Radha Nicholson from near Buddha Bay (oops, Bryon Bay), offers a retreat in Bodh Gaya, March 2025
Ring a travel agent
Radha Nicholson from near Buddha Bay (oops, Bryon Bay), deep on the east coast of Australia, offers in mid March 2025 her annual retreat in Bodh Gaya, a few minutes’ walk from the Bodhi Tree, the world’s most famous tree. You surely all know all what happened under the tree.
Here is the flyer for the essential information, followed with appreciation, light humour and more, plus photo of Radha and myself.
Retreat suitable for beginners and experienced meditators.
The vibes emanate from the Tree of Enlightenment Radha’s glorious teachings and your mindfulness/meditation, plus the vibes, support a wealth of insights.
Some of the geriatric Dharma wallahs keep going about the ‘good old days in Mother India.’ Take no notice of them. Old people remain vulnerable to living in the past. Today, there is more of everything in India. What could be better?
Radha knows spiritual India and the challenges exceptionally well. Tim Dawson has immense experience as manager of these retreats for several years. She regularly invites assistant teachers to join her.
Radha and I have been friends for 50 years since we met in Dalhousie in the foothills of the Himalayas in 1975. We have co-taught retreats in Australia and India on many occasions.
A founder of a wellbeing centre in Hertfordshire, UK, Nshorna (my daughter) loves Radha, who has been an inspiration for her in many ways. Radha has four fine (adult) children, a daughter and three sons. My daughter also has four children. Yes, she has a daughter and three sons.
Radha is of a certain age. She takes her international travels year by year. Her retreats focus on freedom and non-duality. Don’t think about it. See if you can go. Ring your travel agent. Tell your boss you do not have long Covid but long Dharma. You can get treatment in the Royal Thai Monastery hospital in India with the Chief Medical Officer, Radha Nicholson.
Owing to long Dharma, you can only sit still, walk very slowly, stand still and recline, as still as a reclining Buddha image. Every day you will receive the medication of Dharma teachings, instructions, guided meditations, inquiry from the CMO to wake up with wisdom about the unfolding and experoence of living.
You could return to work to offer teachings on ethics, compassion, non-stress in the workplace and ways for bosses and employees to reflect on the pressure of the company to maximise performance and profits. You will return with love and a fresh purpose to your working environment. You can offer the company the capacity to expand in liberated ways free from obsession with production targets.
Wealth of Experience
Radha has a wealth of experience in the University of Life – daughter of a sheep farmer, international travel, two sons born in a tent on Bodhi Farm (an hour drive from Byron Bay), living for years in a community with a radical vision, years training to become a senior psychologist plus teaching Dharma in Europe, Israel, Asia, USA and Australia.
Her retreat starts in three months (March 2025)
Ring a travel agent or two. Buy a ticket. Check your passport. Get a visa. It is a five-star facility in the monastery with a welcoming and wonderful Abbot, plus delicious food.
Finally, years ago, a major Thai TV channel heard of a Western laywoman teaching Vipassana (insight meditation) in the illustrious Royal Thai Monastery filled with monks and nuns. They sent a film crew to broadcast Radha teaching and responding to the reporter’s questions for the evening news.
There is a crack in everything. That’s where the light gets in, sang Leonard Cohen, one of the patron saints of the Dharma.
Radha is well known in the international Sangha and Bodh Gaya for the amazing saris she wears in the Dharma hall and elsewhere in India.
This is a sight for sore eyes accompanied with her deep teachings for the ears and the heart.
Happy travels.
OM. Shanti. Shanti. Shanti.
Namaste.
Love
Christopher
Radha and Christopher, a few minutes walk from my home in Totnes, Devon, UK. Photo taken July 2024.
Hi Christopher,
Thanks for your post. I read your posts quite often and find them heartwarming and insightful. I’m just wondering about a couple of things, though. The travel – celebrated as a marker of ones CV. Don’t get me wrong, I travel too, but feel increasingly uneasy about doing so. Climate catastrophe, tourist invasions, environmental harms etc. How much travel is yet another form of consumption? Also, not everyone can travel. The places many of us visit, many, perhaps most people who live there, can’t afford to travel.
I have no doubt that Radha’s retreats are excellent. But is there a need to travel to India? Also, I suspect the cost is prohibitive for many people. I think there’s a class dimension to all this, is there not? Perhaps I’m wrong.
I have other, let’s call them concerns, but my current gripes will do for now. The more I peer into what has been described as the ‘spiritual industrial complex’ the more questions I have.
Thankyou,
Richard
Hi Christopher. How about a little compassion for the many people living with Long Covid and it's relative ME ? So many people stuck indoors or in bed suffering. Dharma has been a lifeline for me personally with this illness. Sad to see such an awful illness being made light of. Would you use cancer or MS in a sales pitch? Maybe?