Meditation in Southeast Asia - Insight Meditation Center

Preface and thanks
First of all I would like to thank all those people who exert great effort and devotion to support
the Asian meditation centres and monasteries by giving donations and assistance and/or
passing on the Dhamma.
Three personal reports from people who had meditated in Asia, given to the members of the
Munich Buddhist Society during their regular Monday meetings, formed the basis of this
retreat guide. They were written down in order to be available to newly interested people at
any time. The result was a rapidly increasing loose-leaf collection of interesting information
concerning meditation in Asia (mainly in form of leaflets of various monasteries) in the offices
of the German Buddhist Union. Many thanks to all who contributed to this collection!
However, keeping it up to date proved to be difficult and passing on the information required
a lot of time and money (making copies, dispatch them, etc.)
That was why Werner Liegl suggested to grant interested people free and easy access to the
collected information by making it available through the internet. Apart from that he
generously offered to bring his knowledge and his engagement to bear on the project and to
carry it out. From that time data and personal reports were collected on a larger scale and
were brought into a systematic form based on Bill Weir’s (see literary reference). The first
printout contained about ten centres. Hilde Scheller assisted in proofreading and phrasing.
Désirée Schoen kindly took on the editor’s job and supplied the printouts. Also many thanks
for their personal reports and information to Ven. Pra Claus, Hildegard Huber, Sr. Ariya Nani,
Samaneri Uppalavanna Theri, Samanera Analayo, Maggy, Malinee Polte, Ven. Mettiko
Bhikkhu, Gerd Neller, Ven. Than Martin, Jörg Dittmar, Steve Weissman, Helge Latzina,
Chanda von Keyserlingk, Hella Lohmann, Martin H. Petrich, Than Gavesako, Metaji, Erik
Hausstädtler the people working at buddhanet.net and a modest Samanera, who does not
want to be mentioned by name (although he made a considerable contribution to the Sri
Lanka chapter). I am particularly grateful to Katharina Titkemeyer, who translated the first
four chapters (Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and Nepal) into English and Désirée Schoen,
Andrej and Than Gavesako who overtook the editor’s job for the English version, too, as well
as the translation of some paragraphs.
Different people prefer and dislike different kinds of food – the same it true for meditation
methods, Dhamma talks, places and retreat conditions. Almost every place described in this
retreat guide was particularly recommended by someone. However, this does not mean that
somebody else would recommend it, too. Thus the individual descriptions within the chapters
are not ordered according to their quality, but mainly chronologically; other aspects were
geographical proximity and belonging to the same tradition.
May all people find a suitable place and reach freedom.
Dieter Baltruschat
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