Review: Kyoto (Japan) Vipassana Center

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The Kyoto Vipassana Center was a veritable hotel.

There was soap in the bathroom, detergent for washing clothes (by hand in a bucket), a spinner to save you the effort of hand wringing wet clothes, screens on all the windows, hot water on demand, clean futons, immaculate wood floors, a wide assortment of condiments (such as pickles, teas and sweeteners), insect repellent, salve for bug bites, a large container of medicines in the kitchen, complimentary earplugs in case you were bunking with a snorer, and fans in all the rooms. The only thing not included were sheets, which oddly enough were one of the few provisions at Bodhgaya and Sarnath, the two India centers I visited in 2007 and 2008. There we had nothing more than a bed, cold water, buckets, and mosquitoes (even in December).

Kitchen in the background,
attached to dining hall left (not visible in this photo)

Fortunately, few of the latter were buzzing about Kyoto, even in the midst of summer. We did, though, seem to have more than a fair share of spiders and cockroaches, neither of which were a particular bother, except for the cobwebs that occasionally came in contact with my face. Pleh, pleh . . .

The Kyoto center was christened Dhamma Bhanu (Dhamma Light) by Goenkaji himself back around 1989 when the master paid a visit and taught a course or two himself. Today you'd hardly guess that the facilities are 20 years old. It seems a good amount of love and attention has been lavished on their maintenance.

Stairs at left from the Dhamma Hall / Residential Building.
Building at right toilet/shower block, building left dining hall and kitchen.

Toilet/shower block, space for hanging laundry

Like most Japanese buildings or compounds, those of Dhamma Bhanu are rather compact. The residential quarters and Dhamma hall are in the same building. My room was only 5-6 meters from where I sat each day for meditation. Even those housed furthest from the hall are no more than 20-30 meters away. Once you leave the residential building, its only a dozen paces to the bath/toilet block or to the dining hall.

The Dhamma Hall is in the center on the second floor;
left wing is female residence, right wing male.
The garden was available for walking to female students.

To the right of the above photo was this patch of grass and clover,
used for overflow and as walking space for male students.

The center sits in a valley in northern Kyoto prefecture, a quiet pocket of Japan through which passes one narrow road used each day by perhaps a dozen or so drivers. When you're sitting you might also notice a small plane passing overhead a couple of times a day. Otherwise there are few audible intrusions of the surrounding society – no school bells, no trucks blaring advertisements, no construction, no kids playing ball. Just the relaxing chirping of crickets, cicadas, and birds, as well as the gurgling of a small stream running around the perimeter of the center's property, bounded by low mountains (or high hills), a lush green in the midst of the summer season.

At this time of year typical daytime temperatures are uncomfortably warm. A center volunteer noted that the heat often makes meditation uncomfortable. We were quite fortunate, though, to have rain every day of the ten our group was in residence. The sun came out for a couple of hours on two or three days, but for the remainder it was overcast, windy, and wet. I didn't hear anyone using electric fans in the evening. It was a bit too chilly for that.

The Dhamma Hall on last day clean-up.

I understand installation of air conditioning in the Dhamma Hall is under discussion. Perhaps it will be added soon to make life more bearable for those city seekers brave enough to sit quietly for ten days with few of the comforts to which they are accustomed. If you happen to have difficulty with mobility, though, you will not be able to meditate at the Kyoto center. The Dhamma Hall is located on the second floor, up a flight of 16 steep steps, and if you also happen to be male you'll have to climb another set of steps to get to your meals. New students can expect to share a room with anywhere from three to six others, with little more than a futon-size private space. Old students may also have to share living quarters if they attend during one of the center's peak periods (which coincide with the Japanese vacation calendar – New Year's, Golden Week, and Obon).

The male dining hall

As one might expect for a center in Japan staffed by Japanese volunteers, the food was typical Japanese fare. Mid-day meals included oden, pasta with tomato-based vegetable sauce, udon, a one-pot dish of mixed veggies boiled in a light soy sauce, chilled tofu with green veggies, and on the last day, Japanese curry. Whatever was left over from lunch was recycled the next morning, along with fresh bread, butter, jam, and copious amounts of fruit, which in summer included bananas, oranges, grapefruits, apples, and plums. The evening meal for new students was fruit, for old students tea. Altogether the food was healthy and the amount adequate, but taste and presentation hardly remarkable.

Information displays Day 10

One thing I greatly appreciated at the Kyoto center (that I did not find at either of the Indian centers I visited) was the management's willingness to share financial information. On the last day of the course when silence is lifted and donations accepted, a number of placards were erected in front of the dining hall with information on center activities and volunteer opportunities. Included in this presentation was a chart of the center's income and expenses. If you were perhaps wondering about the size of an appropriate donation, you could find that the average daily expense per student is just over 2000yen.

