Meet Wake Up Edinburgh
Wake Up Edinburgh meets on the first and third Tuesday evenings of each month, between 6:30pm and 8:30pm. We meet at the Salisbury Centre, which is a beautiful space welcoming those who want to develop their spiritual and creative lives. For this reason, it can be quite an eclectic and busy community space. We use the Wellspring Room, which is a small meditation room already set up with cushions and meditation stools. There is a calligraphy by Thay on the wall, and we also have access to the centre’s kitchen and garden. When there are no groups meeting in the Library Room, we sometimes go to have a look at the books (some by Thich Nhat Hanh), and there is another calligraphy on the wall there. The all-ages sangha in Edinburgh, Wild Geese, gave us a beautiful bell with a handmade wooden box to store it in, which we were incredibly grateful for.
Our sangha is small, but growing, and our favourite practices are walking meditation and drinking tea. In Scotland, the days are very short in the winter, so we are unable to go outside much then, but in the summer, the garden is so full of life. There are fruit trees, squirrels, colourful flowers, and much more as we slowly walk around, paying full attention to our surroundings. After that, we go to the kitchen to make tea, and then settle back down in the Wellspring Room to enjoy a guided meditation, dharma talk, or discussion.
Recently, six monastics from Plum Village, Br Phap Ly, Br Bao Tich, Sr Tam Muoi, Sr Hien Tam, Br Thien Khai, and Sr Nguyen Anh came to Edinburgh during their Scotland tour. Some of our sangha were able to go to a Dharma talk and a Day of Mindfulness during the tour, and were very happy that the monastics enjoyed some vegan haggis for lunch one day. We were part of around 100 people on a mindful walk into the Meadows, which is a large and busy park in the middle of Edinburgh. A few years ago, a plum tree was planted in the Meadows, with a plaque commemorating Thich Nhat Hanh near it, so it is a very special place.
Two members of our sangha were lucky enough to go to the next stop on the monastic tour: a 5-day retreat at The University of Stirling with almost 200 people. One Wake Up Edinburgh friend received the 5 Mindfulness Trainings, alongside almost 40 other practitioners, and on the final day, we had a ceilidh, which is traditional Scottish dancing. It was a great joy to see the monastics put their whole hearts into the dancing. We have been able to bring some freshness and new ideas from the Scotland Tour into our practice, and we also gained some new sangha members from the events in Edinburgh. We were very grateful that Brother Thien Khai gave us a shout-out at the end of the day of mindfulness, so that people knew where to go next if they wanted to continue to practise with like-minded friends.
Contact Wake Up Edinburgh
If anyone finds themselves in the Edinburgh area, we would love to welcome them. For more information, please email edinburgh@wkup.org. You can also follow them on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wake_up_edinburgh/
Read more about the origin story of Wake Up Edinburg here: https://wkup.org/sangha-of-the-month/wake-up-edinburgh/