Details:

Date: Tuesday 11th May – Sunday 16th May

Retreat Leader: Ven Mary Reavey

Requirements: Everyone is welcome

Cost: Generosity Model – Donation only (by clicking the ‘Donate Here’ button below). Land of Joy provides: All meals, accommodation, workshops, materials and good firewood for soulful nights.

Format: Onsite only / Retreat begins: 7pm on the 11th May / Retreat ends: with lunch on 16th May

Recommended arrival: 3pm – 5pm on the 11th May to join for supper and get settled into the space

Accommodation: Land of Joy wishes for everyone who visits the centre to feel welcome, accepted, safe and secure. Our accommodation options are very limited, with mostly single-sex shared accommodation and a very limited number of single rooms. Single accommodation can therefore only be offered on a priority basis. Please read the relevant sections of the booking form carefully.

About the Retreat

Vipassana, often translated as insight or seeing clearly, invites us to look more deeply into the nature of our experience. Rather than simply following our usual assumptions about ourselves and the world around us, we learn to observe with greater clarity, curiosity and awareness.

This retreat offers an opportunity to explore Vipassana through meditation, mindfulness and enquiry. Building on the stability of attention developed through Shamatha practice, we will turn towards our experience itself — noticing the changing nature of thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, and beginning to explore what they can reveal about the nature of reality.

There will be space both to learn and to practise, allowing insight to develop through direct experience rather than remaining simply an intellectual understanding.

What Will be Offered?

The retreat will combine teachings, guided meditation and periods of personal practice, with time to explore questions arising from your own experience.

The retreat will include:

  • An introduction to Vipassana and the relationship between calm abiding and insight
  • Guided practices for developing mindfulness and clear awareness
  • Exploring the four applications of mindfulness, targeted at body, feelings, mind and phenomena.
  • Emphasis on the flow of experience in line with dependent arising.
  • Course emphasis is teaching, meditation, discussion and question and answer to support individuals.
  • Periods of silence and personal meditation, allowing space for the teachings to settle

The emphasis will be on exploring Vipassana experientially, gradually learning how to look more closely at what is happening within our own minds and lives.

Who is This For?

This retreat may be particularly suitable for those who:

  • Are interested in exploring Vipassana or insight meditation
  • Would like to deepen an existing meditation practice
  • Are curious about looking more closely at thoughts, feelings and moment-to-moment experience
  • Want to develop greater awareness of habitual patterns and ways of responding
  • Are interested in how insight developed through meditation can support everyday life
  • Would value time and space to explore their experience with greater clarity and curiosity

Some previous meditation experience may be helpful, but you do not need an established Vipassana practice.

Why Attend?

This retreat offers time away from the distractions of everyday life to slow down, pay attention and explore your experience more deeply.

It is an opportunity to:

  • Deepen your understanding and practice of Vipassana
  • Develop greater awareness of thoughts, emotions and habitual patterns
  • Explore the difference between how things appear and how they actually exist
  • Discover how insight practice can change the way we relate to our experiences
  • Develop greater clarity and awareness both in meditation and everyday life
  • Spend sustained time practising in the supportive environment of retreat

Retreat Boundaries

To help create the best conditions for meditation practice, this retreat will be held within a supportive framework:

  • Silence – Silence will be observed outside of group sessions during some periods of the day to encourage calm and inward focus.
  • Technology-free space – You will be encouraged to switch off phones, laptops and other devices for the duration of the retreat, except for reading texts and other dharma related material.
  • Respecting the schedule – Participants are asked to attend all sessions on time, as consistency supports both personal practice and the group environment.
  • Mindful living – Meals and daily activities will be approached with awareness, becoming part of the retreat practice itself.

These boundaries are not restrictions but supports — creating a safe, focused space in which the mind can settle and deepen.

About Ven Mary Reavey

Born in Dundee, Scotland, Ven Mary was a staff nurse when she first encountered Buddhism at the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition’s mother monastery – Kopan – in Nepal in 1978. It was her love of adventure and trekking that led her to Kopan. Ven Mary attended a month-long course taught by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa who emphasised the importance of meditation and taking complete responsibility for your own actions and their effects.

In 2001 Ven Mary took ordination as a nun with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, then until 2012 taught meditation and Buddhist philosophy at Jamyang Buddhist Centre Leeds, Buddhist centres in Preston, Liverpool and at Armley Prison, Dumfries Prison, Leeds General Infirmary, St James’ Hospital and Wheatfields Hospice where she held regular meditation sessions. Ven Mary went on to take full Bikshuni ordination in 2015.

Over years Ven Mary has undertaken and led many meditation retreats. She completed a one year solitary retreat in 2014 and completes a three month personal retreat each year. She continues to regularly teach at Land of Joy, Jamyang Buddhist Centre Leeds, Jamyang Liverpool and in York.