Learning about money

David, my husband has written many books and that was a source of extra income. Not anywhere near enough to live on. In his younger days he was a political consultant and sold that business to study Torah and meditation full time. The proceeds from that sale supplemented our income for many years but no longer. We have chosen to live very simply. We no longer own a home and live mostly in Mexico.
Had we wished to teach full time I think we could have easily made a modest living from just teaching. It took time to build as when we started there was no such thing as Jewish meditation retreats. I am hoping you and Beth too ( as you know I have a bias here) can find a way to do this as full time as you want. Blessings to you both. Sincerely Shoshana

If it is anyway useful for the purpose of comparison my father was a Baptist minister by profession for 30 years. In addition to his BA he had 16 years of post grad education, two masters and two doctorates. After his ordination he worked in three ministries for three congregations. He averaged about 120 hours per week including eight hours a day monday to friday in his office along with meetings in the evenings and two services on Sundays. He was on call 24/7, frequently called away for emergencies at all hours and naturally performed weddings, baptisms and funerals. He never earned more than the equivalent of 35K USD/year and this was only in the last few years. He also tithed %10 of all income to missions programs. His specialty was church growth which involved taking over a pastorate at a church in decline, typically less than a hundred aging partitioners and rebuilding the congregation into a young and thriving group of several hundred.

He would not have even the slightest interest in awakening by any definition but he was entirely capable of finding all of my buttons for which I owe him my thanks.

It may be beneficial to network with others and join some related professional associations, for example:

clinical-mindfulness.org/

From the Membership page:
It is an exciting time to be in the field of mental health. Mindfulness and other forms of meditation are becoming increasingly popular as evidence-based clinical interventions, and new research and clinical approaches are continuously becoming available.
By becoming a member of the Society for Clinical Mindfulness & Meditation, you will be connected to colleagues from around the world who share your interest in these approaches. Membership gives you the opportunity to develop your professional network, share your experiences, and keep abreast of the latest developments in the field.
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I do wish you all the best Kenneth and much success in achieving your goals and objectives. I'm sure you will be of great benefit to many others by pursuing this career path of teaching meditation.

...

"I gave the guy a break. I replied.
"

Well, whether it was a break or not depends on how your reply recieved! You give good advice; I like it "Let's not leave aside the source of one's embedded subjectivity. Let's focus on it." .

Just ran across a recent Brad Warner blog post about Zen teachers and how they do/do not have "regular" jobs. The interesting part is in the why Warner doesn't want to live off his students:


hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2010/05/paying-...o-is-most.html#links

FYI: I just got an e-mail from a Steve Snyder and Tina Rasmussen distribution list I signed up for last year and noticed the specific fees that were listed for a new, year-long mentoring program they've started. I'd encourage everybody to check out this link below, where you'll see Steve's and Tina's very above-board requests for fees in exchange for on-the-phone mentoring, including a by-the-hour rate. These are Visuddhimagga-thumpin', uber-traditional Theravadins, and they don't seem to have a problem making specific dana requests. Steve and Tina say something about 'limited financial assistance' or consideration being available. By comparison, Kenneth's notion of a 'scholarship student' seems quite generous, in that he's saying nobody will be turned away at all if he can help it. To those who might be offended by what Steve and Tina are doing, consider that they told Vince they were going to have to sell their house in order to do Pa Auk Sayadaw's last-ever retreat here in the United States. Steve is an attorney, BTW. My guess is that all of the years of doing and teaching retreats have cut into their income, given that they're having to sell their house. I could be wrong.

www.jhanasadvice.com/id4.html

They also offer a lot of other media, at reasonable prices. Nice catch, Joel!

"Let's not leave aside the source of one's embedded subjectivity. Let's focus on it.

What seems clear to you now, is not clear. There are no basic tenets you can bow to.

I gave the guy a break. I replied.

Go and practice."

oops.
I just saw this. i can't complain about the tone since is basically matches mine from the original post.
so, i'm sorry for being testy about this subject.

