Sayadawgyi U Pandita
Sayādaw U Panditābhivamsa was one of the foremost masters of Vipassanā meditation in the Burmese Theravāda Buddhist tradition. As a successor to the late Mahāsi Sayādaw, he had taught the Mahāsi style of Vipassana meditation to many of the Western teachers and students. He is the founder of Panditārāma Meditation Center in Yangon, Burma.
Sayādaw U Panditābhivamsa was born on July 29, 1921 in the greater Yangon area in Burma. He became a novice at age twelve and ordained at age twenty. After decades of study, he passed the rigorous series of government examinations in the Theravāda Buddhist texts gaining the Dhammācariya (Dhamma teacher) degree and Abhivamsa (senior teacher) degree.
Sayadaw U Panditābhivamsa began practicing Vipassanā meditation under the guidance of the late Mahāsi Sayādaw in 1950. In 1955, he left his position as a teacher of scriptural studies to become a meditation teacher at the Mahāsi Meditation Center. Soon after the Mahasi Sayādaw died in 1982, Sayadaw U Panditābhivamsa became the guiding teacher (Ovādacariya) of the Mahāsi Meditation Center. In 1991, he left that position and founded Panditārāma Meditation Center in Yangon. Now, many Panditārāma branch centers have been established in Burma, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, United Kingdom and the United States.
Sayadaw U Panditābhivamsa became well-known in the West after conducting a retreat in the spring of 1984 at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barrel, Massachusetts in the United States. Many of the senior western meditation teachers in the Mahāsi tradition practiced with Sayadaw U Panditābhivamsa at that retreat and subsequent retreats. The talks he gave in 1984 at IMS were compiled as the book "In This Very Life."
Sayadaw U Panditābhivamsa had also been the guiding teacher of Tathāgata Meditation Center (TMC), San Jose, California, USA from 1991 when it was founded until 2016 when he passed away. During this period, he came to teach Vipassanā meditation almost every spring.
