'U Ba Khin' 10 day Vipassana Courses

[playground]

I quite like the story of how 'U Ba Khin' got started with Vipassana.
He developed a cancerous growth under his right eye.
It was rooted into the bone and into the flesh around the eye.
(Just the thought of this makes me squirm)

He responded by taking up meditation (at that time, there was no
shortage of folklore stories of various medical conditions being
cured with meditation).   So U Ba Khin took up meditation and
the cancer went away.   

This account of U Ba Khin's take up of meditation comes from
"A Thousand Lives Away" by Winston King
See here:  https://host.pariyatti.org/treasures/A_Thousand_Lives_Away_Appendix_Winston_King.pdf

Later, Goenka seeks out U Ba Khin in the hope of curing his painful
migraine headaches.   Vipassana worked for his migraine too.  The
effect of meditation on medical conditions seems to be seldom highlighted.
Goenka became a disciple of U Ba Khin and a teacher of U Ba Khin's
Vipassana.

The point of this post .... is...
Goenka's vipassana is a faithful copy of 'U Ba Khin's  vipassana.
Westerners were going to the 'International Meditation Center' (IMC) in
Rangoon, in Burma, since as long ago as 1959.
Marion Dix was one of the very first westerners to attend a 10 day
vipassana course.  Here is a short (3 minute) video taken at the time.
https://vimeo.com/121059800

At the time, there was no allowance made to her for being a westerner
and so everything was the same for her as for her fellow Burmese students.
That means 1 vegetarian meal per day, at lunch, no breakfast and no dinner !

You can still attend 'U Ba Khin'  vipassana 10 day courses.  They are
still running.  They are the original template from which the Goenka 10 days
courses have been copied.  There are 'U Ba Khin' centres around the world
See here:  http://www.internationalmeditationcentre.org/global/index.html

be happy

[raushan]

You seems to be quite a researcher on topic of mindfulness

Thanks for sharing

[dharma bum]

I enjoyed the writeup by King- particularly the following passage resonated with me. I was saying the exact same thing to someone just the other day:

 Likewise—one of the most
interesting features of the whole meditation period—there gradually
came a new sense of the relativity of time. Time seemed to be
infinitely spacious; a moment lasted forever, and three hours was
an infinity—yet strangely it passed quite rapidly too.