PROGRESS REPORT #5 ON MAJOR RESTORATION PROJECTS at Still Mountain Dharma Center
We continue to make progress almost daily on our quest to restore and upgrade our Center so we can reopen for public online and in person programs
THE DAWNING LIGHT—Daily journal Of Transformational Writing
Volume 8, Issue # 843 for Monday, March 25, 2024
STILL MOUNTAIN CHRONICLES Section # 52 Stories by Chinmayan about our life and adventures in pursuit of simple living freedom, our service to the world and our own spiritual path in a small rural Dharma Center in the mountains of Northern California
All images in this issue by Chinmayan
PROGRESS REPORT # 5 on MAJOR RESTORATION PROJECTS AT STILL MOUNTAIN DHARMA CENTER
We continue to make progress every day on our quest to restore and upgrade our Meditation Hall and Center facilities so that we can reopen for public and online programs as soon as possible
A DIARY OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Wednesday, March 13th, 2024
Dear friends…
After many days of one intense atmospheric river after another bringing high winds and heavy rain day and night, today we are back to blue skies and sunny days for at least a week.
Today is once again a beehive of activity here on Still Mountain. This week we have scheduled just two days as work days dedicated to restoration projects.
But because all of us are doing this work with full and happy hearts, every day is full of major accomplishments and monumental steps forward.
As Kalu Rinpoche often reminded us “Great things can be accomplished when a group of dedicated people choose to work together in harmonious alignment and peaceful harmony.”
“When working towards a great and worthy goal…there are times for sitting meditation but there are also times for Working Meditation.”
We are practicing working meditation today.
So far today….
….We have ordered an amazingly beautiful thanka of Chenrezig to be made for us that is the perfect main picture for our altar. We have been praying on this for weeks, and after trying out other images that didn’t feel right, were led to finding this beautiful painting that is the perfect fit.
…Our volunteer Arnold completed restoring the last two sump pumps to good working order. Now all six sump pumps are on line to rapidly pump out all the water that would otherwise become a lake under the floor when it rains. This is a huge achievement because these two were extremely challenging to repair over several days of effort.
…Last week we moved almost all the things that had been stored in the Meditation Hall into the South End so that this week’s primary focus will be starting work on restoring the Hall. This morning, we took the time to organize all the moved items on the new floor in a neat and orderly way.
This is a big deal because after years of having the South End and several storerooms stuffed to the ceiling with chaotic piles of jumbled up things, we crave living in a clutter free and highly organized environment.
Now it feels good to go into the South End because everything has been thoughtfully placed.
The South End with stored things moved and organized onto the new floor
CLEARING OUT A STORE ROOM
…To the right of the Altar and the woodstove is a door to the least visited room in the building, tucked away in the corner. We have always intended to restore this room into a “Dharmasala”, which is a quest room for visiting Dharma students, but other restoration projects have had priority. It has been used as a storeroom, but hasn’t even been opened for a long time.
Today, we did go in and discovered that only a few things were still stored inside, but we could see clearly that some kind of animal has been living there.
From the muddy tracks, it looks like Raccoons have moved in to make it their winter home.
We removed everything inside this room because we also discovered that the floor had collapsed and rotted out.
The walls of the room are paneled with beautiful old growth redwood in excellent condition so someday when we have the time and funds to replace the floor, it will become one of the very nicest spaces in the building.
The future “Dharmasala” partially cleared out
OUR COMMITMENT TO GIVE AWAY ANYTHING WE NO LONGER NEED
…We have operated our county’s longest running Community Free Yard in the front driveway for at least 20 years.
Now, as we are going through storerooms and spaces here, we are choosing to give away anything and everything that we no longer use or do not need.
We actually started this process back in December 2023 just before Christmas when we did a massive GIVE AWAY of an entire storeroom full of tools, furniture, planters, house wares, cooking items, bread makers and so many other valuable things in great shape…and it was all gone from our Free Yard in just 4 hours.
Since then, as we have cleared stagnant spaces, we have refilled the free yard several times.
We have learned that it is far more pleasurable to serve our community by giving away valuable things rather than continuing to save them for ourselves.
