Vipassana pioneer Goenka dies at 90

[Kan Win]

The highly respected monk died peacefully at 10.40pm (midnight, Thailand time) at his residence in Mumbai, his website, thaidhamma.net, said on Monday.

Win

[sabaijai]

Vipassana guru SN Goenka passes away at 90

KATHMANDU: Spiritual leader and Vipassana guru Satya Narayan Goenka died at the age of 90 in his Mumbai-based residence on Sunday night.

According to the Vipasanna Meditation website dhamma.org, the revered teacher passed away peacefully at the ripe age of 90 at his residence 10:40 pm Indian Time.

His funeral will be held on Tuesday, October 1 in Mumbai.

Born on January 30, 1924 in Burma, Goenka learnt Vipassana -- the meditation technique practiced by Lord Buddha to attain enlightenment-- there from Sayagyi U Ba Khin.

He later moved to India, and made the technique popular worldwide through a non-sectarian movement.

Goenka is survived by his wife Elaichidevi, also co-teacher of medidation, and six sons.

Goenka started teaching meditation to the public in India in 1969. Subsequently, he set up Vipassana International Academy --also known as Dhamma Giri -- in Igatpuri in 1976.

Residential courses of Vipassana meditation are taught at numerous centres in different countries on regular basis.

Also, he had started teaching the meditation to jailbirds in Indian prisons.

According to the website, Goenka has taught tens of thousands of people in more than 300 courses in India and in other countries, East and West. In 1982, the principal teacher of Vipassana began to appoint assistant teachers to help him meet the growing demand for courses.

In 2000, Goenka addressed the Millennium World Peace Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Meditation centres have been established under his guidance in India, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Nepal and other countries.

In Nepal alone, there are eight meditation centres -- Dhamma Shringa, Budhanilakantha; Dhamma Kitti, Kirtipur; Dhamma Birata, Itahari; Dhamma Chitawan, Chitwan; Dhamma Pokhara, Pokhara; Dhamma Tarai, Birgunj; Dhamma Janani, Lumbini; and Dhamma Surakhetta, Surkhet.

He was honoured with the Padma Awards by the President of India in 2012.

http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Vipasanna+guru+SN+Goenka+passes+away+at+90&NewsID=392525&a=3

[sabaijai]

S.N. Goenka: The Man who Taught the World to Meditate

Jay Michaelson, Huffington Post

You may not know the name of S.N. Goenka, who died Saturday at the age of 90. But if you've counted your breaths to relax in a hospital, or if you've ever tried to eat, walk, or speak "mindfully," you've felt his influence. He might even have changed your life.

Satya Narayan Goenka did not set out to be a meditation guru. He was an Indian businessman who happened to come across the teachings of a then-radical Burmese Buddhist tradition which had adapted Buddhist meditation practices and taught them to laypeople, like me and (probably) you. That may not seem so radical today, but one hundred years ago, it absolutely was. These techniques had been monastic traditions only - imagine what it would have been like had medieval monks suddenly taught peasants to read the Bible.

Goenka was one of many laypeople whose lives were changed by meditation - but he had the widest influence. He was a core teacher for the first generation of "insight" meditation teachers to have an impact in the United States, and through them, to popularizers like Jon Kabat-Zinn, whose Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) is now taught across the country in hospitals, schools, even prisons.

Indeed, the very notion that meditation may be practiced in a non-religious, non-sectarian way owes much to Goenka himself. Basically a rationalist and a pragmatist, Goenka emphasized that meditation was not spirituality and not religion, but more like a technology - a set of tools for upgrading and optimizing the mind. These are my terms, not his (I discuss this fascinating story of secularization and popularization in my book Evolving Dharma), but the gist is the same. You don't have to believe anything, wear special clothes, or chant special words in order to calm the mind, improve memory, and attain the various other benefits of meditation.

At the same time, Goenka did work within a specific Buddhist tradition, and created a very rigorous format designed to attain certain levels of mental understanding on ten and twenty day silent retreats. To Westerners, he can indeed seem like the very image of the Indian sage, talking about enlightenment while insisting on a very demanding (and inflexible) set of contemplative exercises. Goenka retreats are austere - not only no speaking, but also no reading or writing, and with arduous schedules of concentration and meditation.

Indeed, rather like Bikram yoga, Goenka's method has become something of a fixation for his followers. To this day, Goenka-style retreats are taught by Goenka himself - by video, of course - and it was Goenka's insistence on this point that led some of his leading American students to break from their master and create the forms of mindfulness more familiar to us today. These Americans were ex-hippies, after all. And while Goenka centers have proliferated around the globe, the more flexible techniques taught by his former students (as well as parallel versions from Zen and Tibetan traditions) have had an even wider impact.

