Extracts From Silent Illumination Retreat Report, Jan 2018

…My job in the work period was to clean and maintain the composting toilets! Not one of a squeamish nature, I accepted my lot and as the days went on, watching my aversions, I started to appreciate the challenges that the retreat offers.

Watching my mind, both on and off the cushion, was at times quite shocking, to see the relentlessness of my narcissism; everything revolving around me; and the desperate need, it seemed, to want to alter reality to my own ends, so that I would look/feel ‘better’ in my own and others' eyes. And when that appeared I tried to find some tenderness for myself, rather than a punitive, controlling reaction, which was what seemed to come automatically.

What emerged for me over the days was that I was increasingly making allowances for all this ’nonsense’, and experiencing in that softening towards myself a sense of peace, and stilling of my mind. Helped too by a strong sense of common purpose in the meditation hall. To sit with 20 others and experience the stillness of the group was powerful and inspiring.

Whilst I don’t consider myself a Buddhist, whatever that is, I left with a deep sense of gratitude that the place exists and it exists through the practice of others who have maintained a link back through time to the ‘ancestors’, the great teachers of the past.