scottvacek's blog

Things are fairly quiet for the moment- the retreaters finished their second six-week lerung last wednesday, January 18.  We have shifted the delivery cycle to every two weeks during lerungs as an experiment, and we are hoping that the retreatants like it- it seems to be most beneficial for a lot of reasons-- We invade the Tsam half as much as we used to, since we're going in every two weeks instead of every week....and it also gives caretakers a break for 4-5 days during the "off" week where we can focus on other things-- and it also appears to be cheaper too- so far it looks like the retreatants are ordering less food for a two-week delivery than they used to over two weeks with deliveries every week.   These are very positive things for the retreat and the sanity of the caretakers.

The deliveries on Wednesday January 18 were fairly heavy, but not too huge.  No packages went in to the Tsam on that day as it was still the last day of lerung, and that's the S.O.P. for lerungs- no packages.   This wednesday's delivery will probably be big-  it's a 'break' month now and packages will be going in.   Orit and I just stopped by the post office in Bowie and our lovely postmaster (mistress?) Marisela told us that there is a huge load of packages for the retreat PO boxes.   One of us will need to drive back down there tomorrow with a pickup truck and pick up the packages. 

We're keeping our fingers crossed that the weather stays fairly mild for the GRT events- we will be holding two teachings in a large tent inside the Tsam each day for four days- February 2-5, and we hope it won't be too cold for people.   The teachings go from 2:30 to 7:30pm and so it could get cold in there.   So far the temperatures are mild, but anything can happen this time of year on the mountain- last year this time we had the coldest temperatures in over 100 years in this area and everything froze.   We had a sort of disaster with the water system- many many pipes broke from freezing and it was a mess for a whilte.   Also we expect to have people camping here during the GRT so for their good we're hoping that temps don't go too low.  

Does anybody out there have a good used washing machine they'd like to donate to DM?  The washing machine we have in the campground has evolved into a "dirtying" machine....if You want Your clothes to be dirtier than they are now it's a very reliable machine to use. :) ...but not if You want to clean Your clothes.  Not sure what the problem is but clothes come out with an exciting variety of black streaks and weird white spots or cloudy stains, maybe from soap that never moved.  We can't use it any more...we've ruined too many things in it.   It held up for some time, but it's no longer a washing machine.  Ah, gross impermanence.  Willcox laundromat is not a good option for us either as the last couple times we used it we had a similar experience- it seems that just before we used the washers (according to the nice and apologetic lady minding the mat) a very oily gentleman -who must work on an oilwell or an auto-repair shop or just likes rolling around in motor oil- had just washed all of his clothes.  So we got a sort of petroleum tie-dye effect on a lot of our own clothes.  it's not a good look.

If You have a lovely used washing machine that You believe actually renders clothes cleaner than they were when they went in, please e-mail me at scott.vacek@diamondmountain.org.    Thanks!

Have a lovely day....

scott and orit 

Wow, it's quiet.  Sunday August 14 and there are very few people here right now....just us chickens, so to speak.    It's the middle of a lerung and it's been rainy...a big thunderstorm rolls over the hill almost every afternoon.   I love the rain here....when the storm winds blow in the temperature will drop a good 10-20 degree in a very short time, and then it's a full-on monsoon. 

So the first Great Retreat Teachings are over and I guess we would all agree that they were a success even though we spent money to do them.  We had hoped that the events would be a fund-raiser, but they did not turn out to be, mainly because many people who registered did not show up.  We geared up for a larger crowd and the actual crowd was somewhere around 200 people.   On the bright side there were many newcomers to DM, and everyone who was here was well cared for and fed.  Thank You so much to all of the people who donated to DM, because without You all the cost of the events would have been pretty painful.    We took in about $15,000 in donations....far short of our costs but it helped immensely.   

Hopefully the people who were here for the first time will have a lasting connection with DM that will bear fruit in the future...maybe some will decide to come out for a time as full-time volunteers, or maybe some will do fundraising.   We are holding our own in funding but it's still basically touch-and-go.   It's most likely that we will need to tighten things up a bit, because still just not enough money is coming in.   Things are run very efficiently thanks to the diligence of Rob and Donna watching the books carefully, and we're all volunteers here- no one is paid.    None the less there are 39 people up the hill doing the retreat and they have needs, and we have to maintain a commissary and vehicles to supply them. 

