Participants

How many permanent residents do you have/want?
Number of residents will end up being based on who comes to be part of the project. Our current setup is that all existing residents have to agree to invite the person/people looking to buy in to the project. So far we have the facilitator (60s), two mexican guys (30s), a woman from England (30s) and a canadian man (40s). One of the nice things to me is that our location really has us as a rural neighbourhood of Mazunte meaning that our local community expands past the borders of In Lak’ech ashram, we have access to local schools, medical clinics, public library, etc. We feel rural but our only a 10 minute bike ride to the centre of Mazunte.

Have you/anyone there lived in a community or been involved with one before?
I’ve spent a fair bit of time visiting other intentional communities around the world and seeing what was working and what wasn’t. My father spent several years living in intentional communities including a co-op through college, Lost Valley Education Center, and a smaller eco village in Oregon.

How involved are you with Vipassana?
My father has a strong Vipassana practice. He has done 13 10-day sits in the last 2 years and gets in 2 daily sits most days. Most of us in the project have a spiritual practice and make space for that in our lives, though our practices vary; I’m more of a yogi myself. On my father’s homesite, he is planning to build a Vipassana dorm that would be available for old students from all over the world to come and sit personal retreats of various lengths. We might look at hosting gypsy courses in the future, but we are not wanting to create a sanctioned Vipassana center.