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to 'What's New'October 2004
Dear Friends,
The days have suddenly gotten clear as a bell and the nights cold, with heavy frost on the remaining vegetables in the garden. The aspens are completely lit up, and the oaks are burnt orange and red. All the animals and people at Tara Mandala are preparing for winter. We hope to have the new community building enclosed before the snow flies. Our latest news is that Charlotte Rotterdam and Pieter Oosthuizen are going to join the Tara Mandala team as co-directors. Charlotte has been the Managing Director and the Director of Programming at Naropa University School of Extended Studies, and Pieter has been the Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs also at Naropa. They will be filling and expanding the job that Paloma Cain has so ably held the last two and a half years as she explores her next steps. She sees this transition as a possible sabbatical, and she will be back in December to help manage Adzom Rinpoche's retreat and will remain part of the extended Sangha wherever she lands. We are so grateful for all that she has held here the past several years. Recently we had a wonderful ceremony in which Paloma offered Charlotte and Pieter a container of earth from the land and a blue lotus, symbolic of Tara's Utpala flower, symbolizing the transfer of her position to them.
For nine years Charlotte directed all activities of Naropa University School of Extended Studies including professional development seminars, trainings, certificate programs, and conferences in a wide range of professional areas with special attention to weaving contemplative awareness with practical expertise. This included personal development programs, online education, four Master’s Degrees and over fifty individual courses. She holds a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College where she majored in philosophy and minored in religion. At Tara Mandala she will be in charge of programming, helping to design the retreat and educational opportunities, as well as managing some aspects of marketing, donor relations, benefits and fundraising events, and teacher coordination.
Pieter Oosthuizen worked at Naropa University for seven years, most recently as the Assistant Vice President. He has supervised the School of Extended Studies and all its associated programs including the various Centers for Professional Development within Extended Studies, the Naropa University Distance Education Division, the Allen Ginsberg Library, and the former Prison College Program. He directly participated in the governance of the university through serving on the Outreach Committee of the Naropa Board of Trustees and the Faculty Executive Committee. He networked and fostered relationships with numerous organizations, funding institutions and individuals outside Naropa and focused internally on creative collaboration between all academic and administrative departments. He was educated in his home country of South Africa where he received a law degree from Rand Afrikaans University School of Law and a B.Com also from Rand Afrikaans University (the equivalent of an American BS in Business and Economics). At Tara Mandala Pieter will be in charge of staffing, work flow, website management, design of marketing materials, cottage industries, networking with relevant organizations, fundraising, and budgeting.
As co-directors they will share the responsibilities of strategic overview, marketing strategy, the business plan, business development, public relations strategy and execution, and local outreach. They are a married couple and have worked together at Naropa for many years. They come with the inspiration to change their lives, to live more simply, to be closer to nature in a practice community in the blessings and spaciousness of the land. They will take up residence at Tara Mandala December 1st, but will begin to help out this fall. We are very happy at this outcome of our job search, getting in the end much more than we had initially expected. Charlotte and Pieter come at a time of important expansion and development and we are excited by their experience and inspiration to join us at this time. Charlotte can now be reached at charlotte@taramandala.org. Starting in November Pieter’s email address will be admin@taramandala.org.
The other news is the growth of the Community Building. The walls of the first floor are almost complete. Follow the link for a photo of the western and southern elevations. I recently watched them creating the arches in the entry way out of earth blocks. We have also completed the composting toilet. The other new addition is a 26' grow-dome greenhouse that sprouted up overnight and will provide year round fresh food for the residents and guests. Several people are in long-term retreat now, and we are hoping to start moving towards the three-year retreat building soon.
The month-long 3 Yana Retreat was held in Kapala meadow in order to get away from the construction noise and it proved to be an inspiring place to practice. During walking meditation, the retreatants found two ancient hand stones for grinding and a flat grinding platter, as well as some tools and arrowheads. One of them is an archeologist and is going to begin a study of the archeological history of Tara Mandala.
We have had two more Maha-Benefactors come forward to join the capital campaign with $50,000 pledges and many others helping at different levels of the gift pyramid. The Krishna Das benefit at the end of the summer was very successful with events in Durango and on the land, yielding about $7,000. Grateful thanks go out to Krishna Das and Ambika for so generously donating their time & musical gifts to these events, and to the Local Advisory Council and especially Tami Graham for their heartful & skillful efforts. Thanks also to all the summer staff and volunteers who worked on the building crew this summer. Work continues with hopes that we will get the building closed in before the snow flies.
In early September Dave and I traveled to Margarita Island in Venezuela to receive Longsal teachings from Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. These are his personal termas. It was a wonderful, heartfelt reconnection and we had some warm and intimate personal time with him when he invited us for lunch in his beautiful house overlooking the rapidly growing center where he has been living full-time for the last year.
Through an American who lives in Japan that I met at the Longsal retreat I reconnected with one of my earliest teachers, Nichang Rinpoche. I studied with him in 1971 in Sarnath, India. He has accepted my invitation to come to teach here next summer. He's a great Longchen Nyingthig master, a Chöd master and an important student of the great twentieth century woman teacher Shugseb Jetsun Rinpoche. Khandro Rinpoche has also accepted our invitation to come to Tara Mandala next year. She is the daughter of a great Mindroling master, Minling Trichen Rinpoche, and the reincarnation of the fifteenth Karmapa's consort.
The local Tara Mandala community is growing. Tai Vautier, Robert Woods and their two children are moving to Pagosa October 9th. Jim Woods, Robert’s uncle, has bought land adjoining Tara Mandala and is building a cabin that he hopes to live in this winter. We welcome these new members of the community. The local practice group is meeting every Wednesday night at 6:00 pm at our house during the winter. For details call (970) 264-6177 or send an email to info@taramandala.org.
I am now traveling and teaching in California and Washington. In November I will teach in New York and will be doing several fundraising events this fall, two in New York, and one in Washington. The campaign is going very well. We have raised well over a million dollars and are thankful to everyone who is helping. After Thanksgiving I'll go to Europe to help with Adzom Rinpoche's first European tour (Germany Dec. 1 - 6, Italy December 7 - 11) and return in time to greet him at Tara Mandala in mid-December. The dates for Adzom Rinpoche’s retreat at Tara Mandala will be December 18 – 24th. We'll be sending the details of that retreat out soon. We hope to hold it in the shell of the new Community Building with the woodstove burning. Hope to see you along the way.
Warmly,
Tsultrim Allione