In June 1981, Goenkaji made his first teaching visit to the northeastern United States, conducting a large course at a rental facility in Goshen, Massachusetts. By then he had given several courses in North America for hundreds of participants, and a growing group of old students had gained experience in organizing those courses. With this support, Goenkaji felt the time had come to form a trust and find a site for a permanent center.
After the course, Goenkaji and Mataji stayed for several days in the nearby home of Michael and Lila Stein, and Goenkaji discussed his ideas with Michael. They then drove to the Boston area to meet with local meditators. At that meeting Goenkaji formed the Sayagyi U Ba Khin Memorial Trust of Massachusetts. Among the trust officers, he named Michael president and Kate Lapping treasurer. He also encouraged trust members to start looking at properties for purchase.
A place came up that Goenkaji liked, and the new trust decided to submit an offer contingent on obtaining financing. But it happened that another group had made a cash offer and the sellers accepted it. This was a disappointment, but not the end of the search. A few days later Goenkaji flew on to Europe, where another course was about to start. In his absence, the search for land for a center in the northeastern United States was put on hold.
A year later, in June 1982, Goenkaji returned for a course in Sandwich, Massachusetts. To one of the servers, he expressed his eagerness to find a property that could be turned into a meditation center. He even wanted to know what it might cost to build a structure like the tiny wooden hut in which he and Mataji were staying at the Sandwich site. After the course, the search began in earnest for properties for sale, with several old students looking at different options.
Goenkaji had his own ways of evaluating the sites that he saw. At one place, Michael Stein recalls, he parked and Goenkaji began opening the door of the car. Before he had opened it more than a few inches, he pulled it shut and said, “Okay, let’s head to the next place.”
Toward the end of a long day of viewing properties, Michael drove Goenkaji and Mataji to a site on the Colrain-Shelburne Road, near the town of Shelburne Falls. It at once made a positive impression. Goenkaji and Mataji walked up to the highest point on the land, where the pagoda now stands, and agreed that this would be a good place. The next day, Barry and Kate Lapping drove over to look at the property. They too saw the possibilities.
The asking price for the property was $105,000 (the equivalent of more than $350,000 in 2025 dollars). The trust had only $50,000 from donations offered by meditators. The balance would have to be borrowed from commercial sources. Michael Stein negotiated a bank loan, and other meditators co-signed. Interest rates in those days were quite high: around 15 or 16 percent per year. Financially, it would be challenging to run the center successfully, especially since from the very start there would be no charges for participating in courses. Operating a Vipassana center on that basis had never been done before in a Western country. But several meditators pledged that they would cover loan repayments if the trust didn’t have the funds.
In August, the sale went through and Dhamma Dharā was born. This was the first center to be established outside India specifically for the practice of Vipassana meditation as taught by Goenkaji. It gave expression to a vision spanning continents and cultures.
On the first weekend after the purchase, the Ganges of Dhamma started flowing at Dhamma Dharā. First Cathy Poland, on a visit from her home in Montreal, went in and did a thorough cleaning. Following Goenkaji’s instructions, a handful of old students then went through the house, meditating in every room for an hour or more. Another meditator started sitting a 10-day self-course, with two old students cooking for him. All this was a small beginning toward building a meditative atmosphere in the center.
Meanwhile, Goenkaji had continued on a worldwide teaching tour, but he had scheduled himself and Mataji to return to Boston in late August. This gave them the opportunity to spend time at Dhamma Dharā at the end of the month. During the visit, Goenkaji conducted an inaugural three-day course for old students, although strict occupancy limits meant that many people had to sleep off site and come in to meditate during the day. Goenkaji and Mataji also walked around the site, meditated, and met with the trust and old students. Then they continued on their travels and would not return until the following year. Goenkaji was available for consultation by letter or phone call, but it was up to the new trust to carry out the plans and to begin turning the site into a meditation center.
The property had originally been a farm of over 100 acres. Most of the land had been sold off in earlier years, however. At the time of purchase, Dhamma Dharā consisted of an old farmhouse that had been renovated in the 1950s, a barn, a swimming pool and a tennis court on eight acres of mostly open meadow. Backing it were heavily forested hills. The neighboring properties were small farms or private homes.
After the purchase went through, meditators were cleaning out the basement of the house and found a sign that said “Temperance Tavern.” This referred to a type of establishment that sprang up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, serving only non-alcoholic beverages. If the house at one time had been a temperance tavern, that might have been part of the reason why Goenkaji and Mataji found the atmosphere so congenial at the site.