We are a very small skeleton crew right now and have just enough people to get the job done.    We don't have anyone currently filling the job of volunteer coordinator, and so it makes it hard to respond to the few people who have expressed interest in coming out.   It's great if people want to come out for a week or two, but most of the work is on tuesdays, wednesday and thursdays.   The weekends, especially during lerungs, are quiet.   It's also really helpful if people want to come out for extended periods of time and take on some responsibility for maintenance or improvement projects in the campground area.   Not everyone is allowed to go up into the Tsam, and so a volunteer showing up will usually not be able to ride in the trucks to do deliveries...but we do need help in the commissary to sort food, load delivery bins, unload trucks, load trucks, clean up, etc.  

Venerable Chandra and Tianna have been doing a nice job keeping the commissary running.   Tianna has a wonderful temperment for it....she is very cool.   Chuck handles a lot of the key tasks like filling propane and taking out the trash, and Michael is a regular hand on delivery days.    As usual Orit is busy handling various medical needs for the retreaters.   Rob and Donna work really hard on bookkeeping and they do almost all of the weekly shopping for food and supplies- and that is a huge job.   Nicole works hard on the maintenance of all cabins (not to mention the campground and commissary) and fielding requests for improvements.   Tahiya Knapp is a key worker in the commissary and her daughter Elisha does the newsletter and some other things when she is here.   Mattie Gallup is Mr. Fixit and also does delivery runs...He's an all-around guy.   He lives in Bowie and comes up when there is a project.  It's only barely enough people considering that we like to leave the land once in a while!   Someone always needs to be here, so we have to take turns.

On August 25 Oriti and I are going to go and have our honeymoon! since we never got to have one in the first place...:)   We had one of the weirdest weddings I know of....we wanted to have it done by Lama Chukyi and blessed by Geshe Michael and Lama Christie, and so it had to happen just before the retreat started since that was the only time they were here...but due to various issues with scheduling, our wedding started at 3:00am!   We had a bleary-eyed but dedicated group of people that actually attended!!   Then once it was over we managed to get to the suite at the Quality Inn in Willcox that Orit's mom had gotten for us at 6am and lay down, and then we had to leave around 9am to get back to Diamond Mountain because it was the last day before the retreat!....so we got about 3 hours in the bed and never even set foot in the jacuzzi tub.   Orit's mom and sister had come all the way from Israel and they were incredibly patient with us.   SO, now we're going to spend three nights in a nice place in Tucson and take it very easy....it's been a long time coming.

To all of the friends and family of retreaters, please know that we take it very seriously to take care of the people in the retreat.    We're doing our best and they seem to be in good shape.   

More another time,

scott

About five weeks ago in my last blog post I wrote about the first month or two of the retreat here at DM, and it’s been on my mind lately to write more…   and something that Jim Dey wrote on facebook yesterday kicked me in the butt to tell me it’s time to get some new words out.

So yes, the water emergency was intense…many retreaters went a month with no running water, and it took a monumental effort by Nicole Davis and her team of merry maintenance bandits, running around the retreat valley guerrilla-style in a small window of time every Wednesday, trying to rebuild the devastated system and fix all of the crazy little things that broke in each cabin, not to mention that pretty much everybody with a propane appliance (meaning all retreaters) had to have them re-calibrated for the altitude here....something we learned the hard way with a few items burning out from excessive pressure.  I don’t think that many people realize that each cabin in the retreat valley is a completely unique, custom installation (with the exception of a few similar places that Doug Veenhof designed) and so Nicole has to be familiar with every component of 27-ish different houses, and fix whatever goes wrong with them. It’s totally overwhelming and I can’t believe that Her eyeballs haven’t shot out of Her head… If You own or have ever owned a house you know what it’s like to handle all of the little things that go wrong….now imagine having 29 places like that
to stay on top of... She’s been under a huge amount of pressure and has handled it with amazing grace. I bow down.

