Vision Statement

Modeled after the Providence and Cambridge Zen residency programs, our goal is to establish a vibrant and diverse residential center that provides training for up to 30 students. With this residential training program we strive to create a replicable program model that demonstrates how a small spiritual community can:

• Strengthen their practice within a diverse residential community;
• Support all participants’ efforts to seek higher education through tuition and technical assistance;
• Help participants integrate spiritual practice into all aspects of life such as work, school, and personal relationships; and
• Support the spiritual growth of former prison inmates so that they can live meaningful lives.

Need for Support

To establish the residency program, we are seeking support to purchase a recently closed nursing home known as the Bailey House, which is a historical landmark in the city of Gainesville. The Bailey House is comprised of a main building and four smaller cottages that accommodate up to 30 residents. This facility is convenient to public transportation and both the University of Florida and Santa Fe Community College campuses making it an ideal location for the type of residency program and spiritual community we are committed to creating.

Tuition Assistance Fund: The importance of owning the facility

To achieve our goal of assisting participants to obtain higher education, the Gateless Gate residency program is unique in that ownership of the facility would allow us to create a tuition assistance fund with the resources that would have been used to make mortgage payments. Residents would pay $500 per month in training fees (which includes room, board, and program costs); if we owned the facility, these fees would be pooled and distributed at a rate of approximately $1,500 per student participant towards their college tuition per year.

Our goal is to raise $500,000 towards the purchase of the Bailey House and the creation of the tuition assistance fund. At this time, we have raised $20,000. Your generous support would greatly contribute to this worthy project.

The Residency Program

Living in a Zen Center is a great undertaking and should not be entered into lightly. It requires a substantial commitment of time and energy to the practice (as it is done in Kwan Um School of Zen), and to the community, both residential and non-residential.

Residents are selected on the basis of their ability to make a significant commitment of time and energy to formal practice and to contribute constructively to the residential community. All new residents are subject to a three-month trial period.

Zen Master Seung Sahn has encouraged his students to live together in Zen Centers where they can derive strength and support from each other's continuing practice. The regular schedule of practicing, eating, and working together acts as a backdrop for seeing our karma appear and disappear. We use the analogy of washing potatoes together in a pot of water: as the potatoes bump into one another, they clean each other more quickly than if each was cleaned one at a time.

In a Zen Center, we see clearly how our opinions create problems by coming between us and the situations in which we find ourselves. When we let go of these opinions, it is possible to live our everyday lives with clarity and harmony. As we learn to cooperate, to see clearly, and to accept people and situations as they are, our minds become strong and wide. Then it becomes possible to act for other people with no trace of ourselves.

The Gateless Gate residency program would integrate a diverse group of lay practitioners and unify the efforts of participants with broader Zen Center communities to provide support and spiritual growth opportunities for all.

For individuals interested in this unique residency experience, the following describes the basic criteria/structure of life at the Gateless Gate Zen residential center.

• Demonstrated commitment to the moral and ethical tenets of Buddhism.
• Commitment to pursuing employment and continued education, such as enrollment in community college.
• Commitment to a practice, which consists of early morning practice (5am) six days per week and a minimum of 19 practice periods per week; twelve hour practice period the first weekend of every month; weekly interview with the abbot; weekly community service; and regular household and meditation room assignments/duties. These activities are scheduled around outside employment and school schedules.
• We invite you to review the Resident’s Handbook for further details

You Can Help Make This Vision A Reality

By creating a dynamic model for other spiritual groups and churches to replicate the Gateless Gate Zen Center will have a positive and powerful impact on the community, region and nation: no other such residency program exists in the country. Again, ownership of the facility is key to creating a financially self-supporting system from which to form the tuition assistance fund. You are invited to be a part of this ambitious effort.

Your donation of any amount (including goods and services) would greatly contribute to our goal of establishing this unique residential center. All donations are 100% tax-deductible. Contact Janet Miller, Director, at director@gatelessgate.org for more information.