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Training Application (Preview)

Thank you for your interest in training at the Monastic Academy. Our community values honesty and care above all else. Please be sincere and honest, clear and concise in your responses.

For most people, this application requires four to ten hours to complete. This includes reading essays and listening to content pieces that vary in length from a few minutes to an hour and a half. The personalized link you received by email will save your draft responses so that you can return at any time to continue from any device.

Section 1: History

Please tell us about your personal journey thus far. Include any relevant history of spiritual practice and social change work. These may include meditation retreats, use of psychedelics, and community organizing, among many others.

Briefly describe good and bad experiences you’ve had with those who have contributed to your formation. Please include:

  • Communities you've lived in
  • Organizations you've worked for
  • Spiritual teachers you've learned from
  • Your parents

This program will push you beyond your limits. Do you have a history of mental illness or addiction? If so, how have you worked with these challenges? What is your current state of mental and emotional health?

This program involves rigorous physical activity, long hours of sitting in stillness, and sharing accommodations in close quarters. Please share any relevant health issues or medical conditions.

Do you have any specialized skills?

Section 2: Qualifications and Competencies

If you have cultivated many of these qualities, this training is for you. Choose the ten items below in which you are most extraordinary, and give an example from your past that demonstrates your capacity in this skill.

If you tend toward arrogance, please know that if you think you fulfill most of these, you’re probably too delusional to train here. If you tend toward insecurity, please know that these are ideals, not expectations.

The ideal candidate:

Section 3: Aspirations

What do you want to achieve by training here? What is the purpose of the spiritual path?

What have you already done to achieve the aims you described in the previous question? What have you done to align your life with the purpose you described there?

How have you faced tragedy in your life?

How have you faced world crises?

Section 4: Media Responses

We offer a path forward that differs in values and practices than the mainstream. Any organization that challenges the modern status quo will be at the center of controversy. If you walk this path, you will enter that controversy.

Our deepest clarity must function right in the center of the deepest delusions of our world. In devoting our lives to guiding our civilization out of the fear that results in omnicidal insanity, we meet that insanity and fear without losing our clarity and compassion. This is the heart of our training. It’s important for us to know how you respond to various perspectives on our work so we can assess your ability to see through delusion.

Please review the following four pieces of content created by people who have trained with us. Reply with your reflections on each piece.

The claims made in the following two pieces are false and designed to distract your attention from what truly matters.

First Media Piece

This former trainee signed up for less than one month of training, but arrived with the bigger goal of changing our organization. She also was open about her intention “to seduce a monk.”

When the first man she approached refused her, she immediately attacked his reputation. After the second one initially rejected her, she shared that she planned to seduce him on a beach. This time, she got her way and was able to brag joyfully and proudly about having seduced a monk.

By all accounts, she loved her time with us. She requested repeatedly to stay longer than her initial commitment. However, by the end of her month, it was clear to the staff that she was not psychologically suited to extend her stay. She and the man she loved then left the organization and lived together for eight months. However, she cheated on him. He ended the relationship and returned to MAPLE. Then her tone changed.

Below is a screenshot excerpt of a online post against us, in which she frames their encounter on the beach as sexual assault. Over time, she changed her story repeatedly in order to make the falsehoods more strategic, targeted, and incendiary, making a new, more popular, post. She eventually gained a cult following from the attention, which she used to incite violence against members of our community.

Screenshot of a comment from hannah Screenshot of a comment from hannah

As you can see, our mission is not for the faint of heart. Ours is the type of community that is often subject to this type of attack. Therefore, we need to assess your ability to see through it regardless of whether you know what happened.

What questions does this situation raise for you?
What are her crucial claims?
What are her views and values?
Please demonstrate your ability to see through those claims, views and values.
If all the claims were false, and you were the target of this piece, what would you do?
And a very difficult question: What is really going on here?

Second Media Piece

We understand how difficult it is to overcome patterns of resisting personal responsibility. We also know that to do so makes us able to give useful feedback. Therefore, we emphasize taking responsibility and giving feedback in our leadership training. We push trainees to break through their limits for the sake of integrity and compassion. This former trainee chose to stay stuck.

He left when it was time for him to take on greater responsibility in the community, broke his commitment and abandoned those he cared about and who cared for him.

In this piece, he comes across as reasonable and measured, on the other hand we stand behind our training and its requirements. Again, we need to assess your ability to see through his narrative, regardless of whether you know what happened.

What questions does this situation raise for you?
What are his crucial claims?
What are his views and values?
Please demonstrate your ability to see through those claims, views and values.
If all the claims were false, and you were the target of this piece, what would you do?
And a very difficult question: What’s really going on here?

Your reflections:

The following two pieces (on this page and the next) reflect how our community aligns our lives with what truly matters.

Third Media Piece

In an era of witch hunts, we're the witches.

The global machine is not a viable alternative to what we’re doing here. That’s why it fears us. You will burn us at the stake. You will feed us to the lions. And then you will come to us in remorse. And ask us to take over your civilization.

We have a viable path forward. It is thousands of years old. We are creating it as you read this sentence. We need your help to give this path to the world. You must throw away the petty concerns that feed the machine.

We can help you do that.


