From the Buddha to Us: A Brief History of a Lineage and Tradition

A talk by Bruce Stewart, expanded for publication in collaboration with Luke Matthews

Historians differ on Gotama the Buddha’s actual birth and death dates. According to one accepted calculation, he was born around 563 BCE and died at the age of 80 in the year 483 BCE. He taught Dhamma for forty-five years, during which time there were other prominent spiritual teachers in India, including Mahāvira, revered by the Jains, and numerous ascetics who were not followers of the Buddha. Luke Matthews Bruce Stewart

About 260 BCE, the aggressive Indian emperor Ashoka conquered a neighboring Indian kingdom. The extensive loss of innocent lives and widespread destruction filled him with remorse and caused him to repent his misdeeds. In subsequent years he was drawn toward the Buddha-Dhamma and became a devoted lay disciple.

In marked contrast to his previous reign of conquest and cruelty, Ashoka began espousing nonviolence and freedom of religion, and introduced within his empire certain features of a social welfare state, such as medical facilities, rest houses and elder care. Through his proclamations and edicts, often carved on rock outcrops and stone pillars, and the emissaries whom Ashoka sent to promote the Dhamma, the Buddha’s teachings spread across the Indian subcontinent and beyond, into Central and Southeast Asia, and westward as far as Greece.

Ashokan pillar, Vesālī

During the next two millennia, most traces of Ashoka’s dynasty and his immense contribution to the promulgation of the Buddha’s teachings faded from India’s oral and written record. So too did the very fact of the Buddha’s existence and his Dhamma legacy. This was due partly to changes within the Buddhist saṅgha (monastic order), partly to Brahmin zealots who saw in the Buddha’s teachings a threat to their status and influence, and later on to the twelfth century advance of Islam across the Indian subcontinent.

However, thanks to Ashoka, outside of India the Buddha’s words survived and flourished. About 1,000 years after the Buddha, Buddhaghosa, an Indian monk residing in Sri Lanka, wrote the Visuddhimagga, or Path of Purification, an exhaustive 900-page meditation manual containing a comprehensive description and analysis of morality, concentration and Vipassanā (insight) meditation techniques; of the various stages of progress on the Path; and of the supporting metaphysical theories and philosophy. The Visuddhimagga has thus had a significant influence on many Theravāda (Way of the Elders) traditions.

The Path of Purification, BPS Pariyatti Edition, 1999

In the mid-seventeenth century British merchants established a commercial enterprise called the East India Company to compete with the French and the Dutch in the Indian Ocean trade. The Company sent to the East an assorted workforce of administrators, professional employees and private military personnel, many of whom had both an interest and skills in geography, archaeology, philology, botany and other scholarly fields. Through them the erasure of India’s Buddhist past gradually came to light.

From this diverse and colorful collection of East India Company characters, there eventually emerged a subgroup, interested in Indian languages, literature and the indigenous religions, who called themselves the Orientalists.

In 1784 a few of these Orientalists formed the more purposeful Asiatic Society. Based in Bengal, its members comprised a hard core of India enthusiasts, less interested in colonial spoils than in learning as much as they could about the country, its peoples, culture, history, languages, and religions. They played a central role in researching and documenting ancient texts, inscriptions, coins, and archaeological sites—among them many relating to the Buddha and his teachings.

James Prinsep, 1799–1840, deciphered Ashokan inscriptions

In 1801, Dr. Francis Buchanan, a British surgeon and devoted amateur botanist who had been a member of a British diplomatic expedition to the Kingdom of Ava, in what is now Myanmar (formerly Burma), published On the Religion and Literature of the Burmas, the most extensive account of Buddhism in English to that date, and in it used the word “Buddhism” for the first time in print. He thereby unknowingly founded the discipline of Buddhist studies, and eventually the terms “Buddhism” and “Buddhist” were not only adopted by Westerners but also by traditional followers of the Buddha in countries throughout Asia.

An important source of information for these amateur British researchers were the journals kept by early Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India. In the first century CE, Buddhism made its way east along the Silk Route into China where, in various forms and according to the customs of the region, it took root. One intrepid pilgrim, Fa-Hsien, travelled west overland to India about 400 CE and found the Dhamma flourishing there. About 225 years later, Xuan Tsang noted that although Buddhism still thrived, many former monasteries were in ruins.

Having discovered manuscripts and sketch maps outlining the extensive travels of these and other Chinese pilgrims, Asiatic Society members were able to trace their journeys across the plains of Northern India and rediscover what they had noted centuries earlier: not only Ashoka’s rock and pillar edicts with their inspiring messages of Dhamma inscribed on them, but also the historical locations where the Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, delivered his first discourse, frequently resided, and ultimately passed away.

