Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > The Making of a Buddhist Heretic

Electronic data

  • JBLS article by Kawanami 2021

    Accepted author manuscript, 451 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

View graph of relations

The Making of a Buddhist Heretic: A Case Study of Sky-Blue Sect

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>31/12/2020
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Buddhism, Law & Society
Issue number2020-2021
Volume6
Number of pages25
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

I examine Mòpyar Gaing: a new Buddhist sect that came to prominence in Myanmar in the 1980s and its founder monk; U Nyanar, who was arrested in the early 1980s for propagating the concept of ‘this-worldly karma’, which posed a major challenge to traditional beliefs in karmic causality and rebirth in the conservative Theravada tradition. The article examines how his re-interpretation of Buddhist doctrine brought against him charges of heresy and eventually led to lengthy prison terms until his release in 2016.