Selfish Selfless Server
A first-time server at a Vipassana centre shares what serving a course might look like and why you may or may not choose to give it a go
Who takes nearly two weeks off to cook, clean, and work for 50 non-paying visitors. For free?
Vipassana meditators.
Vipassana meditation centres and those working there aim to create an environment in which meditators — called ‘students’ — can best learn and benefit from the technique, removed from the distractions of everyday life. Hundreds of centres around the world operating only by donations of money, time, and the energy of people who have sat at least one course, are evidence of the benefits they have gained from the experience that they want to share.
There are numerous reasons why people may choose to serve on a Vipassana course and many other reasons why it might not work out. You may want to refresh yourself on the Vipassana technique but serving might not allow you to reach such deep meditative states as when you sit a course. Serving can help you learn how to be selfish in the service of others but you might take time off work to serve at a centre then learn that what you really needed was real time off. Serving offers excellent training in integrating meditation into your everyday life though you may have to do tasks you’d prefer not to. Finally, serving on a course can lead to doorways you might not yet know about…. let’s explore.
What can you expect from serving on a Vipassana course?
Being a student or serving on a Vipassana course gives you intensive practice in the company of others in an optimal environment. Whether a server has chosen to work for part or all of the course, they are generally expected to join 1-hour group meditation sittings three times daily: 8–9am, 2:30–3:30, and 6–7pm. Servers can eat three meals a days. Whereas students are required to keep noble silence throughout the duration of the course, servers are expected to keep noble speech, speaking as necessary to complete the work — a rule open to diverse interpretation. While the code of discipline, timetable, and teaching are the same at all of the 160+ Vipassana centres around the world, one should avoid setting hopes or outcomes from being either a student or serving on a course. Let nature decide that for you.
Servers can be occupied with working and meditating from 4am to after 9pm. For freshly made healthy wholesome vegetarian eating, there are simple recipes written for people with no kitchen experience. There are kilograms of vegetables to be chopped, grated, sliced, peeled and made into curries, stews, with lentils, beans, rice, fresh salads and dressings. People working in the kitchen have to get meals out on time for students, make sure everything that should be in the dining hall is there, serve meals to the Assistant Teachers and prepare what you can for the next day. After the students have eaten, servers take their meals then try to quickly tidy up enough before the 1-hour group sitting. Besides being in the kitchen, there are all sorts of jobs you could be doing, from cleaning communal areas and toilets to being course manager directly helping students and the Assistant Teacher. Remember, you are training to see reality as it is, not as one would like it to be. You can expect that reality will present any number of tasks for you to complete in the present moment.
Are you heading the right way?
In both meditation and navigation, if you’re even 0.25% out when you set the direction, you will end up in the wrong place. Sitting a course, you take in a lot of information through meditation instructions, evening discourses and the physical experience of your practise. It is unsurprising that some details get missed or misunderstood. Whether or not you’ve practised regularly or consistently, serving on a course refreshes your memory on the technique, its details, and theory. Our Assistant Teacher advised servers that the audio instructions were for the students but since I’d forgotten so much, I chose to follow them. Sitting and listening while the Assistant Teacher answered students’ questions in the evening, I quickly realised that so many of my early struggles and confusions are absolutely normal. Servers too have times to pose questions and can arrange to meet with the teacher privately. Only through serving on the course did I learn that my independent practise had compounded early misunderstandings for three years. Serving, meditating, and speaking with the teacher, I was able to reset my direction and find myself joyfully and lightly walking (sometimes skipping) once again on the right path.
Learn to be selfish in the service of others
How can you help others if you don’t know how to help yourself? Within the first days, servers listen to Goenka’s discourse for servers which emphasises the importance of Dhamma service coming only from a positive place. If you are feeling unwell, tired, or motivated negatively, you will share this with everyone else around you. The servers primary purpose is to serve and to ensure the meditating students are in an ideal environment to commit fully to the practice.