Center income and expenses

This may seem high in comparison to India, but where in Japan can you get two meals a day, a clean bed, and all the other amenities – plus absolute silence and the chance to meditate? Just make sure you bring cash. Credit card donations are not accepted.

Dhamma Bhanu is a fine facility for sitting Vipassana. I'll be leaving soon to take a job in the Middle East, but should I ever be back this way, and have the opportunity, I would be very pleased to sit another 10-day course in Kyoto.


Links:

• Kyoto Vipassana Center Dhamma Bhanu website
• Kyoto Vipassana Center Dhamma Bhanu video

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Review: Goenka Vipassana course, Sarnath, India

On the sixth night I went to the teacher.

I have a problem, I explained, and I need your advice.

The old man nodded for me to continue.

I find myself entering a state where I can feel sustained subtle sensations on the body, but almost as soon as I do there's a loud noise behind me and I loose that state and have to start again. It's like walking along a path from which I get knocked off every few minutes. I get back on the path, get knocked off, get back on, get knocked off. It's tiring and I'm beginning to develop aversion . . .

You musn't develop aversion, he interrupted.

I'd very much like not to . . .

You have to develop equanimity.

Do you understand I'm talking about the man behind me? The man who won't stop coughing?

Let him cough. What you have to understand is that his coughing will end. It is anicca, he said using the Pali word for impermanence.

Theoretically, he had a point, that it was my job to develop the ability to ignore distractions. On the other hand, the cougher - the barker, as I came to think of him - was more than just a minor annoyance.

But, sir, there is a reason why we are asked to sit absolutely still for one hour. There is a reason why this facility is built in the village and not in the city. There is a reason we've taken a vow of silence for 10 days . . .

Your job, he interrupted, is just to observe.

I appeared there was no reasoning with the Guru-ji, so I thanked him for his time before leaving.

But it seems to me, and other participants I've since spoken to, that it is the teacher's job not just to advise students on how to meditate or on what qualities they should be striving to develop, but perhaps more importantly to manage the conditions under which they practice. And by most standards, this Guru-ji stumbled, both in his duties, and quite literally.


One morning as he shuffled from the meditation hall through the back room, his weight of age supported in his right hand by a walking cane, we heard him tumble and thump to the ground. For the remainder of the day and all of the next he was accompanied into the hall by one of the young volunteers, who opened and closed doors and made sure his path was clear. If only someone had been there to so conscientiously clear ours.

Behind me sat a young Indian man, probably in his mid-20's, who from the second day developed a rather serious hacking cough. There was no effort made to suppress or otherwise control these pulmonary convulsions; they erupted at full velocity every few minutes, a low barking rumble that for those of us seated in his immediate proximity reverberated through our by now very sensitive bodies.

Along with intermittent fits of sniffling and sucking snot down the back of his throat, it seemed reasonable to assume he had developed a cold. It also seems reasonable for the person managing the course to understand that his coughing was not a typical throat-clearing cough, but something more serious, and to understand his responsibilities: to protect the health of the other participants, to help relieve the suffering of the cougher, and to protect the carefully constructed meditation environment. So far as I know, nothing was done to provide the cougher with medication or medical consultation. Neither was he isolated to prevent possible infection of other students. Even the most stable meditators afterwards remarked on the continued disturbance caused by the cougher.


It was only on the ninth day, when our vow of silence ended and we could speak with the female meditators that we found how far the negligence extended. According to the two European female participants, there were language and cultural misunderstandings with the female Indian volunteer workers. The Europeans didn't speak Hindi, the Indians didn't speak English. The Europeans couldn't understand why they couldn't refuse not to take certain foods they didn't wish to or couldn't eat. They didn't understand why when fetching hot water from the communal cauldron they weren't allowed to help themselves, but had the water ladled out to them ration-like. More disturbingly, they couldn't understand how Vipassana meditators, particularly experienced ones, could erupt in displays of anger for small, unintended breaches of the rules, or what could lead them to petty acts of revenge, such as sprinkling water over someones's bedding. It wasn't just the Europeans, though, that were disturbed by this. Two Indian women, both experienced meditators, quit the course on the seventh day, along with one of the Europeans.

I don't hold any of this against the Guru-ji. Like all of the other teachers in the Vipassana tradition established by SN Goenka, he works free of charge, as a service to the human community. He has himself spent long years practicing and I'm confident of his pure intentions. But perhaps he has come to the point where he can no longer see the experience from the perspective of a new meditator, the person easily distracted, easy to rise to irritation and anger. Perhaps he has put too much faith in the method, and forgotten that the method is only as good as person using it.


