“Pink House on Bohol island, Philippines, is our home, community store, future yoga & meditation center / guest-house, with our public koi meditation pond acting as a community hub with the idea of visitors and locals mingling in this mix.”
“We never ‘contract out’ work. All work is performed by family members who are paid living wages and live with us, eat with us, and relax & laugh with us at the end of each long working day.”
“November 18 2020 is the first anniversary of Pink House. We invite you all to become part of the Pink House First Anniversary story!”
Backstory: loss and renewal
I am an Indian-American writer, performer, Gandhian economist, yoga/meditation teacher for over thirty years.
After twenty-seven years of marriage I lost my beloved wife Krista to cancer but a year later I found my new soul mate.
When Krista died I moved to Bohol, a small and beautiful island in the Philippines that Krista and I had discovered together and fallen in love with. After a while I met Jane, a young woman from the island and a single mother. Together, we dreamed up a new dream which we call Pink House!
What is Pink House?
Last year Jane and I bought an old house together with a small community store located within the house. Our home, Pink House, is in our dreams also an international yoga & meditation center of which I am the Master.
Our plan was to buy the house, open a community store, and create a guest-house / yoga & meditation center with a koi pond as a community hub with the idea of visitors and locals mingling in this mix. We’ve already accomplished many of these goals!
Pink House has been our home for a year now. During this first year we’ve opened Pink Store, our community store serving over five-hundred neighbors. Our koi meditation pond is open and attracts both children and adults who love to contemplate the growing koi, silver, orange, pink, & black, in the pond.
We are amazed and grateful that we’ve come this far!
Who will benefit from this campaign?
Your donations will be paid directly to us (into my bank account in the US) and will help us realize the completion of our Pink House dreams (detailed below).
What will the funds be used for?
As we look forward to our second year in Pink House we need your help! Our next project is making the house more livable and getting the old house ready to become a guest-house / yoga & meditation center by fixing the roof, repairing the community kitchen and refurbishing five bedrooms badly in need of repair.
How soon are the funds needed and when will they be spent?
The funds are needed by the end of this year (to make plans and hire workers) and will be used in the first and second quarters of 2021 in the following order:
Store roof (leaking badly)
House roof (also leaking badly)
Yoga & Meditation roof deck (wooden floor is rotten)
Bedroom 1-2 (flooring, walls, windows)
Bedroom 3-4 (flooring, walls, windows)
Bedroom 5 (flooring, walls, windows)
Repair the community kitchen (wood-burning stove, chimney, ceiling)
A small diesel truck for store and guest-house use
With the money raised by this campaign we will work our way down the list as far as the funds raised will allow us. We never ‘contract out’ work. All work is performed by family members who are paid living wages and live with us, eat with us, and relax & laugh with us at the end of each long working day.
What this support means to us
Your donation will help us continue our dream of Pink House into its second year of existence as we realize key elements (both new and old) of our shared dream:
New elements:
An East-West community yoga & meditation center with me serving as its first Master
Guesthouse for visitors (local and international) to the yoga & meditation center
Old elements renewed:
A roof for our home and store that no longer leaks
Pleasant rooms equipped with simple comforts
A yoga & meditation roof deck strong enough to sustain use by visitors and locals
A working community kitchen
Our gratitude for your support
We are so very excited for you to participate in our Pink House dream in absolutely any way you can. We would truly be very grateful for your support!
There is no dollar minimum and we have absolutely no dollar goal in mind!
Instead, this campaign is conducted in the spirit of creating a Pink House ‘intentional community’ inclusive of everyone near and far, of everyone regardless of race, gender, or national origin.
In this spirit all donations, however small or large, are gratefully accepted as blessings!
The Pandemic
The Pandemic has caused hardship and massive unemployment in our community and so it is even more important for us to keep Pink Store open and our prices low so that neighbors can afford essentials. For example, one of our regulars is a young mother who told us that she needed diapers for her baby on a day when we were closed (we had a funeral to attend) and went to all the other stores in the neighborhood. They all charge as much for a single diaper as we charge for an entire packet of twelve (a 12-pack)! She was so relieved to see us open the next day. We also have a steady stream of visitors to the koi meditation pond who find great enjoyment and renewal of spirit from being in a peaceful, healing space that is free and open to the public.
As the community emerges from the Pandemic we are eager to repair or replace the leaking roof and open our yoga & meditation center / attached guest-house as further ways of healing the mind, body & spirit of locals and international visitors alike.
Pink House is an experiment in integration; an experiment in creating interrelationships between the dense and the subtle.
Commerce, the most material and hence the densest of human activities, relates in the ancient Indian yogic tradition of my ancestors with red, the first chakra or energy point. Red is energy, pure and undiluted. It is the material building block of a society.
We see Pink Store as the spiritual incarnation of commerce—truly a community convenience store, with everything from rice to milk, pencils to razor blades, and of course, our bestseller—ice cream! Being the only vendor of ice cream in the neighborhood means that we are visited at all hours of the day by happy families with laughing children, and sell out as soon as we replenish our stock.
While Pink Store relates to the lowest, densest chakras, or energy points, in the ancient yogic traditions, the public koi meditation pond and our future yoga & meditation center (as well as guest-house) at Pink House relates to the highest, most subtle chakras: silver, purple, pink, and violet, that in the yogic tradition correspond to the highest states of consciousness. Yoga & meditation, in my background and tradition, are the oldest forms of relationship-builders in the realm of the subtle. They are my offering of love to the world.
By combining an affordable community convenience store and a yoga & meditation center under one roof, Pink House is an experiment in integration; an experiment in creating interrelationships between the dense and the subtle leading to shanti, or peace, one loving-healing relationship at a time.
We invite all ice cream and koi fish pond lovers—the entire community of neighbors and all of you into our Pink House fold!
November 18 2020 is the first anniversary of Pink House. We invite you all to become part of the Pink House First Anniversary story!
THANK YOU FOR HELPING US CONTINUE OUR PINK HOUSE DREAM INTO YEAR TWO!
