Visiting Nasalam

Nasalam has always enjoyed having visitors. Some have been travelers needing a place to sleep for a night or two, others have been men who became part of the community. At present, because of the status of our housing, we have limited ability to host guests but we'll do our best to accommodate those who wish to visit.

Here are a few things to prepare you for a visit:

As noted elsewhere, Nasalam is a vegetarian community. Please do not expect us to violate this standard for a guest. Please do not bring meat products to the community.

We realize that most visitors are probably on vacation. Unfortunately, we are not and have work to do to maintain the community. We love to visit with our guests and it is tempting to just play host all day and ignore what really needs to be done. Please don't be offended if we have to go do work. If you really want to be with us, we invite you to join in the work so that we have more time to spend with you!

There are a few ritual activities that take place at Nasalam, particularly the blessing of our food at noon and evening meditation. You are welcome to participate as the Spirit guides you. If there are spiritual practices that you would like to share with community members we urge you to discuss them so that they might be introduced to the community. Who knows -- they may be incorporated into our practice.

If you choose not to participate in spiritual activities, we expect that you be silent and respectful for their duration.

While we don't require it in any rigid way, we do appreciate guests contributing what they can afford financially to offset the expenses of their stay. The normal donation is $10/day to cover food, utilities and other expenses. If this is not possible for you, let us know - no one has been turned away because they were low on finances.

Finally, we lead a simple rustic life and don't have all the amenities you might be used to (for example, our composting toilet). If you have questions, please discuss them with us. We suggest you treat your visit here as though you were traveling to a third world country and then you'll be pleasantly surprised at the modern conveniences we have :)

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We hope these guidelines will help you feel more comfortable in planning your visit to Nasalam by giving you a picture of how we expect visitors to act - exactly the way we act! Let us know when you would like to visit so we can schedule accordingly and send you instructions on getting to the community.

Namasté!