Kat Ehrhorn's blog

The Lotus House is emerging from the mud so sweetly. Helen, Laura and I are tickled as pink as the clay we're mining from the side of the road for this color.

Tired of seeing your man pettered out after builiding your retreat cabin every day?  Build your place yourself and let him put his feet up a spell. Pool party retreat spaces are easy to assemble, with four girls, some umbrella drinks and three weeks. Get in on the bikini crew summer 2010.

Hi again,

With
spring upon us, its time to recruit the Bikini Adobe Crew Summer 2010. Last
year’s crew was successful in producing a thousand blocks and we need to make
that many again for the Peace Shrine.

 

Secondly,
Lotus Houses will need crews four Dakinis in size (Dakas also welcomed) to make
cast adobe and block domes for retreatants and caregivers. In three weeks you
can see one built. Stay longer, see more, build more.

It's really fun and easy to do, and is so satisfying. Consider also how quite uncommon this activity is in our culture to build from mud in this way.

 

Anyone can work with the recycled paper adobe. It’s
lightweight and non-toxic. We’re enjoying an amazing collection of ancient methods
that have housed humans for over four thousand years, made by the village women
and children, the grandmothers throughout semi arid regions of the world. Individual
energy output while making the domes still supports lively conversations, snacks,
dancing, drumming, books, facials and pedicures.
We all have fun and we have energy too for yoga and a good meditation practice.
It’s not hard work at all. But, okay, it does feel great to go to bed early, or
hit the hot springs down the road.

Our
Nahtual temescal is nearing inauguration, so while you’re here also enjoy a
healing sweat lodge and plunge in the spring.  

In addition to adobe, there are garnering projects
on-going through the summer (actually this has started already and you could
come now). One day a
week we harvest any of the several abundant, nutritious and tasty food species
of this land and we process it. This includes mesquite, prickly pear, water
cress, amaranth and all the free fire wood we need. We harvest a one-year
supply of each item for 70 people.

Okay,
that’s the goal. Can we do it? We need your help, please. It takes a village to
care for a village, and it’s such a lovely way to spend some days or weeks, lifetimes,
under starry desert sky. Please come and be part of the fun, the healing, in
amazing service. We need your help. And the refreshments are always wonderful.

Contact
Kat if you can come play in the mud.

And call
it service-for-a-good-cause to boot.

katehrhorn@gmail.com

wonderful

Hi Again,

 

With
spring upon us, its time to recruit the Bikini Adobe Crew Summer 2010. Last
year’s crew was successful in producing a thousand blocks and we need to make
that many again for the Kali Shrine.

Hi. A few of us around the ‘hood have arrived at a delightful and
structural meditation and living space that we offer to make for you. Anywhere.
Anytime.  Named The Lotus House (from mud they grow), they are so fun and powerful in
which to meditate that we will do everything we can to insure everyone who
wants one has one, regardless of ability to pay. There’s a host on standby to
playfully pull magic from the earth for the benefit of your successful practice
and life on earth, for all worlds. Here’s the history and lineage of The Lotus House.

 

 

 

After the first Great Three Year Retreat, our Holy Lama said that
practicing in a round earthen structure was most conducive to successful
inner
body work and meditation.  Thank you for
telling us, dearest Geshe Michael Roach, so
kind. So to see what that looked like, we made a first dome at Diamond
Mountain, The Kiva at Jamyang.
Adorned with a mother bear and two cubs in honor of Bear Springs, this
kiva
continues to house students and retreatants for over five years.

This is the second dome at
Diamond Mountain, The Lama Dome. Both these
domes used plastic bags as flexible forms. The method was taught to us by Nader
Khalili, a Persian architect and builder who drew his knowledge from the
building methods of desert dwellers of the Middle East throughout the millennia.  Thank you, Nader.

The dome is a classic
structure used for over 40 centuries by cultures without steel, timber and
concrete. Its strength is derived from the shape, which is also the shape of
submarines, rockets and bullets, withstanding the most forceful dynamics of
pressure and gravity. It’s also the best shape for long term meditating in that
it simulates and resonates with the shape of the channels of the inner body.

This is the third dome at Diamond Mountain, The Temescal at Bear Springs.
 This evolution was made without expensive
plastic bag forms and extensive, arduous labor.