"oops.
I just saw this. i can't complain about the tone since is basically matches mine from the original post.
so, i'm sorry for being testy about this subject. "

You didn't come across as testy to me, Mike. You made a very legitimate point: Buddhism is actually about suffering and the end of suffering, just as Kenneth's work is about discovering the happiness that is without conditions.
The Buddha talked about somebody getting hit with an arrow and then likened the emotional response to that event--all of the self-inflicted suffering that occurred as a result of the injury--as being the "second arrow." The Buddha didn't say, "Walk right onto the battlefield and don't worry about getting hit with arrows or trying to avoid arrows since you don't exist anyway."
The Buddha flouted the conventions of the day in India and said, "Take care of yourself. Take care of the body and your basic needs."
I think it's OK to expect an enlightened teacher to be relatively free of a lot of second arrow-related suffering, which might have been msj's basic point, but it's maybe not fair to expect them to just accept impoverishment, danger or discomfort. I was just listening to a talk by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, whom I happen to like a lot. He's a very traditional monastic, having been in robes since 1975. That's another way of saying that since 1975, all of his food, clothing and shelter have been provided by others. We can say that the teaching he provides is free, but is it, really? It also comes at another price: the separation that occurs between regular folks and the monks, which allows the former to project all of their unrealistic projections onto the latter. It would be a drag to have to carry those projections. No easy answers for this stuff, but it's great that we're all discussing them in an open way. Down with mushrooms!

"
Just ran across a recent Brad Warner blog post about Zen teachers and how they do/do not have "regular" jobs. The interesting part is in the why Warner doesn't want to live off his students:


hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2010/05/paying-...o-is-most.html#links

"

I saw this too but was reluctant to bring it into the mix because I can't seem to manage to enthuastically share my various opinions and thoughts on this subject without somehow coming off as negative or provoking or something. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong in that regard.
Anyway, I Warner's opinion is pretty much the one I started out with which is just don't try to make a living at it. Make your own living somehow and share the dharma when and how you can. that way, a lot of complications are avoided.
However, this is an unpopular opinion.
And, I adore kenneth folk and if he wants to do this full time it makes me want him to be able to. I want to support his goals.

"I saw this too but was reluctant to bring it into the mix because I can't seem to manage to enthuastically share my various opinions and thoughts on this subject without somehow coming off as negative or provoking or something. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong in that regard.
Anyway, I Warner's opinion is pretty much the one I started out with which is just don't try to make a living at it. Make your own living somehow and share the dharma when and how you can. that way, a lot of complications are avoided.
However, this is an unpopular opinion.
And, I adore kenneth folk and if he wants to do this full time it makes me want him to be able to. I want to support his goals. "

Yours is a perfectly reasonable position, Mike.
And again, I don't think you're coming across as negative. It's more that this subject stirs the pot for people, so the responses are heated, IMHO.

Good discussion.

Re-reading it, I noticed how much of what was written here is based on the assumption that the Dharma can actually be bought and sold. (As opposed to "should not be bought or sold")

Is that really so? Can I buy the A&P knowledge for, say $10k? How much do I pay for the first Noble Truth? Is the third Noble Truth three times as expensive? How much money do I need to fill up emptiness? How much will you pay me for my Soul?

In my opinion, that's why the Dharma can't be sold: not because it would be somehow tainted by the transaction, but because it's just not possible, in the same way that it's not possible to sell the number "348876".

So the uneasy feelings that arise when the subject turns to "taking money for Dharma" seem to come from this knowledge, deep down, and the consequence that by "buying Dharma" I'm being ripped off. Taking this one step further, knowing that I'm being ripped off means knowing that I'm gullible enough to let this happen. In the end, it's the admission of hoping that if I pay enough money, Everything's Gonna Be All Right.

But Kenneth is not in the business of selling Dharma Indulgences, or else he wouldn't require people to actually do the work and improve their meditation skills.

Cheers,
Florian

(edited for spelling and clarity)

Hi, Florian! For me this is not about paying money for the dharma. It's about paying money for Kenneth's time to teach me how to practice better. I know, I know... that seems to some like an esoteric difference, but I don't think it is.

Hi Chris,

Neither do I. That "esoteric difference" is what I tried to express in my post, not very clearly, I'm afraid.

Cheers,
Florian

Nice points, Florian. I think we make this much more complicated than it is. I've been noticing lately that the guitar teacher model works pretty well here. I used to be a guitar teacher. Music is something people feel passionate about. They understand that the ability to play music well is not something anyone can give them. And history shows that people who get regular lessons with a good teacher often more make more progress than they would working on their own. The teacher models techniques, provides an example, holds the student accountable, gives targeted guidance based on the student's individual circumstances, creates an expectation of success, and validates that progress is being made or points out that progress is not being made and helps to figure out why.

