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S.N. Goenka's International Vipassana Centers are the Real Deal: Pure Buddhism without a trace of cultiness...from the leadership, at least.
On my forty seventh birthday, I departed my third ten day silent retreat in a year’s time. I also served a 10 day course as a kitchen manager, and provided support for the 3 days before and after. That’s a total of forty six days of my forty sixth year spent at Vipassana Meditation Centers. My next is planned for October.
Now, most people don’t have six and a half weeks per year to dedicate solely to silence and service. I designed my life so that I do and, for me, this is the best use of my time. Yes, I DO believe that if EVERYONE on the planet spent 10 days at a Vipassana Seminar, even just once in their life, the world would be a better place, but I’m not here to evangelize, just to inform.
“Wellness“ has been so commercialized that we’re, ironically, less suspicious of the practitioners charging for luxury healing than we are, as a culture, of an entirely volunteer lead and funded organization that demands absolutely nothing but your dedication to the discipline for the days that you’re in the center. What you do after is up to you.
I first learned about Vipassana around 2004 from an interview with Weezer Frontman Rivers Cuomo in Tricycle Magazine, a Buddhist Periodical. He’s a long time practitioner who now spends at least one month per year at a center in a 30 day “long course“…or perhaps he’s worked his way up to sixty days in a row, which all assistant teachers must endure (enjoy?) before serving a course.
The primary teacher, S.N. Goenka, has been dead for twelve years. To maintain continuity and avoid corruption, every center uses audio and video recorded live at a seminar in the nineties. Most are taught in English, with translation headsets available in most languages. Goenka was a Burmese Indian, so courses in those countries use his seminars taught in those languages.
There is at least one Assistant Teacher available at each course, and usually two: a male and female to serve the gender segregated participants. Yes, Trans folks are welcomed and respected.
Assistant Teachers have practiced for a minimum of approximately five years, participated in seven 10 day courses, served a 10 day course, sat a Special 10 day course to study the Sattipatthana Sutta (the original text that describes the practice studied during the 10 day course), a 20 day course, two 30 day courses, two 45 day courses and, finally a 60 day course, before they are able to serve as AT’s for a 10 day course.
Their service is limited to facilitate the course, be present for all group sittings and available to address questions twice a day: at noon privately and in the hall following the final meditation of the evening. Their responses are brief and precise, intentionally. I appreciate the lack of commentary they offer. They let the teaching itself do the work, simply responding with the appropriate instruction from the audio you’ve been hearing all day.
The course is managed and the food is prepared and served by people who have previously sat the course. Participants clean their own rooms before departure and can return to any center anywhere to serve during a course or between courses to provide maintenance. Donations are accepted on the final day, anonymously. During the course, when Dana, the concept of donation, is discussed, strong emphasis is placed on donation of time and energy over income, so everyone feels welcomed to offer what they can, even if, at that time, they can offer nothing but the effort exerted and the income lost to be present for those 10 days.
The course is self in incredibly simple…and incredibly challenging. Famously, you submit to ten days of silence…as well as no phones, no reading, no writing, no exercising (light stretching in your room is acceptable) and no other means of distraction from the subtle changes in your mind and body. You just sit, stand, walk, eat and sleep for ten days. Nothing to blame your moods on but the simple fact that everything changes. While sitting twelve hours a day, your mind tries to entertain you with the mundane, profane and profound, but your job is to simply FEEL. The entire instruction can be summarized in a single sentence: Equanimous observation of sensation without craving and aversion. A minute to learn, a lifetime to master.
It took me twenty years to finally sit a course. I had been accepted to two previously, but was forced to abandon them last minute due to business and personal chaos. Last year, having closed my business and freed myself from all obligation, I committed to a course beginning May 1st, 3 days following my birthday, in Delaware. IPhones didn’t exist when I first learned about Vipassana. Somehow, in such a short time, I became enslaved to it. In April of 2024, though, freeing myself from it’s necessity / temptation for 10 days was the primary benefit. I was craving silence. I was intensely overwhelmed by existence. I was constantly overstimulated. With no reliable inclome, I felt compelled to work constantly. I had been burnt out since 2017, but I had no other option but survival. My nervous system felt like an actually electrical fire in my blood, bones and brain.
By the end of my 10 days at Dhamma Pubhananda, I was confident that I found the most effective tool I’d encountered in my twenty plus years of searching and my twenty years of active involvement in the Unfortunate Business of Wellness. Yoga made sense in an entirely different way, now. The Buddha was, in fact, a Yogi. The Asana that has become synonymous with Yoga is preparation for and recovery from intense periods of sitting. We practice physical discomfort to prepare for the surprisingly intense experience of simply sitting in stillness for twelve hours daily. Eventually, with practice, the body becomes trained and, finally, mental stillness in the face of discomfort can be practiced.
For me , and it will likely be different for all, my first sit can best be summarized as dealing with everything that’s been done to me. I spent a lot of time in tears that scaled the spectrum from sorrow to grace.
