11 Facts About Mahasi Sayadaw

Mahasi Sayadaw was a questioner and final editor at the Sixth Buddhist Council on May 17,1954.

Mahasi Sayadaw was born in 1904 in Seikkhun village in Upper Burma.

Mahasi Sayadaw became a novice at age twelve, and was ordained at the age of twenty with the name Sobhana.

Mahasi Sayadaw became known in the region as Mahasi Sayadaw.

In 1947, the Prime Minister of Burma, U Nu, invited Mahasi Sayadaw to be resident teacher at a newly established meditation center in Yangon, which came to be called the Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha.

Mahasi Sayadaw was a questioner and final editor at the Sixth Buddhist Council on May 17,1954.

Mahasi Sayadaw helped establish meditation centers all over Burma as well as in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, and by 1972 the centers under his guidance had trained more than 700,000 meditators.

Mahasi Sayadaw's method is based on the Satipatthana Sutta, which describes how one focuses attention on the breath, noticing how one breathes in and out.

Mahasi Sayadaw published nearly seventy volumes of Buddhist literature in Burmese, many of these transcribed from talks.

Mahasi Sayadaw completed a Burmese translation of the Visuddhimagga, a lengthy treatise on Buddhist practice by the 5th century Indian Theravadin Buddhist commentator and scholar Buddhaghosa.

Mahasi Sayadaw wrote a volume entitled Manual of Vipassana Meditation.