Everyone agrees that guitar teachers should be compensated for their time. In addition to providing a livelihood for the teacher, the fact that the student has to sweat a little to come up with the fee actually supports his progress; he is more likely to practice, knowing that he has a stake in it. I used to be very firm in the way I handled the fee. You had to buy a month worth of once-a-week lessons in advance. If you cancelled, there was no possibility of a refund. "I don't sell guitar lessons," I would tell people. "Guitar lessons are free. I sell time. My time is the most precious thing I own. I insist that you value it. Once I sell a time slot to you, I cannot sell it to someone else on short notice." People understood that kind of clarity and respected it.

Dharma lessons are only complex because of unnecessary religious baggage. Enlightenment isn't religious, it's human. Part of it is my fault because I am accepting dana instead of charging a fee. But I like dana. It allows both me and the student to approach our relationship in a spirit of open-handedness. This can work. It is working. Thanks, everyone, for making it work.

"That "esoteric difference" is what I tried to express in my post, not very clearly, I'm afraid." -- Florian

Nah, my fault.

I would say this subject is entirely based in concepts about values and ultimately can't be reduced to anything fundamental to human life or experience any sense. For instance it is a common notion that slavery has ended and most people would look at it this way because that is their experience but 250 million people in the world today are slaves and for them slavery is their life. Most people would prefer to think this isn't happening and maintain a sense of moral superiority over people in times past while those who continue to be slaves have nowhere to turn for help because 'slavery no longer exists'.

Dharma is sold all the time whether we notice it or not and a lot of money trading hands. In Bangkok 7-11s there are dozens of popular books by popular monks. Same thing in book stores here. I see a couple new books by the Dali Lama every time I'm at the bookshop I go to.

When DhO was a wetpaint site and I'd open the home page there was often a half dozen adds for online meditation classes for sale. Dharma has been borrowed and modified by innumerable sources and put into everything from Scientology to TV dramas.

This is why I've found the subject humorous, the values assigned to dharma teaching are no more or less absolute than the values we assign to everything else. I've found most human perceptions of value humorous in one way or another, for me that is the only real division, the values that make me chuckle as opposed to the ones that obviously lead to tragedy. Nothing tragic is going to come from Kenneth's teaching and if it reduces the pathos in people's lives then it is reducing the tragedy and that is the only significant change in value that I note.

I don't think anyone is assuming this topic is going to solve world hunger, cure cancer or eliminate poverty. But, if we've managed to make you chuckle then it has all been worthwhile

When I had this long dialogue last year with a friend of mine who is a physician, one of the things that just shocked me was to realize that he really thought everything I was talking about regarding meditative inquiry was total bullsh&t. Not the practice itself, but the notion of its ultimate value and purpose. I was used to thinking that Buddhism and science were totally compatible. For him, though, you cannot draw any conclusions whatsoever about the nature of reality--conclusions about "the ground of being" or the all-pervading nature of awareness, etc.--based on what Wilber would call your "interior subjective" experience. To think that you could do so, my friend would say, is analogous to someone thinking that deja vu is evidence of a past life experience, or that an LSD trip could be considered on par with scientific inquiry.
Whether we like it or not, religion is a part of this equation--if only because the vast majority of people will regard enlightenment-focused meditation practice as being some kind of religious or spiritual endeavor. Fundamentalist Christians will see it as religion. Hardcore materialists will see it as religion. Probably a lot of people in between will see it as religion.
When I was at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, the spa offered meditation for $40 an hour, which most people would see as a form of relaxation because of the context. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction could be seen as a form of therapy. Kenneth uses religious terms like stream entry, the four paths and nibbana and quotes spiritual teachers like Ramana Maharshi and St. John of the Cross.
I'd like the think the guitar teacher analogy works, but I think part of the working assumption in that analogy is that religion isn't a part of the equation. Whether the expectation is fair or realistic is beside the point, but people expect dharma teachers to be motivated by some kind of unconditional love for all beings [cont.]

[cont.]
or some kind of non-sentimental appreciation for non-separation. I happen to think that is Kenneth's primary motivation. I get that sense from him, although I appreciate that this could be my projection. Nobody expects someone to cut their grass or teach them the guitar with something like that--an essentially religious impulse--as their primary motive.
(It is true, though, that good guitar teachers will care about their students, and that their students will get that sense from them.)
Part of the reason for the reactivity around the money issue is that people--naively or otherwise--want to feel that money isn't the primary driver of the teaching. If you take religion out of the equation altogether, perhaps by sanitizing the language you use, then you might give people the sense that you don't have any higher purpose for your teaching--even when you actually do!

