7. CONSTRUCTING A TEMPLE AND THE SECOND DHARMA CALL

           THE ABANDONED TOWN OF MARMELLAR

We returned to Ibiza, but things had changed for Ninette and for me. We decided to keep up our usual double life and try to find a place to start a sort of non-sectarian Dharma centre. We began serious meditation and all seemed well. So when the next season was completed we went once more to India with Dharma in our mind and when we passed through Barcelona in Spain we began looking for a place.

We finally found a beautiful site in a sparsely populated area with two undeveloped and apparently slow-moving urban development areas nearby. About three miles south was a magnificent abandoned village. The farmhouse was in an area called Pinedas Altas. It was actually within protected forest land and a Romanic castle was our nearest neighbor except for half a dozen pirate homes built in the area. All was quiet and calm. It was 1981, a landmark year and the date of the farmhouse construction was 1881. A hundred years. A good omen.

We finally bought the property with a two-storey old ruined farmhouse. There was no roof and the second level floor had fallen in. One wall was partially caved in and the windows were small and there was no protection. However the land was beautiful and the four-mile approach to it from the Barcelona side was just a cart track with tall pines bordering both sides.

                 THE FARMHOUSE IN THE FOREST

We had to catch a bus to the nearest town, Torrelles de Foix, and then walk the four miles.

We found out later that we had paid too much, for the realtor had taken advantage of our innocence. However I saw the potential and Ninette appeared satisfied. Still, after paying the price Ninette began to have doubts. Her intuition was correct, as you will see, for we found on the following year that we had entered into a tangle from which it was difficult to extract ourselves.

Nevertheless, with an unpredictable future ahead we continued to Ibiza and made plans. We started by advertising for those interested in joining us in a Dharma Commune for study and development. The result was good and we had fifteen promising but variable replies. So we began correspondence and set up the conditions.

Then disaster hit. We had walked through the pine forest with great spirits. But when we reached our farmhouse after paying cash and securing the legal deeds we were met by a note which declared that it was not our farmhouse and that the person writing the note was the real owner. We were not too concerned, for we believed that a deed was a deed and irrevocable, but when we went to the property registration office we found that someone else had also made a deed claim for the place.

We found a lawyer and put it in his hands and then went again to study Dharma in Asia.

When we returned we heard bad news. Apparently there was an old un-repealed law in Catalunya that declared that if in the distant past a large landowner told a tenant that when he died the place would be his, it was so.

The other fellow had no proof except the word of his father and earlier relatives. One proof presented was a single note from the Town Council which simply at one point used the term "your farmhouse". It went to court and we could do nothing but wait, so we continued with our study plans and waited.

We visited the farmhouse with hopes still intact. 

Finally we had the results. We had lost the farmhouse. It was no longer ours, and to make matters worse the negligent woman judge had "forgotten" to declare that the money we paid should be returned. We had lost farmhouse, all our money and our plan for the future. The correctly registered deeds meant nothing.

Our lawyer referred the case to the Supreme Court and we had to wait. But the result seemed like a foregone conclusion.

What Ninette learned here was a stoicism in the face of disaster and we both simply wrote off the incident as a part of stained Samsara without tears.

                                         The Waiting Game

It took ten years for the Supreme Court decision and during this time we could make no plans, so we continued our Ibiza ways and made further trips to India and Nepal to buy and study there and also trips to other parts of Spain as well as to France, England and America, where we visited Ninette's mother in California and her youngest sister Linda, who was busy with her own spiritual journey.

NINETTE IN THE UNITED STATES

We had given up hope on the farmhouse and Ninette began to settle in Ibiza, at least the part that tourism had not flawed sufficiently to cure her romantic attachment. I to the contrary loathed the tourist influx and the cultural change taking place, urging a rapid path away from the island as soon as the Supreme Court findings were in.

Thn we faced another blow, for the large area for more than thirty kilometers was set on fire. The flames destroyed most of the marvelous forest in the north, but with at least partial fortune the fire was extinguished just before it reached our land. We relaxed but still were in limbo.

Then suddenly, when the court case was out of our minds almost completely, the Supreme Court decided that the farmhouse was, after all, ours. Were the ten years wasted? Not really, for although by that time I was finding the island tourists and new residents impossible to take any longer, we had advanced with the Dharma. I was firmly entrenched with Theravada after frequent visits to Bodhgaya, becoming a wandering Bhikkhu (monk). The Visuddhi Magga was my inspiration and research into the ancient alternative Buddhist systems provided the answer to all my questions. Ninette, on the other hand, while accepting the Buddhist ideals found meditation very difficult. At that moment we did not understand why, but she had persisted in pursuit of that ideal for all those years.