That impact has been enormous. Studies suggest that one million more Americans take up meditation every year - mostly in healthcare contexts. These people are not interested in enlightenment or awakening, and they aren't about to spend ten days in silence watching videotapes of spiritual teachings. They're taking up mindfulness (basically, paying attention to present-moment experience in a particular, focused way, whether in formal meditation or in other activities) because they're suffering from chronic pain or post-traumatic stress. Or they're doing it because they work at Google, or Twitter, or Apple, or one of the dozens of technology companies using mindfulness to improve the performance and well-being of employees. This is how the teachings known as the "dharma" have evolved - beyond religion, beyond spirituality, into every walk of life. And S.N. Goenka is largely responsible for it.

America is on the threshold of a mindfulness revolution. As the data regarding mindfulness's economic impact becomes better developed and better known, we are going to see mindfulness offered everywhere - not for reasons of spirituality, but for sheer economics. These technologies decrease healthcare costs, improve productivity, and speed processes of healing. The Buddha may have taught them to lead to enlightenment - but they also save a ton of money.

How this experiment will turn out is anyone's guess. Maybe mindfulness will just be a fad. Maybe it'll last but, like yoga, be limited only to some. Or maybe it really will transform our society. Whatever comes next, all of us who have used it to relax, get well, or just get through the day owe a debt of gratitude to an Indian businessman who passed away last week. Let's take a mindful breath to remember him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/sn-goenka-dead_b_4016374.html

[sabaijai]

Vipassana guru Goenka attains nirvana at 89

By Jharna Thakkar, Mumbai Mirror | Oct 1, 2013, 04.46 AM IST

Satya Narayan Goenka was born on January 30, 1924, to an affluent Indian industrialist family based in Myanmar, then Burma. At the age of 31, in 1955, Goenka started experiencing severe migraines that no one could diagnose and no amount of money could cure. At that time, a good friend suggested he take a 10-day meditation course.

After months of hesitation, he approached Sayagyi U Ba Khin - a teacher of Buddha's vipassana - in all honesty about his condition. He was turned away ('lovingly' in Goenkaji's words) on the grounds that it was wrong to make use of this ancient purification and meditation technique to treat physical diseases.

A few months later, Goenka decided to learn the teachings that propound the three essentials of this technique - sila (Pali for morality), samadhi (concentration) and panna (wisdom; prajna in Sanskrit). He trained under Khin, who came from a long line of teachers directly descended from the Buddha, including Saya Thet and Ledi Sayadaw.

continued:

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/others/Vipassana-guru-Goenka-attains-nirvana-at-89/articleshow/23325594.cms

[bamboozled]

Start again..... Start again......

[sabaijai]

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/vipassana-guru-s-n-goenka-dies/1176659/

Renowned spiritual leader and Vipassana guru Satya Narayan Goenka died due to old age on Sunday night. He was 89. The funeral is scheduled for Tuesday.

Born on January 30, 1924, in Burma (now Myanmar), Goenka learnt Vipassana, a meditation technique, there from Sayagyi U Ba Khin, an acclaimed teacher and administrator. He later moved to India and made the technique popular worldwide through a non-sectarian movement.

Goenka is survived by his wife Elaichidevi, also a co-teacher of meditation, and six sons.

Goenka, who was conferred the Padma Bhushan for social work last year, started teaching meditation to the public in India in 1969. In 1976, he set up the Vipassana International Academy — also known as Dhamma Giri — in Igatpuri, about 200 km from here in Nashik district.

The ancient technique was part of prison reforms carried out in Delhi's Tihar Jail in early 1990s and it was taught to inmates there. Later, several prisons in the country introduced Vipassana for inmates.

In 1982, Goenka began to appoint assistant teachers to help him meet the growing demand for courses.

In 2000, Goenka addressed the Millennium World Peace Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Besides India, Vipassana centres have come up in countries like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar and Thailand under his guidance.

[sabaijai]

Amid traffic and flowers, Myanmar lays guru S.N. Goenka to rest

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-myanmar-sn-goenka-guru-funeral-20131008,0,6613345.story

[keddy]

I did two GN Goenke retreats, albeit the teaching was played out on video, However I'm very grateful for the experience. Some of the phrases have stayed in my mind 'From the top of your head to the tips of your toes;

You will bound to be successful ....bound to be successful......(tape hiss)

[keddy]

*Sorry SN Goenke

[ChrisB87]

The world needs more legendary people like him.

Edited October 23, 2013 by ChrisB87