Growth as a Patron

Dennis Duff

(an interview with Zoe Sander)

Dennis Duff was one of Avatar Adi Da's earliest devotees. It was Dennis who provided the funds for the purchase of The Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary. In the early years, Dennis was one of the principal missionaries. More recently, Dennis has become one of Adi Da's patrons and a supporter of His Image Art. He is the former CEO and owner of a nationwide US internet marketing company.

Dennis: I thought I’d start by talking about money and the benefits that I’ve received from my association with Avatar Adi Da. Shortly before becoming a devotee of Adi Da Samraj, I received an inheritance. And when I received the inheritance, I had a very unusual feeling that I hadn’t received money that was my own. I wasn’t elated by suddenly having a lot of money. Rather, I had a sense that it wasn’t really mine, and that it would have to be used for positive purposes. But it wasn’t something that was for my benefit. So it was an unusual feeling talking to other people about it, because they now perceived me personally as being a "rich person". I was fairly young. I was in my twenties. The expectation seemed to be that I’d go out and immediately spend a lot of it, which I didn’t do. I held on to it. It felt like it was given to me for some future purpose that I was as yet unaware of.

I became Beloved Adi Da's devotee in January of 1973 and shortly after that moved to Los Angeles, where the Ashram was, and lived there for a while. It was at the end of 1973, around December I think, that Avatar Adi Da decided that it was really time to leave Los Angeles. I think He started considering it in October or November of that year. He felt like for His Work to continue properly and appropriately it needed to be in a more rural setting. So we started looking at different property options and found the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary in northern California. I felt like purchasing this property was what my inheritance was actually for, and so I just offered it as a gift to Adi Da, and He gracefully accepted it.

After I gave the money for the purchase of the Sanctuary, I still had a little bit more. But I had donated the bulk of it. I remember at the time having some conversations with some other devotees about what it’s like to inherent money at a young age and what kind of impact that has on you. One of the things that I realized was that I was not going to be able to develop the kind of skills and strengths that I wanted to as a man as long as I was holding on to money and trying to live off just that and not really going out and developing some real-world skills. So at some point I just felt like I needed to give the rest of it away — that that was the appropriate thing to do. And I did. And it really changed me, because I was now forced to go out and make a living.

Zoe Sander: Who did you give your money to?

Dennis: I gave it to Adidam. It wasn’t just like one lump sum, but I started making more and more contributions and supporting the publication of Adi Da’s literature. I started sponsoring a lot of different projects. That was in ’74 or ’75, I believe, something like that.

Anyway, it was very interesting because it really freed me up from a whole kind of emotional and monetary dependency and childishness. At the same time it brought up a lot of fear in me, because now I was going to have to go out and make it on my own, so to speak. I wasn’t really dependent upon my father’s money. It was actually really good for me. And for the next few years, I lived at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary, or lived in one of the Adidam regions and supported myself through serving Adi Da's work in that region.

And then at one point I realized that I really needed to develop additional skills, particularly business skills. So I went out and started working as a salesman with a number of companies, including a devotee-owned internet marketing company. I worked there for about six years as sales manager and recruiter. Then the owner of the company decided that he wanted to sell, and he basically made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I really wasn’t interested in buying the company, but when I looked at it I thought, “This will be an excellent opportunity for growth.” I felt like I could take the company to a new level, and it could be more successful. And then I would hopefully turn around and sell it in five years at a much greater profit.

So that’s what I did. And this was also scary, because I was jumping into a new situation — I’d never run a company before. It was an internet company. It was a little daunting. But I felt that I knew everybody, I knew the business, I’d hired all the sales people, so I felt confident that I could do it. And I did it. I ran the business. I was the CEO and president and majority owner of the company for five years. And then I sold the company after five years, which was my goal. In fact, in the end, the growth of the company and its sale exceeded my original goals. It was extremely auspicious, because it allowed me to continue being very active as a patron, which I really enjoy doing.

Zoe: Can you say a little bit more about that, about being a patron and what it feels like?

Dennis: Well, being a patron is that you support Avatar Adi Da’s circumstance financially and with gifts. And it’s a real joy to do that. I have felt this from when I first inherited that money and felt like it was for another purpose, not my personal purposes. It was for a greater purpose. And once I became involved in Adidam, I recognized what that purpose was. And so I became a patron, probably the first major patron when I bought the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary as a gift for Adi Da. This was a level of sacrifice and service from which I felt like I received tremendous Blessings in my own life and my practice. It is something that I have never regretted.

There were a number of years when I couldn’t provide the patron service because I didn’t have any money and I was basically serving Adidam full time. But then I reached that point where I felt I needed to go out and take responsibility for generating money in the world and to really understand how the business world operates. I was given some great opportunities to do that. A lot of doors, opportunities, were opened to me. Buying the internet company and then selling it when we did was one of those. And I felt all that was part of the Grace. I was able to give very large bonuses to all the employees. Everything about the sale was very benign.

I think it says in the Bible that whatever you give is returned a hundred-fold, or something like that. I feel that in my service as a patron, that’s exactly what’s happened. Even when I didn’t have any money, I never felt I wasn’t taken care of, and I never felt like I had any worries financially, even without anything really in the bank. And so I felt that if I hadn’t gone through that process of actually giving it away, I would never have gotten into the situation where I learned all the skills and developed all the business skills I did, and ended up buying a company and growing it, and then selling it for such a sizable profit. So all that to me was just a sign of the grace of having been a patron.