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Saddhaloka

Saddhaloka has been living and working at Padmaloka since 1995. Before that he spent sixteen years just down the road in Norwich, helping to run the Buddhist Centre there.

He grew up in Jersey in the Channel Islands through the fifties and sixties, leaving the island to go to university in Leeds. When he finished his studies in 1971, he got married and travelled overland to India with his wife, spending a further fourteen months travelling in India and Nepal.

On his return to the UK he decided it was time to get back down to earth after the years of travelling and studying. He spent several years working on farms, mostly as a dairyman, though the romantic myth of the country idyll did not last too long in face of the harsh realities of farming that he encountered with his first job. He moved towards community and social work, working next on a farm attached to a school and training centre for children and young people with emotional and psychological difficulties.

He then spent three years as a farmer in a community in Ireland for adults with learning difficulties, run by followers of Rudolph Steiner. By the end of this time he saw clearly that it was the teachings of the Buddha that he wanted to follow, and wrote around to different Buddhist groups. In summer 1979 he moved to Norwich with his young family to get a taste of the FWBO. He responded strongly to what he found and was ordained two years later on the first long ordination course in Tuscany. He remained working in Norwich whilst his children were growing up before moving to Padmaloka in 1995.

See also info about his 'outreach' work in Finland, Russia and Estonia.

To listen to talks given by Saddhaloka please see their page on the free buddhist audio website

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