The prior will be taking a break from holding meetings either online or in person from July 31st to August 9th inclusive.

From the 20th July the priory will be fully open again to visitors. You will not need to book ahead, but can do if you wish. I fully appreciate that some of you may wish to get a lie of the land before coming. Please feel free to wear a mask if you wish and I ask that the usual handwashing and other hygiene measures are observed to best of your ability.

I have to be honest and say that I don’t know where this is going. Following government advice we will proceed with some caution and I will adjust as we go if needed. I don’t expect everybody to start flooding back and that many of you will stay online. If you do wish to attend in person again then please do and you will be warmly welcomed.

I suppose a hybrid version of old and new will become standard with online and in person attendance running side by side. With this in mind the calendar of events will be for both formats at one and the same time, rather than some just online  or vice versa. This will hopefully prevent much confusion.

I am hopeful this will work out, but there will be some adjusting to do as we go, so I apologise in advance and beg your patience

To have had the ability to meet online over the last or so has been a joy and given a dimension to priory life that would have been missing otherwise. Rather than to see that time as a disruption or dislocation it has proved .to be an expansive wing that has helped carry the Sangha during this time. I thank each and every one of you for that offering to all of us.

There will be an in person Introductory on Saturday June 5th at 9.30. If you would like to attend please let me know. It will be restricted to three  unless you are coming as a household i.e. husband and wife or partners etc. Please contact me for further details.

It is with much pleasure that I can announce that the Priory can re-open, with some restrictions, from Tuesday May 18th. Due to the size and nature of the Priory I will be restricting visitors to three at the beginning and see how it goes. If it goes well I will increase this number to five + myself.  Please book in advance so that I don’t have to turn anyone away. Those of you who wish to come and are part of a household you will make up one visitor. i.e. husband and wife + two + me. The Zoom sessions will run as usual at the same time. Hopefully this is a good way of getting back to full opening in late June. If you would like to attend just let me know and I can answer any questions you may have.

In Food for the Heart I have included two articles by lay members in response to my request for dharma surrounding their experiences of lockdown and the virus. Hopefully there may be more to come. Please feel free to pen something yourself for consideration.

I have been giving individual Introductory sessions up to now which I will continue with, but now I would like to offer group meetings for those of you who are interested. These will start on Saturday September 12th. They will be start at 9.30am and finish no later than 11.00am. If you are looking for an Introduction to meditation and Buddhism,(especially during these times), then please contact me on [email protected] and I will send you the contact codes for Zoom. These will run once a month until I can safely open the Priory to guests.

Hello everyone. I have been giving out information etc. about my response to Covid-19 in the newsletter so the website has been a bit quiet of late.

There are a couple things I would like to let you know of on tyhough. Firstly I am not receiving emails through info@readingbuddhistpriory at the moment due to unknown technical reasons. I am trying to get it sorted. So if you have been trying to reach me in the last week I apologise but please email me on [email protected]

I am looking into running Introductory sessions via Zoom and how best to do that. I will try to get this up and running soon. There are areas which maybe problematical but I will see what I can do. At least I can get you started even if it is not quite what I would do in person. In the meantime I would recommend going onto the Throssel Buddhist Abbey website and watcching their DVD download on meditation and how to utilise it in your life called ‘Zen Meditation’ and also the book ‘Sitting Buddha’ which is an excellent primer on the practise of Soto Zen.

The use of Zoom I feel has been a great success in helping people feel connected and for me to carry on teaching and providing the usual meditation and services. If you would like to join in and are already used to the practice please contact me and I will give you the neccessary paswords and ID.

With the Priory closed thoughts have gone toward how we can sit together. Below is a list of times when I will be sitting and you can, if you wish, join me. I hope this is of help.

6.30am – 7.00am Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri

7.30pm – 8.00pm Tues, Thurs, Saturday

Wednesday evening 7.30pm – 8.00pm / 10 mins walking / 8.10pm – 8.40pm

Friday afternoon 2.00pm – 2.30pm / 10 mins walk / 2.40pm – 3.10pm

As the Priory is closed this also means no Introductory meetings for the forseeable future. Please keep an eye on the website for when they start up again.

I, along with Rev. Saido, have decided to cancel the retreat at Brownshill monastery in April. There is no immediate plan to set another date, certainly for this year.