Local Mindfulness Groups Share Dāna in Many Ways

At the opening of Deer Park Monastery and the Ocean of Peace Meditation Hall in California, US, in August 2000, Thầy said that when a new meditation hall or bell tower is constructed, it’s wonderful to see the final product.

A hundred times more important, he said, is the brotherhood and sisterhood built by lay friends and monastics when they work in harmony and joy toward a common goal.

“When we do things with all our love and all our hope, then even though it’s not visible, it is something real that we can see with our mindfulness,” Thầy said. “We do it not because we want some kind of fame or profit. It is the energy of love that propels us. And it is this energy of love that creates this great monument.”¹

It’s in this spirit of love that a growing number of the 1,200 local Sanghas around the world are committing themselves to contributing dāna (a Sanskrit word for generosity) in a variety of ways to support Thầy’s International Plum Village Community.

For some Sanghas, dāna takes the form of financial support from individual members or on behalf of the entire group. Support may be offered on a regular basis or for specific projects.

Support can be non-financial, too. Sanghas hold special fundraising events, such as luncheons and dinners or days of mindfulness and invite participants to donate dāna to the Thích Nhất Hạnh Foundation. The Foundation, in turn, disburses the funds to meet the most pressing needs of the monastic community’s eleven global practice centers.

About nine years ago, Organic Garden Sangha in West Los Angeles, California, spearheaded fundraising to help build a new residence for the nuns at Deer Park. For two years, Sangha members maintained a blog on the campaign’s progress, sent out bi-monthly newsletters with stories and updates, and facilitated fundraising events by Sanghas along the West Coast.

In 2023, members of the original lay team committed to support the monks of Deer Park to expand their hamlet and provide beds for their growing community. A new core lay team was formed to include practitioners with experience in sales, marketing, and social media.

The core lay team committed to continue its efforts until the funding goal was met. In support of that work, it has launched outreach programs to the hundreds of Sanghas that call Deer Park their home monastery, which has resulted in dozens of local Sangha fundraising events and Sangha support of events organized by monastics.

“Our goal is to support the monastics so they can use their time and energy to teach the Dharma,” said Mary Gorman, an Order of Interbeing member and Organic Garden Sangha member. “And it’s not all about raising money; it’s an opportunity to build Sangha, for Sanghas to come together joyfully to work together toward a common purpose.”

For communities not close to a monastery, Sanghas sometimes bring the monastery to them by hosting Days of Mindfulness and other events with visiting monks and nuns. The Sangha covers the cost of monastic travel and accommodations and dāna gathered at the event is donated to the monastics’ practice center.

In 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and temporary closure of the community’s monasteries, monks from Deer Park traveled on their “Road Retreat” to multiple Sanghas in the Western United States to share the Dharma in person. Eyes of Compassion Sangha in Denver, Colorado, held a fundraising event in conjunction with a Sangha evening.

In 2014, Lansing Area Mindfulness Community (LAMC) in Michigan—with help from and involvement by Michigan State University—brought five monastics from Blue Cliff Monastery in New York to Michigan to visit Sanghas around the state capital.

“We supported the monastics so they could support us in Michigan,” LAMC cofounder and Cedar Society member Carolyn White said.

Sometimes, Sanghas reach beyond their core community and seek donations from professional peers, friends, and relatives. Through this approach, they raise funds for our monastics and awareness about their own Sangha’s activities as well as Thầy’s legacy.

Other Sanghas contribute dāna in the form of volunteer and in-kind service to support fundraising events led by monastics. Blue Cliff Monastery in New York, which is raising funds to build a new nuns’ residence, has received considerable support from the Vietnamese Liên Châu Sangha, a Zoom-only community with members from Delaware and several surrounding states.

“To us, the most important thing is to maintain and grow our regular practice at home, together as a Sangha,” said Hạnh Nguyễn, a member of Liên Châu Sangha. “This way we can generate the energy of mindfulness and compassion and ‘pay forward’ the fruit of the practice to our local communities. We also attend retreats at the monastery and provide support for cooking, cleaning, and other tasks such as fundraising, so that the monastics can focus their full energy on guiding retreatants,” he added. “We carry out this work as an expression of our gratitude for Thầy’s teachings, which have deeply changed our lives, and also to repay the brothers’ and sisters’ kindness and compassion.”

When practitioners come together in harmony and happiness, united in a common goal, the outcome is far greater than the opening of a new monastery or other capital improvements. The act itself, as Thầy said at Deer Park in 2000, “is a monument that will always be alive in the heart of each one of us.”

Is your Sangha interested in contributing regularly to the Thích Nhất Hạnh Foundation? Visit our website or email us at giving@tnhf.org.

¹ Deer Park Monastery, The Day I Turn Twenty (2020), page 4.