October 17-26 meditation retreat in the Forest of Dean

This was our second retreat at the Oxford Buddha Vihara near the picturesque village of Saint Briavels in Gloucestershire. The autumn colours made the countryside even more beautiful than last year. We had a diverse group of westerners and Asians with people travelling from Ireland, Czech Republic, Germany, Wales and England. The Vihara is home to three monks from Myanmar who kindly gave us Dhamma talks and made us feel very welcome.

Very tasty meals were cooked by Li, who was assisted by Lin and Fabio and others who chipped in:

The retreat provided a safe environment for participants to explore deep jhana states and many had transformative insights as a result.

We are lucky to have such an experienced and engaging a teacher as venerable Obhasa, who helped guide the retreatants with her evening dharma talks and daily one to one interviews. The assistant teacher Conal Clynch also gave a dharma talk and we were pleased to have Antonin Brtnik give his very first dharma talk. These were very well received too:

Antonin also entertained us with his magic tricks at the end of the retreat and Li provided a thrilling exhibition of her Traditional Chinese Sword skills with a form called “eclipse”.

We also paid a visit to our new retreat centre in Newport, which is now almost finished: