Goenka and Mahasi: two Burmese ways of teaching Vipassana

S. N. Goenka's 10-day courses and Mahasi Sayadaw's noting retreats both teach Vipassana, and both grew out of the same movement in twentieth-century Burma (now Myanmar). They differ in where attention starts, whether experience is named, how a retreat runs and how progress is described. Of the Vipassana centres in Nepal listed on this site, 20 teach in Goenka's tradition and two teach Mahasi's method.

This article compares the two without ranking them. It does not teach either method: both are learnt on retreat, with a teacher.

Shared roots in twentieth-century Burma

Spirit Rock Meditation Center traces the lineage to Burma after the British conquest of 1885, when monks and lay people organised to preserve the teaching. Two monks, Ledi Sayadaw (1846–1923) and the Mingun Jetavana Sayadaw (U Nārada, 1868–1955), turned to teaching lay people and started what is now called the Vipassana movement.

Goenka's line comes from Ledi Sayadaw, through his lay disciple Saya Thetgyi to Sayagyi U Ba Khin (1899–1971), a government accountant who opened the International Meditation Centre in Rangoon (Yangon) in 1952. U Ba Khin asked his student S. N. Goenka (1924–2013) to take the practice to India, which Goenka did in 1969.

Mahasi's line comes from the Mingun Sayadaw. Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–1982) practised under him at Thaton and taught his first three students at Seikkhun in 1938. Invited to Rangoon by the Prime Minister, U Nu, he began teaching at the Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha when it opened on 4 December 1949; accounts of that first group give fifteen or twenty-five meditators.

Both men took part in the Sixth Buddhist Council in Rangoon (1954–56), Mahasi as its Questioner and U Ba Khin in its planning. Spirit Rock also names what their methods share: both aim at experiencing impermanence (anicca) directly, without first attaining the absorptions called jhāna. See Samatha and vipassanā for that wider debate.

The first object: nostrils or abdomen

On a Goenka course, the first three days and the morning of Day 4 are given to Anapana: observing the natural breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils, without regulating it. Vipassana begins on Day 4. As the Day Ten discourse sums it up, students then observe natural sensations within the body from head to feet, moving through it in order, part by part. The details are taught only on the course; see Body scanning.

Mahasi's method has no separate breath stage. From the first sitting, the meditator keeps the mind on the abdomen and notes its rising and falling as the breath comes and goes, without changing the breath. Mahasi chose this movement because it is coarse and easy for a beginner to observe; his biographer explains it as observing the air element (vāyodhātu). When a thought, sound or pain becomes more prominent, that is noted instead, and attention returns to the abdomen.

So Goenka's course builds concentration on a small area and then widens the field to the whole body, while Mahasi's relies on what Spirit Rock calls momentary concentration (khaṇika samādhi), built by continuous noting from the start. See Mahasi noting.

Labelling and not labelling

Mahasi's instructions use silent labels: "rising", "falling", "thinking", "hearing", "wanting". The notes are made in the mind, not spoken, and Mahasi wrote that "it is more important to know the object than to know it by a term or name." In his account, continual noting builds the concentration in which the arising and passing away of body and mind becomes vividly clear. More in Mental noting.

Goenka's course adds no words. In the Day Ten discourse he gives two reasons for observing the breath "without adding any word, shape, or form". The breath is common to everyone, while a word or form may suit some people and not others. And attending to a word or shape keeps the meditator at the level of apparent reality, so "there should be neither visualization nor verbalization."

Both put direct knowing ahead of the word. They differ on whether a silent word supports that knowing or gets in its way.

Walking meditation

In the Mahasi tradition, formal practice is divided between sitting and walking. Each step is noted as it happens, at first as "right step, left step" or "walking, walking", later in parts such as lifting, moving and placing. Panditarama Lumbini's guidelines ask meditators to do everything in slow motion. See Walking meditation.

A Goenka course has no formal walking meditation: every meditation period is a sitting. The Code of Discipline suspends exercise programmes but lets students walk in designated areas during breaks.

How retreats are run

A Goenka course is a fixed group course. Everyone arrives on the same day, and the ten full days, with arrival and departure, span 12 calendar days; students commit to staying throughout. The day runs from a 4 am bell to lights out at 9:30 pm, with about ten hours of meditation.

The instructions and evening discourses are recordings of Goenka, in English or Hindi, with translation into local languages. A teacher conducts the course and meets students privately from noon to 1 pm, with public questions from 9 to 9:30 pm. Courses run only on dāna: there is no charge, donations are accepted only from people who have completed a 10-day course in the tradition, and teachers and organisers are unpaid. See The 10-day course.

Nepal's Mahasi centres take meditators for individual stays. At Panditarama Lumbini, as of 2026:

• the centre is open from the beginning of September to the end of March, and a retreat lasts from seven days to several months;
• full-time meditators have four interviews a week with a teacher, and a Dhamma talk every day;
• the guidelines expect 12 to 14 hours of formal practice a day, with four to six hours of sleep;
• the centre runs on dāna, with no set daily fees.