As these early British researchers slowly fit together the disparate pieces of what evolved as the puzzle of Buddhist history in India, the individuals involved did not initially appreciate that they were dealing with what is now identified as Buddhism, or that it had any relationship to the religion practiced elsewhere in Asia as described, often inaccurately, by their fellow Westerners.

But by about 1840 the Indian origins of Buddhism had been established beyond doubt, together with the main biographical facts of the man who was called Gotama Buddha, the Tathāgata, Sakyamuni and more than a score of other names. Of course, the Buddha’s teachings had long been known in neighboring countries, but we owe a debt of gratitude to the dedication and tenacity of the pioneering Asiatic Society members for uncovering the original, ancient presence of Buddhism in India.

As word of these newly elucidated spiritual teachings began to emerge, interest spread among the Western public, and in 1875 the Theosophical Society was created in New York. The Theosophists claimed to be a nonsectarian body of seekers after Truth, who blended an eclectic mix of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, mysticism and the occult. However, they played a significant role in popularizing South Asian religions, including the teachings of the Buddha, in Western countries.

Thomas Rhys Davids, one of the most notable later scholars of the British colonial era, was critical of Theosophy. His approach to the Buddha’s teachings was scientific, similar in some respects to the rationalism that the Buddha himself espoused. In 1881, in England, Rhys Davids founded the Pāli Text Society.

Before his death in 1922, the Pāli Text Society, led by Rhys Davids and his wife Caroline, completed the publication of almost the entire Tipiṭaka (Theravāda Pāli-language Canon) in Roman script with English translations. Their work largely established the standard interpretation of Pāli Buddhism, still generally current today, and almost all of their publications remain in print.

Thomas and Caroline Rhys Davids, 1894

In 1891 the Maha Bodhi Society was founded by the Sri Lankan Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala and the British journalist and poet Sir Edwin Arnold in order to revitalize Buddhism in India. One of its primary aims was the restoration to Buddhist control of the Mahābodhi Temple at Bodh Gayā, the preeminent Buddhist holy site, which since the sixteenth century had been in the hands of a series of Hindu priests. In 1949, after a protracted struggle in the Indian courts, a decision was promulgated ordering the partial transfer of the temple and adjacent property to the management of the Maha Bodhi Society.

Although it is known that Ashoka sent emissaries to Suvaṇṇabhūmi, possibly identified as Southern Burma, historians differ on how the Dhamma first arrived there. One story, popular in Burma, is that two merchants named Tapussa and Bhallika traveled to India for trade and encountered the Buddha immediately after his enlightenment. Filled with awe and devotion, they offered him almsfood and took refuge in the Buddha and his Dhamma, thereby becoming his first lay disciples. The Buddha taught Tapussa and Bhallika neither his doctrine nor meditation, but at their request for something by which to remember and honor him, he gave them eight hairs from his head.

Tapussa and Bhallika offer rice cakes to the Buddha 

Upon returning to present-day Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the merchants offered the hairs to King Okkalapa who, it is said, enshrined them in the renowned Shwedagon Pagoda, which is visited by devout Buddhists to this day.

At certain times, whenever the saṅgha would degenerate in either Burma or Sri Lanka, one country would send learned bhikkhus (monks) to the other to re-ordain monks properly and revive the authentic teachings. Throughout the centuries these two countries have continued to be bound together by their devotion to the Buddha-Dhamma, their efforts to maintain the authenticity of the Pāli Canon, and a similar historical narrative.

History shows that Buddhism was lost in the land of its origin for more than 2,000 years, but it spread to the surrounding contemporary nations or Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bhutan, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan.

In almost all of these various places the Buddha’s teachings survived in diverse forms, some of which are quite different from the Theravāda tradition that spread throughout India during its first few centuries; and they have subsequently shown a profound capacity to cross frontiers and adapt to an ever-changing web of cultures, languages, benefactors, and economic and political circumstances.

One might, at first glance, feel hard-pressed to recognize the similarities among these various expressions of the Buddha’s teachings. But a closer examination will reveal the important common threads, principles and practices—like the Four Noble Truths, Dependent Origination, the Laws of Kamma and Rebirth, and the cultivation of meditation. And regardless of their diversity of approach to the Dhamma, the different Buddhist schools and traditions all claim, with greater or lesser certitude, a direct lineage of teachers going back to the Buddha.

Fortunately, for two millennia Burma and Sri Lanka retained the words of the Buddha in the Pāli Canon. And Burma, as well as numerous other countries, also maintained the practice of Vipassanā in its various forms. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the saṅgha of those countries for their diligence, fortitude and foresight.

