Episode #387: Long Walk to Freedom
RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 30, 2025
“I think vipassana has always been a response to crisis, not just a quest for spiritual purity,” says Gustaaf Houtman, anthropologist, longtime Burma scholar, and author of the seminal 1990 thesis, Traditions of Buddhist Practice in Burma, as well as the 1999 book, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. Speaking from decades of research and deep personal involvement, Houtman connects meditation, language, politics, and cultural history, offering a view of Burma’s Buddhist traditions that is far more complex than most Western narratives allow for.
Language, Lineage, and Cultural Frames
Houtman begins by challenging the tendency on the part of some Western scholars to understand Burmese Buddhism through Western religious categories, which often emphasize belief in abstract doctrinal tenets as separate from daily life. In contrast, Burmese Buddhism— when expressed through the concept of sāsana, or the Buddha’s dispensation—is doctrinal in a way that is inseparable from culture, practice, and historical continuity. It is not simply about belief, but about attempting to live in accordance with a moral and spiritual lineage.
To further illustrate this point, he contrasts the concept of sāsana with the phrase bodha-batha—the outward trappings of how “religion” is practiced, which may shift over time and vary by sect. Houtman traces the origins of the Burmese term bodha-batha to the early 19th century and the work of American missionary Adoniram Judson. In his pioneering Burmese-English dictionary, Judson rendered “Buddhism” not as sāsana—the closest indigenous equivalent—but as bodha-batha, a term he coined that literally means “Buddha-subject” in Burmese. This shift, Houtman argues, was ideological: by reframing Buddhism as a set of surface-level customs, Judson diminished its legitimacy as a historically grounded and spiritually meaningful tradition, aligning it instead with Protestant-Christian assumptions about what a “religion” should be.
For Burmese Buddhists, sāsana refers to the era where the Buddha’s teachings are available, rooted in scriptural continuity and embodied by the monastic Saṅgha. In contrast, bodha-batha imposed a Western framework that reduced Buddhism to a performative system of social customs.
Houtman emphasizes that this was not merely a linguistic shift but an ideological one: it reframed sāsana as an “-ism,” situating Burmese Buddhism within a Western-style religious framework. This shift allowed the abstract tenets of the two “faiths” to be compared on seemingly equal terms, aligning with Judson’s missionary goal of making Buddhism intelligible within a Christian evangelical worldview— which then facilitated their aims at conversion. Judson’s terminology took root in the vernacular and reshaped how Buddhism has been represented and studied, even into the modern era. In response, Burmese reformers sharpened and foregrounded Pāḷi-derived terminology to reclaim their own conceptual ground. As Houtman notes, this episode exemplifies how “language itself became a site of resistance.”
The concept of sāsana also highlights why lay meditation teachers must secure validation from monastic authorities: while monastic ordination is meticulously documented, meditative instruction is informal and highly personal, producing what Houtman calls a “rolling bird” progression as to how meditation practice gets passed down—that is, it is moving, jumping, roving… yet never fixed. “In Burma,” he says, “if you cannot show where your knowledge comes from, people will be suspicious. You need that validation to be trusted.” This explains why U Ba Khin, the lay teacher of S. N. Goenka, needed to seek the endorsement of Webu Sayadaw (a monk reputed to have been fully enlightened) before he attempted to open International Meditation Center (IMC). While Webu did not directly teach U Ba Khin his method of meditation, the great monk’s public validation provided the social and spiritual legitimacy U Ba Khin needed to establish a teaching center with himself esconced as the primary instructor. In this way, Burmese meditation culture depends less on formal institutional frameworks than on webs of personal endorsement, historical memory, and social recognition.
The Global Simplification of Burmese Meditation
From that nuanced Burmese context, Houtman turns to the radically simplified narrative popularized by S. N. Goenka. Goenka’s claim of lineage transmission of a single method—Ledi Sayadaw, to Saya Thet Gyi, to U Ba Khin, to Goenka—presents a clean, linear yet mythologized story of an unbroken technique “preserved in purity” and handed down across generations. This formulation, Houtman argues, is a pedagogical strategy: it removes historical complexity to give beginners a single, stable framework. In fact, this reductionism was actually key to the spread of vipassana into non-Buddhist societies, enabling Goenka’s system to move across boundaries, cultures and institutions. “Like a schoolbook, Goenka’s version avoids confusion by stripping out the messiness of how these traditions really evolved,” he says. “[But] Burmese traditions are anything but linear. They are adaptive, discontinuous, and responsive to their time.”
Yet Houtman cautions that this very success obscures what vipassana meditation has meant culturally in Burma since the movement gained traction in the late 1800’s: a historically contingent, socially embedded response to the country’s collective crises. In this way, Houtman emphasizes that meditation in Burma cannot be separated from its colonial history, when British conquest had dismantled the traditional Buddhist order centered on kingship and monastic scholarship. With the monarchy gone, many Burmese feared that the very existence of the sāsana, itself, was in danger. With that backdrop, the monk Ledi Sayadaw came onto the scene, an innovative reformer who brought scriptural study and meditation directly to laypeople. “Ledi Sayadaw understood that if Buddhism was going to survive under colonial rule, it needed new tools, new language, and new methods of teaching that could reach ordinary people.” He promoted study manuals in simple Burmese and taught meditation as a straightforward, reproducible method. Most non-Burmese meditators know little to nothing about the important history of the practices they have appropriated.
