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