For myself, I came away frustrated and rewarded. The former I've written about enough already. The reward came from doing exactly what the Guru-ji suggested, observing my irritation, and in spite of it experiencing moments of perfect stillness. This stillness, or absorption, I have heard best described as akin to being a smooth metal sphere resting on a smooth metal horizontal surface. Able to move in any direction, the sphere has no need or impetus to do anything but rest perfectly poised. I was sitting in just such a manner one day when the hour session was dismissed for a 5-minute break, but was so perfectly balanced I found myself unable to move, sitting through the break and into the next session.

Perhaps that level of concentration was possible only because the cougher was pushing me to redouble my efforts. So for that, I owe him and the Guru-ji my respect.

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Review: Sarnath Vipassana Centre

I suppose I was expecting something different. I remember being surprised to find the Sarnath Vipassana Center almost identical in construction style to the Bodhgaya center - unremarkable institutional buildings separated by gardens and surrounded by barbed-wire topped walls (to keep out the unwanted, not to prevent meditators from escaping). The only difference is that instead of a pagoda with individual mediation cells, the Sarnath facility had instead a large vegetable garden.

Last year at this time I attended my first course in Vipassana meditation as taught by Burmese-Indian guru S.N. Goenka. Like then, I was in India principally because I had to leave Nepal for a few weeks between visas. Having benefited from last year's 10-day, I decided to do another in Sarnath, sight of the Buddha's first teaching.

FACILITY
Overall the center is adequate to the needs of meditators, who sitting for 10 of their waking hours require only the most basic necessities. The two male dormitories are square concrete buildings with rooms lining a central courtyard. One courtyard was planted with a small flower garden, the other was concrete and used principally for hanging laundry. Rooms are sparse - concrete floors, iron-legged beds supporting comfortably stuffed mattresses, a mosquito net and one iron shelf (slightly rusted) for personal items. Bedding includes a mattress, pillow, sheet, pillow case, and in winter wool blanket. Additional blankets are available on request. Windows are screened to keep out India's teeming population of mosquitoes. A few rooms have attached bathrooms that include toilets and a bathing space (and seem to be the areas throughout the facility most in need of thorough cleansing). Hot water is provided in the winter season through a communal cauldron (over a fire pit) from which meditators may fill their bathing buckets. Laundry is done by hand in the same buckets.





The dining hall is similarly functional, outfitted with plastic stools on which meditators sit facing the walls, eating meals from their stainless steel trays, bowls, plates and cutlery, which they wash afterwards in a long sink just next to the dining area.


The Dhamma Hall, where meditators spend most their waking hours, is a circular concrete structure with plenty of windows to take in natural light, a thin carpet, two sets of two seats for teachers, and two televisions for presentation of taped discourses on meditation techniques and philosophy.



A smaller Dhamma Hall similar in appointment but square in construction was used during my retreat by the non-Indian participants for viewing English versions of the evening video discourses. I made private use of this room for meditation when the main Dhamma Hall or the residence became too distracting, about which you can read more here.

A large vegetable garden, from which we were fed during our stay, makes up the central courtyard of the center, which also includes a lovely rose garden in front of the Dhamma Hall. Many meditators spent free hours circumambulating the paved walkway circling the vegetable garden and linking the male residences with the dining hall and Dhamma hall.


MEALS
The first couple of days didn't impress, but the quality of the meals seemed to improve during the length of the course (or I simply started getting used to the cooking). Food was typical Indian fare and most often consisted at lunches of dahl, curried vegetables, slices of raw vegetable (mostly carrot and radish), white rice and rotti. On occasion curd was available. Breakfasts were usually porridge of some type plus a curried vegetable; masala chai and hot milk were served on alternate days. Evening snacks for new students was a bowl of puffed, curried rice and masala tea; older students were served hot lemon water.


ENVIRONMENT
The center is located several kilometers from Sarnath proper in an agricultural village. The nearest home seems to be some hundred meters distant. Still, Indians like things loud, and so it was possible on more than one occasion to hear televisions, stereos, and parties, though hardly at the level where they disturbed sleep. There were no foul odors or air pollutants.

MANAGEMENT
Apart from issues related to the teacher's handling of the students, I had no problems with the staff. Most of them seemed to have only rudimentary English skills and so to avoid confusion meditators were asked to write requests on a pad kept outside the dining hall. I later learned that things were not as comfortable on the female side. For more about both these issues, see here.


Overall, the Sarnath facility meets the basic requirements for meditators; except for its gardens it doesn't go out of its way to make visitors comfortable. Should you believe in energy emanations of sacred sites, the location may be an added incentive to attend a course here. Otherwise, you might like to look to more well appointed centers where you share a language and cultural assumptions with the volunteer workers.

• Sarnath Vipassana Centre

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