Tarpa’s Mission

Tarpa exists to give anyone, regardless of background or belief, access to something genuinely hard to find: a complete, rigorous, secular education in meditation as a contemplative scientific method for investigating and improving human experience.

Toward this end, Tarpa created the Palace of Learning—a free, self-paced academic program for adult learners based upon three courses that Dr. Gregory Seton (DPhil, Oxford) developed and teaches at Dartmouth College. The Dartmouth courses explore different Buddhist and Western theoretical frameworks for meditation along with an applied learning component, in which students learn and experiment with the different secular methods connected with each framework. The Palace of Learning replicates these courses for the general public but weaves them together into a single comprehensive curriculum with an online theoretical component and an in-person applied component involving immersive experiential learning at its meditation laboratories. The Palace curriculum has multiple levels and different entry points to meet all students where they are—whether they come with no background or years of experience. Its approach is academic and evidence-based, not religious. Students are never asked to accept or believe anything. They are trained to think critically and reach their own conclusions—and to refine and build on them through direct observation and experimentation.

Tarpa’s Palace of Learning provides an important public service that does not exist in the world today. Religious institutions teach meditation theory and practice but require faith commitments that exclude many students. Academic programs in Buddhist studies provide intellectual rigor for those who can enroll in a university but typically offer no training in the methodology itself. Contemporary mindfulness programs present a simplified and decontextualized version of the methodology that stops short of what serious investigation requires. None provides a complete, publicly accessible, secular education in the full methodology for the betterment of society. Tarpa does.

Its educational program produces people who genuinely understand their own experience, change the patterns that cause unnecessary suffering, and bring what they learn back to the people and communities around them.