The Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth, although not quite a temple, is a monastic community founded in 2011 in Lowell, VT, and was the first community established within CEDAR. CEDAR, the Community for the Experience and Development of Awakening and Responsibility, is an international network of communities that aim to make a more trustworthy global culture through training in its monasteries. Besides MAPLE, it has a location called Willow in Canada and Oak in California.
MAPLE seems to present itself as a mixture between a business and a Buddhist retreat. When discussing the work that residents do, the academy’s Q&A page says that, “For residents the work culture at the Monastic Academy is part growing non-profit and part startup, and the responsibilities are varied and eclectic. One day you might be working on a new marketing campaign, the next day you’ll be creating a new teaching program, and the next you’ll be cooking a meal for the community. While the mission is for the benefit of all, the tactics and strategies used borrow heavily from the startup world. As such, you’ll find yourself regularly experimenting with new technologies and organizational practices to optimize performance and results.” Their income mostly comes from guests who worked alongside them on individual projects and monetary donations and grants, and their website is filled with testimonials. Moreover, compared to the average website of a Buddhist monastery or temple, it is considerably more intricate and clearly demonstrates that technology is a very important medium in their work.
Soryu Forall
The founder of MAPLE is Soryu Forall, a native Vermonter, who has a degree in Economics from Williams College with a focus on Environmental Science. Soryu created MAPLE in 2008 after having traveled across Asia to learn from various Buddhist traditions. He originally went to Japan and trained at Sogen Temple under Zen Master Shodo Harada and became ordained there in 1998. He then moved on to study at a Tibetan Kagyu monastery in northern India, a Ch’an monastery in eastern China, and the Sariputta Ambedkar monastery in southern India, where he was also the head monk. In 2008, he returned to Vermont and created MAPLE to help “systemic injustice and promote youth empowerment” and create “the next generation of awakened leaders.”
Practices
Unlike typical Buddhist temples that might get donations of food from the local community, the monastery’s members actually buy food themselves and pay for their stay at the monastery. In fact, the academy doesn’t fully align itself with Buddhism, teaching some meditation practices from other spiritual practices, and focuses on “how to remain deeply open-minded and consistently question assumptions” rather than spiritual beliefs.
While MAPLE doesn’t fully consider itself Buddhist, the academy’s FAQ page says that it is especially inspired by Rinzai Zen Buddhism and Ambedkar Buddhism.
The Rinzai Zen tradition stems from Chan Buddhism. Chan is a type of Chinese Zen Buddhism that teaches that “chan,” or meditative concentration, is the only way that someone can gain enlightenment. Chan adherents believe that the Buddha once gave a special transmission outside of his typical teachings to a single disciple, in which he held up a flower. This mind-to-mind transmission of the lamp (i.e,. the transmission of the experience of awakening) went 28 generations from master to disciple. The 28th receiver of this transmission was named Bodhidharma, who decided to bring the practice to China. After a contest held by the 5th Chinese patriarch Hongren on who can write the best verse understanding Buddhism, two poems are left, one which teaches a gradual approach to enlightenment, and another that teaches sudden enlightenment. These two poems represent the northern and southern schools of Zen, respectively. While the northern school dies out, the southern school splits into five “houses,” forming the five lineages within the school. They are mainly differentiated based on how they instruct students.
The first of these houses is the Rinzai house, which is the Japanese name for the Chinese Linji house. This house focuses on solving koans, which are critical phrases, such as parts of Buddhist stories that don’t make sense on the surface. After meditating on the answer of a koan and solving it, one will receive a sort of mini-awakening known as satori. After solving ten koans, one will become enlightened. Hakuin is known as the father of modern Japanese Rinzai, reviving the practice and creating new koans. However, koans are not meant to be answered via problem-solving. They’re supposed to come after you’ve given up on problem-solving and will help you go beyond your ordinary awareness to see what’s actually there. Hakuin said that there are three things that are needed to solve koans. They are:
A great root of faith – strong faith in yourself is needed because koans will challenge your fortitude
Great doubt – You need to have doubt in your problem solving abilities so that you can stop trying to answer the koan by problem solving
An aspiration to continue on no matter how long it takes
Ambedkar Buddhism, more commonly known as Navayana Buddhism, is a relatively new movement started in 1935. Navayana doesn’t fit into the typical categories of Buddhism such as Mahayana, Theravada, or Vajrayana, as it rejects the traditional key concepts of Buddhism, including karma, samsara, monasticism, enlightenment, and the four noble truths. The founder of the movement, B. R. Ambedkar, came from the lowest Indian caste, and because Buddhism doesn’t recognize the caste system, he decided to convert from Hindu to Buddhist to help his community. However, when he studied Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, he found that they were “flawed, pessimistic and a corruption of the Buddha’s teachings.” He felt that the four noble truths (suffering exists, suffering is caused by desire, suffering can be cured by removing desire, and desire can be removed via the eightfold path) didn’t give people hope. He thought that rebirth and karma were just superstitions, and that nirvana, rather than freedom from the cycle of life and death, was rather a society where people were freed from poverty and discrimination and encouraged to make their lives great. Basically, Navayana Buddhism is focused on social empowerment.
MAPLE also uses Theravada and Mahayana texts, which aim to keep the vinaya (rules for monastics) the same as they were originally written or change them to fit better with contemporary society.
Residencies
Currently, there are 10 villagers, 9 residents, and the founder, Soryu Forall. Out of these, 16 of the members are caucasian, and nearly all seem to be under 40.
Each residency comes with 2 vegan meals per day, a single or shared room, and meditation sessions by Forall. Some of these sessions will be one-on-one interviews with Soryu where you can ask him questions to aid in your meditation and spiritual practice. Interestingly, residents also have a vacation of four days per month, 20 days per year, and one retreat off. They can also do one meditation retreat at a different center for up to seven days.
The academy currently offers three types of residencies:
- Coworking – Those who join the coworking residency only meditate twice per day and primarily focus on completing their own projects and monetarily funding the monastery, which they can do using the monastery’s WiFi and office spaces.
- AI – Those who choose this residency devote their time to building AI systems that will benefit humanity. These residencies last at least a month, with each month costing $1500 to $2500, which includes a living stipend and housing at the monastery. They are required to participate in the morning and evening sitting and chanting sessions, and they can even receive mentoring (for a fee in certain circumstances) from those with doctorates in AI.
- Training – The training emphasizes being mindful while doing everyday tasks, practicing mindfulness, and being a part of a loving community, all within a rigid monastic structure. Stewards, as they are called, help cook meals, maintain the monastery, help prepare for retreats, and other types of mostly physical work. There is no fee, although they, are encouraged to give what they feel like the experience was worth. Their daily schedule of meditation, meals, chores, chanting, etc. are shown below.
Guests are also free to join, where they can also do their own work or help MAPLE, and stick to the schedule of the stewards.
Interaction With Other Buddhist Communities
While there isn’t a lot of communication between MAPLE and other Buddhist communities, so it seems, they are connected to Chautauqua and a practice/community Unified Mindfulness (UM). Chautauqua is a mobile monastery with similar goals, whose teachers learned from MAPLE and added other spiritual teachings into their practice. Unified Mindfulness is a secular type of meditation that integrates scientific research with mindfulness designed by Shinzen Young, who has also given lectures at MAPLE.