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Ive been quiet for a long time. It’s been very busy here. In late March we finally had an opening celebration for the temple we have been building. After almost two years of continuous work we finally cut the red ribbon and let the masses in (pompous enough?).

It has been a long journey to have the temple opened. We started over two years ago by having some big trees cut down from our property, that were becoming dangerous because of rot. We hired a local lumber jack, and a local miller, a high class architect whose dream had been to design a monastery so he did it cheap, and so we started the project. Other than the timber frame, the whole temple is built by the monks. One of the older monks knew some construction, so he started teaching me stuff and we started on it, just the two of us. I had never been into this kind of stuff and there definitely was a learning curve, but eventually I learned a bunch of things. After a year a couple of more young guys moved in and we taught them to do construction too. It has been pretty magical how everything came together. We had hardly any money or the know-how when we started but after two years there’s a 1500 square foot space for worship on our property. It brings to mind a saying of Napoleon, “Impossible is a word in a fool’s dictionary”.

Traditionally you wouldn’t think that when you move to a monastery, you’ll end up doing construction. But it has been a labor of love. Everything can be utilized in learning to appreciate and serve reality or absolute, and building a temple is certainly a good way of learning that. We have put thousands of work hours into it, tens of thousands of nails ans screws, blood and sweat, and now we can offer it like a big sacrifice.

Although devotional action may seem totally ordinary, it’s always different, the main reason being that it’s not done to fulfill your own aspirations or desires but it’s done as service to the absolute, and that kind of action has a purifying effect. Instead of stealing from the environment and claiming things to be ours, we try to act in a way as to recognize that nothing really belongs to us and that we are part of a huge perfectly functioning whole. Knowing one’s real position brings peace, that’s how I feel. And not only knowing, but learning to act accordingly brings that realization on a practical level. What a beautiful way of existing, working for the “big picture” and doing away with exploitation once and for all!