"I Left Home to Manage a Temple and Raise Money?": The Eightfold Path of Leading People and Setting Goals to Strengthen Your Community

Roseanne Freese

As many Buddhist laywomen and nuns have no formal training in business or management, the management of a Buddhist temple or Dharma center can seem overwhelming. The focus of this workshop will be building confidence and learning to break large, unwieldy goals down into small, concrete projects. Using a combination of Vinaya guidance and practical approaches to setting and fulfilling goals, this workshop will help participants identify their vision and basic needs for maintaining and developing a healthy, stable, and vibrant Buddhist community.  Activities will include introducing the "Eightfold Path" of identifying dreams, choosing priorities, planting seeds, developing skillful questions, identifying tasks, identifying helpers, setting time frames, and carrying out the work.  Sample projects will be considered, such as hosting a fund-raising banquet, raising money for temple renovation, or hosting a kathina ceremony.

Following the introduction and discussion, participants will share their dreams and visions for their communities. A number of these dreams/visions will be selected as focuses of attention for small groups. Each group will work through a series of sequential steps: identifying priorities, planting seeds, determining useful questions, setting up tasks, identifying helpers, and setting time frames. Representatives will then describe each group’s chosen project, followed by questions and shared insights.

On a practical level, participants will gain the organizational skills and confidence to express their dreams and identify the steps needed realize the goals they envision for their communities. On a deeper level, they will gain a sense of greater inner capacity and a greater appreciation for the organizational strengths of others. Through this experience of inner creativity and outer organization, they will become more skilled in breaking large projects into manageable steps and in accessing outside resources. They will learn to view organizational development as an opportunity to grow in metta and wisdom.