Claymont Meditation Center's 'noble silence' aims to help calm your mind

It’s 4 a.m. when the first bell rings at Dhamma Pubbananda, the Mid-Atlantic Vipassana Meditation Center. It’s a place in the middle of Claymont that you probably have never heard of.

Maybe because few participants are local but instead are from the region, the nation and the world.

Maybe because its Green Street property looks much like it did for decades as a children’s home.

Maybe because most of the course occurs in silence. “Noble silence,” a sign notes, encompassing silence of body, speech and mind, in any form — including writing, gestures and even eye contact.

“It’s meant for people looking for a way to understand how their mind works,” said Doug Smith, the center’s manager. After the course, “You’ll find that your mind is a lot calmer and more balanced.”

Or maybe meditators will find more positivity, energy, confidence, courage, efficiency and purification of the mind, students say in an explanatory organization video posted on YouTube.

26 restaurants ordered to stop serving food so far in 2018

“It’s an amazing tool for self-awareness and emotional intelligence,” said Delawarean Maria D’Souza, a lifelong practicing Catholic and geriatrician who has taken multiple vipassana classes after meeting her now-husband, Ryan Shelton, who had moved to Delaware to help the center thrive.

Vipassana dates to India 2,500 years ago as “a universal remedy for universal ills, an art of living” rediscovered by Gotama Buddha, in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin and taught by S.N. Goenka. The first U.S. center opened in 1982. Claymont is the first suburban center and 10th in North America.

It’s about how to “observe things in us as we really are. It’s nonsectarian and universal,” said Barry Lapping, who has been practicing vipassana for 47 years and oversees teaching at the Claymont center.

“We are slaves to our mental conditioning,” he said. “We make our misery. We can make our own happiness.”

“It’s based on the teachings of the Buddha but it’s designed for all,” said Shelton, an old student, a term for someone who’s taken a standard 10-day session. (He’s also a Padua teacher). “People let go of their preconceived rituals for 10 days. After that, they can decide what to keep and what to let go.”

The Claymont center was created by participants who had been shuttling around rented spaces in the Washington, D.C., area. They paid $700,000 for five buildings, vandalized during years of non-use, on 4 acres within a fence and 10 more acres beyond. The Dhamma Pubbananda is financially stable, Shelton said.

It opened in 2014, serving 19 students at a time in single-gender classes. It expanded in 2017 to 60 students, in dual-gender classes, helped out by 12 old students. Plans call for rehabbing a fourth building to ease crowded accommodations and offering advanced courses with individual meditation cells.

Former Newark mayor cleans Main Street every day

Ten-day courses are long enough to generate benefits, short enough to fit into hectic lives. There is no cost for the course, nor for room and board. All expenses globally are paid forward by old students.

“Part of the purity of the technique is that it is a gift,” Shelton said. “The foundation is generosity.”

Teachers aren’t paid, either. Nor are old students who prepare meals and perform maintenance. “All they get is the satisfaction of seeing people’s happiness,” an organization FAQ says.

“We would never call it a job,” Shelton said. “We call it service. You can ask for a stipend, but even that is needs-based.”

The course is intense. A standard day starts with the wakeup bell at 4 a.m. and ends with lights out at 9:30 p.m. In between are 10 hours of meditation, meal breaks, a videotaped lecture by Goenka and brief time with on-site teachers, with talking allowed.

Typical questions for first-timers, according to Lapping: “Can you feel the breath coming in and going out? When your mind wanders, can you bring it back quickly, say within five minutes?” And for old students: “Are you able to maintain your awareness of your breath for a minute?”

The emphasis on silence — which includes mowing the lawn only between courses — means “you’re fully engaged in what you’re doing,” Shelton said. Outside contact is out. Fencing excludes potential distractions. Dark blue curtains keep the main meditation hall dim.

Participants are asked during the course to abstain from killing any being including bugs, stealing, sexual activity, telling lies and intoxicants. Old students helping out or returning for another course are also asked to abstain from eating after midday, sensual entertainment, bodily decorations and high or luxurious beds.

To make following that code of conduct easier, males and female use separate dining rooms, sleeping quarters, entrances to the main meditation hall and outdoor areas on campus.

The list of don’ts in the code of discipline includes “all forms of prayer, worship or religious ceremony — fasting, burning incense, counting beads, reciting mantras, singing and dance"; yoga and jogging; crystals and talismans; tobacco and outside food (meals are vegetarian, using daily ethnic themes, with the American meal including mac 'n' cheese); “tight, transparent, revealing or otherwise striking clothing"; music, reading and writing (including taking notes); and all outside contact.

Such limits help participants focus on lessons and also help ensure those going are committed to the program. Registration is first-come, first-served and all courses in Claymont have wait lists.

Shelton said multiple courses helped him “improve my family relationships and cope with the up and down challenges of life.” That outcome also led his mother and wife to follow him as students.

“I was inspired by his experience in learning to be a compassionate, humble, loving human,” said D’Souza, adding she was impressed by other practitioners she met.

“Intelligent, warm, normal people.”

Key terms

Terms associated with Dhamma Pubbananda, the Mid-Atlantic Vipassana Meditation Center:

• Dhamma is a path.
• Pubbananda is the joy of the east, according to delaware.dhamma.org.
• In the language of India, in the time of the Buddha, “vipassana is observing things as they actually are, not just as they appear to be,” www.dhamma.org said in reporting on a talk by S.N. Goenka, a key global figure in teaching vipassana for more than 40 years. “Apparent truth has to be penetrated.”
• Foundations of the meditation are sīla, samādhi and paññā, Sanskrit terms that translate to moral conduct, concentration of the mind and the wisdom of insight.

Ken Mammarella is a Wilmington freelance writer.