When a Buddhist hears the phrase “esoteric Buddhism,” they will most likely think of Tibetan Buddhism, or perhaps Japanese Shingon. Yet a new book uncovers a little known tradition of esotericism within the Theravada tradition, a lineage usually thought to eschew such practices. In Esoteric Theravada (Shambhala; December 22, 2020) Kate Crosby, a professor of Buddhist studies at King’s College, London, looks at a nearly forgotten Buddhist tradition in the Theravada world of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka.
In these practices, which Crosby calls boran kammatthana, or “the old practice,” initiated practitioners aim to create an “enlightened body” through the manipulation of visionary experiences. Esoteric Theravada outlines the process of meditative self-transformation in this tradition as well as the circumstances of the tradition’s near disappearance, and serves as a requiem for a unique expression of Buddhist meditation that Crosby feels should be recorded for posterity—and maybe even revived. Tricycle recently spoke to Crosby about the book and how it might enhance our modern-day understanding of the Theravada tradition.
What is boran kammatthana? How do people practice it? In some texts this is referred to as “building a Buddha within the practitioner’s womb.” The practitioner starts by cultivating states of concentration that give rise to nimitta, or internal experiences of light, then incorporating the nimitta—sometimes in combination with visualized sacred syllables—into their body to build a Buddha. In some cases, the practitioner trains herself to visualize a series of crystal bodies representing different levels of attainment. Different Abhidhammic mental factors [cetasika], such as piti (rapture) and sukha (ease), are “invited” to arise in the body. The practitioner invokes her mental factor as if she were invoking temple gods, and addresses them like distinct and honored beings so as to transform body and mind, or in some cases to gain access to other words and occult beings.
You write that boran kammatthana was suppressed in the 20th century. People in Southeast Asia felt threatened by colonial incursion and wanted to strengthen Buddhist religious practice, but they also internalized the disembodied, rationalist, text-focused bias of the colonizers, which led them away from the more esoteric practices. In some cases it was actually suppressed. The reformer Prince Mongkut of Thailand (1804–1868), for example, sought to disempower a practice tradition that he himself had been trained in. Yet it was also about changes in culture. The previous technologies of alchemy and folk medicine based on Ayurveda [the ancient holistic medical tradition of India] changed with the introduction of Western medicine and science. After that backdrop fell away, there wasn’t the supportive, resonating cultural sphere for practices like boran kammatthana anymore. There was also a brief time when traditional medicine was made illegal, which cut off the livelihood of esoteric medical practitioners.
When [the] Vipassana [movement] came in from Burma, it presented meditation as a rationalistic practice, and promised a method to vivify Buddhism in the face of colonialism. Mainstream Theravada meditation guides were based on the model that one cultivated very deep states of concentration—jhana—and then used that tranquil, lucid mental state to study the nature of one’s experience with an eye to ridding oneself of delusion and attachment. Monastic seclusion was thought best for cultivating such deep meditation. The Vipassana movement, in contrast, cultivated only a minimal degree of the ability to focus the mind and then used various simple techniques to observe the body and mind and give rise to insight (which is what “vipassana” means). This was thought to be accessible to anyone, including laypeople. The processes in boran kammatthana are quite complicated and involved; they are also time-intensive and require initiation and personal attention from a teacher. So they are harder to popularize. All of these factors came together to cause the fading of boran kammatthana.