The Dalai Lama and SN Goenka

In 1974, Goenka met the young Dalai Lama. He remembered talking with him through the night about meditation—“all about technique.” The Dalai Lama was amazed to know that Goenka could bring his students to a state of lucid concentration, in which they saw a light, in just a few days. In Tibetan tradition, the state of seeing the luminosity of the mind’s pure state (gsal ba) is a high stage of meditation. It appears that in this conversation Goenka equated the counterpart sign of classical Theravada meditation, which is a mark of progress in preliminary concentration meditation, with the gsal ba of Tibetan tradition. Goenka recounted that he told the Dalai Lama, “You better send a few of your lamas and let them experience it. If I am wrong, I will rectify it. I don’t teach them that they must see light. It is merely a sign, a milestone on a long path, not the final goal.” Goenka went on to explain how the Dalai Lama “sent three lamas to my next course in Sarnath. All three of them saw light, and they were so happy.” After this, the Dalai Lama organized a large course at the Tibetan Library in Dharamshala, where a large number of Tibetan Buddhist monks and a smaller number of laymen participated.

An excerpt from Daniel Stuart’s S. N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight (Lives of the Masters), describing the meeting between two great meditation teachers. 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.