Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière, Guillaume Rozenberg, and Alicia Turner, eds. Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults in Contemporary Burma. Singapore: NUS Press, 2014, xxvii+261p.

Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults in Contemporary BurmaBENEDICTE BRAC DE LA PERRIERE, GUILLAUME ROZENBERG, and ALICIA TURNER, eds.Singapore: NUS Press, 2014, xxvii+261p.Exciting things are happening in the study of Burmese Buddhism. Recent years have seen the publication of very important contributions to our understanding of this field. In particular, investigations of the roots of the "mindfulness" meditation phenomenon as a Burmese reaction to colonialism have garnered attention far beyond a scholarly audience concerned with Burma exclusively (for example, Braun 2013). Though fascinating, this focus on the origins and spread of the so-called vipassana meditation movement has neglected what Kate Crosby, in the preface to Champions of Buddhism, calls "the Other Burmese Buddhism," by which she means the popular yet politically marginal set of practices belonging to the so-called weikza-path. It is to examining this path that Champions of Buddhism is devoted, both as an introduction to this under-investigated phenomenon and as a stimulus to further inquiries into the nature of Buddhism in Burma and Buddhist global modernity in general. In both respects, it succeeds marvelously.Unless they are experts in Burmese Buddhism, readers may at this point wonder what exactly is meant by the term weikza. In the foreword to the volume, the editors give a good idea by describing weikza as "a religious virtuoso" (p. ix). Because of his behavior, meditation skills, and expertise in the magical arts, a weikza attains the ability to live very long, with the purpose of being present when the next Buddha, Maitreya, appears in our world. Though the usage of magic with the explicit purpose of lengthening one's life may not sound very "Buddhist" to some, one argument that this volume forcefully makes is that such practices are as Buddhist as monks singing sutras or meditating in temples. In her preface (the book has both a foreword and a preface, but-puzzlingly-no introduction), Crosby explores this alternative Burmese Buddhism by sketching the practical, political, and ideological motivations that have kept it in obscurity for so long. Together with Steven Collins' postscript, Crosby's piece connects the materials in the volume to a larger context, a context that is sometimes lost in the detailed accounts collected here.The main body of the volume is divided into three thematic parts. In the first, the weikza phenomenon is further defined by contrasting it to a number of other Burmese Buddhist and non- Buddhist indigenous practices. In chapter 1, Patrick Pranke distinguishes weikza from another, better known ideal, that of the arahant (Sanskrit: arhat). Whereas the latter are the ultimate goal of practitioners in the vipassana tradition, the former belong to a different, esoteric path. Nevertheless, both arhats and weikza are revered after their physical body has disappeared (which does not mean that they are considered "dead"). In the course of his description, Pranke provides a useful history of Buddhism in colonial and postcolonial Burma, serving to orient the reader for the chapters to come. In the next chapter, Juliane Schober expands this comparison between vipassana and weikza practices by affirming that, although weikza are certainly marginalized politically (not having strong connections with the Burmese leaders), doctrinally they are firmly Theravada Buddhist. In the last chapter of the first part, Benedicte Brac de la Perriere introduces a final distinction, namely between different types of spirit mediums: on the one hand, there are the nat gadaw, who contact the spirits of dead Burmese kings. On the other, there are the bodaw or medaw, who contact the spirits of physically departed weikza. Brac de la Perriere's discussion is interesting for several reasons, not in the least because the division she describes is gendered: whereas weikza mediums tend to be male, nat gadaw tend to be female.The second part of the book then details the role of weikza as protectors of Buddhism. …