If DW is tax exempt, that means all this castle building is indirectly subsidized by tax payers.
Culling members is also ungrateful---imagine how one would feel having given ones enthusiasm to building up the DW/Ole fiefdom only to be 'culled' later one because one is not deemed sufficiently enthusiastic.
It can often happen that a person who is young and single, full of energy and idealism will work hard at supporting DW and its projects (including improving the teachers property).
Later, that same young person may marry or find a partner, want to divert his or her energy to making a homelife and not have as much money or time to beaver away at the local DW center.
That person, once enthusiastic while young and single, may also have become more alert and wary after seeing people treated badly, hearing adverse talk against others.
A person like this, once young, single and energetic, now older, with different and legitimate priorities, wanting to divert some personal time, energy and funds to make a home onself and a family,not just add to the property portfolio of DW and Ole N, that person, older and with a legitimate change in priorities, may suddenly find themselves included in the cull and feel betrayed.
And recognize, belatedly, that this is what he or she saw done to others, and ignored the pattern, being young and idealistic at the time.
And not told this by senior member/workleaders who have to keep the numbers up and who rationalize by not wanting to disrupt the practice of younger members by 'making the Dharma look bad'.
Buddha was radicalized by witnessing older persons, sick persons and dead persons.
The measure of a Dharma center or teacher is whether those who are older, ill, who are poor, not rich, who are NOT young, beautiful and wealthy, are supported in their practice.
A true Buddhist does
not favor the energetic and young and beautiful while devaluing those older, ailing, poorer and who have to budget their vitality so as to support their families and homes.
Differences in rank and hierarchy are legitimate in sofar as it produces a nonheirarchical outcome--
That outcome being an atmosphere of steadiness, calm and clarity, to support the practice of all, regardless of youth, wealth, attractiveness or social rank.
British readers may recall this:
Quote
A Jacobite's Epitaph
To my true king I offer'd free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.
For him I languish'd in a foreign clime,
Gray-hair'd with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fever'd sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I ask'd, an early grave.
O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay
[
www.englishverse.com]