I guess you could say that we have recovered from the water devastation, at least on the maintenance front.   I think that Nicole said when this current deep-retreat period started almost two weeks ago that everyone in the retreat had running water again.   Financially I guess You could say we recovered from that to some extent, which is to say that we went from being way, way in the hole to just way in the hole….our monthly costs are still far exceeding our monthly donations, so our cash flow is still very seriously negative.   Having been around Diamond Mountain for about six years now I’m not too preoccupied about that, since we’ve all seen so many other miracles happen out here….I will not be surprised when the money materializes to carry the retreat to its full term- but I can’t deny that it is sort of a cloud hanging overhead….the few of us that are left here go about our daily responsibilities with increasing efficiency, but it’s hard to forget about the constant decline of the bank account.    I look forward to overcoming that issue, and Orit and I are trying to watch our own actions so as not to create any new causes for financial difficulties anywhere, by anyone.

We’ve just passed the three-month mark, so now we officially have three years to go to the scheduled end of the retreat.   Three Years, three months and three days takes us to April 2014.  The weather has turned warm again out here, with the exception of today…we’re actually having some rain today, believe it or not.   It will soon be hot again.   The creatures are waking up and returning…on the way up the road to our little apartment the other day I came across a big pink gila monster waddling along in front of me, and on Wednesday
afternoon after the delivery runs, I inaugurated my new status as official snake wrangler by relocating a 4’ diamondback rattlesnake that was hanging out way too long right next to the commissary driveway…..right where we park the pickup trucks to load supplies for delivery runs.    I felt bad to move him down the road and hope he finds a new place right away.     Oriti almost stepped on a baby snake while she was walking on the main road the other day, and the little guy was not happy about the close encounter…so we have warned everybody to keep their eyes open.

There is a term in Hebrew called “getting into the shvoong”….basically means getting into the
groove.    So, You could say that we are getting into the shvoong at DM.  The few of us here have gotten into a kind of routine that seems to be working so far.  One of our biggest problems now I guess is that we don’t have any “bench”….no backup people to draw from if
someone wants to leave to go do something like go to Geshe Michael’s events in
Phoenix this month…so if people have to leave, it just puts extra work on the shoulders of the few left behind.  I think we went through a natural transition period…..these first three months have had some ups and downs, and we made it through by focusing on the survival of the retreat, but Diamond Mountain was not the same as it has been.  It was really eerie how quiet it got when the retreat started and the small army of construction volunteers disappeared literally overnight <insert sounds of crickets chirping> and we didn’t have any real plan for volunteer organization because we had no idea how many volunteers would be around… and there were no classes going on, so I know that there were several really wonderful people that came here expecting to volunteer at a functioning Dharma center and were disappointed and eventually left…..January thru March were all about scrambling to learn how to serve the retreat and to try to fix the water system…now we are beginning to focus on bringing classes back.    In the future we hope to find a good balance of classes and volunteer working structure that will make the place attractive in something more like a Sivananda style, but not quite as much volunteer responsibility as Sivananda, so that people can spend a little more time on study, practice, etc.    We’re just beginning to work now on a new schedule of classes which will focus at first on webcasts and maybe eventually
lure people here in person.

Several of us have been focusing heavily on planning for the first of six “Great Retreat Teachings” (www.greatretreatteachings.org) which will take place here this July…. Given the fact that Geshe Michael and Lama Marut will be out there actively promoting this event between now and July, we think it could be big. We are already making plans to level a new area as an overflow parking lot. In the first five days after registrations opened (about two weeks ago) we received about 130 registrations, and the numbers have been steadily climbing. It could be a really amazing thing….after all we have 1,040 acres out here and it could be a magical thing to have a large crowd come for such a rare moment when Geshe Michael, Lama Christie and Lama Marut will all be teaching on the same days. I heard somebody call it “Goodstock”….others seem to prefer “Lamapalooza”…. :) What can I say- it’s going to be amazing and we’re working hard on gearing up logistics to accommodate a large crowd.  We are so honored that these three great teachers have arranged their schedules to do this together.   The original series of these (called “Quiet Retreat Teachings”) from the first three-year retreat are legendary….and now to have something even potentially bigger…wow.  We want to maintain the magic of those first ones while making it accessible to a larger audience.   Anyone who shows up here for this is going to get a transmission of something much more than words.

