In the early 1970s, when the first of Goenkaji’s American students came back from India, there wasn’t any organization in North America to provide information about Vipassana meditation. Vipassana meditators would contact others they had met at Goenkaji’s courses in India. If they were in the same area, they would meet to meditate or simply to spend time together.
An American aerospace engineer, Robert Hover, had done courses in Myanmar with Sayagyi U Ba Khin in the 1960s, and Sayagyi had encouraged him to teach Vipassana. He lived in Southern California and had conducted a few courses in the very early 1970s, but there wasn’t any network or way of getting out information. That changed in 1973, when Charlene Spretnak, a young meditator then living in Illinois, contacted Robert Hover and Goenkaji. She proposed starting a newsletter that would provide Vipassana news and course schedules. The same idea had occurred to another meditator, Bill Crecelius, in 1972, when he was about to return home from India and settle in the Bay Area of California. Bill had discussed starting such a publication with Goenkaji, who put him in touch with Robert Hover, and the two started brainstorming about setting up a newsletter.
Meanwhile, in March 1973, a Canadian named Luke Matthews was serving on Course No. 67 in Mumbai and had been assigned a task to occupy him in his spare time: to sort and file the student data sheets from the 66 previous courses Goenkaji had taught. Luke did this and, with Goenkaji’s approval, he also made a list of people from outside India who had participated in a Vipassana course up to then. In all, he found between 100 and 200 names of non-Indians, with their home addresses. A few months later, Luke returned to Canada and sent the list he had made to Bill Crecelius.
The combined efforts of all these people provided the impetus for launching the Vipassana Newsletter. It soon proved its value as a way to provide information on what was happening in our tradition for Vipassana students in North America and, very quickly, around the world.
In 1974, the first issue of the Newsletter was mailed out from Berkeley, California. Charlene contributed the writing and design, while Bill coordinated the other aspects of producing a publication that turned out to have a worldwide readership. Doug Jackson, another meditator, entered Luke’s mailing list into a computer to create a database for the Newsletter, and he kept this up to date as new names came in. Meanwhile, Bill arranged for the printing, bulk mailing permits, permanent post office box and anything else that was needed. The Newsletter covered Goenkaji’s courses in India, as well as those conducted elsewhere by the handful of Westerners whom Sayagyi U Ba Khin had authorized to teach Vipassana: Robert Hover, in California; John Coleman, another American living in the United Kingdom; and Ruth Denison, originally from Germany, who moved to the United States after the Second World War. Meditators started organizing group sittings, and the Newsletter listed these too. After the first issue, Bill Crecelius then took over writing and distribution of the Newsletter. Other local meditators helped, particularly Spence Luttrell and Bill and Marcia Rosenberg.
After the first issue, word spread fast around the world about this initiative. A network developed including the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and most countries in Western Europe. For all these areas, the Newsletter carried information about local courses and group sittings. In each country, the local contact would receive print copies of the Newsletter, and then a group in that country would add an insert in their own language about Vipassana events where they lived. There was real excitement at the rapid increase in the number of courses and group sittings.
The Newsletter provided information about courses, offered encouragement and inspiration, and connected the people who went on to organize courses. A lending library for Dhamma books was also started in Berkeley, originally intended for incarcerated people. In those early years, books on Vipassana were not available in most bookstores, even in college towns. The Newsletter office was located in an apartment in Berkeley, and it became a drop-in place and guesthouse for many meditators returning from India, as well as a venue for one-day self-courses and group sittings. The apartment hosted a group sitting at 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. daily.
Almost immediately, it became apparent that a non-profit organization needed to be formed to handle finances for the Newsletter. The first issues were funded by a few individuals, with small donations barely covering costs. Initially, the non-profit took responsibility for non-center courses, which then were held in rented sites across the country. The Vipassana community in Berkeley as well as in nearby San Francisco and Marin County grew, and soon people were searching for a site not only to rent for courses but also to buy for a permanent meditation center. On weekends, they would drive into the countryside looking for places.
