Vajradevi has been meditating since 1985, and leading retreats since 2002. She has a long standing passion for mindfulness teachings as a path to insight and to this end has explored the teaching of early Buddhism, participating on retreats in the US and Burma, studying with Joseph Goldstein and Sayadaw U Tejaniya. She is currently writing a book based on her own practice of Satipatthana

Amoghavira first encountered Buddhism in 1979 while struggling through a mathematics degree at Glasgow University. Ordained into the Western Buddhist Order in 1982 he then started working at the Glasgow Buddhist Centre. 

He worked for 2 years at the Sydney Buddhist Centre in Australia from 1988, and on his way back to Britain in 1990, spent 3 months in Kathmandu helping run meditation and Buddhism course there. Falling in love with Nepal, he’s been a regular visitor there ever since.

In 1996, he moved to Dhanakosa to help with retreat leading here, which he’s been doing ever since. He loves being in the mountains and this has led to a passion for landscape photography and he now lives in the village of Callander, about 15 miles from Dhanakosa.

These retreats are for people who are already practising within the context of the Triratna Buddhist Community. Previous experience of the Mindfulness of Breathing and Metta Bhavana meditations and of the Sevenfold Puja will be assumed.

These retreats will also be conducted mostly in silence, and will normally have between 5 and 7 hours a day of sitting meditation.