Insight in Perspective

This monograph interrogates a dominant teleological narrative about the history of modern global insight meditation and mindfulness: namely, that modern mass meditation movements were the inevitable result of the work of a handful of modern reformers who were in large part responding to colonial forces in Asia. Focusing on the figure of S. N. Goenka (1924-2013) and his Burmese lineage, the book redescribes the development of twentieth-century lay-focused insight meditation and mindfulness emergent from Burma (Myanmar). By recovering the historical background, lineage relationships, and practice contexts of Goenka’s teacher, the Burmese lay meditation master Sayagyi U Ba Khin (1899-1971), the book elucidates the historical dynamics that gave rise to one of the most influential global meditation institutions of the twentieth century. Daniel M. Stuart shows that an appreciation of the cosmological, political, and personal motivations of the meditation teachers in S. N. Goenka’s lineage brings to light occluded aspects of the history of modern global insight meditation.