Community Care Working Group

Agenda Item

Discussion

Action Item

Introductions of current workgroup members

Amy Conway is the Chair of the Community Care Working Group. President Reoch asked her to chair this group in February. Amy is the Regional Executive Director of Northern California Shambhala. Her career before that was in public health education and prevention.

Jay Stewart is currently the Director of the Sonoma Shambhala Center in California. She is trained as a professional mediator and has been Executive director of several nonprofit organizations including an organization called Healthy Communities. Jay has also worked with intentional communities.

Alan Sloan trained and worked in community economic development for a number of years in rural Nova Scotia. For the last three years, he has been disabled due to a chronic illness.  He is interested in presenting ways for our community to work with illness as path. He has recently helped to launch the Karuna-talk listserv on shambhala.org. 

Dave Whitehorn is a Psychiatric nurse living in Halifax. He is the Operations Officer for the Desung Arm of the Dorje Kasung which oversees community health and well-being. 

Jane Condon has been living and working with health and well-being issues and in particular Death and Dying issues for the last 20+ years in Boulder. 

Judith Broadus is the director of the Lexington Shambhala Center. She didn’t have a chance to state her background information or why she is in this group – next call we’ll hear it!

Explanation of the job of the work group and our timeline

Working Group Overview:

Working groups are to decide upon their own objectives and scope of work in their area. Working group members on the call today were all recommended by President Reoch. The size of the working groups could be as large as 12 people and should represent the different major constituencies within Shambhala. The group is responsible for designing a set of recommendations about their topic to be presented to the international community later this year. Each Working Group will keep notes of its meetings and post them on the Shambhala Congress website for the benefit of the entire community. A review group of about 60 people will be sent the work periodically so that they can give input into the process. 

The timeline is as follows: February – July 2004

During this period, each of the Working Groups will be asked to complete the first phase of their work, including initial consultation within the community, in order to prepare a first draft of their initial findings and recommendations. 

July 2004

A meeting of interested Directors of Shambhala Centres will occur at Shambhala Mountain Centre July 29-August 1, 2004. This would serve as a “first review” meeting to discuss the drafts from the Working Groups, assess the progress being made in follow-up to the Congress and make recommendations to the Board of Shambhala International on any adjustments that should be made to the plan adopted in February 2004. 

A meeting of the interim Board of Shambhala International would take place following the meeting of Centre Directors to receive their recommendations and decide on any changes needed to the plan and the work to be accomplished between then and the next Shambhala Congress. 

July-November 2004

The Working Groups would aim to complete their work and prepare their reports. These reports would become the basis for the discussions to take place at community meetings and in conference calls in preparation for the next Shambhala Congress in 2005.

Please note: Final reports could be as short as a document outlining suggested solutions for a topic area. Or could be something as complex as a new organizational decision- making structure. The time and complexity required varies by group. 

December 2004/January 2005

A meeting of the interim Board of Shambhala International would take place to consider all the reports, feedback received from the community meetings and conference calls, and prepare practical implementation proposals to be presented to the Shambhala Congress. 

Week following Shambhala Day 2005

The next Shambhala Congress will be held.

Discuss the make-up of our current workgroup and suggest who else we may want to invite to participate

The group expects that Dennis Southward will join the next meeting. He was unavailable due to the Sakyong’s visit to Boulder. It was suggested that we have a representative of the Vajra Dawn Youth group such as Tara Slone from Toronto or Ulriche Halpern from Boulder. Another suggestion as an addition to our group was Mary Campbell.

The group also thought it would be good to have a newer sangha member on the group, but no one had a specific person in mind. 

Amy will contact Tara Sloan to see if she would like to participate and contact Mary Campbell and Ulriche Halpern if we still need more members. (Note: after the last call, Shambhala Europe identified John Seex as the European representative and President Reoch contacted Amy to recommend John Barbieri to be on our group. Amy has invited Tara, John B. and John S. to be 3 new  workgroup members. 

Choose draft objectives for our workgroup

Discussion Notes:

Jay thought it would be useful for us to define which community we are making recommendations for. Just sangha? Local communities? Individuals? Or the whole world? 

The group agreed that we should look at each of our smaller sangha communities and see what general principles might apply to the larger sangha. 

We can look at traditional communities and churches and learn from them about how to celebrate rituals, rites of passage for birth, marriage, sickness, death, etc.

What sustains a community, what are the main functions of care in the community that are needed? 

Jane suggested that we are educating ourselves how to become a society. We’ve lost our connection to Drala. We don’t look at everything that arises in our community. All we have to do is look at sangha-announce to raise our awareness of all the different ways our community is in need. 

Jay said we need to develop proactive ways to help one another. This workgroup could come up with specific proposals that can help both raise the awareness of the needs of our community and offer ways to respond appropriately to these needs. 

We could contemplate : What are the characteristics of a caring community?

