Sacramento Dharma Center

The Sacramento Dharma Center Board held its first quarterly meeting with representatives of the Boards of our three founding – and Sustaining Sanghas – Valley Streams Zen Sangha, Sacramento Insight Meditation and Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group. The intention to have more opportunities for informal conversations about what we are doing, and what questions and reflections the individual Sanghas have, was gratefully received! And inspired a warm and fruitful discussion with everyone expressing their sense of the journey we are on together.

It was clear that our coming together in the creation of a dharma center will be potentiated by meetings of this kind. The Board
has felt that our carefully crafted mission statement –The Sacramento Dharma Center’s mission is to create and sustain a sanctuary for meditation and Buddha’s teachings, welcoming everyone who seeks to end suffering and live in harmony – was enough to communicate what we are putting our energies toward. In the conversation at the quarterly meeting it became clear that that there has been some confusion about the way this would manifest beyond ‘having a building’, and what the implications are for the individual Sanghas’ programs and participation.

At our upcoming Board meeting we will consider this need for clarification of the internal structure we are creating while we search for a physical structure to be our shared sanctuary, a home for each Sangha to continue practicing and offering programs within their own tradition. We’ve been evolving and with the caring input from meetings like this we will continue to evolve as a worthwhile home for the Dharma.

Also, check www.sacdharma.org/can-you-help-us-reach-our-goal. We are happy to report that, though we didn’t reach our end of June goal of 100 Sustaining Circle members, we now have 70 members. And through their generosity we did meet the pledged monthly income level we hoped for, which is $2,500! A great success! This is such encouraging momentum to help us reach our goal of 120 Circle members by the end of 2015, with pledged monthly income of approximately $3,600. We invite you to join in! You can do so here: by starting monthly donations, or pledging to donate when we find our home!

We continue to be grateful for your enthusiastic response to our Sustaining Circle appeal. We now have 80 Sustaining Circle monthly donors pledge to donate $2,812 a month. This is encouraging momentum to help us reach our goal of 120 Sustaining Circle members, with pledged monthly income of approximately $3,600. We invite you to join in!

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There are two ways to join in and support the dream:

You can begin donating monthly, automatically right here on our website, or you can mail us a check each month. Better yet, have your bank mail the check, they do it for free! This helps us finance our search for a building, as well as increase our Capital fund and demonstrate our credit worthiness!

Or you can pledge to donate monthly when we locate our home! In this way you help us plan for the future; we will know what we can afford and that we will have stable funding for ongoing expenses. Every monthly donation from you reduces the amount the Dharma Center will need to charge the Sustaining Sanghas.

Begin your monthly pledge here now!

If you would rather donate by check, or pledge to begin donating at a future date: please print, complete, and mail the  Sustaining Circle pledge card found here  (mailing address on the card).

Most of you are probably familiar with the realities of looking for a home to buy or lease, it can take a while and many apparent opportunities fall through for any number of reasons beyond your control. And you keep looking. So it is for us. It looks like, despite our best efforts at making a convincing case for ourselves, our attempt to purchase the Lion’s Club Foundation’s property on 24^th St. isn’t going to come to fruition. It is now in escrow with another party. Our intention to find a full time home for the Dharma is unwavering. Undaunted we continue to search, and we will pursue multiple avenues to reach our goal.

Thanks to the generosity of a Sangha volunteer on our building committee, we have a list of properties around the area which already have an assembly permit, a factor that would facilitate any negotiations with a property’s owner. We have started looking at these properties to see which ones might be suitable for pursuing. As with everything that we do as an organization, we are looking at this as an opportunity to practice the Buddha’s teaching, being mindful of our tendencies to grasp or be attached to the results we wish for. And we are mindful of the patience this process asks of you, and have enormous gratitude for that.

Meanwhile! We are also continuing to pursue growing our Sustaining Circle of monthly donors. We are only 34 people short of our end-of-June goal of having 100 people already donating, or pledging to donate, monthly, at any amount, to establish our credit worthiness to potential sellers, lenders, or landlords. There is more information and there are pledge cards at https://sacdharma.org/contribute. If you want to talk with someone please call SDC Board Member Linda Dekker at 501-9446. She’s more than happy to help!

We hope you’ll consider this way of joining us in the creation of a full time home for your practice, your sangha’s programs, and our Sacramento community’s access to the wisdom and compassion of the Dharma.

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Our June 13th For the Love of the Dharma Party was a huge success! Thank you to all who attended, and to those who helped make it happen.  It was fantastic to see so many people coming together to support the vision of a combined dedicated practice space for our three Sanghas – Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group, Sacramento Insight Meditation and Valley Streams Zen Sangha. On June 13th 2014 his Holiness the Dalai Lama said “In the 21st century…We Buddhist brothers and sisters must have closer contact and cultivate mutual understanding. This will benefit us as individuals, will help preserve and spread the Dharma, and will be an example of religious harmony for the world.” It is truly exciting to see that vision being enacted right here in our city!!

Patience and Preparation   

Bringing everyone up to date with our property search, we told the guests that we still don’t know to whom the Lions will sell their building. All we know is that there is another party who has expressed interest. Susan Orr, board president, reminded attendees that all we can control are our own actions, and not the actions of other groups looking for space, nor the actions of the seller. So we are doing our best to make the strongest offer possible, to be patient, and also to keep our options open. Should the Lions sell to a different group, we don’t want to be caught on our heels so to speak. That is why we are already considering how to be proactive in looking at alternatives. One guest at the party said she has full faith that a location for the Center will arise, even if it’s not this one. We invite you all to join us in seeing this way! In the meantime we are continuing important groundwork though our committees that helps us be more prepared when we do find our new home. An example of that is refining our Conflict Transformation procedures. This is so that when conflict inevitably arises once we are sharing a space – whether between the Sanghas, between a Sangha and the SDC, or between us and our neighbors – we are prepared to learn from it and find harmony in going forward.

Ways to help

At the party we received much-needed monetary support. No matter which way this deal goes, there will be further expenses, and it helps for our financial position to be stronger. We have a thermometer graphic here www.sacdharma.org that shows our progress toward our goal of having 100  Sustaining Circle monthly donors by the end of June. It is so heartening to see the support coming in. Another way that a couple of people can actively support the creation of the Dharma Center is by filling vacancies on our board of directors. If that is a way you might be willing to help, then please email us from our contact page. You will find that it is a way to practice the principles that we learn in our Dharma studies in a conducive setting! Lastly, we are looking at ways that we can utilize volunteers, so please contact us if that is something you are interested in.

 

We are delighted to report that in a few short weeks we have more than doubled the number of monthly contributing supporters or ‘Sustaining Circle members’. Your response to our Sustaining Circle campaign has been wonderful, and we are so grateful to our community.

Today we have 65 Circle members and the monthly income has also more than doubled to $2,340.  Please take a look at our ‘thermometer’ where you can track our progress toward our goal of 100 Circle members by the end of June. Help us reach that goal by joining the Sustaining Circle, demonstrating your support for the Dharma Center vision, with a pledge of whatever you can afford, $10, $25, $50 per month or more. You can sign up now here!