12On July 14, 2025, Ivan Zaitsev, Junior Research Fellow of the Sector for New Challenges in South and Southeast Asia, of the Center of the Indo-Pacific Region of IMEMO, made a presentation "Problem of Perceiving Islam and Christianity as Misconceptions in the Burmese Religious and Philosophical Treatise Vimuttirasa Kyam" at the conference "Current Issues of Buddhological and Indological Studies–19", organized by the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In the course of his presentation, the speaker emphasized that in the target text, Christianity and Islam were considered negative false doctrines that stipulated the presence of personality (sakkaya-ditthi). Conceptually, the description of these religions did not differ from Hinduism, and overcoming such "views" was possible with the help of meditation. Ivan Zaitsev emphasized that as Buddhist nationalism grew in modern Myanmar, official propaganda began to spread a discourse about false views that threatened the existence of Buddhism. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of modern trends requires studying the perception of other beliefs in Burmese Buddhist historical and philosophical thought.
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