Our Community Free Yard
SIMPLIFYING MEANS CLEARING UP ALL UNCONSCIOUS AREAS
One of our MAJOR GOALS with this restoration work is to continuously simplify and give away anything we no longer need, even if we may actually desire to keep them.
We know from experience that all things that we choose to keep always take up energy and attention, even if they are stashed away in tubs in a storeroom.
This dynamic can be good for things that we actually need and use daily, but we have learned that when a lot of things are stored away in various locations on this property, they become stagnant energy vortexes of unconsciousness which are dormant energy drains.
In order to truly simplify, we are gradually clearing up all these stagnant store areas with the goal of making every area clean, clear and conscious by giving away 90% of these things.
This is much more important that it may seem because our over riding goal is to make Still Mountain a beautiful place that is holy, sacred and supportive first through removing everything extraneous and consciously choosing to keep only the very best and most useful things.
It feels really good not to give in to that desire to save extraneous things for ourselves, but to give them away while saying to each other…”Someone is going to love this!” Or “Someone needs this item much more than we do!”
Thursday, March 14, 2024
We begin each work day with a project meeting between Ani, Arnold, our good hearted volunteer and myself sitting around a big desk in the new publications studio at the back of the meditation hall. We go over the “punch list” that details all the things, small or large, that we have as goals to be completed each week.
It was an unmitigated joy to be working in our new Publications Studio in the back of our Meditation Hall last night and then to do my nightly sadhanas ( spiritual practices) at my new prayer and teaching table after publishing today’s issue of “The Dawning Light.’
After two years of rarely being in here and having it full of stored things, it gives me intense satisfaction to have it back to being usable.
There is still much that must be done before we can reopen for public online and in person programs, but enough of the basics are here that the Hall can be used.
I feel like I have come home after a long journey away, and am enjoying, actually totally loving, being in this Hall.
RACCOON INVASION
As I was working on this newsletter, here in the hall, last night I heard our Raccoon squatters come into the “Dharmasala”.
I could tell from their screeching that there were two of them and they were pissed to see everything that had been in their “home”was gone, with nothing left except the wet rotted floor.
Apparently, this made them very irritable because they started fighting with each other with fierce snarling and snapping.
It seemed like one was bigger than the other and that the smaller raccoon was getting pummeled to the point that I heard him being slammed against the walls.
I grew up on coastal islands in Florida where we had groups of raccoons that were always getting into mischief.
Raccoons have five “fingers” one their feet, which allows them to use the front pair like arms when they stand up on their hind legs.
They are clever and can easily open doors and windows, kitchen cupboards and trash cans in their search for food.
Raccoons are masters of mischief!
They can also be dangerous if cornered because they have sharp claws and teeth and will stand and tight if they feel threatened.
So when I heard them fighting in that little room, I didn’t dare open the door to try to scare them off and risk having two scared, furious raccoons jump on me.
Instead, I chose “discretion as the better part of valor” and put on a rock and roll kirtan really loud and they left.
Raccoons are territorial, so they will likely come back in the future.
If they decide to try to keep living in our Dharmasala, we will have to trap them in a large No Harm cage trap that we already have and deport them to a wilderness area far from here.
Our story continues in the next issue of “The Dawning Light”!
In case you missed our previous stories about our restoration, here is a link to those stories:
WE THANK EVERYONE WHO ARE SUPPORTING THIS WORK
We are sending a big thank you! To all those of you who have written to encourage us, who have made financial donations to keep these projects going, who have offered their help through volunteering and most of all, who believe in us and value what we are doing to serve the world. We could not be doing these great and wonderful things without you!
We still need your on going help and support to complete these projects and re open this Center.
Here are the links to our ultra safe donation site… We are asking for donations of any size, even a few dollars makes a massive difference!
DONATION PORTAL to Support Restoration Projects At Still Mountain Mediation Center
Or use this QR code:
In return, everyone who donates any amount to our cause will receive a generous discount on tuition to upcoming new programs and courses, plus we will send you our “Meditation Training Intensive” video course ($150 value) as a reward.
Meanwhile, we will continue to keep on working to do everything we can to be a source of inspiration, information and encouragement for you, our friends and family in the “Dawning Light.”
Thanks again for being here and shining your own light of Love which is needed now more than ever!
dormant energy drains indeed!
Love hearing about the progress!