Ven Jigme Palmo's blog

I came back a week ago from teaching and the foundation had been poured.  Now they are really working on it in earnest.  You can see the courtyard in the front of the picture.  It's going to be a walled garden.

Kevin says that they carved the roof trusses to look like the back of an angel, with wings.

For people who are wondering exactly what it is that we are planning to do, Lama Christie has started to answer questions about retreat in her Monday/Friday meditation classes, and I have posted those recordings at the top of the retreat wiki https://www.dmes.org:443/index.php/3-Year_Retreat_Info.  House plans and lots of other useful info are also linked there.  

As for myself, I have been thinking about the small creatures and other beings that we can't see, who are living in the place where I plan to do my retreat, and who have held this place as their home for ages.  Especially now there will be confusion, as digging has been going on, and the foundation will be poured within a week. So I thought I'd make an peace-offering to put in that place under the foundation, something that might appeal to them, or at least a token of recognition, so they might be more favorably disposed to whoever is doing retreat here.  I'm not sure what they like, so I got a lot of things: coins, incense resins, bells, semi-precious stones, wisdom and practice scriptures printed very small, water from holy places, sweet-smelling herbs, natural tobacco, and things like that and put them in a vase.  I'll bury it there before the foundation is poured.

The retreat is supposed to start in less than a year, and time for building is getting short.  When I think about it, I go into a kind of controlled panic, involving two conflicting thoughts: I have to get this thing going vs. there is nothing I can do to make it happen faster.  I have a hypothetical timeline in my mind that keeps shifting as conditions change, but always the pressure is on.

Now we are on a 3-month break from classes at Diamond Mountain, and I was hoping that certain minimal things would happen during that time.  The first was to get a permit from the county for the building I had in mind, the second — seemingly most unsurmountable, since everyone who is willing to come out to DM to build is already way overbooked — was to find a contractor, and the third was to get started, at least perhaps a foundation. 

I'm learning that standing over the project and wringing your hands doesn't help at all, but I'm not sure what does help.  So I took my lama's advice and went on a six-week trip and tried not to think about it too much, but rather to concentrate on working hard to help with the programs in Asia.  While we were away, the plans were submitted, and just before I got back they were approved.  One big hurdle overcome.

But I was still really worried about trying to find someone who could build it.  I'm actually not that good at construction, at least I don't think I would be.  And it didn't look as if there were many people lining up to help.  So more worry about if it's even possible.  Then Kevin Warren turned up and said he'd work on it, and he thinks it's not impossible, and even seems to be looking forward to it.  So that makes it more of an actual possibility, and he can start soon — the third hurdle. 

So now this is my new worry — money.  For now, it seems as if the retreat cabin has set foot into the realm of possibility, but it's going to cost more than I had thought, maybe more than I have.  And there is more than just my cabin; there are a lot of other people here who don't have money and don't have plans.  They have even less hope than I do and we need to come up with ways to take care of them too.

I am a 58-year-old American nun who is a professor and also the retreat director at Diamond Mountain, and I was also the head caretaker for Geshe Michael's three-year retreat. When Geshe Michael and the others were in the previous 3-year retreat, I was in charge of organizing the teams that did the cooking, guarding their cabins, publicity and communicating with friends, families, and students, keeping the books, and fundraising to pay the bills. Now mostly my work is in communicating with students and gathering materials needed for teaching, and also in helping to support all the various projects.

Because the things I have been learning mean so much to me, I want to share them in whatever way I can. I try to go to every teaching and make recordings to put on the internet, so people all over the world will be able to get them easily. I also try to help fundraise for the Asian Classics and other input projects, to preserve ancient wisdom texts in this world. These teachings are so rare and fragile, and they hold the key to happiness -- we need to keep them in this world.

Because my life has been so busy, I am hoping to go into three-year retreat to find some quiet time for deep spiritual practice. I believe, from my previous experiences in retreat, that it's possible to gain deep understanding into how the world works, and how we can make our world into a paradise for ourselves and others, only with the quiet that comes in deep retreat.

I grew up in a world where common belief was that the most important things in life were to be successful by making money, becoming famous, being somehow better than others, and preserving your own life and comfort at the expense of others. It made me very sad, because I didn't want to be like that, but I didn't know how to overcome my own selfish tendencies. Now I have the tools to slowly change, and over the years I have become happier and happier. I am seeing very gradual improvement in the way I treat others, and it makes me happy and it makes them happy as well.

I feel very strongly that I want to make the teachings as widely available as I can, so that anyone in the world will be able to find true teachings, and so have taken on the job of uploading every teaching given by my lamas to the internet. I am also a co-director of Diamond Mountain University Press, in order to make dharma available to people in the form of books. I also collect books, and have a small library that other people sometimes borrow.

When I was growing up, my father had a big collection of scientific books, and also loved to collect ancient books about religion and philosophy. I learned from him to value education and also the value of preserving ancient teachings. Now I feel very strongly about the Asian Classics Input Project, Geshe Michael's project to save the ancient wisdom texts. It is so important to keep these writings in our world so that future generations will be also able to benefit from the wisdom of our ancestors.

My mother loved to paint and to make things by hand, and she taught us to love beauty and nature. I especially love animals, and had many pets as a child. The wild animals often visit me when I am in retreat and sometimes I feed them a little. Before I became a nun, I used to have a beautiful garden. I like watching things grow, and I like to stay connected to the earth that way. In retreat am planning to have a small garden that will allow me to grow fresh vegetables and also flowers for offering.

Much of the time in retreat I will be working on basic practices like trying to create true love in my heart for others and trying to view the world every day as something that is coming from my own previous actions and thoughts. These foundation practices are essential to making any other practices work. I will also be doing formal meditation sessions at least four times a day, as well as yoga and other practices that are designed to open the heart.

I have done long retreats in solitude, and the hardest thing for me has always been to go for so long without seeing a human face, or without communicating with another person. When you are alone, you lose the subtle kinds of communication that keep you grounded, and it's easy to overreact and get upset by things that really aren't very important.

I have no idea how to build a retreat house, but I have been trying to help other people with retreat plans and fundraising for their retreat houses, and that way I'm learning what I need to do. I am also working on the Diamond Mountain board of trustees, to help it to grow into a place that will bring wisdom and kindness into the world. My hope is that by our small efforts the world we live in will in some way become better and better for everyone.