Encountering weikza in Buddhist Burma

In this ethnographic study, I examine how Medaw, a Buddhist Burmese ritual specialist, claims karmic relationships to naga and describes her life trajectory as encounters with beings known as weikza. These beings pertain to a Burmese field of practice which can be examined in the light of Lorea and Singh’s conceptualization of “tantricking.” With this purpose, I analyze the stories Medaw recounted during the so-called Burmese political transition (2011–2021) as a biographical account. Particularly, I trace how, in the course of her practice as a ritual specialist, she built her relationship with weikza beings as a unique one, qualifying her distinctiveness in contrast to monasticism and to other ritual specialists. In so doing, weikza emerge as beings whose specific agency and ontology—more readily workable with the brand of urban Buddhism that has developed in contemporary Burma—give access to followers and politically well-connected clients eager to tap into their sources of potency. This speaks to the interstitial location of the weikza field of practice in the overall Buddhist religious field in Burma.

Agency (philosophy) · Buddhism · Burmese · Conceptualization · Ethnography · Field (mathematics) · Monasticism · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Politics · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies