S. N. Goenka

Satya Narayan Goenka (1924 to 2013) was a lay teacher of Vipassana meditation. He was Indian by descent but born and raised in Myanmar. There he met Sayagyi U Ba Khin and learned Vipassana from him, training under him for fourteen years.

In 1969 he settled in India and began to teach. His courses soon drew people from many backgrounds, and over almost forty-five years he and the teachers he appointed taught hundreds of thousands of people in India and elsewhere. From 1982 he appointed assistant teachers to meet the demand. He received a Padma award from the Government of India in 2012, and in 2000 he spoke at the Millennium World Peace Summit at the United Nations in New York. He died in September 2013 at the age of 89.

The technique is taught at ten-day residential courses. Participants follow a Code of Discipline, learn the basics of the method and practise it. Attention is placed on physical sensations and their connection with the mind. The organisation presents the approach as non-sectarian. Courses are run solely on a donation basis, from those who have completed a course, and neither teachers nor organisers are paid. Recording devices and cameras are not permitted during a course, so public video of the courses themselves is scarce.

His tradition is organised around lay meditation centres rather than temples. Thailand has more than a dozen, the first being Dhamma Kamala in Prachinburi.

Anyone thinking of sitting a course should read the Code of Discipline on dhamma.org first, because it sets the terms for the whole ten days.