In September, assistant teacher Dr. Bhimshi Savla arrived to conduct a series of courses. He was the first of many assistant teachers who came from around the world to Dhamma Dharā, including Natwarlal Parikh and his wife Kausalya, Ram Singh and his wife Jagdish Kumari, Stuart and Irene Steckler, Norm and Colleen Schmitz, and Bill Hart.
In the very beginning, the local building codes allowed no more than eight people to stay in the house, including the assistant teachers conducting the course. One of the first tasks was to install a fire alarm system, which raised the legal occupancy to 24 people. This was more than enough for the original house.
On the ground floor, the living room became the meditation hall. The larger rooms, upstairs and down, became dormitories with mattresses on the floor. A small alcove served as an office, and a modest family-sized kitchen provided the meals. Comfort was at a minimum, but that didn’t deter people from signing up for courses or crowding into the hall for group sittings. They felt it was wonderful just to be sitting with fellow meditators at a center devoted to the practice of Vipassana as taught by Goenkaji.
These arrangements were fine in the weeks and months after Dhamma Dharā started. However, interest surged after the East–West Journal (a counterculture magazine) published an interview with Goenkaji in late 1982. By spring 1983, more people were attending the regularly scheduled assistant teacher–led courses. In addition, an announcement had gone out that Goenkaji would return in August 1983 for a much larger course. It would be challenging to put in place the facilities where all those people could meditate, eat and sleep. It would be still more challenging to feed them and look after their needs.
Fortunately, from 1979 to 1982 Goenkaji had conducted eight large courses at rental sites in the United States and Canada. This meant that there were people with the skills, experience and motivation required. Some of them came to help prepare for the August 1983 course. And of those old students, quite a few ended up moving to the area of the center. Before long there was a small but dedicated group from the United States and Canada, deeply committed to developing Dhamma Dharā.
The first tent course at Dhamma Dharā
The goal was to qualify for a campground license that would allow the center to host up to 200 people at Goenkaji’s 10-day course scheduled for August 1983. To meet that goal, there was a long worklist.
The most urgent need was for a shower and toilet block. Meditators with architectural and building skills took on the task of designing it and did much of the construction work themselves. This was the first major building project at Dhamma Dharā.
Another top need was for a 5,000-gallon storage tank to ensure a continuous water supply. The existing swimming pool provided the site; in it, contractors poured a concrete tank.
Equally crucial was a commercial kitchen to serve large numbers of people. The existing two-car garage attached to the house filled the bill. It was retrofitted with a used commercial stove and triple sink, plus workstations built by an old student. The same location is still in use today after many upgrades and modifications.
Next came sleeping accommodation. The deluxe option was the barn, which became a dormitory for women students. All other students and servers slept in tents.
The center needed to rent large tents for serving and eating meals. These would also be used on Day 0 for registration.
Last and first, a large tent needed to be installed over the tennis court, turning it into the meditation hall. All these years later, that is still the location of the main meditation hall at Dhamma Dharā.
The work went all the way down to the deadline. In fact, the center received the campground license just hours before the course started. While one of the meditators was standing outside with Goenkaji, a volunteer from the local health department drove up and asked if we had $10 for the license. Yes, we did!
Over the next four decades, step by step and project after project, Dhamma Dharā has developed into an ideal facility capable of accommodating 154 people (meditators and servers) year-round—and still the waiting lists are long.
The meditation hall
The most important feature of any meditation center is a place to meditate. At Dhamma Dharā, the first large meditation hall was a rented tent erected over the tennis court, with the Teachers’ seat facing toward the east, where the teaching of liberation originated.
The tent served its purpose but had some drawbacks. For example, heavy summer rainstorms could strike at any time. Runoff sometimes leaked into the edges of the tent space. Rainwater pounding on the roof could make it hard for meditators to hear Goenkaji’s voice and also disrupted efforts to record him. And so the center’s second major project was to upgrade the meditation facilities. The trust tackled this project in stages. First, in 1986, it replaced the tent with a screened pavilion for use during the warm summer months. Once again, old students did some of the work alongside hired contractors.
