Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Rugged Interdependencyto inmates, for example see [www.abhayagiri.org/fm/v9n1/v9n1.pdf], pages 4 and5. A very large proportion of the free Dhamma books mailed out from Abhayagiriare for people incarcerated around the USA.Spirit Rock has established a city center in the East Bay, particularly to makethe teachings more available to a wider sphere of people than the white middleclasseducated crowd that usually fills the halls at the Center in well-heeled MarinCounty. A small group is actively involved in developing this, including JamesBaraz, Larry Yang, Spring Washam, Diana Winston, Kevin Griffin and DonaldRothberg [www.eastbaydharma.org].It is still true, nevertheless, that most other Vipassanā groups and retreatsaround the country, such as at IMS in Massachusetts or at Seattle Insight MeditationSociety [www.seattleinsight.org] are solidly white middle-class baby-boomer types.When Ajahn Punnadhammo and I, out of curiosity, did the stats on the ages of thegroup attending our IMS retreat in 2001 it was a perfectly symmetrical bell curve – itpeaked exactly at those born in 1949, who were 18 in 1967, the Summer of Love…The Buddhist compassionate relief organization Tzu Chi Foundationhas become more and more active in the US – along with centers in themajor metropolises they also opened a center in Ukiah in the spring of 2004[www.tzuchi.org].The US is still as intensely materialistic as it was, perhaps more so than ever,however that same intense bondage to the sense world continues to generate itsopposite. The level of stimulation available to the average teenager now meansthat they have often seen and done it all by the time they are fifteen. ConsequentlyAbhayagiri receives, on average, a couple of enquiries per week (usually by e-mail)from high school or college students interested in ordination.Our Use Permit only allowed 13 people to stay on site at any one time duringPhase I of the development, so a lot of people have had to be turned away. Somehave gone to England or Thailand for training instead, some have waited and somehave faded. Now that we have entered Phase II of our Permit we will be able toaccommodate a larger number of candidates.On my first visit in 1990 it became clear that the kind of people who wereattracted to Theravādan monastic practice were not looking for or expectinga quick fix. And they were not looking just for spiritual entertainment either –when, in 1991, I came with a list of suggested titles for talks like The Myth of theHero, Buddhist Metaphysics, The Joker and Navigating the Straits of Paradox, the grouplooked at me plaintively and asked: “Couldn’t you just give talks on the Four Noble126