The Twentieth-Century Vipassana Revival

Twentieth-century Burma produced an unusually influential cluster of sayadaws whose teaching reshaped Theravada meditation practice both within the country and, eventually, worldwide: Ledi Sayadaw, active from the late nineteenth into the early twentieth century, is widely credited with beginning a broader movement to teach intensive vipassana, insight meditation, to laypeople rather than restricting serious meditation practice to monastics alone, a significant departure from much earlier practice. Mahasi Sayadaw developed a distinctive, systematically taught method of mindfulness meditation in the mid twentieth century that spread rapidly through government-supported meditation centers across Burma and later through centers and teachers internationally, becoming one of the most widely practiced forms of vipassana meditation in the world.

U Ba Khin, another influential twentieth-century Burmese meditation teacher though not himself formally titled sayadaw, trained S. N. Goenka, an Indian-born student who went on to establish a global network of vipassana meditation centers teaching a specific ten-day residential course format, carrying a lineage traceable directly to Burmese monastic meditation revival to millions of students across dozens of countries who have never set foot in Myanmar, a striking example of how the teaching authority developed within Burma's sayadaw tradition has shaped Buddhist meditation practice on a genuinely global scale.