We used an enhanced adobe product and built in the way of the Nahtual
Indians, a tribe of the Mayan civilization.

We were taught this method by Trini
Pena Lopez, an adobiero and shaman from Isla de Piedra, Sonora, Mexico.  He spent
the last months of his life at DM, leading us on a mystical tour into the minds
of ancient earth builders, learning to play with the dynamics of gravity and
form, exploring alchemical and archetypal relationships with the elements. We
have been uniquely inspired by this man and he lives forever in our heartsand domes. Thank
you, Trini.

 I also want to speak of Trini’s extraordinary
family. Chabela, his wife of 13 years, is from Montreal, and she is an avid adobiera creating large
earth and natural projects in the ways of her holy husband. Vicente, 12, is
their oldest son. Gabriella is 10 and Maya is 7.  We are hopeful Chabela and the children return
to our mad mud adventures here as soon as possible. Working with their holy
children, Chabela is truly a master of earth, water, fire and wind. The
relationship each child has with the elements is also profound. The whole
family exudes ancient earth wisdom, pouring out of their every pore, very important in this world now. Thank
you.

This is the fourth dome emerging from the mud at Diamond Mountain and the first Lotus House. This
Lotus House is named Helen’s Dome in the
combined honors of Helen Chen from Taiwan, and Helen’s
Dome from this place, the prominent peak on the west horizon of Diamond Mountain.  

This design results from seven years of research in materials and
methods.

This design results from seven years of research in materials and
methods. The goals were to come up with (a) the most affordable housing option,
with (b) the least amount of negative impact to life and to the environment,
and (c) the highest performance in safety, operations, maintenance, durability
and demise. This sealed dome is made entirely of recycled paper adobe and
locally harvested timber costing as little as $3.50/sf. It can be made by 4
“unskilled”, like, everyone can do it, yay laborers call them players dancers
angels, within three weeks. Cellulose amended adobe offers earthquake resilient
and fire resistant properties. It offers highly insulated, non-mechanical
environmental controls. It is low maintenance and highly sound proofed.
Recycled paper amended adobe is seven times less brittle than other amended
adobes. The material is proven in resulting highest
performance, with lowest carbon footprint
and lowest cost of any other option. And
as for demise, every single building will
eventually be abandoned, leaving behind itself, transformed into “garbage”.
Everything we put there will be left on the landscape. Being made only of mud,
emulsified cellulose fiber and locally harvested timbers, The Lotus Houses will sweetly and seamlessly transform back to
earth, from whence they came. They mirror the shapes of the surrounding
mountainsides blending in to the landscape with timeless grace and beauty, during
all phases of their existence. You can make it yourself with your friends and with lots of fun. And best of all,
you won’t have to work for years to earn tens of thousands of dollars to buy
the stuff you need to make one. Playing with local elements and spirits is a
great way to get-away for a month in the high desert.  Please accept our invitation and offer to
benefit all worlds, all happiness and freedom.

                           Contact KatEhrhorn@gmail.com

              if you’d like drawings and schedule

for your general
contractor and permit,

or if you want to play in
the mud

for the benefit of
another’s.

And there They grew Dakinis of the field born.

 

Peace Shrine dedicated to serving a vision of world peace.

Hi, pleased to meet you!   My name is Kat Ehrhorn. I am 53 years totally young and was trained by two very kind and bright sons, Grail, now 21, and Zeleigh, 19. They are the fifth generation of our family to be born in Los Angeles, were raised in Arizona and are now both still here in college.

I was born into a well educated, upper middle class American capitalist family. For generations, the ideals of that family have been driven by the values of the American Dream: the one with the most wins. They still live that dream, amassing capital that generations have enjoyed, made from sweat and brilliance, oil, cattle, Wall Street and orange groves.

Basking in the abundance of capital consumerism in the mid-1950’s and 60’s, American and global consumption sky rocketed and the happiness index of America began to decline. Meanwhile my family amply enjoyed the fruits, and our adventures together were wonderful. What a great time to be a kid.

