Your financial contribution helps sustain the activity of Shambhala , allowing us to offer meditation, community events, and courses throughout the year. Monthly support also allows us to create and maintain a “home” for our practices and our community, and to create and model an uplifted environment that supports our practices and the Shambhala path to awakenment.
Our members have diverse means and so they can offer a wide range of monthly dues. No one is excluded from membership because of money. However, making a financial commitment is a very important step along the Shambhala path; it’s a gesture of support to the rest of your Shambhala community, and a clear acknowledgement of the value that you feel Shambhala has in your life.
While we do not have set levels of membership dues, we do have a few ways for you to think about the right level of support to fit your inspiration and your finances.
One way is to look at the chart of levels of donations and simply decide what you feel you can offer.
Another way is to think about your general spending patterns, especially impulse spending, and see if there is anything you wish to change in order to make a monthly contribution to help others experience Shambhala. It might be helpful write down some of your spending on small luxuries, so you can actually see how it accumulates.
Another is to look at how much you spend on living for a year or for a month (total expenditure), or at your annual or monthly income. Either way, from that amount, you can look at various percentages of what you spend to live annually, and think about what makes sense and what will work for you. If this way of thinking is helpful to you, click the image to the right to see a table of percentages of annual livelihood amounts for you to see where you might fit yourself.
There are also ways to think about the benefit your contribution will offer others. For instance:
- Each $x you contribute allows us to host one meditator for one public sitting session.
- Each $x you contribute per month allows us to open a satellite location for twenty minutes.
- Each $x per month contributed allows us, at the end of the year, to purchase one new meditation cushion.
If you would like to speak with someone about your membership, how to decide the right monthly amount that fits your circumstance, and how to make that financial contribution to the centre happen, please contact our membership coordinator.