Shwe Oo Min Dhamma Sukha Tawya

This forest centre on the northern outskirts of Yangon, in Kon Tala Paung village, Mingaladon Township, was started in 1998 by Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw (1913 to 2002), whom Mahasi Sayadaw had made a meditation teacher at the Mahasi centre in Yangon in 1951. Sayadaw U Tejaniya now teaches there. The practice is mindfulness meditation based on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and stresses continuous awareness in daily life. Yogis are expected to keep the eight precepts, and the day runs from 4 am to 9 pm in alternating hours of sitting and walking. Sayadaw often gives a morning talk, mostly in Burmese and partly in English, and holds group interviews (English groups, and translators for some others). Rooms are doubles, there are two meals a day, and teaching and lodging are free. New yogis need Sayadaw U Tejaniya's permission on arrival, and the centre does not take yogis when he is away. Its site puts the centre about 30 to 40 minutes by taxi from Yangon airport, opposite the London cigarette factory on Highway No. 3, and warns not to confuse it with Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw's older monastery in North Okkalapa. The official site has no centre email or phone, and its latest retreat notices date from 2020 and 2021 (including an April 2020 notice that no new yogis were being accepted), so check before travelling.

How to apply

Contact the centre through ashintejaniya.org before you travel: its retreat notices date from 2020–21, and new yogis need Sayadaw's permission in person on arrival.

What is taught here

Sayadaw U Tejaniya's teaching in the Shwe Oo Min lineage near Yangon: relaxed, continuous awareness, with the attitude of the watching mind put first. Read about U Tejaniya (Shwe Oo Min).