At the time, Goenkaji had a Burmese passport that was valid only for entry to India. Despite the growing interest in his teaching elsewhere, he could not visit other countries. He accepted the situation, declaring that the first decade of his mission would be for re establishing Vipassana in the land of its origin. Nevertheless, he keenly followed events in other countries and often gave advice to meditators there, either meeting them on their return visits to India or else sending them letters in the form of pale-blue government-issued “aerograms” with the message handwritten in green ink. This was long before the days of electronic communications, and long-distance telephone calls were very expensive and often technically challenging.
In 1979, the first decade came to an end and Goenkaji accepted invitations to lead five Vipassana courses over a two-month period at locations in France, then in Montreal, Canada, and finally in Britain. All this, however, depended on having the required travel documents—and for its own reasons, the Indian Home Office was taking its time evaluating the passport applications of Goenkaji and his wife Illaichi, whom meditators affectionately called “Mataji” (Mother). In the end it took the intervention of the Prime Minister of India at that time, Shri Morarji Desai, to resolve the impasse. At the last possible moment, Goenkaji and Mataji received their passports. The French consulate in Mumbai cooperated by issuing their tourist visas speedily, and they reached France in time for the first course, starting on July 1. It was followed by a second course in France, one in Montreal, Canada, and two in the United Kingdom.
In the two months from July 1 to September 1, well over 500 meditators joined the courses conducted by Goenkaji, more than half of them sitting with him for the first time. The local students proved entirely up to the task of organizing and running a course for large numbers of participants, and they did it as if it was the greatest privilege in the world. Uncomfortable conditions meant nothing to them as long as they had a chance to sit or serve.
In the following year, 1980, Goenkaji returned for courses in Switzerland, Montreal, Chicago and Northern California, before flying on to Australia for another two courses. In the early days in India, it had been common for meditators to follow Goenkaji from course to course around the subcontinent. In the summer of 1980, a small group of meditators did something similar: they came for the course in Montreal and then drove on to the course in Chicago and finally the course in California.
There were around 200 students on Goenkaji’s first course near Mendocino, California, organized by Jacques Tenzel. The meditation hall (a huge tent) had been set up away from the residences, down a steep slope at the bottom of a hill. When he arrived on Day 0, Goenkaji asked for the tent to be moved to the grassy area at the top of the hill, in the middle of the residences. It was a big job, but the rental company did it without complaint. The new location of the tent worked well, and not only for course participants. Often in the evening, when all the meditators were sitting silently in the tent, deer would come out to graze on the lawn—and so one of the servers called the location “the Deer Park.”
John Pinch had offered to help in the kitchen. He was surprised to find himself put in charge. And he was shocked to hear that he and a team of just seven other volunteers would be feeding so many people—up to 360, he recalls being told. For meal suggestions, John turned to Laurel’s Kitchen and the Moosewood Cookbook. Their recipes were all for six people. To make sure no one would go hungry, he multiplied the quantities by 60. When he saw the resulting figures, he began to realize the scope of what he and the other volunteers were undertaking. Somehow the kitchen crew met the challenge, although some of them didn’t get much sleep. But thanks to their efforts, there was plenty of food for all.
Approximately a year later, in 1981, there was a course for close to 300 students in Mendocino. Luckily, there were plenty of servers for the course, and no one objected to sleeping in crowded rooms or tents. People wanted the Dhamma and were ready to accept crowding for the opportunity to meditate with Goenkaji. They just dove in.
On the 1981 course, the remote location made it impossible to receive frequent food deliveries, so the two women managing the kitchen—Cindy Pinch and Linda Warren—decided to bake their own bread daily for the meditators. They got up very early every morning to start the work, and found the strength to make the bread and do all their other tasks. It was the best bread ever served on a Vipassana course.
On one of these large courses there was an older man from Southeast Asia. At first he seemed somewhat lost, but after a couple of days he came to the manager at breakfast time and said, “That chanting of the teacher … I know that. It is from my tradition. It is mine!” This was a Cambodian refugee who had lost everything but his life fleeing his country. Now, in the California forests, he reclaimed his greatest treasure, the jewel of the Dhamma.