  Dad was the rebel of the family. All he wanted to do was fly airplanes, surf and travel with his family. Finally disgusted with family politics as well as the Viet Nam war, my beautiful parents, to whom I forever give thanks for this amazing life, moved to Nairobi, Kenya. Then we moved to a beach on the Indian Ocean in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, where Dad flew as a safari pilot. We were in Heaven. At age 36 he suffered a brain aneurism while flying, dying in the crash. I was sixteen and took over the job of rebel.   The Object of Suffering Looking at it from the outside, US consumer capitalism, the American Dream, began to make me crazy. I began to see how human consumption patterns, particularly those of my culture, kill life. I noticed that my family, governments around the world, my fellow citizenry said its okay to employ a child slave to make a shirt for me. And they said its okay that we kill each other’s children for our fuel. They also said its okay to pollute the air and water with ton after ton of toxic by-products so I can have anything I want, in any color and size.   After nearly a decade of corporate career successes and personal excesses, at 29, I began to explore alternate ways of living that would be safe. Why did I have to harm and kill so many people for my stuff? Did I even really need it? The American status quo said “Yes! You need more stuff! Bigger houses to hold the more stuff! Faster cars! Faster jets! Faster food!” Looking at the worldwide devastation firsthand, I concluded it was these consumption behaviors that had to change fast. And I was so incredulous that no one else noticed, I got rather kicky and flailing about it. I became the scary one with no respect for the dominant paradigm. Now not to be trusted to uphold popular economic values, the family corporation shunned me.   While still living on the proceeds of this consumptive behavior, still addicted myself, my mind and heart became fixed on finding solutions for patterns that we think are supporting life, but that in fact, are killing life. Consumed now by constant pain in the awareness of how my very existence demands that people literally give their lives to service my own life made it hard for me to walk amongst people. I felt so grieved for this condition, so angry that they all die for me, their babies are born deformed for me, and so on. As a nation of “civilized” people, how could we live, supported by this broad spread cruelty, and just eat more pizza? The richness of my culture became an object of disgust with what I now knew was sacrificed by the entire world to support it. I even lost interest in food, with agricultural practices demanding farmers poison people,  food crops for humans, for the benefit of profit margins. A system of goods and commerce was sick and dying; it became death itself.

  So, bottom line, I’ve lived as a schizophrenic, a tortured soul. Tortured by knowing the toxic state of our world, probing causes, and seeing the depth of grasping to self-cherishing values. Meanwhile, I’ll see you in New York next week, still enjoying the finest things the world has to offer.… always judging my roots, my culture, always loving the party.   On to another dirt road out of the viewfinder for 11 years, I continued to explore and implement solutions in my mind, raising boys, trying to become the change I wanted to see. The Africans, the “Third World”, the disenfranchised showed me powerful examples in living that inspired a vision of how humans could live sustainably.Living in a mash tent as a single mom with two kids under 5 was an amazing and rich experience, but death and global devasation still permeated my projection.   A solution for freedom shows up When teachers of ancient classics finally found me at age 45, in the same middle of nowhere in the form of kind humans serving masters on another great retreat, they were talking about a way through the suffering to happiness. I learned our experiences are created by how we treat other people. And I saw my grace in this life had been caused by a natural compulsion to serve others’ happiness. This had been my very salvation.

On to yet a different dirt road

After serving half of
the last three year retreat, I and my two sons came to Diamond
Mountain, sleeping on metal cots at
the bluffs of the wash where we helped to build the campground. A passion for
using native and local materials drove my vision of construction and design,
and I felt compelled beyond reason to change my life, give up my company with
sales of a million dollars a year while living in a desert forest paradise. I HAD
to move here and help build for the benefit of some yet unknown body of wisdom
and compassion. And by the kindness of holy teachers, we soon landed in the
Jamyang House, built by Holy Lama Winston, to finish and ready for service as the
sole classroom for the first year at DM.

Back in Santa
Monica in 1986, I was introduced to Nader Khalili’s
flexible form rammed earth domes.  And I knew
then in 2003 that I and friends at Diamond
Mountain would have to make one, now
known as the kiva at Jamyang. When Holy Geshe Michael walked into the kiva, he
said, “This is what I’ve always wanted. This is what I want for Three-Year Retreat.”