Later, in 1996, the pavilion was renovated and winterized to become a meditation hall for year-round use, capable of seating 200. Further improvements came in the following years, including air conditioning and surrounding covered walkways (“connectors”) that are winterized and provide easy access to the nearby pagoda and residences.
Dining rooms
In 1986, the trust also undertook construction of two buildings close to the original house. These eventually became dining rooms, but over the years they served different purposes. What is now the men’s dining room was originally a dormitory for 32 men, with partitions giving a bit of privacy. It did not become a full-time dining room until 2018, when more residences were completed. The women’s dining room was a meditation hall during the colder months and a dining room with separate areas for men and women in the warmer months. With these added buildings, the center could accommodate approximately 60 people at courses outside the summer season.
Kitchen
Dhamma Dharā started off with a small kitchen intended to serve an individual family in the existing house. This worked for the first courses conducted by assistant teachers in late 1982 and early 1983. But something more was needed for the large courses to be conducted by Goenkaji in the summer of 1983. That’s when the two-car garage adjoining the house found a new purpose as a kitchen capable of serving hundreds.
During the first courses held in the heat of summer 1983, the garage-turned-kitchen was sweltering but the temperature couldn’t lessen the joy that servers felt. It was wonderful to be present at these first large courses with Goenkaji, and to help serve hundreds of students. A stint at one of the three dishwashing stations was a coveted assignment.
Over the years, the increasing demand meant that the garage kitchen needed to be upgraded and expanded. Among the changes were a commercial-grade dishwashing area, a walk-in refrigeration unit, new stoves, added storage, a kitchen office, and finally a salad prep room in what had been the original house kitchen.
Connectors
Dhamma Dharā can be deep in snow for months at a time. Given this reality, it soon became clear that students, teachers and servers needed a way of getting around the campus without having to go outside during the winter. The solution to this riddle was to build connectors.
The first connectors led from the meditation hall to the main house for women and to the dining room for men. They were simple structures: a wooden frame covered with clear polyethylene sheeting. They had no flooring, or perhaps a few boards and gravel were placed in muddy spots. Today, the connectors are heated and insulated. They allow meditators to go from their rooms to the meditation hall, the pagoda and the dining room without ever having to step outside. This is a huge gain in comfort and livability.
The meditation pagoda
Meditating side by side with Dhamma brothers and sisters can be inspiring, but nothing beats the experience of working alone in the silence and privacy of an individual meditation cell. This is why from the very beginning the plans for Dhamma Dharā called for a pagoda—that is, a building containing concentric rings of cells for individual meditation practice. The models for this building were the pagoda built at Sayagyi U Ba Khin’s center in Yangon in the early 1950s, and the pagoda built at Dhamma Giri starting in 1978 and expanded in the following years.
At Dhamma Dharā, work on the cell building began in 1990. Initially, the center had funds to complete only the ground floor, providing 63 cells for serious meditation in solitude. With cells in place, Dhamma Dharā became the first center in North America able to offer courses of 30 days and longer to serious meditators.
As usual at Dhamma Dharā, meditators did much of the construction work with their own hands. At the end of a day of hard physical labor, they would often sit in meditation for an hour on the bare concrete floor of the construction site.
The first 30-day course in the new pagoda took place early in 1991, and during it there were some heavy snowfalls. A student in the course recalled, “One day at lunchtime, I left my cell after the bell rang. I put on my shoes, stepped outside and looked around, surprised. And I thought to myself, ‘That’s strange. I’ve seen all sorts of weather at Dhamma Giri [the first permanent center in India], but I’ve never seen snow before.’ Then I remembered I was not at Dhamma Giri. But it felt just the same.”
In 2006, work started on an additional 66 cells on the upper floor. This brought the total number of cells in the building to 140. All of the students in a 10-day course could now have an opportunity to sit in the pagoda.
Residences
Creating places to meditate was a top priority in the early days, but it was equally important to provide living quarters that were comfortable and conducive to introspection. At first, these were very basic: tents in warm weather and, in the colder months, mattresses on the floor—as many as would fit into a room. However, Goenkaji advised the trust to provide better accommodation for the students, especially for longer courses. As a first step, in 1987, old students built four wooden cabins, each capable of accommodating four people, with partitions to give some privacy. These were better than the tents, but they were usable only in the warmer months. Very soon, the trust began planning to build individual rooms, each with an attached bathroom, for every meditator and every server.
