Dharma Residents

Space is available for up to four individuals to live in the Dharma Center, serve on the board and support its operation. For more information, including an application, select “Residents Manual” and “Application” at left.

Our past residents have found their stays at the Dharma Center to be full
and very enriching.

Sarah Chalfin writes:
For me, living at the Yellow Springs Dharma Center was a transformational experience. In joining with a community for the first time, I was able to develop my practice and understanding of the Dhamma in a nurturing and supportive environment. While a resident there, I was given the opportunity to live with monks and nuns from various Buddhist traditions. In the same year that I began my residency, I was introduced to a visiting monk from Sri Lanka whom had a profound influence on my life and inspired me to follow the Theravada tradition. One year later I was accepted to the Antioch Education Abroad program, Buddhist Studies in India, an intensive four-month long introduction to Buddhist philosophy, culture and meditation. During my time abroad I had the opportunity to ordain temporarily as a Buddhist nun, to go for pilgrimage to many of the significant places of the Buddha’s life and to complete a certificate course in Pali Studies at the University of Peradeniya in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

            None of this would have been possible without my experiences at the Yellow Springs Dharma Center and the friendships I developed with so many extraordinary people throughout my time as a resident there. Those years were absolutely foundational to my life and practice, and I am exceedingly grateful for the love, kindness and invaluable guidance and support I received from the many members of the community and visiting teachers from around the world.

            I am currently a senior at Earlham College and my major is Peace and Global Studies with a concentration in Buddhism and Pacifism. Following my graduation I intend to return to Sri Lanka for further study in Pali and Sinhala languages, to teach English and to undertake a year-long service project. The Yellow Springs Dharma Center will forever maintain a special place in my life and heart, and I greatly look forward to returning in the years to come.

 
Here is what former resident Amanda Bilecki remembers: 
Life for me at the Dharma Center was marked by a fullness and variance that I
haven’t experienced before or since. It was formative, invaluable. Daily
meditation and ongoing dharma activities provided an amazing infrastructure from
which community, laughter, sorrow, organization, gardens, and so much more
sprung forth. Music was made, food cooked and eaten, often in a hurry, before
the evening sit, I do admit! All of this felt sheltered by the sacred space of
the Dharma Hall.  
 
Looking back, I also see that living at the Dharma Center helped me integrate my
sitting meditation practice with the moving meditation of daily life.  This was
something that I deeply wanted, even if at that time I wasn’t able to articulate
that.  I am still in touch with many of the folks that lived and practiced at
the Dharma Center, while I was living there, and I continue to feel enriched by
these connections.  
 
I am now living in San Francisco, working as an acupuncturist and chinese
herbalist.  I treat mostly fertility and respiratory disorders, and incorporate
mindfulness into my style of treatment.  In my free time, I am enjoying the
beautiful outdoors, hiking, swimming, or surfing with my new board – The Magic
Wahine.

And from Luke Thompson    
     My period of residence at the Yellow Springs Dharma Center proved to be a
wonderful introduction to both Buddhism and the Yellow Springs community.  I had
hitherto known Buddhism solely through a number of popular, English-language
books, not through any living tradition.  At the Dharma Center I was exposed for
the first time to Buddhist practice.  Furthermore, since the Dharma Center
serves as the practice space for a number of Buddhist traditions, I became
familiar with multiple types of Buddhism and was thus made aware of both the
diversity and unity of the various Buddhist traditions that have developed in
different periods and cultures.  Experiencing the practices of these multiple
traditions provided me with a variegated yet comprehensive exposure to Buddhism.
     Life at the Dharma Center also served as an unintended means of entry into
the Yellow Springs community.  As an Antioch student I had failed to venture
outside of insular campus life and thus the only Yellow Springs community
members I knew were Antioch professors.  This changed with my relocation to the
Dharma Center.  Through conversations and daily interaction with people who came
for the daily sittings (many of them regulars) and for the tradition-specific,
weekend practice sessions, I was gradually drawn into the Dharma Center
community and through this new found family into the Yellow Springs community
more broadly.  In fact, when I think back to my time there, the memories that
come to the forefront of my mind are of the kind, dedicated members of the
Dharma Center.  Many a morning or evening sit would be followed by cups of tea,
sipped slowly by friends sitting and chatting at the entrance hall table.
     These two entities to which I was introduced at the Dharma Center—Buddhism
and a new community—were of course related.  For while Buddhism certainly
contains an individualistic strain, how is it practiced the world over but in
communities, with other human beings?  Thus, while reading books provided me
with an historical backdrop against which to think about Buddhism, it was my
period of residence at the Dharma Center that provided me with my first
experience of the living tradition.
     The fond memories I have of the Yellow Springs Dharma Center remain strong
in my mind and the formative experience that my time there proved to be laid the
foundations for a lasting relationship with both Buddhism and Yellow Springs. 
Even today, some nine years later, the deep reverberations of a meditation gong
carry my mind back to life at 502 Livermore Street.