Retreat FAQ

From DmesWiki

Send your questions to <retreats@dmes.org>, and we'll post them here.

Q: What happens to the 3-year retreat cottages after one has finished the retreat?

A: Nothing has been finally decided, and we're open for suggestions, but since the "retreat valley" has been designated as a place strictly for retreat, and the 3-year retreat part of that valley is going to remain for 3-year retreats only, it's likely that people who don't want to continue in strict retreat won't be able to stay in their retreat cottages. As in the village founders' program, the actual house will belong to Diamond Mountain, and the builder can use it for as long as they stay within the guidelines of use that the cottage was build for, in this case for long retreat. That means that the cottage will probably go to someone else who wants to do a long retreat. I think it might be possible to recoup part of the investment from the next tenant, and we might want to consider something like the next retreater pays the builder a percentage of their original investment, and the one after that pays that person a percentage of what they paid, etc. Eventually then the houses would completely belong to DM, and people could use them a little more freely, and that's what we'd really like to do now, but don't have the resources. Since we're the people who are pioneering this place, we have more responsibility than the people who will come later, in that we have to create the place. Later it will be available for many people, and what we do now determines how nice it will be for them.