Wait, what? Goenka is Brown?!: Dissecting Universalism in S. N. Goenka’s Biography

Even after his demise in 2013, S. N. Goenka’s vipassana meditation in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin
continues to flourish as one of the most significant and influential meditation movements with a strong
emphasis on non-sectarian, universal, and scientific Dhamma as an ideal way of life. However, Daniel Stuart’s
recent biography – the only one available in English – challenges this emphasis, portraying Goenka’s life and
teaching as coming out of clashing “identities” – between a global teacher of non-sectarian vipassana and a
traditional guru of Burmese and Indian descent with cultic, conservative and devotional backgrounds and
commitments. This talk critically examines these assertions and provides how best to understand a global
meditation movement such as Goenka’s, especially when it comes to claims like secular, non-sectarian and
universal practice in response to modern secular episteme. Furthermore, it argues that the failure to recognize
religion as a discursive category and a lack of critical self-reflexivity in knowledge production inevitably leads
to a complete misunderstanding of the movements, the Buddhist cultural logic, and its leaders in a typical
Orientalist fashion.

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