Sangha History

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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. Five people came to the first meeting. Three of those continued to meet and were enough to form a little sangha. We met in Joan's house on Sunday nights and announced our meetings in the IMS newsletter. Soon other people started showing up and we took turns meeting in people's homes. Sometimes as many as 15 people would crowd into someone's living room. We'd usually sit and then listen to a taped dharma talk or take turns reading aloud from a book, or have a discussion. We met in members' homes, on Sunday nights, for approximately 9 years, until Eric became our teacher. 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 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.
• Sunday Night Meetings: See Previous Sunday Nights. (In November 2009, we added Sunday night meetings at Bhava Yoga Studio to our schedule. A sangha member who attended UNM could not attend on Thursday evenings because of classes and took the initiative to find a place to meet on Sunday. Bea, the owner of Bhava, has been welcoming and generous with the sangha.)
• 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.
• 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.

Teachers

• Long-term resident teachers:
  1. Eric Kolvig: During the years 1997 through 1999, Eric was the resident teacher for the Santa Fe and Albuquerque sanghas and joined our sangha on Thursday nights about twice a month. Then 2005 through 2010, he traveled to Albuquerque about once a month to sit with us and give a dharma talk.
  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 above for details.

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.

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