Vision Statement

In the Fall of 2001 I began doing doctoral research in medieval Chinese Buddhist-Taoist magic at Princeton University.  I had already received a bachelor’s degree in Religion from Hunter College and a master’s degree in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hawai’i, and I had been teaching courses in Buddhism and Eastern Religion for over two years as an adjunct professor in New York. At Princeton I was studying the art and iconography of Buddhist mandalas, paintings of various colors, shapes and figures used as visual aids in meditation or in the performance of magical rites.

By 2002 I had narrowed my dissertation topic down a particular mandala called the Garbhadhatu (the Matrix World). I was researching how the Chinese Empire adopted this Indian mandala during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD), and how it was used by the royal court as a peace mandala in rituals to avoid war and to pacify the country.  After many long nights meditating on the Garbhadhatu, and many long hours studying Chinese and Japanese sculpture, I came up with an idea for curating a museum exhibition of Buddhist sculpture based on all 365 figures in the mandala. I imagined gathering ancient Buddhist statues from around the world and arranging them in the pattern of the Garbhadhatu, thus creating a three-dimensional version of the mandala. However, after some research I found that only a fraction of the figures in the mandala have ever been made as statues, and the reality of procuring those that existed for an exhibit seemed untenable, given that most of the surviving statues are national treasures of China and Japan.   

Soon after that I had an even greater vision of creating an entirely new type of Asian Art Museum in America that would also function as a meditation garden and spiritual retreat center.  The meditation garden I imagined would be designed in the image of the Garbhadhatu Mandala, and would require creating an entirely new set of statues based on the figures in the Garbhadhatu and installing them permanently in an indoor-outdoor art museum. I immediately wanted to share my vision with others so in 2003 I made a large landscaping model of how I imagined the Garden would look. In order to show all the statues the Garden would contain, I taught myself how to caste and pour wax candles. This was the easiest (and least expensive) way to replicate all the figures from the mandala. Using an ancient Japanese encyclopedia of the Garbhadhatu Mandala that describes each figure in the mandala, what color they are, what color lotus flower they sit, etc., I was able to make small replicas of all the figures. On May 29th I invited my friends and family to join me in Brooklyn, NY for a gathering in honor of the Garden. Since the wax statues were also candles, we concluding the evening with an illumination ceremony, reminiscent of the ancient homa fire ritual of India.   

Over the next two years I devoted myself to teaching classes in Buddhism and translating Chinese Buddhist texts into English. All the while I was contemplating how to turn my vision of the Meditation Garden/Museum into a reality.  Finally, in the summer of 2006, I founded Matrix Mandala Garden, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the practice and awareness of meditation throughout North America. 

The primary goal of the organization is to build the Matrix Mandala Garden, a meditation park and retreat center open year-round to the public, free of charge.  Although the design for the meditation garden is based on a Buddhist mandala, the Park will be, in every way, non-denominational, and is intended to be a meeting place for practitioners of all religions and meditation traditions. This universality is symbolized by a large tree that will stand in the center of the Mandala Garden. The tree has been chosen for being recognized as a symbol of spiritual growth and achievement throughout the World.

MMG now encompasses a growing Board of Directors committed to seeing the Park built and several teams of skilled, intelligent, idealistic dreamers who advise and help me with the various aspects of the project. A concern of everyone involved in is environmental sustainability. To this end, we will build and maintain the Park in the greenest way possible, using only the most environmentally sound techniques and renewable energy sources. The building of the Garden and the maintenance of its activities will be made possible through the generous donations of individuals, with supplementary funding from public and private grants. The purpose of the Garden and MMG is to ensure a peaceful refuge from the world of suffering, and to provide resources for the development of wisdom and compassion in all beings throughout the world.