Avi and DhO,

Avi, in this thread you are advertising by your hyperlink to your site your own paid service ($40) on this DhO site that the founder and sustainer has made both a) monetarily free as well as b) free of advertisements.

When people want to be paid for their own customer services, it is fitting that you as paid customer service providers also pay for your own service needs, e.g. advertising. So far this community ~ as far as I know to-date ~ does not accept monetary contributions nor accept ads and would not then be a fitting place for you to advertise your paid customer service business.

I'm speaking for myself here, have spoken to no one about this in advance. A thread could be opened to discuss this, if needed.

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edit: John, I can split off this comment from your thread and as a note to anyone who replies to my post about advertising on the DhO I would be inclined to split off the conversation away from John's work, but I would ask another moderator to do this on our behalf. Thanks all, Avi, too -- this is a general issue, not an attack on you, if this even needs to be clearly said.

Hi Katy,

I wasn't thinking of including my hyperlink in terms of advertising my course. I just like to include those links in case anybody is interested in what I do professionally. I did do a post here specifically about the course because I thought that it might be of interest to some members of the board. There are plenty of postings about retreats and so on so I thought that it would be okay to post about a meditation course. As for it being a paid service, the $40 fee for four classes ($10 per class) is a pretty minimal, and after I pay for the room rental doesn't net me much at all. The main reason I'm teaching this course is to work toward building a pragmatically oriented meditation community in Toronto. I assumed that this would be consistent with the mission of the DhO.

Avi

Speaking for myself again, it seems fitting for

a) a person seeking to get paid for service to use pay-for-service advertisers, and

b) the community to be shown openly in conjunction with the ad that a person is here in part to promote themselves and their a fee-based business on this, another person's free, ad-less site. This point I find is insightful and helpful to know openly.


Else, for anyone's consideration there are a Pali guidelines for teaching dharma AN 5.159:
1. to teach step-by-step
2. to teach cause and effect
3. to teach with a mind of compassion
4. to teach not for the purpose of material gain
5. to teach without hurting self or others