Mahasi Sayadaw
Mahasi Sayadaw ( Burmese မဟာစည်ဆရာတော် ; born July 29, 1904 in Seikkhun, Myanmar , † August 14, 1982 , Myanmar) was a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition. As a teacher of Vipassana meditation, he made a significant contribution to the reform of Theravada in Burma in the 1950s.
Life
Mahasi Sayadaw comes from a simple farming family. At the age of 6 he went to the village monastery school, at 12 he was ordained as a novice in the name of Sobhana. He was ordained a regular monk at the age of 20 and successfully completed the traditional Pali and Canon studies. At 24, he moved to Mandalay to continue his Buddhist studies with the leading scholastic teachings and to teach himself.
At the age of 28 he left the Taung-waing-galay Taik Kyaung monastery to seek a clear and simple method of meditation as a wandering monk. He found the master and monk U Narada (Mingun Jetawun Sayadaw, 1868–1955), who had developed a form of insight meditation ( vipassana-bhavana ) that was to become Mahasi Sayadaw's trademark under terms such as “naming” or “labeling”. After ten years of learning, Mahasi Sayadaw returned to his hometown of Seikkhun, where he accepted his first students and also taught insight meditation to numerous lay people, including children and women.
In 1941 he was appointed abbot of Mawlamyaing Monastery and passed the state examination for the Pali academic teaching permit. A little later the Second World War reached the monastery. It was used as a military airfield. Mahasi Sayadaw went back to his hometown Seikkhun. There he wrote a two-volume manual of Vipassana meditation in 1945, from which an excerpt was later translated into English under the title " Practical Insight Mediation: Basic and Progressive Stages ".
The method of "naming"
The meditation method developed by Mahasi Sayadaw belongs to the group of insight meditations . The method is considered to be extremely effective, as it allows inexperienced meditators to get started well and advanced practitioners to continuously control their meditation. Not least because of its simplicity, it also allows practitioners without a Buddhist background access to meditation.
The central anchor object of meditation is the observation of the rise and fall of the abdominal wall. When starting the meditation, the meditator mentally assigns a label (he / she names the observed phenomenon) with “lifting” when observing the lifting of the abdominal wall. When the abdominal wall is lowered, the label is then labeled with "lowering". The observed object (e.g. breathing) should not be influenced by the labeling. Due to the universal availability of the breathing process, the meditator can always return to this anchor object when he / she is in meditation e.g. B. loses in thought.
If the meditator has gained a certain certainty in naming the raising and lowering of the abdominal wall, he / she should expand his / her meditation to other physical and mental phenomena and label the phenomena that are dominant in the consciousness. The labels should be simple identifiers, i. A. A very limited vocabulary of a few words is sufficient. So the observation of a thought process z. B. simply named with "thinking", for physical sensations a simple "feeling" or a differentiating "pleasant" or "unpleasant" can be used as a label.
In particular, the excessive wandering of the meditation into the world of thoughts can be limited by this method, as the meditator quickly becomes aware when the label no longer corresponds to the object that is dominant in consciousness (e.g. the thought process). The meditator can then return to the anchor object and continue the meditation. With increasing experience and with a corresponding depth of meditation, the labels move further and further into the background and are then only used cautiously.
An often overlooked aspect of the method is that, in addition to sitting meditation, it also relates to walking meditation and meditation in performing daily activities. In walking meditation, the movement of the foot is the anchor object and should e.g. B. be labeled with "lifting", "moving", "lowering". By extending the method to all activities of daily life, the meditator achieves a consistently deep mindfulness which can ultimately reveal the fruit of Buddhist teaching to him / her.
Act
After the war, on behalf of Prime Minister U Nu, Sir U Thwin , who was highly respected in Burma , looked for a meditation teacher who could help him in his goal of strengthening Buddhism in Myanmar and found him in Mahasi Sayadaw. In 1947, the Buddha Sasana Nuggaha Organization was founded in Yangon , with Sir U Thwin as founding president, to promote the study ( pariyatti ) and practice ( patipatti ) of Buddhism.
In 1948 the foundation stone was laid for a new large retreat center near Yangon , today's "Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha". In 1949 Mahasi Sayadaw was asked by Sir U Thwin and U Nu to start teaching in Yangon in the first meditation center. Within a few years, numerous such centers emerged in Myanmar and the neighboring Theravada countries of Thailand and Sri Lanka .
At the 6th Buddhist Council (1954-1956) in Yangon, Mahasi Sayadaw played an important role in the final editing of the revised version of the Pali canon. Mahasi Sayadaw wrote numerous books, but only a few of them were translated into Western languages.
Western students
Mahasi Sayadaw's training courses in Myanmar were also attended by lay Westerners. For example, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg wrote books about their experiences there. It was also Western students who, in 1979, invited him, as one of the first great Theravada masters, to a longer teaching trip to the West. Thus, he not only had a great influence on the renewal of Buddhism in Myanmar, but also on the western Vipassana movement.
Works
- Handbook of Vipassana Meditation. 1945
- Practical Insight Meditation. Buddhist Publication Society, 1991. ISBN 955-24-0089-9 ( online )
- Satipatthana Vipassana: Insight through Mindfulness
- The Progress of Insight: A Treatise on Satipatthana Meditation.
literature
- Jack Kornfield: Living Buddhist Masters. Unity Press, Santa Cruz 1977. ISBN 0-913300-03-9
- Hans Gruber: Course book Vipassanā. Ways and teachers of insight meditation. Fischer, Frankfurt; 2nd edition 2001. ISBN 978-3-596-14393-1
Web links
See also
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mahasi Sayadaw |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Myanmar teacher of Vipassana meditation |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 29, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Seikkhun , Myanmar |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 14, 1982 |