Sangha History
If you have any suggestions or requests for the page's contents
or if you have more precise dates or additional information,
please send an email to
webmaster@abqsangha.org.
Thanks!
Teachers
- Long-term resident teachers:
- 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.
- 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