Guided Vipassana audio and online courses: what is available

In S. N. Goenka's tradition there is no guided Vipassana audio for the public and no online course: the technique is taught only on residential 10-day courses. What the tradition does publish freely is a short introductory session in breath awareness, recorded talks and documentaries. Other traditions, especially the Western insight meditation centres, do teach online and share thousands of guided meditations.

This page sets out what each tradition offers, why Goenka's tradition keeps its instructions to courses, and how you can start at home in the meantime.

Why there is no online course in Goenka's tradition

dhamma.org says: "The technique is taught at ten-day residential courses during which participants follow a prescribed Code of Discipline, learn the basics of the method, and practice sufficiently to experience its beneficial results." Its questions and answers page gives the reason for the length: "Experience over generations has shown that if Vipassana is taught in periods of less than ten days, the student does not get a sufficient experiential grasp of the technique."

The same caution applies to written material. The Vipassana Research Institute's condensed version of the course talks, The Discourse Summaries, warns that it "should not be treated as a do-it-yourself manual for learning Vipassana, a substitute for a ten-day course."

So in this tradition, "Vipassana at home" means practice after a course, not learning it from a recording. The guide to keeping up the practice covers what old students do between courses.

What dhamma.org makes public

Mini-Anapana: a free introductory session

The one guided practice dhamma.org offers everyone is Mini Anapana Meditation, "An Introductory Session by Mr. S.N. Goenka". It is a recording of Goenka introducing Anapana, awareness of the natural breath, which is the first stage of a 10-day course. It is not Vipassana itself. Recordings in dozens of languages are on dhamma.org's resources site, as an introduction followed by a practice session.

The page sets simple conditions for playing it: a quiet room, sitting with a straight back in "complete silence", no other instructions "live or recorded", and "no charge whatsoever". It also notes that people who attend these sessions are not considered old students.

Nepal's centres host the session in Nepali and Newari on np.dhamma.org, as लघु आनापान साधना. The Nepali version has an 18-minute introduction by Goenka and a 10-minute practice session, and the page suggests using the practice session for regular practice.

Talks, documentaries and apps

dhamma.org's resources site streams talks by Goenka, lecture series and introductory documentaries about courses, prisons and children's courses. The dhamma.org mobile app carries the same material and lets you search for and apply to courses. A separate app, Anapana for Young People, is for children and teenagers who have learned Anapana on a course, to help them keep up 10 minutes of practice in the morning and 10 in the evening. To tell these from look-alike apps and accounts, see official Vipassana websites, apps and social media.

The evening discourses

On a 10-day course, each evening includes a recorded talk by Goenka explaining the theory behind the day's practice. These discourses are on the same resources site, but its introduction says it "intends to provide Old Students a resource". Its copyright notice says access is "limited to the Old Students of this tradition" and asks listeners not to copy or share the recordings or use them to teach. The talks explain; the meditation instructions themselves are given on the course.

Behind the old-student login

Students who have completed a 10-day course can ask dhamma.org for the old-student login, by sending the name of their last course's teacher, its approximate month and year, and its country. The old-student section of the app includes one-hour group sitting recordings "in 25+ different languages", further discourses and chanting, and a logbook for daily sittings that stays on your device.

Why unofficial recordings are discouraged

Recordings described as "1 hour Vipassana" or a guided Goenka session circulate on video sites. dhamma.org does not publish guided Vipassana instructions for the public, so none of these is an official session of Goenka's tradition, and this site does not link to them.

The tradition gives three reasons. First, the Code of Discipline asks students to meditate "exactly as the teacher asks, without ignoring any part of the instructions, nor adding anything to them". Second, the resources site's notice asks that its recordings not be used "to teach the Vipassana technique" except by Goenka's assistant teachers. Third, a course keeps a teacher on hand: students can see the teacher privately at midday and ask questions in the evening. Intensive practice can bring up difficult experiences, as the article on difficult experiences on meditation retreats describes, and a teacher is part of how a course handles them.

What other traditions offer online

Other traditions take a different view, and teach meditation openly in talks, books and online programmes.

• Insight Meditation Society (Massachusetts) runs online programmes and an on-demand video library through its IMS Online Learning Center. Every online programme has several fee levels, including a scholarship rate you can choose yourself. IMS says "free programs are offered regularly", and it offers no-fee enrolment to people who ask for it.
• Spirit Rock (California) holds weekly drop-in groups, mostly online, with meditation and a Dharma talk. They are "offered by donation" on a sliding scale, and "no one is turned away for lack of funds". The Monday evening group, begun by Jack Kornfield in 1986, now meets online with occasional in-person evenings.
• Dharma Seed is a non-profit archive that "freely shares recordings of teachers inspired by early Buddhism". It holds "over 45,000 talks and guided meditations", largely from the Western insight meditation tradition taught at IMS, Spirit Rock, Gaia House and New York Insight.

These are teachers in the lineages described under insight meditation in the West. In the Mahasi tradition, Mahasi Sayadaw's own basic instructions are published in book form, and centres in his tradition teach them on retreat.

Breath awareness you can start today

You do not need a course to sit quietly with the breath. Spirit Rock publishes a short introduction by Jack Kornfield and Gil Fronsdal. In summary:

1. Choose a quiet time and place. Sit on a cushion or chair, "erect yet relaxed", and close your eyes gently.
2. Feel the breath wherever you notice it: coolness or tingling at the nose, or the rise and fall of the chest or abdomen. In their words, "let the breath breathe itself" in any rhythm.
3. When your attention is carried away by a thought, sound or feeling, softly name it ("planning", "remembering"), let it pass and return to the breath.
4. After 20 or 30 minutes, open your eyes and look around before getting up.

They suggest doing this every day. If you are drawn to Goenka's tradition, the Mini-Anapana practice recording (10 minutes in the Nepali version) gives breath awareness in that tradition's own words. Either way, this is breath awareness, a foundation. For more, see how to start Vipassana meditation.

A timer for silent sitting

Once you know what you are doing, you may prefer silence to a voice. This site's meditation timer rings a bell to start and end a sitting, with optional interval bells, and gives no instructions. Your settings stay on your device.

When you are ready to learn Vipassana itself, the centres directory lists where courses are held, and the 10-day course, day by day explains what to expect.