dhamma.org

I am an old student of this tradition, not a teacher and not a representative of it. I have sat six 10-day courses across three of the centers below and used dhamma.org and its subdomains for every application, every code of discipline read-through, and a lot of schedule refreshing. The orientation below is what I wish someone had handed me the first time I landed on the home page.

The pattern most articles miss: per-center subdomains

dhamma.org is not a single site. The shared front door at www.dhamma.org is the global view. Every individual meditation center sits on its own subdomain, and the subdomain matches the center's Pali name. The local team runs the content on that subdomain (directions, accommodations, dietary notes, contact, photos), while the global team handles the course search and the application flow. The subdomain naming convention is described by the dhamma.org platform team at ivta.dhamma.org.

The three centers I have used, in California

These are the three I have personally sat or sat at; my first course was actually at CYO, a rented camp in Marin that hosts the Bay-Area residential courses (CYO is not itself a dhamma.org subdomain, it appears in the course search as a non-center location).

Outside California, the same pattern

The same convention holds worldwide. A few examples I have looked at while comparing course dates abroad:

The full list of subdomains lives in the global location directory at dhamma.org/en/locations/directory. If a center has a website, it is on dhamma.org. If it is on a different domain with the same iconography, it is not part of the network.

The other domains a first-time visitor hits

dhamma.org sits in a small constellation of related domains. The first time I looked at long courses I bounced between three of these and got confused about which was the canonical schedule. They have distinct roles.

From dhamma.org to a confirmed seat

The application flow is one of the few parts of the site that actually changes when you cross between the global and the local subdomain. The form lives at dhamma.org, then forwards to a per-center registrar (a volunteer at the center you picked). Replies come from a center-named email, not from a generic dhamma.org address.

On a popular center in a popular month (Dhamma Maṇḍa in spring or fall, for example), the window between a date opening for applications and the men's or women's side filling is often a few hours. That is a logistical observation, not a complaint; the centers are run on donations and on student labor and they are full.

What is intentionally not on dhamma.org

If you scroll the site looking for a how-to-meditate page, a guided audio, or a sensation reference, you will not find one. That is by design. The technique in this tradition is reserved for in-person transmission inside the 10-day course, by an authorized assistant teacher. The website handles everything around the cushion: what a course is, the Code of Discipline, the daily timetable, the locations, the application form, and the history. It does not handle the cushion itself.

For anything operational about the practice, the canonical answer is dhamma.org/en/about/code and an authorized assistant teacher at a course. This site does not substitute for either.

What this site is, and how it sits next to dhamma.org

vipassana.cool is not affiliated with dhamma.org or with the tradition. I built it as an old student who kept watching practices (mine and others) thin out a few weeks after a course ended, and who wanted a peer-run resource for the part dhamma.org does not cover: the daily life of a practice once you are home and the structure is gone. The practice-buddy matching pairs two meditators for a shared morning sit over video so neither person is the only one defending the time. It is free and peer to peer, not a course.