Template for a research group inside a monastic container

During the day, a group of people work together on some research task. They wear regular clothes and work in a regular work environment, with computers and conference rooms and so on. I imagine that the research problem is AI safety, but for the sake of this template it could be anything.

In the mornings, this group meditates and eats together. There is an hour of chanting, followed by two hours of meditation, followed by an hour of breakfast. The chanting begins at 5:30am, and breakfast is done by 9:30am, after which the group gets to work.

There are some full-time monastics within the community. The monastics provide grounding and spiritual guidance to the research staff.

There are one or more spiritual teachers in the community. These teachers provide guidance to the community by offering interviews during morning meditation, Dharma talks in the evenings, and guidance whenever the opportunity or need arises.

There are periodic meditation retreats, in which participants meditate 8–12 hours a day for periods of one week. These may be offered approximately once per month. They are not compulsory, although members of the community are strongly encouraged to participate in at least two retreats per year.

There are various roles within the research team, just as there would be in a research group at a university or tech company. Research staff may report to one another. There may be operations staff, managers, and so on. All these individuals participate in morning meditation and accept guidance from a spiritual teacher.

The community does not necessarily live together, although some of them might choose to.

Since participation in this community requires a higher level of time commitment than a regular job, and is also quite unusual, some programs are offered to allow outsiders to try it out. Non-members may join morning meditation on an ad-hoc basis. Non-members may participate in a 6-week trial period.

The community may need to hire part-time or contract workers, who are not full members of the community. This could include retaining the help of book-keepers, lawyers, copy-writers, and so on. It is not realistic that all such individuals would participate fully in morning meditation. But the separation between members and non-members should be clear, and care should be taken to keep decision-making within the community.

The community may wish to allow outside researchers to visit the group for periods of a few days to a few weeks. This should be possible, but again care should be taken.

The community is a single community, and decisions that affect the whole community are made jointly by the senior representatives from both the research and spiritual roles.

The community has a set of shared ethical precepts. The members actively hold each other accountable for upholding these precepts, and expect to be held accountable by others. The precepts need not be ideal or perfect, and can be modified. The most important thing is for the precepts to be clear and explicit.