num_pages: 316
description: A groundbreaking exploration of a practice tradition that was nearly lost to history.Theravada Buddhism often understood as the school that most carefully preserved the practices taught by the Buddha has undergone tremendous change over time. Prior to Western colonialism in Asiawhich brought Western and modernist intellectual concerns such as the separation of science and religion to bear on Buddhismthere existed a tradition of embodied esoteric and culturally regional Theravada meditation practices. This once-dominant traditional meditation system known as born kammatthna  is related toyet remarkably distinct fromVipassana and other Buddhist and secular mindfulness practices that would become the hallmark of Theravada Buddhism in the twentieth century. Drawing on a quarter century of research scholar Kate Crosby offers the first holistic discussion of born kammatthna  illuminating the historical events and cultural processes by which the practice has been marginalized in the modern era.
language: English
title: Esoteric Theravada: The Story of the Forgotten Meditation Tradition of Southeast Asia
publisher: Shambhala