Teacher training and certification for meditation instructors, so the standard is Sri Lankan rather than borrowed

A first step

Ask 5 meditation teachers abroad, found through yoga studios and retreat listings, whether a certificate examined by the teachers of a Sri Lankan monastery would be worth a fortnight's travel, and what they would pay. Take their answers to the chief incumbent of a monastery that teaches meditation and ask whether his teachers would set the standard, with you running applications and administration. The proof is one willing examiner and 3 applicants.

Who pays first

A working meditation or yoga teacher abroad who needs a credible credential for clients and wants it from the source rather than a weekend course.

What leaves today

The standard for teaching meditation is set and certified elsewhere, so the fees, the credential and the authority all sit outside the tradition that holds the practice.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

What the book adds

Two things first, because they matter more here than anywhere else in this list.

The aim is to share this with the world, not to sell it. It must be led by the temples, not sold to them. A monastery is not a venue and a monk is not a guide, and any programme that treats them as either will be refused, correctly. What the temples need is not investors but translation, timetables, a way to be found, and someone to handle the practical arrangements that monks should not be handling.

And the point is not to change the visitor's religion. It is to let a person who has travelled across the world to sit in a 2,000-year-old monastery actually do so, properly, with someone who can explain what is happening in a language they understand. Everything else follows from that, including the week they stay instead of the afternoon.

This is, in my view, the strongest idea in this appendix, and it needs almost no money to start.

Sri Lanka observes Poya, the full moon, as a public holiday every month, and on those days lay Buddhists across the island observe Sil, a day of precepts, meditation and teaching at the temple. It is already happening, on a published calendar, every month, across the island.

Nobody else on earth has this. It is the clearest example in the whole book of something the island already has and has not yet shared.

In the book

• Ch. FiveThe Most Photographed Rock in the World
  The visitor is already coming; the question is the second week
• Ch. SeventeenOne Building
  A 25-minute immersion for the airport run, which nobody else can offer

More from cluster 9

• 191Sil programmes for foreign visitors at temples with English-speaking monks, offered on Poya days, with the observance explained rather than performed for an audience
• 192Residential meditation retreats of a week or more, which is the single most direct answer to a country whose average stay keeps shortening
• 193Structured courses in Buddhist philosophy and Pali for serious students, the way people travel to Kyoto or Dharamshala
• 194Monastery stays under proper protocol, with the rules made clear in advance
• 196Pilgrimage routes properly interpreted: Anuradhapura, Mihintale, the Sri Maha Bodhi, Kandy, Dambulla, with guides who know the history and not only the route
• 197Ayurveda and meditation combined into a single wellness week, which is what many visitors from abroad are looking for

All 10 ideas in this cluster