The first residences with individual rooms were built in 2003–04, offering ideal accommodation for 50 women and 45 men. The manager for this project was Jim Kahn, an experienced builder and historical renovator. Jim was so dedicated that friends had to make sure he spent enough time meditating and sleeping. Later he showed his extraordinary talent when the time came to design and construct residences, meditation halls and pagodas at many centers. The first two residences that Jim helped build at Dhamma Dharā were a great leap forward in the center’s development.
Construction of the second women’s residence began in 2010, and was completed in 2012. It added 43 more rooms. In addition, a heated connector allowed women students to walk from their rooms to the dining hall and meditation areas without having to go outside. This and other connectors make it easy for people to move around the meditation campus even in the depths of the New England winter, when snowfalls are often heavy.
While the weather is sometimes challenging, winter in New England is a very quiet time, ideal for deep meditation—much like the rainy season in South Asia. This is one of the reasons that Dhamma Dharā usually offers long courses of 30 up to 60 days in the winter.
The second men’s residence was designed in 2009 and, once the finances were in place, it was constructed in a two-year period from 2016 to 2018. This building added 38 rooms and provided a heated connector for men to the dining room.
The teachers’ residence was built between 2012 and 2015. It is a two-story building connected to the main meditation hall and located in the courtyard between the women’s and men’s residences. The upper floor can accommodate an assistant teacher couple, each with their own bedroom and bathroom as well as a shared kitchen and workspace. The lower floor consists of two separate but identical apartments, each having two bedrooms and a shared kitchen. There are also separate women’s and men’s interview rooms. The building can accommodate a total of six teachers or teacher trainees.
In 2020, a heated connector was built linking the teachers’ residence to the Metta Day area. This eliminates the need to go outside for Dhamma workers delivering food to the residence, as well as for teachers heading to the administrative area of the center.
Maintenance facilities
With such a large plant consisting of so many buildings, maintenance is a major task at Dhamma Dharā. Old students have handled much of this work, but the center also has a list of dependable outside contractors and calls on them regularly. In the initial years, the basement of the house and part of the old barn (now long gone) served as storage and workspace. Since 2008, however, there is a dedicated maintenance building at the end of the lower parking lot. This became the center’s shop and storage facility for tools, mowers and snowblowers. In 2025, half of the original shower and toilet block was converted to a woodworking shop, and the maintenance building was reserved for storage and mechanical repairs.
Solar panels
In January 2021, the center installed solar panels mounted on the roofs of the newer men's and women’s residences. These started producing enough clean electricity to supply about 30 percent of total needs. December 2023 saw the installation of a large array of more than 700 solar panels in the field across the stream from the men’s walking area. The system came into use in the summer of 2024. This array, together with the rooftop panels, will fulfill the center’s entire electrical requirements for the foreseeable future.
Generator
No one comes to a meditation center because it has a generator, but the lack of one can have serious consequences, especially in harsh winter conditions. Many meditators can recall courses when the power went down and students, servers and teachers struggled to continue. A power outage is not just an inconvenience; it can pose health and safety risks. Dhamma Dharā has managed to avoid having to close because of power failures in the winter months, but there have been a few near misses.
In December 2023, the center purchased and installed a diesel generator as a precautionary measure. To the surprise of all, it came into use during a 60-day course in January 2024, when a severe winter storm caused a blackout in the area.
The center has a generator in the hope that it won’t be needed, or needed only infrequently. But it gives us confidence that courses can proceed uninterrupted, and that students and buildings will remain warm and safe even in the most severe weather.
Metta Day area and connector to teachers’ residence
The space between the dining rooms has been used for Day 0 registration and Metta Day activities for many years. As the residences were completed, this area became too small, especially in the winter when students preferred to stay indoors in cold, snowy weather. The remedy was the expansion of the Metta Day area. This project was completed in December 2020.
Welcome building
The construction of the welcome area in 2023 marked the completion of the master plan for Dhamma Dharā. It has become the main entrance for people arriving at the center, as well as a convenient point of entry for course participants especially in winter, when they might be wearing snowy or muddy boots. With this last component in place, Dhamma Dharā has become a center that is truly for all seasons, and is accessible and welcoming to all.
The spirit of Dhamma service
Without the dedication of volunteer servers who give without expecting any material gain, Dhamma Dharā would not have been possible.
On the first course in 1982, there was one student sitting a self-course and two volunteer servers. As the center grew, so did the roles and opportunities for service. Volunteers serve in various capacities, but all share the common volition to give selflessly for the benefit of others.
