Lynn Bousfield
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“I suppose it just felt like, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for!” exclaimed Lynne Bousfield, reflecting on her first meditation retreat in Bodhgaya many decades ago. “It just made sense to me, that this was something authentic, and something I needed to do.”
Growing up in Australia, Lynne came to the practice of vipassana via a long, winding road of travel adventures across Asia. In 1975, when she was 18 years old and a student at the University of Western Australia, she received a postcard from her brother depicting a golden stupa somewhere in Asia. She did a deep dive at the university library to try and unravel the mystery of where the card had been sent from and what it represented. “I don’t remember the book I landed on, but I read something, and I remember having the thought that if you learn to meditate, everything will be okay.” So she quit university, much to her father’s dismay, and worked a temporary job to save some money, then set off for Jakarta, and from there to Bali, Java, Thailand, and Laos, before eventually landing in Burma with an Australian woman friend.
Her visit to the Golden Land only lasted 10 days, but it strongly impacted her, mainly due to the hospitality and extraordinary generosity that she and her friend experienced. “A Burmese man came up to us, and he said, ‘Please come stay at my house,’” she recalls, in a story that is very reminiscent of something that would happen to Claire Thorp, a past podcast guest, several decades later. “We had a few experiences already in Southeast Asia, and you would normally shy away from something like that. But there were no hotels, and I found out later, the Burmese didn’t stay in hotels! So we said, ‘Well, let’s do it,’ and he took us over the next three days to what he thought were all the important things to see in Mandalay. It was a very generous and gracious thing for him to do.”
After Burma, she traveled to India, but while visiting Dharamsala, she got sick and ran out of money. And to her dismay, although she had now been traveling for some time, and dabbling in various practices along the way, nothing had yet stirred her like what she felt on seeing her brother’s postcard. “I really didn’t know what meditation was!” she admits. “But each thing I tried, I realized, well, this isn’t it.”
She was running low on money, and thought of going to Japan to teach English … but she couldn’t afford the ticket. So she ended up traveling overland to another country that had teaching opportunities for foreigners in those days, Iran. Unfortunately, no one believed that she had the credentials because she was so young, but eventually she secured a job as a typist. While in Teheran, staying in a shared apartment, she met a British friend of her housemate who had just come from India, and spoke about a meditation retreat in Bodhgaya led by a teacher named Munindra. That somehow resonated deeply with her, and she headed back to India.
Lynne takes a moment to reflect on her time traveling around Asia in those days, that while it was fun and exhilarating, it also could be dangerous, especially for a young, naive, single, white women, even if they dressed modestly like she did. She recounts several times that she and her friend nearly died; once was due to severe dysentery, likely from a dip in a contaminated pool, being “hunted” in Laos, and a couple of fearful encounters in Iran.
But she she arrived safely in Bodhgaya, and immediately sought out Munindra. He was was, in her words, “his usual, buoyant, welcoming, accepting self." He told her,”You’re in luck! There’s a [Mahasi-style] retreat, already underway, but you can still join us, just go down the road to the Birla Dharamshala.” So about fifteen months from when she started her trip seeking a meditation practice, she had finally found her way to her first course.“It was only five days, but I guess you can say it changed my life.’”
Lynne’s stay in Bodhgaya extended to a year and a half, and she soaked up every opportunity to deepen her budding practice. Even though the Mahasi technique maintained her primary meditation method, she also took courses taught by S. N. Goenka and Christopher Titmuss. She developed friendships with other young Westerners passing through, such as Jack Kornfield, Grahame White, and Joseph Goldstein, many of whom would someday become teachers in their own right. She recalls long conversations with her new friends, discussing how transformative this practice was, yet how challenging it could be as well. “The insight journey is a journey through the storm of the mind,” she says.
Eventually, she enrolled in a three-month retreat at the Mahasi Meditation Center in Burma, taking advantage of the slight “opening” that the military regime allowed in 1980, in order to practice at the site where the technique had originated. It was there that she developed a relationship with Sayadaw U Pandita, and she would always think fondly of the profound example he offered as a teacher and close Dhamma friend. “A lot of people found him fierce, but I found him very kind,” she recalls. “And he had a great sense of humor as well!” She also studied under Sayadaw U Kundala, whose teachings deepened her appreciation for the profound kindness she had first encountered among the Burmese people during her initial visit. “I found [him] very sweet, knowledgeable, and an exceptional teacher.” She says he was the first teacher of that caliber to take the time to discuss her past practice as well as what she was being instructed to do on retreat. “It’s those instances, [where] I really felt the care of those people.
Lynne also was deeply impacted by her experiences with other Burmese meditators, particularly women. She describes one Burmese yogi who, despite dealing with personal challenges, extended kindness and connection that helped Lynne feel more at ease in the rigorous environment of the Mahasi Center. Overall, she observed how the supportive conditions and the mindfulness practices they were engaged in were intertwined with the everyday lives of the people there, and the compassion and care that was daily on display. Those experiences influenced her own approach to meditation, helping her navigate the challenges of the practice with greater ease and understanding.
