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Message from Cheri - December 2006
Gasshō, As another year draws to a close I want to take this opportunity to
If you visit our monthly accomplishments lists, you know that 2006 has been a very busy year for us. At the Monastery we have focused on sustainability, including up-grading our power system and moving our offices from town to the property; continued to offer a full schedule of workshops and retreats; and launched the Reflective Listening Buddies program. We’ve traveled around the country offering additional workshops and retreats and made two significant trips to Zambia to further projects there. In January we will drill the first well to provide clean water in the Kantolomba compound. In April we will break ground on the Community Center that will house a kitchen to expand the lunch program, the first medical clinic in the area, and additional classrooms. These ambitious goals are in place thanks to the groundwork done in our 2006 visits. Keep It Simple has expanded; the weekly radio show, the peace quotes, and peace stories continue; and we’ve worked hard to make our website more accessible and useful. This we have been able to accomplish despite a dwindling monk population—due to illness and injury—thanks to a small, extremely dedicated group of “volunteer monks” living in close proximity to the Monastery and the Zen Center in Palo Alto. And, of course, thanks to the support, assistance, and encouragement of Sangha around the world. In 2005, we did our first Best Year Yet program (join us for our annual workshop in Palo Alto January 6) for Living Compassion and we all happily credit that process, under the guidance of our coach, Jan Letendre, with giving us the structural focus that has enabled us to accomplish what we have. We were always, as a group, dedicated, sincere, hard working, and able to pay very close attention, but we lacked the organizational skills to turn those traits and qualities into accomplishments. With the help of Best Year Yet we have not only, as Bob our IT man says, “earned the right to call ourselves an organization,” we have learned to enjoy working together in a way we could not have imagined when we began. There’s a saying, “nothing succeeds like success,” and we are finding that to be true. The more we do, the more there is to do. I guess that’s always the case, but I don’t mean it in the sense of an endless to-do list—though goodness knows we, like most folks, have some of those. I mean it in the sense of opportunities opening up. People hear about our practice and the ways the practice is manifesting in the world and they offer us more opportunities to manifest! It’s wonderful, it’s exciting, and at a certain point it becomes more than a person can do. We run out of hours in the days. This brings us to our new approach for 2007. Giving up our hope of being all things to all people all the time, we are going to alter two aspects of practice. 1) We are limiting the times the Monastery is open to short-term retreatants, and 2) we are changing our prices. For many years now the practice has been able to stay afloat financially primarily through offering workshops and retreats at a non-stop pace. Retreats were held back-to-back; often we were facilitating workshops in several places on the same day or weekend. This in addition to maintaining the Monastery property and doing all the daily activities such as shopping, cooking, cleaning, answering phones, going to the bank and post office, and the myriad tasks involved in keeping daily life together. The result is a tired—though happy—group of monks. Our aim in increasing prices for workshops and retreats is to allow us to offer fewer retreats and workshops while continuing to generate the income we need to remain financially viable. We have resisted charging more for years, even as our pricing fell far below what similar organizations were charging for comparable programs. Fewer retreats and workshops means a lighter schedule for over-worked monks and allows them the time they need to do all those other tasks. In 2007, we will begin what we’re calling the “Deepening Practice Program.” (Keep in mind our schedule for 2007 is still being fine-tuned. Please don’t take what I’m saying here as the final word.) Twice a year, probably in May and November, we will open up the Monastery for short-term practice periods. Rather than having people come at any time throughout the year to live as monks and follow the monks’ schedule, retreatants will train in the five process that are the foundation of our awareness practice: beliefs and assumptions; projection; aspects of the personality; disidentification; and centering; as well as attention and awareness, mindfulness, working meditation, reflective listening, and process mapping. In the past when people have come to live at the Monastery there was no charge for doing so. Beginning in 2007, there will be a charge for these programs. In addition to those two periods of formal training we will schedule regular times for workshops and sitting practice—weekends as well as our usual multi-day format. These we will endeavor to post far enough in advance that you will be able to plan your Monastery visits easily. And, speaking of Monastery visits, we are hoping you will put two Sangha dates on your calendar right now: May 17 will be the Annual Celebration (during which we celebrate our practice and all the ways it manifests around the world—and ask for your continuing financial support), and September 8, the Sixth Annual Golden Gate Bridge Walk for the work in Africa. If you can attend only one Sangha gathering in the year, please pick one of those. If you can attend both, well, then, we will be very glad indeed. Dag Hammarskjöld said, “For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.” He is also credited with many other wonderful quotes, all apparently speaking to/of/for our practice. “It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.” “Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away.” ”Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.” “Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.” “Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.” “Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.” As a practice, as a Sangha, we did not play it safe in 2006. We did not run away from the challenges and opportunities life brought us. We did not give in and, in fact, found new exercises for muscles we didn’t know we had! While being exactly where we are, we continue to stay attentive to where we’re heading, doing our best to live, now, the future we want. We have achieved and accomplished beyond our wildest dreams and have proved that all is possible. And throughout we have endeavored to care for ourselves and one another with all the kindness and compassion we can muster. Me, sitting here writing this; you, sitting there, reading this; we, us, next door or across the world, together, Sangha. I feel as Dag did. For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes! In lovingkindness and deep gasshō,
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