Sayagyi U Ba Khin

Sayagyi U Ba Khin was born in Rangoon on 6 March 1899. He left school after his final high school examination because of family finances, worked briefly for a newspaper, and then became an accounts clerk in the office of the Accountant General. He passed the Accounts Service examination in 1926. When Burma was separated from India in 1937 he became the first Special Office Superintendent, and on 4 January 1948, the day Burma became independent, he was appointed Accountant General. He retired from government service in 1967. “Sayagyi” is a Burmese term of respect for a teacher.

His meditation began on 1 January 1937, when a student of Saya Thetgyi, a farmer and meditation teacher, explained anapana (breath awareness) to him. He then attended a ten-day course with Saya Thetgyi. In 1941 he met Webu Sayadaw in Kyaukse, who encouraged him to teach. He began formal teaching about ten years later.

In 1950 he started the Vipassana Association of the Accountant General’s Office, so that colleagues could learn the practice, and in 1952 he opened the International Meditation Centre in Rangoon. His public duties included the accounts of the Sixth Buddhist Council. From 1967 he gave his time to teaching at the centre, where his students were Burmese civil servants, Indians and some Westerners.

His best-known student is S. N. Goenka, a Burmese-born Indian who trained under him for fourteen years before moving to India in 1969 and beginning to teach. The ten-day courses of the Goenka tradition, including those held at centres in Thailand, descend from this line. The Vipassana Research Institute notes that many Indian students first came to U Ba Khin through Goenka.

Two of his lectures, “What Buddhism Is” and “The Real Values of True Buddhist Meditation”, are published. He died in January 1971.