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John Earl Coleman (26 March 1930 - 22 November 2012) was a teacher of Vipassana (insight) meditation, a kind of meditation of Theravada Buddhism. He was born in Tresckow, a mining town in Pennsylvania. After attending his studies, he entered the US Army in the 1950s and served in Korea during the war. Afterwards he joined the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency, and was stationed in Thailand in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He worked officially for the Southeast Asia (SEA) Supply Corporation, advisers to the government of Thailand, as a specialist in criminology. thumbnail == Vipassanā Meditation == During his years in Thailand he started to take an interest in Vipassanā meditation. Working for the CIA, Mr Coleman used his free time to explore different spiritual paths, as documented in his book The Quiet Mind (1971). He traveled through India, Burma, Japan and Thailand and encountered such legendary spiritual teachers as Jiddu Krishnamurti, Maharishi, and D. T. Suzuki. After several attempts to study Vipassanā meditation with different monks in Thailand, his search for peace of mind and liberating insights came to fruition in Yangon/Rangoon under the tutelage of the great Vipassanā meditation master Sayagyi U Ba Khin, who had established the International Meditation Center. Sayagyi U Ba Khin was also the teacher of S. N. Goenka and Mya Thwin, also known as Mother Sayamagyi. At the International Meditation Center in Rangoon Mr Coleman sat a 10-day Vipassanā course with Sayagyi U Ba Khin. In his book he says about the experience, “My enthusiasm to learn let me down. I spent a good part of my time analyzing, speculating, making copious notes, and in my zeal I’m afraid I missed the whole object of the exercise.” He was perhaps being overly critical of himself. He had certainly gained something because otherwise he would have gone on his way and never looked back. Instead, a few years later Mr Coleman returned to Sayagyi’s center in Yangon for another course of meditation. This time, he writes, “I put away all my notebooks, pencils and papers and tape recorder and prepared myself to let come what may.” He describes how he immersed himself in the experience of Vipassanā. He went through stages familiar to any meditator. And once he stopped striving to understand, understanding came to him in a moment of transcendent insight. He writes, “I cannot, and never will, lose the memory of that moment. It will always remain absolutely unforgettable and ineradicable in my mind.” == Lineage == Coleman's method of practising Vipassanā is based on ten day retreats as he learned from Sayagyi U Ba Khin. Ba Khin elaborated this method especially for householders with families and jobs. Ba Khin himself learned Vipassanā from a layman, Saya Thetgyi, whose teacher was the monk Ledi Sayadaw. Another important teacher of Ba Khin was the monk Webu Sayadaw, who was considered an arhat. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John Earl Coleman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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