A Short Visit to Sunyata

Sunyata – a small forest thai wat in Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare, Ireland – by Cathal

I came to Sunyata for 5 days (1/12/2022-5/12/2022) and I was very impressed by how such a small
monastery can have such a big impact. The schedule ran like the other wats in this forest thai tradition
(with Ajahn Chah) such as Chithurst, Amavarati – there was about 3 hours work to be done the entire
day with everything being ran off of dāna, breakfast, lunch, tea and the two daily hour pujas I attended.
In the barren countryside of Ireland it’s very personal experience in polarity to the busyness of other
wats, there was 3 other guys in the entire place so I was left alone for most of the day to the chatters of
my mind, which proved to be a new experience and a very insightful to see my mind in such social
seclusion. There was no monastics about although recently Ajahn Succito resided a while for a self-
retreat, there are generally lay visitors coming and going and a couple dedicated long-term laypeople
who stick around who worked quite a bit to maintain the place and keep up the handling of retreats and
so on. It still somehow felt like a Sangha with those guys, we openly could talk and relate to each other
on many levels of personal experience in life and our experiences in meditation, it felt really nice to be
able to find a place in my home country who practiced, sharing connections and places to meet Sangha
is pretty solid.
The place itself is really very simple and after roaming around it is easy to tell they’ve spent a lot of time
cultivating a very aesthetically beautiful place with a bit of land for herbs and vegetables, you have your
room in a dormitory (although the entire dorm will likely be your room if you’re not in some
retreat/event) and do whatever you want. There are free books to read if you like and a comfortable hall
to sit in during the common showery cold Irish days and the only thing you’ll be disturbed by is a dog
and a few cats. There is literally nothing to do and nowhere to go. (welcome to anapanasati)
After the morning reflection, work begins, you will be likely off to do your own task and it is very nice to
practice working meditation as that is something quite mentioned in this tradition, to approach
absolutely everything with mindfulness even the most mundane of things. (where I saw my mind prefers
to be the most active).
It is good to bring any kind of dāna you can whether that be some groceries from the nearby town of
Sixmilebridge or donations, this is a very small place and generally they have to do their own shopping
from retreat donations, but don’t worry if you can’t because there is plenty of food to go around. Being
no monastics has its downside of not being able to talk about your practice or observe long-term
practitioners who can make great friends or teachers, so I suggest if you are a point you’d like a self-
retreat this is definitely a good place to go or to join during some kind of retreat where you’ll be
amongst more people, or to be in contact with the lay-manager as to when monastics are coming and
going. I’ll absolutely be back and for anyone in Ireland this is certainly a place you’ll be glad to be able to
visit often.

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