Some scholars have characterized the roots of the global vipassana movement as “Protestant Buddhism” because it downplayed ritual and emphasized individual spiritual effort over reliance on the monastic community. While this captures part of the story, Houtman argues it overlooks the specifically Burmese context. He explains that Ledi Sayadaw’s reforms emerged as a response to the loss of royal patronage and the pressures of colonial rule. By empowering laypeople as guardians of both scriptural knowledge and meditative practice, Ledi transformed the religious landscape into a form of cultural resistance. This shift not only laid the foundation for figures like Mahasi Sayadaw (who taught many lay practitioners) and U Ba Khin (himself a lay teacher), but also helped preserve the sāsana in the face of foreign domination.
Meditation and Political Power
Houtman explains that meditation in contemporary Burma has long been shaped by political context. During U Nu’s democratic government in the 1950s, the state actively promoted the Mahasi tradition, which emphasized “dry insight” (sukkhavipassanā) meditation—stripped of deep concentration and esoteric practices. U Nu viewed Vipassana as both a tool of moral uplift for the population and a way to extend Buddhist identity into the country’s more remote and ethnically diverse regions. As a result, Mahasi-style meditation effectively became a state-sponsored project. This changed dramatically after Ne Win’s 1962 coup. The new socialist regime, wary of mass mobilization and ideological dissent, only tolerated Mahasi-style practice because it encouraged inward withdrawal and social quietism. In contrast, traditions involving supernatural powers—such as weikza (occult) or samathā (concentration-based) practices—were suppressed due to their perceived potential to inspire charismatic authority or anti-state movements. Jhana-based teachings like Pa Auk could only emerge once the military regime changed once again, in the post-1990 era.
Paradoxically, some Burmese generals from repressive regimes have been reported to show interest in meditation after leaving office. Houtman explains that the apparent contradiction between accumulating worldly power and later seeking spiritual retreat is culturally resolved through the Burmese view of karmic balance. Ne Win, for example, was said to have explored Buddhist texts and even remarked to his ideological advisor that had he understood meditation earlier, he “might not have launched the socialist revolution.” Houtman interprets this as part of a larger pattern: “Those in power live in the loka, the worldly domain they created. When they retire, they try to escape it—by turning to meditation.”
Houtman further recounts how, during his early fieldwork in the 1980s, he lived with a librarian whose family sent her mentally ill father to the Mahasi Center for meditation as a form of therapy. In their household, vipassana was not framed as an austere religious practice but as a practical means of restoring equilibrium, embedded in the social and cultural fabric. Such stories, Houtman suggests, reveal how meditation has long functioned as a kind of “cultural common sense” for many individuals in Myanmar—a tool for surviving hardship rather than a rigorous path to enlightenment. This dovetails with his earlier characterization of vipassana as a cultural response to crisis, and explains why, in moments of crisis, meditation centers fill with practitioners. “When the country falls apart,” Houtman says, “people turn to vipassana. It is the one reliable thing left”.
“Academic Activism”
In recent years, Houtman’s focus has shifted toward what he calls “academic activism.” He describes his involvement in a forthcoming book titled Thrice Under Fire, a collection of ethnographies by young Burmese scholars who, after the 2021 coup, lost their university positions and now conduct research while living in resistance-controlled areas or in exile.
“These are not just researchers,” Houtman insists with emotion in his voice. “They are civil disobedience practitioners, documenting their society while risking arrest or worse.” For him, supporting these scholars is a moral obligation. “After so many years of working in Burma, I cannot stand aside,” he says. “My role now is to help this next generation keep the intellectual and ethical life of the country alive.”
He contrasts this with the brief “opening” between 2015 and 2020, when he was able to teach at Mandalay University and live in Burma without the shadow of surveillance. “It was the first time I felt I could simply be part of the academic community there,” he recalls. That interlude ended abruptly with the coup, but for Houtman, it reinforced a central lesson. “Scholarship on Burma isn’t just scholarship. It’s participation in an ongoing historical struggle.”
Meditation as Historical Continuity
Ultimately, Houtman does not view Burmese meditation practices as isolated, spiritual endeavors; rather, he sees them as a cultural force that has survived and adapted through colonial collapse, authoritarian rule, and global migration. It has provided a moral anchor for Burmese society while quietly reshaping the world through its global diffusion. He says, “When foreigners came to meditate, Burmese think, ‘They’ve come for our most precious thing!’” For Houtman, this encapsulates both the quiet pride of Burmese culture and the enduring power of meditation to bridge worlds without losing its historical roots.
Looking ahead, Houtman does not offer easy optimism. But he holds fast to his conviction that understanding Burma means joining its long story rather than standing outside it. “You cannot study this country as if it’s just an academic subject,” he says. “If you stay with it, you will be drawn in. And if you’re drawn in, you stay for the long haul.”