[eeZah7Ux]

"The Center for Mindful Learning ... brings the power of education and business skills"

"modern project-based learning and leadership training"

I wonder what they are really trying to sell and how much this is compatible with Buddhism (given the pictures clearly hint at Zen).

[mrdomino_]

Heh, I appreciate the skepticism. I spent my first year here uncertain of whether this place was some kind of cult, and stayed away from it for a couple years afterwards, due partially to that uncertainty. (Note that at no point was I convinced it was a cult, much less a dangerous one, but P(cult) being more than like 0.01 is often reason enough to go do something else, all else being equal.)

I'm speaking personally in the following, not on behalf of the organization, because it's late, I'm about to go to bed, and everyone else is off on a vision quest or traveling. So this is all my opinion, probably wrong, but maybe of use to you.

From my own knowledge, I can tell you everything we are trying to sell: we charge a modest rate for overnight visits, we have an initial training fee, and we have a mindfulness in schools program that we charge money for. Of these, the only thing that comes close to being a significant source of income is visits. The training fee is largely there because we've found that there is an extremely high correlation between "not willing to pay a modest training fee" and "not actually all that interested in this training" historically, so having it helps to not waste anyone's time. Once upon a time, we tried to make our main living from the schools program, but at this point it's purely a service project and the charges are mostly to offset costs.

Our main source of income is donations. We rely on people seeing this training as important enough for them to give significant amounts of their own money to it. That has so far in our history happened enough for us to continue to exist. If it ever stops happening, we will probably stop existing. (FWIW I'm currently one of the largest donors. I'm not doing it because anyone asked me to.)

There is a more general thing though, behind what you're saying, which I'm reading—correct me if I'm wrong—as "this is a super confusing, suspicious-looking online presence, what is these guys' deal?" That, I can definitely affirm. We are, as an organization as well as a demographic (people who are apt to give significant portions of their lives to monastic training), not super good at the art of marketing, presentation, or taking people's money. This is why there's a stereotype of spirituality and religion as fluffy, nonsensical, and counterproductive.

There is another side of that phenomenon: people who are very good at marketing, presentation, and taking people's money tend, as a demographic, not to be super good at caring about the world or indeed anyone else. (Which of course is why there's a stereotype of business and corporations as evil, soulless, and greedy.)

Fixing that, you may or may not have gathered from our confusing online presence, is our organization's raison d'être. We think it is great when being good at doing stuff is correlated with caring about the world and things other than yourself. We would like it to happen more often. Hence the leadership training, the business skills, the other stuff that is kind of weird to see for monastic organizations.

I'm curious what you mean by "compatible with Buddhism." I'd also like to know which pictures hint at Zen.

[mping]

I commend you guys to work on a donation basis; also it's important to have someone with training (a former monk?) as the teacher.

Personally, what I find confusing about the website is that it conveys a feeling of a Buddhist monastery (with the leave and meditation posture as symbol, the domain name clearly aims at monasticism) but I'm not sure if it is a monastery or not; not sure if the teacher is a monk or not; the meditation section also notes that there are talks about Buddhism but not exclusively.

If people want to teach mindfulness its none of my business, but if you want to teach some kind of Buddhism I believe it is best to leave it at the Buddhist monks and nuns - those are the ones that can/should teach in the first place.

[mrdomino_]

Our teacher is ordained under Shodo Harada Roshi: http://www.monasticacademy.com/teacher/

I suppose it might have helped you for that info to be on the "Meet Us" page. Is that true? Where else did you expect to find it?

We are not a monastery, in that none of us except Forall are ordained. But we wake up each day at 4:30 AM, chant and sit for multiple hours a day, and set aside time regularly to devote all our attention to formal practice. "Monastic Academy" is our current best attempt at conveying something like that in two words that people can remember. I welcome any feedback for how to do it better.

[mping]

The information is on the right place I guess but the site's first impression conveys to me that it is an academy for training monastics. Just one data point, but I would change the domain to something like spiritual academy. Kudos for following the schedule, I have been to a couple of retreats and know how hard it is.