May is going to be my big chance to do work on the area inside the tsam (retreat area) where the main events will take place- June will be another deep retreat month and so we can't do work in the valley during that time….so come on out in May if You enjoy wielding a pick and shovel in the
sun!   We’ll have some fun and work hard getting the site ready.

The second “deep” period of the retreat began on March 29, so we’re almost two weeks into it.    The retreaters limit themselves to a much closer space during these times and we do not send in packages or do much or any maintenance, so the delivery days are not as intense.   We have been limping along on 1.5 pickup trucks…..our newer one has been quite fine but our old 1992 Toyota with 280,000 miles has been manifesting its gross impermanence lately…. steadily giving up the ghost component by component over the last couple of weeks.   That’s the truck that I usually drive on the mountain during the delivery days, and I really appreciate it- I have been so impressed with what they will do- but this Wednesday it took some
serious muscle to turn the wheel, especially in the tight turnarounds, as the power steering suddenly ceased to exist.   Our local Bowie mechanic Dale told us the old truck is running on 5 of 6 cylinders and on its way out…..so it’s very good news that just in the nick of time Nicole found a really sweet 1997 Toyota Tacoma with 145,000 miles on it that fit our budget, and Rob Ruisinger purchased it this week….it just showed up last night.  
We have been looking hard for another truck to give us two reliable vehicles, and we missed one or two that got snapped up by more aggressive buyers- so we were focused on grabbing this one.   These trucks are THE lifeline to the retreaters….we drive them weekly on things I can’t even
call roads full, loaded to the gills with food bins, coolers, propane, packages and building materials.   It’s been an education to find out that they will quietly and happily creep up the side of almost anything that’s not totally vertical, in 4-Low/second gear….    We try to be quiet when making deliveries and picking up trash, so you try not to slam the door when
you get in or out and try not to bang the bins and propane tanks around....and having a nice quiet engine and creeping along quietly in second gear is really important...not to mention not getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere on the side of steep hill with a heavy load.     The two-track trails we drive on that make up the delivery routes are a little hairy here and there.   We’re used to it now but I’ve learned a lot about off-road driving.   Of course it will be a whole new learning curve when the rains come.

We know that the big freeze and subsequent water emergency were just the first hurdles….there will no doubt be many more lessons along the way in this completely unique and historic
situation.    The land here is beautiful and also ruthless sometimes.   Almost anywhere you step there is something that will stick you, and when the rains come big sections of road can just disappear…so we have some contingencies in mind for dealing with washouts, but we have to be ready for anything.   

So there are a handful of really excellent, dedicated people out here holding down the fort.   Orit has been very busy making sure medical safety is in place, keeping the retreaters supplied with first aid supplies and maintaining relationships with medical professionals.   Tianna Lewis works hard on managing the commissary, with dedicated assistants like Tahiya Knapp and Melissa Young.   Chuck does his normal thing of minding the campground logistics. 
Michael Brannan has been a worthy hand on delivery days and is even teaching ACI 1 classes here now.  
Venerable Phil has been teaching debate in the temple every week too.   Mattie Gallup is
everywhere, wearing a tool belt. 
Bogdan, Viet and Elisha put a lot of time into helping out with a lot of things every week.  Orit and I live on the hill right next to Rob and Donna, and I see them pop up in the morning and stay in the office all day and late into the night, poring over the books and accounts to keep the whole operation afloat…and that’s when they’re not in Tucson doing all of the shopping or driving the big rental truck out here loaded with food, etc.  Chaz Gross too has been instrumental in arranging our bulk food purchase deals and doing the shopping too.

We are all working on getting our act more together, to present a more organized volunteer arrangement and regular classes to attract people, and I think it will be really rewarding to
anybody that comes in the future.    I know that Geshe Michael and Ven. Jigme and others are working on a plan to raise more funds to make this all possible, and we are so grateful.  

