Zen and the art of lockdown on an island retreat
Holy Isle remains closed to visitors but days pass much the same during lockdown at this Buddhist retreat, writes Paul Rodger
On a tiny Scottish island, home to a Tibetan Buddhist community, life has barely changed under lockdown. Holy Isle, just off the coast of the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, is home to 14 people, aged between 19 and 80 years old.
The island, which measures just under two miles long and half a mile wide, is linked with the first Tibetan Buddhist centre in the west, Kagyu Samye Ling, in Dumfries and Galloway.
The last date a person arrived was 17 March, and no-one has shown symptoms of coronavirus since then.
But while the island remains apparently virus free, strict hygiene protocols are being followed when bringing deliveries onto Holy Isle from a neighbouring island.
Adam Rose, 58, manager of the Centre for World Peace and Health, believes life has continued virtually as normal, except for courses on yoga and meditation being cancelled.
Mr Rose said: “I wouldn’t say life hasn’t changed, but maybe we’re among the luckiest people in the UK.”
On Holy Isle, which was founded as a Buddhist community in 1992, meditation sessions start around 6am, followed by a communal breakfast and then a six or sevenhour working day with a break for lunch. Meditations resume each evening for an hour, at 5pm and 7pm, followed by dinner.
Most people stay in private rooms or dorms, although long-term residents have their own cabins.
Mr Rose said: “We’re just getting on with our usual jobs. We’re doing what we normally would do but we just don’t have any guests.
“It’s a six or seven-hour working day, with lunch in between. If there’s been no rain the gardeners start early. As a spiritual centre we have Tibetan prayers and meditation practices, it gives structure to the day.
“We’re happy here day to day and the morale’s great.
“It’s not at all clear how we’ll emerge from this but we’re hopeful for the future – we just take things a day at a time.”
A former civil servant, Mr Rose moved to the island in 2006 when he got fed up with working in London.
He was the last person to set down on the island, on 17 March, after a trip away, but others, visiting from the Czech Republic and Italy, found themselves stranded when flights were cancelled.
Mr Rose said: “We’ve all been here since, including a couple, and there was one from the Czech Republic and another from Italy. Flights were cancelled, there was no movement and they got cut off. There are people who haven’t been off the island in seven or eight months.”
To supplement potatoes, kale, salad leaves and strawberries grown on the island, deliveries of tinned goods are sent over from neighbouring Arran, with surplus vegetables also sent there.
But extra care has to be taken around deliveries.
Mr Rose said: “The little ferry comes once a week and they drop it on the jetty and we pick it up with gloves and spray some items – but that’s the limit.”
The island retreat was founded by Lama Yeshe Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Master, with the story of Buddhist community beginning in the early 1980s at a “dream yoga” retreat in the United States. In his dream, Lama Yeshe visited an island which he described as a place where humans and all life could live in harmony.
Meanwhile, Kay Morris, the former owner of Holy Isle and a devout Catholic, claimed she was instructed by the Virgin Mary in a dream to pass Holy Isle to the Buddhist master.
Lama Yeshe first visited Holy Isle in December 1990 and felt he was in the place that he had dreamt about. A massive global fundraising effort was launched and Holy Isle was signed over on the 18 April 1992.
The island will remain closed to visitors until the end of August.