1.     Interresponsibility

2.     Connectedness 

Alan mentioned that in rural Nova Scotia churches play a large role in helping the members of their congregations. He’s been reflecting on why all our teachings on bodhichitta have not translated into more action. We, as a community, are somewhat isolated from one another, perhaps because we may tend to be a little “heady” or intellectual.  He feels there is too much emphasis on self-sufficiency, which translates into embarrassment when we are unable to take care of ourselves. 

Jay expressed that our arrogance has never served us well.

Judith said that in Lexington, some people have one foot in our door and one foot in their Church. The church is where they get cared for. 

Jane stated that there is a geographic component to this issue as well. She then suggested that we could try not to label ourselves as the problem, but instead look at how we can start to create ways to help each other. There is a misperception that when we are suffering we cannot raise lungta. 

Next, there was a short discussion about Deleks and whether any of them are functioning well in our mandala. Jane said the Delek system in Boulder is not functioning well. No one knew of a good Deleg system except at Seminary. Dave said that the Delek system in Halifax works for those who are already active in the sangha, but those on the periphery or newer community members have no support system since they are not in the Deleks yet. 

Jay mentioned that there is an organization called Share the Care (see sharethecare.org) that helps people not get overwhelmed when they are dealing with illness and death. 

We talked about the importance of looking at ways to handle both acute needs and long-term needs as well as fostering ways to engage in ongoing positive aspects of our communities which make it easier to be there when times are tough. There needs to be a sense of connection that is ongoing. 

We discussed that letting people help you when you are having a hard time is an act of generosity. Alan pointed out that as Buddhists, sometimes we feel that we have to save ourselves or being alone or on retreat is the most heroic way to deal with hard times. We agreed that seeing suffering as our path does not mean refusing help or not reaching out. 

Judith shared a model that has worked well in Lexington to help their community. Norm Braie and Mary Whetsell developed a contemplative practice based on Quaker practice, work by M. Scott Peck, and Shambhala Buddhist teachings. It began as a way for their sangha to define their purposes and values and now has evolved into townhall meetings and speaking circles. Their community has created this space as a way to communicate and open up with one another. (Lexington Shambhala has ~80 members.) 

Jay expressed that this is a nice model since it gives communities a tool that is already in place and useful when things get hard. She recommended that we try to collect tools like this so that we can “teach people how to fish instead of giving them the fish”. 

Judith then shared that Lexington also has a Upaya council that is a group of 3 people who can step in and help resolve conflict or problems if sangha members need assistance like this. 

Alan wondered if we are sometimes limited by the use our Buddhist language. Maybe it is limiting to talk about everything as practice (“the practice of caring” sounds abstract and removed from actually caring for someone).  When dealing with emotionally charged issues, it is easy to hide behind dharmic language rather than talk to each other as ordinary people.  

Jay told a story about a Native American Indian who said he had “Indian Insurance” which meant that he takes care of his tribe and when he is old or in need, he knows the tribe will take care of him too. We need to find ways to create Indian insurance in our sangha. 

Jane pointed out that economic hardship is another area we should be sure to address. Part of our difficulty is that we feel that if we are not contributing financially, we cannot ask for help or participate in sangha events.  Jay stated that we feel if we are poor, that there is something wrong with us. 

We concluded the meeting with Amy highlighting the main principles and points that we discussed and deciding that we could choose our objectives on the next conference call. 

Here is the Summary:

Our workgroup did not finish defining our objectives, but we identified some basic principles that we would like to work with and came up with ideas that could be the basis for forming our objectives on the next call.

Principles:

1. We are engaged in a process of educating ourselves how to create a caring society. We will look at ways that traditional communities and churches have learned to care for one another especially in times of financial hardship, birth, marriage, sickness and death.

2. We recognize that awareness - or seeing the needs of the community - is the first step to being able to help.

3. We encourage the principle of interresponsibility in our community. Staying connected with each other means that we do something for each other when there is a need. It also means asking and allowing someone to help us when we are in need. 

Main Points in our call that may be preliminary Objectives:

1. Explore ways that our community and traditional communities might relate to the acute needs of community members and maintain the long-term, ongoing sense of connection which allows us to share both joy and suffering.

2. Collect "skillful means", best practices, and models of care  - how to do this in practice that are working well now and share them with the entire community.

3. Create specific proposals about how our sangha community can increase our awareness of each others' needs, stay connected to each other, and be more proactive in helping one another.  4. Recommend a community processes that can be put in place to respond to the needs of community members. 5. Connect the recommended care models with the Shambhala Buddhist teachings.  

Schedule next calls

We scheduled the next two calls.

Conference call #2 (the next call) will be held Tuesday, April 6^th at 8:00 p.m. Atlantic time which is 4:00 p.m. Pacific time. 7:00 p.m. Eastern time. Based on our experience the first call, the call will be scheduled to last one hour and fifteen minutes. 

Conference call #3 will be held on Tuesday, April 27^th at 8:00 p.m. Atlantic time, 7:00 p.m. Eastern time, 5:00 p.m. Mountain time and 4:00 p.m. Pacific time.