Furthermore, we now had sufficient money to reconstruct the farmhouse. It was a matter now of deciding when to leave. Ninette, in our first departure of ideas, wanted to stay in Ibiza and I to go immediately. Mara had moved and Ninette felt comfortable on the island and protected. Her mother's conditioning had its early effect and the security and comfort conflicted with the idea of settling in a wild mountain area, far from the Ibiza warmth. Finally, with great resistance to the idea, she agreed to leave.

The construction

We had abandoned the commune idea, so reconstruction was our main objective. Indian and Nepalese trips were off and we began the hard work of rebuilding knowing nothing at all about the task.

Renovating Janus had been mentally difficult, as far as change for Ninette was concerned. The transformation to "hippie" had been socially more difficult. But now, without transport or knowledge, the task became physical and once again without complaint she rose to the task.

Materials could not be delivered directly to the Farmhouse so we had to transport all by wheelbarrow for about two hundred yards down a steep hill. One day when there was heavy load, the mayor of Juncosa passed by to see what was going on and transported that day's supplies down the hill with his car.

We slept on the floor in sleeping bags and when it rained it poured through the roof structures that remained and the wind when it rose from the South sent constant blasts through our open wall. But still Ninette struggled on without the slightest complaint. We rose every day at seven and worked until nightfall.

We constructed walls and the second-storey floor with the help of a constructor (one day was enough to decide that we could do as well alone). We converted the pig pens into a temple and the walls of the chicken pens became our kitchen and bathroom. Water and electricity we tackled by ourselves and finally the town allowed us to connect water, but we had to do the work of laying tubes from more that a hundred yards up the hill to the farmyard. We had the electricity installed after having to build the meter container block and erect the pole.

But we were on our way, despite the rain and storms, the idea being to respect the ancient way of building. This entailed finding old handmade gutters and bricks, using only modern bricks where they could not be seen.

All work and no play they say makes Jack a dull boy, so we visited on many nights a neighbor close by and played cards and further away another house and played dominoes. A far cry from Chess and Scrabble, but it was harmless and pleasant. 

We went perhaps a little wild with the animals, for we bought a dozen chicken for eggs, two gray geese and two white, six guinea hens, four wild ducks, three domestic ducks and two goats.

We constructed ample cages for them, and began a vegetable garden. This added to the work, but the joy at the presence of a host of animals was immense. In those days the hunters had not destroyed the wildlife, so foxes and wild boar visited and birds of multiple varieties were abundant.

We explored our land, cutting down excess vegetation and threatening thorns which made passage difficult. It was during this clearing that we discovered a cave, about fifty yards down the mountain slope, that became a special meditation cave.

     THE MEDITATION CAVE

The ruined castle was always there, projecting the inspiration of other times with its legends, and we found that our cave had been a witch's cave which local people went to for cures and advice on their way to the then- functioning village of Marmellar.

The castle was always there below. But Ninette was exhausted and broken by the hardness of the task, for there was just the two of us without help or any knowledge of construction, plumbing or electricity. But she strove on until we were finished.

THE CASTLE OF MARMELLAR BELOW

SEPARATED FROM US BY A SMALL, OFTEN DRY RIVULET

Ninette then decided on impulse to spare herself the Spartan life by teaching in a nearby town. She enjoyed the experience, for she could use all her training and her great skill of teaching. Yet she continued also with the Dharma. Ninette was content but still not happy, for she felt the constant pressure of her mother's influence.

Students came to study. But she had great problems sharing, particularly with any female of confusion that aroused the early problems of sharing with her sister Marylyn. It was a difficult time for her.

Ninette was advancing in Dharma understanding but her meditations were not bearing fruit. At one point we considered that she should try Tibetan meditation, which uses great symbolism and representative Identity figures. So she started taking ten-day retreats with the Tibetan Kagyu at Panillo, some distance away. I continued with Theravada and started extensive teaching at our farmhouse, which we called the Mahabodhi Sunyata Seminary, and then added teachings by e-mail to groups.

Ninette took charge of all administration and translation of the group correspondence. To give you an idea of the work entailed for her, at one point I had 250 correspondence students, each given individual attention.

The groups were successful, but since they were free they did not help our diminishing funds and the cost of Panillo led to the idea that she should still work in a nearby town as an English teacher. The farmhouse was well on its way, so that was no problem, so off she went to work each day with a white Suzuki Samurai which we bought and named "No Folly".

Ninette was an excellent teacher and highly qualified, for she had an interest in every student and during those years took classes of Catalan language at a high level, in which she won distinction.

Fate then showed its hand, for her meditation teacher in Panillo was that same one-time hippie seller from the Es Cana market that was just across the way in Ibiza. Finally her meditations began to work for she attacked the task with vigor and her usual determination.

She had responded to the second Dharma call.