Vidyamani

When I first met the Dharma it felt like coming home, like something I had always known but not been able to articulate.Throughout my twenties I had been involved with the peace movement, women’s groups, and community action. It seemed that the Dharma offered a spiritual foundation for those ideals, a place for my ‘soul’. I had just moved out of a small holding in the hills of mid-Wales, where I had lived for 15 years and brought up my two children, when I began to attend the Triratna group in Llangollen.My first retreat at Taraloka was life-changing, and I still feel a special connection with that place and community. I volunteer there often, and I was able to live there as a volunteer for 6 months in 2014, a wonderful experience of living in a flow of generosity. I was ordained in 2017 at Akasavana.

I have lived for many years with serious mental illness in a close family member, and it’s the Dharma that has enabled me to keep my heart open and live with joy. I love meditation, and sharing the Dharma through teaching. I feel particularly inspired by Bhante’s teaching of the Greater Mandala, about living with appreciation, or just ‘enjoying the universe’. It’s where the ‘vidya’ part of my name comes from, wisdom in the sense of aesthetic appreciation or ‘relishing’.