Albuquerque Vipassana Sangha

Sangha History

Teachers

• Long-term resident teachers:
  1. Eric Kolvig: Eric visits our sangha several times a year and has done so since 2005. He was also our teacher 1997 through 1999. During those years, he was the resident teacher for the Santa Fe and Albuquerque sanghas and joined our sangha on Thursday nights about twice a month. Eric now lives in northern New Mexico. In mid-2005, he started traveling to Albuquerque about once a month to sit with us and give a dharma talk. He continues to join us nearly every month.
  2. Shaila Catherine: Shaila was resident teacher for the Santa Fe and Albuquerque sanghas from September 2001 through July 2003. She joined us on Thursday nights about twice a month.

• Others: We have had many many other wonderful teachers join us for talks, retreats, and residencies. See links in the Activities section below for details.

Where and When

• Members' Homes: In 1988 or thereabouts, Joan Granger sent a letter to people in the Albuquerque area who were on the IMS mailing list, inviting them to join her in starting a vipassana sitting group in Albuquerque. The sangha was formed from that first meeting at her home. We met in members' homes, on Sunday nights, for approximately 9 years. A Tuesday night group also met for a number of years during this period.

• Unitarian Church: In 1997, Eric Kolvig moved to Santa Fe and was teacher for both the Santa Fe and Albuquerque sanghas. During that time we started meeting on Thursday nights in a large room at the Unitarian Church on Carlisle.

• Adelante: In January 1999, when the Unitarians needed to reclaim our meeting room during a remodeling project, sangha member Mike Kivitz, director of Adelante Development Center, graciously allowed us to meet at the Adelante headquarters on Balloon Park Road. We met there on Thursday nights for approximately 2 years.

• Nahalot Shalom: In 2001, after we outgrew the meeting room at Adelante, we moved to Nahalot Shalom, a Jewish synagogue on Rio Grande Blvd. We met there for 9 months.

• The Wat: In 2002, the monks at the Wat, 145 Madison NE, where we currently meet, generously allowed us to use their temple for our meetings. They have been wonderful dharma friends and host for our sangha.

Activities

• Thursday Night Meetings: See Previous Thursday Nights Activities.

• Retreats: See Previous Sangha Retreats. (This includes residential retreats, day retreats, and half-day retreats.)

• Teacher Residencies: See Previous Teacher Residencies.

• Community Potlucks: See Previous Community Potlucks.

• Sunday Night Gatherings: See Previous Sunday Nights.

• Other: We've done many other things as a sangha. A few examples: regular Sunday all day sittings, study groups (e.g. diversity study group, sutta study group), support groups (e.g., women's support group), visioning parties, Thursday night dinners, membership meetings, board meetings, fund raising activities such as yard sales and a silent auction, celebrations, world cafe, and consensus collective.

Website

• We started the sangha website in January or February 1997. Our web address, for nearly 4 years, was the unwieldy http://www.cs.unm.edu/~richards/sangha. The UNM Computer Science Department graciously let us run the website from their server. We did so until February 2009.

• In September 2000, we got our own domain name, abqsangha.org.

• In February 2009, we moved our website from the UNM server to Dreamhost, making use of their free web hosting for non-profit organizations.

• Check out the early sangha website pages archived through Wayback Machine. Much early sangha history is preserved on these pages. Many (but not all) links on the pages actually work.

Non-Profit Corporation

• Incorporation: In June 1999, the Albuquerque Vipassana Sangha received its official Certificate of Incorporation from the State of New Mexico. See Non-Profit Corporation.

• Tax-Exempt Status: In June 2000, we received tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status from the IRS.

AVS Home