I intend to open a dharma center for practitioners where they may come and do long-term retreats, without having to worry about finances, where their basic needs are taken care of, so that we may have many great practitioners in the world.
I feel there is a great dearth of dharma centers that truly provide for yogis.
There are monasteries, where you may come and work and “earn your keep”, which usually means working a completely unfair amount hours uncompensated. But don’t worry, it comes with free kool-aid.
There are donation based retreats, but these are for short periods.
There are even some places where one can come and stay indefinitely and practice according to a particular tradition.
But, in fact, all of these pale in comparison to true solitude. That is because they are containers which require and demand an a priori commitment to a particular conslusion. They implicitly demand that you credo the beliefs of that tradition. They are not laboratories for the discovery and creation of new dharmas.
And, in fact, as much as I may tend to consider myself generally within the Buddhist tradition, that’s only really because I have found the Buddhadharma to be the most accurate and helpful descriptor of human mystical experience.
My concern is not necessarily with the flourishing of Buddhism, but rather my commitment is to the flourishing of the human contemplative endeavor. I see Shakyamuni and the tradition which sprouts, many-branched, from him to be an important part of the human contemplative endeavor, but it is contextualized within the wider tapestry of human contemplative praxis and mysticism.
To make an analogy, I would say I don’t care much about chinese medicine, but rather human medicine, while still acknowledging the chinese medical tradition with tremendous appreciation and validating its theories in my experience. In the same way, my commitment is not to Buddhism, per se, but I have a great appreciation for it, and simplistically, I find it correct in relation to my mystical and meditative experience.
But it still remains the case that my primary commitment is to the human mystical and contemplative endeavor, and therefore the dharma center I will establish will be precisely for that.
A laboratory, where there is no demand placed towards a certain credo or a priori conclusion. No “this is what awakening will look like”, no “these beliefs are shaping your practice, and determining the outcome”, actually a container of solitude, where yogis are provided for without worry, where they may practice as long as they need, and come up with whatever novel or traditional conclusion they may. It will be a place for the human mystical and contemplative endeavor to flourish. To create and build new saints, new Buddhas.