Chanmyay Sayadaw

Chanmyay Sayadaw U Janakabhivamsa was a Burmese Theravada Buddhist monk and meditation teacher whose life linked the Mahasi tradition of Myanmar with centres of practice across Asia, Europe, and North America. Born on 24 July 1928 in Pyinma village, Taungdwingyi Township, in what was then British Burma, he was the son of U Phyu Min and Daw Shwe Yee. He began studying the Buddhist scriptures at fifteen as a novice, received higher ordination in 1947, and trained in Vipassana meditation under Mahasi Sayadaw, one of the twentieth century's most influential insight teachers.

From 1957 he spent six years in Colombo, Sri Lanka, studying English, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Sinhalese before returning to Myanmar in 1963. At the invitation of the state Buddha Sasana Organisation he lived at Kaba-Aye in Yangon, where he edited Pali text publications. In 1967 Mahasi Sayadaw appointed him a meditation teacher at Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha. A decade later, in 1977, devotees donated Chanmyay Yeiktha Meditation Center, and he became its abbot. From that residence he took the name by which the wider world came to know him: Chanmyay Sayadaw.

Between 1979 and 1980 he accompanied Mahasi Sayadaw on a Dhamma mission to Europe and the United States, including a visit photographed at Oakenholt Buddhist Centre in June 1979. Over the following decades he led retreats and gave talks across Asia, Europe, and North America, remaining active well into his eighties. In July 2015, at 87, he travelled to the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada. Centres connected with his lineage, including Chanmyay Satipatthana Vihara in Springfield, Illinois, continue to teach Satipatthana and Vipassana meditation in the Mahasi method, and many of his English-language instructions remain available as recorded talks.

Chanmyay Sayadaw died on 19 September 2026 at the age of 98. He left a record measured less in office than in students: monks and lay practitioners who learned insight meditation under his guidance, and a network of Chanmyay centres that still carry his name. In early photographs he sits beside Mahasi Sayadaw; in later images from Illinois he appears with the ceremonial fan of a senior Burmese sayadaw, a teacher whose presence spanned village ordination halls and Western retreat houses alike.