The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S.N. Goenka
Igatpuri (Dhamma Giri) · 1987
S
S. N. Goenka
S. N. Goenka
1924 CE–2013 CE · Modern · Mandalay
1924–2013 CE
Satya Narayan Goenka (1924–2013 CE) was a lay teacher who turned the Burmese vipassanā of his master Sayagyi U Ba Khin into a global, non-sectarian meditation movement. Born to an Indian merchant family in Mandalay, Burma, he took up meditation in 1955 to relieve chronic migraines, trained for fourteen years under U Ba Khin, and from 1969 began teaching in India, founding the Dhamma Giri centre at Igatpuri in 1976. He presented his ten-day residential courses as a practical, universal technique rather than a religious conversion, and the network grew to hundreds of centres worldwide. He is thoroughly documented and treated aniconically.
Did you know?
At 76 he addressed the UN General Assembly Hall
On 29 August 2000, the Vipassana teacher S. N. Goenka — a former businessman from a family of Indian merchants in Burma — spoke to the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders inside the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York. He was 76 at the time.
How we know
S. N. Goenka b. 30 Jan 1924, d. 29 Sep 2013; addressed the Millennium World Peace Summit at the UN General Assembly Hall, New York, on 29 Aug 2000 (Wikipedia; vridhamma.org).
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →
✦
Stop 1 of 3Born
Mandalay
What they did here
DOCUMENTED: born in 1924 to an Indian (Marwari) family in Burma; a successful businessman who began vipassanā under Sayagyi U Ba Khin in 1955 and trained with him for fourteen years.
About Mandalay
Mandalay, on the Irrawaddy river in central Myanmar (Burma), was the last royal capital of the Burmese kingdom and remains a major centre of Theravāda Buddhist learning. It was the birthplace, in 1924, of S. N. Goenka, the lay teacher of Indian descent who later spread the vipassanā method of his teacher U Ba Khin around the world.
The world in their lifetime
✦
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with S. N. Goenka’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.