An Open View (Devon, UK and online)

An Open View is a week-long insight meditation retreat held in Devon, UK, and online, so it suits people who want to practise in person at the retreat centre as well as those joining from home. It is led by the Insight Meditation teachers Nathan Glyde and Zohar Lavie, with Lucy Chan and Mark Ovland, and it is offered through Gaia House.

The retreat takes its theme from the Buddhist teaching that wise view comes first. The Buddha saw that our lives unfold from the view we hold, and this retreat is an invitation to look at that view with curiosity and compassion.

What to Expect

The retreat explores how the view we have in any moment is shaped by conditions and experience, and does not arise in isolation. When perception is too narrow, experience tends to tighten into dukkha: stress, entanglement, unease. As the view deepens and widens, the heart-mind opens, clarity moves through experience, and a release that benefits all beings can begin to be sensed.

The retreat runs for a week. The teachers work in the Insight Meditation tradition, and Nathan Glyde and Zohar Lavie are known for their practical approach to dependent origination, the teaching that all things arise reliant on other causes and conditions. That lens, how stress depends on thirsting and how seeing such dependencies opens a path to freedom, is a natural companion to a retreat about view.

About Nathan Glyde

Nathan Glyde is an Insight Meditation teacher recognised by Gaia House in the UK. He has practised and studied meditation since 1997 and has shared teachings on retreats since 2007. In 2004 he co-founded SanghaSeva, whose retreats emphasise wisdom and compassion in ecological and humanitarian service. With Zohar Lavie, he writes the materials and runs every part of DependentOrigination.org, a body of work on the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination, which they describe as a practical exploration of how everything leans. Their aim is to make this deep teaching accessible to all.

About Zohar Lavie

Zohar Lavie teaches alongside Nathan Glyde, and the two offer retreats, online drop-in groups and meditation sessions together. They co-create the DependentOrigination.org teachings, looking at how seeing the conditions behind experience can lighten stress and open the way to freedom.

The Setting

The in-person retreat takes place in Devon, UK, and the same retreat can also be joined online. Gaia House is the host.

Before You Go

Choose between attending in Devon or joining online. If you would like to keep practising afterwards, Nathan and Zohar also lead online drop-in groups and meditation sessions, as well as a series of online courses on how experience is composed.