Dear Friend,
Welcome to the Peace is the Wey of Guildford Sangha. The Wey is the beautiful river that flows through Guildford.
Our site is being updated with refreshed content and is a work in progress. You may find broken links and fragments of content during this process.
Peace is the Wey is a friendly sangha* practicing in the Plum Village Buddhist tradition, initiated by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who is affectionately known as Thay (teacher in Vietnamese).
We meet online via Zoom every Thursday at 7:15pm for a 7:30pm start (GMT). We practice together for around 90 minutes and this includes welcome introductions, a guided meditation, a reading, a tea meditation, sharing from the heart and deep listening (dharma sharing) and a silent meditation. Once a month we recite the Five Mindfulness Trainings so that our practice can deepen each day. You can find out more about the trainings on this website.
We aim to create a friendly, informal and inclusive space and everyone is welcome to practice with us. Although our sangha formally met in central Guildford, since Covid we meet online and welcome friends from across Surrey and further afield.
If you are new to meditation or Plum Village practice, we are happy to give support and guidance and there will be lots of explanation at your first meeting too.
We also hold a quarterly "Day of Mindfulness" for those that have practiced with the sangha for some time. A wonderful opportunity for the sangha to get together in person. The day includes a sitting meditation, a walking meditation, a mindful creative activity and a shared lunch. Sometime we also have a visiting dharma teacher to help us explore a topic.
Sangha members make a small financial (dana) contribution each month to cover sangha running costs.
If you are interested practising with us please email and tell us a little about yourself so we can welcome you to a sangha meeting. You could tell us if you have practiced meditation before and if you are familiar with the Plum Village practice. Our email is Peace2WeySangha@proton.me
Note: our sangha Facebook page is unmonitored and no longer updated
* Sangha: is the Sanskrit work for inseparable. In the context of Plum Village it is a group or community of practioners.
Being Peace UK Centre
Following fundraising the centre is being developed near the Forest of Dean and will be the first dedicated practice centre in the Plum Village tradition in the UK. The Being Peace Practice Centre will be a place for young people, families, activists, and people from all walks of life to come together and practice peace and transformation, inspired by the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. Click on the link above to find out about the progress of this wonderful project.
A YouTube video of a Dharma talk offered by Thich Nhat Hanh in October 2006, a few days after his 80th birthday (and a few days after getting back from UNESCO): “If you ask me how old I am, I will reply that fifty years ago, I was thirty….” And that’s how Thay opens a beautiful talk about his time at An Quang in his 30s, editing the magazine of the National Buddhist Association.
“In Plum Village you can see the kind of Buddhism we need to respond to the needs of our times.”
“You can call Plum Village a centre for the practice of peace and non-violence”
'Peace in myself, Peace in the world
