Vipassana Hawai'i Guiding Teachers

Michele McDonald
Michele co-founded Vipassana Hawai'i in 1984 with Steven Smith. She has taught Insight meditation for thirty years. Beyond her commitment to the Vipassana Hawai'i Sangha, she teaches extensively throughout the United States, in Canada, Burma, and various locations around the world. Michele has been a quiet pioneer having being the first woman to teach a formal retreat in Burma, side-by-side with a senior monastic figure, Sayadaw U Lakkhana, Abbot of Kyaswa Monastery. Having worked with a wide range of Asian and Western teachers, Michele is most inspired by her practice with Dipa Ma and Sayadaw U Pandita and more recently in Burma with the Mya Taung Sayadaw. She appreciates teaching at many levels of practice and has enjoyed teaching three-month retreats for experienced students as well as developing meditation retreats for youth. Her style of teaching emphasizes helping individuals find entry points into stillness that are natural for them. She encourages an understanding of the path of insight and a gentle strengthening of mindfulness and concentration so that, ultimately, people can access the peaceful depths of their experience in every moment. Michele is thrilled when students begin to love their practice.

Steven Smith
Steven co-founded Vipassana Hawai'i in 1984 and in 1995 founded the MettaDana Project for educational and medical projects in Burma. Also in 1995 Steven helped establish the Kyaswa Valley Retreat Center in Burma, headed by Sayadaw U Lakkhana, Abbot of Kyaswa Monastery. This partnership helped usher in the beginnings of Vipassana Hawai'i's Fusion Dhamma approach combining traditional and contemporary teaching styles in the same retreat. Anchored in the Theravadan Buddhist Burmese lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw since 1974, he was trained and sanctioned as a teacher by revered monk and meditation master Sayadaw U Pandita. Steven divides his time teaching Vipassana and the Divine Abodes (loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity) meditation retreats around the world, and assisting Burmese refugee communities along the Thai-Burma border. His long term vision for preserving the Dhamma is culminating in the beginnings of the Hawai'i Insight Meditation Center (HIMC) on the Big Island of Hawai'i's remote North Kohala coast.

Grahame White
Grahame has been involved in Buddhist meditation practice for over 40 years. He began his study in England in 1969 before being ordained as a Buddhist monk for one year in BodhGaya, India in 1971. He took a primary role in the establishment of Vipassana meditation in the tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw in Australia and co-founded the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Center outside Sydney. Now, Grahame leads introductory and day long courses in Sydney and regularly teaches longer intensive retreats in the US. Grahame has been leading and co-teaching retreats with Sayadw U Lakkhana, Steven Smith and Michele McDonald, as well as helping to guide the Hawai'i sangha in its ongoing practice. He has also helped pioneer a workshop format that enhances the transfer of mindfulness from the formal sitting practice into daily life. Grahame returns to Myanmar (Burma) each year in order to deepen his practice and study of the Buddha's teachings and at times assist in the teaching of Vipassana retreats for foreigners. Grahame teaches a classical tradition of insight meditation with a relaxed, accessible style.

Lynne Bousfield
Lynne has been studying and practicing Buddhist meditation for more than 30 years beginning in BodhGaya, India in the mid 1970's. Since 1980 she has returned to Burma regularly to undertake intensive practice and develop her understanding of meditation and Buddhist psychology. She helped establish Vipassana meditation in Australia and was a co-founder of the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre (BMIMC). Lynne is a clinical psychologist practicing in Sydney since 1992. She was responsible for introducing insight meditation into pain management at a major teaching hospital in Sydney where she continues clinical consultation. Lynne actively incorporates meditation into her general clinical work with clients with a range of difficulties. Her emphasis in her clinical work is on the application of meditative practice as a means of understanding and transforming suffering into the foundation for insight. Lynne is regularly invited to speak and present on her clinical work at national and international psychology conferences. She teaches meditation classes in Sydney as well as annual retreats with Steven Smith in Australia and New Zealand and with Steven and Michele McDonald in Canada.

Ovadacariya Teachers

Sayadaw U Pandita
Sayadaw U Pandita is one of the foremost living meditation teachers in the world today. As successor to the late Mahasi Sayadaw he was the guiding teacher at Mahasi Meditation Center until 1991 when he founded the Panditarama Meditation Center in Yangon, Burma. Sayadaw has been a devoted monk since taking novice vows at the age of 12 and full ordination at age 20. He came to prominence in the west when in 1984 he led a 3-month retreat at IMS in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of In This Very Life, and is the sanctioning monk behind Vipassana Hawai'i Founder Steven Smith, to becoming a leading teacher of Dhamma in the west.

Sayadaw U Lakkhana
Sayadaw U Lakkhana is the current Abbot of Kyaswa Valley Monastery in Sagaing Hills, Burma. He developed several programs of study for Kyaswa and under his guidance the monastery has become a focal point for western meditators to experience the full transmission of the Dhamma in a classical teaching setting. Like U Pandita, Sayadaw has been a devoted monk since taking novice vows at the age of 12 and full ordination at age 20. He has received all major honors that can be bestowed for scholarship in Pali Buddhist studies and meditation, including the highest award for meditation instruction, the title of Agga Maha Kammathanacariya, or “Most Noble and Distinguished Meditation Teacher.” He practiced Satipatthana Vipassana meditation under the tutelage of Mahasi Sayadaw and Sayadaw U Pandita, eventually returning to Kyaswa to supervise the meditation center and the numerous health and education projects that he currently runs with the support of Vipassana Hawai'i. Sayadaw travels to Hawai'i on an annual basis to teach alongside western teachers in our Fusion Retreat format. More information on Sayadaw U Lakkhana