I told Him I wasn’t pleased with toxic by-products that harm
life in the manufacturing of the plastic bags, and that they’re quite expensive.
But he said, “Go ahead and make ours with the plastic bags. And keep working on
it”. So a three-year development of a paper emulsified adobe is that adaptation
of materials and method. Now without using plastic bags and expensive forms, we
are keeping paper trash out of landfills when adding it to adobe mud products,
and saving thousands of dollars. The cellulose matrix of the paper fiber offers
a superlative bonding element with the clay, as well as improved sound proofing
and insulative qualities, enhancing non-mechanical climate control. With the
non-brittle, light weight, strengthened adobe, I now had the material to make adobe
domes without the plastic bags.

Those years were also spent in finding someone who would show
me how to make a bagless adobe dome. I knew it was an ancient seed we carry as
humans in the deserts on this planet of clay and stone. Making shelter in the
desert environs of Middle Eastern, Saharan and Sub-Saharan deserts without
steel, concrete or wood, forced elegant evolutions of adobe dome structures over
thousands of years that tolerate the most extreme of temperatures and conditions.
They are earthquake and fire resilient, time tested. However with the current wood
frame based construction climate of the US
(95% of the houses built in the US
are frame and stucco), it was challenging to find that person.

Last year I finally met
Trini and Chabela Pena Lopez. They came to Diamond
Mountain the past summer to teach
me. And the first two adobe domes at Diamond
Mountain are underway in the
ancient way of the Nahtual Aztec Indians of Central Mexico: in complete
perfection, without compromise of materials and harm to life, with hardly any
cost, and lots of joy in their making (especially when Anik is in your crew making
mocha coffees and other delicacies).

These methods are being demonstrated for the benefit of the
poorest of people on this planet who need shelter, as well as for proposed 30 decentralized
library pods-cum-practice rooms, throughout the deep retreat valley at
different retreat cabin sites. Labor to make these domes is light weight and
non skilled. Materials cost practically nothing.

To be coordinated through Adobe Club efforts, we are
developing plans for ten more adobieros to come to Diamond
Mountain from Stone
Island, Mazatlan,
Mexico for a yoga, meditation
and cultural exchange program during late spring. As with the YSI programs that
were conducted in San Pancho, Mexico
for the past two years, they will be doing yoga and meditation programs in the
mornings and evenings, and community service in the afternoons. For their
community service I hope they will be making adobe domed decentralized library
pods at 30 sites, alongside seven members of the Adobe Club.  Time and funding permitting, we also hope to implement
rain water catchment and storage facilities at those 30 sites, removing them from
total dependency on a fossil fuel based water supply for enhanced water
security.