The few left here now are pretty committed.    You have to be, because it is all volunteer work…..everybody here is paying to be here, no joke.   Some people are lucky enough to receive food stamps and if they’re really lucky they have health insurance from the state….but You can’t buy gas or soap or sunscreen or boots or with food stamps, and so you have to get very creative to survive here.   I’ve hesitated to write about this, because I think it sounds vaguely cry-baby in a way... and so if it does, just realize that nobody here is stupid- it’s so, so worth it.   It’s a very powerful thing to serve something big like this, and You can feel it.   Oriti and I talk every day about how grateful we are to be in a place in life where we can drop everything else and be here full-time as volunteers.  It’s incredibly gratifying for so many reasons.  It is painfully obvious that it is needed too….they need us so much.  
As Nicole said to me the other day, “they (the retreaters) need us for everything…down to water and heat.”  We know what powerful seeds we are planting in our minds for the future.    Honestly, I think we’re the luckiest people in the world.   

Maybe after the retreat is
over (we’re hoping that means April 2014, depending on donations), if we’re
still alive, we’ll go do something else…we know that, as a result of doing
this, everything we ever need in the future will come to us easily.    We know that the seeds being planted now are unimaginably powerful, so it is very, very interesting to us to wonder what our world will look like after this opportunity for service is over….    and what the
next one will be….

Have a lovely day…

scott

I wrote pretty much everything you are about to read here to a friend yesterday, and he suggested I post it on the website blog, and I thought it was a good idea...so here goes: 

I thought I would write a little more about the retreat because my first mail to my friend was dashed off pretty quickly in-between getting home to our little apartment at DM (in the Menla garage building) and doing yoga before rushing to another meeting.    It's been hard to maintain a practice here with all of the caretaking work but luckily my lovely and extraordinary wife Orit is not only a yoga teacher and a registered nurse, but also pretty tough about maintaining the practice, so she won't give me a break just because our schedule is crazy.

I had written to my friend that we were working hard out here- and then later I wondered if that seemed at all mysterious- it's hard to imagine that it could be that much work to get together some food and propane and drive it up to the retreat cabins every week, right?   I am totally surprised how much it is taking....we have a full-on army supply depot running here, and it is taking 10-12 volunteers pretty much all week to keep it going.   Tianna Lewis has taken over the "Commissary" and is doing an admirable job, and it's like running a good-sized restaurant.   The big room at Jamyang House which used to be a classroom and living room, has been converted into a storeroom and we keep food bins there for every cabin.   There are a couple of chest freezers in there and we are moving a large commercial glass-front refrigerator in there soon.    There is a large walk-in cooler in the courtyard of Jamyang now which pretty much takes up the whole space.   Every Wednesday we have 10-12 people going up into the retreat valley for 5-7 hours in 6 vehicles to deliver food, propane, produce, packages, mattresses, shelving units, furniture, building supplies, etc. etc.. and to do maintenance, which lately has been like disaster recovery.    Most cabins get a big food bin, a big blue Ikea bag full of produce, some freezer bags full of frozen items, a propane bottle or two, and assorted packages that were mailed in for them from the outside.   We haul out their empty food bins and bags from the previous week, along with trash and an assortment of other odd things they send out.    In the first month we filled two 30-yard trash dumpsters full of construction debris and garbage that we brought down the hill on our return trips with the pickup trucks.   We have two Toyota pickups...one newer and one 1992 with 280,000 miles on it.   It looks terrible but has a big heart and will climb anything.   I have written to the Toyota corporation of America in Torrance, CA to ask them to open their big hearts and maybe give us a new pickup truck!  What can I say....we need it.   I am also interested in approaching GM and Ford....and whatever trucks we use out here need to be tough and not too wide- the narrow two-track roads we drive on to get to the cabins are very rugged, and some of them don't even look like roads!  

Every wednesday, three of the six vehicles do nothing but deliver food and supplies, and the other three are a guerilla maintenance team- 5-6 people moving as fast as they can all over the valley to fix broken items in the water system or at the cabins themselves.

When we bring the empty bins and bags back down the hill to the commissary, a crew working there checks in the food orders from the retreatants for the following week and spends hours transposing those documents into the beginning of a master food order for shopping for the following week.    That master order takes until Thursday night or Friday to complete.    Then there's a bit of a lull in the delivery work on friday where we try to recover and work on projects around the campground or other buildings, service vehicles, etc.   Rob Ruisinger, the president of the DM board, and some others start shopping on the weekend and drive a large rental truck to DM on Monday loaded with all of the food on pallets, in cases and in coolers on ice.   We unload everything Monday evening into the various storage places at Jamyang House, depending on whether it needs to be refrigerated...and then tuesday a crew spends all day reading individual orders and packing the bins and bags.   ....Then Wednesday morning the process starts all over again.

