Visitors 175
Modified 24-Mar-24
Created 11-Jan-12
71 photos
Theravada Buddhism has been the official religion of the Burmese since about the year 1000. (The hill tribes have their own spiritual practices.) The temples are spectacular. Gold is everywhere.
Images from the Buddhist sites near Inle Lake are in another folder.
Burmese forest monks in the 1900s transmitted Vipassana Buddhism to the West. Vipassana is a Theravada form involving meditation and accessible to lay people as well as dedicated monks & nuns. Gil Fronsdal, the founder and teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA, studied under forest monks in Burma. The transmission from the Burmese and Thai forest monks is responsible for the rise of Vipassana in the West, and directly influenced Goenka, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Andrea Fella & the lineage of Western Buddhist teachers. For IMC, see <http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/>
