Voices: Burmese Theravada in a Catholic Land, Part 1

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 only region in all of Southeast Asia that has had hardly any connection to the Dhamma over the course of the last 2,500 years. So then, why would a podcast based on Buddhist practice, with a specific focus on Myanmar, dedicate a series of episodes to the Philippines vis-a-vis the Golden Land? The answer: although the Philippines has had little connection to Buddhism and Buddhist monasticism, this is now slowly changing, and many Filipinos are becoming more open and receptive to the liberating teachings of the Buddha.

We first hear from Tony Fernando, a cellist and psychiatrist at the University of Auckland. He ordained as a monk several times at Chan Myay Myaing Monastery in Yangon, practicing metta (loving kindness) intensively. He’s now introducing compassion into the field of sleep study, and has also begun a mindfulness training at the Mount Eden Correctional Facility. The second guest is Imee Contreras, the founder of Mindfulness Asia and the co-founder of the Philippine Insight Meditation Community. She has also been a mindfulness teacher at Spirit Rock and UCLA.

These two guests relate powerful stories that inform the contemporary spread of Dhamma into new areas of our world.

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