"I would say this subject is entirely based in concepts..."-triplethink

I agree, Nathan. This is all about the ideas we cherish and become attached to. I can't deny that it matters to people, though, as we can see by the deep reactions in this thread, so it matters to me to educate people about this. I think it's worthwhile to find a conceptual model that allows all of us to feel good about how we are getting and giving dharma instruction. Everyone agrees that the instruction is valuable. Most also agrees that meditation teachers have a right to be reasonably compensated for their time, just as janitors and schoolteachers and lawyers do. And yet there is a cognitive disconnect about how to accomplish that.

Part of it is just a question of good taste. Most of us, including me, find it distasteful to see dharma instruction marketed as though it were a corn dog or a used car. That's offensive to us because we so deeply value the dharma. My point is that there must be a way to retain dignity, good taste, and integrity while meeting the very real needs of both students and teachers. And I think discussions like this are the first step. The next step might be some kind of a dharma teachers' manifesto, in which the 2nd bullet point, right after "Our job as dharma teachers is to help people awaken," would be "We dharma teachers have a right to be fairly compensated for our time and efforts." Could any reasonable person object to that? It just hasn't been addressed out in the open, so our deep-seated concerns about integrity and good taste and our fears about cheapening something we hold so dear remain in the shadow only to erupt occasionally as irrational platitudes like "the dharma must never be sold!"

(cont below)

(cont from above)

As Florian pointed out, the dharma could never be sold, anyway. 'Dharma' means "the way it is," and, by extension, the teaching of the Buddha. The word "dharma" has been extended even further to include all authentic spiritual teachings. I call this a good thing.

This isn't really complicated. I'm ready to stand up in plain sight and say, on behalf of all dharma teachers, that I have a right to be compensated for my time whether I am teaching dharma or sweeping the floor or teaching English in the public schools.

Mirroring Vince Horn's post from earlier in this thread, why hasn't the previous generation of Western dharma teachers stood up for this right? Why have they given away their time for pennies while silently enduring a poverty they didn't deserve? Why have students been willing to receive this precious gift of dharma lessons while giving so little in return, watching their old, broke teachers approaching retirement? Why have some students gone so far as to rationalize this inequity by invoking the "pricelessness" of dharma? We are talking about compensating human beings for their time in a way that allows people to afford decent housing, healthcare, and to save for their retirement so that their loved ones don't also go broke paying for their decaying carcasses when they are too old to teach.

I didn't set a good example for you. I didn't value my teacher's time enough. He spent the last years of his life living in a leaky 16' trailer. I have no excuse. But I'm not going to tell you it's OK to have a sense of entitlement for your teacher's time. It's not.

(cont below)

(cont from above)

I see this as an opportunity. We can be the ones to change the culture to make it sustainable. Instead of paying lip service to how much we value the teaching of the dharma, we can actually set the precedent of giving and receiving fair value in return for it. We can model behavior for future generations of teachers and students. When teachers can make the same living teaching dharma as they could by teaching guitar lessons or SAT tutoring, there will be more quality dharma teaching available. This, I believe, will do as much to promote the growth of dharma teaching in the West as anything we could do.

And we should also consider the alternative: unless we create a sane, simple, and easily implemented economy for grass roots dharma, the field may come to be dominated by those whose marketing skills exceed their insight and who are not restrained by 'good taste.'

Keep it simple. Dharma lessons are like guitar lessons. You can't sell enlightenment and you can't sell musicianship. But you can give people quality, targeted instruction and support them in their own efforts to be awake or musical. And if it is your calling to teach either awakening or music, may you be so fortunate as to have students who value your time not only in word but in deed.

Bottom line, this is working. My students have been and continue to be generous with me. We are pioneering a model that can be sustainable not only for me but for other competent dharma teachers. We are doing our part to promote dharma in the West. I'm proud of us.

I love the idea of the manifesto and of spelling everything out: "Here's what you can expect from me, and here's what I will expect of you." Addressing fears that people have (the points about "good taste," etc.) in an upfront way would indeed help reduce the reactivity and shadow stuff.
And the approach you're talking about is totally anti-mushroom!