April 17, 2005: Headlines: COS - Thailand: Religion: Buddhism: Meditation: Architecture: Feng shu: Boston Globe: Joseph Goldstein learned Buddhist meditation when he was in the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia, and now teaches it widely. He practices a form of the creed called Theravada Buddhism, which flourishes in Thailand and other regions of Southeast Asia, where it is usually practiced in a forest setting
Peace Corps Online:
Directory:
Thailand:
Peace Corps Thailand:
The Peace Corps in Thailand:
April 17, 2005: Headlines: COS - Thailand: Religion: Buddhism: Meditation: Architecture: Feng shu: Boston Globe: Joseph Goldstein learned Buddhist meditation when he was in the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia, and now teaches it widely. He practices a form of the creed called Theravada Buddhism, which flourishes in Thailand and other regions of Southeast Asia, where it is usually practiced in a forest setting
Joseph Goldstein learned Buddhist meditation when he was in the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia, and now teaches it widely. He practices a form of the creed called Theravada Buddhism, which flourishes in Thailand and other regions of Southeast Asia, where it is usually practiced in a forest setting
Joseph Goldstein learned Buddhist meditation when he was in the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia, and now teaches it widely. He practices a form of the creed called Theravada Buddhism, which flourishes in Thailand and other regions of Southeast Asia, where it is usually practiced in a forest setting
Feng shui shapes a beautiful Buddhist retreat
By Robert Campbell, Globe Correspondent | April 17, 2005
BARRE -- A magical place called Forest Refuge is a cluster of cedar cottages and pavilions tucked among the rocks and woods of this central Massachusetts town.
Forest Refuge is one of the gems of recent architecture in rural New England. It's also a rare local example of architecture designed according to the principles of feng shui, the Chinese belief in positioning rooms, buildings, and even cities according to what are thought to be positive patterns of energy.
Forest Refuge is a retreat for Buddhists. They come from all over the country and the world to spend time here in meditation. They stay for as little as two weeks or as much as two years. They sleep in modest bedroom cells, and they meditate in silence, sometimes while kneeling on cushions facing the Buddha in the beautiful shrine hall, sometimes while pacing up and down Forest Refuge's corridors and pathways.
''We practice Insight Meditation," says Joseph Goldstein, who founded the community and lives nearby. ''We seek what we call Mindfulness, the practice of undistracted awareness. It's very difficult to do, because the mind wanders."
Goldstein learned Buddhist meditation when he was in the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia, and now teaches it widely. He practices a form of the creed called Theravada Buddhism, which flourishes in Thailand and other regions of Southeast Asia, where it is usually practiced in a forest setting. ''We have about 30 retreatants -- yogis --here at any one time," he says. ''Many of them come more than once. There are also cottages for some of the teachers and staff."
The architects are the firm of O'Neil Pennoyer, in Groton. They've achieved an extraordinary sense of connectedness at Forest Refuge. Man-made buildings and natural surroundings seem all of a piece. The buildings are linked by wood walkways that are built like docks and raised a few inches off the ground. When you see a yogi moving on one, he seems, in his robes, to not quite be touching the earth, but floating just above it.
Simple materials relate the architecture to the natural world. The green-shingled roofs of the walkways are supported by so-called ''lodge pole pine," meaning posts that have been cut from standing dead timber and left unfinished. These rough posts, lining the walkways in rows, suggest a kind of measured pacing even when no one is present.
Other materials are equally natural. Walls are made of vertical cedar planks, and floors are recycled fir. Everywhere you look, the rooms and passageways open to views of trees, rocks, moss, or pastureland. Especially fine is the high, spacious, multiwindowed shrine hall, which evokes a Shaker simplicity and sense of craft. Here meditators face a statue of the Buddha, which stands above a natural rock outcropping that pokes up through the floor.
O'Neil Pennoyer was chosen for the job only after Goldstein tried other architects. Michael Rotondi, a well known avant-garde Californian, made an almost complete design before it was decided that his ideas were too expensive. ''It looked like something from outer space," says one staff member. Goldstein then decided to do something very different and, he felt, more closely attuned to New England.
ADVERTISEMENT
The most fascinating element in the design of the Forest Refuge is the feng shui (pronounced, more or less, ''fung shway"). Hank Reisen is a consultant in Cambridge who specializes in that discipline. Goldstein hired him early on as an adviser on site planning, well before taking on O'Neil Pennoyer.
