Teachers
Nick Scott has been teaching short and long retreats for 20 years with the endorsement of senior monks in the Thai Forest tradition. His teaching is wise and humorous, and illustrated with personal stories and insights from 45 years of meditation, including long solitary retreats and residing for 10 years at Chithurst Buddhist Monastery in England. He is the author of several Buddhist travel books recounting adventures with Buddhist monks. These can be downloaded for free at: www.nickscottbooks.com
Nick is by profession an Ecologist working for environmental charities. He now lives with his partner, Micheline, in Co Galway.
Jackie Carroll has over 25 years' experience of working in frontline crisis services for victims of domestic abuse and the homeless and first took up mindfulness to help reduce the stress of working in a crisis environment. She went on to explore other aspects of Buddhist meditation. She has attended 10 day intensive retreats with various teachers and has now completed an MA in Mindfulness-based interventions at Bangor University in Wales. She has a well-developed personal meditation practice and adheres to the UK and Irish Mindfulness Teachers Network Good Practice Guidelines.
Pádraig Cotter has been practicing meditation for over 20 years in various traditions, mostly in the Insight Meditation tradition and in particular the Thai Forest tradition. It was after coming into contact with the teachings of the Forest tradition while travelling in India in 2009 that he was drawn to Sunyata Buddhist Centre and Teach na Tuisceana where he attended retreats regularly. He has also spent periods of practice in monasteries and retreat centres in the UK, Thailand, and Myanmar. From 2011 to 2014 he was part of the day-to-day management team of Sunyata Buddhist Centre where in 2016 he was asked to begin leading meditation retreats.
Brian Hickey
Brian is a physical therapist and Foundation Training instructor who has a love of the human body. He has been practicing meditation for over 15 years, attended numerous retreats and stayed in Chithurst Buddhist Monastery for the three month winter retreat. He is teaching introduction to Buddhist meditation for us and the use of breath work and foundation training to improve posture. He took this up to cure his own bad back and poor posture.
VISITING TEACHERS
Sister Jinho
Venerable Sister is a Chinese Chan Buddhist nun from Taiwan who has spent several years in the UK and speaks excellent English. She has been a nun for fifteen years, training at Dharma Drum Mountain monastery under the late Chan Master Sheng-yen. She returns there regularly to renew her practise. Her teaching is simple and direct in the Chan (Chinese Zen) style. Unlike in Zen, all Chan monastics are totally celibate and follow the full Buddhist Vinaya (monastic rules) as laid down by the Buddha.
Ajahn Sucitto
Previously the abbot of Chithurst Buddhist Monastery in England and now retired, Ajahn Sucitto is a well known and very well respected meditation master who has written numerous books. His teaching can be very humorous as well as deeply profound. He is English and became a monk in Thailand more than 45 years ago, returning to England to help his teacher, Ajahn Sumedho set up the first Buddhist forest monasteries in the West. He now teaches world wide.
Virginia Kennedy
is originally from Belfast but lives in Northumberland. She has practiced meditation since the early 1970s when she was one of the first students of SN Goenka in India. She was also one of the founders of Harnham Buddhist Monastery in 1981 and has supported it ever since. She has taught yoga for over 40 years, and more recently dance and other movement, and runs meditation workshops and retreats with the endorsement of senior monastic sangha in the Forest Tradition. She has a lifelong love of the arts and her teaching reflects this.