By Brian Bender | 11/4/2025
In the summer of 2020 when the country was shutting down and Vipassana Centers were becoming more restrictive, I figured it was a good time to meditate on my own for ten days. In the woods. After all, didn’t the Buddha say, “Go meditate in the woods.” Or more precisely, in the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta he said, “Here a monk, having gone into the forest, or to the foot of a tree, or to an empty room, sits down cross-legged, keeps his body upright and fixes his awareness in the area around the mouth.”
By Shravasti Dhammika | 9/23/2025
The Five Precepts consist of the bare minimum of moral behaviour for a Dhamma practitoner. Being a sincere devotee involves much more than just following the precepts, and anything less than that disqualifies one from honestly calling oneself a disciple of the Buddha. If you ask someone why they should keep the precepts or what are the benefits of doing so they will usually say something like: “To avoid making bad kamma.” Wanting to circumvent unwholesome behaviour, people sometimes ask if smoking violates the precepts, in particular the fifth. Smoking and intoxication are often associated with each other because of the popular perception that those who smoke also drink alcohol. When the issue is brought up the opinions tend to be either “smoking does not violate the fifth Precept” or “yes, it does.”
By Laurel Rousseau | 9/5/2025
The sockeye salmon is one of the most tenacious animals on the planet. The name “sockeye” is an anglicisation of the Indigenous Coast Salish word suk-kegh, which means red fish, since both the male and female turn from silver to bright red when ready to spawn.
After sockeye eggs hatch, they turn into fry and remain in the freshwater estuary of a creek or river, or in a nearby lake, for a year or two, after which they transition to the smolt stage and migrate into the ocean. They swim north along the British Columbia coast feeding on zooplankton and growing in size, pass through Alaskan waters and enter the Bering Sea. From there, they follow a current rich in food that takes them towards Japan.
By Miguel Romero | 8/23/2025
Most human beings yearn for peace, both in their personal lives and within the broader social sphere. Yet history reveals that humanity’s pursuit of peace has long been a fraught and unfinished endeavor. Even during periods of relative stability, impermanence inevitably asserts itself: social systems shift, governments rise and fall, new conditions emerge, and the fragile peace once enjoyed dissolves.
By Stuart Nicholls | 8/12/2025
The poem is a reworking of the Buddha’s first words after his enlightenment, written in iambic pentameter and modeled after Shakespeare’s sonnets. The translator is an Old Student and physicist from Australia.
By Narayan Dasarwar | 7/15/2025
By 1975, more than a year after Dhamma Giri had been established, meditators in greater numbers were arriving for self-courses, and the task of obtaining permits and other preparations for the proposed construction had begun. Shyam Sundar Taparia was guiding the attendant administrative work and helping in various ways to get the basic infrastructure—water, electricity, telephone—in place.
By David Cohen | 7/3/2025
A couple of years ago, after serving my first Vipassana course, I wrote a piece for this journal to let my fellow meditation practitioners know that not only is serving a course beneficial for one’s practice, but it can also be fun.
By Kory Goldberg | 6/15/2025
Packing for a Dhamma journey is rarely just about clothes and gear.
As I prepared for my trip to Sri Lanka, a country I’d never visited but
had long felt drawn toward, I found myself caught between craving and
renunciation, anticipation and trepidation. What began as a practical
task turned into a meditation on apprehension, perfectionism, and
presence.
By Shravasti Dhammika | 5/19/2025
In 1904 the British engineer Fredrich Oertel was directed to do
archaeological explorations at Sarnath, known in ancient times as
Isipatana, the place where the Buddha first proclaimed the Dhamma to the
world. Excavations had already been done there several times before but
Oertel chose to dig at the side of a previously ignored high pile of
bricks and rubble. Almost immediately he uncovered what he correctly
guessed to be one of King Asoka’s pillars broken into three pieces. A
bit more digging and clearing of earth revealed the face of a lion, then
another, and soon four in all. Oertel had discovered the pillar King
Asoka erected to commemorate the Buddha’s first sermon and the
magnificent lion capital that had once crowned it.
By Shravasti Dhammika | 5/11/2025
Vesak is the most universally observed of all Buddhist celebrations
or holidays. Traditionally it is believed that the Buddha was born,
Awakened and passed into final nibbāna on the same day, the full moon of
the second month of the ancient Indian month called Vesākha, which
corresponds to the modern April-May. For at least the last 60 years,
Vesākha has been widely pronounced as Vesak, the Sinhalese way of saying
it. Why not the Thai (Waistkha), the Tibetan (Sa Ga Dawa), the Korean (Seokga Tansinil) or the Vietnamese (Phat Dan)
forms? Or for that matter, why not the Pāḷi/Sanskrit Vesākha? Because
in 1950 the inaugural meeting of the World Fellowship of Buddhists was
held in, paid for and very much dominated by Ceylon, and so that
country’s way of saying it became current.
By Kevin O'Keefe | 5/8/2025
Three:
All my brothers shuffle
as if, off to the gallows
or like they just got off a horse
after a hard, three-day ride.
By Narayan Dasarwar | 4/9/2025
By early 1975 some initial tree-planting had already begun at Dhamma
Giri. The level two-hectare property to the west that Goenkaji called
the Shanti Pathar (Plateau of Peace) had recently been purchased and a
few trees had been planted there too. Slowly touches of green were
becoming evident throughout the centre.