As told in previous podcast episodes (such as Barry Lapping, Alan Clements, and Michael Stein), after years of practicing in Asia, some young Westerners began to explore the possibility of bringing these transformative practices back to their home countries. Lynne was one of these. “I remember at some point, Grahame [White] saying it was difficult that there weren’t more people around [back in Australia] who you could talk with about the Dhamma,” she recalls. “He had met and established some degree of a relationship with Joseph in the early days in India. And I just said, ‘Why don’t we invite him to teach?!’” So with that in mind, they arranged for Joseph to lead several retreats outside Sydney, as well as some courses taught by Sharon Salzberg. However, they then realized that as North America was quite a bit further than Asia, they should look closer afield for Dhamma guides. “So, it seemed like we ought to invite one of the Sayadaws!”
None other than Sayadaw U Pandita accepted their invitation. “The Sayadaw came out with quite an entourage and we rented a venue. That first retreat was one month, and we had quite a few of the American teachers there as well. So we did a few of those, and he helped spur us on [to build a center].” Land soon came together, and the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Center was born. An array of different teachers in the Mahasi lineage have since passed through, including U Kundala and Bhante Sujiva; the course format there largely follows the Mahasi-inspired centers in the United States.
But it was not smooth sailing, especially at first. Initially, there was skepticism from the local community, as meditation was still a relatively unknown and misunderstood practice. The logistical hurdles of organizing retreats, such as finding suitable venues and accommodating both Western and Burmese teachers, added to the complexity. In addition, there was the issue of translating the depth and rigor of the Burmese tradition into a format that would resonate with an Australian audience, many of whom were new to meditation. U Pandita encouraged Lynne to find authentic ways to connect, and told her that, culturally and linguistically, she may have to make some innovations. “You need your own teachers,” she recalls being told. While quite aware that her and her peers’ meditation experience and scriptural knowledge was just a fraction of the Burmese Sayadaws that they had studied under, she understood his reasoning. “Communication is going to be easier when you've got people who understand you, know where you're from, know your language, and you need a diet that works for you. You need conditions that work for you.” Through these efforts, they were gradually able to bridge cultural gaps and helped vipassana establish a foothold there.
In the meantime, Lynne also realized that she needed to find a livelihood. “I’d thought I’d study psychology, because that must be like meditation, right?” she remembers musing. “It must be about the understanding of the mind. So I went off and studied psychology, but then felt like I kept waiting for them to deliver the goods! And I kept waiting, and ended up with a Master’s Degree, and still didn’t feel like they’d got it.” To Lynne, what was missing from the psychology she learned in school was the deep experience that actual meditation practice seemed best equipped to provide. So, Lynne began incorporating mindfulness practice into her treatments. “In all the thirty years I’ve been a psychologist, there have been two people I haven’t taught to meditate!”
That was years before it became common practice in the professional psychological community. Indeed, early on, Lynne’s approach got something of a cold reception by her peers; her colleagues looked down on her methods, or ask suspiciously for evidence that the practice worked. Now, of course, it’s quite different: therapists regularly point patients towards mindfulness practice, and these days, even easily accessible mindfulness apps on the phone! In Lynne’s case, having studied and taught both meditation and psychology for decades, she has no doubt which one ultimately ‘delivers the goods” in the end. “I think the Dhamma is the bigger box, the Dhamma is the bigger picture,” she says, “and psychology is going to sit inside of that.” Her approach has been to integrate mindfulness and meditation into her psychological practice in a way that respected their origins and full potential. Rather than reducing meditation to a mere therapeutic tool, she emphasizes its role as a comprehensive path to spiritual growth, leading towards full liberation.
Lynne’s personal meditation experiences have profoundly shaped her teaching style and philosophy. Having navigated the challenges of intensive practice in diverse environments—from the rigorous conditions of the Mahasi Center in Burma to the more accessible settings in Australia—her approach emphasizes both compassion and practicality. She understands firsthand the physical and mental struggles that come with deep meditation, and this empathy has made her a patient and understanding guide. Lynne focuses on creating supportive conditions for her students, recognizing that each person’s journey is unique and required different types of encouragement. “What are the conditions that support the development of intelligent understanding?” she asks herself as a teacher. “What are the words of wisdom? What are the mental conditions? What are the environmental conditions?” She also tries to bring in teachings that are deeply rooted in the authentic practices she learned in Burma, while knowing that at times, she needs to adapt them to Western students, ensuring that the practice is both accessible and transformative. This blend of authenticity and adaptability has become charactersitic of her approach, helping her students connect deeply with the Dhamma while navigating their own individual paths.
In closing, like Beth Upton shared on a recent episode, Lynne sees a huge loss in the closing off of access to a genuine wellspring of meditation teachers because of the conflict. “I think meeting people like Mahasi Sayadaw, you’re in the presence of something that is very hard to describe. There’s some kind of recognition with it, but to try to describe it would make it sounds like nothing… but that was trustworthy and true.”
Given the recent turmoil across the country, Lynne’s heartfelt appreciation for her time in Burma has become somewhat bittersweet, especially when she reflects on those early years when she first learned meditation directly from Burmese masters. She fondly remembers the generosity and warmth of the Burmese people, and their incredible respect for the Dhamma and those practicing the Dhamma. When she was in Burma meditating, she felt like she was doing something that made sense to the world around her.
“I would always feel when I landed in Burma, that I was safe.”