Acknowledgments
A Note on Abbreviations
A Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1. Vanguards of the Sāsana
2. The Buddha’s Chief Wizard
3. Women of the Wizard King
4. Pagodas of Power
5. Wizards in the Shadows
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Thomas Nathan Patton is assistant professor of Buddhist and Southeast Asian studies at the City University of Hong Kong.
When hospital visiting hours are over in contemporary Myanmar,
Thomas Nathan Patton reports in this compelling book, the
supernatural heroes known as weizzā stay behind—in images and
statues of them, in dreams, and sometimes in visions—to comfort and
embolden the sick. This is one example of how the men and women of
modern-day Myanmar make lives for themselves in the everyday
company of Buddhist wizard-saints, to the anxious consternation of
religious and political authorities. Written with historical depth,
attentive throughout to comparative phenomena in other religions,
and based on extensive fieldwork, The Buddha’s Wizards is a major
contribution to the critical reexamination of lived religion in the
modern world.
*Robert A. Orsi, author of History and Presence*
In this path-breaking and richly textured study, Patton presents a
much needed revision of the literature on Burmese Buddhist
practices. His comprehensive study accounts of the ways in which
many lay Buddhists in Myanmar form affective relations with wizards
like Bo Min Gaung in dreams, visions, and through their material
embodiments of power. Buddhist wizards and the stories about them
transcend not only time and space; they also help devotees or fight
the threat of Buddhist decline while giving voice to traditional
Theravada sentiments. The reader will leave this book with a
nuanced understanding of Theravada Buddhist practices as lived
religion and its imaginaries that goes far beyond monolithic
depictions of Buddhist institutions or texts by showing the reader
how followers of the Buddha’s wizards make sense of the world
around them. Anthropologists of religion and scholars of Buddhism,
Southeast Asia, and especially Myanmar will want to introduce their
students to Patton’s wonderful book.
*Juliane Schober, author of Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in
Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil
Society*
Patton’s gift to us is that he has opened a door into the mystical
and miraculous world of the weizzā, Burmese Buddhism’s furtive
wizard-saints. Resisting colonial, state, and institutional
religious power, the wizards belong to the people. In affective
bonds with their devotees, they disrupt, occupy, heal, and
transform. Readers will not forget their encounter with the most
potent wizard of all, Grandpa Bo Min Gaung. Grandpa is more
proximate and accessible to his devotees than the Buddha himself.
Patton’s intimate and vivid ethnographic study of the material and
spiritual worlds of lived religion in Myanmar will transform how we
think about Buddhism.
*Jennifer Scheper Hughes, author of Biography of a Mexican
Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local Faith from the Conquest to the
Present*
Beginning from the very first page, Patton whisks us away on an
exciting journey through the magical world of the Buddhist wizards
of Myanmar. Based on in-depth and long-term ethnographic research,
this book provides an intimate and deeply empathetic exploration of
the roles wizards play as healers, bestowers of good luck,
defenders of the faith, spirit guides and teachers, and, most
importantly, as familiar presences in the everyday lives of
contemporary Burmese Buddhists.
*C. Pierce Salguero, author of Buddhism and Medicine: An
Anthology of Premodern Sources*
In The Buddha’s Wizards, the prose sparkles—the writing is crisp
without being dry and evocative without being flowery—and Patton
has achieved a nice balance between personal stories, primary
research, and secondary source citations. He puts the voices of
actual Burmese weizzā and practitioners (both female and male)
first and foremost while also drawing upon a plethora of
Burmese-language sources.
*Justin Thomas McDaniel, author of The Lovelorn Ghost and the
Magical Monk*
An elegant, rich, and thought-provoking study. Thomas Nathan Patton
weaves theoretical reflection through graceful ethnographic and
historical narrative and in the process develops a sophisticated
framework for thinking about religious bodies and their worlds.
*Donovan Schaefer, author of Religious Affects: Animality,
Evolution, and Power*
[An] elucidating anthropological monograph on Burmese Buddhism. . .
. Filled with absorbing stories of wizards and magic, this book
would fit easily into undergraduate or graduate courses on Asian
religions and Southeast Asia.
*Journal of the American Academy of Religion*
Eloquently demonstrates the power of studying religions as lived
phenomena. I hope it will find readers far and wide, both among
specialists and in the undergraduate classroom.
*Reading Religion*
An accessible text suitable for undergraduate students and scholars
alike interested in Buddhist encounters with modernity and
Southeast Asian lived religiosity broadly.
*Religious Studies Review*
A multilayered history and ethnography. . . . Patton’s work is
especially important for the way in which he allows the voices of
his informants to be heard.
*Choice*
Well-written and informative.
*New Books Asia*
A work of lucid scholarship on a novel topic of interest not only
to students of Theravada Buddhism but also to ethnographers,
theorists of affect, and historians of religion.
*Bulletin for the Study of Religion*
A rich in-depth ethnography and intimate examination of the weizzā
cult in its broader historical, sociopolitical, and religious
contexts
*Journal of Southeast Asian Studies*
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