Lisette Garcia and James Connor blissful in a hammock following a 2-month meditation retreat in Colombia, South America.
Summary:
For the last six-years every major life decision Lisette Garcia and I have made together has been in light of how to get into Three-Year Retreat and be successful once we get there. Simply, this is our life’s dream.
Lisette and I have made significant progress—our meditation cabin is close to completion. And we have sold or given away nearly all our worldly possessions.
The final obstacle appears to be having money for food and caretaker support during the retreat, which we estimate at $5,000 a person per year (38,760 Hong Kong Dollars) or $32,500 for three-years, three-months, and three days (251,936 Hong Kong Dollars).
We felt it was important to put together a detailed proposal outlining what we have done to prepare for Three-Year Retreat, before asking for your support.
It is challenging to ask others for money. You should know we have financially supported the Three-Year Retreat in many ways. Below we share more of the details of our contributions. We truly believe providing funding to help others gain peace of mind is among the highest uses of our financial resources. May it bring you great virtue as well.
Any contribution for some or all of the food and caretaker support would be greatly appreciated. Contributions are tax deductible to the full extent of the law.
Lisette Garcia and James Connor in the Temple at Diamond Mountain University.
Who we are:
We have had a reasonable amount of success before giving it all up to pursue Three-Year Retreat.
Dr. Lisette Garcia was a tenure-track university professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. In 2005, Dr. Lisette Garcia was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for her work to prevent false identification in police eyewitness lineups. Lisette received her Masters & Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Tufts University in Massachusetts. While in school, Lisette won the Fogerty Fellowship allowing her to study with top researchers in Mexico.
James Connor founded and owned a small branding and advertising agency for 14 years in New York City. James Connor is also the author of The Perfection of Marketing, published by Diamond Cutter Press in 2009. James graduated at the top of two departments (Music & Communications) from the University of Virginia. While in school, he won the Raven Society Prize, named after Edgar Allen Poe, for his creative writing.
We have studied at Diamond Mountain University in Arizona with Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally for the past six years. We flew back and forth to receive the teachings at Diamond Mountain University while maintaining full-time jobs in New York City. This was very challenging, but essential to funding a cabin for Three-Year Retreat.
Additionally, we are popular dharma teachers in NYC. We’ve taught on average three nights a week for the past five years. We have already successfully passed on to students half of the advanced courses free of charge we have received at Diamond Mountain University.
Lisette Garcia and James Connor in the Three-Year Retreat Valley with their Teachers, Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally
Why we want to do a Three-Year Retreat:
To be a source of happiness for others. We were inspired by seeing the kindness, peace, and wisdom of Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally following their first Three-Year Retreat. Our mutual thought was we want to be like them and teach around the world about the real causes for happiness and peace.
We have both done many months of long meditation retreat in preparation for Three-Year Retreat. Each time, we make our mind more at peace and come out better able to help others.
We recently did two months of retreat in Colombia, South America, in a place that has been at war with the narco-terrorist army FARC for decades and had only gained peace in the last year. We came out of retreat and taught large audiences about the real causes for happiness and peace.
By doing Three-Year Retreat we hope to change the culture of the world, by providing more examples of people with inner peace. Individuals must be at peace first, before we can expect there to be peace in the world.
Lisette shows her mom and sister the progress on constructing our retreat cabin. Her mom loved it!
Our Progress:
We have been helping others first. This builds the merit for retreat. We know it is tremendously difficult to bring all the causes and conditions together for a Three-Year Retreat.
So you can understand the depth of our commitment and strength of our resolve, here are some of the seeds we have consciously planted to get in and succeed during Three-Year Retreat.
1. James Connor contributed to the annual food support during the first Three-Year Retreat in 2000-2003 undertaken by Geshe Michael Roach, Lama Christie McNally, Lama Ani Pelma, Lama Ora Maimes, Lama Trisangma Hlamo, and Ven. Tenzin Chogkyi.
2. We contributed annually to the Diamond Mountain land purchase, providing a quiet place to study and meditate for generations to come.
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Lisette Garcia and James Connor bury water lines in the retreat valley.
3. On volunteer work days for the past six years, we have volunteered on the hard, dirty jobs, such as clearing retreat valley trails and working on water lines for Three-Year Retreat.
4. Raised $40,000 (310,008 Hong Kong Dollars) for building retreat cabins for Venerable Jigme and Venerable Chukyi: two of the three caretakers for the original Three-Year Retreat.
5. When Geshe Michael and Lama Christie challenged retreatants to raise money for someone else’s Three-Year Retreat over the Summer of 2008, we gave $10,000 (77,502 Hong Kong Dollars) to support Venerable Nyingpo and Mercedes Bahleda’s retreat. At the time this was all the money we have saved for our Three-Year Retreat. We believe this was the virtue that allowed James to sell his business to Paul Blakely, the Creative Director who had been with The James Group for five years.
6. The money from the sale of The James Group, gave us enough to build our retreat cabin ($75,000; 581,266 Hong Kong Dollars) and save a parent from foreclosure ($$) due to the recent financial crisis. The retreat cabin will be the property of Diamond Mountain University and is being built to last the next 100 years to serve future meditators. The cabin construction is led by Doug Veenhof, who as an exemplary record for constructing to Arizona State Building Code. He completed the first test cabin at Diamond Mountain as well as the University Temple.
7. We paid for half the RTV ($6,000; 46,501 Hong Kong Dollars). This vehicle is making it possible to carry construction materials to all cabin sites. We also made contributions to the waterlines ($3,000; 23,250 Hong Kong Dollars).
8. While retreat cabin sites were assigned by Geshe Michael and Lama Christie several years ago, ours was one of the sites that was considered unbuildable by trusted professionals mainly due to the steep washes that had to be crossed. We never lost our faith and continued to walk the retreat valley trying to find a critical access point. We finally found the narrowest wash with the lowest banks and using a bulldozer built a check-dam that could be crossed with equipment. This approach inspired other retreatants who also had previously unbuildable sites.
9. We paid for Kevin Warren’s Arizona contractor license ($3,000; 23,250 Hong Kong Dollars) so there could be more contractor’s building retreat cabins for other retreatants.
10. For the past six years, we have contributed to funding the tours our Teachers have taken to teach others around the globe, particularly in Asia. We also contributed to marketing expenses for nearly every teaching event in New York City.
11. Two people surviving three years in one meditation cabin is also a test of your relationship skills. James and Lisette regularly teach the Spiritual Partner courses to help people improve their relationships and keep ours strong during three-year retreat.
12. James Connor wrote and designed the www.retreat4peace.org website to create a vehicle for other Diamond Mountain students to raise money to support their retreat. The website was coded by Andrea Lemmon.
Lisette and James have averaged teaching 3 nights a week for the past five years (when we are not on meditation retreat).
13. Since the Three-Year Retreat is about meditation, James and Lisette have concentrated on teaching meditation, passing on Lama Christie McNally’s Bok Jinpa, Setting Your Meditation on Fire Series free of charge. Our students are now teaching and these meditation courses have been passed on to over 200 students.
Conclusion:
We are firm in our resolve to do the Three-Year Retreat and dedicate our efforts to creating world peace.
We intend to continue teaching the causes for happiness and peace around the world, free of charge, following the Three-Year Retreat.
We have given all we have to support the Three-Year Retreat for ourselves and others. We have nearly completed our cabin. We request your help only with additional support for food and caretaking costs during the Three-Year Retreat.
To Contact Us:
Jamesc@thejamesgroup.com and drlisette@yahoo.com