On to Retreat

And now it's time to take it another step in the guiding hands of ancient masters. I must serve the world by creating the causes for happiness, first through learning the classics of meditation and yoga on how to perfectly put others’ needs before my own. I have to meditate and do yoga every day. And then I can help other people learn this as well. And I give thanks always for this opportunity to walk in the footsteps of great holy masters, while also mastering this ultimate art of wisdom and loving kindness that leads to no more suffering, to enlightenment itself for everyone. Realizing solutions for my own peace, I can then project the peace of my culture that will help to save the world.   I’ve done seven near-month-long meditation and yoga retreats, and find it to be the most provocative environment imaginable. Alone with one’s mind and authentic instructions on how to work this tool is an ultimate opportunity to explore the causes of an enlightened world and people who live there.   I want to help my nation change its dream to embrace rather than consume the rest of the planet. I want to help my nation and the world learn how to provide for basic shelter, food and materials needs without harming others. I have to train my mind in meditation and yoga techniques that will urge forth these outward solutions that include every single life form.   Funding At this time, I have funding for my personal on-going retreat expenses, pending further stock market fluctuations. I have $25,000 personal debt to clear before retreat, incurred after leaving my business and property to commence service projects without quick enough response to drastically reduced income. Darn. This debt was incurred over the past five years as I worked outside the job market to prepare housing and construction materials details for three year retreat as the passion was driving me. Thank you if you could help with this cost.    More importantly, I would like to ask, please, for your assistance in building adobe domed library and practice room facilities for 30 cabins (see following). The philosophy behind these building designs, materials and methods is my dearest wish to provide as a housing option for the poorest of people on earth, as well as a model for sustainable and clean housing, food and water supplies. Our culture desperately needs new models for survival. These models will offer helpful ideas to community builders around the world, and provide for a morally, toxic free environment for meditators of world peace now.   There are five parts, and any part could be funded for any number of retreatants. I offer to coordinate the building of all five parts for every retreatant, if you would offer to fund it.   a. $5000 each for 30 adobe domes 16’ diameter adobe dome that will house a section of an ancient classics library, serving as decentralized pods, enhancing security of texts for future generations by dividing and housing in fire resistant buildings. As caregiver of a section, retreatant may write commentary, translate or catalogue. The library also serves as retreatant’s practice room for meditation and yoga.   b. $2000 each for 30 rainwater catchment and storage systems for added water security Rainwater generally visits this area twice a year. With adequate catchment and storage, one can provide for the bulk of water needs without pumping ground water. This will provide a critical model important in today’s world of decreasing clean water supplies.   c. $2000 each for food staple pantry items, for 30 retreatants for 3 years Buying in bulk saves co2 emissions from food transportation, saves packaging, keeps materials out of landfills, saves caregiver time and energy and is less expensive. See next item for inventory specifications criteria.   d. $2000 each for turnkey food garden installations and rotating plant starters for 3 years Growing food is a critical model in today’s world. The retreatant consults with a nutritionist to learn nutritional requirements for optimum health, and what foods fulfill those requirements. A high yield organic gardener plants to yield all fresh food requirements. Retreatant needs only water, eating foods as they ripen and are stored in the earth.  On-going plant services are offered instead of shopping 100 miles away with trash removal.   e. $1000 each for dry composter/soil amendment generator (toilet!) for 30 retreatants Composting feces and urine for 7 months results in a pathogen-free soil amendment put directly into garden to feed the soil that feeds the plants that feeds the retreatant.   These items drastically reduce a need for further expense and service over the retreat period, as well as provide models for our culture’s benefit in learning to live sustainably. A personal goal for me is to eliminate incoming deliveries of goods for the three year retreat period.   Kat, retreat! When I told Mom I was considering long retreat, her comment was I’d need a new down vest and continued the list. She is always supportive of every wish I make; even more (she’s an angel). In that she’s convinced she will die when she’s 99, (she’s 73 now), her possible death at this time is no worry. Grail said he’s not sure he and his brother can make it without me. Zeleigh assured him they’d be fine. I assured them it’s just a snap in time.
I have no fears about doing three year retreat, as I take my refuge from the love and support of my friends and family, in the training from my teachers, and from the authenticity of the teachings. I have the best holders of the lamp in all the galaxies!   Chapter Two, The Adventures of Kat and Friends of the Adobe Club at Diamond Mountain will be online soon. Please tune in! There’s a lot of joyful effort going on! Meanwhile, you can see other building frenzies and delights (i love working with the elements) at  my blogs domes.blogspot.com and www.flickr.com/photos/30278149@N07/   We hope you can help us make this beautiful dream of peace on earth a reality. Through a building project such as this, what an amazing turn of global events in which to serve. We thank you for making it possible now. I can’t wait to meet you!   All the happiness in the world comes from thinking of others. All the suffering in the world comes from thinking of myself.  

May you live long lives in perfect health and happiness.

I send much love and joy to you and to your holy families.

Kat Ehrhorn
3244 S Old Fort Bowie Road
Bowie, AZ  85605
katehrhorn@gmail.com
520 850 2174

 

 

 