Over the centuries, gatherings of accomplished monks met periodically to review the Buddha’s teachings. The First Council was convened in Rājagaha during the rainy season immediately following the Buddha’s demise. Under the direction of 500 arahants (enlightened bhikkhus), the Buddha’s words were agreed upon and adopted as his authentic teachings, to be remembered, memorized and preserved by generations of nuns and monks.

The Second Council, a little more than a century later, in Vesālī, was held to discuss the rules of monastic discipline.

The Third, in Pāṭaliputta (modern Patna), under the patronage of Emperor Ashoka, was an attempt to reconcile various factions that had arisen. It was after this council that Buddhist emissaries were sent abroad to teach the Dhamma.

The Fourth Council was convened in Sri Lanka about 29 BCE. At that time a severe famine impoverished the land, the political situation was unstable, and the integrity of the saṅgha was deteriorating. As a safety measure, the gathering devoted itself to committing to writing the entire Pāli Canon, which had previously been preserved solely by memory.

In 1871, after a gap of 1,900 years, the Fifth Council was held in Mandalay, the royal capital of Burma. During this council, the entire Tipiṭaka was engraved in Burmese script on 729 stone slabs, which can still be seen there today.

The Sixth Council, organized in Rangoon, Burma, during the years 1954–1956, commemorated 2,500 years of Buddhism.

The primary purpose of these two latter councils, and to a large extent the previous ones, was to scrutinize and affirm the genuine Dhamma and Vinaya (monastic rules and procedures). The entire Pāli Canon was recited by monks from Burma, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Versions of the Tipiṭaka from these countries, in different scripts, were examined, and discrepancies noted, reconciled, corrected, and approved.

In the mid 1990s, the Vipassana Research Institute (VRI) at Dhamma Giri in Igatpuri, India, published the Sixth Council version of the Tipiṭaka, and a few years later digitized the Pāli Canon in eight scripts, making it freely available on CD, and now at www.tipitaka.org—a major contribution to the study of Pāli and the Buddha’s teachings worldwide.

Ledi Sayadaw

In tracing the tradition represented by S.N. Goenka, we can look back only as far as Ledi Sayadaw, because there are no reliable accounts of prior teachers. Some scholars suggest that Ledi Sayadaw did not, in fact, learn Vipassanā from a teacher, but that he, along with a scholar colleague, studied and dissected the texts to produce his own approach to meditation based on the words of the Buddha. Others propose that he might have learned meditation from unknown monks in Upper Burma. Whatever the origin, his efforts initiated the modern evolution of Vipassanā practice as we have come to know it today.

Ledi Sayadaw was born near Monywa in Upper Burma in 1846, became a novice at age 15, and was ordained a monk five years afterward. At a young age he established himself as a renowned scholar, and later in life as an adept in meditation—uniquely competent in both pariyatti and paṭipatti (theory and practice). In some respects, he was a controversial figure, not shy to challenge established doctrines and traditional commentaries, sometimes causing consternation both in the monasteries and among laypeople.

Ledi Sayadaw, 1846–1923

In 1885 the British staged a military takeover of Upper Burma with its royal capital in Mandalay. Here the monarchy had historically been closely connected with and overseen the bhikkhu-saṅgha (monastic system). But in their colonies, the British had always maintained a hands-off policy toward religion. After the British abruptly exiled King Thibaw to India, the role of supervising and protecting the Buddha-Dhamma fell vacant.

Recognizing the threat to the saṅgha and traditional Burmese Buddhism, Ledi Sayadaw began to encourage laypeople to study Abhidhamma (the higher Dhamma analysis). And, besides teaching meditation to monks, he made countrywide efforts to instruct the laity, a departure from the tradition of laypeople, only on occasion, visiting monasteries to learn meditation. Ledi Sayadaw brought meditation and Abhidhamma study into the secular world, to ordinary people where they lived, and encouraged them to form associations to maintain and expand this new trend.

Instead of working to develop deep, prolonged samādhi (concentration) or jhānas (absorption concentrations), as was common among monks, he substantially reduced the degree of concentration specified before initiating the practice of Vipassanā to khaṇika (momentary) samādhi. Ledi Sayadaw was the first to set out this option in detail, which has since become the standard method taught in most modern Vipassanā traditions.

It was during this period, from about 1900 until his death in 1923, that Caroline Rhys Davids, mentioned above, was in frequent contact with Ledi Sayadaw in order to properly understand and appreciate meditation as something beyond a subject of philosophical study. She treated meditation as a beneficial ethical and psychological practice, an approach of considerable originality for a scholar of her time.

