Sayagyi U Ba Khin: Master Healer

While U Ba Khin taught vipassanā as a path to the highest goal of Buddhist practice, nirvana, his popularity as a teacher in mid-twentieth-century Rangoon may have been primarily due to his powerful ability to heal the worldly ailments of many of those who came to him to learn meditation. While his formal writings and teachings do not emphasize this aspect of what he was doing, his oral teachings reveal that he took pride in his healing powers and put much emphasis on them to draw in students. It was precisely U Ba Khin’s reputation as a healer that drew Goenka to him when the latter was desperate to find a remedy for his excruciating migraine attacks.

An excerpt from Daniel Stuart’s S. N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight (Lives of the Masters), describing the conditions that brought Goenka to learn Dhamma from Sayagyi U Ba Khin. Future posts here will look more deeply into this work, and we hope to have Daniel on the Insight Myanmar Podcast as well to discuss his new book.