Poem from the upper zendo at MAPLE

This is a place where we cut through hope and fear. Attacks on this place come from hope and fear. Hope and fear are petty. Wisdom and compassion are not petty. Please consider: the opposite of compassion is pettiness. Harm is justified and valorized by petty aspirations.

We, here in this community, lost our lives by seeing that we are the ones who must do what must be done. We do not wait for someone else to do it. We tried that, and lost faith, so we stepped forward. This is the first blow to arrogance that we know for ourselves.

Then, our lives were taken from us. We saw that what must be done cannot in any way ever be done by us. It certainly cannot be done by notions such as “myself” and “intelligence.” This is the second blow to arrogance that we know for ourselves.

We tried to let go to a larger self or a larger intelligence. But we saw that absolutely no kind of self, and no kind of intelligence, can ever do what must be done. This is the third blow to arrogance that we know for ourselves, and this is how we take full responsibility for doing what must be done.

There is a world beyond belief beyond the confines of your mind.

Centuries have passed since our society last accessed this world. The West has recoiled from this world, and has built structures to hold this world at bay, and cut down everything that reminded it of it. This has meant cutting down everything without exception.

The result is the global crisis. The global crisis is your call to the path of liberation.

That means that if you come here, your first step is to discover the Dharma for yourself.

Your second step is to realize it so clearly that you can design a version of the eternal Dharma for this digital age.

Religions have always given rise to and been distributed through new telecommunications technologies. Your third step is to become so clear that you can distribute the Dharma in the midst of the worst delusions.

You're probably not up for any of this. If you alone could do this, you would have. You need a teacher and you need friends and you need courage.

You are entering this training to become a member of a team that really does this. If you want to be on this team, you must be committed to making it the most important team that has ever existed. If we can function with the same clarity in this era that the Buddhist sangha did at the time of the Buddha, we can do this.

Pay attention to how you feel right now. If you are uncomfortable with this, you’ll hold us back. If this is exciting to you regardless of whether you’re uncomfortable, you’re needed here.

People who train here often say, “Before I came here, no one had ever told me, ‘Yeah, this is real, and it’s possible, and you can do it, and we can help you.’ That’s why I gave up everything to enter this training.”

Here, we are actually committed to saving life on Earth. Everything we do is explained by this. If you don’t believe that anyone could really aspire to saving life on Earth, then you will think we’re crazy. Naive. Malicious. That thought is based on a lifetime in a world that is crazy, naive, malicious. It claims there is no other world. But there is another world. The world we live in here is sane. Realistic. Compassionate.

Here, we here are actually committed to realizing Buddhahood. Everything we do is explained by this. If you don’t believe that anyone could really be committed to realizing Buddhahood, then you will think we’re crazy. Naive. Malicious. That thought is based on a lifetime in a world that is crazy, naive, malicious. It claims there is no other world. But there is another world. The world we live in here is sane. Realistic. Compassionate.

There is a real path. Saving the world is just the first step.

Your reflections:

Fourth Media Piece

Your reflections:

Section 5: Tragedy and Joy

Some say that a life well-lived brings us from the pre-tragic, into the tragic, and beyond that, to the post-tragic.

Much of what we have been assessing in this application so far is the progress you have made moving from pre-tragic to tragic awareness. This is to say we are assessing to what degree you have moved beyond “ignorance is bliss” to facing the suffering of existence, and your place in creating it.

In this section, we emphasize your progress in moving from the tragic to the post-tragic, when integrity and wisdom is bliss and you realize your ability to joyfully resolve the suffering of existence.

Life at MAPLE can be grinding and arduous, but it is above all heartfelt, joyful, loving, and caring. Because we face crisis and tragedy, we have more fun than anyone else we know. We have fun in a way that is not possible for those who avoid horror and despair. These clips show two ways our community rejoices in the midst of tragedy.

We often gather together. We might go on hikes, show off our talents, or sit around the fire and tell stories. This is a Vermont Christmas story that Forall told to our community, about one of the most famous mouses in history. Credit to Thomas Riley. Enjoy.

Having trouble playing this audio? Download audio here

How would you share joy with this community?

Our monthly rhythm typically involves a week-long period that emphasizes intensive meditation in which we are challenged to enter into deep states of concentration and completely let go of everything. We do not call these Retreats, since we do not retreat from anything. We call them Meditation Advances. At the end of each Advance, we celebrate our great efforts with a “Gratitude Breakfast.” This recording expresses what we were grateful for that morning.

What about the opportunity to do this training makes you grateful?

Section 6: Dharma Teaching

Each day during each Advance, we receive an exhortation from our Teacher. Exhortations are discourses on sacred texts that exhort us to practice with unrelenting courage, aiming without compromise for our highest goal. These talks explore Buddhist doctrines in depth. As our purpose is to realize those teachings, rather than merely understand them intellectually, they are to be received within diligent contemplative practice.

Please listen carefully to the following 90-minute exhortation. Sit in an upright posture and practice a meditation technique throughout.

How did your meditation change as the 90 minutes passed?
What clarity did you achieve?
As you could hear, most of the teaching was not in the words. The most important understandings do not come from taking words literally. What insights did you realize from the teachings that were not explicitly stated?

Having trouble playing this audio? Download audio here

Share your most salient insights or impressions.

Section 7: Basic Info

If you have any questions for us, please share them here.