For several years, the pattern in California was to organize large courses in the summer, when Goenkaji could come. But after he started appointing assistant teachers in 1982, Goenkaji encouraged local students to look for a place where they could hold courses year-round. The site they found was a rental property in Nicasio in Marin County, less than an hour’s drive north from San Francisco and Berkeley. Students did the remodeling to turn this into a Dhamma House, that is, a place temporarily hosting courses without being owned by a Vipassana organization. The Nicasio house offered one 10 day course a month, as well as one-day courses and self-courses. At first, the Vipassana Newsletter Trust rented the site, but it soon became apparent that a separate organization was needed to take responsibility for running the property and holding courses. That led to the establishment of the Sayagyi U Ba Khin Vipassana Foundation on July 2, 1982.
The Nicasio Dhamma House helped to solidify the enthusiasm of meditators in the San Francisco Bay area and much of the West Coast of North America. For the first time, there were Vipassana courses being held year-round, as well as a centrally located venue for shorter courses and trust meetings. At the same time, it was important to take the next step and find a permanent center.
After a year, the owner of the Nicasio house declined to renew the lease, so a search began for a new Dhamma House. This led to a property in Occidental, close to the Bay Area. To protect against landlord problems, two old students—Harry and Vivian Snyder—bought the house and rented it back to the trust. When the sale went through, meditators fell to work transforming this 3,000-square-foot home into a meditation center. We had gained valuable experience in developing the Nicasio site, plus we had all the cushions, furniture, pots and pans, mattresses, and so on that we needed for the new location. It was just a matter of setting everything up. The property featured a three-car garage with a small attached room and an attached bathroom, providing a very spacious meditation hall for about 40 students, plus an assistant teacher’s residence next to it. The house was in a very quiet location on Marra Road—a name that gave some meditators pause because it sounded so much like the Pali word Māra, meaning the forces opposed to the Dhamma.
Over the next couple of years, work continued on the property and courses were held monthly. The owners donated the property to the trust, and Goenkaji then gave it the Pali name Dhamma Upavana (“Park” or “Forest” of Dhamma). Now there were two centers in North America, one on the East Coast in Massachusetts and one on the West Coast in California. Goenkaji came and gave courses, and so did many assistant teachers. As the meditation atmosphere developed, more and more students wanted to meditate there.
To meet the growing demand, it was time to deal with one of the biggest problems at Dhamma Upavana: a lack of accommodation. The building itself was a three-bedroom house with only two and a half baths. The large dining room could be used as a dorm, and temporary toilets and outdoor showers were added, but the number of students was still limited. A new residence building was designed, and the trust applied to the local planning department for building permits.
Unfortunately, the application was refused. At the time of purchase, the property had been zoned for use as a meditation center. Somehow, in the intervening six years that Dhamma Upavana had been operating, the county government had changed the zoning so that the property could no longer be used for that purpose. The application was denied because of incorrect zoning, and there was nothing that could be done. This was a big blow because it was a beautiful property only an hour from the Bay Area, with the possibility of expansion if two adjoining properties were purchased. When Goenkaji was told of this dramatic event, he made light of it. He said, “What do you expect when you have a center on Marra Road?”
Once again, the search began for another center. At first, courses continued at Dhamma Upavana, but eventually the county required us to close down. We had no choice but to put the property up for sale and, in the meanwhile, to offer non-center courses at rented sites. This situation continued for several months.
Finally, in late 1990, our search brought us to a children’s camp in North Fork, the future Dhamma Mahāvana. It was in the exact geographic center of the state of California. Volunteers quickly adapted the camp for our purposes, and it was possible to hold the first course only a couple of months after taking possession of the property. Many students participated in scrubbing clean the old accommodations, setting up a kitchen in the large garage, and transforming an old building into a meditation hall.
Fortunately, the property we had been forced to sell had appreciated significantly in value, and so there were sufficient funds to put a large down payment on the North Fork property. We had all the fixtures, furniture and equipment needed for a center waiting in storage; all we had to do was move them to the new location. And so what became one of the most important meditation centers outside India began what we may hope will be centuries of service.
This ended the first chapter of the spread of Vipassana in California. Now a new chapter began that would see the teaching of liberation spread more widely than ever before in the state and beyond.
Thank you for reading this post about The First Years of Vipassana in California, which will eventually be published as part of a print book about the first four centres in the United States.
