Events
Buddhist responses to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar
A Lecture by Prof. Dr. Iselin Frydenlund, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society
December 03, 2025, 4:15 pm, ESA Ost, Room 120 and online - for online participation please register via eventbrite
The military coup in Myanmar on 1 February 2021 ended a period of semi-civilian rule (2011–2021), bringing the country once again under direct military rule. Recent research into the religious responses to the coup in its early phases indicates that the mass protests were characterised by global internet culture, inter-religious solidarity, and new visions for a plural and democratic Myanmar. The Buddhist Sangha, it is often claimed, remained silent and was mainly supportive of the military. In this talk I argue that this narrative is too simplistic, ignoring both changes in attitudes over time, as well as internal divisions within the Sangha. Rather, what we see is both monastic justification of the military's action and resistance to it. Moreover, I will also make the case that Buddhist support for the coup must be understood not only within an instrumentalist framework or within what we can refer to as the "Military-monastic complex", but also through a specific "Buddhist Ideology of Order." In opposition to this, a Buddhist revolutionary movement is identified. It envisions radical societal transformations, including of institutional Buddhism itself. Finally, I will discuss the ways in which pro-revolutionary activities go well beyond established monastic revolutionary networks, indicating broader Sangha engagement in the Myanmar Spring Revolution than has often been assumed.
Dr. Iselin Frydenlund is professor of the Study of Religions at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society and a Fellow of the MF Centre for the Advanced Study of Religion (MF CASR). She specializes in questions relating to Buddhism and its societal impact, focusing on Buddhism, politics, nationalism and violence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. She also works on Buddhist-Muslim relations in Buddhist majority states in Asia and was the PI of the Research Council of Norway-funded research project INTERSECT (“Intersecting Flows of Islamophobia”). Since 2016 she has also been heading an academic exchange program between MF and Myanmar Institute of Theology. Frydenlund regularly appears in national and international media on questions related to Buddhism and politics, and she frequently provides analysis for policy-makers home and abroad. Her latest book is Buddhist-Muslim Relations in a Theravada World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), co-edited with Michael Jerryson. Her monograph on Buddhism as a political force in Asia will soon appear for the Scandinavian University Press.
The Dharma of Giving and the Giving of the Dharma: Social and Soteriological Implications of Teachings on Dāna from a Buddhist Heaven
A Lecture by Prof. Dr. Daniel Stuart, University of South Carolina
November 19, 2025, 4:14 pm, Asia-Africa-Institute, East Wing (ESA O 120) and online, for online participation please register via eventbrite
This talk explores a narrative episode in a middle period Buddhist sūtra, the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra to explore implications of teachings on giving (dāna). The narrative presents readers with the motif of the karma mirror, utilized in this instance by the king of the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods, Śakra/Indra, to teach the inhabitants of his realm about low, middling, and high forms of giving and their karmic effects. By elucidating how these teachings are articulated in the text, this talk shows how internal Buddhist debates on giving involved tensions between different kinds of Dharma teachers and around the goals of Dharma teaching at social and soteriological levels of concern.
Daniel M. Stuart is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina. He holds an MA in Sanskrit Literature and a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. His research examines the history and transformation of Buddhist contemplative practices from premodern South Asia to the global present. He is the author of Thinking about Cessation (2013), A Less Traveled Path (2015), The Stream of Deathless Nectar (2017), S. N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight (2020), and Insight in Perspective (2024). Daniel M. Stuart is currently a fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung at Hamburg University.