Winter 2009 State of The Club

The manufacturing, distribution, consumption and disposal of building materials contribute 40% of global co2 emissions and the largest volume of materials into US landfills. Over 100,000 toxic elements and processes with these materials contribute to the “sick house” syndrome where people get sick just living in them. And the costs for these highly processed and transported building materials are skyrocketing. Compounded with interest rates, its costing Americans upwards of $700,000 on a 30-year, $250,000 home loan, for 95% of American homes built as they are today. As much as an environmental issue, we need to help Americans get out of the Free Slavery System.  The Adobe Club continues its commitment to explore ways to protect life through less expensive living. The club looked at ways people lived successfully on this land for thousands of years, without toxic and financial side problems. They discovered what materials are locally available, with which historically was the only material people could build. According to some sources, it was the advent of the train across the nation that changed architecture and started modern day problems of polluting an entire planet. The club concluded locally available materials are usually better suited to climatic conditions, are far less toxic to produce, are less expensive and support local economies (that’s us!). And The Club's materials and methods development are producing excellent results.   In our case in the southwest, there is an abundance of adobe mud, sand and hardwood timbers, such as mesquite, cedar and pine. True of all communities worldwide, there is also an abundance of recyclable paper trash. It’s been shown that by amending mud with the paper (wood) cellulose, an improved adobe building material results. So keeping our local community’s paper trash out of the landfills, we amend locally available mud and produce non-toxic, eco-friendly, high quality low cost building materials, keeping our local economy strong and environment cleaner.   Wild harvesting construction grade timbers and salvaging used building materials completes a comprehensive picture of locally available building materials. Another important benefit from a locally based materials system is that processes are scaled and tailor-made to embrace children and the elderly, Diamond Mountain students and other in-need populations as identified in related EBM programs. These programs create opportunities for every individual in the community to be vitally important to the overall health and development of their community, and to provide links to socially important support services when needed.       News Paper adobe block production evaluation was completed summer 2009. Three formulae were tested for adobe code compliance. Two of the three passed for load bearing walls, with the third, lightest weight paper block perfect for insulation and sound proofing. This now confirms compliance for construction on permits issued by Cochise County. With documented and legal performance, block production continues at the Lama House and Jamyang yards for the Peace Shrine. The Land Laboratory of the Montessori in Tucson invited the Adobe Club paper adobe mixer to their school. The kids made a 16’d fire ring curb on which to sit around a bonfire. They used clay and dirt dug out of the fire ring itself, they got sand from the wash a few feet away, and, they added two large trash bags of waste paper from their school. Middle school students were transformed while playing in and working with the mud. Teachers were so pleased with the response from the kids they bought the mixer on the spot so they could immerse in further projects. Through contact with mud, it is known to improve and balance mental and emotional functions, and the children’s easy and creative manners seemed pointed at this result. They will continue to recycle their school paper trash and earth, making their own school yard equipment in a very non-toxic, sustainable and fun way!   Adobieros and environmental ed teachers Trini and Chabela from Mexico came and taught us adobe plaster methods and mixes (we’re now using recycled KFC oil for sealant!), as well as brick and cast dome methods. The Club also learned the pampas grass growing at Jamyang is the very best mud reinforcement of all metals and plant species. Chabela advised everyone should plant it, along with the corrizo grass used already as a locally grown building material and shade plant.     Plans are underway to invite members of all ages from the local San Carlos Apache Reservation, to spend a week at Diamond Mountain and learn how to build a domed paper adobe guest house. This particular group of Apaches comes to DM regularly to pray. They tell us they like to come here for the peace and freedom to pray as they wish, away from conflicts at their reservation. They have asked for housing here, to accommodate the elders and children, the spiritual practitioners, for stays of several days to weeks. They want a round house, like the kiva at Jamyang.   Through building this project, they will also be empowered to bring knowledge of this affordable housing option to others at the reservation, and hopefully help residents out of old, inadequate and unsafe trailers that currently dominate reservation landscapes. This visit will be co-administered by other DM EBM programs.   This method of construction has the potential to offer quality and affordable housing for many people around the world. A how-to video of the process can now be found at youtube.com, search “paper adobe”, and includes enough detail to be shared at building conferences, trade workshops and other schools and outlets.   A list of locally made and gleaned building materials currently offered from the Jamyang yard follows.   Gardening at the Adobe Club, is also a vital aspect for eco-friendly human infrastructure development and the Club continues efforts towards establishing community food security. The same travesties that exist in our building materials industries also prevail throughout our food production industries: we produce poison and toxicity that are directly attributable to disease and death on planet earth for all species and for all ecosystems. This must be changed and the Club continues with this commitment.   Thanks to you for caring to make a difference towards world peace in this way.      

