The Essence of Freedom Through Education
Most people who try meditation never get the full picture. Tarpa teaches the whole thing.
Tarpa is a secular educational nonprofit whose Palace of Learning provides a complete, rigorous education in meditation as a contemplative scientific method—a learnable approach to investigating your own experience, understanding what drives it, and developing the clarity and skill to change it. The curriculum is based upon courses Dr. Gregory Seton (DPhil, Oxford) developed and teaches at Dartmouth College. It is free and open to all. No religious commitments, no fees, and no prerequisites required.
The Palace of Learning
The Palace of Learning is a free, self-paced online curriculum organized into five progressive floors—exploring different frameworks of meditation theory and practice—with each level designed so you can test the ideas through your own direct experience, not just read about them. The Foundation and First Floor are available now; the Second Floor launches July 2026.
For students who want to go further, each floor connects to a study intensive at Tarpa’s meditation laboratories in Vershire, Vermont—a controlled environment for immersive experiential learning, where the methodology is investigated directly under Dr. Seton’s instruction.
The approach throughout is academic and evidence-based, not religious. You are never asked to accept or believe anything. You are trained to think critically and reach your own conclusions.
What Makes Tarpa Different
Some of this course material can be found in other places, but nowhere is it organized in a systematic, clear, evidence-based, and secular manner. Religious institutions require faith and teach only their own traditional perspectives. University Buddhist Studies programs focus mainly on history and philosophy, and offer no instruction in meditation theory or practice. Contemporary mindfulness presents a simplified version of practice without sufficient context to make it useful beyond a limited scope. Tarpa’s curriculum draws on the best of all three while providing what each leaves out.
Meet the Instructor
Dr. Gregory Seton is a Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College with a DPhil in Buddhist Studies from Oxford University. He has taught Buddhist meditation theory and practice at Dartmouth since 2016, and brings 37 years of personal contemplative study to Tarpa's curriculum. What he offers is the combination that makes this curriculum distinctive: the analytical precision of rigorous scholarship, the methodological depth of serious long-term practice, and the commitment to making genuine investigation possible for any learner regardless of background. Full Credentials
Ready to Begin?
Browse Our Curriculum – Explore the Palace of Learning, free and open to all
Educational Approach – How Tarpa's scientific method framework works
Meditation Laboratories – Immersive study with direct instruction in Vermont
About Tarpa – Mission, approach, and academic foundation
FAQs – Common questions answered
The Palace of Learning, a progressive course in meditation theory and practice