On the telephone, Reisen attempts to give a hopelessly Western writer a short course on his subject.
''It's about the flow of energy, which we call ch'i," he says (pronouncing it ''chee"). ''It's the flow and pooling of ch'i in the physical environment. You want a balance between flow and pooling. A river would be all flow, a swamp would be no flow and all pool. You can have too much flow or too much pooling."
The linearity, the straight hallways and walks at Forest Refuge, are examples of flow. Nooks that branch off them, he says, ''are like eddies in the stream, so you don't get too much flow." His explanation does, in fact, illuminate some of the beauty and variety of Forest Refuge. The shrine hall, for example, can be thought of as a still lake at the end of a river of motion.
He talks, too, about larger siting issues. ''A site should be like a seat," he says, ''with maybe a little ridge behind, to the north, and a bright open space in front, to the south. The ridge can be a land form, or you can make it out of architecture. It is the tortoise with its hard back. To the east is the dragon, to the west is the tiger, balanced. Beyond the open area in front is the red bird," by which he means some accent in the southern distance, which at Forest Refuge takes the form of trees atop small hills.
I'm not sure how all this plays out at Forest Refuge. But the linked buildings do frame the outdoor spaces, much like the arms of an armchair.
I'm not suggesting that anyone but O'Neil Pennoyer is the architect of Forest Refuge. Architects, however, work with consultants of all kinds. Why not feng shui? What matters is that the result, here in Barre, is a work of beauty and serenity.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.
When this story was posted in April 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
| The Peace Corps Library Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related stories in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can find hundreds of stories about what RPCVs with your same interests or from your Country of Service are doing today. If you have a web site, support the "Peace Corps Library" and link to it today. |
| RPCVs and Friends remember Pope John Paul II Tony Hall found the pope to be courageous and capable of forgiving the man who shot him in 1981, Mark Gearan said the pope was as dynamic in person as he appears on television, Maria Shriver said he was a beacon of virtue, strength and goodness, and an RPCV who met the pope while serving in the Solomon Islands said he possessed the holiness of a man filled with a deep love and concern for humanity. Leave your thoughts here. |
| Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong 170,000 is a very special number for the RPCV community - it's the number of Volunteers who have served in the Peace Corps since 1961. It's also a number that is very special to us because March is the first month since our founding in January, 2001 that our readership has exceeded 170,000. And while we know that not everyone who comes to this site is an RPCV, they are all "Friends of the Peace Corps." Thanks everybody for making PCOL your source of news for the Returned Volunteer community. |
| Crisis Corps arrives in Thailand After the Tsunami in Southeast Asia last December, Peace Corps issued an appeal for Crisis Corps Volunteers and over 200 RPCVs responded. The first team of 8 Crisis Corps volunteers departed for Thailand on March 18 to join RPCVs who are already supporting relief efforts in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and India with other agencies and NGO's. |
| RPCVs in Congress ask colleagues to support PC RPCVs Sam Farr, Chris Shays, Thomas Petri, James Walsh, and Mike Honda have asked their colleagues in Congress to add their names to a letter they have written to the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, asking for full funding of $345 M for the Peace Corps in 2006. As a follow-on to Peace Corps week, please read the letter and call your Representative in Congress and ask him or her to add their name to the letter. |
| Add your info now to the RPCV Directory Call Harris Publishing at 800-414-4608 right away to add your name or make changes to your listing in the newest edition of the NPCA's Directory of Peace Corps Volunteers and Former Staff. Then read our story on how you can get access to the book after it is published. The deadline for inclusion is May 16 so call now. |
| March 1: National Day of Action Tuesday, March 1, is the NPCA's National Day of Action. Please call your Senators and ask them to support the President's proposed $27 Million budget increase for the Peace Corps for FY2006 and ask them to oppose the elimination of Perkins loans that benefit Peace Corps volunteers from low-income backgrounds. Follow this link for step-by-step information on how to make your calls. Then take our poll and leave feedback on how the calls went. |
Read the stories and leave your comments.
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.
Story Source: Boston Globe
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Thailand; Religion; Buddhism; Meditation; Architecture; Feng shu
PCOL19860
42
.