i live very quietly, and locally to LBC, and have done for the past four years or so. i moved here knowing i would be close to the 'buddhist village' but had never been inside the centre before.
what got me through the door was a desire to learn meditiation in the hope that it would help me with personal difficulties arising from having a chronic pain condition that had stopped me working and restricted my life in most measurable ways. what i did have was time. time, already purchased by pain and trying to manage that pain, but nevertheless, mostly up to me how i spent it. my daily life began to involve the trek, most days, to the LBC, for the lunchtime meditations. my involvement has grown slowly, as have i. what i did not expect at that point in this journey, was that i was going to benefit from practices that would enable me to manage my life in a completely different way. not that i am anywhere near actually recovered, as such, it is a chronic condition, but the quality of how i experience my everyday life is altered completely.