From a Global Meditation Method to a Domestic Political Controversy

The modern worldwide spread of vipassana, insight meditation, owes an enormous amount to a small number of twentieth century Burmese sayadaws, above all Mahasi Sayadaw, whose systematic method of noting and observing bodily and mental sensations was taught to visiting Western students from the 1950s onward and became, through their subsequent teaching, one of the main channels through which Buddhist meditation entered secular and religious practice across North America and Europe, including through teachers who later founded prominent Western meditation centres after training partly under Burmese masters.

The same title has also attached, far more uncomfortably, to monks who became internationally known for very different reasons: the monk Ashin Wirathu, addressed with respect as sayadaw by his own followers, became the subject of extensive international reporting for nationalist rhetoric associated with anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar, including during the Rohingya crisis, and his prominence is widely cited as an example of how the same honorific that marks a revered meditation teacher carries no guarantee whatsoever about the political or ethical conduct of the particular monk who holds it, since sayadaw denotes seniority and respect rather than certifying any specific teaching or behaviour.