At the International Buddhist Meditation Center (IBMC) in Kathmandu, newcomers stay at least ten days, plus two for arriving and leaving, and do about 14 hours of sitting and walking a day under the eight precepts. Its information page states no fees, so ask. Yangon has Mahasi-tradition centres too, including the Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha and Chanmyay Yeiktha.

Rules about other techniques

On Goenka courses, all other meditation techniques, healing and spiritual practices are suspended, along with prayer, worship and religious objects. The Code of Discipline says this is not to condemn other practices but to give Vipassana "a fair trial" in its purity. In the Day One discourse Goenka is blunter: "Mixing techniques is very dangerous."

The rule reaches later courses too: the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta course and old-student self-courses are open only to students who have practised no other technique since their last 10-day course.

Both Mahasi centres in Nepal have a similar rule during a stay. Panditarama Lumbini's guidelines say not to practise other meditation methods at the centre and to follow the teacher's instructions strictly, and IBMC's rules say the same.

How each describes progress

Goenka's discourses name a few stages but keep one measure. On Day Seven he warns that a pleasant flow of subtle vibrations is not the goal: progress "can be measured only by the equanimity one develops towards every sensation". If gross sensations return afterwards, he calls them "signs not of regression but of progress", as deeper impurities come up.

The Day Ten discourse describes stations drawn from the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. Arising and passing away are first experienced separately, then together, as solid sensations dissolve into subtle vibrations: the stage of bhaṅga, dissolution. Then comes saṅkhārupekkhā, equanimity towards saṅkhāras, in which deep-lying impurities surface and pass away. The tradition's public pages give no numbered map, and the discourses return to equanimity (upekkhā) as the yardstick.

Mahasi's The Progress of Insight, written in Burmese and put into Pali in 1950, is a detailed map. It sets out a sequence of insight knowledges (ñāṇa) within the seven stages of purification that also frame Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga: from analytical knowledge of body and mind, through arising and passing away and dissolution (bhaṅga-ñāṇa), to equanimity about formations (saṅkhārupekkhā-ñāṇa), then path and fruition.

Its translator, Nyanaponika Thera, writes that the treatise was at first given only to meditators who had completed a strict course at the centre with some success; foreign meditators received short sheets describing the stages, so that they could place their own experience. Mahasi adds that the knowledges can be fully understood only by experiencing them.

The accounts overlap. Both use the names bhaṅga and saṅkhārupekkhā, and both warn against pleasant experience: Mahasi describes "corruptions of insight", such as brilliant light and rapture, that a meditator may mistake for the path.

The two methods side by side

Aspect	Goenka	Mahasi
First object	Natural breath at the nostrils, Days 1 to 4	Rising and falling of the abdomen, from the start
Main practice	Sensations throughout the body, in order, with equanimity	Noting whatever is most prominent, in every posture
Words	None added	Silent notes such as "rising", "falling"
Walking	No formal walking; walking allowed in breaks	Formal walking as well as sitting
Format	Fixed 10-day group course (12 calendar days)	Individual stays; 7 days to months at Panditarama Lumbini
Guidance	Recorded instructions; a teacher conducts the course	Interviews with a teacher, four a week at Panditarama Lumbini
Practice a day	About 10 hours	12 to 14 hours (Panditarama Lumbini)
Precepts	Five for new students, eight for old	Eight
Other techniques	Suspended; some later courses require none since the last	Not practised during a stay
Cost	Dāna, from past students only	Dāna at Panditarama Lumbini; ask elsewhere
Map of progress	A few stations; equanimity the only measure	Stages of insight knowledge (The Progress of Insight)

Practical points when choosing

• Schedule. Goenka courses have fixed dates and a fixed length. At the Mahasi centres you agree your own dates and length, within Panditarama Lumbini's September to March season.
• Teacher contact. On a Goenka course the teaching comes from recordings, and interview times are for clarifying the technique. Panditarama Lumbini guides meditators through regular interviews, and its guidelines say skipping them usually works against the meditator.
• Language. Each Goenka centre's dhamma.org schedule lists its course languages. At Panditarama Lumbini, Sayadaw U Vivekānanda teaches in English, Burmese, German and French.
• Where you live. Goenka-tradition centres are spread across Nepal and many other countries. In Nepal, Mahasi's method is taught in Lumbini and Kathmandu; in the West it is one root of Insight Meditation.
• Health. dhamma.org does not recommend its courses for people with significant mental health issues, and Panditarama Lumbini calls sound physical and mental health a basic requirement. See Difficult experiences on meditation retreats.

Centres of both traditions in Nepal, with how to apply to each, are listed on Vipassana centres in Nepal.