1. Acharya Godwin Samararatne was one of the best known lay meditation teachers in Sri Lanka in recent times.
12 Facts About Godwin Samararatne
1. 2.
Godwin Samararatne was born on 6 September 1932 in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
3.
Godwin Samararatne's father was the chief clerk of a tea estate at Hantane in the hills above Kandy and his mother was a simple up-country housewife.
4.
Godwin Samararatne's three surviving sisters were Dorothy, Matilde and Lakshmi.
5.
Godwin Samararatne was the youngest of the two surviving brothers, Felix and Hector.
6.
Godwin Samararatne attended the Dharmaraja College in Kandy, where his best friend was Siri Gunawardana who later ordained as Venerable Sivali and became a well-known and respected meditation teacher at the Kanduboda International Vipassana Meditation Center.
7.
Godwin Samararatne was an able student and after finishing his education got a job at the Kegalle Public Library in 1956.
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Ian Stevenson 8.
Godwin Samararatne was an active collaborator with the reincarnation researcher Ian Stevenson, and worked with him whenever he visited Sri Lanka from the mid-1960s until Stevenson ended his research in the country in 1988 During that time he co-authored a number of articles with Stevenson on the subject on rebirth and he visited Stevenson in Virginia, United States in 1977 to help with his studies.
9.
Godwin Samararatne left his job as Librarian in Kandy, at first to be the caretaker at the new Center but later he became the resident teacher.
10.
Yogavacara Rahula and Joseph Goldstein; but over time Godwin Samararatne became the resident teacher at the centre, and became accepted as the Centre's main teacher.
11.
Godwin Samararatne taught meditation not only to Theravada Buddhists but to all sorts of groups, including Christian priests and pastors, and Chinese Mahayana Buddhists.
12.
The personal testimonies that poured in after his death and in publications since then attest to the profound influence Godwin Samararatne had on people from all walks of life; and the centres he set up in Nilambe and Lewella in Sri Lanka are still flourishing till this day.