Episode 30: Luissa Burton
Today’s episode explores a unique journey from the fashion runway to the meditation hall! We are so pleased to welcome Luissa Burton to discuss the circuitous route that ultimately brought her to Dhamma practice in Myanmar.
By any measure, Luissa achieved remarkable worldly success at a young age. She won a Ralph Lauren child modelling contest in London, leading to signing on with the FORD modeling agency when she was just 14. Among her many other accomplishments, she was cast in the HBO show Ballers and on Wiz Khalifa’s music video Celebrate, and has worked with the Miami Dolphins. Luissa was also the Miss Earth United Kingdom in 2016 and Miss Europe World in 2018. Besides her stellar modelling career, Luissa has gone on to become a world traveler, humanitarian, documentarian, and mountain climber.
And yet, Luissa’s trajectory up the ranks of the fashion world did not at all follow the conventional story of fame and fortune. From childhood, she was stricken with two serious skin conditions, eczema and psoriasis, which caused her much social anxiety. This, along with the pressures of her industry to conform to certain standards of beauty, led to periodic bouts of eating disorder. Eventually, Luissa decided to proactively confront these challenges and turn them into positives. For example, she became a passionate advocate for animal rights and refuses to use any skin care products or clothing that are not cruelty-free. She has taken the moniker, the “Official Green Queen,” to promote environmental sustainability. And she is helping reinvent the role of social influencer in the 20th century, advocating for young people to focus on self-love and inner acceptance instead of distorting their personality and body image in a quest to become popular or conform to society’s messaging. Her wholesome work was recognized by the Dalai Lama, who she met last year in India.
An inner focus on living a non-harming and healthy life ultimately led Luissa to an interest in meditation, which was further motivated by passing through a “dark night of the soul.” Unable to attend a Vipassana course in the S.N. Goenka tradition in England, she followed an inner voice calling her to come to Myanmar. Just two weeks later, she enrolled in a ten-day course at Dhamma Joti, and then followed up the retreat with an eco-tour around the country.
The talk covers a number of key topics, including the contrast between being a dedicated meditator and a famous international fashion model, the definition of “beauty” in contemporary Western society, and how meditation practice disrupts a dualistic understanding of the world.
After the talk, Melissa Coats joins us to reflect on the underlying meaning of the talk. Melissa strongly resonated with how Luissa spoke to the expectations of women in Western society, and how her own meditation practice and nunhood affected the way she came to look at her physical appearance through the years. She appreciated how even before Luissa ever took to formal practice, she was already living an ethical life in which she intentionally minimized the harm she might otherwise inflict on other beings. In many ways, this follows a traditional Asian path to meditation, where sīla is prioritized before insight is taught.