The early teaching career of SN Goenka: "a long and hard-fought process"

The initial and ongoing conflict with his family was a microcosm of challenges that he would go on to face while trying to spread the Buddha’s meditation teachings. The prejudices toward Buddhism that he himself had grown up with and nursed for much of his life were even stronger in India than they had been in his Hindu community in Burma. Therefore, he had to engage in a public relations campaign, actively courting the approval of a variety of communities and their leaders. He had to show that what he was teaching—the practices he considered to be the core teachings of the historical Buddha—was socially relevant in India and amenable to those who identified as Hindu. He also made attempts to connect with Jain, Buddhist, and Christian communities. This campaign was a long and hard-fought process..

An excerpt from Daniel Stuart’s S. N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight (Lives of the Masters), describing the start of the teaching career of the meditation master. 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.