The second sit, about 4 months later, immediately followed my first 10 day service period. My role was managing the all volunteer kitchen team, a task assigned to me against my will. Burnt out from managing my teams for my entire adult life, I had really wanted to chop vegetables in silence. Instead, I was responsible for two hundred and fifty meals served by dueling volunteer staff: inexperienced whiteys versus the professional Cambodians providing half the menu for the dual language course.
Noble Speech is harder than Noble Silence. The real difficulty in serving was the same difficulty I have in “real life“: Men. The kitchen requires the blending of genders, although we eat separately. I encountered not one but two men who couldn’t observe boundaries. There was creepy guy in his sixties, a resident server and close talker, who attempted to awkwardly flirt with me from the moment I arrived. When a male friend brought me some items I left at his house when I stayed the night before, Creepy Guy cornered me in the walk-in fridge to present the package, “___ says, ‘Con mucho amor.’” “That’s weird,” was all I said. When I spoke with my friend after, he, too, was creeped out and denied saying anything in Spanish…or anything at all. CG’s awkwardness continued throughout, until I departed and refused to share my business card with him.
Worse than that, though, was the kitchen server whose performative spirituality gave way to brooding machismo and loud outbursts when I expressed my boundaries. He was offended that, in the middle of preparation, I didn’t want to stop what I was doing and give my undivided attention to his story. Later, he wanted my undivided attention while he expressed his feelings about my refusal to give him my undivided attention previously. I explained to him that I simply have no time to do so, and he erupted at me in the most inappropriate and unexpected manner imaginable.
I communicated to the Female Assistant Teacher how uncomfortable he had made me, but I don’t have reason to believe he was disciplined in any way. I was disappointed by the dismissive way the team handled him, frankly. This is not unlike the “real world” but, in retrospect, I wish he had been dismissed from the seminar. He attempted to dominate my attention prior to departure, as well. Instead of apologizing he attempted to gaslight me and assail my reaction to his behavior. I shut it down firmly. Is this enough for me to abandon the entire organization? Not yet.
In fact, halfway through, I was compelled to request participation in the session that immediately followed. We were able to sit in the three daily hour long group sessions during kitchen service. I craved more.
During service, we’re allowed to read the books from the Dhamma library. I read about the original Buddhist Women, a bunch of bad asses. In addition to Buddha’s family, there was one who lost her husband, two children and parents in a flood and another who killed her grifter husband in self defense. Buddha was reluctant to allow women into his cohort. Eventually, the women who joined became his most valuable teachers. Notably, though, they weren’t allowed to sleep rough in the woods, like the men…for the same reasons women have to be segregated from men at the centers. Not all men? No, but always a man.
My second session as a silent participant was a progression from the first. It was difficult to abandon the energy I had acquired from serving as Kitchen Manager, but beyond that, there was a distinct theme to my thoughts and feelings. If my first session was spent sorting through what had been done TO me, the second was spent sorting through all I had done TO me and those I’ve met along the way. This is, I found, the greater challenge.
Seven months later, I found myself in the Philippines on my birthday. My first Assistant Teacher, Rosa, had founded the center there, so I figured this would make a lovely symmetry to celebrate the double anniversary, my birthday and a year since my first Vipassana Seminar, at Dhamma Phala, outside of Manila.
This was, by far, the most challenging sit yet, simply because of the intense heat and the absence of AC. The centers I had visited on the east coast of America, particularly Dhamma Dhara, in the Berkshires, the oldest center outside of India, get significantly more donations than this newer center in Taizon. It was more like a campground. The meditation hall itself was beautiful, and shows great promise as more funds come there way. I was lucky, as a returning or “old student,“ to have a private bed and bath, but the accommodation was simple. This was the first time I had ever seriously considered leaving, simply because it was impossible for me to focus in that heat.
One must play it as it lays, though. I made a bargain with myself. I would sit in the hot hall only when I had to, at the 8a, 2:30p and 6-9p group sittings, and during the cool early morning sessions from 4:30-6:30a, when the jungle created a cacophonous symphony of chickens, dogs, frogs and every imaginable songbird greeting the sun’s return. Distracting, but sublime.
During the remaining meditation hours, we are allowed to practice in our rooms. I chose this option and spent most of those hours in restorative postures with the broken, masking taped fan directed at me. This method sustained me. I was able to achieve equanimity most of the time. In fact, my body felt better than it had in the previous 18 months. The absence of technology, the consistent sleep schedule and two delicious vegetarian meals per day worked their magic until I found myself sad to leave on Day twelve, my birthday. From there, I flew to Ho Chi Minh City where the massive celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Reunification offered a completely contradictory assault on my senses.
As I contemplated the previous twelve days while spooning creamy Egg Coffees into my mouth, the theme for my third sit emerged. It could best be summarized as sorting through what I’m GOING to do. I was very distracted by my the future, but found myself more certain that Vipassana is an absolute necessity for my survival. I had deleted all the social media apps from my phone before handing it in at the start of the experience. I only use them for work, but, still, I find myself “working“ all the time. I’m in the most incredible places on earth, and yet my face is in my phone facilitating a future I may not even see.
