VISITING ANUKAMPA GROVE
Special Rains Retreat Announcement: Changes in Schedule & Teachings!
Dear friends, our resident monastic community are currently engaged in their annual three month Rains Retreat, ending in mid-October. During this time we are unable to have friends visiting Anukampa Grove. Please check in with us in October if you would like to visit the resident Sangha after the Rains Retreat.
Whilst the monastics are in silent retreat, we have a wonderful online teaching programme in store for you. Please click here for more information about our "Fragrance of Dhamma" online programme of led by our well-loved guest bhikkhuni and bhikkhu teachers. This special series begins on 6th July and continues every Sunday until mid-October.
General Information
This is a residence for the only budding monastic community of bhikkhunis (fully ordained nuns) in the UK. From time to time we have guests who stay with us by personal arrangement with the resident community. As alms mendicants, bhikkhunis do not cook or own/handle money, therefore we rely on our lay Buddhist friends to participate in community life by volunteering their help with cooking, cleaning and providing transport. As an invited guest, you will be part of our community during your stay, which involves meditating and reflecting on the Buddha's teachings together as they apply to our daily lives.
Currently, we have space for lay friends from early 2026.
A New Monastery – Anukampa Grove Bhikkhuni Monastery
We are delighted to share the news that after a long search, Venerable Candā and the Anukampa community have secured an ideal property, on Boars Hill near the beautiful University city of Oxford to be the first monastic residence for Theravada bhikkhunis in the UK. This is an enormous accomplishment, as it is the first place dedicated to developing a Bhikkhuni Sangha (a community of fully ordained Buddhist nuns) in Britain - a place where full ordination has not been possible for women - until now. Here, it will be possible for aspiring bhikkhunis to practice and monastic and lay friends to visit - what a blessing!
This is an exciting and significant step both for the Bhikkhuni Sangha worldwide, as well as for the Anukampa community. It is a culmination of all the support from well-wishers around the globe and puts us in an excellent position, aligned with our future vision of an established bhikkhuni monastery. We are very inspired and grateful. "Anumodana!" - we rejoice in your goodness and generosity 🙂
Four Ways To Be Involved In The Monastery
More than 2,500 years ago, the Buddha established a radical relationship between the monastics and the lay community which continues today in Theravada Buddhism.
The monastic code (Vinaya) requires the ordained Sangha to live in dependence upon the laity for all their physical needs. Monastics cannot grow or prepare their own food, and they can only accept food that is freely offered by laypeople. Lay practitioners support monastics with material requisites so they may dedicate their life to Awakening, whilst monastics share the Dhamma and provide spiritual sanctuaries (i.e., monasteries!) to help and inspire their supporters to deepen their Buddhist practice.
1. Residential Stays
We offer our lay friends the opportunity to come and stay at the monastery, surrounded by the woods and parks on Boars Hill. You can deepen your practice by meditating and serving the Sangha as part of our small residential community of Buddhist practitioners. We have one or two bedrooms for our lay friends and can accommodate male, transgender or non-binary people. All visits will be made by personal arrangement with the resident community.
Our guests will practice and apply the whole Eightfold Noble Path in a quiet environment, supported by spiritual friends. A stay includes some light work such as cooking, cleaning, gardening and time for solitary meditation practice in our lovely meditation room and grounds. There are two group meditation sessions a day and opportunities to join our online and in-person teachings as well as speak personally about your practice with the bhikkhunis. Our friends say that staying here deeply inspires their practice and they leave feeling a renewed aspiration to commit to living a life of harmlessness and to continue deepening their meditation practice.
Anukampa offers the possibility to explore whether monastic life could be beneficial and inspiring for you. The path to ordination is progressive and would include visits and longer stays at different monasteries. Aspiring monastics would have participated in several retreats of at least a week in length, be in sound mental and physical health, and have an established daily practice that is well integrated into a stable lifestyle at home.
If you are a friend who would like to visit, please email the resident community at team@anukampaproject.org
2. Visiting for Lunch and Giving Other Requisites
There are many ways to offer your support the community from afar to enrich your practice.
Generosity lies at the heart of the Buddhist Path and is the foundation for inner cultivation. The type of giving that yields most benefit are gifts offered with a serene, joyful heart for the purpose of "beautifying" and "equipping" the mind (with stillness and wisdom) AN:8:31. We would very much like to give our supporters the wonderful opportunity to practice generosity (dana) by offering meals and/or other requisites and household items to the resident monastic community (Bhikkhuni Sangha).
Below we offer six ideas for how you can participate in giving, whether you live locally, or far away. To schedule any of these or find out more, please email team@anukampaproject.org.
