|
Growing Buddhist Sangha seeks
a new home
written by Jen Reeder
 |
| Members of the Durango
Sangha gather for meditation Monday. Over the last
few years, the Sangha, or meditation “community,”
has grown from 15 to 20 people per meeting to over
50, forcing the group to look for a larger, permanent
meeting place./Photo by Ben Eng |
Often, in times of stress, people seek spiritual
solace – hence the saying, “There are no atheists
in foxholes.” And with so much concern about war
in the Middle East, many Durangoans are finding comfort
in religion, including Buddhism.
Valeta Bruce, a leader with the Durango Sangha, a local
Buddhist meditation group, said since the war began, there
has been a surge of local interest in Buddhism. The Sangha’s
retreats have been filled with people who feel “choices
were made in their name that they didn’t approve
of or agree with,” she said. Whereas a few years
ago meditation groups saw 15 to 20 people, as many as
50 people now attend, she said.
 Marlena
deCarion, who has been involved with the Durango Sangha
since she moved here from Moab a year ago, said she believes
the teachings of Buddhism speak to the current global
situation, thus the rise in interest.
“Because I think Buddhism 85 has such profound
teachings for the issues of our time and the conflicts
that we face, we’re seeing the rising of it in Durango
– a huge increased interest,” deCarion said.
And if the trend continues, as Bruce and deCarion believe
it will, the Sangha will soon need a new – and permanent
– home. Currently, the group holds its biweekly
meditations in a roughly 400-square-foot rented space
in the Rocky Mountain Retreat Center, on East Third Avenue.
“We’re running out of room,” said deCarion.
As a result, participants at the Durango Sangha have
started a fund-raising campaign to buy a space of their
own. The new place ideally would allow for more frequent
retreats and meditations, as well as someone to live on
site, so people could stop in and meditate whenever they
wished, Bruce said.
The first step in the fund-raising will be a “Sit-a-Thon”
this Sunday, Sept. 28, where community members will be
sponsored to meditate at a daylong retreat in the Smiley
Building. The goal is to raise $20,000 to get the house
hunt started.
The Durango Sangha began in the early 1990s when several
locals decided to “sit” together. “Sangha”
is a Pali word spoken by Buddha more than 2,500 years
ago to refer to “community or interbeingness,”
Bruce said.
She said the Durango Sangha is open to all lineages of
Buddhism - and all people – but is guided by the
Vipassana tradition of Theravada Buddhism. Two main aspects
of the tradition are insight and compassion, she said.
In addition to offering biweekly group meditations, multiday
retreats and meditation classes, the Durango Sangha also
brings in outside Buddhist teachers, including the popular
ZaChoeje Rinpoche, a Tibetan monk who now lives in Arizona.
Bruce said that retreats and the weekly meditations are
lead by dharma (“teaching”) leaders like her,
who undergo 2BD years of training in Buddhist teachings
to gain insight into issues such as racism, ageism, classism
and same-sex relationships.
DeCarion said it is important that teachers address such
current issues so they can provide pertinent guidance.
“We’re not just sitting and navel gazing,”
she said.
 |
| The Durango Sangha now
holds its regular meditations at the Rocky Mountain
Retreat Center on East Third Avenue. However, the
group has outgrown the space it rents there, and a
fund-raising campaign to find a new home is under
way./Photo by Ben Eng. |
Bruce said Sangha leaders try to help participants develop
skills to deal with their experiences in a “nonviolent
way that still allows assertion and effectiveness.”
Heidi Timm, who will participate in the Sit-a-Thon, said
having a dedicated space to meditate is important to her.
“I would love to know if I was really stressed
out I could go into the space and sit,” she said.
Timm said she has been involved in different Buddhist
sanghas since 1982 and joined the Durango Sangha when
she moved here three years ago.
“One of the first things I did was look for a spiritual
community, so I was really happy to learn there was a
Buddhist sangha 85 a community with like-minded people,”
she said.
A strength of the Durango Sangha is that it joins people
of different Buddhist traditions, as well as religions,
Timm said. In larger cities, they would probably be separate,
but the Durango Sangha meditation groups are “inclusive,”
she said.
“It’s open to all people,” Timm said.
“They don’t have to leave their spiritual
tradition to do it.”
Another participant, Randi Schweitz, also plans to participate
in the Sit-a-Thon because she feels a dedicated space
for the Sangha would be good for families like hers.
“I think that one of the pluses of an expanded
space is that families and kids could be involved,”
Schweitz said. “There’s all kinds of activities
kids can get involved in without meditating.”
She said it would be great to do “something special”
for teen-agers, like forming a peer meditation group with
a younger teacher.
But ultimately, she said the new space would allow for
the increased numbers of participants to continue learning
about meditation and offer peace in today’s hectic
lifestyle.
“It’s a special place where people can speak
honestly from the heart,” she said.
Sit-a-Thon planners like deCarion said that although
people can help by sponsoring people like Timm and Schweitz,
general donations to the Durango Sangha’s Site Committee
also are welcome. She said the biggest challenge will
be the high price of real estate, but that Sangha supporters
are staying positive.
“That’s just the reality,” she said.
“But we hope to see possibility, not limitation,
there because the lineage of Buddhist generosity is so
deep and so vast that anything can happen.”
|