The first texts I saw when I finally opened my phone on departure day were from my sisters. My mother had suffered a series of small strokes while I was in silence. They had the number to reach me in case of emergency, but they chose not to. By the time I was able to speak to them, it seemed that these were not strokes, per se, but episodes caused by the pain of a severe UTI. My seventy six year old mother cares for her husband full time. He’s bed ridden with Parkinson’s and is, frankly, a bastard. I have absolute empathy for her. I wish I could be there to do more, but there’s simply no place for me to be.
I last visited her Asheville, North Carolina, in late September of last year, direct from my second Vipassana sit. Her birthday was September 30th…the day after Asheville, decidedly inland, was hit with the worst Hurricane in recent memory. My older sister moved there from Vermont 30 years ago, so my mother retired near her, and my younger sister followed, only to find her home now destroyed by a fallen tree. She and her husband are still living in my mother’s guest room as a result, due to severe housing shortage. My sister’s presence would be of benefit, but, unfortunately, she and her partner are disabled and unable to help my mother care for my sister’s father in any meaningful way. Despite careers in Civil Service (My mother worked for the Vermont Department of Education and my Stepfather was in the military and, subsequently, an RN at the VA Hospital.), they, like most Americans, are doing everything they can to get by in today’s economy, as their 401k’s are drained by Trump’s poor policies. Both are lifelong liberals, deeply resentful of the current cultural climate they exist in. Moving him into a facility would bankrupt them.
These thoughts keep me up at night, distract my days, and drive me toward solutions that may, one day soon, I hope, help me to care for her. She spent her entire life encouraging my impractical passions. It pains me to see her suffer.
That’s what the Vipassana is for. The Buddha’s first teaching following his enlightenment was The Four Noble Truths:
It’s true that suffering exists.
The cause of suffering is wanting for things to be other than they are.
To end suffering, accept things as they are.
To accept things as they are, follow The Noble Eight Fold Path:
Right Understanding (Samma Ditthi): Understanding the Four Noble Truths, which form the foundation of Buddhist teaching.
Right Thought (Samma Sankappa): Cultivating wholesome thoughts, free from greed, hatred, and delusion.
Right Speech (Samma Vaca): Speaking truthfully, kindly, and avoiding gossip and harsh words.
Right Action (Samma Kammanta): Acting ethically and avoiding harmful actions such as killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct.
Right Livelihood (Samma Ajiva): Choosing a profession that doesn't cause harm to oneself or others.
Right Effort (Samma Vayama): Making a conscious effort to cultivate positive mental states and abandon negative ones.
Right Mindfulness (Samma Sati): Being aware of one's thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations.
Right Concentration (Samma Samadhi): Developing a focused and calm mind through meditation practices.
Easy, right?
No. I know. Simple, but not easy.
It requires practice and, perhaps, explanation from someone with more experience.
How much practice? Depends. A lot, usually, for most people. If you commit to two hour long sits daily, you’ll get there faster. As for me, Vipassana is my insulin. I need it. It’s the only thing, in a lifetime of searching, that actually worked. Go figure. It’s the “Eat Well and Exercise” of “Spirituality,” but please let’s not use that word. It simply doesn’t apply. Vipassana, literally translated as “Insight,” is a science and Buddha was a Scientist, observing actions and the results. There is no “belief” of anything beyond your perception in this method. The opposite. All that’s requires IS your perception of reality from moment to moment. Get out of your mind and into your body. Abandon thought in favor of feeling.
I spent forty six days at centers last year. I’m already planning my next stint. I’ll likely be at the cushy center in the Berkshires from September 14 to October 22nd…thirty nine days. That’ll be serving a ten day course specifically offered for folks of Black Heritage to be the majority in the room, a rarity in “wellness“ environments, as well as serving during the Seasonal Service Periods and the Between Course Service days. Hopefully I’ll be accepted into the training to teach the Children’s Courses that occurs during those dates. Finally, after all that, I’ll get to sit the eight day / nine night Sattipatthana Sutta Course, and learn more about the technique from the monograph it’s derived from. By my math, 30 days of service gets me out of Karmic debt for the courses I’ll have taken by then.
Following my time at the Dhamma Dhara, I’ll head over to the Netherlands to establish Dutch Residency. There’s a center just thirty minutes from Amsterdam in Almere. This was a strong sign that this was the right move for me. My community will be close by. I’m pretty certain this is where I’ll meet a mate, if I ever have one again. This isn’t ordained or encouraged in the teachings, it’s just a sense I have. It’s a language for living. The practice and philosophy is so important to me that it would prove pointless to entertain a partnership with someone who wouldn’t AT LEAST sit a single ten day course in an effort to understand me better.
The greater benefit, of course, is that everyone who takes the challenge will understand themselves better. I know it’s a challenge to find ten days, especially for Americans with limited Paid Time Off and little to know support otherwise, but the seminar, and Enlightenment, in general, is FREE.
Remember, though, even if you never attain the big E, you WILL lighten up.
I promise.
www.dhamma.org