Putting your own health first is an easy concept to understand intellectually yet one of the most difficult to practice. One girl arrived to serve halfway through the course, wanting to reconnect with her meditation practice after sitting her first course last year. But her 18-hour stressful work days had left her utterly exhausted and after hearing the servers’ discourse, she realised she needed real time off. After talking with the teacher, she left the next day. On my first day, I told the kitchen coordinator about my headache so he sent me for a 45-minute break during lunch. I felt guilty that I was resting when I’d come to serve. On days 2 and 3, my mind was saying “I want to be useful” though my body was saying “Rest”. While other servers were joining the 4:30am meditation and asking for time off to meditate more, I was struggling with the minimum three hours meditation a day and wanted more time in bed. My mind was already so noisy, cluttered, and over-thinking and then I sat to meditate wondering if the celery is chopped and who is preparing the stewed fruit. I spoke with the Assistant Teacher about how difficult I was finding it. The teacher told me to take time off outside of the meditation periods for most of day 4 so I slept in and took things easy with a stroll in the garden and some reading. That night, I lay in bed considering leaving, thinking “This course is not right for me, something is wrong, I’ve had this headache since I got here and I’m not helping.” I was so relieved that I’d been given time off but I was also replaying a familiar pattern, feeling I’m letting others down when my body asks to be put first, hoping someone else can make the decision for me. I came to realise that I could not let this busy-bossy untrained mind dictate my body. The next evening, I asked to step back from some of my duties, offering instead to peel vegetables, sweep the floor, and clean the toilets. My meditation practice is not yet at a level where I can combine it well with thinking-work though with repetitive physical hands-work, it’s possible.
While serving, you are learning how to apply Dhamma in day-to-day life. After all, Dhamma is not an escape from daily responsibilities. By learning to act according to Dhamma in dealing with students and situations here in the little world of a meditation course or center, you train yourself to act in the same way in the world outside. Despite the fact that unwanted things keep happening, you practice trying to maintain the balance of your mind, and to generate love and compassion in response. This is the lesson that you are trying to master here. You are a student as much as those who are sitting in the course. https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/dscode
Integrate meditation into daily life
Can you observe your sensations with a balanced mind while extricating a lump of many-peoples’-hair entangled in a smelly gunky lump from the hair-traps in the shower? Will you crave things to be otherwise when you are sweeping up the plate you shattered all over the dining room floor five minutes before everyone arrives? Can you calmly catch an insect scuttling between meditators’ cushions and release it outside without harming it? Keeping silent, how will you tell a student stretching on the floor that she’s blocked the doorway? Can you help enforce the centre’s rules with compassion or might you turn a blind eye? What will you do with a baby bird that appears to have fallen injured out of a tree? Will there be a case or an outbreak of COVID during the course? You cannot know what obstacles might challenge you while you are serving on a course but you will surely notice yourself reacting both with craving and aversion at times. Meditation practice isn’t something exclusive to sitting on a cushion and serving on a course may be one of the best ways to learn this.
Doors open
Serving a course full 10-day course makes you eligible for opportunities to continue developing Vipassana practice in different ways. When you first completed a 10-day course, you gained access to audio and written materials, eligibility to join 3-day courses as well as opportunities to serve on courses, help with the running of the centre in ‘general service periods’ or joining Trust meetings. Centres’ timetables of meals and group sittings remain consistent both during and outside of course times, which means if you are serving at any time, you regularly meditate with others and are able to ask the Assistant Teacher questions. Serving one 10-day course is one of the prerequisites for both serving and sitting on long courses (20 days or more), as well as for those wishing to sit the Satipatthana Sutta courses in which the principal text of Vipassana is systematically explained.
Committing to serve a 10-day course is no easy task and reality may easily kick the best intentions aside. While you are unlikely to go as deep into meditation as sitting the course, serving allows you to reconnect with other meditators and teachers and meditate regularly in a wonderful environment. Learning how to serve without any expectation of anything in return is a noble pursuit, nevertheless limited to one’s own abilities. You cannot know what skills you may learn for the first time or develop but you will surely develop an understanding of what it really means to integrate meditation into life beyond the cushion. Whether or not you are committed to pursuing the Vipassana practice through courses, serving will broaden your understanding of your own meditation practice helping you make unknowns known through your own experience.