The freezes really hit us hard....it was dangerously cold down here and water systems were just wrecked everywhere near here.    So many components of the retreat valley water system were broken or destroyed that it was overwhelming....and it happened twice.    The second time was the coldest by far and it just crushed us.    It was amazing to see how complex pipe systems were destroyed beyond recognition...I've never seen anything like it.     We are becoming experts on what will break in a freeze.   We have brought in skilled labor to help on the maintenance days since there has been so much to do.   Technically we are not allowed to do any maintenance at all during the deep retreat periods, like February, and so we were not supposed to do anything at all during February but we felt we had no choice but to sneak around a little bit trying to stop the hemorrhaging of water....we lost so much through broken pipes when things began to melt, it was scary.   Water is especially precious in the desert, and we lost a lot of it.  None of the valves in the system could be shut before the thaw because they were frozen too!...so when the ice began melting, the water began running out.  

One retreatant actually came out of their deep retreat to stop a massive flood from the main well that started in the thaw...They noticed it but nobody else did, and the well could have run for days and pumped out an unthinkable amount of water from the underground spring...so that person is kind of a hero.     Most of the huge main holding tanks ran out completely -nothing but some sediment in the bottom.    In the (2) 1,400 gallon tanks above Menla house and garage where we live, I found a solid layer of ice across the top of the 8' diameter tanks with nothing but air below when I went to investigate why our water had stopped....so it was clear that they emptied in a matter of hours...the water below the ice ran out before the ice layer had enough time to melt and fall to the bottom.   That's 2,800 gallons of water that ran out just down the hill right below where we live, because it happened faster than we could notice.    Some areas of black ABS water line in the retreat valley were like lawn sprinklers from being split by the freeze....little fountains shooting 4-5 feet into the air every 20 feet or so.   We had to shut the entire system down and begin rebuilding it from the well up.   Orit and I were without water at our apartment for a week or so but that's because we were able to fix the damage....but pretty much the entire retreat valley was without running water up until yesterday....so many retreatants hadn't had a shower for a month.    To cook or bathe they dipped buckets into their own holding tanks -if they still had water in them.   We have taken 5-gallon jugs in to many of them but we only go in once a week.   In the last few weeks, we were beginning to get panicky-sounding notes from some of them....some were getting a little freaked out, not understanding why we couldn't restore their water.   It was hard to take, we felt bad, but even with using every available moment for maintenance it took forever to get anything done, and it was expensive.   Nicole Davis has been trying to manage the operations and trying to stay ahead of all of it, and she's been at Her wit's end.    

The good news is that as of yesterday we believe that most cabins' tanks are filling, so many should have water back again, but we have wiped out our money "buffer" to get to this point.

Aside from that we are working on the Great Retreat Teachings in July, and we are trying to teach and practice.  Orit is a registered nurse, and is the medical person for all retreatants and so She is busy making sure everyone stays healthy.

Orit and I recognize the insanely beautiful seeds of serving here, and we're really grateful for it.   We have a strong feeling of the perfection of it....why it's a perfect place for us to be for the next three years.    I just hope we can raise enough money to keep it going.  

We have been doing everything we can to stay ahead of the wave of water system repairs and the retreatants' needs, and to be honest I don't think it ever occurred to anybody to start sending out an SOS about the water emergency....I have been working on a different video to show people what it's like in the caretaking process, because we are falling way short with Dollar-A-Day donations, and we can't go on for very long without a major uptick in donations...so I hope to help people see the value of what's going on and sign up for DAD.   

Then finally we went to Phoenix this weekend to meet with Geshe Michael and to shoot video of Him, and so we made the appeal video that is on the front page of this site and also sent it out to everyone we can think of on facebook- so thankfully it's beginning to help, but we have a long way to go.

That's it for now.... I thought it might be good to tell more of the story....

scott