Ledi Sayadaw did not teach meditation courses as we know them today. In those days, meditation was more closely linked to study, with reference principally to the Abhidhamma and to descriptions of techniques found in the Visuddhimagga. According to Ledi Sayadaw’s own writings, he used beads and other counting methods as a means to develop samādhi. He also popularized the hitherto questionable notion of householder meditation teachers, the best known of whom was Saya Thet. The idea that monks might learn meditation from a layperson was a radically new concept.

The decades immediately following the British absorption of Burma into its empire marked a critical juncture at which the trajectory of traditional Buddhism shifted toward more involvement, responsibility and organization among laypeople. Large numbers of Burmese started practicing meditation at this time, with worldwide consequences, perhaps beyond even Ledi’s reckoning. To this day Ledi Sayadaw is highly regarded, by scholars and practitioners alike, as one of the most influential figures in modern Buddhism.

His accomplished student, U Po Thet, was born in 1873 into a poor family in a rural village several miles south of Rangoon. After only a few years of schooling, he went to work first as an oarsman, then as a bullock-cart driver, rice mill worker, and eventually, through hard work, became a rice merchant and prosperous farmer. He married, and had a daughter and son, but in the winter of 1903–1904 both died during a cholera epidemic. Distraught, and with his wife’s permission, at age 30 he left the village in search of nibbāna (enlightenment).

For three years he wandered from teacher to teacher throughout Upper Burma, until he finally encountered Ledi Sayadaw, with whom he practiced meditation for seven years. Returning to his village after a decade, he started teaching meditation with Ledi’s encouragement. From then on he was known as Saya (teacher) Thet.

Saya Thetgyi, 1873–1945

As a lay teacher, Saya Thet did not have the social stature of a monk, and initially potential students from the surrounding farming area were reluctant to come to him. But within a year or so his reputation as a meditation teacher spread even as far as Rangoon. Operating outside the traditional monastic regimen, he created the course format with which we are now familiar: three days of Ānāpāna (awareness of breath) followed by Vipassanā. Courses were of seven days or longer, in silence, and students were usually required to stay on site. This type of meditation program, which he invented, was then something entirely new.

Saya Thet was not well educated nor a Pāli scholar, but he knew by heart and understood the treatises of his teacher, Ledi Sayadaw. Using them and his own experience as guides, he eventually became a teacher of renown, and during the 1920s and 1930s appointed many assistants who went on to teach throughout Burma. One of Saya Thet’s most notable students was a latecomer, U Ba Khin.

Sayagyi U Ba Khin

U Ba Khin was born into modest circumstances in Rangoon. Although a brilliant student, lack of funds required him to take a job as a clerk in the Accountant-General’s Office, where he quickly worked his way up the ranks.

In 1936 he heard about a meditation teacher, Saya Thet, who lived across the Rangoon river, and on January 1st of the next year he entered his first course. By 1941 U Ba Khin had been promoted to Chief Accounts Officer of the Burma Railways Board, and while conducting an audit at a station in Upper Burma he encountered the Webu Sayadaw, reputed to be an arahant. Upon hearing how U Ba Khin was practicing meditation, the Sayadaw urged him to start teaching immediately.

World War II intervened, but afterward U Ba Khin made preliminary attempts to teach Vipassanā at his office. However, it was not until the opening of the International Meditation Centre (IMC) in 1952 that he had a proper facility.

Sayagyi U Ba Khin, 1899–1971

Sayagyi U Ba Khin’s approach was also based on the Abhidhamma, but focused more on practice than on theory. He developed and refined the part-by-part and “flow” techniques that are important elements of the Vipassanā meditation practice that we know today. He took a strict approach to discipline and all entry-level courses were at least nine days long.

Sayagyi felt the Dhamma needed to be practical and accessible to non-Buddhists. As a family man and high-level civil servant with an ability to speak English, he was immersed in a worldly urban life familiar to foreigners and the sophisticated elite of Burma.

Dhamma Yaung Chi Pagoda, IMC, Rangoon, constructed 1952

An important person at the new center was Daw Mya Thwin, the wife of one of Sayagyi’s junior colleagues at the Accountant-General’s Office. Sayagyi early on noted her aptitude for meditation, and engaged her in helping to guide students in the more advanced stages. Among them was Satya Narayan Goenka, who always felt great appreciation and respect for her.

For a few years, from 1978 until 1981, Goenkaji and Mother Sayama, as she was known, conducted several courses together in India and in England, but afterward began again to teach separately.

Daw Mya Thwin (Mother Sayama), 1925–2017

As well as many Burmese assistant teachers, Sayagyi U Ba Khin also appointed a few foreigners, including the Americans Robert Hover and John Coleman, and Ruth Denison, a German, who conducted courses on their own for many years.