Lifetime Tuition

Lama Foundation is a non-profit organization, but is also a “mystery school” where people come to study various spiritual traditions. Money paid for staying at Lama goes towards “lifetime tuition”. Everyone at Lama Foundation (even “residents”) has a responsibility to take care of their lifetime tuition. Each person who becomes a year-around resident is expected to make regular payments against one’s balance or to defer payments until one can make them.

A question that we often hear at Lama is something like: “I have come to Lama to be a full-time volunteer, why do I have to pay money on top of that?” A good question. Over the years, Lama Foundation has grown as a result of people pouring themselves into Lama. People have not just poured their hearts, their talents, their energies, or their time; they have also poured their money. In day to day operations, Lama needs both service and money in order to continue to operate. Lama does not produce enough money itself to meet operational costs (in spite of the summer programs, prayer flag printing, and hermitages), and the huge generosity of donations from the early days onward (together with tuition payments) have allowed Lama to remain focused as a spiritual community. Other communities have a thriving cottage industry that binds the community together; at Lama, the community is bound together by spiritual practice and heart-based community building. Lama is firstly a place of heart, a place of prayer, and this makes Lama a precious and rare place in today's world.

Originally, people who wanted to spend a winter here had to build their own residence. (Otherwise, there was no place for them to stay.) The current tuition system is similar in that one is asked not only to help out with the day-to-day operations, but also to contribute something for Lama’s growth. People are encouraged NOT to pay their tuition off in one payment, but to pay month by month as they are here. So when one finishes paying off their lifetime tuition, this represents a long-term relationship with Lama and a deep investment into the Foundation.

Money as the only means of measuring “value” or “worth” is a distortion. While Lama Foundation has always kept the prices for its services low, it exists within a society that steadily raises prices. Any money paid or donated to Lama Foundation goes a long way towards keeping Lama operational for the next person who wanders up the mountain. However, in the end, people who have paid off their lifetime tuition agree that ALL they received from Lama far outweighs the tuition price tag, and is something far beyond monetary “value”.