The Touching the Earth Sangha in Banchory are delighted to invite you to our special retreat at the Burn, near Edzell, during the 3rd weekend of September 2019. 

Led by Teri West, an experienced mindfulness practitioner and lay teacher in the tradition of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. (You can find Teri’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/inbedwiththebuddha/ ). We will be offered a range of opportunities to discover life in the present moment. For beginners as well as for those with experience, this is a rare chance to enjoy learning about mindfulness through practice in a most beautiful environment.

The retreat will run from 18.00 on Thursday 19 September (arrival from 16.00) until 15.00 on Sunday 22 September 2019.  Although, our facilitator is a lay teacher of the Zen Community of Interbeing, the weekend will be run in a largely secular manner. Everyone is welcome including those from all religious traditions as well as agnostics and atheists.

We are anticipating a high demand for this retreat so we recommend early booking using the form below.

Teri has pursued various occupations since leaving home as a teenager. By her mid 40s she began working as a professional storyteller, singer, part-time poet and as a member of an improvising clown group in the Nose to Nose school of clowning. She currently takes to the stage at every opportunity, using song to take a dharma message into the unlikely environment of the world of cabaret and has co-led the weekend course, ‘Clown and the Art of Mindfulness’, on three occasions at the European Institute for Applied Buddhism in Germany. Further such courses are scheduled for June and September this year.

Teri was fortunate to be invited to Plum Village in 1988 as a guest with friends of Thay who had worked with him in the ‘70s on founding a charity for Vietnamese refugees. This was a powerful experience. Teri bought ‘Breathe, you are alive!’ which, together with ‘The Miracle of Mindfulness’, brought Buddhism into a grounded, practical form that Teri could relate to, having previously read somewhat intellectual, complicated theories.

She’s been a student of Thay’s since that time, working on various retreats, particularly those that welcome families and founding the Westcountry Sangha (which brings together practitioners from the South-west and provides a base where members of all the local sanghas in the region can come together to share practice). She’s a member of the North Devon Sangha.

Teri was ordained into the Order of Interbeing in 2000, receiving the dharma name ‘True Door of Virtue’ (chan duc mon) and the Lamp Transmission as a dharma teacher in 2016.

Listen to Teri explain why she writes Haiku poetry.