1. Come for a shared lunch! Bring a prepared hot meal to offer for the main meal, which is at 11:00 each day. Prepared food can also be brought the evening before for the following day’s meal). You can check the Lunch Dana Calendar to look for available dates, and to find out how to schedule an offering or get more information.
2. Invite the monastic Sangha for a meal at your home, traditionally called a "house dana," or invite them to a restaurant.
3. Order shopping deliveries or vegetable boxes. You can send groceries on a one-time or recurring basis, which lay visitors can use to prepare meals for the monastic Sangha.
4. Send Gift vouchers. This is particularly helpful for our resident community! Example stores include:
Tesco (supermarket, local to Oxford)
Sainsburys (supermarket near to the Vihara)
Costa and other cafes (helpful for when the monastics are travelling!)
Dunelm (paint, varnish, cabinets, sheets, household, etc)
John Lewis (all manner of things!)
Marks & Spencer (food, household)
Amazon
and other food, home, and hardware stores relevant to the Oxford area.
5. Supply Monastery household items. The Needed Items List contains various household items that would be beneficial for starting up and maintaining the monastery.
6. Offer transport and other needs. You can always invite the resident Sangha to let you know if there are other items or transportation needed. Please let them or our volunteer team (team@anukampaproject.org) know your approximate spending range the time frame of your offer (e.g., £30 available for use within the next 3 months, etc.)
3. Volunteering to Help Build Our Community
We deeply appreciate offers of time volunteered for specific types of tasks, as and when needed. You can also watch for details of non-residential volunteer roles in the newsletter, or write to team@anukampaproject.org with your interests, skills, and availability.
We have two WhatsApp Groups for ad-hoc help, called Anukampa Food at the Ready (lunch and food offerings) and Anukampa Hands at the Ready (AFAR and AHAR for short ;-)) that you are welcome to join to receive updates about what the Sangha needs.
Once again, the volunteers at team@anukampaproject.org can give you further information or add you to either or both group(s).
4. Offer Funds via a Regular Standing Order
Standing orders are particularly helpful in allowing us to plan ahead, especially now that our residential community is growing. If you are in a fortunate position to give more, that is great! We sincerely appreciate donations of any amount and invite you to rejoice in your generosity, knowing it is supporting us to spread the priceless Buddha's teachings around the world.
If you would like to set up a standing order please arrange it with your bank using the following details:
From the UK:
Account Name: Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project
Account Type: Please choose charity, organisation or business (NOT personal account).
Account Number: 91826271
Sort Code: 40-20-24, HSBC Bank plc.
From Overseas:
Account name: Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project
Account Number: 91826271
IBAN: GB97HBUK40202491826271
BIC: HBUKGB4112G (or HBUKGB4BXXX for Wise transfer).
Bank name and address:
HSBC Bank plc
54 High Street
Epsom, Surrey
KT19 8DS
United Kingdom.
Beneficiary address:
Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project
16 Blenheim Close
Shepreth
ROYSTON
SG8 6PT
United Kingdom.
Please note:
The Royston address is a registered address used for official, legal, and financial correspondence only. It is NOT the location of Anukampa Grove Bhikkhuni Monastery or Ven. Canda's residence. Please do not send any physical mail, gifts, or offerings intended for the Monastery or Ven. Canda to this address. If you would like to offer food items or other support please contact us here.
Beneficiary email address: finances@anukampaproject.org
If you would like a receipt or an acknowledgement of your transfer, please forward your contact details by email HERE.
For Donations of 10K or over it is essential to include your email contact details with the transaction.
Thank you for your inspiring generosity and patience!
Wise Transfers
To save fees and get better exchange rates, Wise is a great option. Wise uses the real exchange rate for sending money, which means cheap, fair and transparent international transfers with a low, upfront fee. You can use the referral link HERE. Please be sure to send UK/British Pound sterling (GBP), not other currency.
If you would like to donate using a credit card or via PayPal, please go to our donations page here.
We rejoice in your generosity and in your presence in our spiritual community!
"Bhikkhu(ni)s, in three cases one may be understood to have faith and confidence.
What three? When one desires to see those of virtuous behaviour;
when one desires to hear the good Dhamma;
and when one dwells at home with a mind devoid of the stain of miserliness,
freely generous, openhanded, delighting in relinquishment,
devoted to charity, delighting in giving and sharing.
In these three cases one may be understood to have faith and confidence."
(AN3:42)
“Bhikkhu(ni)s, if beings knew, as I know, the result of giving and sharing, they would not eat without having given, nor would they allow the stain of meanness to obsess them and take root in their minds. Even if it were their last morsel, their last mouthful, they would not eat without having shared it, if there were someone to share it with. But, bhikkhus, as beings do not know, as I know, the result of giving and sharing, they eat without having given, and the stain of meanness obsesses them and takes root in their minds.”
Iti.26 (Giving).
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