Through a series of intimate, feature-length conversations with Alan Clements
, Burma's Voices of Freedom brings together dozens of the country's most respected and well-known politicians, pro-democracy activists, artists and religious leaders to provide one of the most detailed accounts of Burma's decades long struggle for freedom ever compiled. Together, these voices describe the courage and conviction required to nonviolently confront injustice anywhere, whether on a stage, in a demonstration, or in solitary confinement.
Combined with extensive archival material spanning 30 years, and drawing upon Clements' lifetime of connections within Burma, these four volumes provide an inside account of the ongoing struggle for democracy as it has evolved from the time of Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest in 2010, through the National League for Democracy election victory in 2015, and on to the upcoming national elections in late 2020, detailing their implications on the very future of freedom itself.
Volume 1: Key excerpts from decades of interviews, speeches and presentations by Aung San Suu Kyi, followed by expansive conversations with three of her longest and closest colleagues, U Tin Oo, U Win Tin and U Win Htein (542 pages).
Volume 2: Interviews with key National League for Democracy party members, prominent Buddhist, Muslim and Catholic leaders, and veteran activists such as Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, both of whom served nearly two decades in prison (416 pages).
Volume 3: Includes interviews with a broader range of spoken-word activist comedians, musicians, award-winning artists, journalists, and renowned politicians (466 pages).
Volume 4: Finishes the series with a set of scholarly appendices, including historical speeches and articles and a lengthy detailed chronology and analysis of key political events over the last 30 years (570 pages).
ALAN CLEMENTS, author of
The Voice of Hope: Conversations with Aung San Suu Kyi (1996) and one of the first Americans to ordain and live as a Buddhist monk in Burma, is the founder of World Dharma and the Burma Project USA and a veteran activist, author, artist, and speaker whose previous books have been met with critical acclaim.
FERGUS HARLOW has been Alan Clements' assistant and co-author since late 2012, and an unaffiliated student of the Dhamma since 2004.
World Dharma Publications
www.WorldDharma.com/Books
Boston born Alan Clements, after dropping out of the University of Virginia in his second year, went to the East and become one of the first Westerners to ordain as a Buddhist monk in Myanmar. He lived in Yangon at the Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha Mindfulness Meditation Centre for nearly four years, training in both the practice and teaching of Satipatthana Vipassana meditation and Buddhist psychology, under the guidance of his preceptor the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw, and his successor Sayadaw U Pandita. In 1984, forced to leave the country by Burma's dictator Ne Win, with no reason given, Clements returned to the West and through invitation, lectured widely on the "wisdom of mindfulness," in addition to leading numerous mindfulness-based meditation retreats and trainings throughout the US, Australia, and Canada, including assisting a three month mindfulness teacher training with Sayadaw U Pandita, at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), in Massachusetts. In 1988, Alan integrated into his classical Buddhist training an awareness that included universal human rights, social injustices, environmental sanity, political activism, the study of propaganda and mind control in both democratic and totalitarian societies, and the preciousness of everyday freedom. His efforts working on behalf of oppressed peoples led a former director of Amnesty International to call Alan "one of the most important and compelling voices of our times." As an investigative journalist Alan has lived in some of the most highly volatile areas of the world. In the jungles of Burma, in 1990, he was one of the first eye-witnesses to document the mass oppression of ethnic minorities by Burma's military, which resulted in his first book, "Burma: The Next Killing Fields?" (with a foreword by the Dalai Lama). Shortly thereafter, Alan was invited to the former-Yugoslavia by a senior officer for the United Nations, where, based in Zagreb during the final year of the war, he wrote the film "Burning" while consulting with NGO's and the United Nation's on the "vital role of consciousness in understanding human rights, freedom, and peace." In 1995, a French publisher asked Alan to attempt reentering Burma for the purpose of meeting Aung San Suu Kyi. Just released after six years of incarceration, Alan invited Aung San Suu Kyi to tell her courageous story to the world, thus illuminating the philosophical and spiritual underpinnings of Burma's nonviolent struggle for freedom. The transcripts of their five months of conversations were smuggled out of the country and became the book "The Voice of Hope." Translated into numerous languages, The Voice of Hope offers insight into the nature of totalitarianism, freedom, and nonviolent revolution. Said the London Observer: "Clements is the perfect interlocutor ... whatever the future of Burma, a possible future for politics itself is illuminated by these conversations." In 2002 Alan wrote "Instinct for Freedom - Finding Liberation Through Living" (New World Library & World Dharma Publications, nominated for the best spiritual teaching/memoir by the National Spiritual Booksellers Association in 2003), a memoir about his years in Burma that chronicles his mindfulness meditation training and dharma-informed activism. In 2003 he co-founded with his colleague, Dr. Jeannine Davies, the World Dharma Online Institute (WDOI) that offers an evolving video master course based on his life's work.
