A milestone! The Dharma Sanctuary web site is up and running. A previous version existed but got corrupted and disappeared from the web almost ten years ago.
The effort to put up a new site was done to document the history of the temple and to share the many photos from that time. It was a unique undertaking and is an important story to tell.
The site also exists to encourage people to visit today and to become volunteers as 'Friends of the Stupa.'
Additionally, as a founder of the temple and 69 years old I am motivated to record its history before I pass on. Hopefully someone or somebodies will continue to look after the place when I'm gone. To keep things running it takes almost a daily visit to ensure landscaping problems are not cropping up, to monitor strange occurrences that can happen to a public setting, and perform emergency maintenance.
There is a board of directors, but most of the members are part of the original crew and not spring chickens. If continuity is lost or the money isn't there to take care of the temple, it will languish until in a later era the place gets rediscovered and refurbished by people who come to value it. Who knows, once I disappear as the main crutch, a group may fill the void in a new management structure out of necessity and everything will be fine.
The temple will always be there physically, an anomaly in the middle of a residential development. You can't hide a 17 ft high marble stupa very easily. It will always be a reminder that something significant happened there no matter its current condition.
