Shrewsbury TRIRATNA buddhist centre

Help turn a derelict building into a beautiful space – open to all – dedicated to meditation, friendship, and changing the world!  We need your help to finish the project please.  Please visit http://www.zequs.com/campaign/shrewsbury-triratna-buddhist-centre#.VInA_4GkOmG to donate

WE HAVE A VISION …

A vision of a place where people can come together and enjoy friendship

A place where people will find kindness and a strong sense of community

A place where people can learn to meditate and transform their own minds – freeing up energy and creativity, contacting the natural joy of awareness, finding peace of mind, and letting go of the unhelpful thinking that can stress or undermine us.

A place where people are helping to change the world for the better – starting with their own minds!

We’ll offer courses on mindfulness for managing pain and stress, and also team up with teachers of yoga, pilates and tai chi – so long as it’s good for human minds or bodies or hearts, we’ll consider it! And the Centre will be open to all people – on the basis of our shared humanity – not just Buddhists.

Read on to find out more. And if you’d like to make a donation click on one of the ‘pledge’ buttons on the right.

NOW – IT’S A BUILDING SITE!

There’s no heating. The roof is leaking. Lots of the windows are broken.

The garden is full of rubble

And the toilet is a bit open plan …

WE’VE STARTED THE BUILDING WORK

We’ve been demolishing walls (a very good antidote to hours on a computer!), cutting through electricity cables (mostly on purpose), and chipping old putty off the windows, which will be lovingly restored by a team of volunteers.

Tim is our architect and project manager – so we are confident it will be a beautiful space. He is ably supported by Simon who is pretty handy on the tools as well as a Maestro on the excel spreadsheets.

And both of them are working on a totally voluntary basis.

Here’s Tim’s plan for the building layout –

Many others are giving time and energy to the project – some are even willing to risk rats and dust and claustrophobia as they crawl into the space between the floorboards and the earth to lay insulation to keep future meditators warm!

BUT OUR MONEY WILL RUN OUT IN EARLY FEBRUARY

We’ve raised £43,000 for the building works but the total renovation costs are £120,000. And by early February the money will run out, leaving us half way through the construction work, plumbing, re-wiring, plastering … and the rest!

We need to raise another £77,000 to finish the building project and open in the Spring of 2015.

Please support us in any way your can – a Facebook ‘like’ or share or a tweet will help immensely. And all pledges are hugely appreciated.

and TO SAY THANK YOU …

We’re offering a few gifts as an expression of our gratitude.

Some gifts will be sent to our donors – a guided meditation (audio file), a vegetarian cook book (with favourite recipes from lots of our friends), and a set of totally original and very quirky Buddhist greeting cards.

Some gifts are mysterious – a random act of kindness dreamt up by someone who comes to our regular meditation class. It may not directly benefit the donor but it will be inspired by their donation and we hope that hearing about it, on a rainy day in February, will make them happy!

Also the first 50 people to pledge a donation will be entered into a prize draw and could win a week at a beautiful Georgian house in a Suffolk village.

Many thanks and much love

From the Shrewsbury Triratna Buddhist Community and Friends