Instinct for Freedom : Finding Liberation Through Living

Alan Clements was the first American to become a Buddhist monk in Burma, where he lived for the good part of a decade. Since leaving the monastery, he has become a spiritual maverick, working for global human rights and teaching his contemporary understanding of liberation to audiences around the world.
After twenty years of leading retreats, Clements presents his first book of spiritual exploration: Instinct for Freedom a compelling blend of adventurous autobiography and provocative inquiry. Here he presents what he calls World Dharma - an approach to spiritual development that mirrors the narrative of his visionary life. He gives voice to an essential spirituality that can be common to all people - an engaged mysticism based in one precious human value: freedom, the liberation from fear, ignorance, and dogma and the elevation of dignity, conscience, and beauty.

Alan Clements was one of the first Americans to pioneer the dharma from the remote South East Asian Buddhist country of Burma, where he lived in a Buddhist monastery during the late 1970s and 80s, nearly four years of which he spent as a monk. During this time he trained in classical Buddhist psychology and Vipassana (insight) meditation with two of the most respected meditation masters of our era, the late Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw, and his successor Sayadaw U Pandita.
Since 1989, Clements has expanded his teaching beyond classical Buddhism to become an evocative spokesperson for the transformation of consciousness as the basis of freedom and dignity, lecturing and teaching retreats worldwide. His efforts on behalf of oppressed peoples worldwide have led Mr. Jack Healy, the former director of Amnesty International, to call Alan "one of the most important and compelling voices of our times."

Alan has lived in some of the most highly volatile areas of the world. In the jungles of Burma, in 1991, he witnessed and documented the genocide of the ethnic minorities by the military dictatorship, which he wrote about in his first book, Burma: The Next Killing Fields? He then lived in the former-Yugoslavia for nearly a year during the war where he wrote "Burning" (a screenplay). Back in Burma he co-authored The Voice of Hope the internationally acclaimed book of conversations with Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace laureate and leader of her country's non-violent struggle for freedom. Clements is also co-author of Burma's Revolution of the Spirit, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama.

In addition, Clements was the script revisionist and advisor for Beyond Rangoon, a feature film depicting Burma's struggle for democracy, directed by John Boorman. Alan has been interviewed on ABC Nightline, CBS Evening News, Talk to America, CBC, VOA, BBC, and by the New York Times, London Times, Time and Newsweek magazines, and scores of other media worldwide.