The great religions, with the exception of Islam and Judaism, have found their support and drawn their strength from monastic and conventual institutions. They should be placed in the quiet countryside not too far from a city, so that access to them for visits by those compelled to live in the cities should be possible. They should have pleasant walks in old-world gardens and stone-flagged paths with benches here and there. They should have libraries, meditation halls, and lecture rooms. They need not be bare and ugly, it is good if they are pleasantly ascetic. Instruction should be available there, not only for the few permanent residents, but for the many visitors who come there seeking repose and spiritual knowledge. For the sake of those who find it difficult or impossible to get away from city life, some should be built within a city, preferably on a side street, away from traffic with high thick walls around.
If the rooms are kept spotlessly clean, if the decorations are cheerful and not gloomy, if there is some simple comfort there, if the discipline is gentle and not like that of an army barrack's, if there is a measure of individual freedom, it will be possible to get away from the harshly ascetic, prisonlike atmosphere which has too often been associated in the past with such institutions. Much also depends on the management, whether it be tyrannical or humane, cultured or illiterate.
-- Notebooks Category 3: Relax and Retreat > Chapter 4 : Retreat Centres > # 22
