on February 1^st, for Coco and so many others, “all of the dreams just got wasted away.”

He was initially hesitant to join the str…

What is the deeper, symbolic meaning of an overturned alms bowl? What reasoning goes into the decision as to whether a protest sign is written in English or Burmese, or as pictograms, or emojis? And …

Maw Htin Aung, a Kachin Christian by birth, appeared to be a leader right for his time, the kind of progressive champion needed in Myanmar who could help move the country towards a promising future. …

While those outside of Myanmar following news of the protests have often heard updates about the importance of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), some may still not be clear about its inception a…

Ashin Sarana is speaking out, and he’s prepared for the consequences. “I'm basically ready for everything,” the Czech monk tells us. “I'm ready that they will come and they will destroy property, I'm…

Kyawt Thiri Nyunt’s journey from Myanmar to the United States at age 19 was not just a physical one, but a cultural and psychological one as well. She had traveled to enroll in a small liberal arts c…

At a time when corporations, countries, and individuals are speaking out, taking a moral stand, and considering action to support the Burmese people as state-sponsored terror grips their nation, what…

A world-renowned expert on Burmese cuisine and author of the best-selling book Mandalay: Recipes and Tales from a Burmese Kitchen, Mi Mi Aye never imagined that one day she might become an activist. …

Exhausted from the daily protests and sleeping at a different monastery roof with fellow protesters every night for safety, his face darkened from being out under the hot sun all day, his voice hoars…

In looking back at the turbulent recent history of her country, Sayalay Chandadhika, a Burmese Buddhist nun based in Germany, sees a never-ending spiral of destructive patterns that continue to produ…

“We are already in the danger. So we don’t care anymore. The dawn won’t be that much darker than the midnight. And we are already in the midnight, so the darkness can’t be much worse. We are at the p…

“The Dhamma is so central to this culture, and [yet] not understood by the people who write about this place in the media from overseas. So all those sorts of things get reported from a vacuum of und…

Antonio Costanzo and his team may never solve all the mysteries of the life of the great Italian monk U Lokanatha, but they are certainly trying!

Even the little we know of U Lokanatha’s spiritual res…

“And then there was a particular moment in the meditation where it was almost as if awareness separated out from the rest of the objects of consciousness.” So begins David Sudar on sharing about one …

Today’s episode explores a journey from the fashion runway to the meditation hall. An actress, model, and beauty queen, Luissa Burton discusses the circuitous route that ultimately brought her to med…

What place does engagement in social justice issues have, if any, within vipassana meditation centers in the tradition of S.N. Goenka? That is question Clyde Ford is asking, and is at the heart of a …

This is the second episode in our series exploring Filipino meditators affected by the Dhamma of the Golden Land. Here, we tell the story of just one Filipino meditator: Raymond Riveria, or Mon for s…

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. Go…

The Buddha’s teachings of liberation were not meant only for prosperous and stable times, but also for when things are uncertain, or even perilous. Perhaps no moment in recent years has tested the mi…