Anagarika Munindra
Encyclopedia
Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
vipassana
Vipassana
Vipassanā or vipaśyanā in the Buddhist tradition means insight into the true nature of reality. A regular practitioner of Vipassana is known as a Vipassi . Vipassana is one of the world's most ancient techniques of meditation, the inception of which is attributed to Gautama Buddha...
meditation teacher, who taught many notable teachers including Dipa Ma
Dipa Ma
Dipa Ma was born Nani Bala Barua in a small village named Chittagong in East Bengal , moving to join her husband in Burma when she was 16...
, Joseph Goldstein
Joseph Goldstein
Joseph Goldstein is one of the first American vipassana teachers , co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, contemporary author of numerous popular books on Buddhism , resident guiding teacher at IMS, and leader of retreats worldwide on insight and...
, Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg is a New York Times Best selling author and influential teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in West. She co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, in 1974...
, and Surya Das
Surya Das
Lama Surya Das is an American-born lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is a poet, chantmaster, spiritual activist and author of many popular works on Buddhism; a teacher and spokesperson for Buddhism in the West. He has long been involved in charitable relief projects in the Third World...
. Anagarika
Anagarika
In Theravada Buddhism, an anagarika is a person who has given up most or all of his worldly possessions and responsibilities to commit fulltime to Buddhist practice. It is a midway status between monk and layperson where one takes on the Eight Precepts for the entire anagarika period, which could...
simply means a practicing Buddhist who leads a homeless life without attachment in order to focus on the dharma
Dharma
Dharma means Law or Natural Law and is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. In the context of Hinduism, it refers to one's personal obligations, calling and duties, and a Hindu's dharma is affected by the person's age, caste, class, occupation, and gender...
. Munindra was born in Chittagong
Chittagong
Chittagong ) is a city in southeastern Bangladesh and the capital of an eponymous district and division. Built on the banks of the Karnaphuli River, the city is home to Bangladesh's busiest seaport and has a population of over 4.5 million, making it the second largest city in the country.A trading...
, Bangladesh, to the Barua family, descendents of the original Buddhists of India forced east by the eleventh-century Muslim invasion. He was an active member of the Maha Bodhi Society
Maha Bodhi Society
The Maha Bodhi Society is a South Asian Buddhist society founded by the Sri Lankan Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala. The organization's self-stated initial efforts were for the resuscitation of Buddhism in India, and restoring the ancient Buddhist shrines at Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and...
whose purpose was the resuscitation of Buddhism in India and the restoration of ancient Buddhist shrines there. Munindra was the superintendent of the Mahabodhi Temple
Mahabodhi Temple
The Mahabodhi Temple is a Buddhist temple in Bodh Gaya, the location where Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, attained enlightenment. Bodh Gaya is located about from Patna, Bihar state, India. Next to the temple, to its western side, is the holy Bodhi tree...
at Bodh Gaya from 1953 to 1957, the first Buddhist to hold this position in modern times. From 1957 to 1966 he lived in Burma where he was a close disciple of Mahasi Sayadaw
Mahasi Sayadaw
The Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw U Sobhana was a Burmese Theravada Buddhist monk and meditation master who had a significant impact on the teaching of Vipassana meditation in the West and throughout Asia...
, who authorized him to teach vipassana meditation. While in Burma he also studied the Pali canon
Pāli Canon
The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the only completely surviving early Buddhist canon, and one of the first to be written down...
thoroughly, before returning to India where he taught vipassana for many years in Bodh Gaya. Admired for his gentleness, wisdom, and insatiable curiosity, he had a deep knowledge of the Pali canon which he made accessible to Westerners. He was also known to be very open-minded and relaxed in the way he taught. He would encourage his students to study with other teachers, and investigate other traditions. During his stay in Burma he came in close contact with Shri S. N. Goenka and had dhamma discussions with him. Subsequently, he wished to learn Vipassana from Sayaji U Ba khin but since he had already learnt Vipassana from a monk, Sayaji expressed his inability to teach him Vipassana in the tradition of Ledi Sayadaw.
Finally, this wish of his got completed few years later when Goenkaji started teaching Vipassana in India, he joined in course held at Bodhgaya and was impressed by the technique.
Below is the letter of appreciation he wrote to Sayaji U Ba Khin after attending a 10-day retreat with ShriS. N. Goenka
S. N. Goenka
Satya Narayan Goenka is a leading lay teacher of Vipassanā meditation and a student of U Ba Khin. He has trained more than 800 assistant teachers and each year more than 100,000 people attend Goenka sponsored Vipassana courses....
in India:
In his later years he started staying with Shri S.N. Goenka at VRI's main meditation centre at Igatpuri, India. Most of his time was spent practising Vipassana there in his room / cell in pagoda.
For more information about this dharma teacher, a grandfather of the vipassana/mindfulness movement, see the first book ever written about him: Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra (Shambhala), by Mirka Knaster, Ph.D., in collaboration with Robert Pryor, with a foreword by Joseph Goldstein.