Membership Policy Working Group

Meeting 2 - April 15, 2004 - minutes

Present: Candia Ludy, Wendy Layton, Chris Tamdjidi, Jane Ward, Mary Whetsell (chairperson)
Not Present: Susan Wagner. Francesca Nilo, Fernando Ayllon
Next Meeting: Tuesday, May 4^th (note this is a change of date from our previous agreement to meet on 5/5)

 

1. The time line for deliverables from our group was discussed. A preliminary report will be made by Mary in July at the meeting of the Mandala Governing Council. In November, our group will present our work product to the mandala-at-large, giving each Center world-wide time to consider our recommendations prior to the 2005 Shambhala Congress.

 

2.  Members of our group agree that good policy arises out of clear view. Therefore, we have decided that it is important to hold as broad of a discussion as possible regarding Shambhala-Buddhist view of membership. This discussion begun among ourselves and will be extended to our review group.  We hope to be able to report in July regarding prevailing view(s) as well as questions which arise out of these views.

 

3. Chris Tamdjidi has offered a document titled View of Membership (submitted approximately 4-13-04, so it’s a new document).  This group agreed that this document is a good starting place to begin our discussion of view. The document may be modified slightly and then submitted to our review group for their comments and discussion. In order to ascertain correct view, we agreed that the best sources for this are the teachings of the Vidyadhara and the Sakyong, the intelligence of the mandala as a whole, and the input of President Reoch.

 

4.  Review groups will be beginning very soon. The Membership Policy group needs to discuss the process of working with our review group. Mary will post information about our objectives on the review group list-serve, and will set up conference calls for review group members to participate in.

 

5. We discussed how it is that policy arises out of view, and immediately many related questions began to arise. They include:

- what are the conditions for membership?

- - The Sakyong and the Vidyadhara have both been clear in the past that a commitment to Shamatha/Vipassana practice is the key element of the Shambhala Buddhist path, and is essential to membership in our society. Has this view changed or evolved? Is a commitment the to practice and study of  Shamatha/Vipassana still a requirement for membership?

- should there be a less committed category than full membership - a “friends” category? Or should “full membership” be open to anyone who personally feels inspired by the activities of Shambhala without regard to formal practice commitments?

- Policy doesn’t make community, people do. How can we better magnetize and work with people around the issues of membership and community?

- How much latitude will individual Centers and Groups retain to modify or customize membership policies to fit their local situations?

 

6. We agreed that in the time period between July and November, we would endeavor to develop membership recommendations after having conducted a thorough discussion of view.

 

7. We would like to begin posting as many examples of various membership policies as possible, for both ourselves and our review group to read.  Probably the best venue for these posting will be the review group’s website; that way everyone will have access to them, and also we can ask review group members to post policies from their respective Centers.

 

8. We agreed to meet roughly every two weeks, at least in the beginning of this process. The next Meeting will be on Tuesday, May 4^th at 11am Central, noon Eastern, 1pm Atlantic, 5pm BST, 6pm CEST