A couple of years after opening, it became clear that the center needed a long-term manager. The first person to take that role, Luke Matthews, stayed for 11 years, from November 1991 to November 2002. A committee structure took shape to deal with registration, the kitchen, center development and maintenance. A sit-and-serve program has allowed students to immerse themselves in the Dhamma atmosphere by alternating between meditating and serving courses for a number of months. The program benefits the participants and supports day-to-day operations.
A later development was the creation of a more permanent team to staff the office and kitchen, and take care of household and maintenance tasks. The team provides invaluable support on Day 0, Metta Day and throughout courses. On an ongoing basis, they deal with students, servers and the public. They also support the teachers and handle unexpected situations. When one of the original staff members was asked what her job description was, she said, “Registrar—but we all do whatever it takes to make sure that courses run smoothly.” That’s what matters most.
A home away from home at Dhamma Dharā
Goenkaji loved the quiet and peaceful atmosphere at Dhamma Dharā. After all, this was a site he and Mataji had themselves selected. It was also the very first center outside India, and perhaps was especially dear for that reason.
He loved again meeting some of the Westerners he had encountered when he first came to India to teach Vipassana. In those days, many of them had been wild-eyed, naïve, unshaven, unwashed and strangely dressed, for the first time exploring life outside their own society. Now they were upstanding citizens, proudly showing off their children. Goenkaji was delighted to meet these people again, or to encounter people he had never met before who were drawn to his teaching.
Like his teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin, he thought that a garden, with its calm and peaceful atmosphere, was the proper setting for a meditation center. He and Mataji loved the center’s growing trees and flowering plants, which of course were at their best in summer.
Sometimes he and Mataji quietly walked around the center together. They might pause, gently touching a tree trunk or a flower blossom as they practiced mettā. They sometimes chanted as they walked, and someone listening carefully might hear the same words Goenkaji chanted in the meditation hall.
Then the two would go back to their room. And a special joy for Goenkaji, he said, was that people at Dhamma Dharā respected his privacy, they allowed him to relax and focus on his own projects without disturbance.
In those years, no one thought that in the not-too-distant future, a voyage halfway around the world might be too challenging for two elderly people from India.
In July 1991, however, the lower floor of the cell building was in use when Goenkaji and Mataji led a 30-day course at Dhamma Dharā. Afterwards, he told Barry Lapping that the atmosphere in the building was wonderful, and that this was one of the best new pagodas in which they had ever meditated.
It seemed then that there would always be visits from Goenkaji and Mataji, if not every year then every two or three years. But even today, their presence can be felt at the center, welcoming all who come to meditate, making them feel that this is their home away from home.
A vibrant, living tradition
Dhamma Dharā started with a two-story house, a barn, a swimming pool and a tennis court located on eight acres of land. Over the years, meditators purchased the surrounding land that had once been part of the original property, and donated it to the center. Today, Dhamma Dharā includes 108 acres of land and has facilities for 140 students and 15 servers.
Dhamma Dharā embodies the vision of Goenkaji. It is evidence of the life-changing power of Vipassana meditation. It is a meditation center as well as a vibrant community, where individuals from all walks of life come together, united by their shared aspiration to achieve inner peace and harmony.
A model and a training institution
As the first Vipassana center to begin operating outside India, Dhamma Dharā had to invent almost all its procedures from scratch, through a process of trial and error. In the earliest days, it was common for trust meetings to last a full day, and often they ended with a phone call asking Goenkaji’s help to resolve a knotty problem. Repeatedly, well-meaning students would suggest that the trust adopt a particular management style; sometimes this helped and sometimes it didn’t.
Eventually, the trust set up several key committees and left the bulk of the work to them, intervening only on major issues. This governance structure has enabled the center to run efficiently and effectively.
The center also provided training to many servers, and newer centers have often adopted the approaches it developed over the years.
Many of the center teachers across North America started out as servers at Dhamma Dharā, including past or present teachers for the centers in Delaware (Lallie Pratt), Georgia (Maureen and Bruce Stewart), Illinois (Kate and Barry Lapping), Washington state (Rick and Gair Crutcher), Ontario (Bill and Virginia Hamilton) and Quebec (Alain and Rachel Lépine, Geo and Cathy Poland).
