This monograph interrogates a dominant teleological narrative about the history of modern
global insight meditation and mindfulness: namely that modern mass meditation movements were
the inevitable result of the work of a handful of modern reformers who were in large part
responding to colonial forces in Asia. Focusing on the figure of S. N. Goenka (1924-2013) and
his Burmese lineage the book redescribes the development of twentieth-century lay-focused
insight meditation and mindfulness emergent from Burma (Myanmar). By recovering the historical
background lineage relationships and practice contexts of Goenka's teacher the Burmese lay
meditation master Sayagyi U Ba Khin (1899-1971) the book elucidates the historical dynamics
that gave rise to one of the most influential global meditation institutions of the twentieth
century. Daniel M. Stuart shows that an appreciation of the cosmological political and
personal motivations of the meditation teachers in S. N. Goenka's lineage brings to light
occluded aspects of the history of modern global insight meditation.
