Our Guiding Teachers 

Steven Smith is a Guiding Teacher emeritus at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, the Kyaswa Valley Retreat Center in Burma, and is a founder of Vipassana Hawaii (1984). Born and raised in Hawai'i he has been deeply immersed in native Hawaiian and local Asian culture throughout his life. Following university, Mr. Smith lived and traveled for extensive periods in India and Southeast Asia as a student of contemplative practices. Anchored in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition of Southeast Asia since 1974, he has trained as a monk and layman with the renowned Burmese monk and meditation master Sayadaw U Pandita.

Steven has recently collaborated with the Burmese meditation teacher and monk Sayadaw U Lakkhana in developing the Kyaswa Valley Retreat Center in the Sagaing Hills of Upper Burma where Theravadan Buddhism has flourished since the 13th century. The center offers a unique chance for foreigners to study in the geographical heart of Theravadan culture under the concurrent guidance of a senior monk and Western lay teacher. Retreatants come from many countries in both the West and in Asia, and each year there are many more applicants than spaces available.

In a related role, Mr. Smith is a founder of the MettaDana Project, in which he works closely with senior Burmese monks to generate aid for educational and medical projects in the Sagaing Hills area of Upper Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the Democracy movement in Burma and a Nobel Peace prize recipient, serves as a friend and advisor to this project.

Since 1996, Mr. Smith has also been a Working Group member and senior advisor on contemplative practice to the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CMIS), a project initiated by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Fetzer Institute. The mission of CMIS is to integrate contemplative awareness into contemporary life, and since 1996 Mr. Smith has had the responsibility of developing programs for, and teaching meditation to, national environmental leaders, business executives, journalists, and philanthropists attending CMIS events.

Michele McDonald has taught Buddhist meditation practice for twenty years at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, including the annual three-month retreat for experienced students, which takes place each fall. In addition to developing meditation retreats for youth, she has a special interest in exploring the relationship between intensive practice, daily life practice and psychotherapy.

At college and in her early twenties, Michele expressed her love of the natural world by working for Massachusetts Audubon, teaching environmental education in Massachusetts and Maine and homesteading in northern Maine. She has worked with a wide range of Western and Asian teachers, including Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Christopher Titmuss, Christina Feldman, Dipama (Calcutta), Mahasi Sayadaw (Burma), Ajahn Chah (Thailand), and Taungpulu Sayadaw (Burma). She is particularly drawn to the teachings on liberation - the very real possibility of freedom from greed, hatred and delusion in this life.

In 1983 she moved to Honolulu to help found Vipassana Hawaii with her teaching partner, Steven Smith. She has continued to practice intensively, and has studied with the eminent Burmese teacher, Sayadaw U Pandita since 1984. She has also been a practitioner of sandplay therapy since 1985.

 

Grahame White has been involved in Buddhist meditation practice for 35 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. Many of these retreats have been in Hawaii under the auspices of Vipassana Hawaii where Grahame has been leading and co teaching retreats with Sayadw U Lakkhana, Steven Smith and Michele McDonald, as well as helping to guide the Hawaii sangha. With Dr Thynn Thynn, a Burmese Dhamma teacher, he has also pioneered 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 an accessible style.

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