When one center becomes well-established, Goenkaji said, it should go on to support Vipassana activities in surrounding areas. Dhamma Dharā has systematically done this in nearby U.S. states. In New York City, for example, the Dhamma House in Manhattan offers daily group sittings plus half-day and one-day courses. A short distance from the city, there are two 10-day courses in May-June each year. Dhamma Dharā has also provided support to Vipassana activities throughout the Mid-Atlantic region and much further afield. In this way, it continues to contribute to the slow widening of the circle.
The crowning glory: The zedi at Dhamma Dharā
In September 2016, Dhamma Dharā reached a milestone with the installation of a traditional Myanmar-style zedi on top of the meditation cell building. The word zedi means a pagoda or spire, and there are countless such structures in Myanmar, visually expressing devotion to the teaching of liberation.
The zedi at Dhamma Dharā is similar to the one installed decades ago at Sayagyi U Ba Khin’s center in Yangon, and later the ones at Dhamma Giri and the Global Vipassana Pagoda in India. All follow the model of the main spire at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. Each element in the design has significance, and together they draw the eyes upward to the highest aspiration of all.
The person who designed and constructed the zedis that grace several Vipassana centers in the United States and beyond is Jim Kahn, who years before had overseen the construction of the first student residences at Dhamma Dharā. Around 2012–13, Jim went to Myanmar to see firsthand how pagodas were built. He thought he would spend a few months there but ended up staying for many years. He assembled a team of local architects and designers who had an almost innate understanding of the zedi structure and the significance of each element. Jim and his team then established a factory in Yangon that produced the many parts of the zedi structure. The team, along with Jim, used computer-aided design to faithfully replicate the main pagoda at Shwedagon on a smaller scale. But in place of solid masonry, they used reinforced fiberglass, producing lighter-weight, weather-resistant structures that could be transported and would not strain the roofs of the buildings where they were to be installed.
The sections of the zedi were transported by ship to the U.S. east coast, and then by truck to Dhamma Dharā. Finally, on a beautiful autumn weekend, a crane lifted each section of the zedi into place. On hand for this auspicious event were meditators from near and far, including many originally from Myanmar. It was meditators who fitted the sections together on the roof of the pagoda, including those who had been present on the day back in 1982, when Goenkaji originally decided that this was a suitable place for a meditation center.
There was still more work to be done—there will always be more work. But in an important way, the dream that gave rise to Dhamma Dharā had come to fruition.
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Michael Stein sat his first Vipassana course in 1972 in Dalhousie, India. Weeks later, at another course in northern India, the kitchen was understaffed and Michael was asked to help serve food. This was his first experience of Dhamma service. Since then, he’s always been a go-to person when there was something that needed to be done, and he still is today. For example, the property where Dhamma Dharā stands happened to be located not far from where Michael and his family lived. As a result, he knew which tradespeople to go to, and was friendly with some of the local officials whose support the center would need. At the same time, he kept in close contact with Goenkaji—something not so easy in the days before the Internet. At one time or another, Michael did just about every job needing to be done at the center, from plowing the driveway during the first winter to going up in a crane with Barry Lapping to install the bud-shaped crystal at the top of the main zedi on the roof of the meditation cell building in September 2016. Today, Michael is still deeply involved. He advises the staff, and on Metta Day of almost every course he gives a talk about the history of the center. He also keeps a close eye on finances, and oversaw the installation of the center’s new solar field. Michael is now in his fifth decade of serving at Dhamma Dharā, and he’s only getting started!
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Not long after the center started, Rick and Gair Crutcher relocated to Massachusetts from the Pacific Northwest and soon were helping in virtually every way imaginable. Rick was a skilled carpenter, and singlehandedly built most of the first winter walkways (“connectors”) at the center. He was also skilled at matching volunteers with a job within their capabilities, and this talent helped people to feel good about doing their part. Gair volunteered for just about any job needing to be done but she especially enjoyed jockeying the riding lawnmower. When the center took over publishing the Vipassana Newsletter, the couple bought a brand-new Apple Macintosh—then the latest word in home computing—and soon were using it to produce quarterly issues. The two later spent time in India before returning to Washington state and contributing to the establishment of Dhamma Kuñja.