By Bill Crecelius | 3/26/2025
Goenkaji began teaching Vipassana in India in 1969, initially only to
the Indian community. Since he did not have a proper meditation center,
Goenkaji conducted all of his courses at rented locations across the
country, traveling wherever he was invited. The size of the courses
varied, mainly depending on the size of the available venue. This
changed in December 1970 when he expanded his courses to include foreign
students. Once word spread to those traveling the Hippie Trail, many
foreigners began to join, and the courses grew significantly in size.
By Aviva Derenowski | 3/24/2025
After I returned from my first ten-day Vipassana course, my husband signed up for the next one, amazed by the changes in my character and attitude. Last November we attended a course together at Dhamma Dharā in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. We felt excited about the opportunity to deepen our practice. It was my husband’s second course and my third.
By Shravasti Dhammika | 1/6/2025
Buddhism teaches causation, that the whole universe is a web of
interrelated causes and effects. There are two types of causation –
natural causation and moral causation. Natural causation has nothing to
do with people being good or bad, it is simply a matter of the various
forces in the universe acting on each other. A rainstorm or crops
ripening would be examples of natural causation. Natural causes can of
course have an effect on us – being caught in a rainstorm can give us a
bad cold or crops failing may cause food shortages and hunger. But
suffering from a cold or being hungry has nothing to do with moral or
immoral past actions – they would be a natural effect of a natural
cause.
By Miguel A. Romero | 1/5/2025
Bhikkhus, those who have neglected the four bases for spiritual
power have neglected the noble path leading to the complete destruction
of suffering. Those who have undertaken the four bases for spiritual
power have undertaken the noble path
By Narayan Dasarwar | 1/5/2025
In December 1973, with Goenkaji's assent to proceed with the
acquisition of the original seven hectares of land, an agreement was
concluded between the owners and Rangil Mehta, the generous donor. To
meet the legal requirements for the transfer of ownership however, it
took several months to amass the necessary documents, complete the
required surveys, and obtain local government permission to change the
zoning. Shyam Sundar Taparia and his colleagues managed all this.
By Christine Joly | 12/30/2024
By Bikram Dandiya | 12/30/2024
Sometime around 2017, a friend and I were visiting his father who was
convalescing at a hospital in Jaipur, India. Preparing to take my
leave, I happened to mention to my friend about a certain stickiness in
my right eye. I scarcely expected anything consequential from this
offhand remark, but he responded by saying that the ophthalmologist at
that hospital was a schoolmate, and I would do well by seeing him. Not
normally given to visiting doctors, in this case, however, somehow, I
did. I suppose it was the confluence of an expected familiarity with the
doctor and the convenience of already being present at the hospital.
By Manish Chopra | 10/24/2024
Einstein expounded the theory of relativity with a brilliant
postulate about the interchangeability of light and matter that took
others a long time to bear out and verify firsthand. We also hear
commonsense phrases like “mind over matter” that clearly legislate that
mind is supreme and foremost entity that is primordial and precedes all
other phenomenon.
By Shravasti Dhammika | 10/24/2024
The Buddhist virtue of generosity (dāna) or sharing (cāga)
are well-known. That food is the main thing given is also well-known
and a well-established custom. However, the Buddha often spoke of giving
things other than food and giving to recipients other than the Saṅgha.
One of these gifts that receives little attention and which could
perhaps be re-emphasized is the giving of water. In a land such as India
in ancient times, where summers could be witheringly hot, where
distances between one village and the next could be long, and where most
travel was done on foot, the availability of water was not just a
convenience, it could be a matter of life-and-death. The Tipitaka
contains a dozen or so passages about travellers running out of water
while on the road, of people dying of thirst in the wilderness and of
anxiety about not having enough to drink when away from home.
By Narayan Dasarwar | 9/4/2024
Within a few months of the purchase of the land in early 1974, two
foreign meditators arrived—Geo Poland, a Canadian, and Graham Gambie, an
Australian. After thoroughly cleaning one of the two old bungalows on
the property, they each took up residence in rooms at either end and
used the central room for meditation. The only other buildings on the
property were a spacious but neglected godown (warehouse), the
home of spiders and centipedes, and a small shed. At that time, I was a
one-course student working and renting in Igatpuri, but I came to the
new centre almost daily.
By Aviva Derenowski | 9/4/2024
The Satipatthana Sutta course I attended in May 2024 follows a
structured format similar to a ten-day course. The main difference is
that the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, a foundational text in Vipassana
meditation, is thoroughly discussed during the evening discourses. Each
meditator has a textbook of the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, an empty
notepad, and a pencil for personal reflections. The evening discourses
systematically explain the Vipassana meditation technique, offering a
deeper understanding of how and why we practice this technique in this
way.
By Joah McGee | 8/21/2024
Friedgard Lottermoser passed away on August 8th, 2024 in Germany,
from an aggressive cancer of unknown origin. Dedicating herself to a
life that fused Western and Eastern spiritual traditions, Friedgard’s
journey was marked by profound personal transformation and significant
contributions to the global dissemination of Vipassana meditation. Under
the guidance of Sayagyi U Ba Khin, one of Burma's most revered
meditation masters, she became a testament to the power of mindfulness.
By Padmaja Challakere | 8/6/2024
I attended my first Vipassana course in May 2009 at Dhamma Pakasa,
Illinois. Exactly 15 years later I went to my second course at Dhamma
Siri in Texas.
I wish I could say that what brought me to my first
course was a search for happiness, a search for meaning. Rather, it was
suffering, as it is with many of us. I worried all the time and
couldn't escape it. I worried about my brother who had lost everything
and moved to our place in St. Paul. I also worried about my son. Worry
as a form of aversion consumed me.
