S. N. Goenka

Satya Narayan Goenka ( born January 30, 1924 in Mandalay, British India (now Myanmar), † September 29, 2013 in Mumbai, India ), usually just called S. N. Goenka, was a leading teacher of Vipassana meditation.

Life

S. N. Goenka came in Mandalay as a child into the world of Indian parents and grew up as a Hindu. Already in early adulthood, he became a successful businessman and leader of the Indian community in Burma. When he was looking for a way to get rid of his recurring severe migraine attacks, he came into contact with Sayagyi U Ba Khin. This was in the 1950s and 1960s, one of the highest state officials of Burma and also the founder of a meditation center in Rangoon. As a result, Goenka studied for 14 years under U Ba Khin Vipassana meditation.

1969 moved Goenka and his wife to India and began to give courses in Vipassana. The first center of this technique in 1976 Dhammagiri north of Mumbai ( Bombay ) was founded. Goenka conducted since then hundreds of meditation courses in Asia, Europe and the United States and supported the creation and development of over 130 other meditation centers that exclusively serve the spread of Vipassana meditation. The first course in Vipassana in Germany took place in 1983.

The late 1990s, S. N. Goenka initiated the project of the Global Vipassana Pagoda, whose cornerstone was laid in 1997 outside of Mumbai, which was completed in 2008. In this pagoda traditional style more than 8,000 people can meditate at the same time. With just under a hundred meters in diameter ( 280 feet ) and height ( 325 feet ) it is the world's largest self-supporting dome made ​​of natural stones.

Goenka took the view that the Buddha did not teach religion, but Dharma, the path to universal liberation. He therefore took the view that the doctrine advocated by him would be every man, regardless of his faith and denomination, open. He saw it as his task to spread the teachings of Buddha in India today and beyond to the world and viewed himself as a restorer of an original Buddhism. Vipassana was to show the people a possible path to liberation from their suffering.

Satya Narayan Goenka in 2012 was awarded the Padma Bhushan Indian State Order.

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