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For many years, Barry and Kate Lapping were the teachers with overall responsibility for Dhamma Dharā. In the early days, they remember, procedures were very simple. For example, the wall phone in the original kitchen would ring, and often it was someone asking to join a course. Whoever had answered the phone would write down the caller’s name in a spiral-bound notebook, and the caller now had a place in the course. On Day 0 there was often no plan for who would serve the course or who would cook the meals. Barry and Kate would head to the supermarket and stock up on provisions. In winter, they would join other servers clearing snow from the walking paths after 9:00 p.m., and they continued doing this after they became assistant teachers in 1984.
Barry also was hands-on with most construction projects. When the first men’s and women’s residences were built in the 1980s, Barry did all the plumbing himself, with another meditator to help. They worked under the supervision of a licensed plumber, and the job took about a year and a half to complete. According to the project manager, their work saved the center about $250,000. Barry became so skilled as a plumber that the center’s plumbing contractor offered him a job.
Kate's focus was on the setting into which the new buildings would fit. This needed to be beautiful and calm, she recognized —and only gardens could provide the right atmosphere. Working with a local company, Kate oversaw the creation and maintenance of gardens all over the center campus. She also started a trail-building project in the women's compound. Others have since taken up the task, and now both women and men have quiet nature trails to explore at the center.
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Originally from New Brunswick, Canada, Bill Hamilton had sat with Goenkaji in India in 1974 and 1975. He was handy with tools and soon became part of the group of meditator-carpenters who helped on construction projects at the center. There he met his wife-to-be, Virginia, who sat her first Vipassana course at Dhamma Dharā in 1985 and then kept coming back to meditate and serve. The two soon became a couple, serving on the trust and eventually as assistant teachers. In winter 1991, when the center offered its first 30-day course, Bill sat and Virginia headed the kitchen team, turning out wonderful meals. Bill was quiet but Virginia was very sociable and good at networking before that was even a concept. On Metta Day of every course that the two of them conducted, Virginia would chat with the students and encourage them to try helping at the center. Her gentle push led many students to learn the benefits of Dhamma service. In 2002, when meditators in Ontario acquired a property close to Toronto, Bill and Virginia decided to move to the area and devoted the next two decades to developing Dhamma Torana, which soon became one of the largest centers in North America. They have now passed on their responsibility for the center but continue to inspire meditators.
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When Barry and Kate Lapping retired as center teachers for Dhamma Dharā in 2025, they asked Lysha and Leannette Smith to take on this role. By then, they both had served at the center for more than a decade, were thoroughly familiar with center operations, and were committed to helping people integrate Vipassana into their lives. Among other things, Lysha and Leannette helped pioneer the Black Heritage Courses. As one of the first Black assistant teachers and the first Black Acariya in our tradition, this was a task for which Leannette was especially suited. From encouraging the vision, to organizing the earliest retreats, to preparing outreach and inreach materials with Lysha’s support, Leannette helped ensure that the invitation to practice reached more deeply into the Black community. She served the inaugural course as manager and has since served several courses as the conducting teacher. The courses opened doors and lowered barriers that once had made access difficult. Lysha and Leannette hope that Dhamma Dharā will continue to be a refuge for all, where people of every background and heritage can walk on the path of liberation.
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Jerry Sheffren (also known as “the Baba”) turned up at Dhamma Giri for his first course in 1978. Until then, he had been a wandering hippie in India. Soon after, he found himself in Sri Lanka, studying the teaching of the Buddha. He made a lifelong commitment to the Dhamma in early 1980, when he sat his second course with Goenkaji. He spent most of the following decade at Dhamma Giri, doing course after course. Finally, in 1990, he returned to North America to be part of the Dhamma Dharā community. In those years, the center especially needed servers who could lend a hand with the ongoing construction projects. Jerry didn’t have that type of skill set. Still, he was happy to do whatever else was needed. Today you might find him helping in the kitchen or showing new arrivals to their rooms on Day 0 of a course. What he likes best, though, is sitting in meditation or talking about the Dhamma. Vipassana has remained the constant in his life. But if you ask, he might tell you about some of his adventures along the path!
