Should you do a Dhamma Vipassana course?

This post was first published on www.harald.co. If you’re considering doing a Vipassana meditation course with the Dhamma.org organisation, you’re probably trying to decide whether it’s worth giving up ten days of your time. Here are some pointers from my experience. Hope they’re helpful. There’s more detail on my experience in this post.

The Good

Environment: if you’re looking for an ideal place to meditate, there won’t be many places that compare to Dhamma centres. Peace, quiet, no communication, no responsibilities, lots of other focused meditators around you in the meditation hall, and places to walk around if you need some space.

Discipline: eating only what they give you, only at set times, following a schedule for a whole day, and coming out of your usual routine.

Cost: the entire course is donation based. At the end of the course, you pay what you think it’s worth based on what you can afford. There’s no pressure to make a donation, and as far as I could tell no one would even have noticed if I hadn’t donated. All of the teachers and staff are volunteers, so the running costs are actually pretty low. Most of the costs come from the food. Once you’ve done a course you can come back to volunteer in return for using their facilities.

Practicality: the course isn’t an academic exercise or a philosophical exploration of mindfulness. It’s very much practical and experience-oriented. For 11 hours each day you sit there in silence. You get instructions on different meditation techniques, including Anapana and Vipassana, and you try to work continuously to put them into practice. In this sense it’s a good fit for someone who’s read a lot about meditation, but hasn’t been able to make progress on actually doing it.

Intensity: the discipline and environment combined with the duration of the course means that you can get into a deeply calm state, which would be difficult to do anywhere else. This might then allow you to make more progress in meditation than you could at home.

Technique: the techniques they teach focus on improving awareness and equanimity, both of which I personally felt I improved at. Equanimity means accepting things the way they are, which makes it easier to deal with difficult situations.

The Bad

Duration: ten days is a long time. And it’s ten days of only Vipassana course, 24/7. No reading, writing, exercise, or contact with the outside world. Only you can know how much these ten days are worth to you, and what you’re giving up.

Sleep: the schedule allows for only 6.5h of sleep each night. While they claim that proper meditation means you need less sleep, for me it meant that I ended up taking naps during all of the meal breaks to catch up. I know a few others did this too.

Superstition: mixed in with the useful meditation technique is a daily evening talk explaining why the technique works and why it’s important to practice it. This relies on Buddhist beliefs like rebirth, enlightenment, and the idea that experienced meditators can feel individual vibrations in their body at the subatomic(!) level. This really put me off, and I got close to leaving when they first started talking about it.

Patriarchy: it’s never made explicit, but it was an uncomfortable theme for me throughout the course. In each of the evening video talks, S. N. Goenka’s wife sits next to him and never says a word. In the meditation hall with us we had both a male and a female teacher, to address each gender group separately. When instructions common to both groups were given, this was always done by the male teacher.

Conversion: while they say they’re not trying to convert anyone to their way of life, they really are. The talk on the last day made it feel like I’d attended a Buddhist Alpha Course. This doesn’t affect the usefulness of the technique, but it made me doubt why I was there throughout. It made me doubt that the technique had any use at all, and it made it harder to practice.

The Equanimous

Meals: there are only two meals per day; at 6.30am and 11am. At 5pm you can have a piece of fruit. Personally I found this useful since it forced me to realise that I don’t need to eat as much as I normally do, and it’s actually much easier to focus when you’re a little hungry. I know not everyone liked this though.

Observation: you spend most of the time in your own head. That’s great if you like it (which I do), but some people struggle with this and have difficult experiences. I saw a few people leave, some crying, and there was one meditation session where a woman suddenly screamed because someone had brushed against her while walking past.

Pain: sitting down for 11 hours a day is painful. My back hurt, and so did my knees. Part of that is by design — what would the point be in an intensive practical course on changing your response to pain, without experiencing any pain? On the other hand, pain isn’t fun.

Boredom: ten days of meditation, with breaks in between where you do nothing but eat, sleep, walk, shower or go to the toilet. That’s literally it, the entire time. Again though, that’s kind of the point. Through experiencing this boredom you can change your response to it, accept it, and become more capable of focusing on boring tasks.

Segregation: there’s complete gender segregation throughout the course. This is done to reduce distraction (for most people). There are separate accommodation areas, dining areas, shower blocks, and walking areas for men and women.

Testimonials: many people who do the course say it has changed their life, even when they don’t believe the pseudoscience parts. There are people who do the course multiple times, even every year. On the other hand, most sceptical people probably wouldn’t go on the course, or would leave before the end. And there are a lot of biases at play here — it’s a tough experience, and our brain tries to find reasons to rationalise our decisions in hindsight. We’re in a big group of people, and the atmosphere is conducive to agreement. Primacy bias means we’re likely to more strongly remember the pleasant final day of the course than the rest of it. And of course we’re happy when we get to talk again!

Evidence: empirical evidence for the benefit of these courses is limited. Studies have been done on meditation, but the few meta-analyses I found come out with moderate to no benefit compare to active treatments (exercise/drugs/etc). On the other hand, the potential side effects of sitting around not doing much are limited. I haven’t been able to find any studies focused on Vipassana, or on similar duration intensive courses, and it did feel like that was an important part of this experience. (many of the studies look at part-time courses). It’s unclear whether any benefit would come from the seclusion and discipline, or from the actual technique. But I’m not sure it really matters — not everyone has a similar place they could go to to spend ten days in silence and be dependent on others, with no obligation of payment.

So… should you go?

It’s up to you! I think it mostly depends on how much you value your time, whether you can afford to give up your responsibilities for ten days, and whether you think you could sit through sermons on things you completely disagree with. If you can manage those, then I feel like the course can be valuable.

To help you get an idea of some of the good parts of the teachings, it’s worth reading The Art of Living. For the bad parts, check out the Day Six Dhamma Discourse on YouTube, and skip through the part around 40 minutes in when he talks about rebirth.

Some tips if you do decide to go:

• Have a clear reason for going. You can repeat this to yourself while you’re there to remind you why you’re doing it when you have doubts.
• Understand that there will be mysticism, pseudoscience, and thinly veiled religion. At times you’ll feel like you’re a cult. Be prepared for it so it doesn’t throw you off and distract you from what you actually want out of the course. (unless you’re a beginner Buddhist planning for Enlightenment, in which case go ahead!)
• Ensure you’re well rested before you go. The course doesn’t give you time to catch up on sleep, and I felt like I wasted parts of the first few days falling asleep during meditation because I was tired when I arrived.
• Take clothes that will cover you, even if you’re a guy. T-shirts are fine, but shorts and vests aren’t.
• Take flip flops or slip-on shoes, as you’ll be taking them on and off a lot.
• If you’d like to sit through the entire course but you’re not sure you’ll be able to, just promise yourself you won’t leave on days 2 or 6. (or on the evening of day 5). These are seen as the toughest days, but actually I think a lot of people leave on day 5/6 just because that’s when all the pseudoscience comes out. If you go in armed with the expectation of pseudoscience and that promise to yourself, making it through to day 7 can help you get more out of the course.
• Every evening there’s a chance to ask the teacher questions in public. Even if you don’t have any questions, I’d recommend sitting in to listen to the answers to other people’s questions.
• Don’t worry about taking things you think you’ll be tempted by (e.g. phone/notebook), as you can put them in a locker for the entire course. At least this was the case at Dhamma Dipa in UK, where I did my course — it might be worth checking if your centre has lockers too.

Originally published at harald.co on July 16, 2017.