Darnków Newsletter, November 2004


Dear Dharma Friends,

In Darnków we have now beautiful autumn, sun and full of colours, but in the night frost. This is a time to make small recapitulation not only the summer retreat but also whole year activity.

At the beginning what we were able to make in this year:

- on the first floor of gompa building were made the partitions walls with water and electricity installation inside.
we paid for this 38. 547 zl

So now there are 5 guests rooms, library, room for printing texts, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and wc on the first floor of the gompa. But till everything will be completely ready we will have to make inside plasters on main walls, make floors and insert doors

- we made whole elevation of the gompa building: warm insulation and plasters, gutters; warm and water insulation and plates on balconies, drainage around building, moulds above the windows of ground floor and painting the details to make our gompa more Tibetan gompa style (paintings of details will be finish in next year ).
cost of those all works is 121.884 zl., we still have to pay 10.000 zl.

LEAD Technologies Inc. V1.01- as you surely realized from few years we have serious problems with water during summer time. Till now we used our own water collector, which gives water to Rinpoche house, stone house and summer kitchen. But because of changing climate and vary dry weather last years we don’t have enough water there. Water to the toilette complex is taking from the stream, which gets more and more dry every year. You know how important is to have water, especially when we will have to give water also to the gompa building. The only solution is to have a well. And fortunately we have well already!!! About 20 meters behind the gompa building specialists find water and they had make 44 m. deep well so we have water, a lot of water. They check – there is 3.600 litres of water per hour in this well, which is enough for whole centre.
we paid for well 6. 944 zl.

But it is not enough, we have water but we can’t use it because we don’t have the whole water system. What is need? At the beginning the project how to connect everything, after good pump, mechanism to regulate and keeping the pressure, big water tanks and tubes to all buildings. Till we don’t have a project we don’t know how much it will cost. Very approximately it is cost about 10.000 zl + project about
1500 zl.
I hope that we will be able to collect that money till the spring, to don’t have any problems with water for next retreat. And here is the big request to all of you to help us with this project to sponsor water even by small amounts. Each money is very helpful.


And now few words about summer retreat:

As you all probably know we were able to offer 111.111 butterlamps in this year !!!!!
Firs it was possible because of sponsors who covered cost of oil, wicks, cloths to clean lamps and part of the Migme`s ticket (ticket was 3330 zl – from whole lamps offerings left for ticket 1465 zl), second because of people who taken active and generous part in cleaning the lamps – very often till 4.00 am.

Experience of this year show us that this way of organizing butterlamps offering ceremony works good, so the next year retreat we will organize the same way.
On the ground of participators opinions I can say that this year’s retreat was very good. Very good atmosphere and more and more people who came - in this year was many people who didn’t came to Darnkow from Rinpoche passing away - it shows that our sangha is alive, that develops and consolidates.
It makes very happy.

I think that also very important for all of us, was the whole sangha meting and discussion about future “teaching program” in Darnkow. Darnkow is our common centre, of course we all follow our Rinpoche teachings and we will continue and protect this teachings here in Darnkow, but also is very good that everybody could say they own opinion and expectations from the programme of the centre.

Short accounts from the summer retreat:

INCOME AMOUNT EXPENSES AMOUNT SALDO
payment for retreat 23. 783 zl organization of the retreat (cooks pay, taking away waste water, electricity, office, wood for kitchen, etc.) 11. 350 zl
payment for food 9. 526 zl food 10. 066 zl
offering for butterlamps 14. 994 zl oil, wicks, cleaning cloths for butterlamps 13. 529 zl 1. 465 zl
mix payment for retreat and food together 9. 967 zl tickets and “thanks” gifts for teachers 9. 054 zl
TOGETHER 58. 270 zl TOGETHER 43. 999 zl 14. 271 zl


During the retreat we also collected 7. 942 zl offering for gompa.

And at the end few words about the most important investments we have to do next year:

- a water system for whole centre, should be done in spring, as I wrote earlier, it will cost around 10.000 zl

- heating system in gompa building (in autumn)
Heating in the gompa starts to be necessary. Now, when the building has warm insulation and we not heat gompa in winter, the humidity which there is inside the building ( and in each using building there is humidity) could make mould on the walls.
In this year we will manage somehow, we will have to open windows very often in winter, but there is not good solution for the future, we have to make heating in gompa. Here also we need a project, from which we will know how much this investment cost. Project cost 1500 zl, and very approximate cost of whole heating is 30.000 – 40.000 zl.

I hope that thanks to your donations it will be possible to realize those plans, as it was successfully till now. Even small offerings moves work closer to the end.
Thanks to all of you we have really beautiful gompa.

The warmest greetings,
Sarwa Mangalam
Anna Siwecka


Khordong <khordong (ad) poczta.onet.pl> 2nd November 2004


***Newsletter November 2004 12/04ar