A Perfect Desert Home: Adobe Domes Making Beautiful Homes for Less Less time, less money, less headaches   Did you ever imagine how it would feel to live in the desert as a sultan or a king? Thriving civilizations in desert environs have boasted rich scriptural, academic, architectural endeavors throughout millennia - without timber, steel and concrete homes. Do you think they were in there sweating and swatting flies? This adobe house has some of the most sophisticated examples of wind catchers, sky lights, curved roofs. The forms are all functional as well as sculptural, and the roofing is a natural mud-straw plaster.  This is adobe perfected for inhabitation by humans in this desert.   Adobe domes have withstood the test of time in both freezing and high desert temperatures. They resist fire. They passively regulate interior temperatures. They are built with materials found on-hand. Mechanized appliances and fuel demanding infrastructures are unnecessary.   Due to increasing costs, reduced availability and negative environmental impacts surrounding modern building materials (timber, steel, concrete, freight pollution), there is a renewed interest in this ancient building method. In an article entitled “Shell Membrane Theory Applied to Masonry Domes” Nader Khalili describes the engineering and dynamics of a dome. Rather than build with a toxic manipulation and movement of materials; by using what is on hand, earth (adobe) combined with the binding forces of the planet, we get a structurally sound, inexpensive and easy to make dwelling. This is the shape used for missles and submarines, withstanding extreme dynamics of thrust and force, which is just what you need in a house.   Accommodating remote, low budget cabins and decentralized libraries at the retreat center, easy to assemble roof, floors and walls make this model unique. The domed and vaulted roof system with cast walls will be made of paper adobe that is lighter weight compared to normal adobe, stronger, better insulated and sound proofed. It is also fire resistant.  And these materials are readily, affordably (made in the front yard!) available.   Freight calculations demonstrate the lighter weight adobe components needed for foundation, floors, walls and roof will require two trips a day for 11 days of cartage to any site in the DM Retreat Valley.  And with cast components, assembly will be fast and easy on site.   Cost for building materials will run well under $5,000, and accessory items can be added as budget permits.   The design is modular so end users can choose number of rooms and amount of square footage, based on needs and budget.   Arrangement of rooms will be around a central courtyard, further maximizing non-mechanical climate controls and water harvesting and storage.   Construction budgets will be finalized after construction of a 12’ dome currently underway at the Jamyang yard. Design parameters are in place to offer maximum economical, environmental and operational benefits.                                                                                 When comparing these paper adobe materials and casting methods to frame and stucco, straw bale, rammed earth, even standard adobe block, these housing costs, time needed to build and carbon footprint are significantly lower.   Contact Kat Ehrhorn katehrhorn@gmail.com

Protecting Life Supporting a Three-Year Religious Meditation Retreat for World Peace     The religious practitioner studies and follows comprehensive scriptural instructions in the classical ideas of ancient spirituality and languages taught through an authentic lineage for the last thousand years. It has been the traditional practice to secure a remote retreat facility with the simplest features, such as caves and mud huts.   This facility will be used to sustainably supply water, food and shelter, to support the minimal physical needs, of religious practitioners as they embark on daily meditation, prayer and yoga practices over a three-year period or less. The structure and operation of the facility itself will remove needs for food deliveries and trash removal, thereby facilitating a traffic-free solitary environment during the meditation program. To insure the least amount of distractions and infiltrating vibrations from man made materials and toxic activities, these simple buildings are designed with the intention to avoid products and materials dependent on new consumption of fossil fuels, first time purchases, and contributors of toxic waste in their manufacturing, distribution and disposal around the world. If a new product demands that life be harmed or killed during any of these three phases of a product’s life, it cannot be used due to moral and conscientious objections. This is to also help maintain vows that practitioners have taken to protect life and environment as a part of this religious practice.   The same criterion applies to food and water. Religious activities facilities will offer infrastructure that provides all water and nutritional needs of the religious practitioner on site. This eliminates further fossil fuel consumption and expensive car wear and tear by caregivers in purchasing food items in stores from hundreds of miles away, which is the current practice. This also eliminates the fuel used to get the food products to that store in the first place. (Did you know the average American lunch has traveled over 22,000 miles to get to your table?) This then keeps tons of packaging materials out of landfills, which is an escalating problem worldwide due to the increasingly high volume demands of American consumers.  Instead of fuel intensive and toxic food and garbage, caregivers will deliver food starter plants and seeds for each to grow their own, within the turnkey food and storage facilities that are an integral built-in part of the facility.  And this is primary function of the first of two buildings: a green house for the food.     The religious activities facilities will also locally catch and store water needed for religious practitioners. This eliminates dependence on a fossil fuel based water supply, which is the current water source.  

