We are now half way through this year of testing if Sunyata can be a Buddhist monastery. So far one aspect is going very well – are the monks happy there? But the other is poor - can we support monks? We need to correct this if we want to keep a Buddhist monastery in Ireland.  

In the early days of Harnham Monastery in Northumberland, just three of us rented a cottage for £10 a week and some monks moved in. The support slowly grew, the monastery expanded, so that eventually we could buy land, build a Dhamma Hall, have a manager, buy a car, build a small retreat centre and build meditation huts for the monks. Today Harnham is thriving. At Sunyata we already have the land, we have the Dhamma Hall, we have the manager, the car, we have separate buildings for visitors to stay and we have a forest with three meditation huts (which the monks love!). All of that takes a lot of maintenance and support. 

Another issue is that over the last few years, the buildings have not been maintained, and the forest stopped being managed. This happens to all organisations being run by volunteers - they run out of steam trying to keep everything going. It means there is a lot of repair and restoration work needed for the buildings and there is no firewood from the forest. 

We have two excellent monks who love the quiet of the place. They walk over an hour to Broadford on alms round several times a week where they are now a feature the locals seem to love. They are driven into Ennis and Limerick weekly, and Galway monthly, for an alms round where Thai people fill their bowls. They have more than enough food to feed anyone staying, including Matt who has offered to be the manager with no stipend. The community are being really frugal, with the heating turned off most of the time, and great efforts to keep costs down. Some money is coming in and people have come forward to volunteer – just not enough to run and maintain something as large as Sunyata. 

So we need to help Sunyata. 

Can you give them a donation? Or even better, a direct debit for a few years to get them on their feet? LINK 

Can you offer practical help?  Building maintenance, work in the forest, cutting the grass, decorating or cleaning?  If so, go see the monks (arrange to meet one of them by phone or through the manager), or Matt, or contact Sarah Jane, Chair of the Sunyata board. LINK 

Can you simply go there and make them feel more welcome and wanted?  A Buddhist monastery is an open space that you can use at any time. Unless you wish to stay, you don’t need to book. The meditation hall is always open, as is the kitchen for tea, but you’ll only find monks at particular times: for their meal which is offered at 10am (they stay on to meet anyone), morning puja and meditation, weekend afternoon guided meditations, and moon days. See the schedule.  

We are doing our bit at Teach na Tuisceana. We recently held dana for Sunyata monks, and we will be looking at doing this regularly in future. Teaching residential retreats in the same space as a monastery does not work so although Sunyata would like to do both, it’s not going to be possible to begin with. So we invited Ajahn Vajiro to teach a weekend next month at Kilcuan and we have plans for more monk-led retreats. We have given them all the money we could spare from the fund which runs our retreats, and Micheline and I will be setting up a direct debit to make a regular donation. 

Like a newly planted seedling we have to care for this little potential monastery so it can grow, become self-sufficient and eventually be a benefit for us and everyone else in the West of Ireland. 

Nick Scott