Why

Setting up and maintaining your own meditative routine is challenging. Dealing with a never-ending stream of thoughts, strong emotions, dry spells, social pressures while you are sitting on your cushion, and also the difficulty of applying the given instructions to your own life’s experiences, can quickly endanger an already fragile daily meditation rhythm. Many practitioners even feel a bit lonely, as their ethical and meditative discipline is not shared or even appreciated by those around them.

This is the reason why the Buddha advised his attendant Ananda, that spiritual friendship is so important. For a fruitful and on-going progress, we need friends to share our joys and challenges, and an experienced guide. Therefore, each year ten yogis will be selected to undertake the year long journey of the Yogi Bootcamp. You are invited to join our growing community of dedicated practitioners.

Who

The Yogi Bootcamp is designed especially for dedicated practitioners who want to develop their meditation practice amid their often hectic daily lives. If you have a good basic understanding of the Dharma and can commit to a rigorous discipline of two hours of daily meditation for the duration of a year, this training may be an ideal opportunity for you. You will need to be able to read English instructions. Due to time restraints only ten practitioners per year can be accepted for the moment.

What

The Yogi Bootcamp runs from September to June the next year. During this period, you will receive bi-weekly written instructions and guided meditations (in English) to guide your practice. Based on your own meditation review notes, you will have an opportunity for a personal interview (by phone) with Ven. Gendun once a week. The progress, challenges and benefits are discussed, and more personal instructions are given, aimed at dealing with your own individual struggles at that moment.

The main objective of the training is to provide you with a comprehensive set of tools to become a self-sustained practitioner and to help you settle in and maintain a daily meditation rhythm. The training will include the development of shamatha and vipassana, as well as the various motivations that sustain practice such as:

the brahmaviharas (equanimity, joy, love, and compassion),
definite emergence (the wish for freedom of samsara),
bodhicitta (the wish to become a buddha for the welfare of all sentient beings.

At the end of the year, you will join the alumni community which has steadily grown over the past three years. The people in the community will be given lifelong meditative support (as this is an on-going program) by receiving instructions and having personal interviews, although obviously less frequent.

Contribution through scientific collaboration

The training is offered for free, although donations to support The Buddha Project are always more than welcome. This project is not only focused on supporting practitioners in their meditative progress. It is also a research project, aimed at proving the benefits of sustained practice on personal wellbeing, worldview, and skillful meaning formation. You are kindly requested to participate in this scientific research project. This participation consists mainly of interviews and filling out written questionnaires.

Application and questions

Currently the waiting list is two years. When there are new opportunities, this will be communicated through the centers participating in the IDMT. For more information you can contact us using the contact form.