Abiquiu Sikh Mosque, New Mexico   The second building is an adobe dome that functions as one pod of a decentralized library. Religious practitioners will serve the housing of a section of religious books as they also catalogue, translate and write commentaries. Decentralizing rediscovered collections into fire resistant adobe structures, will serve to reduce vulnerability of these religious books for the benefit of future generations.   The materials used for these structures will be stone, adobe, recycled glass, locally wild harvested timbers, locally hand crafted components and local ingenuity. The building methods implemented will be those used by indigenous peoples living in arid deserts on over 35% of the earth’s land mass, who’ve lived in simplicity, comfort and beauty, engineered, tested and proven throughout millennia. The adobe and stone greenhouse and domed library will have adobe sculpted benches, counters, niches, and vessels with water gravity fed from cisterns catching rainwater from the roofs of the two buildings.   It is the intention of this design to provide a sustainable, economic and non-toxic religious activities facility for religious practitioners who have moral objections to toxic building methods or materials, or with financial limitations. Kat Ehrhorn katehrhorn@gmail.com

Specifications Religious Activities Facility Library and Greenhouse                                                                                                             Total SF (OD)                                       434 sf     >Library 16’d                                       200sf       Walls 5’h x 12”wide                         adobe       Roof Domed 13’h                            adobe     >Greenhouse 18’ x 13’                         234sf         Front 18’ x 8’     Stem Wall 36”h x 12”wide’             stone, adobe     Walls 9’-6”h x 1” thick                    glass, timber, stone, adobe     Roof                                               polycarbonate sheets,  timber, adobe       Back 18’ x 5’     Stem Wall 36”h x 18”wide’               stone, adobe     Parapet walls 9’-6”                           adobe     Roof at 7’ slopes to 5’                        adobe with vigas               Adobe Floors                                        yes Electrical Wiring                                  no                                Plumbing                                              no Wood burning stove                               no Foundations                                          field stone and mortar Fridge, Stove                                        no Solar Panels & Battery                          no Wind Generator 850w w/o batteries        yes Waterless Composter in greenhouse        yes                               Septic Tank                                           no     There is no kitchen, no bathroom, no sleeping room.                  

     

Once I heard this teaching. Our Holy Lamas were on retreat in China, in a very remote village at the top of high mountains. All they ate for two months was watermelon and squash, what was growing in the garden in the front of the house. And then they went to Morocco, again with a garden in the front yard. The instructions from both caretakers at each place were to just add water and eat what grows. “There’s your food.”   The simple act of removing ourselves from a fossil fuel demanding food supply chain, such as how food is grown and transported with current cultural practices, begins to globally protect life on a deep and wide level. We protect ourselves and agricultural workers, all inhabitants of the earth, from harmful pesticides and petroleum based fertilizers, expensive and toxic packaging and storage methods, and we eliminate diesel pollution and co2 emissions from freight and transport activities. (Did you know the food from your luncheon plate traveled over 22,572 miles to get there?)   Culturally we first need to wean ourselves from pleasing a spoiled child-like palate that demands variety on a daily basis. This way of eating is toxic to the entire planet and all the beings who live on it. In the retreat environment especially it will be important to practice simple eating that is not harmful to life. The only way to do this is by growing food locally.     Each retreat cabin will have a small walled-in garden, green house and rain water catchment system. The retreatant consults with a nutritionist to learn nutritional requirements for optimal health during three-year retreat, and what foods fulfill those requirements. A high yield organic gardener specialist then plants each garden, to yield all fresh produce requirements, including fruits, vegetables, herbs, grains and legumes to taste. Retreatant will water daily, or as needed, enjoying foods as they ripen and are stored in the earth (not in the fridge).   Instead of delivering groceries and trash, caregivers periodically deliver starter plants as part of a rotating planting system implemented village wide ensuring food continuity, also redistributing larger volume crops yielded at each cabin. Wild harvesting nutritionally important native foods rounds out the program.  This action significantly contributes to moving from a toxic, fossil fuel based relation with planet earth, one that demands we kill each other’s children for the fuel that moves our food to us, to a sustainable and healthy relation with the dynamics of this earth. How we nourish our bodies is a vitally important part of the model in demonstrating world peace.