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Steve Gorn first experienced Vipassana in 1984, when Goenkaji was conducting a 10-day course at Dhamma Dharā. As the CEO of a large real estate development firm and a family man with two children, Steve recognized the value of maintaining equanimity in the face of ongoing challenges. Since that first course, Steve has returned to sit nearly every year and has made a deliberate effort to apply Dhamma in daily life. He says that this has helped him to remain balanced and make morally sound decisions. In the 1990s, Dhamma Dharā was expanding in every direction. A team was already in place to guide the pagoda construction. Steve offered to oversee the other projects in the center’s master plan. This involved working with the development committee, hiring architects, obtaining the necessary permit (Steve convinced the local authorities to issue a single permit for all the planned buildings—something almost unheard of) and hiring local contractors. Often he would fly up from his home city of Baltimore in the morning, view the state of construction, meditate for an hour and then return home later in the day to pick up his worldly responsibilities. Steve’s professional expertise was crucial for the task of completing construction of the center. But equally crucial was his commitment to Vipassana. He even built a room exclusively for meditation in his office, something that not many CEOs have done. This is how he has succeeded in applying the Dhamma for his own good and the good of many.
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George and Bucky Dole were pillars of the local community, and their family had lived in the area for generations. They had a contracting business, and in 1986 they did their first job for Dhamma Dharā: building the wooden pavilion that replaced the tent we had been using for large summer courses. The Doles were happy for meditator-volunteers to work alongside them on the project. First, a half-dozen meditators (almost all of them future center teachers) framed the outer walls of the building. Then the Doles operated a forklift to raise the trusses one by one, and the volunteers secured each truss in place. The Doles worked on many more projects at Dhamma Dharā over the years, up to and including the pagoda. The last project they worked on was the welcome center. They both passed away not long after its completion.
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Joe Palmeri was an electrical contractor and Jerry Jubinville was a plumber. Both made key contributions to the center, and Jerry worked with us until shortly before he died. One cold Sunday morning in March 1984, the center manager discovered that the pump in the center’s well had burnt out and needed to be replaced. No more than 20 minutes later, Joe and Jerry were on site. The pump store in the nearby town of Greenfield was officially closed but it opened at Jerry’s request, and within hours the new water pump was operating. Without Joe’s and Jerry’s prompt help that chilly Sunday, it might have been necessary to cancel the course in progress. Jerry’s daughter Dee worked on construction of the shower and toilet block back in the 1980s, and Joe’s son Matt is now the electrician for the center.
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A noted child psychiatrist, Robert (“Bob”) Switzer served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1956, then in the Navy Reserve, and eventually retired with the rank of Rear Admiral. In the small Vipassana community, though, he was known for having married into an unusual family: His wife Gracie and her son and daughter had participated in courses with Goenkaji in India, and they all became serious meditators. Soon Bob could be seen accompanying Gracie at Vipassana courses, and the couple came to Dhamma Dharā in the months after the center opened.
Not long after, Michael Stein noticed an envelope in the center mailbox from Bob Switzer. It contained a $25 check for the new center. Month after month, year after year, a check for the same amount arrived in the mail.
In the 1980s, $25 wasn’t riches but it still could go a long way. For example, it could buy a tankful of gasoline for most cars, or a week’s supply of groceries for a small family. Sent month after month, year after year, Bob’s checks became a substantial amount. But most significant was the volition that they expressed, renewed every month: that more people may find a way out of suffering through the practice of Vipassana meditation.
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Leslie Jennings encountered Vipassana in the late 1980s, and she soon became a familiar face at Dhamma Dharā. Originally from South Carolina, she was a registered nurse, and she was able to block off time from work so that she could spend extended periods sitting courses or serving at the center—or later, visiting centers in India. She was a cheerful person with a twinkle in her eye, a kindly manner and a soft way of speaking. Very soon she found a valuable role for herself: helping people with physical or mental difficulties who applied for courses. Gently, she helped those applicants figure out how they could successfully join a course. Or for some, she helped them understand that now was not the time for them.
In the late 1990s, Leslie was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. It was definitely a shock for her and her many friends. Despite the treatment she received, the disease progressed relentlessly and there was no remission. At her insistence, she was released from hospital and allowed to return home for her remaining days.
Leslie’s brother and sister came to see her, and Dhamma friends surrounded her throughout the ordeal. On her last day, about a dozen meditators sat on the floor around her bed. One by one, each got up to say a few words to Leslie, and then sat down again to meditate. They could hear her breathing. Finally, Leslie breathed out, and then there was no incoming breath. As quietly as she had arrived, she moved beyond. But those who knew and loved her do not forget Leslie.
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Thank you for reading this post about Dhamma Dharā—Land of Dhamma, which will eventually be published as part of a print book about the first four U.S. centers.
